Western Society A Brief History Complete Edition

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Western Society: A Brief History

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W E S T E R N S O C I E T Y:
A Brief History
John P. McKay
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Bennett D. Hill
Late of Georgetown University
John Buckler
Clare Haru Crowston

Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks
University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee
Bedford/St. Martin’s
Boston New York
Preface
The first edition of A History of Western Society grew out of our desire to infuse new life
into the study of Western civilization. We knew that historians were using imaginative
questions and innovative research to open up vast new areas of historical interest and
knowledge. We also recognized that these advances had dramatically affected the sub-
ject of European economic, cultural, and, especially, social history, while new scholar-
ship and fresh interpretations were also revitalizing the study of the traditional mainstream
of political, diplomatic, and religious developments. Our goal was to write a textbook
that reflected these dynamic changes, and we have been gratified by the tremendous
response to this book on the part of both instructors and students.
This version of the textbook—Western Society: A Brief History—reflects the same
goals and approach of its full-length counterpart. But its brevity addresses the needs of a
growing number of instructors whose students need a less comprehensive text, either
because of increased supplemental reading in the course or because their students ben-
efit from less detail in order to grasp key developments. It also suits courses that cover the
entire history of Western civilization in one semester. Finally, its lower price makes it an
affordable alternative to larger texts, and the retention of a particularly strong illustration
and map program and a full program of pedagogical support make the book a particu-
larly good value.
In developing Western Society: A Brief History, we shortened our full-length narrative
by thirty percent. We began by judiciously reducing coverage of subjects of secondary
importance. We also condensed and combined thematically related sections and aimed
throughout the text to tighten our exposition while working hard to retain our topical
balance, up-to-date scholarship, and lively, accessible writing style. The result, we be-
lieve, is a concise edition that preserves the narrative flow, balance, and power of the
full-length work.
Central Themes and Approach

It was our conviction, based on considerable experience introducing large numbers of
students to the broad sweep of Western civilization, that a book in which social history
was the core element could excite readers and inspire a renewed interest in history.
Therefore we incorporated recent research by social historians as we sought to re-create
the life of ordinary people in appealing human terms. At the same time, we were deter-
mined to give great economic, political, cultural, and intellectual developments the at-
tention they unquestionably deserve. We wanted to give individual readers a balanced,
integrated perspective so that they could pursue—on their own or in the classroom—
those themes and questions that they found particularly exciting and significant.
In an effort to realize fully the potential of our innovative yet balanced approach, we
made many changes, large and small, in the editions that followed the original publica-
tion of A History of Western Society. In particular, we approached the history of the West
as part of the history of the world, devoting more attention throughout the book to Eu-
rope’s interactions with other cultures and societies. Too, we took advantage of the excit-
ing recent scholarship on women’s and gender history to provide even fuller discussion
of the role of gender in the shaping of human experience. Producing this briefer edition
gave us the opportunity to bring even more clarity and focus to our core themes and
approach.
v
vi Preface
Pedagogy and Features

We know from our own teaching that students need and welcome help in assimilating
information and acquiring critical-thinking skills. Thus we retained the class-tested
learning and teaching aids of the parent text while adding more such features. Each
chapter opens by posing four or five historical questions keyed to its main sections in a
clearly defined chapter preview that accompanies the chapter introduction. The rele-
vant questions appear at the start of the chapter’s main sections, all of which conclude
with a section review that encapsulates the material presented and provides an answer to
the question. Then a carefully crafted chapter review at the close of each chapter re-
prises the chapter questions and summary answers.
In other measures to promote clarity and comprehension, bolded key terms in the
text are defined in the margin next to their appearance and repeated at the end of the
chapter, and confidence-building phonetic spellings are located directly after terms that
readers are likely to find hard to pronounce. Chapter chronologies alert students to the
major developments discussed in the chapter and topic-specific chronologies appear at
key points throughout the book.
We are particularly proud of the illustrative component of our work, its art and map
programs. Over 340 illustrations, many of them in full color and all contemporaneous
with the subject matter—reveal to today’s visually attuned students how the past speaks
in pictures as well as in words. Recognizing students’ difficulties with geography, we also
offer over 65 full-color maps and the popular “Mapping the Past” chapter feature,
which provides questions that encourage students’ close investigation of one map in
each chapter, often with prompts to compare it to other maps in order to appreciate
change over time. Substantive captions for all our illustrations help students to make the
most of these informative materials.
We are proud as well of the biographical and primary-source special features that appear
in each chapter to spotlight our focus on social history. These were so well received by read-
ers of the full-length edition that we determined to keep them in our concise account.
Each chapter features “Individuals in Society,” an illustrated biographical essay of
a woman, man, or group intended to extend the chapter narrative while showing stu-
dents the similarities and differences between these former lives and their own. This
special feature evidences our focus on people, both famous and obscure, and we believe
that student readers will empathize with these human beings as they themselves seek to
define their own identities. Examples include Bithus, a typical Roman soldier (Chapter
6), the German abbess and mystic Hildegard of Bingen (Chapter 10), freed slave and
abolitionist Olaudah Equiano (Chapter 19), and Tariq Ramadan, the controversial
European-Muslim intellectual (Chapter 31). “Questions for Analysis” guide students’
consideration of the historical significance of these figures. For a complete list of the
individuals highlighted, see page xxvii.
Each chapter also includes a one- or two-page feature titled “Listening to the Past,”
chosen to extend and illuminate a major historical issue raised in the chapter through
the presentation of a single original source or several voices on the subject. Each “Listen-
ing to the Past” selection opens with a problem-setting introduction and closes with
“Questions for Analysis” that invite students to evaluate the evidence as historians would.
Selected for their interest and importance and carefully fitted into their historical con-
text, these sources, we hope, do indeed allow students to “listen to the past” and to ob-
serve how history has been shaped by individual men and women, some of them great
aristocrats, others ordinary folk. Sources include Gilgamesh’s quest for immortality
(Chapter 1), an Arab view of the Crusades (Chapter 9), parliamentary testimony of
young British mine workers (Chapter 22), and Simone de Beauvoir’s critique of mar-
riage (Chapter 30). A full list of these features appears on page xxvii.
Preface vii
The complete volume presents eight photo essays entitled “Images in Society.”
Each consists of a short narrative with questions, accompanied by several pictures. The
goal of the feature is to encourage students to think critically: to view and compare visual
illustrations and draw conclusions about the societies and cultures that produced those
objects. Thus, in Chapter 1 appears the discovery of the “Iceman,” the frozen remains of
an unknown herdsman. “The Roman Villa at Chedworth” in Britain mirrors Roman
provincial culture (Chapter 6). The essay “From Romanesque to Gothic” treats the ar-
chitectural shift in medieval church building and aims to show how the Gothic cathe-
dral reflected the ideals and values of medieval society (Chapter 11). “Art in the
Reformation” (Chapter 14) examines both the Protestant and Catholic views of religious
art. Chapter 17 presents the way monarchs displayed their authority visually in “Absolut-
ist Palace Building.” Moving to modern times, the focus in Chapter 19 changes to “Lon-
don: The Remaking of a Great City,” which depicts how Londoners rebuilt their city
after a great catastrophe. “Class and Gender Boundaries in Women’s Fashion, 1850–
1914” studies women’s clothing in relationship to women’s evolving position in society
and gender relations (Chapter 24). Finally, “Pablo Picasso and Modern Art” looks at
some of Picasso’s greatest paintings to gain insight into his principles and the modernist
revolution in art (Chapter 28).
Supplements
To aid in the teaching and learning processes, a wide array of print and electronic sup-
plements for students and instructors accompanies Western Society: A Brief History.
Some of the materials are available for the first time with our new publisher, Bedford/St.
Martin’s. For more information on popular value packages and available materials,
please visit bedfordstmartins.com/mckaywestbrief/catalog or contact your local Bedford/
St. Martin’s representative.
For Students
Print Resources
The Bedford Series in History and Culture. Over 100 titles in this highly praised se-
ries combine first-rate scholarship, historical narrative, and important primary docu-
ments for undergraduate courses. Each book is brief, inexpensive, and focuses on a
specific topic or period. Package discounts are available.
Rand McNally Atlas of Western Civilization. This collection of over fifty full-color
maps highlights social, political, and cross-cultural change and interaction from classical
Greece and Rome to the post-industrial Western world. Each map is thoroughly indexed
for fast reference.
The Bedford Glossary for European History. This handy supplement for the survey
course gives students historically contextualized definitions for hundreds of terms—from
Abbasids to Zionism—that students will encounter in lectures, reading, and exams.
Available free when packaged with the text.
Trade Books. Titles published by sister companies Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Henry
Holt and Company; Hill and Wang; Picador; St. Martin’s Press; and Palgrave are avail-
able at a 50 percent discount when packaged with Bedford/St. Martin’s textbooks. For
more information, visit bedfordstmartins.com/tradeup.
viii Preface
New Media Resources
Western Society: A Brief History e-Book. This electronic version of Western So-
ciety: A Brief History offers students unmatched value—the complete text of the print
book, with easy-to-use highlighting, searching, and note-taking tools, at a significantly
reduced price.
Online Study Guide at bedfordstmartins.com/mckaywestbrief. The popular Online

Study Guide for Western Society: A Brief History is a free and uniquely personalized
learning tool to help students master themes and information presented in the textbook
and improve their critical-thinking skills. Assessment quizzes let students evaluate their
comprehension, a flashcard activity tests students’ knowledge of key terms, and learning
objectives help students focus on key points of each chapter. Instructors can monitor
students’ progress through the online Quiz Gradebook or receive e-mail updates.
Benjamin, A Student’s Online Guide to History Reference Sources at bedfordstmartins

.com/mckaywestbrief. This Web site provides links to history-related databases, in-
dexes, and journals, plus contact information for state, provincial, local, and professional
history organizations.
The Bedford Bibliographer at bedfordstmartins.com/mckaywestbrief. The Bedford

Bibliographer, a simple but powerful Web-based tool, assists students with the process of
collecting sources and generates bibliographies in four commonly used documentation
styles.
The Bedford Research Room at bedfordstmartins.com/mckaywestbrief. The Research

Room, drawn from Mike Palmquist’s The Bedford Researcher, offers a wealth of resources—
including interactive tutorials, research activities, student writing samples, and links to
hundreds of other places online—to support students in courses across the disciplines.
The site also offers instructors a library of helpful instructional tools.
Diana Hacker’s Research and Documentation Online at bedfordstmartins.com/

mckaywestbrief. This Web site provides clear advice on how to integrate primary and
secondary sources into research papers, how to cite sources correctly, and how to format
in MLA, APA, Chicago, or CBE style.
The St. Martin’s Tutorial on Avoiding Plagiarism at bedfordstmartins.com/

mckaywestbrief. This online tutorial reviews the consequences of plagiarism and ex-
plains what sources to acknowledge, how to keep good notes, how to organize research,
and how to integrate sources appropriately. The tutorial includes exercises to help stu-
dents practice integrating sources and recognizing acceptable summaries.
For Instructors
Print Resources
Instructor’s Resource Manual. This helpful manual offers both first-time and experi-
enced teachers a wealth of tools for structuring and customizing Western civilization
history courses of different sizes. For each chapter in the textbook, the manual includes
a set of instructional objectives; a chapter outline; lecture suggestions; suggestions on
using primary sources in the classroom; a list of classroom activities; a suggested map
Preface ix
activity; an audiovisual bibliography; a list of internet resources; and an annotated list of

suggested reading.
New Media Resources
Instructor’s Resource CD-ROM. This disc provides instructors with ready-made and
customizable PowerPoint multimedia presentations built around chapter outlines, maps,
figures, and selected images from the textbook, plus jpeg versions of all maps, figures,
and selected images suitable for printing onto transparency acetates. Also included are
chapter questions formatted in PowerPoint for use with i>clicker, a classroom response
system, as well as outline maps.
Computerized Test Bank. This test bank CD-ROM offers instructors a flexible and
powerful tool for test generation and test management. The test bank offers key term
identification, essay questions, multiple choice questions with page references and feed-
back, map questions that refer to maps in the text, and a sample final exam. Instructors
can customize quizzes, add or edit both questions and answers, and export questions and
answers into a variety of formats, including WebCT and Blackboard.
Book Companion Site at bedfordstmartins.com/mckaywestbrief. The companion

Web site gathers all the electronic resources for the text, including the Online Study
Guide and related Quiz Gradebook, at a single Web address. Convenient links to
PowerPoint chapter outlines and maps, an online version of the Instructor’s Resource
Manual, the digital libraries at Make History, and PowerPoint chapter questions for
i>clicker, a classroom response system, are also available from this site.
Make History at bedfordstmartins.com/mckaywestbrief. Comprising the content of

Bedford/St. Martin’s acclaimed online libraries—Map Central, the Bedford History Im-
age Library, DocLinks, and HistoryLinks—Make History provides one-stop access to
relevant digital content including maps, images, documents, and Web links. Students
and instructors alike can search this free, easy-to-use database by keyword, topic, date, or
specific chapter of Western Society: A Brief History. Instructors can create collections of
content and post their collections to the Web to share with students.
Content for Course Management Systems. A variety of student and instructor re-
sources developed for this textbook are ready to use in course management systems such
as WebCT, Blackboard, and other platforms. This e-content includes nearly all of the
offerings from the book’s Online Study Guide as well as the book’s test bank.
Videos and Multimedia. A wide assortment of videos and multimedia CD-ROMs on

various topics in European history is available to qualified adopters.
x Preface
Acknowledgments
It is a pleasure to thank the many instructors who read and critiqued the manuscript for
the ninth edition of the parent text, from which this version is derived:
Hugh Agnew, George Washington University
Melanie Bailey, Centenary College of Louisiana
Rachael Ball, Ohio State University
Eugene Boia, Cleveland State University
Robert Brown, State University of New York, Finger Lakes Community College
Richard Eichman, Sauk Valley Community College
David Fisher, Texas Technical University
Wayne Hanley, West Chester University of Pennsylvania
Michael Leggiere, Louisiana State University, Shreveport
John Mauer, Tri-County Technical College
Nick Miller, Boise State University
Wyatt Moulds, Jones County Junior College
Elsa Rapp, Montgomery County Community College
Anne Rodrick, Wofford College
Sonia Sorrell, Pepperdine University
Lee Shai Weissbach, University of Louisville
It is also a pleasure to thank our many editors for their efforts on this edition. To Carol
Newman and Rosemary Jaffe, who guided production, and to Tonya Lobato, our devel-
opment editor, we express our special appreciation. And we thank Carole Frohlich for
her contributions in photo research and selection as well as Doug McGetchin of Florida
Atlantic University and Cynthia Ward for their editorial contributions.
Many of our colleagues at the University of Illinois and the University of Wisconsin–
Milwaukee continue to provide information and stimulation, often without even know-
ing it. We thank them for it. In addition, John McKay thanks JoAnn McKay for her
unfailing support and encouragement. John Buckler thanks Professor Jack Cargill for his
advice on topics in Chapter 2. He also thanks Professor Nicholas Yalouris, former Gen-
eral Inspector of Antiquities, for his kind permission to publish the mosaic from Elis,
Greece in Chapter 3. He is likewise grateful to Dr. Amy C. Smith, Curator of the Ure
Museum of Archaeology of the University of Reading, for her permission to publish the
vase also in Chapter 3. His sincerest thanks go also to Professor Paul Cartledge of Clare
College, Cambridge University, for his kind permission to publish his photograph of the
statue of Leonidas in Chapter 3. Clare Crowston thanks Ali Banihashem, Max Edelson,
Tara Fallon, John Lynn, Dana Rabin, and John Randolph. Merry Wiesner-Hanks thanks
Jeffrey Merrick, Carlos Galvao-Sobrinho, and Gwynne Kennedy.
Each of us has benefited from the criticism of his or her coauthors, although each of
us assumes responsibility for what he or she has written. Originally, John Buckler wrote
the first six chapters; Bennett Hill continued the narrative through Chapter 16; and John
McKay wrote Chapters 17 through 31. Beginning with the ninth edition of the parent
text and continuing with this brief edition, Merry Wiesner-Hanks assumed primary re-
sponsibility for Chapters 7 through 14, and Clare Crowston took responsibility for Chap-
ters 15 through 21.
Finally, we continue to welcome the many comments and suggestions that have
come from our readers, for they have helped us greatly in this ongoing endeavor.
J. P. M. J. B. C. H. C. M. E. W.
Brief Contents
1 Origins, ca. 400,000–1100 b.c.e. 2
2 Small Kingdoms and Mighty Empires in the Near East,

ca. 1100–513 b.c.e. 24
3 Classical Greece, ca. 1650–338 b.c.e. 38
4 The Hellenistic World, 336–146 b.c.e. 65
5 The Rise of Rome, ca. 750–44 b.c.e. 85
6 The Pax Romana, 31 b.c.e.–450 c.e. 107
7 Late Antiquity, 350–600 133
8 Europe in the Early Middle Ages, 600–1000 162
9 State and Church in the High Middle Ages, 1000–1300 193
10 The Changing Life of the People in the High Middle Ages 220
11 The Creativity and Challenges of Medieval Cities 246
12 The Crisis of the Later Middle Ages, 1300–1450 277
13 European Society in the Age of the Renaissance, 1350–1550 307
14 Reformations and Religious Wars, 1500–1600 337
15 European Exploration and Conquest, 1450–1650 370
16 Absolutism and Constitutionalism in Western Europe, ca. 1589–1715 401
17 Absolutism in Central and Eastern Europe to 1740 432
18 Toward a New Worldview, 1540–1789 458
19 The Expansion of Europe in the Eighteenth Century 484
xi
xii Brief Contents
20 The Changing Life of the People 510
21 The Revolution in Politics, 1775–1815 535
22 The Revolution in Energy and Industry, ca. 1780–1860 565
23 Ideologies and Upheavals, 1815–1850 589
24 Life in the Emerging Urban Society in the Nineteenth Century 617
25 The Age of Nationalism, 1850–1914 645
26 The West and the World, 1815–1914 673
27 The Great Break: War and Revolution, 1914–1919 698
28 The Age of Anxiety, ca. 1900–1940 726
29 Dictatorships and the Second World War, 1919–1945 752
30 Cold War Conflicts and Social Transformations, 1945–1985 781
31 Revolution, Rebuilding, and New Challenges: 1985 to the Present 810

Contents
2
Small Kingdoms and Mighty
Empires in the Near East,
Preface v ca. 1100–513 b.c.e. 24
Maps, Figures, and Tables xxv ❚ Disruption and Diffusion 25
Features xxvii The End of Egyptian Power 27
About the Authors xxix The Rise of Phoenicia 27
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY Wen-Amon 26
❚ The Children of Israel 28
1 The Evolution of the Jewish State
Elements of Jewish Religion 30
28
Origins, ❚ Assyria, the Military Monarchy 30

ca. 400,000–1100 b.c.e. 2 The Power of Assyria 31
MAPPING THE PAST Map 2.2: The Assyrian
❚ From Caves to Towns 3 and Persian Empires 31
IMAGES IN SOCIETY The Iceman 6 Assyrian Culture 32
❚ Mesopotamian Civilization 4 ❚ The Empire of the Persian Kings 33
MAPPING THE PAST Map 1.1: Spread of Cultures The Land of the Medes and Persians 33
in the Ancient Near East 5 The Rise of the Persian Empire
The Invention of Writing and the First Schools 8 (550–540 b.c.e.) 34
Mesopotamian Thought and Religion 8 Thus Spake Zarathustra 35
Sumerian Social and Gender Divisions 10
Chapter Review 36 | Key Terms 36 | Notes 36
❚ The Spread of Mesopotamian Culture 11
LISTENING TO THE PAST The Covenant
The Triumph of Babylon 11
Between Yahweh and the Hebrews 37
Life Under Hammurabi 12
❚ Egypt, the Land of the Pharaohs
(3100–1200 b.c.e.)
The God-King of Egypt 14
13 3
The Pharaoh’s People 16
Classical Greece,
The Hyksos in Egypt (1640–1570 b.c.e.) 16 ca. 1650–338 b.c.e. 38
The New Kingdom: Revival and Empire
(1500–1075 b.c.e.) 17
❚ Hellas: The Land 39
The Minoans and Mycenaeans
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY (ca. 2000–ca. 1100 b.c.e.) 39
Nefertiti, the “Perfect Woman” 18 Homer, Hesiod, Gods, and Heroes
❚ The Hittites and the End of an Era (1100–800 b.c.e.) 42
(ca. 1640–1100 b.c.e.) 17
❚ The Polis 43
The Coming of the Hittites Origins of the Polis 43
(ca. 1640–1200 b.c.e.) 19
Governing Structures 44
The Fall of Empires and the Survival of Cultures
(ca. 1200 b.c.e.) 20 ❚ The Archaic Age (800–500 b.c.e.) 46
Overseas Expansion 46
Chapter Review 20 | Key Terms 20 | Notes 21 The Growth of Sparta 47
LISTENING TO THE PAST A Quest for Immortality 22 The Evolution of Athens 48
xiii
xiv Contents
❚ The Classical Period (500–338 b.c.e.)

The Persian Wars (499–479 b.c.e.) 50
50
5
Growth of the Athenian Empire The Rise of Rome,
(478–431 b.c.e.) 51 ca. 750–44 b.c.e. 85
The Peloponnesian War (431–404 b.c.e.) 51
MAPPING THE PAST Map 3.2: The Peloponnesian ❚ The Etruscans and Rome 86
War 52 The Etruscans and the Roman Settlement
Athenian Arts in the Age of Pericles 53 of Italy (ca. 750–509 b.c.e.) 86
Daily Life in Periclean Athens 55 The Roman Conquest of Italy
Gender 55 (509–290 b.c.e.) 87
Greek Religion 56 ❚ The Roman Republic 89
The Flowering of Philosophy 58 The Roman State 89
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY Aspasia 57 Social Conflict in Rome 90
❚ The Final Act (404–338 b.c.e.) 60 ❚ Roman Expansion 91
The Struggle for Hegemony 61 Italy Becomes Roman 91
Philip and the Macedonian Ascendancy 62 Overseas Conquest (282–146 b.c.e.) 91
The Punic Wars and Beyond
(264–133 b.c.e.) 91
LISTENING TO THE PAST The Great Plague
MAPPING THE PAST Map 5.2: Roman Expansion
at Athens, 430 b.c.e. 64
During the Republic 92
Rome Turns East (211–133 b.c.e.) 94
4 ❚ Old Values and Greek Culture
Cato and the Traditional Ideal 94
94
The Hellenistic World, Scipio Aemilianus: Greek Culture

336–146 b.c.e. 65 and Urban Life 96
❚ Alexander and the Great Crusade 66 ❚ The Late Republic (133–31 b.c.e.) 98
Unrest in Rome and Italy 99
❚ Alexander’s Legacy 68 Civil War 102
The Political Legacy 68
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY Quintus Sertorius 101
MAPPING THE PAST Map 4.2: The Hellenistic
World 69 Chapter Review 103 | Key Terms 103 | Notes 104
The Cultural Legacy 70 LISTENING TO THE PAST A Magic Charm 105
❚ The Spread of Hellenism 71
Cities and Kingdoms 71
Men and Women 6
in Hellenistic Monarchies 72 The Pax Romana,
Greeks and Easterners 73 31 b.c.e.–450 c.e. 107
Hellenism and the Jews 74
❚ The Economic Scope of the Hellenistic World 75 ❚ Augustus’s Settlement (31 b.c.e.–14 c.e.) 108
The Principate and the Restored Republic 108
❚ Hellenistic Intellectual Advances 76
Religion in the Hellenistic World 76 Roman Expansion into Northern
Philosophy and the People 78 and Western Europe 109
Hellenistic Science 79 Literary Flowering and Social Changes 110
Hellenistic Medicine 81 ❚ The Coming of Christianity 113
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY Archimedes and the Unrest in Judaea 113
Practical Application of Science 80 The Life and Teachings of Jesus 114
The Spread of Christianity 114
The Appeal of Christianity 115
LISTENING TO THE PAST Alexander and the
Brotherhood of Man 84
Contents xv
❚ Augustus’s Successors 116 ❚ Christian Missionaries and Conversion 146

The Julio-Claudians and the Flavians 116 Missionaries on the Continent 147
The Age of the “Five Good Emperors” Missionaries in the British Isles 147
(96–180 c.e.) 118 Conversion and Assimilation 148
❚ Life in the “Golden Age” 120 ❚ Migrating Peoples 149
Imperial Rome 120 Celts, Germans, and Huns 149
MAPPING THE PAST Map 6.2: The Economic Aspect MAPPING THE PAST Map 7.3: The Barbarian
of the Pax Romana 121 Migrations 151
Rome and the Provinces 122 Germanic Kingdoms 153
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY Bithus, Anglo-Saxon England 153
a Typical Roman Soldier 119 ❚ Barbarian Society 154
IMAGES IN SOCIETY The Roman Villa Kinship, Custom, and Class 155
at Chedworth 124 Law 156
❚ Rome in Disarray and Recovery Social and Economic Structures 156
(177–450 c.e.) 122 Chapter Review 157 | Key Terms 157 | Notes 159
Civil Wars and Foreign Invasions
LISTENING TO THE PAST The Conversion
in the Third Century 123
of Clovis 160
Reconstruction Under Diocletian
and Constantine (284–337 c.e.) 123
Inflation and Taxes 127
The Decline of Small Farms 127
8
The Acceptance of Christianity 128 Europe in the
The Construction of Constantinople 128 Early Middle Ages,
From the Classical World to Late Antiquity 129 600–1000 162
❚ The Spread of Islam 163
LISTENING TO THE PAST Rome Extends The Arabs 163
Its Citizenship 131 The Prophet Muhammad 164
The Teachings of Islam 165
7 Expansion and Schism 166

Muslim Spain 168
Late Antiquity, Science and Medicine 169
350–600 133 Muslim-Christian Relations 170
❚ The Frankish Kingdom 171
❚ The Byzantine Empire 134 The Merovingians 171
Sources of Byzantine Strength 134 172
The Rise of the Carolingians
The Law Code of Justinian 136
Byzantine Intellectual Life 136
❚ The Empire of Charlemagne 173
Charlemagne’s Personal Qualities
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY and Marriage Strategies 173
Theodora of Constantinople 138 Territorial Expansion 173
❚ The Growth of the Christian Church 137 The Government of the Carolingian Empire 174
The Church and Its Leaders 137 The Imperial Coronation of Charlemagne 176
The Church and the Roman Emperors 140 Decentralization and “Feudalism” 176
The Development of Christian Monasticism 142 Manorialism, Serfdom, and the Slave Trade 179
Western and Eastern Monasticism 143 INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY Ebo of Reims 178
❚ Christian Ideas and Practices 144
❚ Early Medieval Scholarship and Culture 181
Christian Notions of Gender and Sexuality 144 Scholarship and Religious Life
Saint Augustine on Human Nature, Will, in Northumbria 181
and Sin 145 The Carolingian Renaissance 183
xvi Contents
❚ Invasions and Migrations

Vikings in Western Europe 184
184
10
MAPPING THE PAST Map 8.3: Invasions and Migrations The Changing Life
of the Ninth Century 185 of the People in
Slavs and Vikings in Eastern Europe 186
the High Middle Ages 220
Magyars and Muslims 188
Chapter Review 189 | Key Terms 189 | Notes 190 ❚ Village Life 221
Slavery, Serfdom, and Upward Mobility 221
LISTENING TO THE PAST Feudal Homage
The Manor 222
and Fealty 191
Agricultural Methods and Improvements 224
Households, Work, and Food 226
9 Health Care 227
Childbirth and Child Abandonment 228
State and Church
❚ Popular Religion 229
in the High Middle Ages, Village Churches and Christian Symbols 229
1000–1300 193 Saints and Sacraments 230
Beliefs 231
❚ Political Revival 194
Muslims and Jews 231
Medieval Origins of the Modern State 194
Marriage and Children 232
England 195
Death and the Afterlife 233
France 197
Central Europe 198 ❚ Nobles 234
Sicily 200 Origins and Status of the Nobility 234
The Iberian Peninsula 201 Childhood 235
Youth and Marriage 236
❚ Law and Justice 202
Power and Responsibility 236
France and the Holy Roman Empire 203
Henry II and Thomas Becket 203 ❚ Monasteries and Convents 238
King John and Magna Carta 204 Monastic Revival 238
Life in Convents and Monasteries 240
❚ The Papacy 205
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY
The Gregorian Reforms 205
Hildegard of Bingen 241
Emperor versus Pope 207
Innocent III and His Successors 208 Chapter Review 242 | Key Terms 242 | Notes 243
❚ The Crusades 209 LISTENING TO THE PAST The Pilgrim’s Guide
Background 209 to Santiago de Compostela 244
MAPPING THE PAST Map 9.4: The Routes
of the Crusades 210
Motives and Course of the Crusades 210
11
Crusades Within Europe and the Expansion The Creativity and Challenges
of Christendom 212 of Medieval Cities 246
Consequences of the Crusades 213
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY The Jews of Speyer: ❚ Towns and Economic Revival 247
A Collective Biography 215 The Rise of Towns 247
Town Liberties and Merchant Guilds 248
Craft Guilds 249
LISTENING TO THE PAST An Arab View City Life 251
of the Crusades 218 Servants and the Poor 252
The Revival of Long-Distance Trade 253
MAPPING THE PAST Map 11.1: Trade and Manufacturing
in Medieval Europe 254
Contents xvii
Business Procedures 255 Ethnic Tensions and Restrictions 300

The Commercial Revolution 258 Literacy and Vernacular Literature 301
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY Francesco Datini 256 Chapter Review 303 | Key Terms 303 | Notes 304
❚ Medieval Universities 259 LISTENING TO THE PAST Christine de Pizan 305
Origins 259
Abelard and Heloise 261
Instruction and Curriculum 262 13
Thomas Aquinas and the Teaching
of Theology 264
European Society in the
Age of the Renaissance,
❚ Arts and Architecture 265
Vernacular Literature and Entertainment 265 1350–1550 307
Churches and Cathedrals 266
❚ Economic and Political Developments 308
IMAGES IN SOCIETY From Romanesque to Gothic 268 Commercial Developments 308
❚ Cities and the Church 270 Communes and Republics 309
Heretical Groups 270 The Balance of Power Among the Italian City-States 310
The Friars 271 ❚ Intellectual Change 312
The Friars and Papal Power 272 Humanism 312
Chapter Review 273 | Key Terms 273 | Notes 274 Education 314
LISTENING TO THE PAST Courtly Love 275 Political Thought 314
Secular Spirit 315
Christian Humanism 316
12 The Printed Word 317
MAPPING THE PAST Map 13.2: The Growth of
The Crisis of
Printing in Europe 319
the Later Middle Ages,
❚ Art and the Artist 320
1300–1450 277 Art and Power 320
Subjects and Style 321
❚ Prelude to Disaster 278
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY Leonardo da Vinci 313
❚ The Black Death 280
Spread of the Disease 280 ❚ Social Hierarchies 324
MAPPING THE PAST Map 12.1: The Course of the Black Race 325
Death in Fourteenth-Century Europe 281 Class 326
Care 282 Gender 327
Social, Economic, and Cultural Consequences 284 ❚ Politics and the State in the Renaissance
❚ The Hundred Years’ War 286 (ca. 1450–1521) 328
Causes 286 France 329
The Popular Response 287 England 329
The Course of the War to 1419 287 Spain 330
Joan of Arc and France’s Victory 289 Chapter Review 333 | Key Terms 333 | Notes 334
Costs and Consequences 289 LISTENING TO THE PAST An Age of Gold 335
❚ Challenges to the Church 291
The Babylonian Captivity and
Great Schism 291 14
The Conciliar Movement 292 Reformations and Religious Wars,
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY Jan Hus 294
1500–1600 337
❚ Economic and Social Change 293
Peasant Revolts 293 ❚ The Early Reformation 338
Urban Conflicts 297 The Christian Church in the
Sex in the City 297 Early Sixteenth Century 338
Fur-Collar Crime 299 Martin Luther 339
xviii Contents
Protestant Thought 341 Later Explorers 382

The Appeal of Protestant Ideas 342 New World Conquest 383
The Radical Reformation 343 ❚ Europe and the World After Columbus 385
The German Peasants’ War 346 Spanish Settlement and
The Reformation and Marriage 346 Indigenous Population Decline 385
IMAGES IN SOCIETY Art in the Reformation 344 Sugar and Slavery 386
❚ The Reformation and German Politics 348 The Columbian Exchange 389
The Rise of the Habsburg Dynasty 348 Colonial Administration 391
The Political Impact of the Silver and the Economic Effects
Protestant Reformation 348 of Spain’s Discoveries 391
The Birth of the Global Economy 392
❚ The Spread of the Protestant Reformation 351
The Reformation in England and Ireland 351 INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY Juan de Pareja 388
Calvinism 354 ❚ Changing Attitudes and Beliefs 393
The Establishment of the New Ideas About Race 393
Church of Scotland 355 Michel de Montaigne and Cultural Curiosity 394
The Reformation in Eastern Europe 355 Elizabethan and Jacobean Literature 395
❚ The Catholic Reformation 357 Chapter Review 395 | Key Terms 395 | Notes 396
The Reformed Papacy 357
LISTENING TO THE PAST Columbus Describes
The Council of Trent 357 His First Voyage 398
MAPPING THE PAST Map 14.2: Religious Divisions
in Europe 358
New Religious Orders 359 16
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY Teresa of Ávila 360 Absolutism and Constitutionalism
❚ Religious Violence 361 in Western Europe,
French Religious Wars 361
The Netherlands Under Charles V 362
ca. 1589–1715 401
The Great European Witch-Hunt 363 ❚ Seventeenth-Century Crisis and Rebuilding 402
Chapter Review 365 | Key Terms 365 | Notes 367 Economic and Demographic Crisis 402
Seventeenth-Century State-Building:
LISTENING TO THE PAST Martin Luther,
On Christian Liberty 368 Common Obstacles and Achievements 403
Popular Political Action 405
❚ Absolutism in France and Spain 405
15 The Foundations of Absolutism:
Henry IV, Sully, and Richelieu 406
European Exploration
Louis XIV and Absolutism 408
and Conquest, Financial and Economic Management
1450–1650 370 Under Louis XIV: Colbert 409
Louis XIV’s Wars 410
❚ World Contacts Before Columbus 371
MAPPING THE PAST Map 16.1: Europe in 1715 412
The Trade World of the Indian Ocean 371
The Decline of Absolutist Spain
Africa 373
in the Seventeenth Century 413
The Ottoman and Persian Empires 374
Genoese and Venetian Middlemen 374 ❚ The Culture of Absolutism 415
Baroque Art and Music 415
❚ The European Voyages of Discovery 375
Court Culture 416
Causes of European Expansion 376
French Classicism 417
Technological Stimuli to Exploration 377
The Portuguese Overseas Empire 378 ❚ Constitutionalism 418
Absolutist Claims in England
MAPPING THE PAST Map 15.1: Overseas Exploration
and Conquest, Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries 379 (1603–1649) 418
Religious Divides 419
The Problem of Christopher Columbus 380
Contents xix
Puritanical Absolutism in England:

Cromwell and the Protectorate 421 18
The Restoration of the English Monarchy 422 Toward a New Worldview,
The Triumph of England’s Parliament:
Constitutional Monarchy
1540–1789 458
and Cabinet Government 423 ❚ The Scientific Revolution 459
The Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth Century 424 Scientific Thought in 1500 459
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY The Copernican Hypothesis 460
Glückel of Hameln 425 From Brahe to Galileo 461
Chapter Review 428 | Key Terms 428 | Notes 429 Newton’s Synthesis 463
LISTENING TO THE PAST The Court
Causes of the Scientific Revolution 463
at Versailles 430 Science and Society 464
❚ The Enlightenment 466
The Emergence of the Enlightenment 466
17 The Philosophes and the Public 467
Urban Culture and the Public Sphere 470
Absolutism in
Late Enlightenment 472
Central and Eastern Europe Race and the Enlightenment 473
to 1740 432
❚ The Enlightenment and Absolutism 474
❚ Warfare and Social Change Frederick the Great of Prussia 475
in Central and Eastern Europe 433 Catherine the Great of Russia 477
The Consolidation of Serfdom 433 The Austrian Habsburgs 478
The Thirty Years’ War 435 MAPPING THE PAST Map 18.1: The Partition of Poland
Consequences of the Thirty Years’ War 436 and Russia’s Expansion, 1772–1795 479
❚ The Rise of Austria and Prussia 438 INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY Moses Mendelssohn
The Austrian Habsburgs 438 and the Jewish Enlightenment 476
Austrian Rule in Hungary 439 Chapter Review 480 | Key Terms 480 | Notes 481
Prussia in the Seventeenth Century 439
LISTENING TO THE PAST Voltaire on Religion 482
The Consolidation of Prussian Absolutism 443
IMAGES IN SOCIETY
Absolutist Palace Building 440 19
❚ The Development of Russia The Expansion of Europe
and the Ottoman Empire 444
The Mongol Yoke and the Rise of Moscow 444
in the Eighteenth Century 484
MAPPING THE PAST Map 17.3: The Expansion of Russia ❚ Agriculture and the Land 485
to 1725 445 The Agricultural Revolution 486
Tsar and People to 1689 446 The Leadership of the Low Countries and England 487
The Reforms of Peter the Great 447
❚ The Beginning of the Population Explosion 488
The Growth of the Ottoman Empire 450
❚ Cottage Industry and Urban Guilds 490
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY Hürrem 453 The Putting-Out System 490
Chapter Review 455 | Key Terms 455 | Notes 455 The Textile Industry 491
LISTENING TO THE PAST A Foreign Traveler MAPPING THE PAST Map 19.1: Industry and Population
in Russia 456 in Eighteenth-Century Europe 491
Urban Guilds 493
The Industrious Revolution 494
❚ Building the Global Economy 495
Mercantilism and Colonial Wars 495
The Atlantic Slave Trade 501
Trade and Empire in Asia 504
Adam Smith and Economic Liberalism 505
xx Contents
IMAGES IN SOCIETY London: A Limited Monarchy 542

The Remaking of a Great City 498 Revolutionary Aspirations in Saint-Domingue 544
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY Olaudah Equiano 503 ❚ World War and Republican France
Chapter Review 506 | Key Terms 506 | Notes 507 (1791–1799) 545
Foreign Reactions and the Beginning of War 545
LISTENING TO THE PAST The Debate
The Second Revolution 547
over the Guilds 508
Total War and the Terror 548
Revolution in Saint-Domingue 550
20 The Thermidorian Reaction and the Directory
(1749–1799) 551
The Changing Life
❚ The Napoleonic Era (1799–1815) 552
of the People 510 Napoleon’s Rule of France 552
Napoleon’s Expansion in Europe 554
❚ Marriage and the Family 511
The War of Haitian Independence 556
Late Marriage and Nuclear Families 511
The Grand Empire and Its End 556
Work Away from Home 512
Premarital Sex and Community Controls 513 INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY Toussaint L’Ouverture 557
New Patterns of Marriage and Illegitimacy 514 MAPPING THE PAST Map 21.1: Napoleonic Europe
in 1810 559
❚ Children and Education 515
Child Care and Nursing 515 Chapter Review 560 | Key Terms 560 | Notes 562
Foundlings and Infanticide 517 LISTENING TO THE PAST Revolution and
Attitudes Toward Children 517 Women’s Rights 563
Schools and Popular Literature 518
❚ Food, Medicine, and New Consumption Habits
Diets and Nutrition 520
520
22
Toward a Consumer Society 521 The Revolution
Medical Practitioners 523
in Energy and Industry,
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY Madame du Coudray,
ca. 1780–1860 565
the Nation’s Midwife 525
❚ Religion and Popular Culture 526 ❚ The Industrial Revolution in Britain 566
The Institutional Church 526 Eighteenth-Century Origins 566
Protestant Revival 527 The First Factories 567
Catholic Piety 528 The Steam Engine Breakthrough 569
Leisure and Recreation 530 The Coming of the Railroads 570
Chapter Review 531 | Key Terms 531 | Notes 532 Industry and Population 571
LISTENING TO THE PAST A Day in the ❚ Industrialization in Continental Europe 573

The Challenge of Industrialization 573
Life of Paris 533
Government Support and Corporate Banking 574
MAPPING THE PAST Map 22.2: Continental
21 Industrialization, ca. 1850 574
The Revolution ❚ Relations Between Capital and Labor 576
The New Class of Factory Owners 577
in Politics, 1775–1815 535 The New Factory Workers 579
❚ Background to Revolution 536 Conditions of Work 580
Legal Orders and Social Change 536 Changes in the Division of Labor by Gender 582
The Crisis of Political Legitimacy 537 The Early Labor Movement in Britain 584
The Impact of the American Revolution 538 INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY
Financial Crisis 539 The Strutt Family 578
❚ Revolution in Metropole and Colony Chapter Review 585 | Key Terms 585 | Notes 586
(1789–1791) 540 LISTENING TO THE PAST Testimony Concerning
The Formation of the National Assembly 540 Young Mine Workers 587
The Revolt of the Poor and the Oppressed 541
Contents xxi
The Working Classes 625

23 Working-Class Leisure and Religion 629
Ideologies and Upheavals, IMAGES IN SOCIETY Class and Gender Boundaries
1815–1850 589 in Women’s Fashion, 1850–1914 626
❚ The Changing Family 630
❚ The Peace Settlement 590 Premarital Sex and Marriage 630
The European Balance of Power 590 Kinship Ties 631
MAPPING THE PAST Map 23.1: Europe in 1815 592 Gender Roles and Family Life 631
Intervention and Repression 593 Child Rearing 634
❚ Radical Ideas and Early Socialism 594 INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY Franziska Tiburtius 633
Liberalism 594 ❚ Science and Thought 636
Nationalism 595 The Triumph of Science 636
French Utopian Socialism 596 Social Science and Evolution 637
The Birth of Marxian Socialism 597 Realism in Literature 639
❚ The Romantic Movement 598 Chapter Review 641 | Key Terms 641 | Notes 641
Romanticism’s Tenets 598
LISTENING TO THE PAST Middle-Class
Literature 599
Youth and Sexuality 643
Art and Music 600
❚ Reforms and Revolutions 601
National Liberation in Greece 602 25
Liberal Reform in Great Britain 602
Ireland and the Great Famine 604
The Age of Nationalism,
The Revolution of 1830 in France 606 1850–1914 645
❚ The Revolutions of 1848 607 ❚ Napoleon III in France 646
A Democratic Republic in France 607 The Second Republic and Louis Napoleon 646
The Austrian Empire in 1848 610 Napoleon III’s Second Empire 647
Prussia and the Frankfurt Assembly 611
❚ Nation Building in Italy and Germany 648
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY Jules Michelet 608 Cavour and Garibaldi in Italy 648
Chapter Review 613 | Key Terms 613 | Notes 614 Bismarck and the Austro-Prussian War (1866) 650
LISTENING TO THE PAST Speaking for The Taming of the Parliament 651
the Czech Nation 615 The Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871) 651
MAPPING THE PAST Map 25.2 The Unification
of Germany, 1866–1871 652
24 ❚ Nation Building in the United States 653
Life in the ❚ The Modernization of Russia
Emerging Urban Society and the Ottoman Empire 654
The “Great Reforms” 655
in the Nineteenth Century 617
The Revolution of 1905 656
❚ Taming the City 618 Decline and Reform in the Ottoman Empire 657
Industry and the Growth of Cities 618 ❚ The Responsive National State (1871–1914) 659
Public Health and the Bacterial Revolution 619 General Trends 659
MAPPING THE PAST Map 24.1: European Cities of 100,000 The German Empire 660
or More, 1800 and 1900 620 Republican France 661
Urban Planning and Public Transportation 621 Great Britain and Ireland 662
❚ Rich and Poor and Those in Between 622 The Austro-Hungarian Empire 663
Social Structure 623 Jewish Emancipation and
The Middle Classes 623 Modern Anti-Semitism 664
Middle-Class Culture 624 INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY Theodor Herzl 665
xxii Contents
❚ Marxism and the Socialist Movement

The Socialist International 667
667
27
Unions and Revisionism 668 The Great Break:
Chapter Review 669 | Key Terms 669 | Notes 670 War and Revolution,
LISTENING TO THE PAST The Making 1914–1919 698
of a Socialist 671
❚ The First World War 699
The Bismarckian System of Alliances 699
26 The Rival Blocs 700
The Outbreak of War 701
The West and the World, Stalemate and Slaughter 703
1815–1914 673 The Widening War 705
❚ Industrialization and the World Economy 674 ❚ The Home Front 708
The Rise of Global Inequality 674 Mobilizing for Total War 708
The World Market 675 Growing Political Tensions 711
The Opening of China and Japan 676 INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY Vera Brittain 710
Western Penetration of Egypt 678 ❚ The Russian Revolution 711
❚ The Great Migration 679 The Fall of Imperial Russia 712
European Migrants 679 The Provisional Government 712
Asian Migrants 680 Lenin and the Bolshevik Revolution 713
Trotsky and the Seizure of Power 714
❚ Western Imperialism (1880–1914) 681
The Scramble for Africa 681 Dictatorship and Civil War 714
MAPPING THE PAST Map 26.1 The Partition ❚ The Peace Settlement 716
of Africa 682 The End of War 716
Imperialism in Asia 685 Revolution in Germany 716
Causes of the New Imperialism 685 The Treaty of Versailles 717
Critics of Imperialism 688 MAPPING THE PAST Map 27.4 Shattered Empires
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY Cecil Rhodes 684 and Territorial Changes After World War 718
The Peace Settlement in the Middle East 719
❚ Responding to Western Imperialism 689
American Rejection of the Versailles Treaty 721
The Pattern of Response 689
Empire in India 689 Chapter Review 722 | Key Terms 722 | Notes 723
The Example of Japan 691 LISTENING TO THE PAST Arab Political Aspirations
Toward Revolution in China 693 in 1919 724
LISTENING TO THE PAST A British Woman
in India 696
Contents xxiii
28 29
The Age of Anxiety, Dictatorships and the
ca. 1900–1940 726 Second World War,
1919–1945 752
❚ Modernism and the Crisis
of Western Thought 727 ❚ Stalin’s Soviet Union 753
Modern Philosophy 727 From Lenin to Stalin 753
The New Physics 729 The Five-Year Plans 754
Freudian Psychology 730 Life and Culture in Soviet Society 756
The Modern Novel 731 Stalinist Terror and the Great Purges 757
Modernism in Art and Design 732
❚ Mussolini and Fascism in Italy 758
Modern Music 733 The Seizure of Power 758
IMAGES IN SOCIETY Pablo Picasso The Regime in Action 760
and Modern Art734
❚ Hitler and Nazism in Germany 761
❚ Movies and Radio 736 Hitler’s Road to Power 761
❚ The Search for Peace and Political Stability 737 The Nazi State and Society 763
Germany and the Western Powers 738 Hitler’s Popularity 764
Hope in Foreign Affairs (1924–1929) 739 Aggression and Appeasement (1933–1939) 765
Hope in Democratic Government 741 ❚ The Second World War 767
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY Gustav Stresemann 740 Hitler’s Empire (1939–1942) 767
❚ The Great Depression (1929–1939) 743 The Holocaust 769
The Economic Crisis 743 Japan’s Empire in Asia 772
Mass Unemployment 744 The Grand Alliance 773
The New Deal in the United States 744 The War in Europe (1942–1945) 773
MAPPING THE PAST Map 28.1 The Great Depression MAPPING THE PAST Map 29.2 World War II
in the United States, Britain, and Europe 745 in Europe 774
The Scandinavian Response to the Depression 746 The War in the Pacific (1942–1945) 775
Recovery and Reform in Britain and France 747 INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY Primo Levi 771
Chapter Review 748 | Key Terms 748 | Notes 749 Chapter Review 777 | Key Terms 777 | Notes 778
LISTENING TO THE PAST Life on the Dole LISTENING TO THE PAST Stalin Justifies
in Great Britain 750 the Five-Year Plan 779
xxiv Contents
30 31
Cold War Conflicts and Revolution, Rebuilding,
Social Transformations, and New Challenges:
1945–1985 781 1985 to the Present 810
❚ The Division of Europe 782 ❚ The Collapse of Communism
The Origins of the Cold War 782 in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union 811
West Versus East 784 Gorbachev’s Reforms in the Soviet Union 812
❚ The Western Renaissance (1945–1968) 785 The Revolutions of 1989 814
The Postwar Challenge 785 The Disintegration of the Soviet Union 818
MAPPING THE PAST Map 30.1 European Alliance Systems, The Gulf War of 1991 818
1949–1989 786 ❚ Building a New Europe in the 1990s 820
Decolonization in East Asia 787 Common Patterns and Problems 820
Decolonization in the Middle East and Africa 789 MAPPING THE PAST Map 31.2 Contemporary
America’s Civil Rights Revolution 790 Europe 821
❚ Soviet Eastern Europe (1945–1968) 791 Recasting Russia 822
Stalin’s Last Years (1945–1953) 791 Progress in Eastern Europe 823
Reform and De-Stalinization (1953–1964) 792 Tragedy in Yugoslavia 825
The End of Reform 793 Unity and Identity in Western Europe 826
The Soviet Union to 1985 794 ❚ New Challenges in the Twenty-first
❚ Postwar Social Transformations (1945–1968) 795 Century 828
Science and Technology 795 The Prospect of Population Decline 828
The Changing Class Structure 796 The Growth of Immigration 829
New Roles for Women 797 Promoting Human Rights 830
Youth and the Counterculture 798 ❚ The West and the Islamic World 831
❚ Conflict and Challenge in the Late Cold War The al-Qaeda Attack of September 11, 2001 831
(1968–1985) 800 The War in Iraq 832
The United States and Vietnam 800 The West and Its Muslim Citizens 834
Détente or Cold War? 801 INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY Tariq Ramadan 835
The Women’s Movement 802 Chapter Review 836 | Key Terms 836 | Notes 837
Society in a Time of Economic Uncertainty 803
LISTENING TO THE PAST The French Riots:
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY Margaret Thatcher 805 Will They Change Anything? 838
LISTENING TO THE PAST A Feminist Critique
of Marriage 808 Index I-1
Maps, Figures, and Tables
MAPS 13.2 MAPPING THE PAST: The Growth of Printing
1.1 MAPPING THE PAST: Spread of Cultures in Europe 319
in the Ancient Near East 5 14.1 The Global Empire of Charles V 349
1.2 Ancient Egypt 14 14.2 MAPPING THE PAST: Religious Divisions
2.1 Small Kingdoms of the Near East 29 in Europe 358
2.2 MAPPING THE PAST: The Assyrian 15.1 MAPPING THE PAST: Overseas Exploration
and Persian Empires 31 and Conquest, Fifteenth and Sixteenth
Centuries 379
3.1 Ancient Greece 40
15.2 Seaborne Trading Empires in the Sixteenth
3.2 MAPPING THE PAST: The Peloponnesian and Seventeenth Centuries 390
War 52
16.1 MAPPING THE PAST: Europe in 1715 412
4.1 Alexander’s Conquests 67
16.2 Seventeenth-Century Dutch Commerce 427
4.2 MAPPING THE PAST: The Hellenistic World 69
17.1 Europe After the Thirty Years’ War 437
5.1 Italy and the City of Rome 88
17.2 The Growth of Austria and Brandenburg-
5.2 MAPPING THE PAST: Roman Expansion Prussia to 1748 442
During the Republic 92
17.3 MAPPING THE PAST: The Expansion of Russia
6.1 Roman Expansion Under the Empire 111 to 1725 445
6.2 MAPPING THE PAST: The Economic Aspect 17.4 The Ottoman Empire at Its Height, 1566 451
of the Pax Romana 121
18.1 MAPPING THE PAST: The Partition of Poland
6.3 The Roman World Divided 126 and Russia’s Expansion, 1772–1795 479
7.1 The Byzantine Empire, ca. 600 135 19.1 MAPPING THE PAST: Industry and Population
7.2 The Spread of Christianity 141 in Eighteenth-Century Europe 491
7.3 MAPPING THE PAST: The Barbarian 19.2 The Atlantic Economy in 1701 496
Migrations 151 21.1 MAPPING THE PAST: Napoleonic Europe
8.1 The Islamic World, ca. 900 167 in 1810 559
8.2 Charlemagne’s Conquests 175 22.1 The Industrial Revolution in England,
8.3 MAPPING THE PAST: Invasions and Migrations ca. 1850 572
of the Ninth Century 185 22.2 MAPPING THE PAST: Continental
9.1 The Growth of the Kingdom of France 197 Industrialization, ca. 1850 574
9.2 The Holy Roman Empire and the 23.1 MAPPING THE PAST: Europe in 1815 592
Kingdom of Sicily, ca. 1200 199 24.1 MAPPING THE PAST: European Cities
9.3 The Reconquista 202 of 100,000 or More, 1800 and 1900 620
9.4 MAPPING THE PAST: The Routes 25.1 The Unification of Italy, 1859–1870 649
of the Crusades 210 25.2 MAPPING THE PAST: The Unification
11.1 MAPPING THE PAST: Trade and Manufacturing of Germany, 1866–1871 652
in Medieval Europe 254 26.1 MAPPING THE PAST: The Partition
11.2 Intellectual Centers of Medieval Europe 260 of Africa 682
12.1 MAPPING THE PAST: The Course of the Black 26.2 Asia in 1914 686
Death in Fourteenth-Century Europe 281 27.1 The Balkans After the Congress
12.2 English Holdings in France of Berlin, 1878 702
During the Hundred Years’ War 288 27.2 The Balkans in 1914 702
13.1 The Italian City-States, ca. 1494 311 27.3 The First World War in Europe 706
xxv
xxvi Maps, Figures, and Tables
27.4 MAPPING THE PAST: Shattered Empires 24.1 The Decline of Death Rates
and Territorial Changes in England and Wales, Germany,
After World War I 718 France, and Sweden, 1840–1913 621
28.1 MAPPING THE PAST: The Great Depression 24.2 The Urban Social Hierarchy 625
in the United States, Britain, 24.3 The Decline of Birthrates
and Europe 745 in England and Wales, Germany,
29.1 The Growth of Nazi Germany, France, and Sweden, 1840–1913 635
1933–1939 766 26.1 The Growth of Average Income per Person
29.2 MAPPING THE PAST: World War II in the Third World, Developed Countries,
in Europe 774 and Great Britain, 1750–1970 674
29.3 World War II in the Pacific 776 26.2 Origins and Destinations of European
30.1 MAPPING THE PAST: European Alliance Emigrants, 1851–1960 679
Systems, 1949–1989 786 30.1 The Decline of the Birthrate and the
31.1 Russia and the Successor States 819 Increase of Married Working Women
in the United States, 1952–1979 798
31.2 MAPPING THE PAST: Contemporary
Europe 821
31.3 The Ethnic Composition
TAB LE S
of Yugoslavia, 1991 825 Periods of Egyptian History 15
The Hellenic Period 42
FIGURES Roman History After Augustus 117
1.1 Sumerian Writing 8 The French Revolution 549
19.1 The Growth of Population in England, The Napoleonic Era 553
1000–1800 488 The Prelude to 1848 604
19.2 The Increase of Population in Europe
in the Eighteenth Century 489
Features
I MAG E S I N S O C I E T Y Cecil Rhodes 684
The Iceman 6 Vera Brittain 710
The Roman Villa at Chedworth 124 Gustav Stresemann 740
From Romanesque to Gothic 268 Primo Levi 771
Art in the Reformation 344 Margaret Thatcher 805
Absolutist Palace Building 440 Tariq Ramadan 835
London: The Remaking of a Great City 498
Class and Gender Boundaries in Women’s
Fashion, 1850–1914 626 LI S TE N I N G TO TH E PA S T
Pablo Picasso and Modern Art 734 A Quest for Immortality 22
The Covenant Between Yahweh and the Hebrews 37
I N D I V I D U A LS I N S O C I E T Y The Great Plague at Athens, 430 b.c.e. 64
Nefertiti, the “Perfect Woman” 18 Alexander and the Brotherhood of Man 84
Wen-Amon 26 A Magic Charm 105
Aspasia 57 Rome Extends Its Citizenship 131
Archimedes and the Practical Application The Conversion of Clovis 160
of Science 80
Feudal Homage and Fealty 191
Quintus Sertorius 101
An Arab View of the Crusades 218
Bithus, a Typical Roman Soldier 119
The Pilgrim’s Guide to Santiago de Compostela 244
Theodora of Constantinople 138
Courtly Love 275
Ebo of Reims 178
Christine de Pizan 305
The Jews of Speyer:
An Age of Gold 335
A Collective Biography 215
Martin Luther, On Christian Liberty 368
Hildegard of Bingen 241
Columbus Describes His First Voyage 398
Francesco Datini 256
The Court at Versailles 430
Jan Hus 294
A Foreign Traveler in Russia 456
Leonardo da Vinci 313
Voltaire on Religion 482
Teresa of Ávila 360
The Debate over the Guilds 508
Juan de Pareja 388
A Day in the Life of Paris 533
Glückel of Hameln 425
Revolution and Women’s Rights 563
Hürrem 453
Testimony Concerning Young Mine Workers 587
Moses Mendelssohn and the
Jewish Enlightenment 476 Speaking for the Czech Nation 615
Olaudah Equiano 503 Middle-Class Youth and Sexuality 643
Madame du Coudray, The Making of a Socialist 671
the Nation’s Midwife 525 A British Woman in India 696
Toussaint L’Ouverture 557 Arab Political Aspirations in 1919 724
The Strutt Family 578 Life on the Dole in Great Britain 750
Jules Michelet 608 Stalin Justifies the Five-Year Plan 779
Franziska Tiburtius 633 A Feminist Critique of Marriage 808
Theodor Herzl 665 The French Riots: Will They Change Anything? 838
xxvii
About the Authors
John P. McKay Born in St. Louis, John P. McKay received his B.A. from Wesleyan
University (1961), his M.A. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy (1962),
and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley (1968). He began teaching
history at the University of Illinois in 1966 and became a Professor there in 1976. John
won the Herbert Baxter Adams Prize for his book Pioneers for Profit: Foreign Entrepre-
neurship and Russian Industrialization, 1885–1913 (1970). He has also written Tram-
ways and Trolleys: The Rise of Urban Mass Transport in Europe (1976) and has translated
Jules Michelet’s The People (1973). His research has been supported by fellowships from
the Ford Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the
Humanities, and IREX. He has written well over a hundred articles, book chapters, and
reviews, which have appeared in numerous publications, including The American His-
torical Review, Business History Review, The Journal of Economic History, and Slavic
Review. He contributed extensively to C. Stewart and P. Fritzsche, eds., Imagining the
Twentieth Century (1997).
Bennett D. Hill A native of Philadelphia, Bennett D. Hill earned an A.B. from Prince-
ton (1956) and advanced degrees from Harvard (A.M., 1958) and Princeton (Ph.D.,
1963). He taught history at the University of Illinois, where he was department chair
from 1978 to 1981. He published English Cistercian Monasteries and Their Patrons in
the Twelfth Century (1968), Church and State in the Middle Ages (1970), and articles in
Analecta Cisterciensia, The New Catholic Encyclopaedia, The American Benedictine Re-
view, and The Dictionary of the Middle Ages. His reviews appeared in The American
Historical Review, Speculum, The Historian, the Journal of World History, and Library
Journal. He was one of the contributing editors to The Encyclopedia of World History
(2001). He was a Fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies and served on
the editorial board of The American Benedictine Review, on committees of the National
Endowment for the Humanities, and as vice president of the American Catholic His-
torical Association (1995–1996). A Benedictine monk of St. Anselm’s Abbey in Washing-
ton, D.C., he was also a Visiting Professor at Georgetown University.
John Buckler Born in Louisville, Kentucky, John Buckler received his Ph.D. from
Harvard University in 1973. In 1980 Harvard University Press published his Theban
Hegemony, 371–362 b.c. He published Philip II and the Sacred War (Leiden 1989) and
also edited BOIOTIKA: Vorträge vom 5. Internationalen Böotien-Kolloquium (Munich
1989). In 2003 he published Aegean Greece in the Fourth Century b.c. In the following
year appeared his editions of W. M. Leake, Travels in the Morea (three volumes), and
Leake’s Peloponnesiaca. Cambridge University Press published his Central Greece and
the Politics of Power in the Fourth Century, edited by Hans Beck, in 2008.
Clare Haru Crowston Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and raised in Toronto,

Clare Haru Crowston received her B.A. in 1985 from McGill University and her Ph.D.
in 1996 from Cornell University. Since 1996, she has taught at the University of Illinois,
where she has served as associate chair and Director of Graduate Studies, and is cur-
rently Associate Professor of history. She is the author of Fabricating Women: The Seam-
stresses of Old Regime France, 1675–1791 (Duke University Press, 2001), which won two
awards, the Berkshire Prize and the Hagley Prize. She edited two special issues of the
Journal of Women’s History (vol. 18, nos. 3 and 4) and has published numerous articles
xxix
xxx About the Authors
and reviews in journals such as Annales: Histoire, Sciences Sociales, French Historical
Studies, Gender and History, and the Journal of Economic History. Her research has been
supported with grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mellon
Foundation, and the Bourse Châteaubriand of the French government. She is a past
president of the Society for French Historical Studies and a former chair of the Pinkney
Prize Committee.
Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks Having grown up in Minneapolis, Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks

received her B.A. from Grinnell College in 1973 (as well as an honorary doctorate some
years later), and her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1979. She taught
first at Augustana College in Illinois, and since 1985 at the University of Wisconsin–
Milwaukee, where she is currently UWM Distinguished Professor in the department of
history. She is the co-editor of the Sixteenth Century Journal and the author or editor of
nineteen books and many articles that have appeared in English, German, Italian, Span-
ish, and Chinese. These include Early Modern Europe, 1450–1789 (Cambridge, 2006),
Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 3d ed., 2008), and Gender in
History (Blackwell, 2001). She currently serves as the Chief Reader for Advanced Place-
ment World History and has also written a number of source books for use in the college
classroom, including Discovering the Western Past (Houghton Mifflin, 6th ed, 2007) and
Discovering the Global Past (Houghton Mifflin, 3d. ed., 2006), and a book for young
adults, An Age of Voyages, 1350–1600 (Oxford 2005).
80°N
GREENLAND
(DENMARK) ARCTIC OCEAN
ALASKA ICELAND NORWAY FINLAND

(U.S.)
SWEDEN ESTONIA RUSSIA
60°N
LATVIA
LITHUANIA
CANADA UNITED
KINGDOM NETH.
DEN.
BELARUS
IRELAND
GERMANY POLAND
BEL. CZ.
SLK. UKRAINE KAZAKHSTAN
LUX. AUS. HUNG.
FRANCE MOLDOVA MONGOLIA
SLN. CR. ROMANIA
SWITZ. B. H. SE. GEORGIA UZBEKISTAN
ITALY
MO. K. BULGARIA
MAC.
SPAIN ALBANIA KYRGYZSTAN N. KOREA
40°N TURKEY TURKMENISTAN
PORTUGAL GREECE ARMENIA TAJIKISTAN
UNITED STATES Azores CYPRUS
S. KOREA
JAPAN
(Port.) MALTA AZERBAIJAN
TUNISIA
LEBANON
SYRIA
AFGHANISTAN
PAC I F IC OC EAN
Bermuda MOROCCO ISRAEL
IRAQ
IRAN PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA
(U.K.)
AT L A N T I C O C E A N BAHRAIN BHUTAN
Midway Is. JORDAN PAKISTAN
QATAR
(U.S.) WESTERN ALGERIA LIBYA EGYPT KUWAIT NEPAL
BAHAMAS SAHARA SAUDI
(MOROCCO) ARABIA BANGLADESH
Hawaiian Is. MEXICO DOMINICAN REP.
Virgin Is. UNITED MYANMAR
TAIWAN
(U.S.) CUBA (U.S.) ARAB EMIRATES
OMAN INDIA (BURMA)
JAMAICA HAITI ST. KITTS AND NEVIS 20°N MAURITANIA LAOS
BELIZE ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA NIGER Mariana Wake I.
HONDURAS Puerto Rico
MALI Islands (U.S.)
(U.S.)
DOMINICA
BARBADOS CAPE CHAD ERITREA THAILAND
VIETNAM
(U.S.)
ST. LUCIA VERDE SENEGAL YEMEN
GUATEMALA ST. VINCENT AND BURKINA MARSHALL
NICARAGUA GRENADA
THE GRENADINES GAMBIA
FASO
SUDAN CAMBODIA
(KAMPUCHEA)
PHILIPPINES Guam
(U.S.)
ISLANDS
EL SALVADOR GUINEA
BENIN DJIBOUTI
PAC I F IC OC EAN COSTA RICA TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO
GUINEA-BISSAU
NIGERIA
VENEZUELA IVORY CENTRAL ETHIOPIA SRI LANKA BRUNEI
GUYANA SIERRA PALAU
COAST AFRICAN REP. DARUSSALAM FEDERATED STATES
PANAMA FR. GUIANA LEONE CAMEROON
(FRANCE) TOGO SOMALIA MALDIVES OF MICRONESIA
LIBERIA GHANA M A L AYS I A
COLOMBIA EQUATORIAL GUINEA KIRIBATI
UGANDA KENYA SINGAPORE
Equator SURINAM 0° RWANDA
Galapagos Is. ECUADOR SÃO TOMÉ AND PRINCIPE GABON NAURU
(Ecuador) DEM. REP. INDIAN OCEAN
OF CONGO SEYCHELLES
REP. OF CONGO PAPUA
BURUNDI TANZANIA INDONESIA NEW SOLOMON IS.
PERU
GUINEA TUVALU
BRAZIL ABBREVIATIONS TIMOR LESTE
SAMOA COMOROS
ANGOLA AUS. AUSTRIA
ZAMBIA MALAWI VANUATU
BEL. BELGIUM
French Polynesia FIJI
(France) BOLIVIA B. H. BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
MADAGASCAR
20°S NAMIBIA
ZIMBABWE CR. CROATIA
TONGA CZ. CZECH REPUBLIC
PARAGUAY BOTSWANA MAURITIUS
N DEN. DENMARK
New Caledonia
(France)
Easter Is. CHILE MOZAMBIQUE HUNG. HUNGARY AUSTRALIA
(Chile) SWAZILAND K. KOSOVO
SOUTH
AFRICA
LESOTHO
LUX. LUXEMBOURG
URUGUAY MAC. MACEDONIA
MO. MONTENEGRO
ARGENTINA
NETH. NETHERLANDS
40°S SE. SERBIA
NEW
0 1,000 2,000 Km. SLK. SLOVAKIA ZEALAND
SLN. SLOVENIA
0 1,000 2,000 Mi. SWITZ. SWITZERLAND
Falkland Is.
(U.K.)
160°W 140°W 120°W 100°W 80°W 60°W 40°W 20°W 0° 20°E 40°E 60°E 80°E 100°E 120°E 140°E 160°E
60°S
80°S
Western Society: A Brief History
chapter 1
Origins
ca. 400,000–1100 B.C.E.
Chapter Preview
From Caves to Towns
How did early peoples evolve from
bands of hunter-gatherers to settled
farming communities?
Mesopotamian Civilization
How did the Sumerians create a
complex society in the arid climate
of Mesopotamia?
The Spread of Mesopotamian Culture

How did the Babylonians unite
Mesopotamia politically and culturally
and spread that culture to the
broader world?
Egypt, the Land of the Pharaohs

(3100–1200 b.c.e.)
How did Egypt’s geography contribute
to the rise of a unique culture, and
what was the role of the pharoah in
this society?
Osiris. Egyptian lord of life and death, powerful and serene, here
depicted in his full regalia. (G. Dagli-Orti/The Art Archive)
The Hittites and the End of an Era
(ca. 1640–1100 b.c.e.)
How did the Hittites rise to power, and
how did they facilitate the exchange of
ideas throughout the Near East? How
did the Egyptian and Mesopotamian
cultures survive the fall of empires?
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY: Nefertiti, the

“Perfect Woman”
IMAGES IN SOCIETY: The Iceman
LISTENING TO THE PAST: A Quest for Immortality
2
From Caves to Towns 3
T he civilization and cultures of the modern Western world, like great rivers,
have many sources. Peoples in western Europe developed numerous com-
munities uniquely their own but also sharing some common features. They mas-
tered such diverse subjects as astronomy, mathematics, geometry, trigonometry,
engineering, religious practices, and social organization. Yet the earliest of these
peoples did not record their learning and lore in systems of writing. Their lives and
customs are consequently largely lost to us.
Other early peoples confronted many of the same basic challenges as those in
Europe. They also made progress, but they took the important step of recording
their experiences in writing. The most enduring innovations occurred in the an-
cient Near East, a region that includes the lands bordering the Mediterranean’s
eastern shore, the Arabian peninsula, parts of northeastern Africa, and perhaps
above all, Mesopotamia, the area of modern Iraq. Fundamental to the develop-
ment of Western civilization and culture was the invention of writing by the Su-
merians, which allowed knowledge of the past to be preserved. It also facilitated
the spread and accumulation of learning, science, and literature. Ancient Near
Eastern civilizations also produced the first written law codes, as well as religious
concepts that still permeate daily life.
From Caves to Towns

How did early peoples evolve from bands of hunter-gatherers to settled
farming communities?
Virtually every day brings startling news about the path of human evolution. We
now know that by about 400,000 b.c.e. early peoples were making primitive stone
tools, which has led historians to refer to this time as the Paleolithic (pay-lee-oh- Paleolithic period The time between
LITH-ik) period. During this period, which lasted until about 7000 b.c.e., people 400,000 and 7000 b.c.e., when early
peoples began making primitive stone
survived as gatherers and hunters, usually dwelling in caves or temporary shelters. tools, survived by hunting and gathering,
These nomads (NO-madz) led roaming lives, always in search of new food sources. and dwelled in temporary shelters.
(See the feature “Images in Society: The Iceman.”)
Settled communities began to emerge in the Neolithic (nee-oh-LITH-ik) pe- nomads Homeless, independent
people who lead roaming lives, always
riod, usually dated between 7000 and 3000 b.c.e. The term Neolithic stems from in search of pasturage for their flocks.
the new stone tools that came into use at that time. People used these tools to man-
age crops and animals, leading to fundamental changes in civilization. Neolithic period The period between
7000 and 3000 b.c.e. that serves as the
Sustained agriculture made possible a stable and secure life. With this settled dividing line between anthropology
routine came the evolution of towns and eventually of cities. Neolithic farmers usu- and history; the term itself refers to the
ally raised more food than they could consume, so their surpluses permitted larger, new stone tools that came into use at
healthier populations. Population growth in turn created an even greater reliance this time.
on settled farming, as only systematic agriculture could sustain the increased num-
bers of people. Since surpluses of food could also be bartered for other commodi-
ties, the Neolithic era witnessed the beginnings of the large-scale exchange of goods.
Neolithic farmers also improved their tools and agricultural techniques. They
domesticated bigger, stronger animals to work for them, invented the plow, and
developed new mutations of seeds. By 3000 b.c.e. they had invented the wheel.
Agricultural surpluses also made possible the division of labor. It freed some people
to become artisans who made tools, pottery vessels, woven baskets, clothing, and
jewelry. In short, life became more complex yet also more comfortable for many.
These developments generally led to the further evolution of towns and a whole
new way of life. People not necessarily related to one another created rudimentary
4 Chapter 1 Origins, ca. 400,000–1100 B.C.E.
Stonehenge
Seen in regal isolation, Stonehenge sits
among the stars and in April 1997 was
along the path of the comet Hale-Bopp.
Long before Druids existed, a Neolithic
society laboriously built this circle to mark
the passing of the seasons. (Jim Burgess)
governments that transcended the

family. These governments, led by a
recognized central authority, made
decisions that channeled the shared
wisdom, physical energy, and re-
sources of the whole population to-
ward a common goal. These societies
made their decisions according to
custom, the generally accepted norms
of traditional conduct. Here was the
beginning of law. Towns also meant
life in individual houses or groups of them, which led to greater personal indepen-
dence. People erected public buildings and religious monuments, evidence of
their growing wealth and communal cooperation. Some of these groups also pro-
Sec tion Review tected their possessions and themselves by raising walls.
• Human communities evolved from A mute but engaging glimpse of a particular Neolithic society can be seen to-
bands of hunter-gatherers in the day in southern England. Between 4700 and 2000 b.c.e. arose the Stonehenge
Paleolithic period (until 7000 b.c.e.) (STOHN-henj) people, named after the famous stone circle on Salisbury (SAWLZ-
to stable farming communities in the ber-ee) Plain. Though named after a single spot, this culture spread throughout
Neolithic period (7000–3000 b.c.e.). Great Britain, Ireland, and Brittany in France. Stonehenge and neighboring sites
• Neolithic innovations included stone reveal the existence of prosperous, well-organized, and centrally led communities
tools, the wheel, large-scale exchange that were able to pool material and human resources in order to raise the circles.
of goods, and greater complexity,
including division of labor. Stonehenge indicates an intellectual world that encompassed astronomy, the en-
vironment, and religion. The circle is oriented toward the midwinter sunset and
• Agricultural surpluses allowed the
evolution of towns, government, the midsummer sunrise. It thus marked the clocklike celestial change of the sea-
and law. sons. This silent evidence proves the existence of a society prosperous enough to
• Prosperous, well-organized communities endure over long periods during which lore about heaven and earth could be
led to the contruction of sophisticated passed along to successive generations. It also demonstrates that these communi-
sites such as Stonehenge. ties considered themselves members of a wider world that they shared with the
deities of nature and the broader universe.
Mesopotamian Civilization
How did the Sumerians create a complex society in the arid climate of
Mesopotamia?
The origins of Western civilization are generally traced to an area that is today not
seen as part of the West: Mesopotamia (mes-oh-puh-TAY-mee-uh), the Greek
name for the land between the Euphrates (you-FRAY-teez) and Tigris (TIE-gris)
irrigation The solution to the problem Rivers. There the arid climate confronted the peoples with the hard problem of
of arid climates and scant water supplies,
a system of watering land and draining to farming with scant water supplies. Farmers learned to irrigate their land and later
prevent buildup of salt in the soil. to drain it to prevent the buildup of salt in the soil. Irrigation on a large scale, like
C hronology
building stone circles in Western Europe, demanded orga- 3200 B.C.E. Development of wheeled transport
nized group effort. That in turn underscored the need for and invention of cuneiform writing
strong central authority to direct it. This corporate spirit led
ca. 3200–2200 B.C.E. Sumerian and Akkadian domination
to governments in which individuals subordinated some of
in Mesopotamia
their particular concerns to broader interests. These factors
made urban life possible in a demanding environment. By ca. 3100 B.C.E. Invention of Egyptian hieroglyphic
about 3000 b.c.e. the Sumerians (SOO-mehr-ee-uhnz), writing
whose origins are mysterious, established a number of cities 3100–ca. 1333 B.C.E. Evolution of Egyptian polytheism
in the southernmost part of Mesopotamia, which became and belief in personal immortality
known as Sumer (see Map 1.1). The fundamental innova- 3000–1000 B.C.E. Origins and development of religion
tion of the Sumerians was the creation of writing, which in Mesopotamia
evolved from a tool for recording business transactions to the
ca. 2700–1000 B.C.E. Arrival of Indo-European peoples in
means of promoting and preserving cultural ideas. western Asia and Europe
ca. 2660–1640 B.C.E. Old and Middle Kingdoms in Egypt
ca. 2600–1200 B.C.E. Expansion of Mesopotamian trade
with neighbors
ca. 2000–1595 B.C.E. Babylonian empire in Mesopotamia
ca. 1790 B.C.E. Epic of Gilgamesh and
Mapping the Past
Hammurabi’s law code
MAP 1.1 Spread of Cultures in the Ancient Near East
ca. 1600–1200 B.C.E. Hittite power in Anatolia
This map depicts the area of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, a region
often called the “cradle of civilization.” Map 1.2 on page 14 shows the ca. 1570–1075 B.C.E. New Kingdom in Egypt
balance of power that later extended far beyond the regions depicted ca. 1400 B.C.E. Development of Phoenician
in Map 1.1. [1] Does this expansion indicate why Mesopotamia and alphabet
Egypt earned the title of “cradle”? [2] What geographical features of
this region naturally suggest the direction in which civilization spread? ca. 1300–1100 B.C.E. Increased use of iron in
[3] Why did the first cultures of Mesopotamia spread farther than the
western Asia
culture of Egypt spread?
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Images in Society
The Iceman
O n September 19, 1991, two German vacationers

climbing in the Italian Alps came upon one of the
most remarkable finds in European history: a corpse ly-
ing face-down and covered in ice (Image 1). They had
stumbled on a mystery that still intrigues archaeologists
and many others in the scientific world. After chiseling
the body out of the ice, various specialists examined
the man. Having died 5,300 years ago, he is the earliest
and best-preserved corpse from the Neolithic period
(Image 2).
The skin of most corpses found in glaciers appears
white and waxy, but the skin of the Iceman, as he is
generally known, was brown and dry. Forces of nature
had so desiccated the body that it became mummified:
the body, including the internal organs, was perfectly
IMAGE 2 The Face of the Iceman (Rex USA)
preserved. The Iceman’s less perishable possessions also
survived, so scientists were able to examine him almost
as though he had died recently. inches tall. The bluish tinge of his teeth showed that he
The Iceman was quite fit, was between twenty-five had enjoyed a diet of milled grain, perhaps millet—and
and thirty-five years of age, and stood about five feet two also showed that he came from an environment where
IMAGE 1 The Discovery of the Iceman (Paul Hanny)
6
crops were grown. He wore an unlined robe of animal
skins that he had stitched together with careful needle-
work, using thread made of grass, which he probably
had made for himself. Over his robe he wore a cape of
grass, very much like capes worn by shepherds in this
region as late as the early twentieth century (even as late
as the Second World War German soldiers stuffed straw
into their boots to withstand the fierce Russian cold).
The Iceman also wore a furry cap.
The equipment discovered with the Iceman demon-
strates his mastery of several technologies. He carried a
hefty copper ax (a sign of stoneworking), but he seems to
have relied chiefly on archery. In his quiver were nu-
merous wooden arrow shafts and two finished arrows, all
indicating a great deal of knowledge and ingenuity (Im-
age 3). The arrows had flint heads (another sign of
stoneworking), and feathers were attached with a resin-
like glue to the ends of the shafts. These simple facts
convey much information about the technological
knowledge of this mysterious man. He knew how to IMAGE 4 X-ray of the Iceman’s Shoulder (South Tyrol Museum of
work stone, he knew the value of feathers to direct the Archaeology/AP Images)
arrows, and he was fully aware of the basics of ballistics.
He chose for his bow the wood of the yew, some of the One last mystery surrounds the Iceman. When his
best wood in central Europe. Yet yew trees do not grow body was first discovered, scholars assumed that he was
everywhere, so the use of yew wood proves that the Ice- a hapless traveler overtaken by a fierce snowstorm. But a
man had thoroughly explored his environment. He car- recent autopsy found an arrowhead lodged under his
ried his necessary supplies in a primitive rucksack that left shoulder (Image 4). The Iceman was not alone on
he had made. his last day. Someone accompanied him, someone who
shot him from below and behind. The Iceman is the
victim in the first murder mystery of Western history.
Given this information, can you picture the circum-
stances of the Iceman’s discovery (Image 1)? What was
he doing there? From Image 2 can you imagine how
nature preserved his remains? From the picture of his
arrows (Image 3) can you conclude anything about the
Iceman’s self-reliance? From Image 4 comes the evi-
dence for the cause of his death. Does it necessarily
IMAGE 3 The Iceman’s Quiver (S.N.S./Sipa Press) prove that Neolithic society was as violent as ours?
7
The origins of writing prob-

PHONETIC The Invention of ably go back to the ninth mil-
MEANING PICTOGRAPH IDEOGRAM SIGN Writing and the lennium b.c.e., when Near
First Schools Eastern peoples used clay
A Star
tokens as counters for record keeping. By the fourth
millennium people had realized that drawing pictures
B Woman of the tokens on clay was simpler than making tokens
(see Figure 1.1). This breakthrough in turn suggested
that more information could be conveyed by adding
C Mountain pictures of still other objects, resulting in a complex sys-
tem of pictographs. These pictographs were the forerun-
ners of a Sumerian form of writing known as cuneiform
Slave (kyoo-NEE-uh-form), from the Latin term for “wedge-
D woman
shaped,” used to describe the strokes of the stylus.
The next step was to simplify the system. Instead of
Water drawing pictures, the scribe made ideograms: conven-
E In
tionalized signs that were generally understood to repre-
sent ideas. The sign for star could also be used to indicate
heaven, sky, or even god. The real breakthrough came
FIGURE 1.1 Sumerian Writing
when the scribe learned to use signs to represent sounds.
(Source: From S. N. Kramer, The Sumerians: Their History, Culture and Character, 1963.
For instance, the scribe drew two parallel wavy lines to
Reprinted by permission of the publisher, the University of Chicago Press.)
indicate the word a or “water” (line E). Besides water,
the word a in Sumerian also meant “in.” The word in
expresses a relationship that is very difficult to represent pictorially. Instead of try-
cuneiform Sumerian form of writing ing to invent a sign to mean “in,” some clever scribe used the sign for water be-
(from the Latin term for “wedge- cause the two words sounded alike. This phonetic use of signs made possible the
shaped”); used to describe the strokes
of the stylus.
combining of signs to convey abstract ideas.
The Sumerian system of writing was so complicated that only professional
scribes mastered it after many years of study. By 2500 b.c.e. scribal schools flour-
ished throughout Sumer. Most students came from wealthy families and were
male. Each school had a master, teachers, and monitors. Discipline was strict, and
students were caned for sloppy work and misbehavior. One graduate of a scribal
school had few fond memories of the joy of learning:
My headmaster read my tablet, said:

“There is something missing,” caned me.
....
The fellow in charge of silence said:
“Why did you talk without permission,” caned me.
The fellow in charge of the assembly said:
“Why did you stand at ease without permission,” caned me.1
Although Mesopotamian education was primarily intended to produce scribes

for administrative work, schools were also centers of culture and scholarship.
The building of cities, palaces, temples, and canals

Mesopotamian demanded practical knowledge of geometry and trigo-
Thought and Religion nometry. The Mesopotamians made significant ad-
vances in mathematics using a numerical system based on units of sixty, ten, and
six. They also developed the concept of place value—that the value of a number
depends on where it stands in relation to other numbers.
Mesopotamian Civilization 9
Mesopotamian medicine was a combination of magic, prescriptions, and sur-

gery. Mesopotamians believed that demons and evil spirits caused sickness and that
magic spells and prescriptions could drive them out. Over time, some prescriptions
were found to work and thus were true medicines. In this slow but empirical fash-
ion medicine grew from superstition to an early form of rational treatment.
The Sumerians originated many religious beliefs, and their successors added
to them. The Mesopotamians were polytheists (POL-eh-thee-ists), that is, they polytheism The worship of several
believed that many gods run the world. However, they did not consider all gods gods; this was the tradition of Egyptian
religion.
and goddesses equal. Some deities had very important jobs, taking care of music,
law, sex, and victory, while others had lesser tasks, overseeing leatherworking and
basketweaving.
Mesopotamian gods were powerful and immortal and could make themselves
invisible. Otherwise, Mesopotamian gods and goddesses were very human: they
celebrated with food and drink, and they raised families. They enjoyed their own
“Garden of Eden,” a green and fertile place. They could be irritable, vindictive,
and irresponsible. The motives of the gods were not always clear. In times of afflic-
tion one could only pray and offer sacrifices to appease them.
Encouraged and directed by the traditional priesthood, which was dedicated to
understanding the ways of the gods, the people erected shrines in the center of
each city and then built their houses around them. The best way to honor the gods
was to make the shrine as grand and as impressive as possible, for gods who had a
splendid temple might think twice about sending floods to destroy the city.
Ziggurat
The ziggurat is a stepped tower that dominated the landscape of the Sumerian city. Surrounded by a walled enclosure, it stood as a monument to
the gods. Monumental stairs led to the top, where sacrifices were offered for the welfare of the community. (Corbis)
The Mesopotamians had many myths to account for the creation of the uni-
verse. According to one Sumerian myth (echoed in Genesis, the first book of the
Bible), only the primeval sea existed at first. The sea produced heaven and earth,
which were united. Heaven and earth gave birth to Enlil, who separated them and
made possible the creation of the other gods. These myths are the earliest known
attempts to answer the question “How did it all begin?”
In addition to myths, the Sumerians produced the first epic poem, the Epic of
Gilgamesh (GIL-guh-mesh), which evolved as a reworking of at least five earlier
myths. An epic poem is a narration of the achievements, labors, and sometimes
the failures of heroes that embodies a people’s or a nation’s conception of its own
past. The Sumerian epic recounts the wanderings of Gilgamesh—the semihistori-
cal king of Uruk (OO-rook)—and his companion Enkidu (EN-kee-doo). It shows
the Sumerians grappling with such enduring questions as life and death, human-
kind and deity, and immortality. (See the feature “Listening to the Past: A Quest
for Immortality” on pages 22–23.)
nobles The top level of Sumerian

society; consisted of the king and his Sumerian society was a complex arrangement of free-
Sumerian Social and dom and dependence, and its members were divided
family, the chief priests, and high palace
officials. Gender Divisions into four categories: nobles, slaves, clients, and com-
clients Free men and women who were moners. Nobles consisted of the king and his family, the chief priests, and high
dependent on the nobility; in return for palace officials. Generally, the king rose to power as a war leader elected by the
their labor they received small plots of citizenry; he established a regular army, trained it, and led it into battle. The might
land to work for themselves. of the king and the frequency of warfare quickly made him the supreme figure in
patriarchal Societies in which most the city, and kingship soon became hereditary. The symbol of royal status was the
power is held by older adult men, palace, which rivaled the temple in grandeur.
especially those from the elite groups. The king and the lesser nobility held extensive tracts of land that were, like the
estates of the temple, worked by slaves and clients. Slaves were prisoners of war,
convicts, and debtors. While they were subject to whatever treatment their owners
Sec tion Review
might mete out, they could engage in trade, make profits, and even buy their free-
• Early hunters created a stable life by dom. Clients were free men and women who were dependent on the nobility. In
relying on sustained agriculture that in return for their labor, the clients received small plots of land to work for them-
turn led to the creation of villages and selves. Although this arrangement assured the clients a livelihood, the land they
small towns.
worked remained the possession of the nobility or the temple. Commoners were
• The Mesopotamian civilization of free and could own land in their own right. Male commoners had a voice in the
Sumer used irrigation and created a
centrally organized urban society. political affairs of the city and full protection under the law.
Each of these social categories included both men and women, but their expe-
• Sumerian scribes, trained in schools
where they were subject to corporal riences were not the same, for Sumerian society made clear distinctions based
punishment, used wedge-shaped on gender. Sumerian society—and all Western societies that followed, until very
cuneiform writing to represent words recently—was patriarchal (PAY-tree-AR-kal), that is, most power was held by older
and ideas phonetically. adult men, especially those from the elite groups. Boys became the normal in-
• Sumerians developed mathematics, heritors of family land. Women could sometimes inherit if there were no sons in
medicine, and their polytheistic a family, but they did not gain the political rights that came with land ownership
religion, building temples to appease for men.
their hierarchical pantheon.
The states that developed in the ancient Middle East, beginning with Sumer,
• The Sumerians produced the first epic further heightened gender distinctions. Laws governing sexual relations and mar-
poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh, about
the wanderings of a king and his riage practices set up a very unequal relationship between spouses. Women were
companion Enkidu. required to be virgins on marriage and were strictly punished for adultery; sexual
• Sumerian society was patriarchal and relations outside of marriage on the part of husbands were not considered adultery.
divided between nobles, slaves, clients, Religious concepts heightened gender distinctions. In some places heavenly hier-
and commoners. archies came to reflect those on earth, with a single male god, who was viewed as
the primary creator of life, dominating the religious pantheon.
The Spread of Mesopotamian Culture 11
The Spread of Mesopotamian Culture

How did the Babylonians unite Mesopotamia politically and culturally
and spread that culture to the broader world?
The Sumerians established the basic social, economic, and intellectual patterns of
Mesopotamia, but the Semites (SEH-mites) played a large part in spreading Su-
merian culture far beyond the boundaries of Mesopotamia. The interaction of the
Sumerians and Semites, in fact, gives one of the very first glimpses of a phenom-
enon that can still be seen today. History provides abundant evidence of peoples of
different origins coming together, usually on the borders of an established culture.
The outcome in these instances was the evolution of a new culture that consisted
of two or more old parts. Although the older culture almost invariably looked on
the newcomers as inferior, the new just as invariably contributed something valu-
able to the old. So it was in 2331 b.c.e. The Semitic chieftain Sargon conquered
Sumer and created a new empire. The symbol of his triumph was a new capital,
the city of Akkad (AH-kahd). Sargon, the first “world conqueror,” led his armies to
the Mediterranean Sea. Although his empire lasted only a few generations, it
spread Mesopotamian culture throughout the Fertile Crescent, the belt of rich
farmland that extends from Mesopotamia in the east up through Syria in the north
and down to Egypt in the west (see Map 1.1).
Although the empire of Sargon (SAHR-gone) was ex-

The Triumph tensive, it was short-lived. It was left to the Babylonians
of Babylon to unite Mesopotamia politically and culturally. The
Babylonians were Amorites (AM-uh-rites), a Semitic people who had migrated
from Arabia and settled on the site of Babylon along the middle Euphrates, where
that river runs close to the Tigris. Babylon enjoyed an excellent geographical posi-
tion and was ideally suited to be the capital of Mesopotamia. It dominated trade
on the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers: all commerce to and from Sumer and Akkad
had to pass by its walls. It also looked beyond Mesopotamia. Babylonian mer-
chants followed the Tigris north to Assyria (uh-SEER-ee-uh) and Anatolia. The
Euphrates led merchants to Syria, Palestine, and the Mediterranean. The city
grew to be great because of its commercial importance and soundly based power.
Babylon’s king Hammurabi (ham-moo-RAH-bee) (r. 1792–1750 b.c.e.) set
out to do three things: make Babylon secure, unify Mesopotamia, and win for the
Babylonians a place in Mesopotamian civilization. The first two he accomplished
by conquering Assyria in the north and Sumer and Akkad in the south. Then he
turned to his third goal.
Politically, Hammurabi joined in his kingship the Semitic concept of the tribal
chieftain and the Sumerian idea of urban kingship. Culturally, he encouraged the
spread of myths that explained how the Babylonian god Marduk (MAHR-dook)
had been elected king of the gods by the other Mesopotamian deities, thus making
Babylon the religious center of Mesopotamia. Through Hammurabi’s genius the
Babylonians made their own contribution to Mesopotamian culture—a culture
vibrant enough to maintain its identity while assimilating new influences. Ham-
murabi’s conquests and the activity of Babylonian merchants spread this enriched
culture north to Anatolia and west to Syria and Palestine.
One of Hammurabi’s most memorable accomplish-

law code A proclamation issued by the
Life Under ments was the proclamation of a law code that offers a
Babylonian king Hammurabi to establish Hammurabi wealth of information about daily life in Mesopotamia.
law and justice in the language of the
land, thereby prompting the welfare
Hammurabi’s was not the first law code in Mesopotamia; indeed, the earliest goes
of the people; it inflicted harsh back to about 2100 b.c.e. Like earlier lawgivers, Hammurabi proclaimed that he
punishments, but despite its severity, was issued his laws on divine authority “to establish law and justice in the language of
pervaded with a spirit of justice and sense the land, thereby promoting the welfare of the people.”
of responsibility.
The Code of Hammurabi has two striking characteristics. First, the law dif-
fered according to the social status and gender of the offender. Nobles were not
punished as harshly as commoners, nor commoners as harshly as slaves. Certain
actions that were crimes for women were not crimes for men. Second, the code
demanded that the punishment fit the crime. It called for “an eye for an eye, and
a tooth for a tooth,” at least among equals. However, a noble who destroyed the eye
of a commoner or slave could pay a fine instead of losing his own eye. Otherwise,
as long as criminal and victim shared the same social status, the victim could de-
mand exact vengeance.
Hammurabi’s code began with legal procedure. There were no public prose-
cutors or district attorneys, so individuals brought their own complaints be-
fore the court. Each side had to produce written documents or witnesses
to support its case. For example, in cases of murder, the accuser had to
prove the defendant guilty; any accuser who failed to do so was put to
death. This strict law was designed to prevent people from lodging
groundless charges.
Because farming was essential to Mesopotamian life, Hammurabi’s
code dealt extensively with agriculture. Farmers who rented land were
required to keep the irrigation canals and ditches in good repair. Oth-
erwise the land would be subject to floods and the owners would face
crippling losses. Any tenant whose neglect of the canals resulted in
damaged crops had to bear all the expense of the lost crops. Those
tenants who could not pay the costs were forced into slavery.
Consumer protection is not a modern idea; it goes back to Ham-
murabi’s day. Merchants had to guarantee the quality of their goods
and services. A boatman who lost the owner’s boat or sank someone
else’s boat replaced it and its cargo. House builders guaranteed their
work with their lives. A merchant who tried to increase the interest
rate on a loan forfeited the entire amount.
Hammurabi gave careful attention to marriage and the family.
As elsewhere in the Near East, marriage had aspects of a business
agreement. The prospective groom or his father offered the pro-
spective bride’s father a bridal gift, usually money. If the man and
his bridal gift were acceptable, the father provided his daughter
with a dowry. After marriage the dowry belonged to the woman
(although the husband normally administered it) and was a means
of protecting her rights and status. Once the two men agreed on
financial matters, they drew up a contract; no marriage was con-
sidered legal without one. Fathers often contracted marriages
Law Code of Hammurabi

Hammurabi ordered his code to be inscribed on a stone pillar and set up in
public. At the top of the pillar Hammurabi is depicted receiving the scepter of
authority from the god Shamash. (Hirmer Verlag München)
Egypt, the Land of the Pharaohs (3100–1200 B.C.E.) 13
while their children were still young, and once contracted, the children were con- Sec tion Review
sidered to be wed even if they did not yet live together. The husband had virtually
absolute power over his household. He could even sell his wife and children into • The Semitic Amorites of Babylon
under King Hammurabi conquered
slavery to pay debts. Any son who struck his father could have his hand cut off. A Assyria, Sumer, and Akkad, unifying
father was free to adopt children and include them in his will. Artisans sometimes Mesopotamian civilization on the
adopted children to teach them the family trade. Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.
Law codes, preoccupied as they are with the problems of society, provide a • Babylon represented the interaction
bleak view of things. Other documents give a happier glimpse of life. Although between the newer Semitic influence
marriage was primarily an arrangement between families, evidence of romantic and the older Sumerian culture,
love survives in Mesopotamian poetry. Countless wills and testaments show that symbolized in the election of the
Babylonian deity Marduk as king of
husbands habitually left their estates to their wives, who in turn willed the property the other Mesopotamian gods.
to their children. Hammurabi’s code restricted married women from commercial
• The law code of Hammurabi differed
pursuits, but financial documents prove that many women engaged in business according to social status and gender
without hindrance. Some carried on the family business, while others became of the offender, and demanded that
wealthy landowners in their own right. Mesopotamians found their lives lightened the punishment fit the crime.
by holidays and religious festivals. Traveling merchants brought news of the out- • The strict law code of Hammurabi
side world and swapped marvelous tales. In all, the Mesopotamians enjoyed a vi- dealt with agriculture, trade, marriage,
brant and creative culture that left its mark on the entire Near East. and the family.
• In all, Mesopotamians also enjoyed a
vibrant culure that celebrated holidays
and religious festivals.
Egypt, the Land of the Pharaohs (3100–1200 b.c.e.)

How did Egypt’s geography contribute to the rise of a unique culture, and
what was the role of the pharoah in this society?
The Greek historian and traveler Herodotus (heh-ROD-uh-tuhs) in the fifth cen-
tury b.c.e. called Egypt the “gift of the Nile.” No other single geographical factor
had such a fundamental and profound impact on the shaping of Egyptian life,
society, and history as the Nile (see Map 1.2). Unlike the rivers of Mesopotamia, it
rarely brought death and destruction by devastating entire cities. The Egyptians
never feared the relatively tame Nile in the way the Mesopotamians feared the
Tigris. Instead, they sang its praises:
Hail to thee, O Nile, that issues from the earth and comes to keep Egypt alive! . . .
He that waters the meadows which Re [Ra] created,
He that makes to drink the desert . . .
He who makes barley and brings emmer [wheat] into being . . .
He who brings grass into being for the cattle . . .
He who makes every beloved tree to grow . . .
O Nile, verdant art thou, who makest man and cattle to live.2
In the mind of the Egyptians, the Nile was the supreme renewer of the land.
Each September the Nile floods its valley, transforming it into a huge area of
marsh or lagoon. By the end of November the water retreats, leaving behind a thin
covering of fertile mud ready to be planted with crops. Farmers were able to produce
an annual agricultural surplus, which in turn sustained a growing and prosperous
population. The Nile also unified Egypt. The river was the region’s principal high-
way, promoting communication throughout the valley.
Egypt’s natural resources made it nearly self-sufficient. Besides the fertility of
its soil, Egypt possessed enormous quantities of stone, which served as the raw
material of architecture and sculpture. Abundant clay was available for pottery, as
was gold for jewelry and ornaments. The raw materials that Egypt lacked were
MAP 1.2 Ancient Egypt

Old Kingdom (2575–2134 B.C.E.)
Geography and natural resources provided Egypt with centuries of
and Middle Kingdom A N ATO L I A peace and abundance.
Euphrat
(2040–1640 B.C.E.)
Expansion of Egyptian control
during New Kingdom
es
R.
(1532–1070 B.C.E.) Ugarit Ebla close at hand. The Egyptians could obtain copper from
Orontes R.
Areas of contact during
New Kingdom
Cyprus Sinai (SIGH-nigh) and timber from Lebanon (LEB-uh-
SYRIA
non). They had little cause to look to the outside world
NT
Major battle Kadesh
1274 B.C.E. for their essential needs, a fact that helps explain the insu-
VA
Major pyramid site
Tyre Damascus lar quality of early Egyptian life.
LE
Other ancient site
Oasis PALESTINE
Jordan R.
Mediterranean Sea Jerusalem
Gaza Dead
NILE DELTA
LOWE R
Sea The Nile divided ancient
EGY P T Avaris
Heliopolis
The God-King Egypt into two entities—
Giza
30°N
Saqqâra
Faiyum Lake
Limestone
Memphis S I NAI
of Egypt Upper Egypt, the upstream
Basalt
EA
N Turquoise/
valley in the south, and Lower Egypt, the land of the delta
ST
Copper A R A B I A N
Ni le R.
ER
D E S E RT where the Nile branches into smaller waterways and then

N
Copper
Akhetaten (Amarna) empties into the Mediterranean Sea. The Egyptians told
Alabaster
of a great king, Menes (MEH-neez), who united Upper
DE
W E S T E R N U P P E R EGY PT
SE
and Lower Egypt into a single kingdom around 3100 b.c.e.

RT
DESE RT Abydos
Valley of the Kings Thebes (Karnak)
Deir el-Bahri
Thereafter the Egyptians divided their history into dynas-
Copper/
25°N
Gold ties, or families of kings; modern historians organize it into
RE
Edfu
R
S A H A R A periods (see page 15). The political unification of Egypt

D
Elephantine Copper
e
1st Cataract Granite

d
ushered in the period known as the Old Kingdom (2660–

SEA
Tropic of Cancer
2180 b.c.e.), an era remarkable for prosperity, artistic

S
Copper
HI
Abu Simbel
flowering, and the evolution of religious beliefs.
LL
2nd Cataract
S
LO W E R In religion, the Egyptians were polytheists, like the

NUBIA
Gold
Gold Mesopotamians. They developed complex, often contra-
20°N
Gold N U B IAN DESE RT
dictory, ideas of their gods that reflected the world around
KI NG DO M O F KU S H
3rd Cataract
Kerma 4th Gold
them. The most powerful of these gods were Amon (AH-
Cataract muhn), a primeval sky-god, and Ra, the sun-god. Amon
Napata
R.
5th Cataract created the entire cosmos by his thoughts. He caused the
ile
N
UPPER
NUBIA Nile to flood and the northern wind to blow. The Egyp-
Meroë tians considered Ra (ra) the creator of life. He com-
At
ba
6th manded the sky, earth, and underworld. This giver of life
ra
Cataract
R.
Bl u
35°E
could also take it without warning. The obvious similari-
e
15°N
ties between Amon and Ra eventually led the Egyptians
Ni
0 100 200 Km.

le
R.
White Nile
30°E R. 0 100 200 Mi.
to combine them into one god, Amon-Ra. Yet the Egyp-
tians never fashioned a formal theology to resolve these
differences. Instead they worshiped these gods as different
aspects of the same celestial phenomena.
Amon-Ra An Egyptian god, consisting The Egyptians likewise developed views of an afterlife that reflected the world
of Amon, a primeval sky-god, and Ra, around them. The dry air of Egypt preserves much that would decay in other cli-
the sun-god.
mates. Thus there was a sense of permanence about Egypt: the past was never far
from the present. The dependable rhythm of the seasons also shaped the fate of
the dead, for, unchanged, they regulated the afterlife, which continued in accor-
Book of the Dead An Egyptian book dance with the same regularity. The Egyptian Book of the Dead explained that
that preserved their ideas about death
and the afterlife; it explains that after the god Osiris (oh-SIGH-ris), king of the dead, weighed each person’s heart to de-
death the soul leaves the body to become termine if he or she had lived justly enough to deserve everlasting life. After death
part of the divine. the soul left the body to become part of the divine. It entered gladly through the
gate of heaven and remained in the presence of Aton (AHT-on) (a sun-god) and
the stars.
Egypt, the Land of the Pharaohs (3100–1200 B.C.E.) 15
Ra and Horus
The god Ra appears on the left in a form
associated with Horus, the falcon-god. The
red circle over Ra’s head identifies him as the
sun-god. In this scene Ra also assumes
characteristics of Osiris, god of the
underworld. He stands in judgment of the
dead woman on the right. She meets the god
with respect but without fear, as he will guide
her safely to a celestial heaven. (Egyptian
Museum, Cairo)
The focal point of religious and political life in the Old Kingdom was the
pharaoh (FAY-roh), who commanded the wealth, resources, and people of all pharaoh The leader of religious and
Egypt. The pharaoh’s power was such that the Egyptians considered him to be the political life in the Old Kingdom, he
commanded the wealth, resources, and
falcon-god Horus in human form, a living god on earth, who became one with people of Egypt.
Osiris after death. The queen was associated with the goddess Isis (EYE-sis), wife of
Osiris, and both the queen and the goddess were viewed as protectors. The pha-
raoh was not simply the mediator between the gods and the Egyptian people.
Above all, he was the power that achieved the integration between gods and hu- pyramid The burial place of pharaohs,
man beings, between nature and society, that ensured peace and prosperity for the it was a massive tomb that contained all
things needed for the afterlife; also
land of the Nile. The pharaoh was thus a guarantee to his people, a pledge that the symbolized the king’s power and his
gods of Egypt (strikingly unlike those of Mesopotamia) cared for their people. connection with the sun-god.
The pharoah’s surroundings
had to be worthy of a god. Just as he
occupied a great house in life, so Periods of Egyptian History
he reposed in a great pyramid (PIR-
uh-mid) after death. The massive Period Dates Significant Events
tomb contained all the things Archaic 3100–2660 b.c.e. Unification of Egypt
needed by the pharaoh in his after- Old Kingdom 2660–2180 b.c.e. Construction of the pyramids
life. The walls of the burial cham- First Intermediate 2180–2080 b.c.e. Political chaos
ber were inscribed with religious
texts and spells relating to the pha- Middle Kingdom 2080–1640 b.c.e. Recovery and political stability
raoh’s journeys after death. After Second Intermediate 1640–1570 b.c.e. Hyksos “invasion”
burial the entrance was blocked New Kingdom 1570–1075 b.c.e. Creation of an Egyptian empire;
and concealed to ensure his undis- Akhenaten’s religious policy
turbed peace. To this day the great
pyramids at Giza near Cairo bear silent but magnificent testimony

to the god-kings of Egypt.
Because the common folk stood at the

The Pharaoh’s People bottom of the social and economic scale,
they were always at the mercy of grasp-
ing officials. The arrival of the tax collector was never a happy occa-
sion. One Egyptian scribe described the worst that could happen:
And now the scribe lands on the river-bank and is about to register
the harvest-tax. The janitors carry staves and the Nubians rods of
palm, and they say, Hand over the corn, though there is none. The
cultivator is beaten all over, he is bound and thrown into a well,
soused and dipped head downwards. His wife has been bound in
his presence and his children are in fetters.3
That was an extreme situation. Nonetheless, taxes might amount to
20 percent of the harvest, and tax collection could be brutal.
Egyptian society seems to have been a curious mixture of free-
dom and constraint. Slavery did not become widespread until the
New Kingdom (1570–1075 b.c.e.). There was neither a caste sys-
tem nor a color bar, and humble people could rise to the highest
positions if they possessed talent. On the other hand, most ordinary
folk could not easily leave the land of their own free will. Peasants
were also subject to forced labor, including work on the pyramids
and canals. Young men were drafted into the pharaoh’s army, which
King Menkaure and Queen served both as a fighting force and as a labor corps.
The pharaoh and his wife represent all the magnificence, The vision of thousands of people straining to build the pyra-
serenity, and grandeur of Egypt. (Old Kingdom, Dynasty 4, reign mids brings to the modern mind a distasteful picture of absolute
of Mycerinus, 2532–2510 b.c.; Greywacke; H x W x D: 54¹¹⁄₁₆ x 22⅜ x
power. Indeed, the Egyptian view of life and society is alien to those
21⁵⁄₁₆ in. (139 x 57 x 54 cm). Harvard University—Museum of Fine Arts
Expedition, 11.1738. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
raised with modern concepts of individual freedom and human
rights. To ancient Egyptians the pharaoh embodied justice and
order—harmony among human beings, nature, and the divine. If
the pharaoh was weak or allowed anyone to challenge his unique position, he
opened the way to chaos. Twice in Egyptian history the pharaoh failed to maintain
rigid centralization. During those two eras, known as the First and Second Inter-
mediate Periods, Egypt was exposed to civil war and invasion. Yet the monarchy
survived, and in each period a strong pharaoh arose to crush the rebels or expel the
invaders and restore order.
While Egyptian civilization flourished behind its bul-

The Hyksos in Egypt wark of sand and sea, momentous changes were tak-
(1640–1570 B.C.E.) ing place in the ancient Near East. These changes
involved enormous and remarkable movements, especially of peoples who spoke
Semitic tongues. The original home of the Semites was perhaps the Arabian
peninsula. Some tribes moved into northern Mesopotamia, others into Syria and
Hyksos Called Rulers of the Uplands Palestine, and still others into Egypt. Shortly after 1800 b.c.e. people whom the
by the Egyptians, these people began to
settle in the Nile Delta shortly after Egyptians called Hyksos, which means “Rulers of the Uplands,” began to settle in
1800 b.c.e. the Nile Delta. The movements of the Hyksos were part of a larger pattern of mi-
gration of peoples during this period. The Hyksos arrived in such numbers that
The Hittites and the End of an Era (ca. 1640–1100 B.C.E.) 17
they were able to take political control, creating a capital city at Avaris in the north- Bronze Age The period in which the
eastern Nile Delta. production and use of bronze implements
became basic to society; bronze made
Although the Egyptians portrayed the Hyksos as a conquering horde, their farming more efficient and revolutionized
entry into the delta was generally peaceful. The Hyksos brought with them the warfare.
method of making bronze and casting it into tools and weapons. They thereby
brought Egypt fully into the Bronze Age culture of the Mediterranean world, a monotheism The belief in one god;
when applied to Egypt it means that only
culture in which the production and use of bronze implements became basic to Aton among the traditional Egyptian
society. Bronze tools were sharper and more durable than the copper tools they deities was god.
replaced. The Hyksos’ use of bronze armor and weapons revolutionized Egyptian
warfare, as did their use of chariots and stronger bows. Yet the newcomers also
Sec tion Review
absorbed Egyptian culture. The Hyksos came to worship Egyptian gods and mod-
eled their monarchy on the pharaonic system. • The predictable floods of the Nile and
the resulting reliable agriculture made
Egyptians unified and self-sufficient,
even insular.
The pharaohs of the Eighteenth Dynasty arose to chal-
The New Kingdom: lenge the Hyksos. These pharaohs pushed the Hyksos • Until their death and entombment in
Revival and Empire out of the Nile Delta, subdued Nubia in the south, and
a pyramid, the god-king pharaohs
(1570–1075 B.C.E.) ruled over the polytheistic Egyptians
conquered Palestine and parts of Syria in the northeast. who worshiped Amon the sky god, Ra
In this way, Egyptian warrior-pharaohs inaugurated the New Kingdom—a period the sun god, Osirus the king of the
in Egyptian history characterized by enormous wealth and conscious imperialism. dead, and his wife Isis.
During this period, probably for the first time, widespread slavery became a fea- • Although Egyptians had to pay taxes
ture of Egyptian life. The pharaoh’s armies returned home leading hordes of slaves and lacked modern concepts of
freedom, performing forced labor
who constituted a new labor force for imperial building projects.
building pyramids, repairing canals,
One pharoah of this period, Akhenaten (ah-keh-NAT-en) (r. 1367–1350 b.c.e.), and serving in the military, they did
was more concerned with religion than with conquest. Nefertiti (nef-uhr-TEE-tee), enjoy justice, order, and harmony.
his wife and queen, encouraged his religious bent. (See the feature “Individuals in • The movement of the bronze-
Society: Nefertiti, the ‘Perfect Woman.’ ”) The precise nature of Akhenaten’s reli- wielding, chariot-riding Semitic
gious beliefs remains debatable. Most historians, however, agree that Akhenaten Hyksos into Lower Egypt marked an
and Nefertiti were monotheists (mon-oh-THEE-ists); that is, they believed that the Intermediate Period of the breakdown
of order in Egypt.
sun-god Aton, whom they worshiped, was universal, the only god. They consid-
ered all other Egyptian gods and goddesses frauds and disregarded their worship. • The pharaohs of the Eighteenth
Dynasty established the New Kingdom,
Yet Akhenaten’s monotheism, imposed from above and accompanied by intoler-
ousting the Hyksos, conquering
ance and persecution, failed to find a place among the people and did not endure Nubia and Palestine, and bringing
beyond his reign. home slaves.
• The heretic pharaoh Akhenaten and
his wife Nefertiti introduced mono-
theism in their worship of the sun-god
The Hittites and the End of an Era Aton, although it did not last past
their reign.
(ca. 1640–1100 B.C.E.)
How did the Hittites rise to power, and how did they facilitate the
exchange of ideas throughout the Near East? How did the Egyptian and
Mesopotamian cultures survive the fall of empires?
Like the Mesopotamians and the Egyptians before them, the Hittites (HIT-ites)
introduced a new element into the development of the ancient Near East. The
Hittites were the first Indo-Europeans to become broadly important throughout
the region. The term Indo-European refers to a large family of languages that in- Indo-European A large family of
cludes English, most of the languages of modern Europe, including Greek and languages that includes English, most of
the languages of modern Europe, Greek,
Latin, and languages as far afield as Persian and Sanskrit, spoken in ancient Turkey Latin, Persian, and Sanskrit, the sacred
and India. They left a lasting imprint on the Near East before the empires of the tongue of ancient India.
whole region suffered the shock of new peoples and widespread disruption.
Individuals in Society
Nefertiti, the “Perfect Woman”
E gyptians understood the pharaoh to be the living em-
bodiment of the god Horus, the source of law and
morality, and the mediator between gods and humans.
haps because he wanted to erase the fact that a woman
had once been pharaoh. Only within the last decades
have historians and archaeologists begun to (literally)
His connection with the divine stretched to members piece together her story.
of his family, so that his siblings and Though female pharaohs were very rare, many royal
children were also viewed as in some women had power through their position as “Great
ways divine. Because of this, a pha- Royal Wives.” The most famous of these was Nefertiti,
raoh often took his sister or half-sister the wife of Akhenaten. Her name means “the perfect (or
as one of his wives. This concentrated beautiful) woman has come,” and inscriptions also give
divine blood set the pharaonic family her many other titles. Nefertiti used her position to
apart from those of other Egyptians spread the new religion of the sun-god Aton. Together
(who did not marry close relatives), she and Akhenaten built a new palace at Akhetaten, the
and allowed the pharaohs to imitate present Amarna, away from the old centers of power.
the gods, who in Egyptian mythology There they developed the cult of Aton to the exclusion
often married their siblings. A pha- of the traditional deities. Nearly the only literary survival
raoh chose one of his wives to be the of their religious belief is the “Hymn to Aton,” which
“Great Royal Wife,” or principal queen. declares Aton to be the only god. It describes Nefertiti as
Often this was a relative, though “the great royal consort whom he! Akhenaten! Loves,
sometimes it was one of the foreign the mistress of the Two Lands! Upper and Lower Egypt!”
princesses who married pharaohs to Nefertiti is often shown the same size as her hus-
Nefertiti, queen of
establish political alliances. band, and in some inscriptions she is performing reli-
Egypt (Bildarchiv
Preussischer Kulturbesitz/Art
The familial connection with the gious rituals that would normally have been done only
Resource, NY) divine allowed a handful of women to by the pharaoh. The exact details of her power are hard
rule in their own right in Egypt’s long to determine, however. An older theory held that her
history. We know the names of four husband removed her from power, though there is also
female pharaohs, the most famous being Hatshepsut speculation that she may have ruled secretly in her own
(hat-SHEP-soot) (ruled 1479–1458 b.c.e.). She was the right after his death. Her tomb has long since disap-
sister and wife of Thutmose II and, after he died, served peared, though in 2003 an enormous controversy devel-
as regent for her young stepson Thutmose III, who was oped over her possible remains. There is no controversy
actually the son of another woman. Hatshepsut sent that the bust shown above, now in a Berlin museum,
trading expeditions and sponsored artists and architects, represents Nefertiti, nor that it has become an icon of
ushering in a period of artistic creativity and economic female beauty since it was first discovered in the early
prosperity. She built one of the world’s great buildings, twentieth century.
an elaborate terraced temple at Deir el Bahri, which
eventually served as her tomb. Hatshepsut’s status as a
Questions for Analysis
powerful female ruler was difficult for Egyptians to con-
ceptualize, and she is often depicted in male dress or 1. Why might it have been difficult for Egyptians to
with a false beard, thus looking more like the male rul- accept a female ruler?
ers who were the norm. After her death, Thutmose III 2. What opportunities do hereditary monarchies such
tried to destroy all evidence that she had ever ruled, as that of ancient Egypt provide for women? How
smashing statues and scratching her name off inscrip- does this fit with gender hierarchies in which men
tions, perhaps because of personal animosity and per- are understood as superior?
18
The Hittites and the End of an Era (ca. 1640–1100 B.C.E.) 19
During the nineteenth century b.c.e. the native king-

The Coming of doms in Anatolia engaged in suicidal warfare that left
the Hittites (ca. most of the area’s once-flourishing towns in ashes and
1640–1200 B.C.E.) rubble. In this climate of exhaustion the Hittite king,
Hattusilis I, led his army to victory against neighboring kingdoms.
The Hittites, like the Egyptians of the New Kingdom, produced an energetic and
able line of kings who built a powerful empire. Perhaps their major contribution
was the introduction of iron in the form of weapons and tools. Around 1300 b.c.e.
the Hittites stopped the Egyptian army of Rameses II at the Battle of Kadesh in
Syria. Having fought each other to a standstill, the Hittites and Egyptians first
made peace, then an alliance. Alliance was followed by friendship, and friendship
by active cooperation between the two greatest powers of the early Near East.
The Hittites and Egyptians next included the Babylonians in their diplomacy.
All three empires developed an official etiquette in which they treated one
another as “brothers,” using this gendered familial term to indicate their connec-
tion. These alliances facilitated the exchange of ideas throughout the Near East.
Furthermore, the Hittites passed much knowledge and lore from the Near East to
the newly arrived Greeks in Europe. The details of Hittite contact with the Greeks
are unknown, but enough literary themes and physical objects exist to prove the
connection.
Hittite Solar Disc

This cult standard represents Hittite concepts of fertility and prosperity. (A standard is a flag or
emblematic object raised on a pole.) The circle surrounding the animals is the sun, beneath which
stands a stag flanked by two bulls. Stylized bull’s horns spread from the base of the disc. The symbol
is also one of might and protection from outside harm. (Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, Ankara)
The Battle of Kadesh ushered in a period of peace and

The Fall of Empires stability in the Near East that lasted until the thirteenth
and the Survival century b.c.e. Then, however, foreign invaders de-
of Cultures stroyed both the Hittite and the Egyptian empires.
Sea Peoples Invaders who destroyed
(ca. 1200 B.C.E.) The most famous of these marauders, called the Sea
the Egyptian empires in the late Peoples by the Egyptians, launched a series of stunning attacks that brought down
13th century; they are otherwise
unidentifiable because they went their
the Hittites and drove the Egyptians back to the Nile Delta.
own ways after their attacks on Egypt. The Egyptians took the lead in the recovery by establishing commercial contact
with their new neighbors. With the exchange of goods went ideas. Both sides shared
practical concepts of shipbuilding, metal technology, and methods of trade that al-
lowed merchants to transact business over long distances. They began to establish
and recognize recently created borders, which helped define them geographically
and politically. When the worst was over, the Egyptians made contact with the Se-
mitic peoples of Palestine and Syria, whom they found living in small walled towns.
Farther north in the land soon to be named Phoenicia (fi-NEE-sha), they also en-
Sec tion Review countered a people who combined sophisticated seafaring with urban life.
• The iron-wielding Hittites were the first The situation in northern Syria reflected life in the south. Small cities in all
Indo-Europeans to become important these places were mercantile centers, rich not only in manufactured goods, but
in the Near East. also in agricultural produce, textiles, and metals. The cities flourished under royal
• The Hittites at first fought the families that shared power and dealt jointly in foreign affairs. These northerners
Egyptians, such as at the Battle of relied heavily on their Mesopotamian heritage. While adopting Babylonian writ-
Kadesh, but then they made peace and ing to communicate with their more distant neighbors to the east, they also adapted
included the Babylonians in their
fraternal alliance, easing the flow of it to write their own north Semitic language. At the same time they welcomed the
ideas throughout the three empires and knowledge of Mesopotamian literature, mathematics, and culture. They wor-
the region. shiped both their own and Mesopotamian deities. Yet the cultural exchange re-
• The Sea Peoples disturbed this peace, mained a mixture of adoption, adaptation, contrast, and finally balance, as the two
resulting in the downfall of the Hittites cultures came to understand and appreciate each other.
and the withdrawal of Egyptians to the A pattern emerged in Palestine, Syria, and Anatolia. In these areas native cul-
Nile Delta. tures established themselves during the prehistoric period. Upon coming into
• The Phoenicians combined contact with the Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations, they adopted many
sophisticated seafaring with urban life. aspects of these cultures, adapting them to their own traditional customs. Yet they
• A huge group of communities across also contributed to the advance of Egyptian and Mesopotamian cultures by intro-
the Near East maintained local ducing new technologies and religious ideas. The result was the emergence of a
character while also sharing and
helping to develop further common huge group of communities stretching from Egypt in the south to Anatolia in the
cultural elements from Egypt and north and from the Levant in the west to Mesopotamia in the east. Each enjoyed
Mesopotamia. its own individual character, while at the same time sharing many common fea-
tures with its neighbors.
Chapter Review
How did early peoples evolve from bands of hunter-gatherers to settled farming
communities? (page 3)
For thousands of years Paleolithic peoples moved from place to place in search of
food. Only in the Neolithic era—with the invention of new stone tools, a reliance on Key Terms
sustained agriculture, and the domestication of animals—did people begin to live in Paleolithic period (p. 3)
permanent locations. These villages evolved into towns, where people began to create nomads (p. 3)
new social bonds and political organizations. Stonehenge is one example of the collec-
Neolithic period (p. 3)
tive effort and imagination of a Neolithic community.
Chapter Review 21
How did the Sumerians create a complex society in the arid climate of Mesopo- irrigation (p. 4)
tamia? (page 4)
cuneiform (p. 8)
The earliest area where these developments led to genuine urban societies is Meso- polytheism (p. 9)
potamia. Here the Sumerians and then other Mesopotamians developed writing,
which enabled their culture to be passed on to others. Their religious beliefs reflected nobles (p. 10)
a pessimistic view of the world in which the gods could bring destruction without clients (p. 10)
concern for human life. The great Sumerian poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh, shows patriarchal (p. 10)
them grappling with questions of life and death that are still of importance today. The law code (p. 12)
beginnings of patriarchy and social class inequalities can also be seen in their culture.
Amon-Ra (p. 14)
Book of the Dead (p. 14)
How did the Babylonians unite Mesopotamia politically and culturally and
pharaoh (p. 15)
spread that culture to the broader world? (page 11)
pyramid (p. 15)
The Sumerians established the basic social, economic, and intellectual patterns of
Hyksos (p. 16)
Mesopotamia, but the Semites played a large part in spreading Mesopotamian culture
to the broader world through both conquest and commercial exchange. First the Ak- Bronze Age (p. 17)
kadians and then the Babylonians came to power in the region. Under Hammurabi, monotheism (p. 17)
the Babylonians were able to unify Mesopotamia politically and culturally. The law Indo-European (p. 17)
code of Hammurabi illustrates the king’s intentions to regulate the lives of his people
Sea Peoples (p. 20)
and promote social harmony.
How did Egypt’s geography contribute to the rise of a unique culture, and what
was the role of the pharoah in this society? (page 13)
Around the same time in Egypt, the fertile Nile valley and other natural resources
contributed to the rise of a wealthy and insular culture. The Egyptians too developed
their own writing system and religious beliefs, and they undertook monumental build-
ing projects that required sophisticated organizational and intellectual skills. Under the
strong central leadership of the pharaoh, Egyptian life was stable and predictable. The
Hyksos brought Bronze Age culture to the Egyptians when they settled the Nile Delta.
How did the Hittites rise to power, and how did they facilitate the exchange of
ideas throughout the Near East? How did the Egyptian and Mesopotamian
cultures survive the fall of empires? (page 17)
Finally, the Hittites, an Indo-European people, entered the Near East from the north.
Distant ancestors of the modern folk of Europe and the Americas, the Hittites intro-
duced iron tools and weapons to the region. Along with the Egyptians and then the
Babylonians, they developed an alliance that facilitated the exchange of goods and
ideas throughout the Near East. Near East peoples received hard knocks from hostile
invaders beginning around the thirteenth century b.c.e., but key social, economic, and
cultural patterns survived to enrich future generations.
Notes
1. Quoted in S. N. Kramer, The Sumerians: Their History, Culture and Character, 1963. Re-
printed by permission of the publisher, the University of Chicago Press. John Buckler is the
translator of all uncited quotations from a foreign language in Chapters 1–6.
2. J. B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts, 3d ed. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 1969), p. 372. Hereafter called ANET.
3. Quoted in A. H. Gardiner, “Ramesside Texts Relating to the Taxation and Transport of Corn,”
Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 27 (1941): 19–20.
To assess your mastery of this chapter, go to bedfordstmartins.com/mckaywestbrief

Listening to the Past
A Quest for Immortality
Utnapishtim said, “There is no permanence.
Do we build a house to stand forever, do we seal a
T he human desire to escape death and achieve immortal-
ity is one of the oldest wishes of all peoples. The Sumer-
ian Epic of Gilgamesh is the earliest recorded treatment of
contract to hold for all time? Do brothers divide an
inheritance to keep forever, does the flood-time of
this topic. The oldest elements of the epic go back at least to rivers endure? . . . What is there between the mas-
the third millennium B.C.E. According to tradition, Gilgamesh ter and the servant when both have fulfilled their
was a king of Uruk whom the Sumerians, Babylonians, and doom? When the Anunnaki [the gods of the under-
Assyrians considered a hero-king and a god. In the story Gil- world], the judges, come together, and Mammetun
gamesh and his friend Enkidu set out to attain immortality [the goddess of fate], the mother of destinies, come
and join the ranks of the gods. They attempt to do so by per- together they decree the fates of men. Life and
forming wondrous feats against fearsome agents of the gods, death they allot but the day of death they do not
who are determined to thwart them. disclose.
During their quest Enkidu dies. Gilgamesh, more deter-
mined than ever to become immortal, begins seeking anyone Utnapishtim then tells Gilgamesh of a time when
who might tell him how to do so. His journey involves the gods decided to send a great flood to destroy the
effort not only to escape from death but also to reach an un- Sumerians, who had angered the great god Enlil.
derstanding of the meaning of life. Along the way he meets
Siduri, the wise and good-natured goddess of wine, who gives
him the following advice.
Gilgamesh, where are you hurrying to? You will

never find that life for which you are looking.
When the gods created man they allotted to him
death, but life they retained in their own keeping.
As for you, Gilgamesh, fill your belly with good
things; day and night, night and day, dance and be
merry, feast and rejoice. Let your clothes be fresh,
bathe yourself in water, cherish the little child that
holds your hand, and make your wife happy in your
embrace; for this too is the lot of man.
Ignoring Siduri’s advice, Gilgamesh continues his

journey, until he finds Utnapishtim [oot-nuh-
PISH-tim], a mortal whom the gods so favored that
they put him in an eternal paradise. Gilgamesh
puts to Utnapishtim the question that is the reason
for his quest.
Oh, father Utnapishtim, you who have entered the

assembly of the gods, I wish to question you con-
cerning the living and the dead, how shall I find Gilgamesh, from decorative panel of a lyre unearthed at Ur.
the life for which I am searching? (The University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, neg. T4-108)
22
The god Ea, however, intervened and commanded do not abuse this power, deal justly with your
Utnapishtim to build a boat big enough to hold his servants in the palace, deal justly before the face of
family, various artisans, and all animals in order to the Sun.”
survive the flood that was to come. Enlil was infuri-
ated by the Sumerians’ survival, and Ea rebuked Questions for Analysis
him. Then Enlil relented and blessed Utnapishtim 1. What does the Epic of Gilgamesh reveal about
with eternal paradise. After telling the story, Utna- Sumerian attitudes toward the gods and
pishtim foretells Gilgamesh’s fate. human beings?
2. At the end of his quest, did Gilgamesh achieve
O Gilgamesh, this was the meaning of your dream immortality? If so, what was the nature of that
[of immortality]. You were given the kingship, such immortality?
was your destiny, everlasting life was not your 3. What does the epic tell us about Sumerian
destiny. Because of this do not be sad at heart, do views of the nature of human life? Where do
not be grieved or oppressed; he [Enlil] has given human beings fit into the cosmic world?
you power to bind and to loose, to be the darkness
and the light of mankind. He has given you un- Source: From The Epic of Gilgamesh, translated and with
an introduction by N. K. Sanders (Penguin Classics,
exampled supremacy over the people, victory in
1960; Third Edition, 1972). Copyright © N. K. Sanders,
battle from which no fugitive returns, in forays and 1960, 1964, 1972. Reproduced by permission of Penguin
assaults from which there is no going back. But Books Ltd.
23
CHAPTER 2
Small Kingdoms and Mighty
Empires in
the Near East
ca. 1100–513 B.C.E.
Chapter Preview
Disruption and Diffusion
How did the Nubians, Kush, and
Phoenicians respond to the power
vacuum in Egypt and the western
Near East?
The Children of Israel

How did the Hebrew state evolve, and
what were the unique elements of
Hebrew religious thought?
Assyria, the Military Monarchy

What enabled the Assyrians to conquer
their neighbors, and how did their
aggression finally cause their undoing?
The Empire of the Persian Kings

How did the Persians rise to power and
maintain control over their extensive
empire? What were the central concepts
of their religion, Zoroastrianism?
Reconstruction of the “Ishtar Gate,” Babylon, early sixth century b.c.e.
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY: Wen-Amon Located in the Berlin Museum. (Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz/Art
Resource, NY)
LISTENING TO THE PAST: The Covenant Between
Yahweh and the Hebrews
24
Disruption and Diffusion 25
T he migratory invasions that brought down the Hittites and stunned the
Egyptians in the late thirteenth century b.c. ushered in a new era in the
ancient Near East. In the absence of powerful empires, the Phoenicians, Hebrews,
and many other peoples carved out small independent kingdoms until the Near
East was a patchwork of small states. During this period Hebrew culture and reli-
gion evolved under the influence of urbanism, kings, and prophets.
In the ninth century b.c.e. this jumble of small states gave way to an empire
that for the first time embraced the entire Near East. Yet the very ferocity of the
Assyrian Empire led to its downfall only two hundred years later. In 550 b.c.e. the
Persians and Medes (meeds), who had migrated into Iran, created a “world em-
pire” stretching from Anatolia in the west to the Indus Valley in the east. For over
two hundred years the Persians gave the ancient Near East peace and stability.
Disruption and Diffusion

How did the Nubians, Kush, and Phoenicians respond to the power
vacuum in Egypt and the western Near East?
The fall of empires was a time of both massive political disruption and cultural
diffusion. In Africa, the decline of Egyptian power energized the kingdoms of
Nubia and Kush, who adopted elements of Egyptian culture as they rose to power
Nubian Pyramids
The Nubians adopted many aspects of Egyptian culture and customs. The pyramids shown here are not as magnificent as their
Egyptian predecessors, but they served the same purpose of honoring the dead king. Their core was constructed of bricks,
which were then covered with stone blocks. At the doors of the pyramids stood monumental gates to the interiors of the
tombs. (Michael Yamashita)
Wen-Amon
W en-Amon, an official of the temple of Amon-Ra
at Karnak in Egypt, personally experienced the
weakening of Egypt’s power on a trip to Byblos in Phoe-
the two men met and a heated argument ensued. Not
until Wen-Amon reminded the prince of the god Amon’s
power did the prince agree to the sale of the timber.
nicia sometime in the eleventh century b.c.e. His mis- After the timber was loaded aboard his ship, Wen-
sion was to obtain lumber for Amon saw eleven enemy ships entering the harbor.
Amon-Ra’s ceremonial barge. They anchored, and those in charge reported to the
Wen-Amon’s detailed account prince of Byblos that they had come for the Egyptians.
of his experiences comes in The prince refused to hand them over, saying that he
the form of an official report to would never arrest a messenger of Amon-Ra. He agreed,
the chief priest of the temple. however, to send Wen-Amon away first and allow the
Entrusted with silver to pay enemy ships to pursue the Egyptians. Stormy seas blew
for the lumber, Wen-Amon set the Egyptian ship into Hittite territory. When Wen-
out on his voyage. He docked Amon landed there, Queen Heteb granted him protec-
at Dor, in modern Israel, tion and asylum.
which was independent of the The papyrus breaks off at this point, but it is obvious
pharaoh, but the local prince that Wen-Amon weathered his various storms to return
The essentials of Egyptian writing:
a sheet of papyrus, a stylus or received him graciously. While safely to Egypt. The document illustrates the presump-
pen, an ink well. (Réunion des his ship was at anchor, one tion of power by Wen-Amon and his bluster at the lack
Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, NY) of Wen-Amon’s own sailors of respect shown him. It also shows how Egypt’s neigh-
vanished with the silver. Wen- bors no longer feared Egyptian power. Finally, it illus-
Amon immediately reported the robbery to the prince trates the impact of Egyptian culture and religion on the
and demanded that he investigate the theft. The prince peoples living along the coast of the Levant. Although
flatly told Wen-Amon that he did not care whether Wen- Egyptian political power was in eclipse, its gods were
Amon and the others were important men and that the respected.
matter was not his problem. No earlier foreign prince
would have dared speak to a high Egyptian official in
such terms.
Although rebuffed, Wen-Amon found a ship from 1. What do Wen-Amon’s experiences tell us about
Byblos and robbed it of an equivalent amount of silver. political conditions in the eastern Mediterranean?
When he left Dor and entered the harbor of Byblos, the 2. Since Wen-Amon could no longer depend on the
prince there, who had learned of the theft, ordered him to majesty of Egypt for respect, how did he fulfill
leave. For twenty-nine days there was an impasse. Finally his duty?
26
Chronology
in the region. The Phoenicians also thrived with the absence ca. 1100–653 B.C.E. Third Intermediate Period
of pressure from the Egyptians and Hittites, using their inde- in Egypt
pendence to develop a trade network that spread Mesopota-
ca. 1100–400 B.C.E. Era of the prophets in Israel
mian culture along the Mediterranean.
ca. 1025–925 B.C.E. United Hebrew kingdom
950–730 B.C.E. Movement of new peoples
The long wars against the Sea into Egypt
The End of Peoples impoverished Egypt,
Egyptian Power ca. 950–500 B.C.E. Beginning of the Hebrew Bible
weakening its power in the region
and at home. The four hundred years of political fragmenta- ca. 900–612 B.C.E. Assyrian Empire
tion are known as the Third Intermediate Period (eleventh– ca. 900–550 B.C.E. Phoenician seafaring and trading
seventh centuries b.c.e.). (See the feature “Individuals in in the Mediterranean
Society: Wen-Amon.”) ca. 710–550 B.C.E. Creation of the Persian Empire
In southern Egypt, the pharaoh’s decline opened the way
ca. 600–500 B.C.E. Spread of Zoroastrianism
to the Nubians, who extended their authority northward
throughout the Nile Valley. Nubian kings and aristocrats em- 586–538 B.C.E. Babylonian Captivity of
braced Egyptian culture wholesale, repeating a Near Eastern the Hebrews
phenomenon: new peoples conquered old centers of political ca. 550–513 B.C.E. Expansion of Persian trade from
and military power but were assimilated into the older culture. western Asia to India
Another independent African state, the kingdom of Kush,
grew up during the period of Egyptian weakness. The Kush-
ites worshiped Egyptian gods and used Egyptian hieroglyphs
(high-ruh-GLIFS). In the eighth century b.c.e. their king, Piankhy, swept north
from their capital at Nepata in the region of modern Sudan, extending his con-
quests all the way to the Nile Delta. Egypt enjoyed a brief period of peace, but
reunification of the realm did not lead to a new Egyptian empire.
Sec tion Review

The fall of the Hittite Empire and Egypt’s collapse cre-
The Rise of Phoenicia ated a vacuum of power in the western Near East that • Long wars against the Sea Peoples
allowed for the rise of numerous small states. The impoverished Egypt, leading to
the Third Intermediate Period
Phoenicians, who had long inhabited several cities along the coast of modern (11th–7th c. b.c.e.) of political
Lebanon, used their new freedom to become the seaborne merchants of their fragmentation.
broad world. With the Greeks, one of their early customers, they traded their popular • In southern Egypt the Nubians and
purple and blue textiles, from which originated their Greek name, Phoenicians, the Kushites gained strength as the
meaning the “Purple People.” pharaohs declined.
Their growing success inspired new ventures, and the Phoenicians began to • In the western Near East the
manufacture other goods for export, such as metal tools, weapons, and cooking Phoenicians became skilled
ware. They also expanded their trade routes, first to Egypt, then along the coast of merchants, manufactured goods for
North Africa, eventually to the far western Mediterranean and beyond, to the At- export, and spread their customs
peacefully to other peoples.
lantic Ocean. Although the Phoenicians did not found colonies, they planted trad-
ing posts and small farming communities along the way. Their trading post in • The name Phoenician, Greek for the
“Purple People,” reflected the rich
Carthage prospered to become a leading city in the western Mediterranean. Through textiles they traded.
these ventures the Phoenicians peacefully spread Mesopotamian customs to less
• The most remarkable cultural
urbanized peoples. achievement of the Phoenicians was
The Phoenicians’ overwhelming cultural achievement was the development their development of an alphabet
of an alphabet: they, unlike other literate peoples, used one letter to designate one using one letter for each sound, vastly
sound, a system that vastly simplified writing and reading. The Greeks modified simplifying writing.
this alphabet and then used it to write their own language.
28 Chapter 2 Small Kingdoms and Mighty Empires in the Near East, ca. 1100–513 B.C.E.
Phoenician Ships
These small ships seem too frail to breast the waves. Yet Phoenician mariners routinely sailed them, loaded with their cargoes, to the far
ports of the Mediterranean. (British Museum/Michael Holford)
The Children of Israel

How did the Hebrew state evolve, and what were the unique elements of
Hebrew religious thought?
South of Phoenicia arose a small kingdom, the land of the ancient Israelites or
Hebrews. Virtually the only source for much of their history is the Bible, a religious
document that contains many myths and legends as well as historical material.
According to Hebrew tradition, the patriarch Abra-

The Evolution of ham led his people from Mesopotamia in the second
the Jewish State millennium b.c.e. Together with other seminomadic
peoples, they probably migrated into the Nile Delta seeking good land. According
to the Bible the Egyptians enslaved them. One group, however, under the leader-
ship of Moses (MOH-zis), left Egypt in what the Hebrews remembered as the Exo-
dus. From Egypt they wandered in the Sinai Peninsula until they settled in Palestine
in the thirteenth century b.c.e.
Once in Palestine, the greatest danger to the Hebrews came from the neigh-
boring Philistines (FIL-uh-steens), whose superior technology and military organiza-
tion at first made them invincible. In Saul (ca. 1000 b.c.e.), a farmer of the tribe of
Benjamin, the Hebrews found a champion and a spirited leader. In the biblical
account Saul led attacks on the Philistines, often without success. Yet in the mean-
time he established a monarchy over the twelve Hebrew tribes.
Saul’s work was carried on by David of Bethlehem, who pushed back the Phil-
istines. To give his kingdom a capital, he captured the city of Jerusalem, which he
enlarged, fortified, and made the religious and political center of his realm. His
work in consolidating the monarchy and enlarging the kingdom paved the way for
his son Solomon.
The Children of Israel 29
The Golden Calf

According to the Hebrew Bible, Moses descended from Mount Sinai, where he had received the
Ten Commandments, to find the Hebrews worshiping a golden calf, which was against Yahweh’s
laws. In July 1990 an American archaeological team found this model of a gilded calf inside a
pot. The figurine, which dates to about 1550 b.c.e., is strong evidence for the existence of the cult
represented by the calf in Palestine. (Courtesy of the Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon. Photo: Carl Andrews)
Solomon (ca. 965–925 b.c.e.) ap-

plied his energies to creating a nation.
He began by dividing the kingdom into
twelve territorial districts cutting across
the old tribal borders. To bring his
kingdom up to the level of its
more sophisticated neighbors,
he set about a building pro-
gram that encompassed cities, Yahweh A god, who in Medieval Latin
palaces, fortresses, and roads. became Jehovah, that appeared to Moses
on Mount Sinai and made a covenant
The most symbolic of these projects with the Hebrews.
was the Temple of Jerusalem, which
became the home of the Ark of the Babylonian Captivity A period of time
in 587 b.c.e. when the survivors of a
Covenant, the cherished chest
Babylonian attack on the southern
that contained the holiest of He- kingdom of Judah were sent into exile
brew religious articles. The temple in Babylonia.
in Jerusalem was intended to be the religious heart of the
kingdom and the symbol of Hebrew unity.
At Solomon’s death, his kingdom broke into two po-
R .
SYRIA
ni
litical halves (see Map 2.1). The northern part became
Lita
Sidon Damascus
IA
N IC
Israel, with its capital at Samaria. The southern half was Mt. Hermon
OE
Tyre
Judah, and Jerusalem remained its center. With political
PH
division went a religious rift: Israel, the northern king- Akzib Lake Huleh
dom, established rival sanctuaries for gods other than Akko Sea
of Galilee
Mt. Carmel
Yahweh (YAH-way). Megiddo
ARON
Ramoth Gilead
Eventually, the northern kingdom of Israel was wiped ISR AEL
Mediterranean
out by the Assyrians, but the southern kingdom of Judah
F SH
Sea Samaria
survived numerous calamities until the Babylonians Shechem
IN O
Joppa
Jordan R.
32°N
crushed it in 587 b.c.e. The survivors were sent into exile
PLA
PHILISTINES Jericho AMMON

in Babylonia, a period commonly known as the Baby- Ashkelon
Jerusalem Mt. Nebo
Lachish Bethlehem
lonian Captivity. In 538 b.c.e. the Persian king Cyrus Gaza N
Hebron
(SIGH-russ) the Great permitted some forty thousand ex- J U DA H
Dead
Sea
iles to return to Jerusalem. During and especially after the Beersheba MOAB
Babylonian Captivity, the exiles redefined their beliefs
and practices and thus established what they believed was NEGEV EDOM
the law of Yahweh. Those who lived by these precepts can D E SE RT
ca. 800 B.C.E.
be called Jews.
Kingdom of Israel
Kingdom of Judah
SINAI
30°N
0 30 60 Km.
MAP 2.1 Small Kingdoms of the Near East
0 30 60 Mi.
This map illustrates the political fragmentation of the Near East after Ezion-geber
the great wave of invasions that occurred during the thirteenth 34°E Gulf of Aqaba 36°E
century b.c.e.
Covenant A formal agreement between According to the Bible, the god Yahweh appeared to
Yahweh and the Hebrew people that if Elements of Moses on Mount Sinai. There Yahweh made a con-
the Hebrews worshiped Yahweh as their Jewish Religion tract with the Hebrews, known as the Covenant. If
only god, he would consider them his
chosen people and protect them from they worshiped Yahweh as their only god, he would consider them his chosen
their enemies. people and protect them from their enemies. As the chosen people, the Hebrews’
chief duty was to maintain the worship of Yahweh as he demanded. That worship
Sec tion Review was embodied in the Ten Commandments, which forbade the Hebrews to steal,
murder, lie, or commit adultery. The Covenant was a constant force in Hebrew
• The main source of information for life (see the feature “Listening to the Past: The Covenant Between Yahweh and
the Hebrews comes from the Bible, a the Hebrews” on page 37).
religious document containing myths
and legends in addition to history The uniqueness of the Hebrews’ religion can be seen by comparing the es-
verifiable through other sources. sence of Hebrew monotheism with the religious outlook of the Mesopotamians.
• King Saul defended the Israelites Whereas the Mesopotamians considered their gods capricious, the Hebrews knew
against the Philistines, and King David what Yahweh expected. The Hebrews believed that their god would protect them
founded Jerusalem. and make them prosper if they obeyed his commandments. The Mesopotamians
• King Solomon built the Temple of thought human beings insignificant compared to the gods, so insignificant that the
Jerusalem and created a sophisticated gods might even be indifferent to them. The Hebrews, too, considered themselves
nation through an ambitious building puny in comparison with Yahweh. Yet they were Yahweh’s chosen people, whom
program. he had promised never to abandon. Finally, though the Mesopotamians believed
• At Solomon’s death, the kingdom split that the gods generally preferred good to evil, their religion did not demand ethi-
into Israel in the north, which the cal conduct. The Hebrews could please their god only by living up to high moral
Assyrians wiped out, and Judah in
the south. standards as well as by worshiping him.
Religious leaders were important in Judaism, but not as important as the writ-
• The Babylonians crushed Judah in
587 b.c.e., the beginning of the ten texts they interpreted; these texts came to be regarded as the word of Yahweh
Babylonian Captivity, which lasted and thus had a status other writings did not. The most important task for observant
until 538 b.c.e. Jews was to study religious texts, an activity limited to men until the twentieth
• Those who followed god Yahweh’s law century. Women were obliged to provide for men’s physical needs so that they
became known as Jews. could study, which often meant that Jewish women were more active economi-
• The Hebrews’ religion was unique cally than their contemporaries of other religions. Women’s religious rituals tended
because they knew what Yahweh to center on the home, while men’s centered on the temple. The reverence for a
expected and that if they followed his particular text or group of texts was passed down from Judaism to the other West-
commandments and lived an ethical ern monotheistic religions that grew from it, Christianity and Islam.
life they would be protected.
Assyria, the Military Monarchy

What enabled the Assyrians to conquer their neighbors, and how did
their aggression finally cause their undoing?
Small kingdoms like those of the Phoenicians and the Hebrews could exist only in
the absence of a major power. The beginning of the ninth century b.c.e. saw the
rise of such a power: the Assyrians of northern Mesopotamia, whose chief capital
was at Nineveh (NIN-uh-vuh) on the Tigris River. The Assyrians were a Semitic-
speaking people heavily influenced by the Mesopotamian culture of Babylon to
the south. Living in an open, exposed land, the Assyrians experienced frequent
and devastating attacks by the tribes to their north and east and by the Babylonians
to the south. The constant threat to survival promoted Assyrian political cohesion
and military might, and they evolved into one of the most warlike societies in his-
tory. Yet they were also a mercantile people who had long pursued commerce with
their neighbors to the north and south.
Assyria, the Military Monarchy 31
For over two hundred years the Assyrians labored to

The Power of Assyria dominate the Near East. In 859 b.c.e. the new Assyr-
ian king, Shalmaneser (shal-muh-NEE-zer), unleashed
the first of a long series of attacks on the peoples of Syria and Palestine.
Under the warrior-kings Tiglath-pileser III (TIG-lath-pih-LEE-zuhr) (774–
727 b.c.e.) and Sargon II (r. 721–705 b.c.e.), the Assyrians stepped up their attacks
on Anatolia, Syria, and Palestine. The kingdom of Israel and many other states fell;
others, like the kingdom of Judah, became subservient to the warriors from the
Tigris. In 717 to 716 b.c.e., Sargon led his army in a sweeping attack along the
Philistine coast, where he defeated the pharaoh. Sargon also lashed out at Assyria’s
traditional enemies to the north and then turned south against a renewed threat
in Babylonia. By means of almost constant warfare, Tiglath-pileser III and Sargon II
carved out an Assyrian empire that stretched from east and north of the Tigris
River to central Egypt (see Map 2.2).
Although it was renowned for gruesome displays of violence, Assyria’s success
was actually due to its sophisticated military machine. Infantrymen were armed
with spears and swords and protected by helmet and armor. Archers charged the
enemy on horseback and in chariots. Other heavily armored archers served as a
primitive field artillery, sweeping the enemy’s walls of defenders so that others
could storm the defenses. Slingers also served as artillery in pitched battles.
MAPPING THE PAST

MAP 2.2 The Assyrian and Persian Empires
Compare this map showing the extent of the Assyrian and Persian Empires with Map 2.1 on page
29, which shows the earliest political extent of the Eastern states. [1] What do these maps tell us
about the growth of political power? [2] What new areas have opened to the old cultures?
[3] What do the two maps suggest about the shift of power and the spread of civilization in the
ancient Near East?
20°E 30°E SC Y TH I A 40°E 50°E 60°E 70°E 80°E

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BABYLONIA Pasargadae
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Persepolis
Memphis
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DESERT Gu
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Assyrian homeland
d
Growth of the Persian

Thebes
Empire to 500 B.C.E. 20°N
Growth of the Assyrian Arabian
Se
Empire to 660 B.C.E. Persian Royal Road

a
0 250 500 Km. Sea

Persian homeland
0 250 500 Mi.
The Assyrians’ military genius extended to siege machinery and techniques,

including excavation to undermine city walls and battering rams to knock down
Sec tion Review walls and gates. Never before in the Near East had anyone applied such technical
• Assyrian monarchs Tiglath-pileser III knowledge to warfare. The Assyrians even invented the concept of a corps of engi-
and Sargon II attacked Anatolia, Syria, neers, who bridged rivers with pontoons or provided soldiers with inflatable skins
and Palestine, destroying the Kingdom for swimming. And the Assyrians knew how to coordinate their efforts, both in
of Israel and occupying Judah and open battle and in siege warfare.
Egypt.
• Assyria rose to power at the beginning
of the 9th c. b.c.e. because of its superior
military technology, including heavily In the seventh century b.c.e. Assyrian power seemed
armored archers and siege machinery. Assyrian Culture firmly established. Yet the downfall of Assyria was swift
• Assyrian artists used a series of pictures and complete. Babylon finally won its independence
to show progression of a story—an idea in 626 b.c.e. and joined forces with a newly aggressive people, the Medes, an
later adopted by the Persians along with Indo-European-speaking folk from Iran. Together the Babylonians and the Medes
Assyrian military tactics. The Assyrians destroyed the Assyrian Empire in 612 b.c.e., paving the way for the rise of the
depicted their military campaigns in Persians. The Hebrew prophet Nahum (NEY-hum) spoke for many when he asked:
continuous friezes and monumental
sculpted figures. “Nineveh is laid waste: who will bemoan her?”1
Their cities destroyed and their power shattered, the Assyrians disappeared from
• Babylon won independence from
Assyria in 626 b.c.e., and the Assyrians history, remembered only as a cruel people of the Old Testament. Two hundred
disappeared from history until the years later, when the Greek adventurer and historian Xenophon (ZEN-uh-fuhn)
modern era. passed by the ruins of Nineveh, he marveled at the extent of the former city but knew
nothing of the Assyrians. The glory of their empire was forgotten until modern
Royal Lion Hunt

This wall painting from the seventh century b.c.e. depicts the Assyrian king frightening a lion, a typical representation of the energy and
artistic brilliance of Assyrian artists. The lion hunt signified the king as the protector of society, not simply as a sportsman. (Louvre/Réunion des
Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, NY)
The Empire of the Persian Kings 33
archaelogy brought the Assyrians out of obscurity. Among the treasures unearthed in
recent centuries were monumental sculpted figures—huge winged bulls, human-
headed lions, and sphinxes—as well as brilliantly sculpted friezes. Assyrian artists
had hit on the idea of portraying a series of episodes in a continuous frieze, so that
the viewer could follow the progress of a military campaign from the time the army
marched out until the enemy was conquered. These techniques influenced Persian
artists, who adapted them to gentler scenes. In fact, many Assyrian innovations,
military and political as well as artistic, were taken over by the Persians.
The Empire of the Persian Kings

How did the Persians rise to power and maintain control over their
extensive empire? What were the central concepts of their religion,
Zoroastrianism?
Like the Hittites before them, the Iranians were Indo-Europeans from central Eu-
rope and southern Russia. They migrated into the land known in ancient times as
Persia and today as Iran. From Persia would come one of the greatest empires of
antiquity, one that encompassed scores of peoples and cultures.
The Iranians who entered Persia around 1000 b.c.e.

The Land of the were nomads who migrated with their flocks and herds.
Medes and Persians They were also horse breeders, and the horse gave
them a decisive military advantage over the prehistoric peoples of Iran. These
centuries of immigration saw constant cultural interchange between conquering
newcomers and conquered natives.
Persian Charioteers
Here are two Persians riding in a chariot
pulled by four horses. The chariot is
simple in construction but elegant in
ornamentation. The harness of the
horses is worked in elaborate and
accurate detail. This chariot was used
for ceremonial purposes, not for
warfare. (Courtesy of the Trustees of the
British Museum)
The Royal Palace at Persepolis

King Darius began and King Xerxes finished building a grand palace worthy of the glory of the Persian Empire. Pictured here is
the monumental audience hall, where the king dealt with ministers of state and foreign envoys. (George Holton/Photo Researchers)
Two groups of Iranians gradually began coalescing into larger units: the Per-
sians and the Medes. The Medes united under one king around 710 b.c.e. and
then extended their control over the Persians to the south. In 612 b.c.e. they joined
the Babylonians to overthrow the Assyrian Empire. With the rise of the Medes, the
balance of power in the Near East shifted for the first time east of Mesopotamia.
In 550 b.c.e. Cyrus the Great (r. 559–530 b.c.e.), king

The Rise of the of the Persians and one of the most remarkable states-
Persian Empire men of antiquity, conquered the Medes. Cyrus’s con-
(550–540 B.C.E.) quest of the Medes resulted not in slavery and slaughter
but in the union of the Iranian peoples. Having united Iran, Cyrus set out to
achieve two goals. First, he wanted to win control of the West and thus of the ter-
minal ports of the great trade routes that crossed Iran and Anatolia. Second, he
strove to secure eastern Iran from the pressure of nomadic invaders.
In a series of major campaigns, Cyrus achieved his goals. He swept into Anatolia,
easily overthrowing the young kingdom of Lydia (LID-ee-uh). His generals subdued
the Greek cities along the coast of Anatolia, thus gaining him important ports on
the Mediterranean. From Lydia, Cyrus marched to the far eastern corners of Iran
and conquered the regions of Parthia (PAHR-thee-uh) and Bactria (BAK-tree-uh).
The Babylonians welcomed him as a liberator when his soldiers moved into their
kingdom.
The Empire of the Persian Kings 35
With these victories, Cyrus demonstrated to the world his benevolence as well
as his military might. He spared the life of Croesus (KREE-suhs), the conquered
king of Lydia, to serve him as friend and adviser. He allowed the Greeks to live
according to their customs, thus making possible the spread of Greek culture.
Cyrus’s humanity likewise extended to the Jews, whom he found enslaved in
Babylonia. He returned their sacred objects to them and allowed them to return
to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple.
Cyrus’s successors Darius (duh-RIE-uhs) (r. 521–486 b.c.e.) and Xerxes (ZERK-
sees) (r. 486–464 b.c.e.) rounded out the Persian conquest of the ancient Near
East. Within thirty-seven years (550–513 b.c.e.) the Persians transformed them-
selves from a subject people to the rulers of an empire that included Anatolia, world empire All of the oldest and
Egypt, Mesopotamia, Iran, and western India. They had created a world empire most honored kingdoms and peoples of
the ancient Near East that were united
encompassing all the oldest and most honored kingdoms and peoples of the an- under the Persian political organization.
cient Near East. Never before had this region been united in one such vast politi-
cal organization (see Map 2.2). Royal Road The main highway created
by the Persians; it spanned 1,677 miles
The Persians knew how to preserve the peace. Unlike the Assyrians, they did
from Greece to Iran.
not resort to royal terrorism to maintain order. Instead, the Persians built an effi-
cient administrative system to govern the empire, based in the capital city of Per- Zoroastrianism A religion teaching
sepolis (per-SEP-uh-lis), near modern Schiras, Iran. From Persepolis they sent that Ahura Mazda, god of good and light,
fought continuously with Ahriman, god
directions to the provinces and received reports back from their officials. To do so of evil and dark, with Ahura Mazda
they maintained a sophisticated system of roads linking the empire. The main ultimately winning.
highway, the famous Royal Road, spanned some 1,677 miles (see Map 2.2). Other
roads branched out to link all parts of the empire from the coast of Asia Minor to
the valley of the Indus River. This system of communications enabled Persian kings
to keep in close touch with their subjects and officials. They were thereby able to
make the concepts of right, justice, and good government a practical reality.
Sec tion Review
Around 600 b.c.e. a preacher named Zarathustra (zar- • Iranians (Medes and Persians) were
Thus Spake uh-THUH-struh)—Zoroaster (zo-ro-ASS-ter), as he is Indo-European nomads who entered
Zarathustra better known—introduced new spiritual concepts to
Persia around 1000 b.c.e. and joined
the Babylonians to overthrow the
the people of Iran. Zoroaster taught that life is a constant battleground for the two Assyrians in 612 b.c.e.
opposing forces of good and evil. The Iranian god Ahuramazda (ah-HOOR-uh- • Cyrus the Great formed the Persian
MAZZ-duh) embodied good and truth but was opposed by Ahriman (AH-ree- Empire in 550 b.c.e., subduing
mahn), a hateful spirit who stood for evil and lies. Ahuramazda and Ahriman were important Greek port cities on the
locked together in a cosmic battle for the human race, a battle that stretched over coast of Anatolia, yet allowing the
thousands of years. Greeks to live according to their
customs.
Zoroaster emphasized the individual’s responsibility to choose between good
and evil. He taught that people possessed the free will to decide between Ahura- • Persian successors Darius and Xerxes
built an efficient administrative system
mazda and Ahriman and that they must rely on their own conscience to guide that included the Royal Road.
them through life. Their decisions were crucial, Zoroaster warned, for there would
• About 600 b.c.e. a sage named
be a time of reckoning. The victorious Ahuramazda, like the Egyptian god Osiris, Zarathustra (Zoroaster) taught that a
would preside over a last judgment to determine each person’s eternal fate. Those cosmic battle was occurring between
who had lived according to good and truth would enter a divine kingdom. Liars the good god Ahuramazda and the
and the wicked, denied this blessed immortality, would be condemned to eternal evil spirit Ahriman, and individuals
pain, darkness, and punishment. Thus Zoroaster preached a last judgment that led would be subjected to eternal heaven
or hell through a last judgment by
to a heaven or a hell. Ahuramazda.
Zoroaster’s teachings converted Darius, who did not, however, try to im-
• Darius adopted Zarathustra’s religion
pose them on others. Under the protection of the Persian kings, Zoroastrianism of Zoroastrianism, and it in turn
(zo-ro-ASS-tree-uh-niz-uhm) won converts throughout Iran. It survived the fall of influenced Judaism, Christianity,
the Persian Empire to influence liberal Judaism, Christianity, and early Islam. and Islam.
Good behavior in the world, even though unrecognized at the time, would receive
ample reward in the hereafter. Evil, no matter how powerful in life, would be
punished after death. In some form or another, Zoroastrian concepts still pervade
the major religions of the West and every part of the world touched by Islam.
Chapter Review
How did the Nubians, Kush, and Phoenicians respond to the power vacuum in
Egypt and the western Near East? (page 25) Key Terms
During the centuries following the Sea Peoples’ invasions, the African kingdoms of Yahweh (p. 29)
the Nubians and the Kush filled the power vacuum in Egypt and adopted elements of Babylonian Captivity (p. 29)
Egyptian culture such as hieroglyphs and pyramids. In Anatolia, the Phoenicians in Covenant (p. 30)
particular took advantage of the fall of the Hittites and the weakness of Egyptian power
to spread commodities and ideas through trade. world empire (p. 35)
Royal Road (p. 35)
Zoroastrianism (p. 35)
How did the Hebrew state evolve, and what were the unique elements of He-
brew religious thought? (page 28)
Another group to benefit from the absence of a major power in the region were the
Hebrews, who created a small kingdom in Palestine. Their kingdom was short-lived,
but their religious beliefs and written codes of law and custom proved to be long last-
ing. Judaism, their monotheistic religion, continues as a vibrant faith today and was an
important source for Christianity and Islam.
What enabled the Assyrians to conquer their neighbors, and how did their ag-
gression finally cause their undoing? (page 30)
In this world rose the Assyrians, another Semitic people who had lived on its periph-
ery. The Assyrians’ superior military organization enabled them to conquer many small
kingdoms, but they also created many enemies who ultimately joined to defeat them.
Assyrian artists, however, were innovators whose ideas were adapted by the Persians.
How did the Persians rise to power and maintain control over their extensive
empire? What were the central concepts of their religion, Zoroastrianism?
(page 33)
The Persians assimilated the best of the civilizations that they found around them.
Through conquest that was mild compared with that of the Assyrians, they broadened
the geographical horizons of the ancient world. Their empire looked west to the Greeks
and east to the peoples of the Indus Valley, and they gave the Near East a long period
of peace. The Persians, whose empire far surpassed the Assyrians’, had a farsighted
conception of empire. Though as conquerors they willingly used force to accomplish
their ends, they preferred to depend on diplomacy to rule. They usually respected their
subjects and allowed them to practice their native customs and religions. Thus the
Persians gave the Near East both political unity and cultural diversity. Through their
religion, Zoroastrianism, they also introduced the concept of life as a battleground
between good and evil.
Note
1. Nahum 3:7.

The Covenant Between Yahweh
and the Hebrews
day: and all the people greatly feared the Lord and Sam-
uel. And all the people said to Samuel, pray for your
A s we mentioned in this chapter, the Hebrew Bible is not a
document that we may accept as literal truth, but it does
tell us a great deal about the people who created it. From the
servants to the Lord your God, so that we will not die: for
we have added to all of our sins this evil, to ask us for a
following passages we may discern what the Hebrews thought king. And Samuel said to the people, Fear not: you have
about their own past and religion. done all this wickedness; yet turn not aside from follow-
The background of the excerpt is a political crisis that has ing the Lord, but serve the Lord with all your heart; And
some archaeological support. The king of the Ammonites had do not turn aside; for then should you go after vain
threatened to destroy the Hebrews, and word of the threat was things, which cannot profit nor deliver; for they are vain.
sent among the Hebrew tribes. Saul came forth as a leader For the Lord will not forsake his people for his great
and rallied the men of Israel and Judah to fight the aggressors, name’s sake: because it pleases the Lord to make you his
and his army overwhelmed the Ammonites. The elders of the people. Moreover, as for me, God forbid that I should
tribes had previously chosen judges to lead the community sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you: but I will
only in times of crisis. However, the Hebrews demanded that a teach you the good and the right way: Only fear the
kingship be established. They turned to Samuel, the last of the Lord, and serve him in truth with all your heart: for con-
judges, who anointed Saul as the first Hebrew king. In this sider how great things he has done for you. But if you
excerpt Samuel reminds the Hebrews of their obligation to shall still act wickedly, you will be consumed, both you
honor the Covenant and recognize Yahweh as their true king. and your king.

Now therefore behold the king whom you have cho- 1. What was Samuel’s attitude toward kingship?
sen, and whom you have desired! and behold, the Lord 2. What were the duties of the Hebrews toward
has set a king over you. If you will fear the Lord, and Yahweh?
serve him, and obey his voice, and not rebel against the 3. Might those duties conflict with those toward the
commandment of the Lord, then shall both you and secular king? If so, in what ways, and how might the
also the king who reigns over you continue following the Hebrews avoid the conflict?
Lord your God: But if you will not obey the voice of the
Lord, but rebel against the commandment of the Lord, Source: 1 Samuel 11:1–15; 12:1–7, 13–25. Abridged and adapted
from The Holy Bible, King James Version.
then shall the hand of the Lord be against you, as it was
against your fathers. Now therefore stand
Ark of the Covenant, depicted in a relief from
and see this great thing, which the Capernaum Synagogue, second century c.e.
Lord will do before your eyes. (Ancient Art & Architecture Collection)
Is it not wheat harvest today? I
will call to the Lord, and he
shall send thunder and rain;
that you may perceive and see
that your wickedness is great,
which you have done in the sight
of the Lord, in asking you a king.
So Samuel called to the Lord; and
the Lord sent thunder and rain that
37
CHAPTER 3
Classical
Greece
ca. 1650–338 B.C.E.
Chapter Preview
Hellas: The Land
When the Greeks arrived in Hellas, how
did they adapt themselves to their new
landscape?
The Polis
After the Greeks had established the
polis, in which they lived their political
and social lives, how did they shape it
into its several historical forms?
The Archaic Age (800–500 b.c.e.)

What major developments mark the
Archaic Greek period in terms of spread
of culture and the growth of cities?
The Classical Period (500–338 b.c.e.)

How did the Greeks develop their
literature, philosophy, religion, and art,
and how did war affect this intellectual Dionysos at sea. Dionysos here symbolizes the Greek sense of
and social process? exploration, independence, and love of life. (Bildarchiv Preussischer
Kulturbesitz/Art Resource, NY)
The Final Act (404–338 b.c.e.)

How did the Greek city-states meet
political and military challenges, and
how did Macedonia become dominant?
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY: Aspasia
LISTENING TO THE PAST: The Great Plague at Athens,

430 b.c.e.
38
Hellas: The Land 39
T he people of ancient Greece developed a culture that fundamentally

shaped Western civilization. They were the first to explore most of the ques-
tions that continue to concern Western thinkers to this day. Going beyond myth-
making, the Greeks strove to understand the world in logical, rational terms. The
result was the birth of philosophy and science—subjects that were as important to
most Greek thinkers as religion. The concept of politics evolved through Greek
philosophy. Greek contributions to the arts and literature were equally profound.
The history of the Greeks is divided into two broad periods: the Hellenic Hellenic period The time between the
(HELL-len-nic) period (the subject of this chapter), roughly the time between the arrival of the Greeks (approximately
2000 b.c.e.) and the victory of Greece
arrival of the Greeks (approximately 2000 b.c.e.) and the victory over Greece in in 338 b.c.e. by Philip of Macedon.
338 b.c.e. by Philip of Macedon (mas-ee-DOHN); and the Hellenistic (hel-uh-
NIS-tik) period (the subject of Chapter 4), the age beginning with the remarkable Hellenistic period The new culture
that arose when Alexander overthrew the
reign of Philip’s son, Alexander the Great (336–323 b.c.e.), and ending with the
Persian Empire and began spreading
Roman conquest of the Hellenistic East (200–146 b.c.e.). Hellenism, Greek culture, language,
thought, and way of life as far as India. It
is called Hellenistic to distinguish it from
the Hellenic period.
Hellas: The Land
When the Greeks arrived in Hellas, how did they adapt themselves to
their new landscape?
Hellas, as the Greeks still call their land, encompassed the Greek peninsula, the
islands of the Aegean (ah-GEE-uhn) Sea, and the lands bordering the Aegean, an
area known as the Aegean basin (see Map 3.1). The Aegean basin included Ionia Aegean basin The territory
(eye-OH-nee-uh), on the coast of modern Turkey. The Greek peninsula consisted surrounding Greece proper, including
the Aegean Sea and Greek islands.
of various regions with distinctive geographical features. In the north and center
were Thessaly (THES-uh-lee) and Boeotia (bee-OH-shuh), regions containing good
farmland that helped sustain a strong population capable of fielding a formidable
cavalry and infantry. Immediately to the south of Boeotia was Attica (AT-eh-kah),
an area of thin soil but home to the olive and the vine. Its harbors looked to the
Aegean, which invited its inhabitants, the Athenians, to concentrate on maritime
commerce. Still farther south was the Peloponnesus (PELL-eh-puh-neze-us), a patch-
work of high mountains and small plains that divided the area into several regions.
The geographical fragmentation of Greece encouraged political fragmenta-
tion. Furthermore, communications were extraordinarily poor. Rocky tracks were
far more common than roads, which were seldom paved. These conditions pro-
hibited the growth of a great empire like those of the Near East.
The origins of Greek civilization are complicated, ob-

The Minoans and scure, and diverse. Neolithic peoples had already built
Mycenaeans (ca. prosperous communities in the Aegean, but not until
2000–ca. 1100 B.C.E.) about 2000 b.c.e. did they establish firm contact with
one another. By then artisans had discovered how to make bronze, which gave
these Stone Age groups more efficient tools and weapons. Some Cretan (KREE-
tan) farmers and fishermen began to trade their surpluses with their neighbors.
The central position of Crete (kreet) in the eastern Mediterranean made it a cru-
cial link in this trade. The Cretans voyaged to Egypt, Asia Minor (the lands from Minoan A flourishing and vibrant
the coast of Anatolia to the Euphrates River), other islands, and mainland Greece. culture on Crete around 1650 b.c.e.,
named after King Minos. The symbol of
They thereby played a vital part in creating an Aegean economy that brought their culture was the palace and its
them all into close contact. These favorable circumstances produced the vibrant surrounding buildings, the most
Minoan culture on Crete, named after the mythical King Minos. important one being Cnossus.
40
0 50 100 Km.
Nest
os
0 50 100 Mi.
THRACE
R.
St Byzantium
ry m
Ax i u s
on
R.
R.
MACEDON Sea of Marmara
us
Amphipolis
R.
Pella
br
He
Thasos
Chapter 3
R.
Ao CHALCIDICE
on
u sR
km
.
A l ia Potidaea
Hellespont
40° N
Mt. Olympus
Lemnos Troy
Mt. Ossa
Classical Greece, ca. 1650–338 B.C.E.

. ANATOLIA
Corcyra Dodona Pene us R
THESSALY
PI
EPIRUS Mt. Pelion S ang
a ri u
ND
A e
s R.
US
Lesbos
M
Artemisium
g
TS
480 B.C.E.
.
sR
e
.
ACARNANIA LYDIA us R.
Ionian Thermopylae erm
l ou
a
AETOLIA 480 B.C.E.
H
e
I O
Ach
Mt. Parnassus Chaeronea Euboea
n
Ithaca Delphi Chalcis Sardis
N I
Sea Mt. Helicon
BOEOTIA Eretria
Chios Smyrna
S
Gulf Thebes
A
o f C Leuctra Mt. Parnes
orin
e
t h Plataea Marathon
Elis ACHAEA 479 B.C.E. R.
a
Sicyon Eleusis 490 B.C.E. der
20° E Megara Athens Andros Ephesus M a e an
ELIS Corinth N
Olympia Nemea Salamis ATTICA Samos
ARCADIA Mycenae 480 B.C.E.
Mantinea Argos Aegina Mycale
Saronic 479 B.C.E.
M
PELOPONNESUS Epidaurus Gulf Miletus

Tegea
e
Mt. Ithome Delos

d
CYCLADES
TAYG
it
MESSENIA Paros Halicarnassus

Pylos Sparta Naxos
e
ETOS
LACONIA
rr
Cos
M TS .
a
Melos
e
n
a
n
S Rhodes
e Cythera
a
Ancient Greece
S e a o f C r e t e
Plains
25° E
Major battle of
the Persian Wars Knossos
Crete
Mountain
Gortyn
Sanctuary 35° N
MAP 3.1 Ancient Greece

In antiquity, the home of the Greeks included the islands of the Aegean and the western shore of Asia Minor as well as the Greek peninsula itself.
Chronology
Although the Minoans created a script now called Lin- ca. 1650–1000 B.C.E. Arrival of the Mycenaean Greeks
ear A, very little of it can be read with any certainty. However, in Europe
archaeology and art offer some glimpses of life on the island.
ca. 1100–800 B.C.E. Evolution of the polis; Greek
The palace was the political and economic center of its soci-
migrations within the Aegean
ety. About 1650 b.c.e. Crete was dotted with them, but the basin; poems of Homer
palace at Cnossus (NOSS-suhs) towered above all others in and Hesiod
importance. Few specifics are known about Minoan life ex-
cept that at its head stood a king and his nobles. Minoan so- ca. 800–500 B.C.E. Rise of Sparta and Athens;
flowering of lyric poetry
ciety was wealthy and, to judge by the absence of fortifications
on the island, relatively peaceful. Minoan artistic remains, 776 B.C.E. Founding of the Olympic games
including frescoes and figurines, show women as well as men ca. 750–550 B.C.E. Greek colonization of the
leading religious activities, watching entertainment, and en- Mediterranean
gaging in athletic competitions such as leaping over a bull. ca. 700–500 B.C.E. Concentration of landed wealth
We do not know if these represent daily life or mythological
scenes, but many scholars see fewer restrictions on women ca. 640 B.C.E. Use of coinage in western Asia
than elsewhere in the ancient world. ca. 525–362 B.C.E. Birth and development of
Greek-speaking peoples arrived in the peninsula around tragedy, historical writing,
2000 b.c.e. They came gradually as individual groups who and philosophy; spread of
spoke various dialects of the same language. Despite these monumental architecture
dialects, the Greeks considered themselves a related folk. By 499–479 B.C.E. Persian wars
about 1650 b.c.e. one group had founded a powerful king- 431–404 B.C.E. Peloponnesian War
dom at Mycenae (my-SEE-nee), while others spread else-
404–338 B.C.E. Spartan and Theban
where in Greece. They merged with native inhabitants, and
hegemonies; success of Philip
from that union emerged the society that modern scholars of Macedon
call Mycenaean (my-suh-NEE-uhn), after the most famous
site of this new culture.
Early Mycenaean Greeks established cities at Thebes
(theebz), Athens (ATH-ins), and elsewhere. As in Crete, the Mycenaean A society created from a
political unit was the kingdom. The king and his warrior aristocracy stood at the union between native inhabitants and
the powerful group centered at Mycenae;
top of society. The seat and symbol of the king’s power and wealth was his palace, it was named after the most famous site
which was also the economic center of the kingdom. Within its walls royal artisans of this new culture.
fashioned jewelry and rich ornaments, made and decorated fine pottery, forged
weapons, prepared hides and wool for clothing, and manufactured the other goods
needed by the king and his retainers. Palace scribes kept records of taxes and the
king’s possessions in Greek with a script known as Linear B, which was derived
from Minoan Linear A. The Mycenaean economy was marked by an extensive
division of labor, all tightly controlled from the palace. At the bottom of the social
scale were male and female slaves, who were normally owned by the king and
aristocrats but who also worked for ordinary people.
Contacts between the Minoans and Mycenaeans were originally peaceful,
and Minoan culture flooded the Greek mainland. But around 1450 b.c.e. the
Mycenaeans attacked Crete, destroying many Minoan palaces and taking posses-
sion of the grand palace at Cnossus. For about the next fifty years, the Mycenaeans
ruled much of the island until a further wave of violence left Cnossus in ashes.
Whatever the explanation of these events, Mycenaean kingdoms in Greece
benefited from the fall of Cnossus, quickly expanding commercially throughout
the Aegean. Palaces became grander, and citadels were often protected by mam-
moth stone walls. Prosperity, however, did not bring peace, and between 1300 and
1000 b.c.e. kingdom after kingdom suffered attack and destruction. Although later
Greeks accused the Dorians (DOR-ee-ahns) of overthrowing the Mycenaean king-
doms, these centers undoubtedly fell because of mutual discord. The fall of the
Mycenaean kingdoms ushered in a period of such poverty and disruption that
historians usually call it the “Dark Age” of Greece (ca. 1100–800 b.c.e.). Even
42 Chapter 3 Classical Greece, ca. 1650–338 B.C.E.
literacy, which was not widespread in any case, was a casualty of the chaos. None-
theless, Greece remained Greek; nothing essential was swept away. Greek reli-
gious cults remained vital to the people, and basic elements of social organization
continued to function effectively. It was a time of change and challenge, but not
of utter collapse.
The disruption of Mycenaean societies caused the widespread movement of
Greek peoples. They dispersed beyond mainland Greece farther south to Crete
and in greater strength across the Aegean to the shores of Asia Minor. They arrived
during a time when traditional states and empires had collapsed. Economic hard-
ship was common, and various groups wandered for years. Yet by the end of the
Dark Age, the Greeks had spread their culture throughout the Aegean basin.
The Greeks, unlike the Hebrews, had no sacred book

Homer, Hesiod, that chronicled their past. Instead they had the poems
Gods, and Heroes of Homer and Hesiod (HES-ee-uhd) to describe a leg-
(1100–800 B.C.E.) endary Heroic Age when gods and heroes still walked the
earth. In terms of pure history these works contain scraps of information about the
Bronze Age, much about the early Dark Age, and some about the poets’ own era.
Homer’s Iliad recounts an expedition of Mycenaeans, whom Homer called
“Achaeans” (ah-KEY-uhns), to besiege the city of Troy in Asia Minor. The war was
incited, as Homer tells it, by the Trojan prince Paris’s abduction of the beautiful
Helen, wife of a Mycenaean king. The heart of the Iliad, however, concerns the
quarrel between Agamemnon, leader of the Mycenaean force, and his greatest
The Hellenic Period

Period Significant Events Major Writers
Bronze Age Arrival of the Greeks in Greece
2000–1100 b.c.e. Rise and fall of the Mycenaean kingdoms
Dark Age Greek migrations within the Aegean basin Homer
1100–800 b.c.e. Social and political recovery Hesiod
Evolution of the polis
Rebirth of literacy
Archaic Age Rise of Sparta and Athens
800–500 b.c.e. Colonization of the Mediterranean basin Sappho
Flowering of lyric poetry Solon
Development of philosophy and science in Ionia Anaximander Heraclitus
Classical Period Persian wars Herodotus
500–338 b.c.e. Growth of the Athenian Empire Thucydides
Peloponnesian War Aeschylus
Rise of drama and historical writing Sophocles
Flowering of Greek philosophy Euripides
Spartan and Theban hegemonies Aristophanes
Conquest of Greece by Philip of Macedon Plato Aristotle
The Polis 43
warrior Achilles (uh-KIL-eez), who refuses to fight when Agamemnon wounds his Sec tion Review
pride. The Odyssey (OD-uh-see) narrates Odysseus’s (oh-DIS-ee-uhs) long journey
home from Troy; while quick-witted, his pride is also the source of his misfortunes. • The vibrant Minoans from their
palace at Cnossus in Crete, using
Both of Homer’s epics portray engaging but flawed characters who are larger Linear A writing, ruled an artistic
than life and yet typically human. Homer was also strikingly successful in depict- society, including relatively liberated
ing the great gods, who generally sit on Mount Olympus (oh-LIM-puhs) and watch women, without needing
the fighting at Troy like spectators at a baseball game, although they sometimes fortifications.
participate in the action. Homer’s deities are reminiscent of Mesopotamian gods • Mycenaean Greeks, who used Linear
and goddesses. Hardly a decorous lot, the Olympians are raucous, petty, deceitful, B writing and owned slaves, attacked
and splendid. In short, they are human. Crete and seized Cnossus about 1450
b.c.e. before building grand palaces
Hesiod, who lived somewhat later than Homer, made the gods the focus of his protected with mammoth stone walls.
epic poem, the Theogony (thee-OG-uh-nee). Hesiod was influenced by Mesopo-
• The chaotic, illiterate Dark Age of
tamian myths, which the Hittites had adopted and spread to the Aegean. Like the Greece (1100–800 b.c.e.) led to the
Hebrews, Hesiod envisaged his cosmogony—his account of the way the universe spread of Greek peoples and culture
developed—in moral and gendered terms. Originally the primary deity was an throughout the Aegean basin.
earth goddess, Gaia (GAY-yah), but through a series of incestuous relationships • The Greek epic poet Homer created
and generational conflicts, Zeus (zooss) emerged triumphant. He established a the Illiad and Odyssey about the
moral order with himself at the head, ending the chaotic female-dominated sys- Trojan war, depicting heroes and
tem. In Theogony and others of his works, Hesiod attributes all human problems powerful but flawed gods.
to the first woman, Pandora (pan-DOHR-uh), whose curiosity led her to open the • Hesiod’s misogynist Theogony depicts
container in which pain, war, and other evils had been enclosed. the sky god Zeus’s triumph over the
earth goddess Gaia, and attributes all
human problems to the first woman,
Pandora.
The Polis
After the Greeks had established the polis, in which they lived their
political and social lives, how did they shape it into its several
historical forms?
After the upheavals that ended the Mycenaean period and the slow recovery of
prosperity during the Dark Age, the Greeks developed the polis (PAU-lis). The polis Generally interpreted as city-state,
term polis is generally interpreted as “city-state,” although the word is basically it was the basic political and institutional
unit of Greece.
untranslatable. While “city-state” does not capture how integral the countryside
was to the community, it is at least a term generally understood and accepted.
The polis was far more than a political institution. Above all it was a commu-
nity of citizens whose customs comprised the laws of the polis. Even though the
physical, religious, and political form of the polis varied from place to place, it was
the very badge of Greekness.
Recent archaeological expeditions and careful study

Origins of the Polis have done much to clarify the origins of the polis. Even
during the late Mycenaean period, towns had grown
up around palaces. These towns and even smaller villages performed basically lo-
cal functions. The first was to administer the ordinary political affairs of the com-
munity. The village also served a religious purpose in that no matter how small,
each had its local cult to its own deity. The exchange of daily goods made these
towns and villages economically important, if only on a small scale. These settle-
ments also developed a social system that was particularly their own. They likewise
had their own views of the social worth and status of their inhabitants and the
nature of their public responsibilities. In short, they relied on custom and mutual
agreement to direct their ordinary affairs.
When fully developed, each polis normally shared a surprisingly large number
of features with other poleis. Physically a polis was a society of people who lived in
a city (asty) and cultivated the surrounding countryside (chora). The city’s water
supply came from public fountains, springs, and cisterns. By the fifth century b.c.e.
the city was generally surrounded by a wall. The city contained a point, usually
acropolis An elevated point within a elevated, called the acropolis (ah-KROP-uh-lis) and a public square or market-
city on which stood temples, altars, place called the agora (AG-er-uh). On the acropolis, which in the early period was
public monuments, and various
dedications to the gods of the polis.
a place of refuge, stood the temples, altars, public monuments, and various dedica-
tions to the gods of the polis. The agora was originally the place where the warrior
agora A public square or marketplace assembly met, but it became the political center of the polis. In the agora were
that was a political center of Greece.
porticoes, shops, and public buildings and courts.
hoplites The heavily armed infantry The countryside was essential to the economy of the polis and provided food
that were the backbone of the to sustain the entire population. But it was also home to sanctuaries for the deities
Greek army. of the polis and the site of important religious rites. The sacred buildings, shrines,
monarchy Derived from the Greek for and altars were the physical symbols of a polis, uniting country and city dwellers.
the rule of one man, it was a type of The religious dedications in them were the possessions not only of the gods but
Greek government in which a king also of the polis, reflecting its power and prestige.
represented the community.
The average polis did not have a standing army. Instead it relied on its citizens
tyranny Rule by a tyrant, a man who for protection. Very rich citizens often served as cavalry, which was, however, never
used his wealth to gain a political as important as the heavily armed infantry, or hoplites (HOP-lites). These were
following that could take over the the backbone of the army. Hoplites wore metal helmets and body armor, carried
existing government.
heavy, round shields, and armed themselves with spears and swords. They pro-
vided their own equipment and were basically amateurs.
In some instances the citizens of a polis hired mercenar-
ies to fight their battles. Mercenaries were expensive,
untrustworthy, and willing to defect to a higher bidder.
Even worse, they sometimes seized control over the po-
lis that had hired them.
Greek city-states had several

Governing Structures different types of government.
Monarchy, rule by a king,
was prevalent during the Mycenaean period but after-
wards declined. While Sparta (SPAHR-tuh) boasted of two
kings, they were only part of a more broadly based con-
stitution. During fully developed historical times Greek
states were either democracies or oligarchies. Sporadic
periods of violent political and social upheaval often led
to a third type of government—tyranny. Tyranny was rule
by one man who had seized power by unconstitutional
means, generally by using his wealth to win a political
following that toppled the existing legal government.
The Delphic Oracle

The Marmaria, the sanctuary of Athena, is seen here against the
backdrop of the mountains that surround the sanctuary of Apollo.
Around the oracle clustered many temples to various deities, shrines,
and other sacred buildings, all of them in a remote mountainous
area especially chosen by Apollo to be his home and the place
where he answered the supplications of the faithful. (John Buckler)
The Polis 45
Early Greek Warfare

Before the hoplites became the
backbone of the army, wealthy
warriors rode into battle in a chariot,
dismounted, and engaged the enemy.
This scene, almost a photograph, shows
on the left the warrior protecting the
chariot before it returns to the rear. The
painter has caught the lead horses
already beginning the turn. (Courtesy of
the Ure Museum of Greek Archaeology, University
of Reading)
Only democracy and oligarchy (OLL-ih-gahr-key) played lasting, broad roles

in Greek political life, and these two forms flourished across Greece well into later
years. In principle, democracy meant that all people, without respect to birth or democracy A type of Greek government
wealth, administered the workings of government. In reality, Greek democracy in which all citizens, without regard to
birth or wealth, administered the work-
meant the rule of citizens, not “the people” as a whole, and citizenship was drasti- ings of government; it translates as the
cally limited. In Athens and in other democracies, only free adult men who had power of the people.
lived in the polis a long time were citizens. Women, foreigners, slaves, and others
had no rights. The 10 to 20 percent of the population who were citizens generally
shared equally in the determination of policy and the administration of govern-
ment. Along with military service, citizenship provided men with an opportunity
to bond with one another, and it became an important component in Greek ideas
of masculinity.
Most Greek states actually preferred oligarchy to democracy as their form of
government. Oligarchy, which literally means “the rule of the few,” was govern- oligarchy The rule of a few; a type of
ment by a small group of wealthy citizens. Oligarchy generally gave its whole Greek government in which a small
group of wealthy citizens, not necessarily
population—leaders and people alike—stable government and freedom to prosper. of aristocratic birth, ruled.
Men could advance politically by earning enough wealth to qualify for the right to
vote for officials and to hold office. Although the wealthy governed the city, they
officially endorsed social mobility for capable men and application of the law
equally to everyone. Corinthian oligarchs also listened to the will of the citizens, a
major factor in their long success.
Oligarchy evolved into federalism first in the region of Boetia, where the oli-
federalism One of two political
garchy of Thebes united with neighboring oligarchies to form the “Boeotian concepts created by Greeks in the fourth
Confederacy.” Federalism in Greece meant a system of government in which in- century b.c.e. in an attempt to prevent
dividual city-states joined to create one general government. The Boeotian Con- war. It uses the idea that security can be
gained through numbers. Greek leagues
federacy of oligarchic city-states proved so successful that elsewhere in Greece would band together and marshal their
other states followed its example. It was particularly popular and widespread later resources to defend themselves from
in the Hellenistic period. outside interference.
Sec tion Review During the classical period (500–338 b.c.e.), however, despite the allure of
federalism, the citizens of the vast majority of city-states were determined to remain
• The Greeks developed the polis (city- autonomous. The very integration of the polis proved to be one of its basic weak-
state), a community of urban and rural
citizens who administered their own
nesses. The political result, as earlier in Sumer, was almost constant warfare. The
political, religious, and economic polis could dominate, but unlike earlier and later empires, it could not incorporate.
affairs.
• The polis included an acropolis (high
point), an agora (marketplace), and was
defended by heavy infantry hoplites and
occasionally hired mercenaries.
The Archaic Age (800–500 b.c.e.)
• Greek democracy meant rule by the 10 What major developments mark the Archaic Greek period in terms of
to 20 percent of the population that spread of culture and the growth of cities?
were citizens, excluding women,
foreigners, and slaves.
The Archaic (ahr-KAY-ik) Age was one of the most vibrant periods of Greek his-
• Oligarchy, rule by the wealthy, provided
tory, an era of extraordinary expansion geographically, artistically, and politically.
a stable government applying laws
equally; men could advance politically, Greeks ventured as far east as the Black Sea and as far west as Spain. With the re-
hold office, and vote if they earned birth of literacy, this period also witnessed a tremendous literary flowering. Politi-
enough wealth. cally these were the years when Sparta and Athens—the two poles of the Greek
• Federalism was a widespread and experience—rose to prominence.
popular system where individual poleis
united to form one general government.
During the years 1100–800 b.c.e. the Greeks not only
Overseas Expansion recovered from the breakdown of the Mycenaean
world but also grew in wealth and numbers. This new
prosperity brought new problems. The increase in population meant that many
families had very little land or none at all. Land hunger and the resulting social
and political tensions drove many Greek men and women to seek new homes
outside of Greece. Other factors, largely intangible, played their part as well: the
desire for a new start, a love of excitement and adventure, and natural curiosity
about what lay beyond the horizon.
From about 750 to 550 b.c.e., Greeks from the mainland and Asia Minor trav-
eled throughout the Mediterranean and even into the Atlantic Ocean in their
quest for new land. They sailed in the greatest numbers to Sicily and southern
Italy, where there was ample space for expansion.
Colonization changed the entire Greek world, both at home and abroad. In
economic terms it created a much larger market for the exchange of agricultural
and manufactured goods. From the east, especially from the northern coast of the
Black Sea, came wheat in a volume beyond the capacity of Greek soil. In return
flowed Greek wine and olive oil, which could not be produced in the harsher cli-
mate of the north. Greek-manufactured goods, notably rich jewelry and fine pot-
tery, circulated from southern Russia to Spain. During this same period the Greeks
adopted the custom of minting coins, a custom they apparently imported from
Lydia. At first coinage was of little economic importance, and only later did it re-
place the common practice of barter. In the barter system one person simply ex-
changes one good for another without the use of money. Thus Greek culture and
economics, fertilized by the influences of other societies, spread throughout the
Mediterranean basin.
Colonization presented the polis with a huge challenge, for it required organi-
zation and planning on an unprecedented scale. The colonizing city, called the
metropolis The colonizing or “mother”
city, responsible for deciding where to metropolis, or mother city, first decided where to establish the colony, how to
establish the colony. transport colonists to the site, and who would sail. Then the metropolis collected
and stored the supplies that the colonists would need both to feed themselves and
The Archaic Age (800–500 B.C.E.) 47
Mosaic Portrait of Sappho

The Greek letters in the upper left corner identify this
idealized portrait as that of Sappho (SAF-oh), a poet
of the Archaic period. Sappho’s verse expressed the
intensely personal side of life, including erotic love.
She was bisexual, and her name become linked with
female homosexual love. The English word lesbian
is derived from her island home of Lesbos (LEZ-
bos). (Museum of Sparta/Archaeological Receipts Fund)
to plant their first crop. Once the colonists landed, their leader laid out the new
polis, selected the sites of temples and public buildings, and established the gov-
ernment. Then he surrendered power. The colony was thereafter independent of
the metropolis. For the Greeks, colonization had two important aspects. First, it
demanded that the polis assume a much greater public function than ever before,
thus strengthening the city-state’s institutional position. Second, colonization
spread the polis and its values far beyond the shores of Greece. Even more impor-
tant, colonization on this scale had a profound impact on the course of Western
civilization. It meant that the prevailing culture of the Mediterranean basin would
be Greek.
During the Archaic period the Spartans expanded the

The Growth of Sparta boundaries of their polis and made it the leading power
in Greece. Like other Greeks, the Spartans faced the
problems of overpopulation and land hunger. Unlike other Greeks, the Spartans
solved these problems by conquest, not by colonization. To gain more land, the
Spartans set out in about 735 b.c.e. to conquer Messenia (muh-SEE-nee-uh), a
rich, fertile region in the southwestern Peloponnesus. This conflict, the First Mes-
senian War, lasted for twenty years and ended in a Spartan triumph. The Spartans
appropriated Messenian land and turned the Messenians into helots (HELL-uts), helots State serfs who worked the land.
or state serfs who worked the land.
In about 650 b.c.e. Spartan exploitation and oppression of the Messenian hel-
ots led to a helot revolt so massive and stubborn that it became known as the Sec-
ond Messenian War. The Spartan poet Tyrtaeus, a contemporary of these events,
vividly portrays the ferocity of the fighting:
For it is a shameful thing indeed

When with the foremost fighters
An elder falling in front of the young men
Lies outstretched,
Having white hair and grey beard,
Breathing forth his stout soul in the dust,
Holding in his hands his genitals
stained with blood.1
It took the full might of the Spartan people, aristocrat and commoner alike, to
win the Second Messenian War. After the victory non-noblemen, who had done
much of the fighting, demanded rights equal to those of the nobility. The agitation
of these non-nobles disrupted society until the aristocrats agreed to erase political
distinctions among Spartan warriors. An oligarchy of five ephors (EF-fors), or over-
seers, held the real executive power, while two kings and twenty-eight elders delib-
erated on foreign and domestic matters.
Every Spartan citizen owed primary allegiance to the polis. Once Spartan boys
reached the age of seven, they were enrolled in separate companies with other
homosocial Same-sex setting in which boys their age. They lived in this homosocial (same-sex) setting for much of their
Spartan boys lived for much of their lives. lives. They slept outside on reed mats and underwent rugged training until age
twenty-four, when they became frontline soldiers. For the rest of their lives, Spar-
tan men kept themselves prepared for combat. Their military training never
ceased, and the older men were expected to be models of endurance, frugality,
and sturdiness to the younger men. In battle Spartans were supposed to stand and
die rather than retreat. An anecdote frequently repeated about one Spartan mother
sums up Spartan military values. As her son was setting off to battle, the mother
handed him his shield and advised him to come back either victorious, carrying
the shield, or dead, being carried on it.
In this militaristic atmosphere, citizen women were remarkably free. The
Spartan leadership viewed maternal health as important for the bearing of strong
children and thus encouraged women to participate in athletics and to eat well.
With men in military service most of their lives, citizen women owned property
and ran the household; they were not physically restricted or secluded. Marriage
often began with a trial marriage period to make sure the couple could have chil-
dren, with divorce and remarriage the normal course if they were unsuccessful.
Men saw their wives only rarely when they sneaked out of camp, and their most
meaningful relations were same-sex ones. Spartan military leaders viewed such
relationships as militarily advantageous, judging that men would fight more
fiercely in defense of close comrades and lovers. Close links among men thus
contributed to Spartan dedication to the state and understanding of civic virtue,
which were admired throughout the Greek world.
Like Sparta, Athens faced pressing social and economic

The Evolution problems during the Archaic period, but the Athenian
of Athens response was far different from that of the Spartans.
Instead of creating an oligarchy, the Athenians extended to all citizens the right
and duty of governing the polis. Indeed, the Athenian democracy was one of the
most thoroughgoing in Greece.
The late seventh century b.c.e. was for Athens a time of turmoil, the causes of
which are virtually unknown. In 621 b.c.e. Draco (DRAY-koh), an Athenian aristo-
crat, doubtless under pressure from the peasants, published the first law code of
the Athenian polis. His code was thought harsh, but it nonetheless embodied the
The Archaic Age (800–500 B.C.E.) 49
ideal that the law belonged to the citizens. Nevertheless, the aristocracy still gov-
erned Athens oppressively and by the early sixth century b.c.e. the situation was
explosive. The aristocrats owned the best land, met in an assembly to govern the
polis, and interpreted the law. Noble landowners were forcing small farmers into
economic dependence. Many families were sold into slavery; others were exiled
and their land was pledged to the rich.
One person who recognized these problems clearly was the poet Solon (SOH-
luhn), himself an aristocrat. Solon recited his poems in the Athenian agora, where
anyone there could hear his call for justice and fairness and his condemnation of
aristocratic greed and dishonesty. The aristocrats realized that Solon was no crazed
revolutionary, and the common people trusted him. Around 594 b.c.e. the nobles
elected him archon (AHR-kon), chief magistrate of the Athenian polis, and gave
him extraordinary power to reform the state.
Solon immediately freed all people enslaved for debt, recalled all exiles, can-
celed all debts on land, and made enslavement for debt illegal. Solon allowed
even the poorest men into the old aristocratic assembly, where they could take part
in the election of magistrates.
Although Solon’s reforms solved some immediate problems, they did not bring deme A local unit that served as the
peace to Athens. Some aristocrats attempted to make themselves tyrants, while basis of Cleisthenes’ political system.
others banded together to oppose them. In 546 b.c.e. Pisistratus (pie-SIS-tra-tus), boule Part of a larger legislative body
an exiled aristocrat, returned to Athens, defeated his opponents, and became ty- (with the ecclesia), it is a council
rant. Pisistratus reduced the power of the aristocracy while supporting the com- composed of five hundred members.
mon people. Under his rule Athens prospered, and his building program began to ecclesia An assembly of all citizens that
transform the city into one of the splendors of Greece. His reign as tyrant pro- serves as the other legislative body with
moted the growth of democratic ideas by arousing rudimentary feelings of equality the boule.
in many Athenian men.
Democracy took shape in Athens under the leadership of Cleisthenes
(KLAHYS-thuh-neez), a prominent aristocrat who won the support of lower- Sec tion Review
status men to emerge triumphant in 508 b.c.e. Cleisthenes created the deme • The Greek growth in population and
(deem), a local unit that kept the roll of citizens, or demos, within its jurisdiction. wealth led to overseas colonization
The democracy functioned on the idea that all full citizens were sovereign. Yet throughout the Mediterranean basin.
not all citizens could take time from work to participate in government. Therefore, • The colonizing city, the metropolis,
they delegated their power to other citizens by creating various offices meant to spread Greek culture by determining
run the democracy. The most prestigious of them was the board of ten archons the sites of colonies.
who were charged with handling legal and military matters. Six of them oversaw • Sparta was a militaristic society
the Athenian legal system. They presided over courts, fixed dates for trials, and involved in both the First and Second
ensured that the laws of Athens were consistent. They were all elected for one year. Messenian wars, making the
Messenians into helots (slaves).
After leaving office they entered the Areopagus (ar-ee-OP-uh-gus), a select coun-
cil of ex-archons who handled cases involving homicide, wounding, and arson. • Spartan males lived in a homosocial
setting for most of their lives,
Legislation was in the hands of two bodies, the boule (BOO-lee), or council, contributing to their dedication to the
composed of five hundred members, and the ecclesia (ee-KLEE-zhee-uh), the as- state and allowing their women much
sembly of all citizens. The boule, separate from the Areopagus, was perhaps the economic freedom.
major institution of the democracy. By supervising the various committees of gov- • Draco made harsh laws and Solon
ernment and proposing bills to the assembly, it guided Athenian political life. It reformed Athens, leading to tyrannical
received foreign envoys and forwarded treaties to the assembly for ratification. It rule before Cleisthenes established
oversaw the granting of state contracts and was responsible for receiving many democracy through the deme.
revenues. It held the democracy together. Nonetheless, the ecclesia had the final • Citizens ruled democratically in
word. Every citizen could express his opinion on any subject on the agenda, and a Athens through archons (legal and
military), the Areopagus (former
simple majority vote was needed to pass or reject a bill. archons), the boule (council of five
Athenian democracy was to prove an inspiring ideal in Western civilization. It hundred), and ecclesia (assembly of
demonstrated that a large group of people, not just a few, could efficiently run the all citizens).
affairs of state. Because citizens could speak their minds, they did not have to resort
to rebellion or conspiracy to express their desires. Like all democracies in ancient

Greece, however, Athenian democracy was limited. Slaves, women, recent mi-
grants, and foreigners could not be citizens; their opinions about political issues
were not taken into account or recorded.
The Classical Period (500–338 b.c.e.)

How did the Greeks develop their literature, philosophy, religion, and art,
and how did war affect this intellectual and social process?
In the years 500 to 338 b.c.e., Greek civilization reached its highest peak in poli-
tics, thought, and art. In this period the Greeks beat back the armies of the Persian
Empire. Then, turning their spears against one another, they destroyed their own
political system in a century of warfare. Some thoughtful Greeks felt prompted to
record and analyze these momentous events. Herodotus (ca. 485–425 b.c.e.),
from Asia Minor, traveled the Greek world to piece together the course of the
Persian wars. Although he consulted documents when he could find them, he
relied largely on the memories of the participants, making him the first oral histo-
rian as well as the “father of history.” Next came Thucydides (thoo-SID-ih-dees)
(ca. 460–ca. 399 b.c.e.), whose account of the Peloponnesian (PELL-eh-puh-neze-an)
War remains a classic of Western literature. Unlike Herodotus, he was often a
participant in the events that he described.
This era also saw the flowering of philosophy, as thinkers
in Ionia and on the Greek mainland began to ponder the na-
ture and meaning of the universe and human experience. The
Greeks invented drama, and the Athenian tragedians Aeschylus
(ES-kuh-luhs), Sophocles (SOF-uh-kleez), and Euripides (yoo-
RIP-eh-deez) explored themes that still inspire audiences to-
day. Greek architects reached the zenith of their art and
created buildings whose very ruins still inspire awe. Because
Greek intellectual and artistic efforts attained their fullest and
finest expression in these years, this age is called the “classical
period.” Few periods in the history of Western society can
match it in sheer dynamism and achievement.
One of the hallmarks of the classi-

The Persian Wars cal period was warfare. In 499
(499–479 B.C.E.) b.c.e. the Ionian Greeks, with the
feeble help of Athens, rebelled against the Persian Empire. In
490 b.c.e. the Persians struck back at Athens but were beaten
off at the Battle of Marathon, on a small plain in Attica. This
victory taught the Greeks that they could defeat the Persians
and successfully defend their homeland. It also prompted the
Persians to try again. In 480 b.c.e. the Persian king Xerxes led
Leonidas at Thermopylae a mighty invasion force into Greece. In the face of this emer-
This heroic statue symbolizes the sacrifice of King Leonidas at gency, many of the Greeks united and pooled their resources
the battle. Together with his Spartans, the Thespians, and the to resist the invaders. The Spartans provided the overall lead-
Thebans, he heroically died to stop the Persians at the pass ership and commanded the Greek armies. The Athenians,
of Thermopylae. (Professor Paul Cartledge) led by the wily Themistocles (thuh-MIS-tuh-kleez), provided
The Classical Period (500–338 B.C.E.) 51
the heart of the naval forces. After an initial defeat at the battle of Thermopylae
(thuhr-MOP-uh-lee), the Greek military repelled the Persians at sea and on land.
The significance of these Greek victories is nearly incalculable. By defeating
the Persians, the Greeks ensured that they would not be taken over by a monarchy,
which they increasingly viewed as un-Greek. The decisive victories meant that
Greek political forms and intellectual concepts would be handed down to later
societies.
The defeat of the Persians created a power vacuum in

Growth of the the Aegean, and the Athenians took advantage of this
Athenian Empire situation. The Athenians and their allies formed the
(478–431 B.C.E.) Delian (DAY-lee-un) League, a grand naval alliance Delian League A grand naval alliance
aimed at liberating Ionia from Persian rule. Athenians provided most of the aimed at liberating Ionia from Persian
rule created by the Athenians and led
warships and crews and determined how many ships or how much money each by Aristides.
member of the league should contribute to the allied effort.
The Athenians, supported by the Delian League and led by the young aristo-
crat Cimon (SIGH-muhn), carried the war against Persia. But Athenian success
had a sinister side. While the Athenians drove the Persians out of the Aegean, they
also became increasingly imperialistic. Athens began reducing its allies to the sta-
tus of subjects. Tribute was often collected by force, and the Athenians placed the
economic resources of the Delian League under tighter and tighter control. Dis-
sident governments were put down, and Athenian ideas of freedom and democ-
racy did not extend to the citizens of other cities.
Athens justified its conduct by its successful leadership. In about 467 b.c.e.
Cimon defeated a new and huge Persian force at the Battle of the Eurymedon
River in Asia Minor, once again removing the shadow of Persia from the Aegean.
But as the threat from Persia waned and the Athenians treated their allies more
harshly, major allies such as Thasos (THAH-saws) revolted (ca. 465 b.c.e.), requir-
ing the Delian League to use its forces against its own members.
The expansion of Athenian power and the aggressiveness of Athenian rule also
alarmed Sparta and its allies. While relations between Athens and Sparta cooled,
Pericles (PER-eh-kleez) (ca. 494–429 b.c.e.) became the leading statesman in Ath-
ens. Like the democracy he led, Pericles, an aristocrat of solid intellectual ability,
was aggressive and imperialistic. At last, in 459 b.c.e. Sparta and Athens went to
war over conflicts between Athens and some of Sparta’s allies. Though the Athenians
conquered Boeotia (bee-OH-shuh), Megara (MEG-er-uh), and Aegina (ee-JAY-
nuh) in the early stages of the war, they met defeat in Egypt and later in Boeotia.
The war ended in 445 b.c.e. with no serious damage to either side and nothing
settled. But this war divided the Greek world between the two great powers.
Athens continued its severe policies toward its subject allies and also battled
Corinth, one of Sparta’s leading supporters (see Map 3.2). Pericles also escalated
the tension in the region by excluding Megara from trade with the Athenian em-
pire as punishment for alleged sacrilege. In response the Spartans convened a
meeting of their allies, whose complaints of Athenian aggression ended with a
demand that Athens be stopped. Reluctantly the Spartans agreed to declare war.
At the outbreak of this conflict, the Peloponnesian

The Peloponnesian War, the Spartan ambassador Melesippus warned the
War (431–404 B.C.E.) Athenians: “This day will be the beginning of great evil
for the Greeks.” Indeed, the Peloponnesian War lasted a generation and brought
ILLYRIA Black Sea

y
Ital ly
To d S i c i Epidamnus
an THRACE
Amphipolis
MACEDON 422 B.C.E.
Sea of Marmara
Pella Thasos
Aegospotami
CHALCIDICE 405 B.C.E.
Cyzicus 410 B.C.E.
40° N Potidaea Hellespont
432-430 B.C.E. Lemnos N
Corcyra EPIRUS
PERSIAN EMPIRE
PI
Corcyra THESSALY
ND
427 B.C.E.
A e
Mytilene 428-427 B.C.E.
US
M
Lesbos Arginusae Islands

TS
g
406 B.C.E.
.
ACARNANIA A N ATO L I A
e
Ionian
AETOLIA
I O
a
Euboea
Delphi BOEOTIA Sardis
n
Sea Delium 424 B.C.E. Chios
Thebes
N I
Naupactus Gulf
of C Plataea 429-427 B.C.E.
S
orin
429 B.C.E. ACHAEA th
e
ATTICA a Ephesus
A
20° E ELIS Corinth Megara Andros Samos
Athens
ARCADIA
Olympia Argos
Mantinea 418 B.C.E. Aegina Miletus
PELOPONNESUS
Delos
MESSENIA Paros Halicarnassus
Me Pylos 425 B.C.E. Sparta Naxos
dite LACONIA
rran Cos
ean
Sea Melos
416 B.C.E.
Athens and allies
Cythera Rhodes
Sparta and allies
Neutral Greek states
S e a o f C r e t e
Persian Empire 0 50 100 Km.
25° E
Major battle 0 50 100 Mi.
Crete
Major siege of city 35° N
MAPPING THE PAST

MAP 3.2 The Peloponnesian War
This map shows the alignment of states during the Peloponnesian War. [1] What does Map 3.2
tell us about the balance of power during the Peloponnesian War? Which states led the others?
[2] Are the leading states in Map 3.2 still the leaders in the next century?
in its wake fearful plagues, famine, civil wars, widespread destruction, and huge
loss of life.
After a Theban attack on the nearby polis of Plataea (pluh-TEE-uh), the Pelo-
ponnesian War began in earnest. In the next seven years, the army of Sparta and
its Peloponnesian allies invaded Attica five times. The Athenians stood behind
their walls, but in 430 b.c.e. the cramped conditions nurtured a plague that killed
huge numbers, eventually claiming Pericles himself. (See the feature “Listening to
the Past: The Great Plague at Athens, 430 b.c.e.” on page 64.) Under a new leader,
Cleon (KLEE-on), the Athenians counterattacked and defeated the Spartans at
Pylos (PIE-lohs), yet the Spartans responded by widening the war. Only after ten
years of death, destruction, and stalemate did Sparta and Athens agree to the Peace
of Nicias (NISH-ee-uhs) in 421 b.c.e.
The Peace of Nicias resulted in a cold war. But even cold war can bring horror
and misery. Such was the case when in 416 b.c.e. the Athenians sent a fleet to the
neutral island of Melos with an ultimatum: the Melians could surrender or perish.
The motives of the Athenians were frankly and brutally imperialistic. The Melians
resisted. The Athenians conquered them, killed the men of military age, and sold
the women and children into slavery.
The cold war grew hotter, thanks to the ambitions of Alcibiades (al-suh-BAHY-
uh-dees) (ca. 450–404 b.c.e.), an aristocrat, a kinsman of Pericles, and a student
of the philosopher Socrates (SOK-ruh-teez). Alcibiades convinced the Athenians
to attack Syracuse, the leading polis in Sicily. Ultimately the people of Syracuse
prevailed, as Thucydides wrote: “[Athenian] infantry, fleet, and everything else
were utterly destroyed, and out of many few returned home.”2
The disaster in Sicily ushered in the final phase of the war, which was marked
by three major developments: the renewal of war between Athens and Sparta,
Persia’s intervention in the war, and the revolt of many Athenian subjects. The
year 413 b.c.e. saw Sparta’s declaration of war against Athens and widespread re-
volt within the Athenian Empire. Yet Sparta still lacked a navy, the only instru-
ment that could take advantage of the unrest of Athens’s subjects, most of whom
lived either on islands or in Ionia. The sly Alcibiades, now working for Sparta,
provided a solution: the Persians would build a fleet for Sparta, and Sparta would
give Ionia back to Persia. Now equipped with a fleet, the Spartans challenged the
Athenians in the Aegean, the result being a long roll of inconclusive naval battles.
The strain of war prompted the Athenians in 407 b.c.e. to recall Alcibiades
from exile. He cheerfully double-crossed the Spartans and Persians, but even he
could not restore Athenian fortunes. In 405 b.c.e. Athens met its match in the
Spartan commander Lysander, who destroyed the last Athenian fleet and block-
aded Athens until it was starved into submission. After twenty-seven years the Pelo-
ponnesian War was over, and the evils prophesied by the Spartan ambassador
Melesippus in 431 b.c.e. had come true.
In the last half of the fifth century b.c.e., Pericles

Athenian Arts in the turned Athens into the showplace of Greece. He ap-
Age of Pericles propriated Delian League funds to pay for a huge
building program, planning temples and other buildings to honor Athena (uh-
THEE-nuh), the patron goddess of the city, and to display to all Greeks the glory of
the Athenian polis. The main site of these projects was the acropolis, and the larg-
est monument was the Parthenon (PAHR-thuh-non), a temple to Athena.
In many ways the Athenian Acropolis is the epitome of Greek art and its spirit.
Although the buildings were dedicated to the gods and most of the sculptures por-
tray gods, these works nonetheless express the Greek fascination with the human
form. In the Parthenon sculptures it is visually impossible to distinguish the men
and women from the gods and goddesses. The Acropolis also exhibits the rational
side of Greek art. Greek artists portrayed action in a balanced and restrained fash-
ion, capturing the noblest aspects of human beings: their reason and dignity.
Other aspects of Athenian cultural life were also rooted in the life of the polis.
The development of drama was tied to the religious festivals of the city. The polis
sponsored the production of plays and required that wealthy citizens pay the ex-
penses of their production. Many plays were highly controversial, but they were
neither suppressed nor censored.
The Athenian dramatists were the first artists in Western society to examine
such basic questions as the rights of the individual, the demands of society on the
individual, and the nature of good and evil. Conflict is a central element in Athe-
nian drama.
In his trilogy of plays, The Oresteia (ohr-e-STEE-uh), Aeschylus (525–456
b.c.e.) deals with the themes of betrayal, murder, and reconciliation, urging that
The Acropolis of Athens

These buildings embody the noblest spirit of Greek architecture. From the entrance the visitors walk through the
Propylaea, a ceremonial gateway. Ahead opens the grand view of the Parthenon, still noble in ruins. To the left
stands another temple, the Erectheum, the whole a monument to Athens itself. (Courtesy, Sotiris Toumbis Editions)
reason and justice be applied to resolve fundamental conflicts. The final play
concludes with a prayer that civil dissension never be allowed to destroy the city
and that the life of the city be one of harmony and grace.
Sophocles (496–406 b.c.e.) also dealt with matters personal and political. In
Antigone (an-TIG-uh-nee) he highlights conflicts between divine and human law
and comments on the gender order in Greek society. Antigone defies Creon, her
uncle and king, to follow divinely established rules and bury her brother against
Creon’s decree. Creon rages that she is not above the laws he has established, and
that if he does not punish her she will be more man than he is. Antigone escapes
her punishment by committing suicide.
Perhaps his most famous plays are Oedipus (ED-uh-puhs) the King and its se-
quel, Oedipus at Colonus. Oedipus the King is the tragic story of a man doomed by
the gods to kill his father and marry his mother. Try as he might to avoid his fate,
Oedipus’s every action brings him closer to its fulfillment. When at last he realizes
that he has carried out the decree of the gods, Oedipus blinds himself and flees
into exile. In Oedipus at Colonus Sophocles dramatizes the last days of the broken
king, whose patient suffering and piety win him an exalted position. In the end the
gods honor him for his virtue. These stories are renowned for their psychological
depth and wrenching emotions.
With Euripides (ca. 480–406 b.c.e.), drama entered a new, in many ways more
personal, phase. To him the gods were far less important than human beings. The
essence of Euripides’ tragedy is the flawed character—men and women who bring
disaster on themselves and their loved ones because their passions overwhelm rea-
son. Although Euripides’ plays were less popular in his

lifetime than were those of Aeschylus and Sophocles, his
work was to have a significant impact on Roman drama.
Writers of comedy treated the affairs of the polis and
its leading politicians bawdily and often coarsely. Even
so, their plays also were performed at religious festivals.
Best known are the comedies of Aristophanes (ar-uh-
STOFF-uh-neze) (ca. 445–386 b.c.e.), an ardent lover of
his city and a merciless critic of cranks and quacks. He
lampooned eminent generals, at times depicting them
as morons. He commented snidely on Pericles, poked
fun at Socrates, and hooted at Euripides. Through sat-
ire, he too commented on human conduct and values.
The Athenian house was

Daily Life in rather simple. It consisted of
Periclean Athens a series of rooms opening
onto a central courtyard that contained the well, an al-
tar, and a washbasin. Larger houses often had a room at
the front where the men of the family ate and enter-
tained guests, and a women’s quarter at the back. If the
family lived in the country, the stalls of the animals
faced the courtyard. Country dwellers kept oxen for
plowing, pigs for slaughtering, sheep for wool, goats for
cheese, and mules and donkeys for transportation. Even
in the city chickens and perhaps a goat or two roamed Woman Grinding Grain
the courtyard together with dogs and cats. Here a woman takes the grain raised on the family farm and grinds it by
In the city a man might support himself as a hand in a mill. She needed few tools to turn the grain into flour. (National
craftsman—a potter, bronzesmith, sailmaker, or tanner— Archaeological Museum, Athens/Archaeological Receipts Fund)
or he could contract with the polis to work on public
buildings, such as the Parthenon. Certain crafts, including spinning and weaving,
were generally done by women. Men and women without skills worked as paid
laborers but competed with slaves for work. Slaves were usually foreigners whose
native language was not Greek. Citizens and slaves were paid the same amount for
their work.
The social condition of Athenian women has been the

Gender subject of much debate. One of the difficulties is the
fragmentary nature of the evidence. Women appear
frequently in literature and art, often in idealized roles, but seldom in historical
contexts of a wider and more realistic nature (see the feature “Individuals in Soci-
ety: Aspasia”). This is due in part to the fact that most Greek historians of the time
recounted primarily the political, diplomatic, and military events of the day, events
in which women seldom played a notable part. Yet that does not mean that women
were totally invisible in the life of the polis. It indicates instead that ancient sources
provide only a glimpse of how women affected the society in which they lived.
Athenian men believed that men and women should be segregated and that women
should not appear in public, but the reality was less limiting then the ideal.
The status of a free woman of the citizen class was strictly protected by law.
Only her children, not those of foreigners or slaves, could be citizens. She was in
charge of the household and the family’s possessions, yet the

law protected her primarily to protect her husband’s inter-
ests. Raping a free woman was a lesser crime than se-
ducing her, because seduction involved the winning
of her affections. This law was concerned not with
the husband’s feelings but with ensuring that he
need not doubt the legitimacy of his children.
A citizen woman’s main functions were to
have and raise children. Childbirth could be
dangerous for both mother and infant, so
pregnant women often made sacrifices or
visited temples to ask help from the gods.
Demeter (di-MEE-ter) and Artemis (AHR-
tuh-mis) were particularly favored. In prac-
tical terms, citizen women relied on their
friends, relatives, and midwives to assist in
the delivery. Greek physicians did not con-
cern themselves with obstetrical care.
Citizen women never appeared in court or
in the public political assemblies that were the
heart of Athenian democracy, though they did at-
tend public festivals, ceremonies, and funerals. They
took part in annual processions to honor the goddess
Athena and in harvest festivals honoring the goddess Deme-
ter, who protected the city’s crops. In a few cases, women were
Greek Courtship
priestesses in the cults of various goddesses. Priestesses prayed in public
Here two young lovers embrace. With
on behalf of the city and, like priests, were paid for their services. The most prom-
one arm around his girl and the other
holding a wine vessel, he draws his girl inent priestess was at Delphi (DEL-fye), near Athens, where the god Apollo (ah-
nearer. With a smile she seems more POL-oh) was understood to give messages about the future. The priestess at the
interested in her music, for with her oracle at Delphi interpreted these prophecies, and people came from all over
right thumb she turns the boy Greece and beyond to hear them.
down. (Erich Lessing /Art Resource, NY)
Greek religion is extremely difficult for modern people

Greek Religion to understand, largely because of the great differences
between Greek and modern cultures. In the first place,
it is not even easy to talk about “Greek religion,” since the Greeks had no uniform
faith or creed. Although the Greeks usually worshiped the same deities—Zeus,
Hera (HEER-uh), Apollo, Athena, and others—the cults of these gods and god-
desses varied from polis to polis. The Greeks had no sacred books such as the Bi-
ble, and Greek religion was often a matter more of ritual than of belief. Nor did
cults impose an ethical code of conduct. Greeks did not have to follow any par-
ticular rule of life, practice certain virtues, or even live decent lives in order to
participate. Unlike the Egyptians and Hebrews, the Greeks lacked a priesthood as
the modern world understands the term. In Greece priests and priestesses existed
to care for temples and sacred property and to conduct the proper rituals, but not
to make religious rules or doctrines, much less to enforce them. In short, there
existed in Greece no central ecclesiastical authority and no organized creed.
The most important members of the Greek pantheon were Zeus, the king of
the gods, and his consort, Hera. Although they were the mightiest and most hon-
ored of the deities who lived on Mount Olympus, their divine children were closer
Aspasia
A spasia (a-SPEY-shuh) was born in the Greek city
of Miletus and came to Athens in about 445 b.c.e.
She moved in a society in which the greatest glory for
wife died in an epidemic, Pericles
pressured the Athenian citizenship to
let his son by Aspasia become a citi-
women was to be “least talked about by men, either zen. Sons of noncitizen women were
for excellence or blame” (Thucydides 2.46). This ideal normally barred from citizenship (a
became the reality for most Athenian women, whose law Pericles himself had introduced),
names and actions never became part of “history.” It was but the law was waived in this case.
not true, however, for Aspasia, who is easily one of the Pericles was powerful enough to
most intriguing women in ancient history. Once in Ath- get his way, though he could not halt
ens, Aspasia may have become a hetaira (hi-TAHYR- criticism and ridicule. Not only had
uh), which literally means “companion.” The duties of he let himself get attached to a for-
a hetaira varied. She accompanied men at dinners and eign woman, but he was more de-
drinking parties, where their wives would not have been voted to her than Athenians felt was
welcome, and also served as a sexual partner. The major appropriate for an adult man. Even
attractions of a successful hetaira included beauty, intel- Athens’s greatest statesman was ex-
ligent conversation, and proper etiquette. In return she pected to follow the proper gender or- Idealized portrait of
Aspasia. (Alinari/Art
was paid for her services. No contemporary sources spe- der in his personal relationships. Resource, NY)
cifically say that Aspasia was a hetaira, but she may have Pericles died shortly after his son
been. became a citizen, and Aspasia disap-
Contemporary sources do make clear that Aspasia pears from the historical record. We
enjoyed a rare opportunity to influence the men who can celebrate her achievements, but we do not know
shaped the political life of Athens. The Roman biogra- what motivated her. A funeral speech attributed to her is
pher Plutarch reports that she enjoyed the company of included in one of Plato’s dialogues, but whether these
the most famous men in Athens. In one of Plato’s dia- were her actual words we will never know.
logues, Socrates claims that she taught him the art of
public speaking. The story is probably not true, but it
points to her public reputation.
Aspasia was introduced to Pericles, who was either 1. How did Aspasia’s position as a foreigner in Athens
already divorced from his wife or divorced her soon af- shape her opportunities?
terward. Because Aspasia was not an Athenian citizen, 2. In what ways does her story support and in what
she and Pericles could not marry, but they did have a ways does it contradict the general picture of gender
son, also named Pericles. When Pericles’ sons by his roles in Athenian society?
57
Sacrificial Scene
Much of Greek religion was simple and festive, as this scene demonstrates. The participants include women and boys dressed in their finest
clothes and crowned with garlands. Musicians add to the festivities. Only the sheep will not enjoy the ceremony. (National Archaeological Museum,
Athens/Archaeological Receipts Fund)
to ordinary people. Apollo was especially popular. He represented the epitome of

youth, beauty, benevolence, and athletic skill. He was also the god of music and
culture and in many ways symbolized the best of Greek culture. His sister Athena,
who patronized women’s crafts such as weaving, was also a warrior-goddess and
had been born from the head of Zeus without a mother. Best known for her cult
at Athens, to which she gave her name, she was highly revered throughout Greece,
even in Sparta, which eventually became a fierce enemy of Athens. Besides the
Olympian gods, each polis had its own minor deities, each with his or her own
local cult.
Though Greek religion in general was individual or related to the polis, the
Greeks also shared some Pan-Hellenic festivals, the chief of which were held
at Olympia in honor of Zeus and at Delphi in honor of Apollo. The festivities at
Olympia included the famous athletic contests that have inspired the modern
Olympic games. Held every four years, they attracted visitors from all over the
Greek world and lasted well into Christian times. The Pythian (PITH-ee-uhn)
games at Delphi were also held every four years, but these contests included musi-
cal and literary contests. Both the Olympic and the Pythian games were unifying
factors in Greek life.
The myths and epics of the Mesopotamians are ample

The Flowering testimony that speculation about the origin of the uni-
of Philosophy verse and of humans did not begin with the Greeks.
The signal achievement of the Greeks was the willingness of some to treat these
questions in rational rather than mythological terms. Although Greek philosophy
did not fully flower until the classical period, Ionian thinkers had already begun in
the Archaic period to ask what the universe was made of. These men are called the
Pre-Socratics, for their work pre-

ceded the philosophical revolution
begun by the Athenian, Socrates.
Though they were keen observers,
the Pre-Socratics rarely undertook deliber-
ate experimentation. Instead, they took indi-
vidual facts and wove them into general theories.
Despite appearances, they believed the universe was actu-
ally simple and subject to natural laws. Drawing on their observa-
tions, they speculated about the basic building blocks of the
universe.
The first of the Pre-Socratics, Thales (THEY-leez) (ca. 600
b.c.e.), learned mathematics and astronomy from the Babylo-
nians and geometry from the Egyptians. Yet there was an im-
mense and fundamental difference between Near Eastern
thought and the philosophy of Thales. The Near Eastern
peoples considered such events as eclipses to be evil omens.
Thales viewed them as natural phenomena that could be ex-
plained in natural terms. In short, he asked why things hap-
pened. He believed the basic element of the universe to be
water. Although he was wrong, the way in which he had
asked the question was momentous: it was the beginning
of the scientific method.
Thales’ follower Anaximander (un-nak-suh-
MAN-der) (d. ca. 547 b.c.e.) continued his work.
He theorized that the basic element of the universe
A Greek God
is the “boundless” or “endless”—something infinite
Few pieces of Greek art better illustrate the conception of the gods as greatly
and indestructible. In his view the earth floats in a
superior forms of human beings than this magnificent statue, over six feet ten
void, held in balance by its distance from everything inches in height. Here the god, who may be either Poseidon or Zeus, is
else in the universe. Heraclitus (her-uh-KLAHY- portrayed as powerful and perfect but human in form. (National Archaeological
tuhs) (ca. 500 b.c.e.), however, declared the primal Museum, Athens/Archaeological Receipts Fund)
element to be fire. He also declared that the uni-
verse was eternal yet changed constantly. An outgrowth of this line of speculation
was the theory of Democritus (di-MOK-reh-tuhs) (b. ca. 460 b.c.e.) that the uni-
verse was made up of invisible, indestructible atoms. The culmination of Pre-
Socratic thought was the theory that four simple substances made up the universe:
fire, air, earth, and water.
Hippocrates (hi-POK-ruh-teez) (second quarter of the fifth century b.c.e.), the
father of medicine, contributed ideas about the workings of the body based on
empirical knowledge rather than magic. The human body, he declared, contained
four humors, or fluids: blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile. In a healthy
body the four humors were in perfect balance; too much or too little of any par-
ticular humor caused illness.
The teachings of the revolutionary thinker Socrates (ca. 470–399 b.c.e.) are
known to us largely through the writings of his student Plato (PLAY-toh), whose
dialogues show Socrates engaged in probing discourse with others. Socrates’ ap-
proach was to start with a philosophical problem and to narrow the matter to its
essentials. He did so by continuous questioning rather than lecturing, a process
known as the Socratic dialogue. Socrates thought that through the pursuit of wis-
dom, human beings could approach the supreme good and thus find true happi-
ness. Yet in 399 b.c.e. Socrates was brought to trial, convicted, and executed on
charges of corrupting the youth of the city and introducing new gods.
Sec tion Review Plato (427–347 b.c.e.) carried on his master’s search for
truth, founding a philosophical school, the Academy. Plato be-
• The Greek victories over the Persians at Marathon (490 lieved that the ideal polis could exist only when its citizens were
b.c.e.) and against Xerxes (480 b.c.e.) meant the survival well educated. He developed the theory that there are two
and spread of Greek political and intellectual ideas.
worlds: the impermanent, changing world of appearance that
• After driving out the Persians, Athens became increasingly we know through our senses, and the eternal, unchanging realm
imperialistic, treating their allies harshly, leading to war
between Sparta and Athens. of “forms” that constitute the essence of true reality. Only the
mind can perceive eternal forms. The intellectual journey con-
• The Peloponnesian war brought widespread destruction to
both Sparta and Athens and was only won when Sparta, sists of moving from the realm of appearances to the realm of
with the aid of the Persian navy, finally defeated Athens. forms.
• The Athenian Acropolis exhibited Greek art portraying the Aristotle (ar-ih-STAH-tahl) (384–322 b.c.e.) disagreed with
noble side of humans and sponsored the production of Plato’s idea of a separate, supernatural reality and believed that
plays dealing with a variety of themes from drama to genuine knowledge is derived through close examination of the
comedy and satire. natural world. He believed that the universe operated according
• Greek women ideally lived a segregated, private life, to principles and laws that could be discovered through scien-
although some women had important public roles as tific reasoning. Aristotle argued that everything and everyone
priestesses, for example at the Delphic oracle. has an inner potential or purpose that they are meant to fulfill.
• Although Greek religion lacked scriptures, ethics, or a The philosophies of Plato and Aristotle both viewed women
priesthood, Greeks worshipped gods and celebrated festivals as inferior beings. Plato associated women with the body and
such as the Olympic games, which unified Greeks
culturally. emotions and men with the superior faculties of mind and rea-
son. Aristotle thought that women’s primary purpose was to bear
• Greek philosophers included the Pre-Socratics Thales
(water), Anaximander (void), Heraclitus (change), and children. Athenian philosophers thus reflected the patriarchy of
Democritus (atoms); Hippocrates and his four humors for their society, while also pushing beyond the magical thinking of
medicine; and Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. previous generations. Both the breadth of their vision and its lim-
itations are their legacies to Western civilization.
The Final Act (404–338 b.c.e.)

How did the Greek city-states meet political and military challenges, and
how did Macedonia become dominant?
The turbulent period from 404 to 338 b.c.e. is sometimes mistakenly seen as a
period of failure and decline. It was instead a vibrant era in which Plato and Aris-
totle thought and wrote, one in which literature, oratory, and historical writing
flourished. The architects of the fourth century b.c.e. designed and built some of
the finest buildings of the classical period, and engineering made great strides. If
the fourth century was a period of decline, this was so only in politics. The Pelo-
ponnesian War and its aftermath proved that the polis had reached the limits of its
success as an effective political institution. The attempts of various city-states to
dominate the others led only to incessant warfare. The polis system was commit-
ting suicide.
The Greeks of the fourth century b.c.e. experimented seriously with two po-
Common Peace One of two political litical concepts in the hope of preventing war. First was the Common Peace, the
concepts created by Greeks in the fourth idea that the states of Greece, whether large or small, should live together in peace
century b.c.e. in an attempt to prevent
war. It was the idea that the states of
and freedom, each enjoying its own laws and customs. In 386 b.c.e. this concept
Greece should live together in peace and was a vital part of a peace treaty with the Persian Empire, in which the Greeks and
freedom, each enjoying its own laws Persians pledged themselves to live in harmony.
and customs. Federalism, the second concept to become prominent, already had a long his-
tory in some parts of Greece (see page 45). Strictly speaking, the new impetus
toward federalism was intended more to gain security through numbers than to
The Final Act (404–338 B.C.E.) 61
prevent war. In the fourth century b.c.e. at least ten other federations of states ei-
ther came into being or were revitalized. Federalism never led to a United States
of Greece, but the concept held great importance not only for fourth-century
Greeks but also for the Hellenistic period and beyond. In 1787, when the Found-
ing Fathers met in Philadelphia to frame the Constitution of the United States,
they studied Greek federalism very seriously in the hope that the Greek past could
help guide the American future.
The chief states, Sparta, Athens, and Thebes, each hegemony A political ascendancy over
The Struggle tried to create a hegemony (heh-JEM-uh-nee), that is, other states.
for Hegemony a political ascendancy over other states, even though
they sometimes paid lip service to the ideals of the Common Peace. In every in-
stance, the ambition, jealousy, pride, and fear of the major powers doomed the
effort to achieve genuine peace.
When the Spartans defeated Athens in 404 b.c.e., they used their victory to
build an empire instead of ensuring the freedom of all Greeks. Their decision
brought the Spartans into conflict with their own allies and with Persia,
which now demanded the return of Ionia to its control (see page 39).
From 400 to 386 b.c.e. the Spartans fought the Persians for Ionia, a
conflict that eventually engulfed Greece itself. After years of stale-
mate the Spartans made peace with Persia and their Greek enemies.
The result was the first formal Common Peace, the King’s Peace of
386 b.c.e., which cost Sparta its empire but not its position of as-
cendancy in Greece.
Not content with Sparta’s hegemony of Greece, Agesilaos
(ah-gis-il-A-us) betrayed the very concept of the Common Peace
to punish cities that had opposed Sparta during the war. He
treacherously ordered Thebes to be seized and even condoned an
unwarranted and unsuccessful attack on Athens. Agesilaos had
gone too far. Even though it appeared that his naked use of force
had made Sparta supreme in Greece, his imperialism was soon to
lead to Sparta’s downfall at the hands of the Thebans, the very people
whom he sought to tyrannize.
After routing the once-invincible Spartans from Thebes, the The-
ban leader Epaminondas (ee-pam-uh-NON-duhs) eliminated Sparta
as a major power through a series of invasions. He concluded alliances
with many Peloponnesian states but made no effort to dominate them,
instead fostering federalism in Greece. He also threw his support behind
the Common Peace. Although he made Thebes the leader of Greece
from 371 to 362 b.c.e., other city-states and leagues were bound to Thebes
only by voluntary alliances. By his insistence on the liberty of the Greeks,
Epaminondas, more than any other person in Greek history, successfully
blended the three concepts of hegemony, federalism, and the Common
Peace. His death at the Battle of Mantinea in 362 b.c.e. put an end to
his efforts, but not to these three political ideals.
Statue of Eirene
The Athenians erected this statue of Eirene (Peace) holding Ploutos (Wealth) in her
left arm. Athens had seen only war for some fifty-six years, and the statue celebrated
the Common Peace of 375 b.c.e. The bitter irony of this poignant scene is that the
treaty lasted scarcely a year. (Glyptothek, Munich/Studio Koppermann)
While the Greek states exhausted one another in end-

Philip and the less conflicts, a new and unlikely power rose in Mace-
Macedonian donia to the north. The land of Macedonia, extensive
Ascendancy and generally fertile, nurtured a numerous and hardy
population. Yet Macedonia was often internally divided and distracted by foreign
opportunists. Nevertheless, under a strong king Macedonia was a power to be reck-
oned with, and in 359 b.c.e. such a king ascended the throne. Philip II fully un-
derstood the strengths and needs of the Macedonians, whose devotion he won
virtually on the day that he became king.
The young Philip, already a master of diplomacy and warfare after years spent
in Thebes, quickly saw Athens as the principal threat to Macedonia. Once he had
secured the borders of Macedonia against barbarian invaders, he launched a series
of military operations in the northwestern Aegean. Not only did he win rich terri-
tory, but he also slowly pushed the Athenians out of the region. Macedonian war-
riors gained a reputation for fierceness, as one comic playwright from Athens
suggests:
Do you know that your battle will be with men
Sec tion Review Who dine on sharpened swords,
And gulp burning firebrands for wine?
• Greeks of the fourth century b.c.e.
Then immediately after dinner the slave
experimented with the Common Peace
and federalism to gain peace and Brings us dessert—Cretan arrows
security. Or pieces of broken spears.
We have shields and breastplates for
• Sparta, Athens, and Thebes each tried
Cushions and at our feet slings and arrows,
to achieve hegemony (political control)
over all of Greece. And we are crowned with catapults.3
• Spartan King Agesilaos used Spartan These dire predictions and the progress of Philip’s military operations at last
power to terrorize Athens and Thebes, had their effect. In 338 b.c.e. the armies of Thebes and Athens met Philip’s veter-
leading to Sparta’s downfall by the ans at the Boeotian city of Chaeronea. There on one summer’s day Philip’s army
Thebans.
won a hard-fought victory that gave him command of Greece and put an end to
• The Theban leader Epaminondas classical Greek freedom. Because the Greeks could not coexist peacefully, they
(371–362 b.c.e.) successfully blended
hegemony, federalism, and the fell to an invader. Yet Philip was wise enough to retain much of what the fourth-
Common Peace. century Greeks had achieved. Not opposed to the concepts of peace and federal-
• Philip II of Macedon militarily ism, he sponsored a new Common Peace in which all of Greece, except Sparta,
threatened Athens from the north was united in one political body under his leadership. Philip thus used the con-
beginning in 359 b.c.e. cepts of hegemony, the Common Peace, and federalism as tools of Macedonian
domination. The ironic result was the end of the age of classical Greece.
Chapter Review
When the Greeks arrived in Hellas, how did they adapt themselves to their new
landscape? (page 39) Key Terms
The Greeks entered a land of mountains and small plains, which led them to estab- Hellenic period (p. 39)
lish small communities. Sometimes these small communities were joined together in Hellenistic period (p. 39)
kingdoms, most prominently the Minoan kingdom on the island of Crete and the Aegean basin (p. 39)
Mycenaean kingdom on the mainland. Minoans and Mycenaeans used written rec-
ords, and the fall of these kingdoms led writing to disappear for centuries, a period Minoan (p. 39)
known as the Greek Dark Age (1100–800 b.c.e.).
Chapter Review 63
After the Greeks had established the polis, in which they lived their political and Mycenaean (p. 41)
social lives, how did they shape it into its several historical forms? (page 43)
polis (p. 43)
Even though kingdoms collapsed, Greek culture continued to spread, and more in- acropolis (p. 44)
dependent communities were formed. Such a community, called a polis, developed
social and political institutions. Some were democracies, in which government was agora (p. 44)
shared among all citizens, which meant adult free men. Other Greeks established hoplites (p. 44)
smaller governing bodies of citizens, called oligarchs, which directed the political af- monarchy (p. 44)
fairs of all.
tyranny (p. 44)
democracy (p. 45)
What major developments mark the Archaic Greek period in terms of spread of oligarchy (p. 45)
culture and the growth of cities? (page 46) federalism (p. 45)
During the Archaic Age (800–500 b.c.e.) Greeks colonized much of the Mediterra- metropolis (p. 46)
nean, establishing cities in Asia Minor, southern Italy, Sicily, and southern France. helot (p. 47)
This brought them into contact with many other peoples, and also spread Greek cul-
homosocial (p. 48)
ture widely. During this period Sparta and Athens became the most important poleis.
deme (p. 49)
boule (p. 49)
How did the Greeks develop their literature, philosophy, religion, and art, and ecclesia (p. 49)
how did war affect this intellectual and social process? (page 50)
Delian League (p. 51)
Sparta and Athens joined together to fight the Persian Empire, but later turned Common Peace (p. 60)
against one another in the Peloponnesian War (431–404 b.c.e.). During this time of
hegemony (p. 61)
warfare, Athenian leaders turned their city into an architectural showplace, supporting
the creation of buildings and statues that are still prized. Playwrights presented trage-
dies and comedies that dealt with basic issues of life. Life for the men in Athens who
were citizens revolved around public political assemblies, while for women it revolved
around the household. Athenian thinkers regarded women as inferior and did not
think they should have a public role. Both women and men took part in ceremonies
honoring gods and goddesses, though some men, most prominently the philosophers
Plato and Aristotle, developed ideas about the universe and the place of humans in it
that did not involve the gods.
How did the Greek city-states meet political and military challenges, and how
did Macedonia become dominant? (page 60)
The Greeks destroyed a good deal of their flourishing world in a series of wars. De-
spite their political advances, they never really learned how to routinely live peacefully
with one another. Their disunity allowed for the rise of Macedonia under the leader-
ship of King Philip II, a brilliant military leader.
Notes
John Buckler is the translator of all uncited quotations from a foreign language in Chapters 1–6.
1. J. M. Edmonds, Greek Elegy and Iambus (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1931),
I.70, frag. 10.
2. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 7.87.6.
3. J. M. Edmonds, The Fragments of Attic Comedy (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1971), 2.366–2.369,
Mnesimachos frag. 7.

The Great Plague at Athens, 430 B.C.E.
of self-indulgence which before then they used to keep in
the dark. Thus they resolved to spend their money quickly
I n 430 B.C.E. many of the people of Attica sought refuge in
Athens to escape the Spartan invasion. The overcrowding of
people, the lack of proper sanitation, and the scarcity of clean
and to spend it on pleasure, since money and life alike
seemed equally ephemeral. As for what is called honor,
water made the population vulnerable to virulent disease, and no one showed himself willing to abide by its laws, so
indeed a severe plague swept the city. The great historian doubtful was it whether one would survive to enjoy the
Thucydides lived in Athens at the time and contracted the name for it. It was generally agreed that what was both
disease himself. He was one of the fortunate people who sur- honorable and valuable was the pleasure of the moment
vived the ordeal. For most people, however, the disease proved and everything that might conceivably contribute to that
fatal. Thucydides left a vivid description of the nature of the pleasure. No fear of god or law of man had a restraining
plague and of people’s reaction to it. influence. As for the gods, it seemed to be the same thing
whether one worshiped them or not, when one saw the
good and the bad dying indiscriminately. As for offenses
The most terrible thing of all was the despair into against human law, no one expected to be punished. In-
which people fell when they realized that they had stead, everyone felt that already a far heavier sentence
caught the plague. Terrible, too, was the sight of people had been passed on him and was hanging over him, and
dying like sheep through having caught the disease as a that before the time for its execution arrived, it was only
result of nursing others. This indeed caused more deaths natural to get some pleasure out of life.
than anything else. For when people were afraid to visit This, then, was the calamity that fell upon Athens,
the sick, then they died with no one to look after them. and the times were hard indeed, with people dying in-
Indeed, there were many houses in which all the inhab- side the city and the land outside being laid waste.
itants perished through lack of attention. When, on the
other hand, they did visit the sick, they lost their own
lives, and this was particularly true of those who made it 1. What does this account of the plague say about
a point of honor to act properly. Such people felt human nature when put in an extreme crisis?
ashamed to think of their own safety and went into their 2. Does popular religion offer any solace during such
friends’ houses at times when even the members of the a catastrophe?
household were so overwhelmed by the weight of their 3. How did public laws and customs cope with such a
calamities that they had actually given up the usual disaster?
practice of making laments for the dead. . . .
Source: From The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucyd-
A factor that made matters much worse than they ides, translated by Rex Warner, with an introduction and notes
were already was the removal of people from the coun- by M. I. Finley (Penguin Classics 1954; Revised edition 1972).
try into the city, and this particularly affected the new- Translation copyright © Rex Warner, 1954. Introduction and
comers. There were no houses for them, and, living as Appendices copyright © M. I. Finley, 1972. Reproduced by per-
mission of Penguin Books Ltd. and
they did during the hot season in badly ventilated huts, Curtis Brown Group Ltd.,
they died like flies. The bodies of the dying were heaped London on behalf of the
one on top of the other, and half-dead creatures could Estate of Rex Warner.
be seen staggering about in the streets or flocking around
the fountains in their desire for water.
The catastrophe was so overwhelming that people, Coin depicting the god
Asclepius, represented
not knowing what would happen next to them, became
by a snake, putting an
indifferent to every rule of religion and law. Athens owed end to urban plague.
to the plague the beginnings of a state of unprecedented (Bibliothèque nationale de
lawlessness. People now began openly to venture on acts France)
64
CHAPTER 4
The
Hellenistic
World
336–146 B.C.E.
Chapter Preview
Alexander and the Great Crusade
Why did Alexander launch his massive
attack on the Persian Empire? How
extensive were his conquests?
Alexander’s Legacy
What happened to Alexander’s empire
after his death? What was his political
and cultural legacy?
The Spread of Hellenism

What effect did Greek migration have
on Greek and native peoples?
The Economic Scope of the

Hellenistic World
What effects did East-West trade have
on ordinary peoples during the
Hellenistic period?
Hellenistic Intellectual Advances

What is the intellectual legacy of the
Tetrapylon of Aphrodisias. This monumental gate celebrates the Hellenistic period?
beautiful and rich city of Aphrodisias in modern Turkey. (John Buckler)
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY: Archimedes and the
Practical Application of Science
LISTENING TO THE PAST: Alexander and the
Brotherhood of Man
65
66 Chapter 4 The Hellenistic World, 336–146 B.C.E.
T wo years after his conquest of Greece, Philip of Macedon fell victim to an

assassin’s dagger. Philip’s twenty-year-old son, historically known as Alexan-
der the Great (r. 336–323 b.c.e.), assumed the Macedonian throne. This young
man, one of the most remarkable personalities of Western civilization, was to have
a profound impact on history. By overthrowing the Persian Empire and by spread-
ing Hellenism—Greek culture, language, thought, and way of life—as far as India,
Hellenistic The new culture that arose Alexander was instrumental in creating a new era, traditionally called Hellenistic
when Alexander overthrew the Persian to distinguish it from the Hellenic. As a result of Alexander’s exploits, the individu-
Empire and began spreading Hellenism,
Greek culture, language, thought, and
alistic and energetic culture of the Greeks came into intimate contact with the
way of life as far as India. It is called venerable older cultures of the Near East.
Hellenistic to distinguish it from the
Hellenic period.
Alexander and the Great Crusade

Why did Alexander launch his massive attack on the Persian Empire? How
extensive were his conquests?
In 336 b.c.e. Alexander inherited not only Philip’s crown but also his policies.
After his victory at Chaeronea (ker-uh-NEE-uh), Philip had organized the states of
Greece into a huge league under his leadership and announced to the Greeks his
plan to lead them and his Macedonians against the Persian Empire. Fully intend-
ing to carry out Philip’s designs, Alexander proclaimed to the Greek world that the
invasion of Persia was to be a great crusade, a mighty act of revenge for the Persian
invasion of Greece in 480 b.c.e. It would also be the means by which Alexander
would create an empire of his own in the East.
Despite his youth, Alexander was well prepared to lead the attack. Philip had
groomed his son to become king and had given him the best education possible.
Alexander at the Battle of Issus

At left, Alexander the Great, bareheaded and wearing a breastplate, charges King Darius of Persia, who is standing in a chariot. The moment
marks the turning point of the battle, as Darius turns to flee from the attack. (National Museum, Naples/Alinari/Art Resource, NY)
Chronology
In 334 b.c.e. Alexander led an army of Macedonians and 340–262 B.C.E. Rise of Epicurean and Stoic
Greeks into Asia Minor. With him went a staff of philoso- philosophies
phers and poets, scientists whose job it was to map the coun-
336–24 B.C.E. Alexander’s “Great Crusade”
try and study strange animals and plants, and the historian
Callisthenes (kuh-LIS-thuh-neez), who was to write an ac- 330—200 B.C.E. Establishment of new
count of the campaign. Alexander intended not only a mili- Hellenistic cities
tary campaign but also an expedition of discovery. 326–146 B.C.E. Spread of Hellenistic commerce
In the next three years Alexander won three major battles from the western Mediterranean
at the Granicus (gran-UH-kuhs) River, Issus (IS-uhs), and to India
Gaugamela (GAW-guh-mee-luh). As Map 4.1 shows, these 323–301 B.C.E. Wars of Alexander’s successors;
battle sites stand almost as road signs marking his march to establishment of the Hellenistic
the East. When Alexander reached Egypt, he quickly seized monarchies
the land, honored the priestly class, and was proclaimed phar- 310–212 B.C.E. Scientific developments in
aoh, the legitimate ruler of the country. He next marched to mathematics, astronomy,
the oasis of Siwah, west of the Nile Valley, to consult the fa- and physics
mous oracle of Zeus-Amon. No one will ever know what the
305–146 B.C.E. Growth of mystery religions
priest told him, but henceforth Alexander considered him-
self the son of Zeus. Next he marched into western Asia, 301–146 B.C.E. Flourishing of the Hellenistic
where at Gaugamela he defeated the Persian army. After this monarchies
victory the principal Persian capital of Persepolis easily fell to
him. There he performed a symbolic act of retribution by
MAP 4.1 Alexander’s Conquests

This map shows the course of Alexander’s invasion of the Persian Empire and the speed of his
progress. More important than the great success of his military campaigns was his founding of
Hellenistic cities in the East.
Alexander´s empire in 332 B.C.E.

0 250 500 Km. Territory added by 330 B.C.E.
0 250 500 Mi. Territory added by 326 B.C.E.
Route of Alexander´s invasion
N Major battle
Major siege of city
Da J ax
nub e R . ar t
Ar a l es
R.
BALK AN MTS. Sea
C AU C
MACEDON Mt. Pangaeum Black Sea AS U 40°N
Ca
Pella THRACE SM
TS Ox
sp
Olynthus Granicus River . us

R. Alexandria
ian
Chaeronea Troy Maracanda the Farthest

Thebes Ancyra (Samarkand)
GREECE
Sea
Athens
Sparta Sardis SOGDIANA
M ANATOLIA
Issus
ed Halicarnassus Side ASSYRIA
ite Gaugamela Zadracarta Bactra S
H
r r a Crete Arbela MEDIA KU
Hydaspes
nea BACTR I A (Jhelum)
T ig r
n Sea Cyprus up PARTHIA DU

HIN River
E
h
is R
Tyre M ra te Ecbatana
E s R.
.
S
O 30°N
R.
L I BYA Alexandria SYRIA

Gaza P .)
si s
O Susa a R
T p h le j
Babylon A M H y S ut
Siwah Oasis I A Pasargadae
Memphis R.
(
EGYPT
s
Persepolis
du
P ER SI S
In
Pe
Ni
G ED R OSI A
le
rs
an Pattala INDIA
R.
S A H A R A ARABIA Pura
i
Re
Gu
lf
d
Se
Arabian
a
Sea
30°E 40°E 50°E 60°E 70°E
burning the buildings of Xerxes, the invader of Greece. In 330 b.c.e. he took
Sec tion Review
Ecbatana (ek-BAT-un-uh), the last Persian capital, and pursued the Persian
• Alexander set out to conquer Persia as an act king to his death.
of revenge at the beginning of his own empire. The Persian Empire had fallen, and the war of revenge was over, but
• Alexander used his campaign as a method Alexander had no intention of stopping. He dismissed his Greek troops but
of study as well as war, bringing along permitted many of them to serve on as mercenaries. Alexander then began
scientists and philosophers to document his personal odyssey. With his Macedonian soldiers and Greek mercenaries,
the adventure.
he set out to conquer the rest of Asia. He plunged deeper into the East, into
• After conquering Egypt, Alexander honored lands completely unknown to the Greek world. It took his soldiers four ad-
the priests who proclaimed him pharaoh, then
he consulted the oracle of Zeus-Amon, and ditional years to conquer Bactria and the easternmost parts of the now-
from then on considered himself the son defunct Persian Empire, but still Alexander was determined to continue
of Zeus. his march.
• Alexander defeated the Persians at the battle In 326 b.c.e. Alexander crossed the Indus River and entered India.
of Gaugamela and then captured the Persian There, too, he saw hard fighting, and finally at the Hyphasis (HIF-ah-sis)
capital Persepolis, pursuing the Persian king River his troops refused to go farther. Alexander was enraged by the mutiny,
to his death, and capturing the last capital for he believed he was near the end of the world. Nonetheless, the army
of Ecbatana.
stood firm, and Alexander relented. Still eager to explore the limits of the
• Alexander next conquered Bactria and entered world, Alexander turned south to the Arabian Sea. Though the tribes in the
India, where his troops mutinied and refused
to go farther; in retaliation, Alexander waged area did not oppose him, he waged a bloody, ruthless, and unnecessary war
needless wars along the Arabian Sea and against them. After reaching the Arabian Sea and turning west, he led his
marched them home through the army through the grim Gedrosian Desert. The army suffered fearfully, and
Gedrosian Desert. many soldiers died along the way; nonetheless, in 324 b.c.e. Alexander
• Alexander died in 323 b.c.e. in Babylon. reached his camp at Susa. The great crusade was over, and Alexander him-
self died the next year in Babylon.
Alexander’s Legacy
What happened to Alexander’s empire after his death? What was his
political and cultural legacy?
Alexander so quickly became a legend during his lifetime that he still seems super-
human. That alone makes a reasoned interpretation of him very difficult. Some
historians have seen him as a high-minded philosopher, and none can deny that
he possessed genuine intellectual gifts. Others, however, have portrayed him as a
bloody-minded autocrat, more interested in his own ambition than in any philo-
sophical concept of the common good. Alexander is the perfect example of the
need for the historian to use care when interpreting the known facts. (See the fea-
ture “Listening to the Past: Alexander and the Brotherhood of Man,” on page 84.)
What is not disputed is that Alexander was instrumental in changing the face of
politics and culture in the eastern Mediterranean. His campaign swept away the
Persian Empire, which had ruled for over two hundred years, and opened the East
to the tide of Hellenism.
In 323 b.c.e. Alexander the Great died at the age of

The Political Legacy thirty-two. The main question at his death was whether
his vast empire could be held together. Although he
fathered a successor while in Bactria, his son was an infant at Alexander’s death.
The child was too young to assume the duties of kingship and was cruelly mur-
dered. That meant that Alexander’s empire was a prize for the taking by the strong-
est of his generals. Within a week of Alexander’s death a round of fighting began
Seleucid Monarchy Parthian Empire
0 250 500 Km.
Ptolemaic Monarchy Bactrian Kingdom
0 250 500 Mi.
Antigonid Monarchy Major battle
Other independent Independent
kingdoms and leagues city-state N
Da J ax
n u b e R. ar t
Ar a l es
R.
BALK AN MTS. Sea
C AU C
Black Sea AS U 40°N
Ca
MACEDON
Pella SM
T Ox
sp
THRACE S. us
EPIRUS R. Alexandria
ian
BITHYNIA COLCH I S the Farthest
AETOLIAN PONTUS
LEAGUE
Athens Pergamum GALATIA
ACHAEAN
ANATOLIA
Sea
LEAGUE Sardis ARMENIA
Sparta Ipsus BACTR I A
M IONIA
301 B.C.E.
CAPPADOCIA MEDIA Aï Khanum
ed Tarsus ATROPATENE
ite Rhodes Bactra S
H
r r a Crete Antioch PARTHIA KU
nea
T ig r
n Sea Cyprus up DU Khyber Pass
HIN
E
Cyrene SYRIA hr
is R
at Ecbatana
es
.
Tyre Damascus R.
Seleucia-on-the-Tigris
30°N
R.
PALESTINE )
si s
Susa
AR AC H OS I A a R.
Alexandria Raphia Babylon ph lej
H y S ut
Memphis 217 B.C.E. R.
(
EGYPT
s
du
PERSIS
In
Pe
Ni
G E D ROS I A
le
rs
an INDIA
R.
S A H A R A ARABIA
i
Re
Ptolemais Gu
lf
d
Se
Arabian
a
Sea
30°E 40°E 50°E 60°E 70°E
Mapping the Past

MAP 4.2 The Hellenistic World
This map depicts the Hellenistic world after Alexander’s death. [1] What does this map suggest
about Alexander’s legacy? [2] Compare this map to Map 4.1 on page 67, which shows
Alexander’s conquests. After Alexander’s death, were the Macedonians and Greeks able to retain
control of all the land he had conquered? [3] What does Map 4.2 tell us about the legacy of
Alexander’s conquests? What does it suggest about the success or failure of Alexander’s dreams
of conquest?
that was to continue for forty years. No single Macedonian general was able to re-
place Alexander as emperor of his entire domain. In effect, the strongest divided it
among themselves. By 263 b.c.e. three officers had split the empire into large
monarchies (see Map 4.2). Antigonus Gonatas became king of Macedonia and
established the Antigonid (an-TIG-uh-nid) dynasty, which ruled until the Roman
conquest in 168 b.c.e. Ptolemy (TAWL-uh-mee) made himself king of Egypt, and
his descendants, the Ptolemies, assumed the powers and position of pharaohs.
Seleucus (sih-LOO-sus), founder of the Seleucid (sih-LOO-sid) dynasty, carved
out a kingdom that stretched from the coast of Asia Minor to India. In 263 b.c.e.
Eumenes (yoo-MEN-eez), the Greek ruler of Pergamum (PUR-guh-mum), a city
in western Asia Minor, won his independence from the Seleucids and created the
Pergamene monarchy. Though the Seleucid kings soon lost control of their east-
ernmost provinces, Greek influence in this area did not wane. In modern Turke-
stan (tur-kuh-STAN) and Afghanistan (af-GAN-uh-stan) another line of Greek
kings established the kingdom of Bactria and even managed to spread their power
and culture into northern India.
The political face of Greece itself changed during the Hellenistic period. The
day of the polis was over; in its place rose leagues of city-states. The two most pow-
erful and extensive were the Aetolian (ee-TOH-lee-uhn) League in western and
central Greece and the Achaean (a-KEY-an) League in the Peloponnesus. Once-
powerful city-states like Athens and Sparta sank to the level of third-rate powers.
The political history of the Hellenistic period was dominated by the great
monarchies and the Greek leagues. The political fragmentation and incessant
warfare that marked the Hellenic period continued on an even wider and larger
scale during the Hellenistic period. Never did the Hellenistic world achieve po-
litical stability or lasting peace. Hellenistic kings never forgot the vision of Alexan-
der’s empire, spanning Europe and Asia, secure under the rule of one man. Try
though they did, they were never able to re-create it. In this respect Alexander’s
legacy fell not to his generals but to the Romans of a later era.
As Alexander waded ever deeper into the East, distance

The Cultural Legacy alone presented him with a serious problem: how was
he to retain contact with the Greek world behind him?
Communications were vital, for he drew supplies and reinforcements from Greece
and Macedonia. His solution was to plant cities and military colonies in strategic
places. In these settlements Alexander left Greek mercenaries and Macedonian
veterans who were no longer up to active campaigning. Besides keeping the road
open to the West, these settlements served the purpose of dominating the country-
side around them.
Their military significance apart, Alexander’s cities and colonies became pow-
erful instruments in the spread of Hellenism throughout the East. His successors
The Great Altar of Pergamum

A new Hellenistic city needed splendid art and architecture to prove its worth in Greek eyes. The king of Pergamum ordered the construction of
this monumental altar, now in Berlin. The scenes depict the mythical victory of the Greek gods over the Giants, who symbolize non-Greeks. The
altar served the propaganda purpose of celebrating the victory of Hellenism over the East. (Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz/Art Resource, NY)
The Spread of Hellenism 71
continued his policy by luring Greek colonists to their realms. For seventy-five Sec tion Review
years after Alexander’s death, Greek immigrants poured into the East. At least
250 new Hellenistic colonies were established. The Mediterranean world had • Alexander changed the eastern
Mediterranean both politically and
seen no comparable movement of peoples since the Archaic Age (see page 46), culturally, ended the Persian Empire,
when wave after wave of Greeks had turned the Mediterranean basin into a Greek- and opened the East to Hellenism.
speaking region. • Upon Alexander’s death after much
The overall result of Alexander’s settlements and those of his successors was fighting, his generals Antigonus
the spread of Hellenism as far east as India. Throughout the Hellenistic period, Gonatas, Ptolemy, and Seleucus
Greeks and Easterners became familiar with and adapted themselves to each oth- split his empire into three large
er’s customs, religion, and way of life. Although Greek culture did not completely monarchies, the Antigonid, Ptolemeic,
and Seleucid.
conquer the East, it gave the East a vehicle of expression that linked it to the West.
Hellenism became a common bond among the East, peninsular Greece, and the • Leagues of city-states replaced the
polis and a period of political unrest
western Mediterranean. This pre-existing cultural bond was later to prove su- and continuous warfare began as
premely valuable to Rome—itself heavily influenced by Hellenism—in its efforts Hellenistic kings unsuccessfully
to impose a comparable political unity on the Western world. sought to become the next Alexander.
• Alexander solved the problem of
communication across his empire by
establishing cities and colonies that
The Spread of Hellenism continued his policies.
What effect did Greek migration have on Greek and native peoples? • The settlements spread Hellenism as
far east as India, while the resulting
intermingling of ideas linked the East
When the Greeks and Macedonians entered Asia Minor, Egypt, and the more
to the West.
remote East, they encountered civilizations older than their own. In some ways the
Eastern cultures were more advanced than the Greek, in others less so. Thus this
third great tide of Greek migration differed from preceding waves, which had
spread over land that was uninhabited or inhabited by less-developed peoples.
What did the Hellenistic monarchies offer Greek immigrants politically and
materially? More broadly, how did Hellenism and the cultures of the East affect
one another? What did the meeting of East and West entail for the history of
the world?
One of the major developments of these new king-

Cities and Kingdoms doms was the resurgence of monarchy, which had
many repercussions. For most Greeks, monarchs were
something out of the heroic past, something found in Homer’s Iliad but not in
daily life. Furthermore, most Hellenistic kingdoms embraced numerous different
peoples who had little in common. Hellenistic kings thus needed a new political
concept to unite them. One solution was the creation of a ruler cult that linked the
king’s authority with that of the gods. Thus, royal power had divine approval and
was meant to create a political and religious bond between the kings and their
subjects. These deified kings were not considered gods as mighty as Zeus or Apollo,
and the new ruler cults probably made little religious impact on those ruled.
Nonetheless, the ruler cult was an easily understandable symbol of unity within
the kingdom.
Hellenistic kingship was hereditary, which gave women who were members of
royal families more power than any women in democracies, in which citizenship
was limited to men. Wives of kings and queen mothers had influence over their
husbands and sons, and a few women ruled in their own right when there was no
male heir.
Hellenistic monarchs continued the policy of establishing cities throughout
their kingdoms in order to entice Greeks to immigrate. They gave their cities all
The Main Street of Pergamum

No matter where in old Greece they
had come from, all Greeks would
immediately feel at home walking along
this main street in Pergamum. They
would all see familiar sights. To the left
is the top of the theater where they
could watch the plays of the great
dramatists, climb farther to the temple,
and admire the fortifications on the
right. (Faith Cimok, Turkey)
the external trappings of a polis. Each had an assembly of citizens, a council to

prepare legislation, and a board of magistrates to conduct the city’s political busi-
ness. Yet, however similar to the Greek polis they appeared, these cities could not
engage in diplomatic dealings, make treaties, pursue their own foreign policy, or
sovereign An independent, wage their own wars. The Greek polis was by definition sovereign (SOV-er-in)—
autonomous state run by its citizens, free an independent, autonomous state run by its citizens, free of any outside power or
of any outside power or restraint.
restraint. Hellenistic kings, however, refused to grant sovereignty to their cities. In
effect, these kings willingly built cities but refused to build a polis.
A new Hellenistic city differed from a Greek polis in other ways as well. The
Greek polis had one body of law and one set of customs. In the Hellenistic city
Greeks represented an elite citizen class. Natives and non-Greek foreigners who
lived in Hellenistic cities usually possessed lesser rights than Greeks and often had
their own laws. In some instances this disparity spurred natives to assimilate Greek
culture in order to rise politically and socially. Yet the Hellenistic city was not ho-
mogeneous and could not spark the intensity of feeling that marked the polis.
Though Hellenistic kings never built a true polis, that does not mean that their
urban policy failed. Rather, the Hellenistic city was to remain the basic social and
political unit throughout the Hellenistic world until the sixth century c.e. Cities
were the chief agents of Hellenization, and their influence spread far beyond their
walls. These cities formed a broader cultural network in which Greek language,
customs, and values flourished. Roman rule in the Hellenistic world would later
be based on this urban culture, which facilitated the rise and spread of Chris-
tianity. In broad terms, Hellenistic cities were remarkably successful.
If the Hellenistic kings failed to satisfy the Greeks’ po-

Men and Women litical yearnings, they nonetheless succeeded in giving
in Hellenistic them unequaled economic and social opportunities.
Monarchies The ruling dynasties of the Hellenistic world were
Macedonian, and Greeks filled all important political, military, and diplomatic
positions. They constituted an upper class that sustained Hellenism in the East.
Besides building Greek cities, Hellenistic kings offered Greeks land and money as
lures to further immigration.
The opening of the East offered ambitious Greeks opportunities for well-paying
jobs and economic success. Some talented Greek men entered a professional corps
of Greek administrators. Greeks and Macedonians also found ready employment
The Spread of Hellenism 73
in the armies and navies of the Hellenistic monarchies. Greeks were able
to dominate other professions as well. The kingdoms and cities
recruited Greek writers and artists to create Greek works on
Asian soil. Architects, engineers, and skilled craftsmen found
their services in great demand because of the building policies
of the Hellenistic monarchs.
Increased physical and social mobility benefited some
women as well as men. More women learned to read
than before, and they engaged in occupations
in which literacy was beneficial, including
care of the sick. During the Hellenistic
period some women took part in com-
mercial transactions. They still lived
under legal handicaps; in Egypt, for ex-
ample, a Greek woman needed a male
guardian to buy, sell, or lease land, to
borrow money, and to represent her
in other transactions. Yet often such a
guardian was present only to fulfill
the letter of the law. The woman
was the real agent and handled the
business being transacted.
As long as Greeks continued to replenish their professional ranks, the king- Marital Advice
doms remained strong. In the process they drew an immense amount of talent This small terra-cotta sculpture is
from the Greek peninsula, draining the vitality of the Greek homeland. However, generally seen as a mother advising her
the Hellenistic monarchies could not keep recruiting Greeks forever, in spite of daughter, a new bride. Such intimate
their wealth and willingness to spend lavishly. In time the huge surge of immigra- scenes of ordinary people were popular
in the Hellenistic world, in contrast to
tion slowed greatly. Even then the Hellenistic monarchs were reluctant to recruit
the idealized statues of gods and
Easterners to fill posts normally held by Greeks. The result was at first the stagna-
goddesses of the classical period.
tion of the Hellenistic world and finally, after 202 b.c.e., its collapse in the face of (British Museum/Michael Holford)
the young and vigorous Roman republic.
Because they understood themselves to be “the West,”

Greeks and Greeks generally referred to Egypt and what we now
Easterners call the Near East collectively as “the East.” Many his-
torians have continued that usage, seeing the Hellenistic period as a time when
Greek and “Eastern” cultures blended to some degree. Eastern civilizations were
older than Greek, and the Greeks were a minority outside of Greece. Hellenistic
monarchies were remarkably successful in at least partially Hellenizing Easterners
and spreading a uniform culture throughout the East, a culture to which Rome
eventually fell heir. The prevailing institutions, laws, and language of the East
became Greek. Indeed, the Near East had seen nothing comparable since the
days when Mesopotamian culture had spread throughout the area.
Yet the spread of Greek culture was wider than it was deep. At best it was a
veneer, thicker in some places than in others. Hellenistic kingdoms were never
entirely unified in language, customs, and thought. Greek culture took firmest
hold along the shores of the Mediterranean, but farther east, in Persia and Bactria,
it was less strong. The principal reason for this curious phenomenon is that Greek
culture generally did not extend far beyond the reaches of the cities. Many urban
residents adopted the aspects of Hellenism that they found useful, but others in the
countryside generally did not embrace it wholly.
Cultural Blending
Ptolemy V, a Macedonian by birth and the Hellenistic king of Egypt,
dedicated this stone to the Egyptian sacred bull of the Egyptian god Ptah.
Nothing here is Greek or Macedonian, a sign that the conquered had, in
some religious and ceremonial ways, won over their conquerors. (Egyptian
Museum, Cairo)
For non-Greeks the prime advantage of Greek culture was

its very pervasiveness. The Greek language became the com-
mon speech of Egypt and the Near East. It was also the speech
of commerce: anyone who wanted to compete in business had
to learn it. As early as the third century b.c.e. some Greek cities
were giving citizenship to Hellenized natives.
The vast majority of Hellenized Easterners, however, took
only the externals of Greek culture while retaining the essen-
tials of their own ways of life. Though Greeks and Easterners
adapted to each other’s ways, there was never a true fusion of
cultures. Nonetheless, each found useful things in the civiliza-
tion of the other, and the two fertilized each other. This fertil-
ization, this mingling of Greek and Eastern elements, is what
makes Hellenistic culture unique and distinctive.
A prime illustration of cultural min-

Hellenism and gling is the impact of Greek culture
the Jews on the Jews. At first, Jews in Helle-
nistic cities were treated as resident aliens. As they grew more numerous, they
Sec tion Review received permission to form a political corporation, which gave them a great
deal of autonomy. They obeyed the king’s commands, but there was virtually
• To create unity, Hellenistic kings
established remarkably successful cities no royal interference with the Jewish religion. Indeed, the Greeks were typi-
with the governmental structure of a Greek cally reluctant to tamper with anyone’s religion. Antiochus III (an-TIE-uh-
polis, although they refused to grant them kuhs) (ca. 242–187 b.c.e.), for instance, recognized that most Jews had become
sovereignty and Greeks had more rights loyal subjects, and he went so far as to deny any uninvited foreigner permission
than natives and non-Greek foreigners. to enter the temple at Jerusalem. Only the Seleucid king Antiochus Epiphanes
• Hellenistic cities formed a broad cultural (175–ca. 164 b.c.e.) tried to suppress the Jewish religion in Judaea. He did so
network upon which the Romans later not because he hated the Jews (who were a small part of his kingdom), but be-
based their rule.
cause he was trying to unify his realm culturally to meet the threat of Rome. To
• The Hellenistic monarchs offered the Jews he extended the same policy that he applied to all subjects. Apart from
economic and social opportunities to
Greeks and benefited women through this instance, Hellenistic Jews suffered no official religious persecution. Some
increased literacy and economic Jews were given the right to become full citizens of Hellenistic cities, but few
opportunities. exercised that right. Citizenship would have allowed them to vote in the as-
• Greek became the language of commerce sembly and serve as magistrates, but it would also have obliged them to worship
in the East, and although a true blending the gods of the city—a practice few Jews chose to follow.
of cultures did not happen, the Jews living in Hellenistic cities often embraced a good deal of Hellenism.
intermingling of Greek and Eastern So many Jews learned Greek, especially in Alexandria, that the Old Testament
cultures makes Hellenistic culture unique.
was translated into Greek, and services in the synagogue came to be conducted
• Jews in Hellenistic cities generally had in Greek. Jews often took Greek names, used Greek political forms, adopted
religious freedom and many learned Greek
but most refused citizenship so they could Greek practice by forming their own trade associations, put inscriptions on
practice their own religion and not be graves as the Greeks did, and much else. Yet no matter how much of Greek
required to worship the gods of the city. culture or its externals Jews borrowed, they normally remained attached to
their religion.
The Economic Scope of the Hellenistic World 75
The Economic Scope of the Hellenistic World

What effects did East-West trade have on ordinary peoples during the
Hellenistic period?
Alexander’s conquest of the Persian Empire not only changed the political face of
the ancient world but also brought the East fully into the sphere of Greek econom-
ics. Yet the Hellenistic period did not see a revolution in the way people lived and
worked. The material demands of Hellenistic society remained as simple as those
of Athenian society in the fifth century b.c.e. Clothes and furniture were essen-
tially unchanged, as were household goods, tools, and jewelry. The real achieve-
ment of Alexander and his successors was linking East and West in a broad
commercial network. The spread of Greeks throughout the Near East and Egypt
created new markets and stimulated trade. The economic unity of the Hellenistic
world, like its cultural bonds, would later prove valuable to the Romans.
Alexander’s conquest of the Persian Empire had immediate effects on trade. In
the Persian capitals Alexander had found vast sums of gold, silver, and other trea-
sure. This wealth financed the building of roads and the development of harbors
as well as the creation of new cities. Whole new markets opened to Greek mer-
chants, who eagerly took advantage of the new opportunities. In bazaars, ports,
and trading centers Greeks learned of Eastern customs and traditions while spread-
ing knowledge of their own culture.
The Seleucid and Ptolemaic dynasties traded as far afield
as India, Arabia, and sub-Saharan Africa. Overland trade with
India and Arabia was conducted by caravan and was largely
in the hands of Easterners. Once the goods reached the
Hellenistic monarchies, Greek merchants took a hand in
the trade.
Essential to the caravan trade from the Mediterranean to
Afghanistan and India was the southern route through Arabia.
The desert of Arabia may seem at first unlikely and inhospi-
table terrain for a line of commerce, but to the east of it lies
the plateau of Iran, from which trade routes stretched to the
south and still farther east to China. Commerce from the East
arrived at Egypt and the excellent harbors of Palestine, Phoe-
nicia, and Syria. From these ports goods flowed to Greece,
Italy, and Spain. The backbone of this caravan trade was the
camel, a splendid beast of burden that could endure the harsh
heat and aridity of the caravan routes.
Over the caravan routes traveled luxury goods that were
light, rare, and expensive. In time these luxury items became
more of a necessity than a luxury. In part this development
was the result of an increased volume of trade. In the prosper-
ity of the period more people could afford to buy gold, silver,
Harbor and Warehouse at Delos

During the Hellenistic period Delos became a thriving center of trade.
Shown here is the row of warehouses at water’s edge. From Delos, cargoes
were shipped to virtually every part of the Mediterranean. (SuperStock)
ivory, precious stones, spices, and a host of other easily transportable goods. Per-
haps the most prominent goods in terms of volume were tea and silk. Indeed, the
Great Silk Road The name of the trade in silk gave the major route its name, the Great Silk Road. In return the
major route for the silk trade. Greeks and Macedonians sent east manufactured goods, especially metal weap-
ons, cloth, wine, and olive oil. Although these caravan routes can trace their ori-
gins to earlier times, they became far more prominent in the Hellenistic period.
Business customs developed and became standardized, so that merchants from
different nationalities communicated in a way understandable to all of them.
Sec tion Review More economically important than this exotic trade were commercial deal-
• The Hellenistic period did not change ings in essential commodities like raw materials, grain, and industrial products.
the way people lived and worked but The Hellenistic monarchies usually raised enough grain for their own needs as
was successful in uniting the East and well as a surplus for export. For the cities of Greece and the Aegean this trade in
West economically, creating a broad grain was essential, because many of them could not grow enough. Fortunately for
commercial network. them, abundant wheat supplies were available nearby in Egypt and in the Crimea
• Alexander used the wealth he captured (cry-MEE-ah) in southern Russia.
to build roads, cities, and harbors, The Greek cities paid for their grain by exporting olive oil and wine. Another
opening new markets in which Greek
merchants could trade. significant commodity was fish, which for export was either salted, pickled, or
dried. This trade was doubly important because fish provided poor people with an
• The caravan trade routes carried luxury
goods, especially tea and silk, across the essential element of their diet. Of raw materials, wood was high in demand.
southern desert by camel from as far Most trade in bulk commodities was seaborne, and the Hellenistic merchant
east as China. ship was the workhorse of the day. The merchant ship had a broad beam and re-
• Commercial trade in essential lied on sails for propulsion. It was far more seaworthy than the Hellenistic warship,
commodities was economically more which was long, narrow, and built for speed. A small crew of experienced sailors
important than trade in luxury goods could handle the merchant vessel easily. Maritime trade provided opportunities
for Hellenistic cities. for workers in other industries and trades: sailors, shipbuilders, dockworkers, ac-
• Hellenistic merchant ships carried countants, teamsters, and pirates. Piracy was always a factor in the Hellenistic
bulk commodities and provided world and remained so until Rome extended its power throughout the East.
opportunities for workers in other
industries, including pirates. Throughout the Mediterranean world slaves were almost always in demand as
well. Only the Ptolemies discouraged both the trade and slavery itself, and they did
• Slave labor was common throughout
the Meditteranean except in Egypt, so only for economic reasons. Their system had no room for slaves, who would
where it would have competed with only have competed with free labor. Otherwise slave labor was to be found in the
free labor. cities and temples of the Hellenistic world, in the factories and fields, and in the
homes of wealthier people.
Hellenistic Intellectual Advances

What is the intellectual legacy of the Hellenistic period?
The peoples of the Hellenistic era took the ideas and ideals of the classical Greeks
and advanced them to new heights. Their achievements created the intellectual
and religious atmosphere that deeply influenced Roman thinking and eventually
the religious thought of liberal Judaism and early Christianity. Far from being
stagnant, this was a period of vigorous growth, especially in the areas of philosophy,
science, and medicine.
In religion the most significant new ideas were devel-

Religion in the oped outside Greece. At first the Hellenistic period saw
Hellenistic World the spread of Greek religious cults throughout the
Near East and Egypt. When Hellenistic kings founded cities, they also built
temples and established new cults and priesthoods for the old Olympian gods.
Hellenistic Intellectual Advances 77
Greek cults sponsored literary, musical, and athletic contests, which were staged
in beautiful surroundings among impressive Greek buildings. On the whole, how-
ever, the civic cults were primarily concerned with ritual and neither appealed to
religious emotions nor embraced matters such as sin and redemption. Although
the new civic cults were lavish in pomp and display, they could not satisfy deep
religious feelings or spiritual yearnings. Greeks increasingly sought solace from
other sources. Some turned to philosophy as a guide to life, while others turned
to superstition, magic, or astrology. Still others might shrug and speak of Tyche Tyche Fate or chance or doom; a
(TIE-kee), which meant “Fate” or “Chance” or “Doom”—a capricious and some- capricious and sometimes malevolent
force.
times malevolent force.
Beginning in the second century b.c.e., some individuals were increasingly
attracted to new mystery religions, so called because they featured a body of ritual mystery religions Bodies of ritual not
not to be divulged to anyone not initiated into the cult. These new mystery cults to be divulged to anyone not initiated
into the cult. They incorporated aspects
incorporated aspects of both Greek and Eastern religions and had broad appeal for of both Greek and Eastern religions and
people who yearned for personal immortality. Since the Greeks were already fa- had broad appeal for both Greeks and
miliar with old mystery cults, such as the Eleusinian (el-yoo-SIN-ee-uhn) myster- Easterners who yearned for personal
ies in Attica, the new cults did not strike them as alien. Familiar, too, was the immortality.
concept of preparation for an initiation. Devotees of the Greek Eleusinian myster-
ies and other such cults had to prepare themselves mentally and physically before
entering the gods’ presence. Thus the mystery cults fit well with Greek usage.
The new religions enjoyed one tremendous advantage over the old Greek
mystery cults. Whereas old Greek mysteries were tied to particular places, such as
Eleusis (ee-LOO-sis), the new religions spread throughout the Hellenistic world.
Hellenistic Mystery Cult

The scene depicts part of the ritual of initiation into the cult of Dionysus. The young woman here has
just completed the ritual. She now dances in joy as the official with the sacred staff looks on. (Scala/Art
Resource, NY)
People did not have to undertake long and expensive pilgrimages just to become
members of the religion. In that sense the mystery religions came to the people,
for temples of the new deities sprang up wherever Greeks lived.
The mystery religions all claimed to save their adherents from the worst that
fate could do and promised life for the soul after death. They all had a single con-
cept in common: the belief that by the rites of initiation devotees became united
with a god, usually male, who had himself died and risen from the dead. The
sacrifice of the god and his victory over death saved the devotee from eternal death.
Similarly, all mystery religions demanded a period of preparation in which the
convert strove to become holy, that is, to live by the religion’s precepts. Once aspi-
rants had prepared themselves, they went through an initiation in which they
learned the secrets of the religion. The initiation was usually a ritual of great emo-
tional intensity, symbolizing the entry into a new life.
The mystery religions that took the Hellenistic world by storm were the Egyp-
tian cults of Serapis (si-REY-pis) and Isis. Serapis, who was invented by King Ptol-
emy, was believed to be the judge of souls, who rewarded virtuous and righteous
people with eternal life.
The cult of Isis enjoyed even wider appeal than that of Serapis. Isis, wife of
Osiris, was believed to have conquered Tyche and promised to save any mortal
who came to her. She became the most important goddess of the Hellenistic
world, and her worship was very popular among women. Her priests claimed that
she had bestowed on humanity the gift of civilization and founded law and litera-
ture. She was the goddess of marriage, conception, and childbirth, and like Sera-
pis she promised to save the souls of her believers.
Mystery religions took care of the big things in life, but many people resorted
to ordinary magic for daily matters. When a cat walked across their path, they
stopped until someone else had passed by them. Or they could throw three rocks
across the road. People often purified their houses to protect them from Hecate
(HEK-uh-tee), a sinister goddess associated with magic and withcraft. Many people
had dreams that only seers and augurs (AW-gers) could interpret. Some of these
things are familiar today because some old fears are still alive.
During the Hellenistic period, philosophy reached out

Philosophy and to touch the lives of more men and women than ever
the People before. Two significant philosophies caught the minds
and hearts of contemporary Greeks and some Easterners, as well as some later
Epicureanism A practical philosophy Romans. The first was Epicureanism (ep-ee-kyoo-REE-uh-niz-uhm), a practical
founded by Epicurus, it argued that the philosophy of serenity in an often tumultuous world. Epicurus (ep-ee-KYOOR-
principal good of human life is pleasure.
uhs) (340–270 b.c.e.) taught that the principal good of human life is pleasure,
which he defined as the absence of pain. He was not advocating drunken revels or
sexual dissipation, which he thought actually caused pain. Instead, Epicurus con-
cluded that any violent emotion is undesirable and advocated mild self-discipline.
Even poverty he considered good, as long as people had enough food, clothing,
and shelter. Epicurus also taught that individuals can most easily attain peace and
serenity by ignoring the outside world and looking into their personal feelings and
reactions. His followers ignored politics and issues, for they led to tumult, which
would disturb the soul.
Stoicism The most popular of Opposed to the passivity of the Epicureans, Zeno (ZEE-noh) (335–262 b.c.e.),
Hellenistic philosophies, it considered
nature an expression of divine will;
a philosopher from Citium in Cyprus, advanced a different concept of human be-
people could be happy only when living ings and the universe. Zeno first came to Athens to form his own school, the Stoa,
in accordance with nature. named after the building where he preferred to teach. Stoicism (STOH-uh-siz-uhm)
became the most popular Hellenistic philosophy and the one that later captured
the mind of Rome. To the Stoics the important question was not whether they
achieved anything, but whether they lived virtuous lives. In that way they could
triumph over Tyche, for Tyche could destroy achievements but not the nobility of
their lives.
Zeno and his followers considered nature an expression of divine will; in their
view, people could be happy only when living in accordance with nature. They
stressed the unity of man and the universe, stating that all men were brothers and
were obliged to help one another. The Stoics’ most significant practical achieve-
ment was the creation of the concept of natural law. The Stoics concluded that as natural law A Stoic concept that as all
all men were brothers, partook of divine reason, and were in harmony with the men were brothers, partook of divine
reason, and were in harmony with the
universe, one law—a part of the natural order of life—governed them all. The Stoic universe, one law—a part of the natural
concept of a universal state governed by natural law is one of the finest heirlooms order of life—governed them all.
the Hellenistic world passed on to Rome. The Stoic concept of natural law, of one
law for all people, became a valuable tool when the Romans began to deal with
many different peoples with different laws. The ideal of the universal state gave the
Romans a rationale for extending their empire to the farthest reaches of the world.
The obligation of individuals to their fellows served the citizens of the Roman
Empire as the philosophical justification for doing their duty. In this respect, too,
the real fruit of Hellenism was to ripen only under the cultivation of Rome.
Hellenistic culture achieved its greatest triumphs in

Hellenistic Science the area of science. The most notable of the Hellenis-
tic astronomers was Aristarchus (ar-uh-STAHR-kuhs)
of Samos (ca. 310–230 b.c.e.), who was educated in Aristotle’s school. Aristarchus
concluded that the sun is far larger than the earth and that the stars are enor-
mously distant from the earth. He argued against Aristotle’s view that the earth was
the center of the universe. Instead, Aristarchus propounded the heliocentric (he- heliocentric theory The theory of
lee-oh-CENT-rik) theory—that the earth and planets revolve around the sun. His Aristarchus that the earth and planets
revolve around the sun.
work is all the more impressive because he lacked even a rudimentary telescope.
Aristarchus had only the human eye and brain, but they were more than enough.
Unfortunately, Aristarchus’s theories did not persuade the ancient world. In
the second century c.e. Claudius Ptolemy, a mathematician and astronomer in
Alexandria, accepted Aristotle’s theory of the earth as the center of the universe,
and this view prevailed for fourteen hundred years. Aristarchus’s heliocentric the-
ory lay dormant until resurrected in the sixteenth century by the brilliant Polish
astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (koh-PUR-ni-kuhs).
In geometry Euclid (YOO-klid) (ca. 300 b.c.e.), a mathematician who lived in
Alexandria, compiled a valuable textbook of existing knowledge. His book The
Elements of Geometry has exerted immense influence on Western civilization, for
it rapidly became the standard introduction to geometry. Generations of students,
from the Hellenistic period to the present, have learned the essentials of geometry
from it.
The greatest thinker of the Hellenistic period was Archimedes (ahr-kuh-MEE-
deez) (ca. 287–212 b.c.e.), a native of Syracuse. (See the feature “Individuals in
Society: Archimedes and the Practical Application of Science.”) His mathematical
research, covering many fields, was his greatest contribution to Western thought.
In his book On Plane Equilibriums Archimedes dealt for the first time with the
basic principles of mechanics, including the principle of the lever. He once said
that if he were given a lever and a suitable place to stand, he could move the
world. With his treatise On Floating Bodies he founded the science of hydrostatics.
Archimedes and the Practical
Application of Science
T hroughout the ages generals have besieged cities to
force them to surrender. Between 213 and 211 b.c.e.
the Roman general Marcellus laid close siege to the
missiles. Huge stones came tumbling down upon them
almost perpendicularly, and the wall shot out arrows at
them from every point. They therefore retired. And here
strongly walled city of Syracuse, the home of the sci- again, when they were some distance off, missiles darted
entist Archimedes. Hiero, king of forth and fell upon them as they were going away, and
Syracuse and friend of Archime- there was a great slaughter among them. Many of their
des, turned to him for help. Ar- ships, too, were dashed together, and they could not re-
chimedes used his knowledge of taliate in any way upon their foes. For Archimedes had
mechanics to create engines that built most of his engines close behind the wall, and the
could fire objects at the enemy. Romans seemed to be fighting against the gods, now that
countless mischiefs were poured out upon them from an
Archimedes, however, began to ply invisible source.
his engines, and shot against the At last the Romans became so fearful that whenever
land forces of the attackers all sorts they saw a bit of rope or a stick of timber projecting a little
of missiles and immense masses of over the wall. “There it is,” they shouted, “Archimedes is
stones, which came down with in- training some engine upon us.” They then turned their
Archimedes’ mill. A slave credible din and speed. Nothing backs and fled. Seeing this, Marcellus desisted from all
turns a large cylinder fitted whatever could ward off their weight, the fighting and assault, and thenceforth depended on a
with blades to form a screw but they knocked down in heaps long siege.
that draws water from a well.
those who stood in their way, and
(Courtesy, Soprintendenza
Archeologica di Pompei. Photo: threw their ranks into confusion. At For all his genius, Archimedes did not survive the siege.
Dr. Penelope M. Allison) the same time huge beams were sud- His deeds of war done, he returned to his thinking and
denly projected over the [Roman] his mathematical problems, even with the siege still in the
ships from the walls [of Syracuse], background. When Syracuse was betrayed to the Romans,
which sank some of them with great weights plunging soldiers streamed in, spreading slaughter and destruc-
down from on high. Others were seized at the prow by tion throughout the city. A Roman soldier came upon
iron claws, or beaks like the beaks of cranes, drawn Archimedes in his study and killed him outright, thus
straight up into the air, and then plunged stern first into ending the life of one of the world’s greatest thinkers.
the depths, or were turned round and round by means of
enginery within the city, and dashed upon the steep cliffs Questions for Analysis
that jutted out beneath the wall of the city, with great 1. How did Archimedes’ engines repulse the Roman
destruction of the fighting men on board, who perished in attacks?
the wrecks. Frequently, too, a ship would be lifted out of
the water into mid-air, whirled here and there as it hung 2. What effect did his weapons have on the Roman
there, a dreadful spectacle, until its crew had been thrown attackers?
out and hurled in all directions. Then it would fall empty 3. What is the irony of Archimedes’ death?
upon the walls, or slip away from the clutch that had
Source: Reprinted by permission of the publishers and the
held it.
Trustees of the Loeb Classical Library from Plutarch: Volume
Then in a council of war the Romans decided to come V, Loeb Classical Library Volume 87, translated by B. Perrin,
up under the walls while it was still night. . . . When, pp. 475–477, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
therefore, they came under the walls, thinking themselves 1917. The Loeb Classical Library® is a registered trademark of
unnoticed, once more they encountered a great storm of the President and Fellows of Harvard College.
80
He concluded that whenever a solid floats in a liq-

uid, the weight of the solid is equal to the weight of
the liquid displaced. He made his discovery when
he stepped into a bath. He noticed that the weight
of his body displaced a volume of water equal to it.
He immediately ran outside shouting “Eureka,
eureka” (I have found it, I have found it).1
Archimedes was willing to share his work with
others, among them Eratosthenes (er-uh-TOS-thuh-
neez) (285–ca. 204 b.c.e.), who was librarian of
the enormous royal library in Alexandria, Egypt.
Eratosthenes used mathematics to further the geo-
graphical studies for which he is most famous. He
calculated the circumference of the earth geo-
metrically, estimating it as about 24,675 miles. He
was not wrong by much: the earth is actually
24,860 miles in circumference. Eratosthenes also
concluded that the earth was a spherical globe
and that the land was surrounded by ocean.
Using geographical information gained by Al-
exander the Great’s scientists, Eratosthenes tried
Catapult
to fit the East into Greek geographical knowledge.
This model shows a catapult as its crew would have seen it in action. The arrow
Although for some reason he ignored the western
was loaded on the long horizontal beam, its point fitting into the housing. There
Mediterranean and Europe, he declared that a the torsion spring under great pressure released the arrow at the target, which
ship could sail from Spain either around Africa to could be some 400 yards away. (Courtesy, Noel Kavan)
India or directly westward to India. Not until the
great days of Western exploration did sailors such
as Vasco da Gama and Magellan actually prove Eratosthenes’ theories.
For all of its speculation, Hellenistic science made an inestimable, if grim,
contribution to practical life. The Greeks and Macedonians applied theories of
mechanics to build siege machines, thus revolutionizing the art of warfare. The
catapult became the first and most widely used artillery piece. The earliest cata-
pults could shoot only large arrows and small stones. By the time Alexander the
Great besieged Tyre in 332 b.c.e., his catapults threw stones big enough to knock
down city walls. Generals soon realized that they could also hurl burning bundles
over the walls to start fires in the city. To approach enemy town walls safely, engi-
neers built siege towers, large wooden structures that served as artillery platforms,
and put them on wheels so that soldiers could roll them up to the wall. Once
there, archers stationed on top of them swept the enemy’s ramparts with arrows,
while other soldiers manning catapults added missile fire. To aid the siege towers,
generals added battering rams that brought down large portions of walls. If these
new engines made waging war more efficient, they also added to the misery of the
people. War was no longer confined to the battlefield and fought between soldiers.
It had come to embrace the whole population.
The study of medicine flourished during the Hellenis-

Hellenistic Medicine tic period, and Hellenistic physicians carried the work
of Hippocrates into new areas. Herophilus, who lived
in the first half of the third century b.c.e., approached the study of medicine in
a systematic, scientific fashion: he dissected dead bodies and measured what he
observed. He discovered the nervous system and concluded that two types of
An Unsuccessful Delivery
This funeral stele depicts a mother who has perhaps lost her own life as well
as her baby’s. Childbirth was the leading cause of death for adult women in
antiquity, though funeral steles showing this are quite rare. Another of the
few that do show death in childbirth bears the heartbreaking words
attributed to the mother by her grieving family: “All my labor could not
bring the child forth; he lies in my womb, among the dead.” (National
Archaeological Museum, Athens/Archaeological Receipts Fund)
nerves, motor and sen-

sory, existed. Herophilus
Sec tion Review also studied the brain,
• Greek religious cults were based on which he considered the
ritual and did not satisfy deeper center of intelligence,
religious feelings, causing many Greeks and discerned the cere-
to turn to philosophy, astrology, magic,
and mystery cults to guide their lives.
brum (suh-REE-bruhm)
and cerebellum (ser-uh-
• The mystery cults such as the
Eleusinian mysteries and the Egyptian
BEL-uhm). His other
cults of Serapis and Isis held broad work dealt with the liver,
appeal and promised life after death for lungs, and uterus.
those who passed their emotionally In about 280 b.c.e.
intense rituals and adhered to their Philinus and Serapion,
religious precepts.
pupils of Herophilus,
• Epicureanism taught individuals to concentrated on the ob-
attain peace by seeking pleasure and
ignoring the outside world while
servation and cure of
Stoicism maintained that one achieved illnesses rather than fo-
happiness by living a dutiful, virtuous cussing on dissection.
life according to universal nature. They also laid heavier
• Many significant advances were made stress on the use of drugs
in science including the heliocentric and medicine to treat illnesses.
theory, geometry, and the basic Heraclides of Tarentum (tuh-REN-tuhm) (perhaps first century b.c.e.) carried on
principles of mechanics, hydrostatics,
and using mathematics in
this tradition and discovered the benefits of opium and worked with other drugs
geographical studies. that relieved pain.
• Advances in science revolutionized
The Hellenistic world was also plagued by people who claimed to cure ill-
warfare with the introduction of nesses through incantations and magic. Their potions included such concoctions
the catapult, siege towers, and as blood from the ear of an ass mixed with water to cure fever, or the liver of a cat
battering rams. killed when the moon was waning and preserved in salt. Quacks damaged the
• The study of medicine led to a greater reputation of dedicated doctors who intelligently tried to heal and alleviate pain.
understanding of the human body The medical abuses that arose in the Hellenistic period were so flagrant that the
through dissection as well as the use of Romans, who later entered the Hellenistic world, developed an intense distrust of
drugs and medicine to treat illnesses,
but the popularity of quacks who
physicians and also considered the study of Hellenistic medicine beneath the dig-
claimed to cure illness through magic nity of a Roman. Nonetheless, the work of men like Herophilus and Serapion
and potions hindered these advances. made valuable contributions to the knowledge of medicine, and the fruits of their
work were preserved and handed on to the West.
Chapter Review 83
Chapter Review
Why did Alexander launch his massive attack on the Persian Empire? How ex- Key Terms
tensive were his conquests? (page 66)
Hellenistic (p. 66)
Although Alexander may not originally have intended to march all the way to the sovereign (p. 72)
Indus Valley, he gained so much territory that he saw every reason to continue as far as
Great Silk Road (p. 76)
possible. It was an almost foolhardy adventure, but it permanently changed the face of
world history. Tyche (p. 77)
mystery religions (p. 77)
What happened to Alexander’s empire after his death? What was his political Epicureanism (p. 78)
and cultural legacy? (page 68) Stoicism (p. 78)
Alexander’s legacy proved of essential importance to the future of the West. He natural law (p. 79)
brought the vital civilization of the Greeks into intimate contact with the older cul- heliocentric theory (p. 79)
tures of the East. He and his successors established cities and encouraged a third great
wave of Greek migration.
What effect did Greek migration have on Greek and native peoples? (page 71)
In the Aegean and Near East the fusion of Greek and Eastern cultures laid the social,
intellectual, and cultural foundations on which the Romans would later build. In the
heart of the old Persian empire, Hellenism was only another new influence that was
absorbed by older ways of thought and life. Yet overall, in the exchange of ideas and the
opportunity for different cultures to learn about one another, a new cosmopolitan so-
ciety evolved.
What effects did East-West trade have on ordinary peoples during the Hellenis-
tic period? (page 75)
For ordinary men and women, the greatest practical boon of the Hellenistic adven-
ture was economic. Trade connected the world on a routine basis. Economics brought
people together just as surely as it brought them goods. By the end of the Hellenistic
period, the ancient world had become far broader and more economically intricate
than ever before.
What is the intellectual legacy of the Hellenistic period? (page 76)

Hellenistic achievements included intellectual advances as well as trade connec-
tions. Mystery religions, such as the worship of the goddess Isis, provided many people
with answers to their questions about the meaning of life, while others turned to practi-
cal philosophies such as Stoicism for ethical guidance. Mathematicians and scientists
developed theoretical knowledge and applied this to practical problems in geography,
mechanics, and weaponry. Physicians also approached medicine in a systematic fash-
ion, though many people relied on magic and folk cures for treatment of illness. People
of the Hellenistic period not only built on the achievements of their predecessors, but
they also produced one of the most creative intellectual eras of classical antiquity.
Note
1. Vitruvius, On Architecture 9 Preface, 10.

Alexander and the Brotherhood of Man
A t one point in his crusade, Alexander found himself

confronted with a huge mutiny by his Macedonian
veterans. He ordered the most vocal of the rebels to be ex-
ecuted and reminded the others of the glory they had achieved
in battle and the shame they would endure at home if they
returned as deserters. He then refused to see any of the Mace-
donians and turned over command of the brigades to the
Persians. Alexander’s words of reconciliation at the conclusion
of this episode have been interpreted as an expression of his
desire to establish a “brotherhood of man.” Readers can deter-
mine for themselves whether Alexander attempted to introduce
a new philosophical ideal or whether he harbored his own
political motives for political cooperation.

1. What was the purpose of the banquet?
This selection has been omitted intentionally
2. Were all of the guests treated equally?
from your CourseSmart eBook due to electronic
permissions issues. Regrettably, we cannot make 3. What did Alexander gain from bringing to-
this piece available to you in a digital format. gether the Macedonians and Persians?
Source: From The Greek Historians by Francis R. B.

Godolphin. Copyright © 1942 and renewed 1970 by
Random House, Inc. Used by permission of Random
House, Inc.
This gilded case for a

bow and arrows indicates
that Alexander’s success
came at the price of
blood. These vigorous
scenes portray more
military conflict than
philosophical compassion.
(Archaeological Museum
Salonica/Dagli Orti/The
Art Archive)
84
CHAPTER 5
The Rise
of Rome
ca. 750–44 B.C.E.
Chapter Preview
The Etruscans and Rome
How did the Etruscans shape early
Roman history?
The Roman Republic

What was the nature of the Roman
republic?
Roman Expansion
How did the Romans take control of the
Mediterranean world?
Old Values and Greek Culture

How did Roman society change during
the age of expansion?
The Late Republic (133–31 b.c.e.)

The Roman Forum. (Josephine Powell Photography, Courtesy of Special Collections, What were the main problems and
Fine Arts Library, Harvard College Library) achievements of the late republic?
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY: Quintus Sertorius
LISTENING TO THE PAST: A Magic Charm
85
86 Chapter 5 The Rise of Rome, ca. 750–44 B.C.E.
L ike the Persians under Cyrus and the Greeks under Alexander, the Romans
managed to conquer vast territories in less than a century. Their achieve-
ment lay in their ability to incorporate conquered peoples into the Roman system.
Unlike the Greeks, who refused to share citizenship, the Romans extended their
citizenship first to the Italians and later to the peoples of the provinces. With that
citizenship went Roman government and law. Rome created a world state that
embraced the entire Mediterranean area and extended northward.
Nor was Rome’s achievement limited to the ancient world. Rome’s law, lan-
guage, and administrative practices shaped later developments in Europe and be-
yond. London, Paris, Vienna, and many other modern European cities began as
Roman colonies or military camps. When the Founding Fathers created the Amer-
ican republic, they looked to Rome as a model. On the darker side, Napoleon and
Mussolini paid their own tribute to Rome by aping its forms. All were acknowledg-
ing admiration for the Roman achievement.
Roman history is usually divided into two periods: the republic, the age in
which Rome grew from a small city-state to ruler of an empire, and the empire, the
period when the republican constitution gave way to constitutional monarchy.
The republic is the focus of this chapter.
The Etruscans and Rome

How did the Etruscans shape early Roman history?
While the Greeks pursued their destiny in the East, the Etruscans (eh-TRUS-kuns)
and Romans entered the peninsula of Italy. The arrival of the Etruscans in the
region of Etruria can reasonably be dated to about 750 b.c.e. The Romans settled
farther south in Latium. Located at an easy crossing point on the Tiber (TIE-ber)
River, Rome stood astride the main avenue of communication between northern
and southern Italy. Its seven hills were defensive and safe from the floods of the
Tiber. (See Map 5.1.)
The Etruscans established permanent settlements that

The Etruscans evolved into the first Italian cities, which resembled
and the Roman the Greek city-states in political organization. Their
Settlement of Italy influence spread over the surrounding countryside,
(ca. 750–509 B.C.E.) which they farmed but also mined, as it contained rich
mineral resources. From an early period the Etruscans began to trade natural
products, especially iron, with their Greek neighbors on the Mediterranean in ex-
change for luxury goods. They thereby built a rich cultural life that became the
foundation of civilization throughout Italy. In the process they touched a small
collection of villages subsequently called Rome.
The Romans had settled in Italy by the eighth century b.c.e. According to one
legend, Romulus and Remus founded the city in 753 b.c.e., Romulus making his
home on the Palatine Hill, while Remus chose the Aventine (see inset of Map 5.1).
Under Etruscan influence the Romans prospered, spreading over all of Rome’s
seven hills.
From 753 to 509 b.c.e. a line of Etruscan kings ruled the city and introduced
many customs. The Romans adopted the Etruscan alphabet, which the Etruscans
themselves had adopted from the Greeks. The Romans later handed on this alphabet
Chronology
to medieval Europe and from there to the modern Western 750–31 B.C.E. Beginning of the economic growth
world. Even the toga (TOH-guh), the white woolen robe of Rome
worn by citizens, came from the Etruscans.
750–133 B.C.E. Traditional founding of Rome;
Under the Etruscans Rome enjoyed contacts with the
evolution of the Roman state
larger Mediterranean world, while the city continued to
grow. In the years 575 to 550 b.c.e. temples and public build- 509–290 B.C.E. Roman conquest of Italy
ings began to grace the city. The forum ceased to be a cem- 499–186 B.C.E. Introduction of Greek deities
etery and began its history as a public meeting place, similar ca. 494–287 B.C.E. Struggle of the Orders
to the Greek agora. Trade in metalwork became common,
and wealthier Romans began to import fine Greek vases. 264–133 B.C.E. Punic Wars and the conquest
of the East
The Etruscans had found Rome a collection of villages and
made it a city. 262 B.C.E. Growth of large estates
239–159 B.C.E. Rise of Latin Literature
88–31 B.C.E. Civil war
Legend has it that the republic
The Roman was formed when the son of the 86–35 B.C.E. Birth of historical and
Conquest of Italy Etruscan king raped Lucretia political writing
(509–290 B.C.E.) (loo-KREE-shuh), a virtuous Ro-
man woman, and the people rose up in anger. The republic
was actually founded in the years after 509, when the Ro-
mans fought numerous wars with their neighbors on the Italian peninsula. Not toga The white woolen robe worn
until roughly a century after the founding of the republic did the Romans drive the by citizens.
Etruscans entirely out of Latium (LA-cee-um). Early on, the Romans learned the forum A public meeting place; a
value of alliances, and the Latin towns around them provided them with a large development parallel to that of the
reservoir of manpower. These alliances involved the Romans in still other wars Greek agora.
and took them farther afield in the Italian peninsula.
Around 390 b.c.e. the Romans suffered a major setback when a new people,
the Celts—or Gauls (gawls), as the Romans called them— Gauls The Celts, people who swept
swept aside a Roman army and sacked Rome. More intent aside a Roman army and sacked Rome
around 390 b.c.e.
on loot than on land, they agreed to abandon Rome in
return for a thousand pounds of gold. In the century
that followed, the Romans rebuilt their city and
Sarcophagus of Lartie Seianti

The woman portrayed on this lavish sarcophagus is the noble Etruscan Lartie Seianti. Although the
sarcophagus is her place of burial, she is portrayed as in life, comfortable and at rest. The influence of
Greek art on Etruscan is apparent in almost every feature of the sarcophagus. (Archaeological Museum,
Florence/Nimatallah/Art Resource, NY)
recouped their losses. They brought Latium and their Latin allies fully under their
control and conquered Etruria. In 343 b.c.e. they grappled with the Samnites in a
series of bitter wars for the possession of Campania (kam-PAY-nee-uh) and south-
franchise The right to vote or hold ern Italy (see Map 5.1). The Samnites were a formidable enemy, but the superior
Roman offices. military organization and manpower of the Romans won out in the end. Although
Rome had yet to subdue the whole peninsula, for the first time in history it stood
MAP 5.1 Italy and the City unchallenged.
of Rome The Romans spread their religious cults, mythology, and drama throughout
The geographical configuration of Italy. They did not force their beliefs on others, but they did welcome their neigh-
the Italian peninsula shows how bors to religious places of assembly. The Romans and Italians grew closer by the
Rome stood astride north-south mutual understanding of and participation in religious rites.
communication routes and how the With many of their oldest allies, such as the Latin cities, the Romans shared full
state that united Italy stood poised to Roman citizenship. In other instances they granted citizenship without the franchise,
move into Sicily and northern Africa.
P S ROME
A L
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0 1,500 3,000 Ft.
Verona
Ad
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IL
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Q
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IN
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er
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E MT.
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(Bologna) Ariminum CAPITOLINE MT. Senate House
I LI N
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LY Forum
QU
Florentia R
ES
IA Regia
Pisae (Florence) Fanum Fortunae Temple of
(Pisa) Arno R. Tiber Island Jupiter
Ligurian Ancona PALATINE
UM
MT.
Arretium T Hills of Rome
Sea
BR
N Castrum Truentinum T.
ibe
NM
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P IC
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Populonia ETRURIA Maximus

A
EN U
Elba
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M
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Corsica Reate ti
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Veii Rome
Corfinium Se
SAMNIUM a
Ap
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a
W APULIA
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Tarracina Barium
C A M Beneventum
PA Venusia Apollonia
Capua N Ap
pia
IA nW Brundisium
Misenum ay C AL
Neapolis Tarentum AB
(Naples) Paestum LUCANIA RI
A 40°N
Sardinia
G u lf o f EP
Neapolis Thurii Ta re n tu m IR
US
Ty r r h e n i a n S e a
Carales
Croton
IUM
UT T
20°E
BR
Roman territory (full citizens)

Me Messana Locri
dit Rhegium Roman territory
er (citizens without suffrage)
ra Lilybaeum
ne Sicily
Roman allies
10°E
an Latin colonies
S Carthaginian possessions
Cape e a
Syracuse
Utica
Bon Greek cities
Carthage
Hippo Regius 0 50 100 Km. Major roads by 100 B.C.E.
NORTH AFRICA 0 50 100 Mi. Roman territory added by 218 B.C.E.
15°E
The Roman Republic 89
that is, without the right to vote or hold Roman offices. These allies were subject Sec tion Review
to Roman taxes and calls for military service but ran their own local affairs. The
Latin allies were able to acquire full Roman citizenship by moving to Rome. • Around 750 b.c.e. the Etruscans
entered Italy and prospered by farming,
The Roman roads, many of which were in use as late as the medieval period, mining, and trading with the Greeks;
allowed for the flow of communication, trade, and armies from the capital to out- they also helped the Romans flourish
lying areas. They were the tangible sinews of unity. farther to the south in Latium.
• The Romans used the Etruscan
alphabet (originally adopted from the
Greeks), wore the Etruscan toga, built
The Roman Republic temples and public buildings, and
What was the nature of the Roman republic? changed the forum from a cemetery
to a public meeting place.
• The Romans founded their republic,
The Romans summed up their political existence in a single phrase: senatus popu-
after much fighting on the peninsula,
lusque Romanum, “the Roman senate and people.” This sentiment reflects the with the help of their many alliances;
republican ideal of shared government rather than concentrated power within a they later overcame the sack of Rome
monarchy. Abbreviated as “SPQR,” the letters became a shorthand way of saying by the Celts (Gauls) and went on to
“Rome.” The beliefs, customs, and laws of the republic—its unwritten constitution— conquer Etruria and the Samnites
in Campania.
evolved over centuries to meet the demands of the governed.
• The Romans shared their religious
cults, mythology, and drama
throughout Italy, but not by force,
In the early republic social divisions determined the thus furthering friendly relations
The Roman State shape of politics. Political power was in the hands of between the Italians and Romans.
the aristocracy—the patricians (puh-TREESH-uhns), • Latins in allied cities, connected
who were wealthy landowners. Patrician families formed clans, as did aristocrats in by elaborate Roman roads, shared
early Greece. Patrician men dominated the affairs of state, provided military lead- citizenship, including taxation, but
ership in time of war, and monopolized knowledge of law and legal procedure. did not have the right to vote or hold
office unless they moved to Rome,
The common people of Rome, the plebeians (plee-BEE-ahns), were free citizens
in which case they did acquire
with a voice in politics, but they could not hold high political office or marry into full citizenship.
patrician families. While some plebeian merchants rivaled the patricians in wealth,
most were poor artisans, small farmers, and landless urban dwellers.
The chief magistrates of the republic were the two consuls, elected for one-year
terms. At first the consulship was open only to patrician men. The consuls com- patricians The aristocracy; wealthy
manded the army in battle, administered state business, and supervised financial af- landowners who held political power.
fairs. When the consuls were away from Rome, praetors (PRAY-ters) could act in their plebeians The common people of
place. Otherwise, the praetors dealt primarily with the administration of justice. Rome who had few of the patricians’
After the age of overseas conquest, the Romans divided the Mediterranean advantages.
area into provinces governed by ex-consuls and ex-praetors. Because of their expe- consuls The two chief Roman
rience in Roman politics, they were well suited to administer the affairs of the magistrates.
provincials and to fit Roman law and custom into new contexts.
Other officials included quaestors (KWEH-ster), who took charge of the public
treasury and prosecuted criminals in the popular courts; censors, whose many re-
sponsibilities included the supervision of public morals, the power to determine
who lawfully could sit in the senate, the registration of citizens, and the leasing of
public contracts; and the aediles (AY-dials), who supervised the streets and markets
and presided over public festivals.
Perhaps the greatest institution of the republic was the senate, which had orig- senate Originating under the
inated under the Etruscans as a council of noble elders who advised the king. Etruscans, it was a council of noble
elders who advised the king.
During the republic the senate advised the consuls and other magistrates. Because
the senate sat year after year, while magistrates changed annually, it provided sta-
bility and experienced counsel. Technically, the senate could not pass legislation;
it could only offer its advice. But increasingly, because of the senate’s prestige, its
advice came to have the force of law.
The Romans created several assemblies, through which men elected magis-
natural law A universal law that could trates and passed legislation. The comitia centuriata (kuh-MISH-ee-uh cent-ur-EE-
be applied to all people and societies. ah-tah) was a popular assembly organized by centuries, which were both military
Struggle of the Orders A great social companies and political voting blocs. The patricians possessed the majority of
conflict that developed between centuries and could easily outvote the plebeians. In 471 b.c.e. plebeian men won
patricians and plebeians; the plebeians the right to meet in an assembly of their own, the concilium plebis, and to pass
wanted real political representation and ordinances.
safeguards against patrician domination.
One of the most important achievements of the Romans was their development
tribunes The people whom plebeians of a body of law. Roman assemblies added to the law, and praetors interpreted it.
were able to elect; tribunes would in turn The spirit of the law aimed at protecting the property, lives, and reputations of
protect the plebeians from the arbitrary
conduct of patrician magistrates.
citizens, and redressing wrongs. As the Romans came into more frequent contact
with foreigners, the praetors adopted aspects of other legal systems and resorted to
paterfamilias A term that means far the law of equity—what they thought was right and just to all parties. By the time
more than merely father, it indicates the of the late republic, Roman jurists were reaching decisions on the basis of the
oldest, dominant male of the family, one
who held nearly absolute power over the Stoic concept of natural law, a universal law that could be applied to all societies.
lives of his family as long as he lived.
The inequality between plebeians and patricians led to

Sec tion Review Social Conflict a conflict known as the Struggle of the Orders. Rather
• The Roman political ideal was “Senatus
in Rome than using violence to achieve their goals, the plebe-
populusque Romanum” or “SPQR” ians leveraged their power as a group. The patricians also responded peacefully,
(“the Roman senate and people”), ultimately resorting to a practical compromise.
which meant they valued shared
government over a monarchy. The first showdown between plebeians and patricians came, according to tra-
dition, in 494 b.c.e. To force the patricians to grant concessions, the plebeians lit-
• In the early republic, political power
was in the hands of wealthy men— erally walked out of Rome and refused to serve in the army. The plebeians’ general
patricians—who were elected for strike worked, and the patricians made important concessions. They allowed patri-
one-year terms as consuls, while the cians and plebeians to marry one another. They recognized the right of plebeians
plebeians (the common people) were to elect their own officials, the tribunes (trib-YOONS), who could bring plebeian
free but could not hold high office or grievances to the senate for resolution. And they gave up their legal monopoly,
marry into patrician families.
publishing the law and legal procedures so that plebeians could also argue cases
• The senate advised the consuls and in court.
other magistrates, providing stability,
and while initially it could not pass Further reforms followed after a ten-year battle. Wealthy plebeians wanted the
legislation, due to its reputation its opportunity to provide political leadership for the state. They demanded that the
advice later came to have the force patricians allow them access to all the magistracies of the state. If they could hold
of law. the consulship, they could also sit in the senate and advise on policy. They won
• The development of Roman law, added the right to one of the two annual consul positions. Though decisive, this victory
to by assemblies and interpreted by did not automatically end the Struggle of the Orders. That happened only in
praetors, included the adoption of the 287 b.c.e. with the passage of a law that gave the resolutions of the concilium
law of equity and the concept of
“natural law,” which provided equal plebis the force of law for patricians and plebeians alike.
justice for all involved. The compromise established a new nobility shared by wealthy plebeians and
• The Struggle of the Orders was a patricians. They were both groups of aristocrats who had simply agreed to share
conflict between the plebeians and the the great offices of power within the republic. This would lead not to major politi-
patricians, during which the plebeians cal reform but to an extension of aristocratic rule.
went on strike and won the right to The Struggle of the Orders made all male citizens equal before the law, but a
elect their own officials (tribunes), to man’s independence was limited by the power that the male head of the family,
hold one of the two annual consul
positions, and to legal equality. termed the paterfamilias (pat-er-fuh-MEE-lee-uhs), had over him. This was also
true for all women, who even as adults were always under the legal guardianship
• The paterfamilias was the male head of
the family and held absolute power over of some man. The paterfamilias held nearly absolute power over the lives of his
the lives of his wife and children as long wife and children as long as he lived. He could legally kill his wife for adultery, or
as he lived. divorce her at will. He could kill his children or sell them into slavery. Until the
paterfamilias died, his sons could not even own property.
Roman Expansion 91
Roman Expansion
How did the Romans take control of the Mediterranean world?
Once the Romans had settled their internal affairs, they turned their attention
outward. As seen earlier, they had already come to terms with the Italic peoples in
Latium. Only later did Rome achieve primacy over its Latin allies, partly because
of successful diplomacy and partly because of overwhelming military power. In
282 b.c.e. Rome expanded even farther in Italy and extended its power across the
sea to Sicily, Corsica (KAWR-si-kuh), and Sardinia (sahr-DIN-ee-uh).
In only twenty years, from 282 to 262 b.c.e., the Ro-

Italy Becomes Roman mans established a string of colonies throughout Italy,
some of them populated by Romans and others by Lat-
ins. Those living closest to Rome were incorporated into the Roman state. They
enjoyed the full franchise and citizenship that the Romans themselves possessed.
Those Italians who lived farther afield were bound by treaty with the Romans and
were considered allies. Although they received lesser rights of active citizenship,
the allies retained their right of local self-government. Through these contacts—
social, political, and legal—Rome and the rest of Italy began to share similar views
of their common welfare.
In 282 b.c.e., when the Romans had reached southern

Overseas Conquest Italy, they embarked upon a series of wars that left them
(282–146 B.C.E.) the rulers of the Mediterranean world (see Map 5.2).
These wars became fiercer and were fought on a larger scale than those in Italy.
Though the Romans sometimes declared war reluctantly, they nonetheless felt the
need to dominate, to eliminate any state that could threaten them. Yet they did not
map out grandiose strategies for world conquest but rather responded to situations
as they arose.
The Samnite wars had drawn the Romans into the political world of southern
Italy. In 282 b.c.e., alarmed by the powerful newcomer, the Greek city of Taren-
tum (tuh-REN-tuhm) in southern Italy called for help from Pyrrhus (PEER-uhs),
king of Epirus (eh-PAHY-ruhs) in western Greece. A relative of Alexander the
Great and an excellent general, Pyrrhus won two furious battles but suffered heavy
casualties—thus the phrase Pyrrhic victory for a victory involving severe losses. Pyrrhic victory A phrase for a victory
Against Pyrrhus’s army the Romans threw new legions, and in the end manpower involving severe losses, stemming from
the victories of Pyrrhus, which were won
proved decisive. In 275 b.c.e. the Romans drove Pyrrhus from Italy and extended despite major casualties.
their sway over southern Italy. They then needed to secure the island of Sicily (SIS-
uh-lee) in order to block the northward expansion of Carthage (KAHR-thij).
By 264 b.c.e. Carthage was the unrivaled power of the

The Punic Wars western Mediterranean. It had created and defended a
and Beyond mercantile empire that stretched from western Sicily
(264–133 B.C.E.) to beyond Gibraltar. The battle for Sicily set the stage
for the First Punic (PYOO-nik) War between Rome and Carthage, two powers First Punic War A war between Rome
expanding into the same area. The First Punic War lasted for twenty-three years and Carthage that lasted 23 years.
(264–241 b.c.e.). The Romans quickly learned that they could not conquer Sicily
°N
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North
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B R I TAI N Sea
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SPA I N (Marseilles) Arretium I LLYR IC U M
Ad
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r
217 B.C.E. ITA LY ti
Corsica c
Saguntum Se T H R AC E PONTUS ARMENIA
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Rome Cannae a AN
Corduba 216 B.C.E. Byzantium A
NI
(Córdoba) N EA R ER Sardinia
M AC E D O N IA
B ITH
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10°W SPA I N Capua Brundisium Pydna
Balearic Is. Tarentum C AP PADOCI A
Gades 168 B.C.E. G A L AT IA Tig
EP I R U S r is
New Carthage Pergamum
Cynoscephalae A N AT O L I A R.
Drepana 197 B.C.E. A S IA Carrhae PAR T H I A
249 B.C.E. 53 B.C.E.
Ephesus Tarsus
Messana Athens Eu
PAM P HYLIA ph
N NIA
Sicily Corinth
CI LI
CIA r at
E TA Carthage ACHAEA LYCIA Antioch es
MAUR Zama
Syracuse R. Susa
202 B.C.E. M Rhodes SY R I A Ctesiphon
N U M I DIA ed Malta
Seleucia N
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PR
Sea Jerusalem Persian

O
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0° N Cyrene Gulf
SU
LA
RI C Y R E N A IC A Alexandria
S Petra
Roman territory in 264 B.C.E. A R A B I A N
SINAI
Roman territory added by 133 B.C.E.
EGY P T D E S E RT 50°E
Roman territory added by 44 B.C.E. S A H A R A
N i le R
Parthian Empire in 44 B.C.E. Red
Major battle Sea
.
10°E 20°E 30°E 40°E
Mapping the Past

Map 5.2 Roman Expansion During the Republic
Previous maps have shown that the Greeks and Macedonians concentrated their energies on opening the East. This map indicates that Rome for the first time looked to the West. [1] What
does this say about the expansion of Roman power in the Mediterranean? [2] What does this foreshadow for the subsequent development of Europe?
Roman Expansion 93
unless they controlled the sea, and so they built a navy. Triumphal Column
They fought seven major naval battles with the Carthagin- of Caius Duilius
ians, won six, and finally wore them down. In 241 b.c.e. This curious monument celebrates
the Romans took possession of Sicily, which became Rome’s naval victory, in the First Punic
their first real province. War. In the battle Caius Duilius (KEY-
The peace treaty between the two powers brought uhs doo-ILL-ee-us) destroyed fifty
Carthaginian ships. He then celebrated
no peace, in part because in 238 b.c.e. the Romans
his success by erecting this column,
took advantage of Carthaginian weakness to seize the
which portrays the prows of the enemy
islands of Sardinia and Corsica. Unable to resist the ships projecting from the column.
Roman move, Carthage looked to Spain to recoup its (Alinari/Art Resource, NY)
fortune. In 237 b.c.e. Hamilcar led an army to Spain
in order to turn it into Carthaginian territory. With
him he took his nineteen-year-old son, Hannibal,
but not before he had led Hannibal to an altar and
made him swear forever to be an enemy to Rome. In
the following years Hamilcar and his son-in-law Hasdru-
bal (HAS-droo-buhl) rebuilt Carthaginian power.
Rome responded in two ways: first, the Romans
made a treaty with Hasdrubal in which the Ebro
River of Spain formed the boundary between
Carthaginian and Roman interests, and second,
the Romans began to extend their own influence
in Spain.
In 221 b.c.e. the young Hannibal became
Carthaginian commander in Spain. When Han-
nibal laid siege to Saguntum (suh-GOON-tum),
which lay within the sphere of Carthaginian in-
terest, the Romans declared war, claiming that
Carthage had attacked a friendly city. So began
the Second Punic War. In 218 b.c.e. Hannibal Second Punic War A war fought
struck first by marching more than a thousand miles over the Alps into Italy. Once between Carthage, led by the young
Hannibal, and Rome. By the end of the
there, he defeated one Roman army at the Battle of Trebia and later another at the war in 202 b.c.e., Rome was victorious,
Battle of Lake Trasimene. Hannibal won his greatest victory at the Battle of Can- ensuring that Roman heritage would
nae (KAN-ee), in which he inflicted some forty thousand casualties on the Ro- pass on to the Western world.
mans. He then spread devastation throughout Italy, and a number of cities in
central and southern Italy rebelled against Rome. Yet Hannibal failed to crush
Rome’s iron circle of Latium, Etruria, and Samnium. The wisdom of Rome’s po-
litical policy of extending citizenship to its allies showed itself in these dark hours.
And Rome fought back.
In 210 b.c.e. Rome found its answer to Hannibal in the young commander
Scipio, later better known as Scipio Africanus. Scipio copied Hannibal’s methods
of mobile warfare, streamlining the legions by making their components capable
of independent action and introducing new weapons. In the following years,
Scipio operated in Spain, which in 207 b.c.e. he wrested from the Carthaginians.
Also in 207 b.c.e. the Romans sealed Hannibal’s fate in Italy. At the Battle of
Metaurus, the Romans destroyed a major Carthaginian army coming to reinforce
Hannibal. Scipio then struck directly at Carthage itself, prompting the Carthagin-
ians to recall Hannibal from Italy to defend the homeland.
In 202 b.c.e., near the town of Zama (see Map 5.2), Scipio defeated Hannibal
in one of the world’s truly decisive battles. Scipio’s victory meant that the world of
the western Mediterranean would henceforth be Roman. The Second Punic War
contained the seeds of still other wars. Unabated fear of Carthage led to the Third
Sec tion Review Punic War, a needless, unjust, and savage conflict that ended in 146 b.c.e. when
Scipio Aemilianus (SKIP-ee-oh AY-mil-ee-an-us), grandson of Scipio Africanus,
• Romans established colonies destroyed the old hated rival.
throughout Italy; they incorporated
those closest into the Roman state,
During the war with Hannibal, the Romans had invaded Spain, a peninsula
granting full citizenship, while Italians rich in material resources and the home of fierce warriors. When the Roman le-
who lived farther away were considered gions tried to reduce the Spanish tribes, they met with bloody and determined re-
allies and allowed the right to local sistance. Not until 133 b.c.e., after years of brutal and ruthless warfare, did Scipio
self-government. Aemilianus finally conquer Spain.
• The Romans wanted to be free of any
state that could threaten them; instead
of looking for conquests they acted
During the Second Punic War, King Philip V of Mace-
defensively, such as against Pyrrhus, Rome Turns East donia made an alliance with Hannibal against Rome.
the Greek king of Epirus, whose army (211–133 B.C.E.)
defeated the Romans in several battles, Despite the mortal struggle in the West, the Romans
but suffered such losses that the found the strength to turn eastward to settle accounts. Their first significant victory
Romans eventually succeeded in against the Macedonians came in 197 b.c.e. Piece by piece the Hellenistic king-
driving it out of Italy.
doms and city-states fell to Rome, first Sparta, then the Seleucid kingdom, the
• The First Punic War between Carthage Achaean League, the Macedonian kingdom, and finally, in 133 b.c.e., Pergamum
and Rome over control of Sicily
became a battle of the sea, which the
and the Ptolemic kingdom of Egypt.
Romans finally won, gaining Sicily.
• The peace treaty with Carthage did not
last and during the Second Punic War, Old Values and Greek Culture
the Carthaginians under Hannibal
defeated Rome’s legions at Cannae and How did Roman society change during the age of expansion?
devastated much of Italy, but were
ultimately unable to conquer Rome’s
Rome had conquered the Mediterranean world, but some Romans considered
power in Latium, Etruria, and
Samnium. that victory a misfortune. The historian Sallust (86–34 b.c.e.), writing from hind-
sight, complained that the acquisition of an empire was the beginning of Rome’s
• The Roman Scipio Africanus defeated
the Carthaginians by attacking Spain troubles: “The Romans had easily borne labor, danger, uncertainty, and hardship.
and enemy armies in Italy and then To them leisure, riches—otherwise desirable—proved to be burdens and torments.
Hannibal’s army at Zama, while an So at first money, then desire for power grew great. These things were a sort of
unnecessary Third Punic War destroyed cause of all evils.”1
Carthage and years later Scipio’s son
Indeed, in the second century b.c.e. the Romans learned that they could not
Scipio Aemilianus conquered Spain.
return to what they fondly considered a simple life. They were world rulers. They
• The Romans fought the Macedonians
had to change their institutions, social patterns, and way of thinking to meet the
because they had made an alliance
with Hannibal and by 133 b.c.e. the new era. But in the end Rome triumphed here just as it had on the battlefield, for
Hellenistic kingdoms, Pergamum, and out of the turmoil of change would come the pax Romana—“Roman peace.”
Ptolemaic Egypt fell to Rome. How did the Romans of the day meet these challenges? How did they lead
their lives and cope with these momentous changes? Obviously there are as many
answers to these questions as there were Romans. Yet two men represent the major
trends of the second century b.c.e. Cato the Elder shared the mentality of those
who longed for the good old days and idealized the traditional agrarian way of
life. Scipio Aemilianus led those who embraced the new urban life, with its eager
acceptance of Greek culture.
Marcus Cato (MAHR-kuhs KAY-toh) (234–149 b.c.e.)

Cato and the was born a plebeian, but his talent and energy carried
Traditional Ideal him to Rome’s highest offices. He created an image of
himself as the bearer of “traditional” Roman virtues. His description of his life is
partly invented, but its details reflect the way many Romans actually lived.
Because of his political aspirations, Cato often walked to the marketplace of
the nearby town and defended anyone who wished his help. He received no fees
Old Values and Greek Culture 95
for these services, but in return Cato’s clients gave him their political support or
their votes whenever he asked for them. This practice of a patron offering his pro-
tection in return for support from a client is know as clientage. The notion of cli-
entage was a particularly Roman custom that helped men of lower social status
advance themselves and advance the careers of their patrons.
Cato was married, as were almost all Roman citizens. Grooms were generally
somewhat older than their brides, who often married in their early teens. There
were two types of marriage in Rome, one of which put the woman under control
of her husband’s family and one of which kept her under her father’s control. Each
had advantages and disadvantages for women.
Women could inherit property under Roman law, though they generally re-
ceived a smaller portion of any family inheritance than their brothers did. A wom-
an’s inheritance usually came as a dowry on marriage. By the time of Cato, both
men and women could initiate divorce. Women appear to have gained greater
control over their dowries, perhaps in response to the fact that Rome’s military
conquests meant that many husbands were away for long periods of time and
women needed some say over family finances.
Until the age of seven, children were under their mother’s care. During this
time the matron began to educate her daughters in the management of the house-
hold. After the age of seven, sons—and in many wealthy households daughters
too—began to receive formal education. Formal education for wealthy children
Temple of Mater Matuta

This round temple was dedicated to Mater Matuta (MAY-ter ma-TWO-tah), a very old Roman mother goddess. Its shape and
architectural ornamentation indicate Hellenistic influence. (Vanni/Art Resource, NY)
was generally in the hands of tutors, who were often Greek slaves. By the late re-
public, there were also a few schools.
The agricultural year followed the sun and the stars—the farmer’s calendar. The
main money crops, at least for rich soils, were wheat and flax. Forage crops included
clover, vetch, and alfalfa. Prosperous farmers like Cato raised olive trees chiefly for
the oil. They also raised grapevines for the production of wine. Cato and his neigh-
bors harvested their cereal crops in summer and their grapes in autumn.
An influx of slaves resulted from Rome’s wars and conquests. Races were not
enslaved because the Romans thought them inferior. The black African slave was
treated no worse—and no better—than the Spaniard. For the talented slave the Ro-
manumission The freeing of individual mans always held out the hope of eventual freedom. Manumission—the freeing of
slaves by their masters. individual slaves by their masters—became so common that it was limited by law.
For Cato and most other Romans, religion played an important part in life.
Originally the Romans thought of the gods as invisible, shapeless natural forces.
Only through Etruscan and Greek influence did Roman deities take on human
form. Jupiter, the sky-god, and his wife Juno became equivalent to the Greek Zeus
and Hera. The gods of the Romans were stern, powerful, and aloof. But as long as
the Romans honored the cults of their gods, they could expect divine favor. The
shrine of the goddess Vesta (VES-tuh), for example, was
tended by six so-called vestal virgins, chosen from patri-
cian families. Roman military losses were sometimes
blamed on inattention by the vestal virgins, a link be-
tween female honor and the Roman state.
Along with the great gods the Romans believed in spir-
its who haunted fields, forests, crossroads, and even the
home itself. Some of these deities were hostile; only magic
could ward them off. The spirits of the dead, like ghosts in
modern horror films, frequented places where they had
lived. They too had to be placated but were ordinarily be-
nign. (See the feature “Listening to the Past: A Magic
Charm” on pages 105–106.)
The old-fashioned ideals that

Scipio Aemilianus: Cato represented came into
Greek Culture and conflict with a new urban
Urban Life culture that reflected Helle-
nistic influences. The spoils of war went to build baths,
theaters, and other places of amusement, and Romans
and Italian townspeople began to spend more of their
time in leisure pursuits. The poet Horace (HAWR-iss)
African Acrobat
Conquest and prosperity brought exotic
pleasure to Rome. Every feature of this sculpture
is exotic. The young African woman and her daring
gymnastic pose would catch anyone’s attention.
And to add to the spice of her act, she performs
using a live crocodile as her platform. Americans
would have loved it. (Courtesy of the Trustees of the
British Museum)
Old Values and Greek Culture 97
(64–8 b.c.e.) summed it up well: “Captive Greece captured her rough conqueror
and introduced the arts into rustic Latium.”
One of the most avid devotees of Hellenism and the new was Scipio Aemilia-
nus, the destroyer of Carthage. Scipio realized that broad and worldly views had to
replace the old Roman narrowness. Rome was no longer a small city on the Tiber;
it was the capital of the world. Scipio broke with the past in the conduct of his
political career, choosing a more personal style of politics, one that reflected his
own views and looked unflinchingly at the broader problems that the success of
Rome brought to its people. Perhaps more than anyone else of his day, Scipio
represented the new Roman—imperial, cultured, and independent.
In his education and interests, too, Scipio broke with the past. As a boy he had
received the traditional Roman training in Latin and the law. He mastered the
fundamentals of rhetoric and learned how to throw the javelin, fight in armor, and
ride a horse. But later Scipio also learned Greek and promoted the spread of Hel-
lenism in Roman society. He became the center of the Scipionic (SKIP-ee-ohn-ik)
Circle, a small group of Greek and Roman artists, philosophers, historians, and
poets. Conservatives like Cato tried to stem the rising tide of Hellenism, but men
like Scipio carried the day and helped make the heritage of Greece an abiding
factor in Roman life.
The new Hellenism profoundly stimulated the growth and development of
Roman art. Soldiers returned from the Hellenistic East with Greek paintings and
sculpture to grace Roman temples, public buildings, and private homes. Roman
artists copied many aspects of Greek art, but their emphasis on realistic portraiture
carried on a native tradition.
Roman Table Manners

This mosaic is a floor that can never be swept clean. It whimsically suggests what a dining room floor looked like
after a lavish dinner and also tells something about the menu: a chicken head, a wishbone, and remains of various
seafood, vegetables, and fruit are easily recognizable. (Museo Gregoriano Profano, Vatican Museums/Scala/Art Resource, NY)
In literature, the Greek influence was also strong. Fabius Pictor (FAY-bee-us
PIK-ter) (second half of the third century b.c.e.), a senator, wrote the first history
Sec tion Review
of Rome in Greek. Other Romans translated Greek classics into Latin. Still others,
• Marcus Cato was a plebian who such as the poet Ennius (EN-ee-us) (239–169 b.c.e.), the father of Latin poetry,
advanced himself politically through adapted many of Euripides’ tragedies for the Roman stage. The Roman dramatist
clientage, and as a successful farmer
Terence (ca. 195–159 b.c.e.), a member of the Scipionic Circle, wrote comedies
represented traditional Roman virtues.
of refinement and grace that owed their essentials to Greek models. In contrast,
• By the time of Cato, women could
Plautus (PLAW-tus) (ca. 254–184 b.c.e.) brought a bawdy humor to his reworkings
inherit land, initiate divorce, and had
greater control over their dowries, while of Greek plays.
children over age seven began formal During the second century b.c.e. the Greek custom of bathing also became a
education, and so many slaves earned Roman passion. Large buildings containing pools and gymnasia went up in great
their freedom that lawmakers legally numbers, and the baths became an essential part of the Roman city. They became
limited their ability to gain it.
even more elaborate several centuries later. Architects built intricate systems of
• Unlike the conservative Cato, Scipio aqueducts to supply the bathing establishments with water. Bathing establish-
Aemilianus represented the new Rome
ments were more than just places to take a bath. They also contained snack bars
and helped promote Roman art,
literature, culture, and independence. and halls where people chatted and read and even libraries and lecture halls. The
baths were socially important places where men and women went to see and be
• Roman baths became very elaborate
and socially important places with their seen. Social climbers tried to talk to the right people and wangle invitations to
own water supplied by aqueducts; they dinner; politicians took advantage of the occasion to discuss the affairs of the day;
often included snack bars, meeting marriages were negotiated by wealthy fathers. Prostitutes added to the attraction of
places, libraries, and prostitutes. many baths. These women might be slaves, members of the lower classes, or ac-
• Rome had conquered the tresses and entertainers who needed more income.
Mediterranean world but some, such as Did Hellenism and new social customs corrupt the Romans? Perhaps the
Marcus Cato, longed for the simple life
best answer is this: the Roman state and the empire it ruled continued to exist for
from before these conquests; others,
such as Scipio Aemelianus, enjoyed six more centuries. Rome did not collapse; the state continued to prosper. The
the new luxuries. golden age of literature was still before it. The high tide of its prosperity still lay in
the future.
The Late Republic (133–31 b.c.e.)

What were the main problems and achievements of the late republic?
The wars of conquest created serious problems for the Romans, some of the most
pressing of which were political. The republican constitution had suited the needs
of a simple city-state but was inadequate to meet the requirements of Rome’s new
position in international affairs. Officials had to be appointed to govern the prov-
inces and administer the law. These officials and administrative organs had to find
places in the constitution. Armies had to be provided for defense, and a system of
tax collection had to be created.
Other political problems were equally serious. During the wars Roman gener-
als commanded huge numbers of troops for long periods of time. These men of
great power and prestige were on the point of becoming too mighty for the state to
control. Although Rome’s Italian allies had borne much of the burden of the fight-
ing, they received fewer rewards than did Roman officers and soldiers. Italians
began to agitate for full Roman citizenship, including the right to vote. In addi-
tion, the armies became weaker as a result of a complex shift in land ownership.
These problems, complex and explosive, largely account for the turmoil of the
closing years of the republic. This period produced some of Rome’s most famous
figures: the Gracchi (GRAK-hi), Marius, Sulla (SUHL-uh), Cicero, Pompey (POM-
pee), and Julius Caesar (JOOL-yuhs SEE-zar), among others. In one way or another,
each of these men attempted to solve Rome’s problems. Yet personal ambition
often clashed with patriotism to create political tension throughout the period.
The Late Republic (133–31 B.C.E.) 99
Hannibal’s operations and the warfare in Italy had left

Unrest in Rome the countryside a shambles. The prolonged fighting
and Italy had also drawn untold numbers of Roman and Italian
men away from their farms for long periods. The families of these soldiers could
not keep the land under full cultivation.
When the legionaries returned to their farms in Italy, they encountered an ap-
palling situation. All too often their farms looked like the farms of people they had
conquered. Two courses of action were open to them. They could rebuild as their
forefathers had done, or they could take advantage of a new alternative and sell
their holdings to wealthy investors who bought up small farms to create huge es-
tates, which the Romans called latifundia (lat-uh-FUHN-dee-uh). latifundia Huge Roman estates created
Selling their land appealed to the veterans for a variety of reasons. Many veter- by buying up several small farms.
ans had tasted the rich city life of the Hellenistic states and were reluctant to settle
down to a dull life on the farm. Often their farms were so badly damaged that re-
building hardly seemed worthwhile. Besides, it was hard to make big profits from
small farms.
Most veterans migrated to the cities, especially to Rome. Although some found
work, most did not. Industry and small manufacturing were generally in the hands
of slaves. Even when work was available, slave labor kept the wages of free men low.
Instead of a new start, veterans and their families encountered slum conditions.
This trend held ominous consequences for the strength of Rome’s armies. The
Romans had always believed that only landowners should serve in the army, for
only they had something to fight for. Once the war veterans sold their land, they
became ineligible for further military service. The landless ex-legionaries wanted
a new start, and they were willing to support any leader who would provide it.
One man who recognized the plight of Rome’s peasant farmers and urban
poor was an aristocrat, Tiberius Gracchus (tie-BEER-ee-uhs GRAK-uhs) (163–
133 b.c.e.). Appalled by what he saw, Tiberius scolded his countrymen about the
legionaries: “[N]ot a man of them has an hereditary altar, not one of all these
many Romans an ancestral tomb, but they fight and die to support others in luxury,
and though they are styled masters of the world, they have not a single clod of earth
that is their own.”2
After his election as tribune in 133 b.c.e., Tiberius proposed that public land
be given to the poor in small lots. Although his reform enjoyed the support of some
very distinguished and popular aristocrats, it angered those who had usurped large
tracts of public land for their own use. They had no desire to give any of it back, so
they bitterly resisted Tiberius’s efforts. This was to be expected, yet he made addi-
tional problems for himself. He introduced his land bill in the concilium plebis
without consulting the senate. When King Attalus III left the kingdom of Per-
gamum to the Romans in his will, Tiberius had the money appropriated to finance
his reforms—another slap at the senate. A large body of senators, led by the ponti-
fex maximus (the chief priest), decided to kill Tiberius in cold blood. It was a black
day in Roman history. The very people who directed the affairs of state and admin-
istered the law had taken the law into their own hands. The death of Tiberius was
the beginning of an era of political violence. In the end that violence would bring
down the republic.
Although Tiberius was dead, his land bill became law. Furthermore, Tiberius’s
brother Gaius Gracchus (GEY-uhs GRAK-uhs) (153–121 b.c.e.) also became trib-
une and demanded even more extensive reform than had his brother. To help
the urban poor Gaius pushed legislation to provide them with cheap grain for
bread. He defended his brother’s land law and proposed that Rome send many of
its poor and propertyless people out to form colonies in southern Italy. Gaius even
went so far as to urge that all Italians be granted full rights of Roman citizenship.
This measure provoked a storm of opposition, and it was not passed in Gaius’s
lifetime. Had the senate listened to Gaius, it could have prevented a later bloody
conflict known as the Social War (91–88 b.c.e.). Yet like his brother Tiberius,
Gaius aroused a great deal of personal opposition. To many he seemed too radical;
political opponents considered him belligerent and headstrong. When Gaius
failed in 121 b.c.e. to win the tribunate for the third time, he feared for his life. In
desperation he armed his staunchest supporters, whereupon the senate ordered
the consul Opimius to restore order. Opimius did so by having Gaius killed, along
with three thousand of his supporters who opposed the senate’s order. Once again
the cause of reform had met with violence.
The death of Gaius brought little peace, and trouble came from two sources:
the outbreak of new wars in the Mediterranean basin and further political unrest
in Rome. For five years, the Roman legions made little headway against the rebel-
lious North African kingdom of Jugurtha (joo-GUR-thuh). Then in 107 b.c.e.
Gaius Marius (GEY-uhs MAIR-ee-uhs), an Italian new man (a politician not from
the traditional Roman aristocracy), became consul. Marius’s values were those of
the military camp. He took the unusual but not wholly unprecedented step of re-
cruiting an army by permitting landless men to serve in the legions. In 106 b.c.e.
Marius and his new army handily defeated Jugurtha.
An unexpected war broke out in the following year when two groups of Ger-
man peoples moved into Gaul and later into northern Italy. After the Germans
had defeated Roman armies sent to repel them, Marius was again elected consul,
even though he was legally ineligible. From 104 to 100 b.c.e. Marius annually held
the consulship, putting unprecedented power into a Roman commander’s hands.
Before engaging the Germans, Marius encouraged enlistments by promising
his volunteers land after the war. Poor and landless veterans flocked to him, and
together they conquered the Germans by 101 b.c.e. When Marius proposed a bill
to grant land to his veterans, the senate refused to act, in effect turning its back on
the soldiers of Rome. It was a disastrous mistake. Henceforth the legionaries ex-
pected the commanders—not the senate or the state—to protect their interests.
Another strong general, Sulla, was elected to consul in 88 b.c.e. after putting
down the Italian allies in the Social War. While Sulla was away from Rome fight-
ing the last of the rebels, factions agitating on behalf of Marius had him deposed
from his consulship. He immediately marched on Rome and restored order, but it
was an ominous sign of the deterioration of Roman politics and political ideals.
Order restored, Sulla in 88 b.c.e. led an army to Asia Minor where Roman rule
was being challenged. In Sulla’s absence, rioting and political violence again ex-
ploded in Rome. Marius and his supporters marched on Rome and launched a
reign of terror.
Although Marius died shortly after his return to power, his supporters con-
tinued to hold Rome. Sulla returned in 82 b.c.e., and after a brief but intense
civil war, he entered Rome and ordered a ruthless butchery of his opponents.
He also proclaimed himself dictator. He launched many political and judicial
reforms, including strengthening the senate while weakening the tribunate, and
he voluntarily abdicated his dictatorship in 79 b.c.e. Yet Sulla the political
reformer proved far less influential than Sulla the successful general and dictator.
Civil war was to be the constant lot of Rome for the next fifty years, until the re-
publican constitution gave way to the empire of Augustus (aw-GUHS-tuhs) in
27 b.c.e. (See the feature “Individuals in Society: Quintus Sertorius (KWIN-tuhs
ser-TAWR-ee-uhs).”)
One figure who stands apart from the struggles of the late Republic is Cicero
(106–43 b.c.e.), a practical politician whose greatest legacy to the Roman world
Quintus Sertorius
Q uintus Sertorius (126–73 b.c.e.), son of a promi-
nent Italian family, stands as an example of a Ro-
man leader caught up in the political and military
eled his Spanish state along Ro-
man civil lines but under his
leadership. Spain had never
upheavals of the day. He became a rebel against Rome seen so many military, cultural,
while bringing Roman influences to the province of and civil developments in such a
Spain. Sertorius launched his public career in Rome, short time.
where he mastered Roman law and became a gifted The Romans to whom he had
military officer. When two barbarian tribes invaded bestowed a home began to insult,
Gaul in 105 b.c.e., he fought so effectively that his abil- punish, and abuse the Spaniards
ity and valor brought him to the attention of senior Ro- while doing everything possible
man military commanders. These events honed his to thwart Sertorius’s plans. Then
martial skills and acquainted him with the new peoples they rebelled against him, hop-
gradually entering western Europe. ing either to topple him and
Sertorius’s success in Gaul led him in 97 b.c.e. to reign in his place or to return This statue of Quintus Sertorius
higher command in Spain. From that time until his the province to Roman rule. still bears testimony to Rome’s
death, his destiny and Spain’s would be intertwined. He, Finally, with a treachery that respect for his efforts to unite
like Marius, Sulla, and other notable men, was swept up matched that of the conspirators Romans and Spaniards.
(Courtesy, Luca Bonacina)
in this vast and chaotic episode in republican history. against Caesar, some Romans
He chose the wrong side and upon defeat fled to Spain, who were still considered loyal
where he worked to establish his own independent assassinated Sertorius at a ban-
authority. quet in 73 b.c.e. Roman generals from the East easily
A surprising accident put another tool of authority took control of Spain.
into Sertorius’s hands. As the story goes, one of his sol- Death and defeat did not erase Sertorius’s achieve-
diers, while hunting, encountered a white fawn and pre- ments in Spain. He introduced the region to Greco-
sented it to Sertorius. Sertorius declared that the animal Roman culture. He gave the land and its peoples a civil
was the gift of Diana whose attributes included the gifts government that united them. He turned their tribal
of wisdom and prophecy. This divine endorsement en- hordes into an army along Roman lines. He paved the
hanced his authority among the Spaniards. way for peaceful Spanish inclusion into the quickly
The Roman civil war soon reached Spain. Sertorius’s evolving Roman Empire.
reputation and exploits persuaded many Spaniards to
invite him to lead them against the Romans. As com-
mander, he trained Spanish troups in Roman military
tactics. His army’s success prompted many Romans to
switch sides. Even some senators left Rome to join him. 1. How did Sertorius create a state in Spain?
Welcoming them with honor, he got them involved in 2. What was his legacy to Spain, Rome, and Western
the civil government that he introduced. Sertorius mod- civilization in general?
101
and to Western civilization is his mass of political and oratorical writings. Yet
Cicero commanded no legions, and only legions commanded respect.
First Triumvirate A political alliance

between Caesar, Crassus, and Pompey
in which they agreed to advance one Sulla’s real political heirs were Pompey and Julius
another’s interests. Civil War Caesar, with at least Caesar realizing that the days of
the old republican constitution were numbered. Pom-
Sec tion Review pey, a man of boundless ambition, began his career as one of Sulla’s lieutenants.
After his army put down a rebellion in Spain, he himself threatened to rebel un-
• The Roman countryside suffered less the senate allowed him to run for consul. He and another ambitious politi-
greatly from the prolonged fighting and
much of the farmland was in shambles, cian, Crassus (KRAS-uhs), pooled political resources, and both won the consulship.
so returning legionaries often sold their They dominated Roman politics until the rise of Julius Caesar, who became
farms to wealthy investors who created consul in 59 b.c.e. Together the three concluded a political alliance, the First
huge estates called latifundia. Triumvirate (try-UHM-ver-it), in which they agreed to advance one another’s
• Tiberius Gracchus and later his brother interests.
Gaius sought land reform for the poor The man who cast the longest shadow over these troubled years was Julius
but aristocrats and the senate opposed Caesar (100–44 b.c.e.). Born of a noble family, he received an excellent educa-
them vigorously, eventually having
them both killed. tion, which he furthered by studying in Greece with some of the most eminent
teachers of the day. Caesar was a superb orator, and his affable personality and wit
• Gaius Marius became consul and
gained power by allowing non- made him popular. Caesar launched his military career in Spain, where his cour-
landowners into the army and age won the respect and affection of his troops.
promising them land after the war, but In 58 b.c.e. Caesar became governor of Cisalpine Gaul (sis-AL-pine gawl), or
when the senate did not approve this modern northern Italy. By 50 b.c.e. he had conquered all of Gaul, or modern
plan, the legionaries turned their France. By 49 b.c.e. the First Triumvirate had fallen
allegiance to their commanders, not the
senate or state, for protection. apart. Crassus had died in battle, and Caesar and
Pompey, each suspecting the other of treachery,
• In the following years, another general,
Sulla, was elected consul and fought came to blows. The result was a long and bloody
against Marius for control of Rome, civil war that raged from Spain across northern
proclaimed himself dictator and Africa to Egypt.
introduced many political and judicial Egypt, meanwhile, was embroiled in a battle
reforms before voluntarily abdicating for control between brother and sister, Ptolemy
his dictatorship in 79 b.c.e.
XIII and Cleopatra (klee-uh-PA-truh) VII (69–
• Sulla’s political heirs were Pompey, 30 b.c.e.). Cleopatra first allied herself with Pom-
Crassus, and Julius Caesar who formed
the First Triumvirate and agreed to help pey but then switched her alliance to Caesar. The
each other, but following Crassus’ two became lovers as well as allies, and she bore
death Pompey and Caesar suspected him a son. She returned to Rome with Cae-
each other of treason and fought a sar, but was hated by the Roman people as a
bloody civil war. symbol of the immoral East.
• Caesar allied with Egypt’s Cleopatra, Although Pompey enjoyed the official
defeating Pompey’s forces, and made support of the government, Caesar finally de-
himself dictator before his assassination,
which left his grandnephew Octavian feated Pompey’s forces in 45 b.c.e. He had
(later called Augustus) and two overthrown the republic and made himself
lieutenants, Marc Antony and Lepidus, dictator.
to form the Second Triumvirate, Julius Caesar was not merely another vic-
avenging Caesar. torious general. He was determined to make Julius Caesar
• Octavian (Augustus) defeated Antony basic reforms, even at the expense of the old In this bust, the sculptor portrays
and Cleopatra in the naval battle of constitution. He extended citizenship to
Actium (31 b.c.e.), after which the Caesar as a man of power and
couple committed suicide, leaving many of the provincials who had supported intensity. It is a study of determination
Augustus to rule the entire Roman him. He also founded at least twenty colo- and an excellent example of Roman
world. nies, most of which were located in Gaul, portraiture. (Museo Archeologico Nazionale
Spain, and North Africa, in part to cope with Naples/ Scala/Art Resource, NY)
Chapter Review 103
Rome’s burgeoning population. These colonies were important agents in spreading

Roman culture in the western Mediterranean.
In 44 b.c.e. a group of conspirators assassinated Caesar and set off another
round of civil war. Caesar had named his eighteen-year-old grandnephew, Octa-
vian (ok-TAY-vee-uhn)—or Augustus, as he is better known to history—as his heir.
Augustus joined forces with two of Caesar’s lieutenants, Marc Antony and Lepidus
(LEP-ee-dus), in a pact known as the Second Triumvirate, and together they Second Triumvirate A pact between
hunted down and defeated Caesar’s murderers. In the process, however, Augustus Augustus and two of Caesar’s lieutenants,
Marc Antony and Lepidus; together they
and Antony came into conflict. hunted down and defeated Caesar’s
In 41 b.c.e. Antony met Cleopatra, who had returned to Egypt after Julius murderers.
Caesar’s assassination. Though Antony was already married to Augustus’s sister
Octavia, he became Cleopatra’s lover. Antony repudiated Octavia, married Cleo-
patra, and changed his will to favor his children by Cleopatra. Romans turned
against Antony as a traitor and a weakling, and in 31 b.c.e. Augustus defeated the
army and navy of Cleopatra and Antony at the battle of Actium in Greece. The
two committed suicide. This victory put an end to an age of civil war that had
lasted since the days of Sulla.
Chapter Review
How did the Etruscans shape early Roman history? (page 86)
The land of Italy proved kinder to the Romans and their neighbors than did the pen- Key Terms
insula of Hellas to the Greeks. The newcomers settled comfortably on the seven hills toga (p. 87)
of Rome by the banks of the Tiber River. They came into contact with the Etruscans, forum (p. 87)
who had settled in Italy before their arrival. Separate villages soon merged into one
Gauls (p. 87)
city, creating a single community. Under the governance of the more politically and
socially advanced Etruscans, the Romans fully entered the wider world around them. franchise (p. 88)
patricians (p. 89)
plebeians (p. 89)
What was the nature of the Roman republic? (page 89)
consuls (p. 89)
Once established, the Romans created an advanced and flexible political constitu- senate (p. 89)
tion of their own. Their society fell into two principal groups: the aristocratic patricians
who led the community and the commoners (plebeians) who made up the rest of natural law (p. 90)
the citizenry and filled the ranks of the army. The conflict between these two basic Struggle of the Orders (p. 90)
social groups resulted in the Struggle of the Orders, which led to greater rights for the tribunes (p. 90)
plebeians.
paterfamilias (p. 90)
Pyrrhic victory (p. 91)
How did the Romans take control of the Mediterranean world? (page 91) First Punic War (p. 91)
From these beginnings the Romans spread their power and influence through the Second Punic War (p. 93)
rest of Italy. Beginning as conquerors, the Romans learned to use alliances and politi- manumission (p. 96)
cal agreements to unite their efforts with those of other Italian communities to create latifundia (p. 99)
a common policy. They put this association on a formal political basis to create a gov-
ernment shared by Romans and non-Romans. Looking beyond Italy, the Romans First Triumvirate (p. 102)
fought three hard wars with the Carthaginians, their Punic neighbors in North Africa. Second Triumvirate (p. 103)
In the process they included the Greeks of southern Italy in their growing empire. As
these wars spread to western Europe, the Romans won control of Spain and Gaul
(modern France). Further warfare next took them eastward into the Hellenistic world.
Conquest followed conquest to create the nucleus of the Roman Empire.
How did Roman society change during the age of expansion? (page 94)
These tumultuous events fundamentally reshaped Roman society. Though some Ro-
mans longed for what they saw as simpler times, many were dazzled by Hellenistic
sophistication and ways of life. They learned to appreciate the arts and intellectual
pursuits of the older Greek and Eastern cultures. They joined fully the broad cultural
world of the Mediterranean, all the while making their own contribution.
What were the main problems and achievements of the late republic? (page 98)
In some ways the Romans had moved too far and too fast from their small beginnings.
Their empire had become too big for them to manage easily. Their constitution and
political institutions could no longer adequately cope with the burdens and pressures
that imperial life brought. After a series of bloody civil wars, the general Octavian, soon
to be more generally known as Augustus, restored order and forever changed the na-
ture of Roman life and government.
Notes
1. Sallust, War with Catiline 10.1–3. John Buckler is the translator of all uncited quotations from
a foreign language in Chapters 1–6.
2. Plutarch, Life of Tiberius Gracchus 9.5–6.

A Magic Charm
in the midriff, one in the hands, two in the genital
organs, two in the soles, saying each time: “I am
T he pursuit of love has one of the oldest histories in the
world. When their own efforts failed, lovers of the past
might turn to magic to win the hearts of the beloved. The
piercing such and such a member of NN, so that
she may remember me, NN alone.” Take a lead
following text of a love charm comes from a papyrus found in tablet and write on it the same formula and recite
Egypt and dates from the period of the Roman Empire. The it. Tie the lead leaf [i.e., the lead tablet] to the two
applicant, in this case a man, asks the spirits of the under- creatures with thread from the loom after making
world to assist him. three hundred sixty-five knots, saying, as you have
learned: “Abrasax, hold her fast.” As the sun is set-
ting, you must place it near the tomb of a person
Take wax [or clay] from a potter’s wheel and who has died an untimely or a violent death, along
form two figures, one male and one female. Make with the flowers of the season.
the male one look like Ares in arms, holding a The formula to be written and recited: “I am
sword in his left hand and pointing it at her right handing over this binding spell to you, gods of the
collarbone. Her arms must be (tied) behind her underworld, hyesemigadon and kore peerseph-
back, and she must kneel. Fasten the magical sub- one ereschigal and adonis, the barbaritha,
stance on her head or neck. On the figure of the chthonic hermes thoouth phokentazepseu
woman you want to attract write as follows. On the aerchthatoumi sonktai kalbanachamre and to
head: isee iao ithi oune brido lothion nebou- mighty anubis psirinth who has the keys to the
tosoualeth. On the right ear: ouer mechan. On realm of Hades, to gods and daemons of the under-
the left: libaba oimathotho. On the face: world, to men and women who have died
amounabreo. On the right eye: oror- before their time, to young men and
mothio aeth. On the right arm: women, from year to year, from
ene psa enesgaph. On the other: month to month, from day to
melchiou melchieda. On day, from hour to hour. I ad-
the hands: melchamelchou jure all the daemons in
ael. On the breast write the this place to assist this
name, on her mother’s side, daemon. Arouse your-
of the woman you want to self for me, whoever
attract. On the heart: you are, male or fe-
balamin thoouth. Un- male, and enter every
der the abdomen: aobes place, every neighbor-
aobar. On her sexual hood, every house,
organs: blichianeoi and attract and bind,
ouoia. On her buttocks:
pissadara. On the sole of
the right foot: elo. On Amulet of Abrasax, the
the other: eloaioe. Take demon with the head of a
thirteen bronze needles and cock, the body of a Roman
soldier, feet of snakes, and whip
stick one in the brain and
in the right hand. This amulet
say: “I am piercing your brain, protected against other demons.
NN.” Stick two in the ears, two (Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, University of
in the eyes, one in the mouth, two Michigan, KM 26054)
105
attract NN, daughter of NN, whose magical sub- nity]. If you accomplish this for me, I will let you
stance you have. Make NN, daughter of NN be in rest at once.
love with me. Let her not have sexual intercourse
with another man, . . . let her not have pleasure Questions for Analysis
with another man, only with me, NN, so that she, 1. How does this magical charm invoke the help
NN, is unable to drink or eat, to love, to be strong, of the gods?
to be healthy, to enjoy sleep, NN without me. . . . 2. Does the woman he seeks favor him, or is she
Yes, drag her, NN, by her hair, by her heart, by her reluctant?
soul to me, NN, every hour of life [or: eternity],
3. Is the charm to entice love or to force submission?
night and day, until she comes to me, NN, and let
her, NN, remain inseparable from me. Do this, Source: Luck, Georg, Arcana Mundi, Second Edition:
Magic and the Occult in the Greek and Roman Worlds:
bind her for all the time of my life and force her,
A Collection of Ancient Texts, pp. 129–131. Copyright
NN, to be my, NN, servant, and let her not flutter © 2006 The Johns Hopkins University Press. Reprinted
away from me for even one hour of life [or: eter- with permission of The Johns Hopkins University Press.
106
Chapter 6
The Pax
Romana
31 B.C.E.–450 C.E.
Chapter Preview
Augustus’s Settlement (31 b.c.e–14 c.e.)
How did Augustus transform the
Roman Empire?
The Coming of Christianity

Why did Christianity, originally a minor
local religion, sweep across the Roman
world to change it fundamentally?
Augustus’s Successors
How did Augustus’s successors build on
his foundation to enhance Roman
power and stability?
Life in the “Golden Age”

What was life like in the city of Rome in
the “golden age,” and what was it like in
the provinces?
Rome in Disarray and Recovery

(177–450 c.e.)
What factors led Rome into political and
economic chaos, and how and to what
extent did it recover?
Hadrian’s Wall. (Sandro Vannini/Corbis)
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY: Bithus, a Typical

Roman Soldier
IMAGES IN SOCIETY: The Roman Villa at Chedworth
LISTENING TO THE PAST: Rome Extends Its

Citizenship
107
108 Chapter 6 The Pax Romana, 31 B.C.E.–450 C.E.
H ad the Romans conquered the entire Mediterranean world only to turn

it into their battlefield? Would they, like the Greeks before them, be-
come their own worst enemies, destroying one another and wasting their strength
until they perished? At Julius Caesar’s death in 44 b.c.e., it must have seemed so
to many. Yet finally, in 31 b.c.e., Augustus restored peace to a tortured world, and
with peace came prosperity, new hope, and a new vision of Rome’s destiny. The
Roman poet Virgil (VUR-juhl) expressed this vision most nobly:
You, Roman, remember—these are your arts:
To rule nations, and to impose the ways of peace,
To spare the humble and to wear down the proud.1
Augustus created the structure that the modern world calls the “Roman Empire.”
For the first and second centuries c.e., the lot of the Mediterranean world was
pax Romana A period during the first the Roman peace—the pax Romana (paks ro-MAN-ah), a period of security, or-
and second centuries c.e. of security, der, harmony, flourishing culture, and expanding economy and territory. By
order, harmony, flourishing culture, and
expanding economy.
the third century c.e., Rome and its culture had left an indelible mark on the ages
to come.
Augustus’s Settlement (31 b.c.e.–14 c.e.)

How did Augustus transform the Roman Empire?
When Augustus put an end to the civil wars that had raged since 88 b.c.e., he
faced monumental problems of reconstruction. The first problem facing him was
to rebuild the constitution and the organs of government. Next he had to de-
mobilize much of the army yet maintain enough soldiers to protect the European
frontiers. Augustus was highly successful in meeting these challenges. His gift of
peace to a war-torn world ushered in the Golden Age of Latin literature.
In an inscription known as the Res Gestae (The Deeds

The Principate and of Augustus), Augustus claimed that he had restored
the Restored Republic the republic after regaining the peace:
In my sixth and seventh consulships [28–27 B.C.E.], I had ended the civil war,
having obtained through universal consent total control of affairs. I transferred the
Republic from my power to the authority of the Roman people and the senate. . . .
After that time I stood before all in rank, but I had power no greater than those
who were my colleagues in any magistracy.2
He took the title of princeps civitatis (prin-SEPS civ-ee-TAT-is), “First Citizen
of the State,” a title that carried no power but that indicated that he was the most
constitutional monarchy A monarchy
in which the power of the ruler is distinguished of all Roman citizens. Yet despite his claims, Augustus had not re-
restricted by the constitution and the stored the republic. He had created a constitutional monarchy, something com-
laws of the nation. pletely new in Roman history. The title princeps, “First Citizen,” came to mean
princeps A title meaning “First Citizen” in Rome, as it does today, “prince” in the sense of a sovereign ruler. The period of
that later came to mean “prince,” in the the First Citizen came to be known as the principate.
sense of a sovereign ruler. Augustus’s genius was to gather power while operating within the structure of
principate Position of the emperor
the republic. As consul he had no more constitutional and legal power than his
resulting fom the combination of his fellow consul. Yet in addition to the consulship Augustus had many other magistra-
consular and tribunician powers. cies, which his fellow consul did not. Constitutionally, his ascendancy within the
Chronology
state stemmed from the number of magistracies he held and 27 B.C.E.–68 C.E. Julio-Claudian emperors; expansion
the power granted him by the senate. At first he held the into northern and western Europe;
consulship annually; then the senate voted him proconsular growth and stability of trade in the
power on a regular basis. The senate also voted him the “full empire
power of the tribunes,” which gave him the right to call the 17 B.C.E.–17 C.E. Flowering of Latin literature
senate into session, present legislation to the people, and de-
fend their rights. He held either high office or the powers of ca. 3 B.C.E.–29 C.E. Life of Jesus
chief magistrate year in and year out. No other magistrate ca. 30–312 C.E. Spread of Christianity
could do the same. In 12 b.c.e. he became pontifex maximus 41–54 C.E. Creation of the imperial bureaucracy
(PAHN-tih-fex MAX-ih-muhs), the chief priest of the state.
60–120 C.E. Composition of the New Testament
By assuming this position of great honor, Augustus also be-
came chief religious official. 69–96 C.E. Consolidation of the European
The main source of Augustus’s power was his position as frontiers
commander of the Roman army. He made a momentous 96–180 C.E. “Golden age” of prosperity and
change in the army by turning it into Rome’s first permanent, huge expansion of trade
professional force. Soldiers received standard training under 96–180 C.E. “Five good emperors”; increasing
career officers who advanced in rank according to experi- barbarian menace on the frontiers
ence, ability, and valor. Augustus controlled the deployment
193–284 C.E. Military monarchy; extension of
of troops and paid their wages, bonuses, and retirement ben- citizenship to all free men
efits. His title imperator (im-puh-RAH-ter), with which
Rome customarily honored a general after a major victory, 278–337 C.E. Steady spread of administration,
government, and law from Britain
came to mean “emperor” in the modern sense of the term. The
to Syria
army was loyal to the imperator but not necessarily the state.
This arrangement worked well at first, but by the third 284–337 C.E. Inflation and decline of trade and
century c.e. the army would make and break emperors at industry; transition to the Middle
will. Nonetheless, it is a measure of Augustus’s success that Ages in the West and the Byzantine
Empire in the East
his settlement survived as long as it did.
337 C.E. Baptism of Constantine
Augustus initially used the army imperator A title that usually honored
Roman Expansion to expand the Roman Empire into northern and western a general after a major victory, it came to
into Northern and Europe (see Map 6.1). First he completed the conquest mean “emperor.”
Western Europe of Spain. In Gaul, he founded twelve new towns, and
the Roman road system linked new settlements with one another and with Italy.
But the German frontier, along the Rhine River, was the scene of hard fighting.
Roman legions advanced to the Elbe River, and the area north of the Main River
and west of the Elbe was on the point of becoming Roman. But in 9 c.e. Augus-
tus’s general Varus lost some twenty thousand troops at the Battle of the Teuto-
burger (two-TO-burg-er) Forest. Thereafter the Rhine remained the Roman
frontier.
Meanwhile Roman legions penetrated the area of modern Austria, southern
Bavaria, and western Hungary. The regions of modern Serbia, Bulgaria, and Ro-
mania fell. Within this area the legionaries built fortified camps linked by roads,
and settlements grew up around the camps. Traders began to frequent the frontier
and to traffic with the native peoples, who adopted those aspects of Roman culture
that fit in with their own way of life. Eventually provincial towns were granted Ro-
man citizenship if they embraced Roman culture and government and were im-
portant to the Roman economy. (See the feature “Listening to the Past: Rome
Extends Its Citizenship” on pages 131–132.)
On the other hand, the arrival of the Romans often provoked resistance from
tribes of peoples who were not Greco-Roman. Romans generally referred to such
Augustus as Imperator
Here Augustus, dressed in breastplate and uniform, emphasizes the
imperial majesty of Rome and his role as imperator. The figures on his
breastplate represent the restoration of peace, one of Augustus’s
greatest accomplishments and certainly one that he frequently
stressed. (Erich Lessing /Art Resource, NY)
people as barbarians, a word derived from a Greek word for

those who did not speak Greek. The Romans maintained
peaceful relations with the barbarians whenever possible,
but their legions remained on the frontier to repel hostile
barbarians.
Augustus and many of his

Literary Flowering friends actively encouraged
and Social Changes poets and writers, and indeed
the period has become known as the golden age of Latin
literature. Roman poets and prose writers celebrated the
dignity of humanity and the range of its accomplishments.
They stressed the physical and emotional joys of a com-
fortable, peaceful life. Their works were elegant in style
and intellectual in conception.
Rome’s greatest poet was Virgil (0–19 b.c.e.), a sensi-
tive man who delighted in simple things. Virgil left in his
Georgics a charming picture of life in the Italian country-
barbarians Tribes of people who were side during a period of peace. His masterpiece is the Aeneid (uh-NEE-id), an epic
not Greco-Roman and who simply poem that is the Latin equivalent of the Greek Iliad and Odyssey. Virgil’s account
wanted to be left alone.
of the founding of Rome and the early years of the city gave final form to the leg-
end of Aeneas, a Trojan hero who escaped to Italy at the fall of Troy. The legend
of Aeneas (ah-NEE-uhs) was a third story about the founding of Rome, along with
those of Romulus and the rape of Lucretia (see page 87). As Virgil told it, Aeneas
became the lover of Dido (DIE-doh), the widowed queen of Carthage, but left her
because his destiny called him to found Rome. She committed suicide, and their
relationship eventually became the cause of the Punic Wars. In leaving Dido, an
“Eastern” queen, Aeneas put the good of the state ahead of marriage or pleasure;
the parallels between this story and the real events involving Antony and Cleopatra
were not lost on Virgil’s audience. This fit well with Augustus’s aims; he had en-
couraged Virgil to write the Aeneid and made sure it was published immediately
after Virgil died.
The poet Ovid (OV-id) [43 b.c.e.–17? c.e.] shared Virgil’s views of the simple
pleasures of life and also celebrated the popular culture of the day. In his Fasti
(FAS-tee) (ca. 8 c.e.) he explains the ordinary festivals of the Roman year, and his
work offers modern readers a rare glimpse of Roman life and religion.
The historian Livy (LIV-ee) (59 b.c.e.–17 c.e.) approved of Augustus’s efforts to
restore republican virtues. Livy’s 142-book history of Rome, titled simply Ab Urbe
Condita (From the Founding of the City), began with the legend of Aeneas and
ended with the reign of Augustus. His theme of the republic’s greatness comple-
mented Augustus’s program of restoring the republic.
The poet Horace (65–8 b.c.e.) rose from humble beginnings as the son of an
ex-slave to friendship with Augustus. He loved Greek literature and finished his
10°W 0° 20°E 40°E 50°E 60°E °N 70°E
10°E 30°E
North 50
N Sea Roman Empire by death of Augustus, 14 C.E.
C ALEDON IA
(85–105 C.E.) Territory added by death of Hadrian, 138 C.E.
Hadrian’s Wall
122 C.E. Territory gained and lost, with dates held
Eburacum Baltic Parthian Empire, ca. 200 C.E.
(York) Sea
B R ITA I N Major battle
Elb
Camulodunum e
R.
(Colchester)
Londinium GER MAN IA
LOWER (4–9 C.E.) Vi s
AT L A N T I C (London)
GERMANY
Aral
Sea
tu l
Colonia Claudia Agrippinensis
OC EAN
Rh
Volg
a R.
(Cologne) a
BELGICA
ine
R.
Lutetia Parisiorum Dni
R.
Moguntiacum eper R .
(Paris) (Mainz) R. on
Da D
LUGDUNENSIS nu M
U P P ER be R. Vindobona DO
GAUL G E R MA NY (Vienna) IN
G °N
AQUITANIA RAETIA K C 40
AN
Burdigala Lugdunum
L PS NORICUM
Aquincum
(Budapest) BO
S PO
R a
(Bordeaux) (Lyons)
s
A Mediolanum DACIA
p
NARBONENSIS (Milan) (107–272 C.E.)
ia
Eb PANNONIA
Nemausus CISALPINE CAUCASU
S MT Nisa
n
(Nîmes) Rhône R. GAUL Po R. Singidunum
ro
S.
R.
Narbo Massilia (Belgrade)

S e a
S
TARRACONENSIS (Marseilles) DALMATIA a c k
B l
e
Arretium
MOESIA
a
LUSITANIA I T A LY dr
A
S PA I N Tarraco Corsica ia ARMENIA

Emerita Augusta tic
Rome
Se
THRACE D PONTU S (114 –117 C.E.)
(Mérida) Ostia a Byzantium AN
Corduba Mt. Vesuvius N IA
Sardinia Y
(Córdoba)
Balearic Is. Pompeii Brundisium Thessalonica B ITH
BAETICA MACEDONIA CAPPADOCIA ASSYRIA
GALATIA (116 –117 C.E.) T
EPIRUS Pergamum ig Ecbatana
Actium A N ATO L I A
ris
AS IA M ESO P OTAM I A
31 B.C.E. P A R T H I A
R.
Athens PAMPHYLIA Tarsus (115 –117 C.E.)
TAN IA Sicily Corinth Ephesus A
U R E CI Antioch Euphr a
MA Carthage Syracuse ACHAEA LYCIA CI LI t es R 30°
N
.
Palmyra Ctesiphon Susa
AFRIC
Malta Rhodes SYRIA Seleucia

NUMIDIA
M e Crete Cyprus Babylon Persepolis
d i t Damascus
A
e r r a n
e a n S e a
PR
C J U DAEA Pe
O
O Leptis Magna Cyrene Jerusalem rs

N ia
NORTH AFRICA SU
LA n
RIS CYR ENAIC A Alexandria Petra Gu
lf
AR AB IA
EGYPT A R A B I A N
Bahriya
0 200 400 Km. Oasis D E S E R T
Nil e
Re
S A H A R A d
R.
0 200 400 Mi.

Se
a
MAP 6.1 Roman Expansion Under the Empire

Following Roman expansion during the republic, Augustus added vast tracts of Europe to the Roman Empire, which the emperor Hadrian later enlarged by assuming control over parts of central
Europe, the Near East, and North Africa.
Ara Pacis
This scene from the Ara Pacis, the Altar of Peace erected in Rome by Augustus, celebrates Augustus’s restoration of peace and imperial
family values. On this side, Mother Earth is depicted with twin babies on her lap, framed by nymphs representing land and sea. The
sheep and the cow are both agricultural and sacrificial animals. Other sides of the altar show Romulus and Remus (another set of
twins) and Augustus and his wife Livia in traditional Roman clothing. (Scala /Art Resource, NY)
education in Athens. After Augustus’s victory he re-

Sec tion Review turned to Rome and became Virgil’s friend. Horace
• Augustus rebuilt the government to restore the republic and gained happily turned his pen to celebrating Rome and
power by holding many magistracies and eventually becoming “pontifex Augustus.
maximus,” the chief priest of the state and the chief religious official. Concern with morality and traditional Roman
• Augustus’s real power came as commander of the Roman army, which he virtues was a matter for law as well as literature. Au-
controlled as imperator (emperor) and made into a professional organiza- gustus promoted marriage and childbearing through
tion with standard training wages and advancement opportunities. legal changes that released free women and freed-
• The army completed the conquest of Spain and Gaul but was turned women (female slaves who had been freed) from
back at the Rhine on the German frontier; next they took Serbia, male guardianship if they had given birth to a cer-
Bulgaria, and Romania, linking settlements with roads and trading with tain number of children. Men and women who
the natives.
were unmarried or had no children were restricted
• The golden age of literature celebrated humanity, peace, and comfort as in the inheritance of property. Adultery, defined as
Rome’s greatest poet Virgil told the story of the founding of Rome in his
epic, the Aeneid. sex with a married woman or a woman under male
guardianship, was made a crime, not simply the pri-
• Augustus promoted marriage and childbearing by releasing women from
male guardianship if they gave birth to a certain number of children, by vate family matter it had been. In imperial propa-
declaring adultery a crime, and by setting up his own family as a model. ganda, Augustus had his own family depicted as a
• Augustus solved the problem of a legal successor by sharing his powers model of traditional morality, with his wife Livia at
and wealth with his adopted son, Tiberius; the senate requested that his side dressed in conservative and somewhat old-
Tiberius be the next ruler of the principate. fashioned clothing rather than the more daring
Greek styles of the time.
The Coming of Christianity 113
The solidity of Augustus’s work became obvious at his death in 14 c.e. Since
the principate was not technically an office, Augustus could not legally hand it to
a successor. Augustus recognized this problem and long before his death had
found a way to solve it. He shared his consular and tribunician powers with his
adopted son, Tiberius, thus grooming him for the principate. In his will Augustus
left most of his vast fortune to Tiberius, and the senate formally requested Tiberius
to assume the burdens of the principate. Formalities apart, Augustus had suc-
ceeded in creating a dynasty.
The Coming of Christianity

Why did Christianity, originally a minor local religion, sweep across the
Roman world to change it fundamentally?
During the reign of the emperor Tiberius (14–37 c.e.), in the Roman province
created out of the Jewish kingdom of Judah, Jesus of Nazareth preached, attracted
a following, and was executed on the order of the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate.
Much contemporary scholarship has attempted to understand who Jesus was and
what he meant by his teachings. Views vary widely. Some see him as a visionary
and a teacher, others as a magician and a prophet, and still others as a rebel and a
revolutionary. The search for the historical Jesus is complicated by many factors.
One is the difference between history and faith. History relies on proof for its con-
clusions; faith depends on belief. Thus, whether Jesus is divine or not is not an is-
sue to be decided by historians. Their role is to understand him in his religious,
cultural, social, and historical context.
The civil wars that destroyed the Roman republic had

Unrest in Judaea extended as far as Judaea in the eastern Mediterranean.
Jewish leaders took sides in the conflict, and Judaea
suffered its share of violence and looting. Although Augustus restored stability, his
appointed king for Judaea, Herod (r. 37–4 b.c.e.), was hated by the Jews. Upon
Herod’s death, the Jews revolted, and Herod’s successor waged almost constant
war against the rebels. Added to the horrors of this war were years of famine and
plague.
Among the Jews two movements spread. First was the rise of the Zealots (ZEL-
uhts), extremists who fought to rid Judaea of the Romans. The second movement
was the growth of militant apocalypticism—the belief that the coming of the apocalypticism The belief that the
Messiah (mi-SIGH-uh) was near. The Messiah would destroy the Roman legions, coming of the Messiah was near.
and all the kingdoms that had ruled Israel, and then inaugurate a period of happi- Messiah The savior of Israel.
ness and plenty for the Jews.
The pagan world of Rome is also part of the story of early Christianity. The pagans All those who believed in the
Greco-Roman gods.
term pagans (PAY-gans) refers to all those who believed in the Greco-Roman gods.
Paganism at the time of Jesus’ birth can be broadly divided into three spheres: the
official state religion of Rome, the traditional Roman cults of hearth and country-
side, and the new mystery religions that flowed from the Hellenistic East (see
Chapter 4). The mystery religions gave their adherents what neither the state religion
nor traditional cults could—the promise of immortality. Yet the mystery religions
were by nature exclusive, and none was truly international, open to everyone.
Into this climate of Jewish Messianic hope and Roman

The Life and religious yearning came Jesus of Nazareth (ca. 3 b.c.e.–
Teachings of Jesus 29 c.e.). He was raised in Galilee, stronghold of the
Zealots. The principal evidence for the life and deeds of Jesus are the four Gospels of
the New Testament. These Gospels—the word means “good news”—are records of
his teachings and religious doctrines with certain details of his life. The earliest Gos-
pels were written some seventy-five years after his death, and there are discrepancies
among the four accounts. These differences indicate that early Christians had a diver-
sity of beliefs about Jesus’ nature and purpose. Only slowly, as the Christian church
became an institution, were lines drawn more clearly between what was considered
heresy Incorrect teachings within the correct teaching and what was considered incorrect, or heresy (HER-uh-see).
Christian church. Despite this diversity, there were certain things about Jesus’ teachings that al-
most all the sources agree on: he preached of a heavenly kingdom, one of eternal
happiness in a life after death. His teachings were essentially Jewish. His orthodoxy
enabled him to preach in the synagogue and the temple. His major deviation from
orthodoxy was his insistence that he taught in his own name, not in the name of
Yahweh. Was he then the Messiah? A small band of followers thought so, and Jesus
claimed that he was. Yet Jesus had his own conception of the Messiah. He would
establish a spiritual kingdom, not an earthly one.
The prefect Pontius Pilate knew little of Jesus’ teachings. His concern was
maintaining peace and order. The crowds following Jesus at the time of the Pass-
over, a highly emotional time in the Jewish year, alarmed Pilate, who faced a vola-
tile situation. Some Jews believed that Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah, which
triggered Roman concerns about rebellion; others hated and feared Jesus and
wanted to be rid of him. To avert riot and bloodshed, Pilate condemned Jesus to
death and had his soldiers carry out the sentence.
On the third day after Jesus’ crucifixion, some of his followers claimed that he
had risen from the dead. For the earliest Christians and for generations to come,
the resurrection of Jesus became a central element of faith: he had triumphed over
death, and his resurrection promised all Christians immortality.
The memory of Jesus and his teachings survived and

The Spread flourished. Believers in his divinity met in small assem-
of Christianity blies or congregations, often in one another’s homes,
to discuss the meaning of Jesus’ message. These earliest Christians defined their
faith to fit the life of Jesus into an orthodox Jewish context. Only later did these
congregations evolve into what can be called a church with a formal organization
and set of beliefs.
The catalyst in the spread of Jesus’ teachings and the formation of the Chris-
tian church was Paul of Tarsus, a Hellenized Jew who was comfortable in both the
Roman and Jewish worlds. He had begun by persecuting the new sect, but on the
road to Damascus he was converted to belief in Jesus. He was the single most im-
portant figure responsible for changing Christianity from a Jewish sect into a sepa-
Gentiles A term for non-Jews. Paul rate religion. He urged the Jews to include Gentiles (JEN-tie-uhls) (non-Jews) in
helped spread Christianity by not the faith. His was the first universal message of Christianity.
distinguishing between Jews and
Gentiles.
Many early Christian converts were women, who seem to have come particu-
larly from the Greco-Roman middle classes. Paul greeted male and female con-
verts by name in his letters and noted that women provided financial support for
his activities. Missionaries and others spreading the Christian message worked
The Coming of Christianity 115
The Catacombs of Rome

The early Christians used underground
crypts and rock chambers to bury their
dead. The bodies were placed in these
galleries and then sealed up. The
catacombs became places of pilgrimage,
and in this way the dead continued to
be united with the living. (Catacombe di
Priscilla, Rome/Scala/Art Resource, NY)
through families and friendship networks. The growing Christian communities in

various cities of the Roman Empire had different ideas about many things, includ-
ing the proper gender roles for believers. Some communities favored giving women
a larger role, while others were more restrictive (see page 120).
Christianity might have remained just another sect had it not reached Rome,
the capital of the Western world. Rome proved to be a dramatic step in the spread
of Christianity for different reasons. First, Jesus had told his followers to spread his
word throughout the world, thus making his teachings universal. The pagan Ro-
mans also considered their secular empire universal, and early Christians there
combined these two concepts of universalism. Secular Rome provided another universalism The result of the
advantage to Christianity. If all roads led to Rome, they also led outward to the combination of the two concepts: first,
Jesus told his followers to spread his word
provinces of central and western Europe. The very stability and extent of the Ro- throughout the world, thus making his
man Empire enabled early Christians easily to spread their faith southward to Af- teachings universal, and second, the
rica and northward into Europe and across the channel to Britain. pagan Romans also considered their
The catacombs, underground cemeteries for Christian burial, testify to the secular empire universal.
vitality of the new religion and Rome’s toleration of it. Although many people to- catacombs Huge public underground
day think of the catacombs as secret meeting places of oppressed Christians, they cemeteries found along Via Appia
were actually huge public structures along the Via Appia, one of Rome’s proudest in Rome.
lanes. The development of Christian art can be traced on their walls, with pagan
and Christian motifs on early tombs, and biblical scenes on later ones.
Christianity offered its adherents the promise of salva-

The Appeal tion. Christians believed that Jesus had defeated evil
of Christianity and that he would reward his followers with eternal life
after death. Christianity also offered the possibility of forgiveness. Human nature
was weak, and even the best Christians would fall into sin. But Jesus loved sinners
and forgave those who repented.
Sec tion Review Christianity was also attractive because it gave the Roman world a cause. In-
stead of passivity, Christianity stressed the ideal of striving for a goal. By spreading
• Judea suffered under the civil wars the word of Christ, Christians played their part in God’s plan for the triumph of
and finally revolted, forming two
movements, the Zealots who fought to
Christianity on earth. The Christian was not discouraged by temporary setbacks,
expel the Romans, and those who believing Christianity to be invincible.
followed militant apocalypticism, Christianity also gave its devotees a sense of community. Believers met regu-
looking for a messiah to destroy the larly to celebrate the Eucharist (YOO-kuh-rist), the Lord’s Supper. Each individ-
Romans and bring peace. ual community was in turn a member of a greater community. And that community,
• Paganism, belief in Greco-Roman gods, according to Christian Scripture, was indestructible, for Jesus had promised, “the
was the official Roman religion and gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”3
included the Roman cults and the new
mystery religions that offered
immortality but were not open to all.
• The four gospels of the New Testament
are the main source of information on Augustus’s Successors
the life of Jesus, and though there are
differences, they agree that he taught How did Augustus’s successors build on his foundation to enhance
about a heavenly kingdom and life after Roman power and stability?
death, that he was the Messiah, and that
his kingdom was spiritual, not earthly.
Augustus’s success in creating solid political institutions was tested by the dynasty
• Pontius Pilate had Jesus condemned to
he created, the Julio-Claudians, who schemed against one another trying to win
death to avoid a riot between Jews who
thought he was the Messiah and these and hold power. This situation allowed a military commander, Vespasian (ve-
who hated him, but three days after his SPEY-zhuhn), to claim the throne and establish a new dynasty, the Flavians. The
death, Jesus’ followers claimed he had Flavians were followed by the “Good Emperors,” who were successful militarily
risen from the dead, ensuring and politically.
immortality for his followers.
• Paul of Tarsus promoted the spread of
Christianity by including non-Jews in
For fifty years after Augustus’s death the dynasty that he
the faith, which was spread through The Julio-Claudians established—known as the Julio-Claudians because
missionaries, family, and friendship. and the Flavians they were all members of the Julian and Claudian
• Christianity had appeal because it
provided a community among believers, clans—provided the emperors of Rome. Some of the Julio-Claudians, such as Ti-
a sense of purpose in spreading the faith, berius and Claudius, were sound rulers and able administrators. Others, including
and because it promised forgiveness and Caligula and Nero, were weak and frivolous men. The story of the Julio-Claudians
life after death. involves adultery, bigamy, murder, incest, sexual promiscuity, forced suicide, and
a host of other ills, as emperors and empresses sought to win and hold power.
Nonetheless, during their reigns the empire largely prospered.
Augustus’s creation of an imperial bodyguard known as the Praetorians (pray-
TOR-ee-ahns) had repercussions for his successors. In 41 c.e. the Praetorians mur-
dered Caligula and forced the senate to ratify their choice of Claudius as emperor.
It was a story repeated frequently. During the first three centuries of the empire,
the Praetorian Guard all too often murdered emperors they were supposed to pro-
tect and saluted emperors of their own choosing.
Claudius was murdered by his fourth wife to allow her son by a previous mar-
riage, Nero, to become emperor. In 68 c.e. Nero’s inept rule led to military rebellion
and his suicide, thus opening the way to widespread disruption. In 69 c.e., the “Year
of the Four Emperors,” four men claimed the position of emperor. Roman armies in
Gaul, on the Rhine, and in the East marched on Rome to make their commanders
emperor. Vespasian, commander of the eastern armies, emerged triumphant.
Vespasian did not solve the problem of the army in politics. To prevent usurpers
from claiming the throne, Vespasian designated his sons Titus and Domitian as his
successors. By establishing the Flavian dynasty (named after his clan), Vespasian
openly turned the principate into a monarchy. He also expanded the emperor’s
power by increasing the size of the professional bureaucracy Claudius had created.
Augustus’s Successors 117
Roman History After Augustus

Period Important Emperors Significant Events
Julio-Claudians 27 b.c.e.–68 c.e. Augustus, 27 b.c.e.–14 c.e. Augustan settlement
Tiberius, 14–37 Beginning of the principate
Caligula, 37–41 Birth and death of Jesus
Claudius, 41–54 Expansion into northern and western Europe
Nero, 54–68 Creation of the imperial bureaucracy
Year of the Four Emperors 69 Nero Civil war
Galba Major breakdown of the concept of the principate
Otho
Vitellius
Flavians 69–96 Vespasian, 69–79 Growing trend toward the concept of monarchy
Titus, 79–81 Defense and further consolidation of the European frontiers
Domitian, 81–96
Antonines 96–180 Nerva, 96–98 The “golden age”—the era of the “five good emperors”
Trajan, 98–117 Economic prosperity
Hadrian, 117–138 Trade and growth of cities in northern Europe
Antoninus Pius, 138–161 Beginning of barbarian menace on the frontiers
Marcus Aurelius, 161–180
Commodus, 180–192
Severi 193–235 Septimius Severus, 193–211 Military monarchy
Caracalla, 198–217 All free men within the empire given Roman citizenship
Elagabalus, 218–222
Severus Alexander, 222–235
“Barracks Emperors” 235–284 Twenty-two emperors in Civil war
forty-nine years Breakdown of the empire
Barbarian invasions
Severe economic decline
Tetrarchy 284–337 Diocletian, 284–305 Political recovery
Constantine, 306–337 Autocracy
Legalization of Christianity
Transition to the Middle Ages in the West
Birth of the Byzantine Empire in the East
He is also known for sending a Roman army to put down revolts in Judaea, which
led to the destruction of Jerusalem and the enslavement of the Jewish survivors.
The Flavians carried on Augustus’s work on the frontiers. Domitian, the last of
the Flavians, won additional territory in Germany and consolidated it in two new
provinces. He defeated barbarian tribes on the Danube (DAN-yoob) frontier and
strengthened that area as well. Even so, Domitian was one of the most hated of
Roman emperors because of his cruelty, and he fell victim to an assassin’s dagger.
The Emperor Marcus Aurelius

This equestrian statue, with the emperor greeting his people, represents both
the majesty and the peaceful intentions of this emperor and philosopher—one
of the five good emperors. Equestrian statues present an image of idealized
masculinity, but most portray their subjects as fierce and warlike, not with a
hand raised in peace as Marcus Aurelius’s hand is here. (Tibor Bognar/Alamy)
Nevertheless, the Flavians had kept the legions in line. Their

work paved the way for the Antonine dynasty and the era of the
“five good emperors.”
The five good emperors—Nerva,

The Age of the “Five Trajan (TREY-juhn), Hadrian (HEY-
Good Emperors” dree-uhn), Antoninus Pius, and
(96–180 C.E.) Marcus Aurelius—ruled the empire
wisely, fairly, and humanely. Yet the nature of their rule was con-
siderably different from what it had been under Augustus.
Augustus had claimed that his influence arose from the col-
lection of offices the senate had bestowed on him and that
he was merely the First Citizen. Under the Flavians the princi-
pate became a full-blown monarchy, and by the time of the
Antonines the principate was an office with definite rights, pow-
ers, and prerogatives. While the five good emperors were not
power-hungry autocrats, they were absolute kings all the same.
five good emperors The name for the They needed vast powers and the help of professional bureaucrats in order to
five emperors who ruled the empire run the empire efficiently. Later rulers would use this same power in a despotic
wisely, fairly, and humanely. They
created a period of peace and prosperity.
fashion.
The Roman army had also changed since Augustus’s time. Under the Flavian
emperors the frontiers became firmly fixed, except for a brief period under Trajan,
who attempted to expand the empire. No longer a conquering force, the army
concentrated on defending what had already been
won. Forts and watch stations guarded the borders.
Sec tion Review Outside the forts the Romans built a system of roads
• For fifty years after Augustus, the Julio-Claudian dynasty included able that allowed the forts to be quickly supplied and re-
rulers, such as Tiberius and Claudius, and inept rulers, such as Caligula inforced in times of trouble. The army had evolved
and Nero. from a mobile unit into a garrison force, with le-
• During the Julio-Claudian dynasty, the Praetorians, the imperial gions guarding specific areas for long periods.
bodyguard of Augustus, often murdered emperors and then established The personnel of the legions was changing, too.
successors of their own choosing. Italy could no longer supply all the recruits needed
• During the “Year of the Four Emperors” Vespasian finally claimed the for the army. Increasingly, only the officers came
throne and openly changed the principate into a monarchy, expanding from Italy and from the more Romanized provinces.
the emperor’s power while his heirs the Flavians continued expansion on
the frontiers. The legionaries were mostly drawn from the prov-
inces closest to the frontiers. In the third century c.e.
• The “Five Good Emperors” Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and
Marcus Aurelius ruled fairly but were still kings with vast powers using this shift would result in an army indifferent to
the aid of professional bureaucrats to rule. Rome and its traditions. In the age of the five good
• Under the Flavians, the Roman army changed its role from mobile emperors, however, the army was still a source of
expansion unit to garrison force, protecting the borders, using forts, and economic stability and a Romanizing agent. (See
building roads for rapid movement of supplies and reinforcements. the feature “Individuals in Society: Bithus, a Typi-
cal Roman Soldier.”)
Bithus, a Typical Roman Soldier
F ew people think of soldiers as missionaries of
culture, but they often are. They expose others
to their own traditions, habits, and ways of thinking
army he received the grant of Roman
citizenship for himself and his family.
In his civilian life the veteran enjoyed
while at the same time they gain an understanding a social status that granted him honor
of other cultures that they can bring home. This and privileges accorded only to Ro-
was true of the soldiers of the Roman Empire. The mans. From his military records there
empire was so vast even by modern standards that is no reason to conclude that Bithus
soldiers were recruited from all parts of it to serve in had even seen Rome, but because of
distant places. A soldier from Syria might find him- his service to it, he became as much a
self keeping watch on Hadrian’s Wall in Britain. Roman as anyone born near the Tiber.
He brought with him the ideas and habits of his The example of Bithus is impor-
birthplace and soon realized that others lived life tant because it is typical of thousands
differently. Yet they all lived in the same empire. of others who voluntarily supported
Despite their ethnic differences, they were united the empire. In the process they
by many commonly shared beliefs and opinions. learned about the nature of the em-
Idealized statue of
Historical records offer us a glimpse into the life pire and something about how it a Roman soldier.
of the infantryman Bithus, who was typical of many worked. They also exchanged experi- (Deutsches Archaeologisches
who served in the legions. Born in Thrace, the re- ences with other soldiers and the lo- Institut, Rome)
gion of modern northeastern Greece, his military cal population and this helped shape
life took him to Syria, where he spent most of his a sense that the empire was a human
career. There he met others from as far west as as well as a political unit.
Gaul and Spain, from West Africa, and from the
modern Middle East. This experience gave him an Questions for Analysis
idea of the size of the empire. It also taught him 1. What did Bithus gain from his twenty-five years
about life in other areas. of service in the Roman army?
Unlike many other cohorts who were shifted pe- 2. What effect did soldiers such as Bithus have on
riodically, Bithus saw service in one theater. While the various parts of the Roman Empire where
in the army, he raised a family, much like soldiers they served, both in their way of seeing new
today. The children of soldiers like Bithus often cultures and in their way of sharing new
themselves joined the army, which thereby became experiences?
a fruitful source of its own recruitment. After
twenty-five years of duty, Bithus received his reward Source: Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, vol. 16 (Berlin:
on November 7, 88. Upon mustering out of the G. Reimer, 1882), no. 35.
119
Life in the “Golden Age”

What was life like in the city of Rome in the “golden age,” and what was it
like in the provinces?
The years of peace and prosperity under the five good emperors are considered by
many to represent the “golden age” of Rome. Life in the capital city was signifi-
cantly different from that in the provinces of northern and western Europe, and
the Romans went to no great lengths to spread their culture. Yet roads and secure
sea-lanes linked the empire in one vast web, with men and women traveling and
migrating more often than they had in earlier eras (see Map 6.2). Through this
network of commerce and communication, greater Europe entered the economic
and cultural life of the Mediterranean world.
Rome was truly an extraordinary city, especially by

Imperial Rome ancient standards. It was also enormous, with a popula-
tion somewhere between 500,000 and 750,000. Al-
though it could boast of stately palaces, noble buildings, and beautiful residential
areas, most people lived in jerrybuilt apartment houses. Fire and crime were per-
ennial problems, even after Augustus created fire and urban police forces. Streets
were narrow and drainage was inadequate. During the republic sanitation had
been a common problem. Numerous inscriptions record prohibitions against
dumping human refuse and even cadavers on the grounds of sanctuaries and cem-
eteries. Under the empire this situation improved. By comparison with medieval
and early modern European cities, Rome was a healthy enough place to live.
Rome was such a huge city that the surrounding countryside could not feed it.
Because of shortages and high prices, the emperor, following republican practice,
provided the citizen population with free grain for bread and, later, oil and wine.
By feeding the citizenry the emperor prevented bread riots. For those who were
not citizens, the emperor provided grain at low prices. By furnishing free bread he
eliminated shortages.
The emperor and other wealthy citizens also entertained the Roman popu-
lace, often at vast expense. The most popular forms of public entertainment were
gladiators Criminals and convicts who gladiatorial (glad-ee-uh-TAWR-ee-uhl) contests and chariot racing. Many gladia-
were sentenced to be slaughtered in the tors (glad-ee-ay-TAWRS) were criminals under a death sentence. These convicts
arena as public entertainment.
were given no defensive weapons and stood little real chance of survival. Other
criminals were sentenced to fight in the arena as fully armed gladiators. Some
gladiators were the slaves of gladiatorial trainers; others were prisoners of war. Still
others were free men who volunteered for the arena. Even women at times en-
gaged in gladiatorial combat. Some Romans protested gladiatorial fighting, but the
emperors recognized the political value of such spectacles, and most Romans ap-
pear to have enjoyed them. Christian authors generally opposed gladiatorial and
animal combat, but this did not lead to immediate bans.
The Romans were even more addicted to chariot racing than to gladiatorial
shows. Under the empire four permanent teams competed against one another.
Each had its own color—red, white, green, or blue. Two-horse and four-horse
chariots ran a course of seven laps, about five miles. One charioteer, Gaius Ap-
puleius Diocles, raced for twenty-four years. During that time he drove 4,257 starts
and won 1,462 of them. His admirers honored him with an inscription that pro-
claimed him champion of all charioteers.
Roman Empire at its height, ca. 200 C.E.
North
Principal trade routes by sea
Sea JUTLAND Principal trade routes by land °N
Lead Baltic 50
Deva Grain Principal product
Sea
B R I TA I N
Grain El b
e Amber N
London Slaves R.
Tin Lead Cloth Vis
tul
a R. Aral
B E LG I U M D on
AT L A N T I C Cloth
Cologne
G ER M A NY
R. Sea
Grain Hides Vol
ga
OCEAN D ni R .
R.
Pottery epe
r R.
ine
Rh
GA U L Wine Grain
C °N
Grain Iron Horses 40
Olbia Salt a
Brigantium
Lugdunum Metals Gold sp
(Lyons) PS Panticapeum Routes to China
AL
Lead Wool Copper Potaissa Grain CAUCA
Glass Fish C R I M E A
ne R.
Aquileia SUS and India
ia
Gold MTS
Pottery Po R. DAC I A .
n
Horses
Rhô
Wine
Eb
Olives Luna DA L M AT I A Grain Dioscurias Iron 60°E

Narbo
ro
. Silk
Pottery D an u b e R Black Sea
R.
Massilia
S
Ancona Salonae Slaves
(Marseilles)
e
S PA I N Silver M OESI A
Tarraco Olives Sinope Trapezus
a
Corsica
Rome TH R ACE Fish
Horses Amisus
Grain Ostia I TALY Timber AR M E N IA
Puteoli Dyrrhachium
Olives Wool Byzantium Grain Hecatompylos
Silver Sardinia
10°W Wine Thessalonica C AP PAD OCI A
Gades New Fish Wool Melitene Ti
Carthage M AC E D O N I A
gr
Fish is
Olives Marble A SI A Horses R.
Wine
Caesarea Marble Ephesus Ecbatana P A R T H I A
Timber Sicily Tarsus Eu
Corinth Carpets ph
Copper Grain r at
Pottery Antioch es R °N
M A U R ETA N IA Carthage Syracuse ACH A E A Wine . 30
Olives Myra
Ctesiphon
Slaves Grain M Copper
SY R I A
NUMIDIA ed Crete
Timber
Seleucia
Persepolis
ite Cyprus
Damascus
Salt rran Charax
ean Sea
Olives
Glass
N O RT H A F R IC A Cloth
Cyrene Caesarea A R A B I A N
Ivory and Incense
Leptis J U DAEA Persian
from Africa Silphium Alexandria
Olives D E S E R T Gulf
L I BYA
0 200 400 Km.
Aelana Gerra
Memphis
0 200 400 Mi. Glass
N ORTH AF R I C A Grain EGYP T Ommana
Cloth
S A H A R A Papyrus Routes to southern Arabia,
Ni Red eastern Africa, and India
Gold and Ivory le .
0° 10°E 20°E from Africa R Sea 40°E 50°E
Mapping the Past

MAP 6.2 The Economic Aspect of the Pax Romana
This map gives a good idea of trade routes and the economic expansion of the Roman Empire at its height. Map 11.1 on page 254 is a similar map that shows trade in roughly the same area
nearly a millennium later. Examine both maps and answer the following questions: [1] To what extent did Roman trade routes influence later European trade routes? [2] What similarities and
differences do you see in trade in the Mediterranean during these two periods?
Gladiatorial Games
Though hardly games, the contests were vastly popular among the
Romans. Gladiators were usually slaves, but successful ones could
gain their freedom. The fighting was hard but fair, and the gladiators
shown here look equally matched. (Interfoto Pressebildagentur/Alamy)
The rural population through-

Rome and out the empire left few records,
the Provinces yet the inscriptions that remain
point to a melding of indigenous and Roman cultures.
This melding can be seen in the evolution of Romance
languages, which include Spanish, Italian, French, Portu-
guese, and Romanian. These languages evolved in the
provinces where people used Latin for legal and state reli-
gious purposes, eventually leading to a blending of Latin
and their native tongues. The process of cultural exchange
was at first more urban than rural, but the importance of
cities and towns to the life of the wider countryside ensured that its effects spread
villa A country estate, which was the far afield.
primary unit of organized political life. On the frontiers of the empire, the city was not as central to society. The villa,
a country estate, was the primary unit of organized political life. This pattern of life
differed from that of the Mediterranean, but it prefigured that of the early Middle
Sec tion Review Ages. The same was true in Britain, where the normal social and economic struc-
tures were farms and agricultural villages. (See the feature “Images in Society: The
• Roads and secure sea-lanes connected
Rome to the empire, encouraging Roman Villa at Chedworth” on pages 124–125.) Very few cities were to be found,
increased travel and migration, and and many native Britons were largely unacquainted with Greco-Roman culture.
fostering Roman economic and Across eastern Europe the pattern was much the same. In the Alpine provinces
cultural life. north of Italy, Romans and native Celts came into contact in the cities, but native
• Rome was an enormous city with cultures flourished in the countryside. In Illyria (eh-LEER-ee-uh) and Dalmatia, the
both noble buildings and run-down regions of modern Albania and the former Yugoslavia (yoo-gah-SLAH-vee-uh),
apartments that boasted a fire and
the native population never widely embraced either Roman culture or urban life.
police force.
Similarly, the Roman soldiers who increasingly settled parts of these lands made
• The emperor provided free grain to
little effort to Romanize the natives, and there was less intermarriage than in Celtic
the population to prevent riots and
entertained the public with gladiator areas. To a certain extent, however, Romanization occurred simply because these
fights and chariot races. peoples lived in such close proximity.
• The Romance languages, Spanish,
Italian, French, Portuguese, and
Romanian, are proof of a melding of
cultures, with Latin blending with the
native tongues. Rome in Disarray and Recovery (177–450 c.e.)
• Romanization in the countryside was What factors led Rome into political and economic chaos, and how and to
less profound than in the cities. what extent did it recover?
The long years of peace and prosperity abruptly gave way to a convulsed period of
domestic upheaval and foreign invasion. Law yielded to the sword. Only the po-
litical mechanisms of the empire—its bureaucrats and its ordinary lower officials,
protected by loyal soldiers—staved off internal collapse and foreign invasion. Peace
came with the ascension of Diocletian (die-uh-KLEE-shuhn) to emperor in 284.
Once Diocletian had ended the period of turmoil, succeeding emperors con-
fronted the work of repairing the damage. Yet the Roman world, like Humpty
Dumpty, could not quite be put back together again.
Rome in Disarray and Recovery (177–450 C.E.) 123
After the death of Marcus Aurelius, the last of the five

Civil Wars and good emperors, misrule by his successors led to a long
Foreign Invasions and intense spasm of fighting. More than twenty differ-
in the Third Century ent emperors ascended the throne in the forty-nine
years between 235 and 284. So many military commanders ruled that the middle
of the third century has become known as the age of the barracks emperors. The barracks emperors The name of the
Augustan principate had become a military monarchy, and that monarchy was period in the middle of the third century
when many military commanders ruled.
nakedly autocratic.
Preoccupied with creating and destroying emperors, the army left gaping holes
in the border defenses. Taking advantage of the weakness, bands of Goths devas-
tated the Balkans as far south as Greece and down into Asia Minor. The Alamanni
(al-uh-MAN-eye), a Germanic people, swept across the Danube. At one point
they reached Milan in Italy before being beaten back. Meanwhile, the Franks, still
another Germanic folk, invaded eastern and central Gaul and northeastern Spain.
Saxons from Scandinavia sailed into the English Channel in search of loot. In the
east the Sassanids (suh-SAH-nidz) overran Mesopotamia.
augustus A title that became

At the close of the third century c.e. the emperor Dio- synonymous with emperor, it was given
Reconstruction cletian (r. 284–305) put an end to the period of turmoil. by Diocletian to a colleague along with
Under Diocletian Repairing the damage done in the third century was the rule of the western part of the empire.
and Constantine the major work of the emperor Constantine (r. 306–
(284–337 C.E.) Tetrarchy A system by which four men
337) in the fourth. But the price was high. rule the empire.
Under Diocletian, the princeps became dominus—“lord.” The emperor claimed
that he was “the elect of god”—that he ruled because of divine favor. To
underline the emperor’s exalted position, Diocletian and Constantine
adopted the gaudy court ceremonies and trappings of the Persian Em-
pire. People entering the emperor’s presence prostrated themselves be-
fore him and kissed the hem of his robes.
Diocletian recognized that the empire had become too great for
one man to handle and divided it into a western and an eastern half
(see Map 6.3). Diocletian assumed direct control of the eastern part;
he gave the rule of the western part to a colleague, along with the
title augustus, which had become synonymous with emperor. Dio-
cletian and his fellow augustus further delegated power by appoint-
ing two men to assist them. Each man was given the title of caesar
to indicate his exalted rank. Although this system is known as the
Tetrarchy (TEE-trahrk-ee) because four men ruled the empire,
Diocletian was clearly the senior partner and final source of
authority.
Each half of the empire was further split into two prefectures,
each governed by a prefect responsible to an augustus. Diocletian
reduced the power of the old provincial governors by dividing
Diocletian’s Tetrarchy
The emperor Diocletian’s attempt to reform the Roman Empire by dividing
rule among four men is represented in this piece of sculpture. Here the
four tetrarchs demonstrate their solidarity by clasping one another on the
shoulder. Nonetheless each man has his other hand on his sword—a gesture
that proved prophetic when Diocletian’s reign ended and another struggle for
power began. (Alinari/Art Resource, NY)
Images in Society
The Roman Villa at Chedworth
O n the European borders of the Roman Em-

pire, the villa was often as important as the
town. Indeed, villas sometimes assumed many of
necessarily isolated. The villa at Chedworth was
connected by roads and rivers to other similar
neighboring villas. The whole picture depicts a so-
the functions of towns. They were economic and ciety that, though rural, was nonetheless cultured,
social centers from which landlords directed the comfortable, and in touch with the wider world. A
life of the surrounding countryside. The villa at good analogy is the American southern plantation
Chedworth in Roman Britain provides an excel- before the Civil War. Like many of these villas,
lent example. The ordinary villa included a large Chedworth survived the demise of the Roman Em-
courtyard with barns, gardens, storehouses, and pire. They all remained to play a crucial role in
buildings for processing agricultural products and preserving Greco-Roman civilization in northern
manufacturing goods. The villa also included the Europe.
comfortable living quarters of the owner and his What did a Roman villa look like, and how can
family. These structures included the usual bed- archaeological remains define and explain its func-
rooms and baths. A small temple or shrine often tioning? Since few ancient structures remain in-
provided a center for religious devotions. Quarters tact, many must obviously be reconstructed from
for servants and slaves were nearby but set apart excavations. Image 1 is the archaeological ground
from the great houses. Equally important were the plan of Chedworth. At first it seems to show only a
other buildings that served domestic and light in- series of foundations. Yet a closer look reveals its
dustrial needs. The villa, then, was essentially a design. The large buildings marked 3, 5a, and 5 are
small, self-contained community. Yet it was not the remains of the manorial houses. Rooms 10
IMAGE 1 Ground Plan of the Roman Villa

at Chedworth (From R. Goodburn, The Roman Villa,
Chedworth. Reproduced with permission.)
124
IMAGE 2 Archaeological Reconstruction
of the Villa (Courtesy, Professor Albert
Schachter)
IMAGE 3 Aerial View of Chedworth (Courtesy of West Air Photography) IMAGE 4 A View of the Site Today (John Buckler)
through 25a are the bath structures. Number 17 is aerial view of the villa, and Image 4 provides an ex-
a small temple. Buildings on the northern side, cellent cameo of the western wing of the villa.
numbers 26–32, were domestic quarters. From this information can you determine from
Two questions immediately arise. How do we the ground plan (Image 1) and the reconstruction
know what these buildings looked like, and how do (Image 2) what the villa actually looked like? From
we know how they functioned? By analyzing the Image 3, an aerial view of Chedworth, together
physical remains and the building techniques of the with Images 1 and 2, can you locate the landlord’s
site, archaeologists and architects have made a pa- houses, the temple, and the domestic buildings?
tient reconstruction of the entire villa (see Image 2). Now using these three images, can you identify the
Artifacts found in the structures reveal their func- buildings in Image 4? Lastly, from this material can
tions. The most obvious example is the elaborate you imagine the functions of the villa in its envi-
bath complex of numbers 19–25a. Image 3 gives an ronmental and cultural context?
125
10°W 0° 10°E 20°E 30°E 40°E 50°E
N
North
Sea Prefecture of Gaul
Baltic
Sea Prefecture of Italy
B R ITA I N Prefecture of Illyricum
Elb
e Prefecture of the East
R. N
50°
Vi s
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la R .
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AT L A N T I C a
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nub
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CISALPINE PANNONIA CRIMEA
E GAUL Po R.
DACIA
br
NARBONENSIS
o
Ravenna
R.
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FA R T H E R Massilia LM S e a
a c k
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S PA I N (Marseilles) AT
ri
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er R.
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a
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t
Corsica
S TH R AC E 40°N
Rome e ARMENIA
a
Byzantium
NEARER Sardinia
Nicomedia
S PA I N Balearic Is. Brundisium P H R YG I A
MACEDONIA C A P PA D O C IA
LY D IA T igri
Pergamum sR
.
ASIA
Athens Tarsus Euphrate
R ETA N I A Sicily Corinth Ephesus sR
MAU CILICIA Antioch .
Carthage Syracuse
Malta Rhodes SYRIA

NUMIDIA
M e Crete Cyprus
d i t Damascus
e r r a
n e a n S e a J U DAEA
NORTH AFRICA
Cyrene Jerusalem
30°N
L I B YA Alexandria Petra
Line of division between

east and west EGYPT ARA B I A N
0 200 400 Km.
DES E RT
Nil e
Re
d
S A H A R A
R.
0 200 400 Mi.
Se
a
MAP 6.3 The Roman World Divided
Under Diocletian, the Roman Empire was first divided into a western and an eastern half, a development that foreshadowed the medieval division
between the Latin West and the Byzantine East.
provinces into smaller units. He organized the prefectures into small administra-
dioceses Small administrative units that tive units called dioceses (DIE-uh-seez), which were in turn subdivided into small
were governed by a prefect responsible to provinces. Provincial governors were also deprived of their military power, leaving
an augustus.
them only civil and administrative duties.
Diocletian’s political reforms were a momentous step. The Tetrarchy soon
failed, but his division of the empire into two parts became permanent. Constan-
tine and later emperors tried hard but unsuccessfully to keep the empire together.
Throughout the fourth century c.e. the eastern and the western sections drifted
apart. In later centuries the western part witnessed the fall of Roman government
and the rise of Germanic kingdoms, while the eastern empire evolved into the
Byzantine Empire.
Economic, social, and religious problems confronted Diocletian and Con-
stantine. They needed additional revenues to support the army and the imperial
court, yet the wars and invasions had struck a serious blow to Roman agriculture.
Christianity had become too strong either to ignore or to crush. How Diocletian,
Rome in Disarray and Recovery (177–450 C.E.) 127
Arch of Constantine
Though standing in stately
surroundings, Constantine’s arch is
decorated with art plundered from the
arches of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius.
He robbed them rather than decorate
his own with the inferior work of his
own day. (Michael Reed, photographer/
www.mike-reed.com)
Constantine, and their successors responded to these problems influenced later

developments.
The empire was less capable of recovery than in earlier

Inflation and Taxes times. Wars and invasions had disrupted normal com-
merce and the means of production. Mines were ex-
hausted in the attempt to supply much-needed ores, especially gold and silver. In
the cities, markets were disrupted, and travel became dangerous. Merchant and ar-
tisan families rapidly left devastated regions. The barracks emperors had dealt with
economic hardship by cutting the silver content of coins until money was virtually
worthless. The immediate result was crippling inflation throughout the empire.
Diocletian’s attempt to curb inflation illustrates the methods of absolute mon-
archy. In a move unprecedented in Roman history, he issued an edict that fixed
maximum prices and wages throughout the empire. The emperors dealt with the
tax system just as strictly and inflexibly. Taxes became payable in kind, that is, in
goods or produce instead of money. All those involved in the growing, preparation,
and transportation of food and other essentials were locked into their professions.
A baker or shipper could not go into any other business, and his son took up the
trade at his death. In this period of severe depression many localities could not pay
their taxes. In such cases local tax collectors, who were also locked into service,
had to make up the difference from their own funds. This system soon wiped out
a whole class of moderately wealthy people.
Because of worsening conditions during the third cen-

The Decline of tury c.e., many free tenant farmers and their families
Small Farms were killed, fled the land to escape the barbarians, or
abandoned farms ravaged in the fighting. Consequently, large tracts of land lay
deserted. Great landlords with ample resources began at once to reclaim as much
of this land as they could. The huge estates that resulted, called villas, were self-
sufficient. Because they often produced more than they consumed, they success-
fully competed with the declining cities by selling their surplus in the countryside.
They became islands of stability in an unsettled world.
The rural residents who remained on the land were exposed to the raids of
barbarians or brigands and to the tyranny of imperial officials. In return for the
protection and security landlords could offer, the small landholders gave over their
lands and their freedom. They could no longer decide to move elsewhere. Hence-
forth they and their families worked their patrons’ land, not their own. Free men
and women were becoming what would later be called serfs.
The Roman attitude toward Christianity evolved as

The Acceptance well during the period of empire. A splendid analysis of
of Christianity the different phases in the relationship between official
Rome and Christianity has come from the eminent Italian scholar Marta Sordi.4
At first many pagans genuinely misunderstood Christian practices and rites. They
thought that such secret rites as the Lord’s Supper, at which Christians said that
they ate and drank the body and blood of Jesus, were acts of cannibalism. Pagans
thought that Christianity was one of the worst of the mystery cults, with immoral
and indecent rituals. They also feared that the gods would withdraw their favor
from the Roman Empire because of the Christian insistence that the pagan gods
either didn’t exist or were evil spirits.
There were some cases of pagan persecution of the Christians, including some
executions in Rome ordered by the Emperor Nero, but with few exceptions they
were local and sporadic in nature. The Christians exaggerated the degree of pagan
hostility toward them, and although there were some martyrs, most of the gory stories
about the martyrs are fictitious. No constant persecution of Christians occurred.
As time went on, pagan hostility decreased. Pagans realized that Christians were
not working to overthrow the state and that Jesus was no rival of Caesar. The em-
peror Trajan forbade his governors to hunt down Christians. Trajan admitted that he
thought Christianity an abomination, but he preferred to leave Christians in peace.
The stress of the third century, however, seemed to some emperors the punish-
ment of the gods. Although the Christians depicted the emperor Diocletian as a
fiend, he persecuted them in the hope that gods would restore their blessings on
Rome. Yet even these persecutions were never very widespread or long-lived. By
the late third century, pagans had become used to Christianity. Constantine rec-
ognized Christianity as a legitimate religion and himself died a Christian in 33.
Constantine’s acceptance of Christianity can be seen as the pagans’ alliance with
the strongest god of them all.
In time the Christian triumph would be complete. In 380 the emperor Theo-
dosius (thee-uh-DOH-shee-uhs) made Christianity the official religion of the Ro-
man Empire. At that point Christians began to persecute the pagans for their
beliefs. History had come full circle.
The triumph of Christianity was not the only event

The Construction that made Constantine’s reign a turning point in Ro-
of Constantinople man history. Constantine took the bold step of build-
ing a new capital for the empire. Constantinople, the New Rome, was constructed
on the site of Byzantium, an old Greek city on the Bosporus. Throughout the third
Chapter Review 129
century emperors had found Rome and the West hard to defend.
The eastern part of the empire was more easily defensible and es- Sec tion Review
caped the worst of the barbarian devastation. It was wealthy and its
urban life still vibrant. Moreover, Christianity was more widespread • Following Marcus Aurelius’s death, the empire was so
preoccupied with military commanders vying for rule
in the East than in the West, and the city of Constantinople was that foreign invaders took advantage and swept in on
intended to be a Christian center. several fronts.
• Diocletian, and later Constantine, ended the turmoil,
dividing the empire into a western and eastern half
The two-faced Roman god Janus, who with an augustus and two caesars to rule each half, a
From the Classical represented transitions, well symbolizes system known as the Tetrarchy.
World to Late this period. A great deal of the past re- • Because of war, the empire was drained of resources so
Antiquity mained through these years of change. Diocletian fixed prices and wages and taxes were
People still lived under the authority of the emperors and the guid- payable in kind, but this severe system soon wiped out
the moderately wealthy.
ance of Roman law. They communicated with one another as
usual, in Latin throughout the West and Greek in the East. Greco- • As small-scale farming became increasingly dangerous,
wealthy landlords bought up the land and offered
Roman art, architecture, and literature surrounded them. small tracts of land and protection to the farmers in
Yet changes were also under way. Government had evolved exchange for their freedom.
from the SPQR of the past to the Christian monarchy of the new • Christians exaggerated stories about martyrs, and
age. The empire itself split into East and West, and the latter be- although pagans at first misunderstood Christian rites,
came the home of barbarians who built a different world on classi- fearing it was the cause of the empire’s troubles,
cal foundations. Greek philosophy was replaced by theology, as pagans eventually grew used to Christianity and in 380
thinkers tried earnestly to understand Jesus’ message. emperor Theodosius made it the official religion of the
Roman Empire.
Through all these changes the lives of ordinary men and
women did not change dramatically. They farmed, worked in cit- • Constantine built a new capital, Constantinople, on
the site of Byzantium on the Bosporus, intending it to
ies, and hoped for the best for their families. They took new ideas, be a Christian center in the wealthier East while
blended them with old, and created new cultural forms. Gradually abandoning Rome and the western half of the empire
the classical world gave way to a vibrant new intellectual, spiritual, to the barbarians.
and political life.
Chapter Review
How did Augustus transform the Roman Empire? (page 108)
Key Terms
Once Augustus had restored order, he made it endure by remodeling the Roman
pax Romana (p. 108)
government. The old constitution of the city-state gave way to the government of an
empire. Although Augustus tried to save as much of the old as possible, he necessarily constitutional monarchy (p. 108)
created a virtually new and much expanded system of rule. Furthermore, he made it princeps (p. 108)
endure. principate (p. 108)
imperator (p. 109)
Why did Christianity, originally a minor local religion, sweep across the Roman barbarians (p. 110)
world to change it fundamentally? (page 113) apocalypticism (p. 113)
Christianity triumphed because it offered salvation to all people, men and women, Messiah (p. 113)
regardless of their nationality, race, or social status. pagans (p. 113)
heresy (p. 114)
How did Augustus’s successors build on his foundation to enhance Roman
Gentiles (p. 114)
power and stability? (page 116) universalism (p. 115)
(continued)
As life settled down under this calming order, a small event with universal repercus-
sions occurred in remote Judaea. There a young Jew named Jesus taught a new religion,
promising salvation to all who embraced it. Although Roman officials executed him, catacombs (p. 115)
this new religion did not die. Instead it spread across the East, then to Rome, and by
the end of the period throughout the empire. five good emperors (p. 118)
gladiators (p. 120)
villa (p. 122)
What was life like in the city of Rome in the “golden age,” and what was it like in
barracks emperors (p. 123)
the provinces? (page 120)
augustus (p. 123)
Augustus’s success in creating solid political institutions was tested by the dynasty he Tetrarchy (p. 123)
created, the Julio-Claudians. The fifty years during which they ruled Rome saw emper-
ors and empresses trying to win and hold power through multiple political marriages, dioceses (p. 126)
murder, and other tactics. In 70 c.e., Vespasian, a military commander, established a
new dynasty, the Flavians, who restored some stability in Rome and expanded the
empire. The Flavians were followed by a series of effective emperors, later called the
“Five Good Emperors,” who created a more effective bureaucracy and larger army to
govern the huge Roman Empire.
What factors led Rome into political and economic chaos, and how and to what
extent did it recover? (page 122)
For many Romans these were rich and happy years. Much of the population enjoyed
sufficient leisure time, which many spent pursuing literature and art. Others preferred
watching spectacular games including gladiatorial contests and chariot races. In the
ever-expanding provinces, Roman and native cultures combined, and products and
peoples moved more easily across huge areas.
The good times fell into disarray when a series of weak emperors, many of them
backed by soldiers they had commanded, fought for the throne. To worsen matters,
barbarians on the frontiers took advantage of these internal troubles to invade, plunder,
and destroy. These factors brought Rome near collapse. With the end apparently at
hand, two stern and gifted emperors, Diocletian and Constantine, restored order and
breathed fresh life into the economic and social order. By the end of this period, Chris-
tianity had made such gains that it was recognized as the official religion of the empire.
By the end of Constantine’s reign the Roman Empire was politically divided and reli-
giously changing. Still, many aspects of Greco-Roman culture remained strong.
Notes
1. Virgil, Aeneid 6.851–6.853. John Buckler is the translator of all uncited quotations from a
foreign language in Chapters 1–6.
2. Augustus, Res Gestae 6.34.
3. Matthew 16:18.
4. See Marta Sordi, The Christians and the Roman Empire (London: Croom Helm, 1986).

Rome Extends Its Citizenship
him—Lucius Vestinus, whom I cherish most inti-
mately and whom at this very time I employ in my
O ne of the most dramatic achievements of the pax Ro-
mana was the extension of citizenship throughout the
Roman Empire. Citizenship gave people advantages in judi-
affairs. And it is my desire that his children may
enjoy the first step in the priesthoods, so as to ad-
cial procedures, property transmission, and commercial rela- vance afterwards, as they grow older, to further
tions. Male citizens could vote, and both female and male honors in their rank. . . .
citizens passed citizenship on to their children. All these distinguished youths whom I gaze
Yet various emperors went even further by viewing Rome upon will no more give us cause for regret if they
not only as a territorial but also as a political concept. In their become senators than does my friend Persicus, a
eyes Rome was a place and an idea. Not every Roman agreed man of most noble ancestry, have cause for regret
with these cosmopolitan views. The emperor Claudius (r. 41– when he reads among the portraits of his ancestors
54) took the first major step in this direction by allowing the name Allobrogicus. But if you agree that these
Romanized Gauls to sit in the senate. He was roundly criti- things are so, what more do you want, when I point
cized by some Romans, but in the damaged stone inscription out to you this single fact, that the territory beyond
that follows, he presents his own defense. the boundaries of Narbonese Gaul already sends
you senators, since we have men of our order from
Lyons and have no cause for regret. It is indeed
Surely both my great-uncle, the deified Augus- with hesitation, members of the senate, that I have
tus, and my uncle, Tiberius Caesar, were following gone outside the borders of the provinces with
a new practice when they desired that all the flowers which you are accustomed and familiar, but I must
of the colonies and the municipalities everywhere— now plead openly the cause of Gallia Comata [a
that is, the better class and the wealthy men—should region in modern France]. And if anyone, in this
sit in this senate house. You ask me: Is not an Ital- connection, has in mind that these people engaged
ian senator preferable to a provincial? I shall reveal the deified Julius in war for ten years, let him set
to you in detail my views on this matter when I come against that the unshakable loyalty and obedience
to obtain approval for this part of my censorship [a of a hundred years, tested to the full in many of our
magistracy that determined who was eligible for crises. When my father Drusus was subduing
citizenship and public offices]. But I Germany, it was they who by their tran-
think that not even provincials quility afforded him a safe and
ought to be excluded, provided securely peaceful rear, even at
that they can add distinction a time when he had been
to this senate house. summoned away to the
Look at that most dis- war from the task of or-
tinguished and most ganizing the census
flourishing colony of which was still new
Vienna [the modern and unaccustomed to
Vienne in France], the Gauls. How diffi-
how long a time al- cult such an operation
ready it is that it has
furnished senators to
Provocatio, the right of
this house! From that
appeal, was considered a
colony comes that orna- fundamental element of Roman
ment of the equestrian order— citizenship. (Courtesy of the
and there are few to equal Trustees of the British Museum)
131
is for us at this precise moment we are learning all in the senate? Did he see them as debasing the
too well from experience, even though the survey is quality of the senate?
aimed at nothing more than an official record of 2. What do his words tell us about the changing
our resources. [The rest of the inscription is lost.] nature of the Roman Empire?
Source: Slightly adapted and abbreviated from Roman Civi-

lization, 2 volumes, Third Edition. Volume 1 by N. Lewis
1. What was the basic justification underlying and M. Reinhold. Copyright © 1966 Columbia University
Claudius’s decision to allow Gallic nobles to sit Press. Reprinted with permission of the publisher.
132
Chapter 7
Late Antiquity
350–600
Chapter Preview
The Byzantine Empire
How was the Byzantine Empire able to
survive for so long, and what were its
most important achievements?
The Growth of the Christian Church

What factors enabled the Christian
church to expand and thrive?
Christian Ideas and Practices

How did Christian thinkers adapt Greco-
Roman ideas to Christian theology?
Christian Missionaries and Conversion

What techniques did missionaries
develop to convert barbarian peoples
to Christianity?
Migrating Peoples
What were some of the causes of the
barbarian migrations and how did they
affect the regions of Europe?
Hagia Sophia (AH-yah SOH-fee-uh) (“Holy Wisdom”), built by

the Emperor Justinian in the sixth century, was the largest Christian Barbarian Society
What patterns of social, political, and
cathedral in the world for a thousand years. After Constantinople
economic life characterized barbarian
was conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1453, it became a mosque,
society?
and today is a museum. (Editore Sadea Editore)
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY: Theodora

of Constantinople
LISTENING TO THE PAST: The Conversion of Clovis
133
134 Chapter 7 Late Antiquity, 350–600
F rom the third century onward, the Western Roman Empire slowly disinte-
grated. The last Roman emperor in the West, Romulus Augustus, was de-
posed by the Ostrogothic (OS-truh-goth-ic) chieftain Odoacer in 476, but much
of the empire had already come under the rule of various barbarian tribes well
before this. Scholars have long seen this era as one of the great turning points in
Western history, a time when the ancient world was transformed into the very dif-
ferent medieval world. During the past several decades, however, scholars have
shifted their focus to continuities as well as changes, and what is now usually
termed “late antiquity” has been recognized as a period of creativity and adapta-
tion, not simply of decline and fall.
The two main agents of continuity were the Eastern Roman (or Byzantine)
Empire and the Christian church. The Byzantine Empire lasted until 1453, a
thousand years longer than the Western Roman Empire, and preserved and trans-
mitted much of ancient law, philosophy, and institutions. Missionaries and church
officials spread Christianity within and far beyond the borders of the Roman Em-
pire, transforming a small sect into the most important and wealthiest institution
in Europe. The main agents of change in late antiquity were the barbarian groups
migrating into the Roman Empire. They brought different social, political, and
economic structures with them, but as they encountered Roman culture and be-
came Christian, their own ways of doing things were also transformed.
The Byzantine Empire

How was the Byzantine Empire able to survive for so long, and what were
its most important achievements?
Constantine had tried to maintain the unity of the Roman Empire, but during the
fifth and sixth centuries the Western and Eastern halves drifted apart. From Con-
stantinople, Eastern Roman emperors worked to hold the empire together and to
reconquer at least some of the West from barbarian tribes. Justinian (r. 527–565)
waged long wars against the Ostrogoths and temporarily regained Italy and North
Africa, but the costs were high. Justinian’s wars exhausted the resources of the
state, destroyed Italy’s economy, and killed a large part of Italy’s population. Weak-
ened, Italy fell easily to another Germanic tribe, the Lombards, shortly after Justin-
ian’s death. In the late sixth century, the territory of the Western Roman Empire
came once again under Germanic sway.
However, the Roman Empire continued in the East. The Eastern Roman or
Byzantine Empire (see Map 7.1) preserved the forms, institutions, and traditions
of the old Roman Empire, and its people even called themselves Romans. Most
important, however, is the role of Byzantium as preserver of the wisdom of the
ancient world. Byzantium protected the intellectual heritage of Greco-Roman
civilization and then passed it on to the rest of Europe.
While the Western parts of the Roman Empire gradu-

Sources of ally succumbed to Germanic invaders, the Eastern Ro-
Byzantine Strength man or Byzantine Empire survived waves of attacks. In
559 a force of Huns and Slavs reached the gates of Constantinople, and in 583 the
Avars (AH-varz), a mounted Mongol people, also threatened the capital. Between
572 and 630 the Sasanid (suh-SAH-nid) Persians put pressure on the Byzantine
Chronology
Empire, and only two years after the Persians were repelled, 312 Constantine legalizes Christianity in Roman
Arab forces began their own assaults (see Chapter 8). Empire
Why didn’t one or a combination of these enemies cap-
340–419 Life of Saint Jerome; creation of the Vulgate
ture Constantinople as the Germans had taken Rome? First,
the Byzantine Empire enjoyed strong military leadership. 354–430 Life of Saint Augustine
General Priskos (d. 612) skillfully led Byzantine armies to a 380 Theodosius makes Christianity official
decisive victory over the Avars in 601. Then, after a long religion of Roman Empire
war, the emperor Heraclius I (her-uh-KLY-uhs) (r. 610–641) 385–461 Life of Saint Patrick
crushed the Persians at Nineveh in Iraq. Second, the capital
city was well fortified. Massive triple walls, built by Constan- 481–511 Reign of Clovis
tine and Theodosius II (408–450) and kept in good repair, 527–565 Reign of Justinian
protected Constantinople from sea invasion. Within the 529 The Rule of Saint Benedict
walls huge cisterns provided water, and vast gardens and graz-
542–560 “Justinian plague”
ing areas supplied vegetables and meat so that the defending
people could hold out far longer than the besieging army.
Attacking Constantinople by land posed greater geographi-
cal and logistical problems than a seventh- or eighth-century
army could solve. The site was not absolutely impregnable—as the Venetians
demonstrated in 1204 and the Ottoman Turks in 1453 (see pages 211 and 374)—
but it was almost so. For centuries, the Byzantine Empire served as a bulwark for
the West, protecting it against invasions from the East.
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Sassanid Empire, ca. 600 0 250 500 Km.
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0˚ 10˚E 20˚E 30˚E 40˚E Gulf
MAP 7.1 The Byzantine Empire, ca. 600

The strategic position of Constantinople on the waterway between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean was clear to Constantine when he chose
the city as the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, and it was also clear to later rulers and military leaders. Byzantine territories in Italy were
acquired in Emperor Justinian’s sixth-century wars and were held for several centuries.
Byzantine emperors organized and preserved Roman

The Law Code law, making a lasting contribution to the medieval and
of Justinian modern worlds. Roman law had developed from many
sources—decisions by judges, edicts of the emperors, legislation passed by the sen-
ate, and the opinions of jurists expert in the theory and practice of law. By the
fourth century, it had become a huge, bewildering mass, and its sheer bulk made
it almost unusable.
Sweeping and systematic codification took place under the emperor Justinian.
He appointed a committee of eminent jurists to sort through and organize the laws.
The result was the Code, which distilled the legal genius of the Romans into a coher-
ent whole, eliminated outmoded laws and contradictions, and clarified the law itself.
Not content with the Code, Justinian set about bringing order to the equally huge
body of Roman jurisprudence (joor-is-PROOD-ins), the science or philosophy of law.
During the second and third centuries, the foremost Roman jurists had ex-
pressed varied learned opinions on complex legal problems. To harmonize this
body of knowledge, Justinian directed his jurists to clear up disputed points and to
issue definitive rulings. Accordingly, in 533 his lawyers published the Digest,
which codified Roman legal thought. Finally, Justinian’s lawyers compiled a hand-
book of civil law, the Institutes. These three works—the Code, the Digest, and the
Institutes—are the backbone of the corpus juris civilis (KAWR-puhs JOOR-is si-
VIL-is), the “body of civil law,” which is the foundation of law for nearly every
modern European nation.
The Byzantines prized education; because of them

Byzantine many masterpieces of ancient Greek literature have
Intellectual Life survived to influence the intellectual life of the mod-
ern world. The literature of the Byzantine Empire was predominately Greek, al-
though Latin was long spoken by top politicians, scholars, and lawyers. Among the
large reading public, history was a favorite subject.
Justinian and His

Attendants
This mosaic detail is composed
of thousands of tiny cubes of
colored glass or stone called
tessarae, which are set in plaster
against a blazing golden
background. Some attempt
has been made at naturalistic
portraiture. (Scala/Art Resource, NY)
The Growth of the Christian Church 137
The most remarkable Byzantine historian was Procopius (ca. 500–ca. 562),
who left a rousing account praising Justinian’s reconquest of North Africa and It-
aly. Proof that the wit and venom of ancient Greek and Roman writers lived on in
Sec tion Review
the Byzantine era can be found in Procopius’s Secret History, a vicious and up-
roarious attack on Justinian and his wife, the empress Theodora. (See the feature • Germanic invaders overcame the
“Individuals in Society: Theodora of Constantinople.”) western part of the Roman Empire
Although the Byzantines discovered little that was new in mathematics and but the East evaded capture through
strong military leadership and a well-
geometry, they passed Greco-Roman learning on to the Arabs, who made remark- fortified capital in Constantinople.
able advances with it. In science, they faithfully learned what the ancients had to
• Emperor Justinian organized the
teach but made advances only in terms of military applications. For example, the Roman legal system through the Code
best-known Byzantine scientific discovery was an explosive compound known as (clarifying the law itself), the Digest
“Greek fire” that was heated and propelled by a pump through a bronze tube. As (codifying Roman legal thought), and
the liquid jet left the tube, it was ignited—somewhat like a modern flamethrower. the Institutes (compiling civil law).
Greek fire saved Constantinople from Arab assault in 678. In mechanics Byzan- • Theodora, a former actress and
tine scientists improved and modified artillery and siege machinery. dancer, married Justinian and became
The Byzantines devoted a great deal of attention to medicine, and the general empress, using her influence to
improve the legal status of women
level of medical competence was far higher in the Byzantine Empire than in west- and to promote her religious
ern Europe. Yet their physicians could not cope with the terrible disease, often interpretation of Christianity.
called the “Justinian plague,” that swept through the Byzantine Empire and parts • Part villain and part heroine,
of western Europe between 542 and about 560. Probably originating in northwest- Theodora manipulated those around
ern India and carried to the Mediterranean region by ships, the disease was similar her while improving the empire by
to modern forms of the bubonic plague. Characterized by high fever, chills, de- establishing hospitals, orphanages,
lirium, and enlarged lymph nodes (the buboes that gave bubonic plague its name), and churches.
or by inflammation of the lungs that caused hemorrhages of black blood, the Jus- • The Byzantines made few advances in
tinian plague carried off tens of thousands of people. The epidemic had profound mathematics and science, but valued
education, history, literature, and
political as well as social consequences. It weakened Justinian’s military resources, medicine.
thus hampering his efforts to restore unity to the Mediterranean world.
• Procopius was a remarkable historian
By the ninth or tenth century, most major Greek cities had hospitals for the whose work Secret History is a witty
care of the sick. The hospitals might be divided into wards for different illnesses, and and scathing account of the reign of
hospital staff had surgeons, practitioners, and aides with specialized responsibilities. Justinian and Theodora.
The imperial Byzantine government bore the costs of these medical facilities.
The Growth of the Christian Church

What factors enabled the Christian church to expand and thrive?
As the Western Roman Empire disintegrated in the fourth and fifth centuries, the
Christian church survived and grew, becoming the most important institution in
Europe. The able administrators and highly creative thinkers of the church devel-
oped permanent institutions and complex philosophical concepts.
Scriptural scholars tell us that the earliest use of the

The Church and word church in the New Testament appears in Saint
Its Leaders Paul’s Letter to the Christians of Thessalonica (thes-
uh-LON-ee-kuh) in northern Greece, written about 51 c.e. Church means as-
sembly or congregation (in Greek, ekklesia); by ekklesia Paul meant the local
community of Christian believers. In Paul’s later letters the word refers to the
entire Mediterranean-wide assembly of Jesus’ followers. After the legalization of
Christianity by the emperor Constantine (see page 128) and the growth of institu-
tional offices and officials, the word church was sometimes applied to those officials—
Theodora of Constantinople
T he most powerful woman in Byzantine history was
the daughter of a bear trainer for the circus. Theo-
dora (ca. 497–548) grew up in what her contemporaries
petrators. Both sides turned against the emperor, besieg-
ing the palace while Justinian was inside it. Shouting
N-I-K-A (victory), the rioters swept through the city,
regarded as an undignified and morally suspect atmos- burning and looting, and destroyed half of Constanti-
phere, and she worked as a nople. Justinian’s counselors urged flight, but, accord-
dancer and burlesque actress, ing to Procopius, Theodora rose and declared:
both dishonorable occupations
For one who has reigned, it is intolerable to be an
in the Roman world. Despite
exile. . . . If you wish, O Emperor, to save yourself,
her background, she caught the
there is no difficulty: we have ample funds and there
eye of Justinian, who was then
are the ships. Yet reflect whether, when you have once
a military leader and whose
escaped to a place of security, you will not prefer death
uncle (and adoptive father) Jus-
to safety. I agree with an old saying that the purple
tin had himself risen from ob-
[that is, the color worn only by emperors] is a fair wind-
scurity to become the emperor
ing sheet to be buried in.
of the Byzantine Empire. Un-
der Justinian’s influence, Justin Justinian rallied, had the rioters driven into the hippo-
changed the law to allow an ac- drome, and ordered between thirty and thirty-five thou-
tress who had left her disrepu- sand men and women executed. The revolt was crushed
table life to marry whom she and Justinian’s authority restored, an outcome approved
liked, and Justinian and Theo- by Procopius.
dora married in 525. When Other sources describe or suggest Theodora’s influ-
The empress Theodora shown Justinian was proclaimed co- ence on imperial policy. Justinian passed a number of
with the halo, a symbol of
power in Eastern art. (Scala/Art emperor with his uncle Justin laws that improved the legal status of women, such as
Resource, NY) on April 1, 527, Theodora re- allowing women to own property the same way that
ceived the rare title of augusta, men could and to be guardians over their own children.
empress. Thereafter her name He forbade the abandonment of unwanted infants, which
was linked with Justinian’s in the exercise of imperial happened more often to girls than to boys, as boys were
power. valued more highly. Theodora presided at imperial re-
Most of our knowledge of Theodora’s early life comes ceptions for Arab sheiks, Persian ambassadors, Germanic
from the Secret History, a tell-all description of the vices princesses from the West, and barbarian chieftains from
of Justinian and his court, written by Procopius (proh- southern Russia. When Justinian fell ill from the bubonic
KOH-pee-uhs) (ca. 550), who was the official court his- plague in 532, Theodora took over his duties, banning
torian and thus spent his days praising those same those who discussed his possible successor. Justinian is
people. In the Secret History, he portrays Theodora and reputed to have consulted her every day about all as-
Justinian as demonic, greedy, and vicious, killing court- pects of state policy, including religious policy regarding
iers to steal their property. In scene after detailed scene, the doctrinal disputes that continued throughout his
Procopius portrays Theodora as particularly evil, sexu- reign. Theodora’s favored interpretation of Christian
ally insatiable, depraved, and cruel, a temptress who used doctrine about the nature of Christ was not accepted by
sorcery to attract men, including the hapless Justinian. the main body of theologians in Constantinople—nor
In one of his official histories, The History of the Wars by Justinian—but she urged protection of her fellow be-
of Justinian, Procopius presents a very different Theo- lievers and in one case hid an aged scholar in the wom-
dora. Riots between the supporters of two teams in char- en’s quarters of the palace for many years.
iot races—who formed associations somewhat like street Theodora’s influence over her husband and her
gangs and somewhat like political parties—had turned power in the Byzantine state continued until she died,
deadly, and Justinian wavered in his handling of the per- perhaps of cancer, twenty years before Justinian. Her
138
influence may have even continued after death, for Jus- views, the debate continues today among writers of sci-
tinian continued to pass reforms favoring women and, at ence fiction and fantasy as well as biographers and
the end of his life, accepted her interpretation of Chris- historians.
tian doctrine. Institutions that she established, includ-
ing hospitals, orphanages, houses for the rehabilitation
of prostitutes, and churches, continued to be reminders
of her charity and piety.
Theodora has been viewed as a symbol of the ma- 1. How would you assess the complex legacy of
nipulation of beauty and cleverness to attain position Theodora?
and power, and also as a strong and capable co-ruler 2. Since the public and private views of Procopius are
who held the empire together during riots, revolts, and so different regarding the empress, should he be
deadly epidemics. Just as Procopius expressed both trusted at all as a historical source?
139
much as we use the terms the college or the university when referring to academic
administrators.
In early Christian communities the local people elected their leaders, or bishops.
Bishops were responsible for the community’s goods and oversaw the distribution
of those goods to the poor. They also were responsible for maintaining orthodox
(established or correct) doctrine within the community and for preaching. Bish-
ops alone could confirm believers in their faith and ordain men as priests.
The early Christian church benefited from the brilliant administrative abilities
of some bishops. Bishop Ambrose, for example, the son of the Roman prefect of
Gaul, was a trained lawyer and the governor of a province. He is typical of the Ro-
man aristocrats who held high public office, were converted to Christianity, and
subsequently became bishops. Such men later provided social continuity from
Roman to Germanic rule. As bishop of Milan, Ambrose himself exercised respon-
sibility in both the business and church affairs of northern Italy.
During the reign of Diocletian (284–305), the Roman Empire had been di-
vided for administrative purposes into geographical units called dioceses. Gradu-
ally the church made use of this organizational structure. Christian bishops
established their headquarters, or sees, in the urban centers of the old Roman dio-
ceses. A bishop’s jurisdiction extended throughout the diocese. The center of his
authority was his cathedral (from the Latin cathedra, meaning “chair”). Thus,
church leaders adapted the Roman imperial method of organization for ecclesias-
tical purposes.
The bishops of Rome—known as “popes,” from the Latin word papa, meaning
“father”—claimed to speak and act as the source of unity for all Christians. They
based their claim to be the successors of Saint Peter and heirs to his authority as
chief of the apostles on Jesus’ words:
You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the jaws of death shall
not prevail against it. I will entrust to you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.
Whatever you declare bound on earth shall be bound in heaven; whatever you
declare loosed on earth shall be loosed in heaven.1
Petrine Doctrine The statement used Theologians call this statement the Petrine (PEE-tryne) Doctrine.
by popes, bishops of Rome, based on After the capital and the emperor moved from Rome to Constantinople (see
Jesus’ words, to substantiate their claim
of being the successors of Saint Peter
page 128), the bishop of Rome exercised considerable influence in the West be-
and heirs to his authority as chief of cause he had no real competitor there. He became known as the “Patriarch of the
the apostles. West.” In the East, the bishops of Antioch, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Constanti-
nople, because of the special dignity of their sees, also gained the title of patriarch.
Their jurisdictions extended over lands adjoining their sees; they consecrated bish-
ops, investigated heresy, and heard judicial appeals.
In the fifth century the bishops of Rome began to stress their supremacy over
other Christian communities and to urge other churches to appeal to Rome for
the resolution of disputed doctrinal issues. While local churches often exercised
their own authority and Rome was not yet as powerful as it would become, these
arguments laid the groundwork for later appeals.
The church benefited considerably from the emper-

The Church and the ors’ support. Constantine had legalized the practice of
Roman Emperors Christianity in the empire in 312 and encouraged it
throughout his reign. He freed the clergy from imperial taxation. At churchmen’s
request, he helped settle theological disputes and thus preserved doctrinal unity
within the church. Constantine generously endowed the building of Christian
churches, and one of his gifts—the Lateran (LAT-er-uhn) Palace in Rome—

remained the official residence of the popes until the fourteenth century. Con-
stantine also declared Sunday a public holiday, a day of rest for the service of God.
Because of its favored position in the empire, Christianity slowly became the lead-
ing religion (see Map 7.2).
In the fourth century, theological disputes frequently and sharply divided the
Christian community. Some disagreements had to do with the nature of Christ.
For example, Arianism (AIR-ree-uh-nizm), which originated with Arius (ca. 250– Arianism A theological belief that
336), a priest of Alexandria, held that Jesus was created by the will of the Father originated with Arius, a priest of
Alexandria, denying that Christ was
and thus was not co-eternal with the Father. Arius also reasoned that Jesus the Son divine and co-eternal with God the
must be inferior to God the Father because the Father was incapable of suffering Father.
and did not die. Orthodox theologians branded Arius’s position a heresy—the de-
nial of a basic doctrine of faith. heresy The denial of a basic doctrine
of faith.
Arianism enjoyed such popularity and provoked such controversy that Con-
stantine, to whom religious disagreement meant civil disorder, interceded. He
summoned church leaders to a council in Nicaea (neye-SEE-uh) in Asia Minor
and presided over it personally. The council produced the Nicene (neye-SEEN)
Creed, which defined the orthodox position that Christ is “eternally begotten of
MAP 7.2 The Spread of Christianity

Originating in Judaea, the southern part of modern Israel and Jordan, Christianity first spread
throughout the Roman world and then beyond it in all directions.
PICTS 60°N Extent of Christianity, ca. 300

(St. Columba, ca. 521–597)
Iona Areas Christianized, 300–600
North
Armagh Areas Christianized, 600–800
IRISH BRITAIN Sea
(St. Patrick, 385?–461?)
Tara Whitby Centers of Christian diffusion
IRELAND
ANGLO- (Dates indicate period of conversion to Christianity)
SAXONS
Christianity introduced in (597–670) Northern part of Islamic world, ca. 750
FRISIANS
Britain by Romans in (690–739)
3rd century, nearly lost Canterbury SAXONS
during Anglo-Saxon Aix-la- (787–805) 50°N
Elb
50°E
invasion Chapelle Cologne Vol
e
ga
R.
Rouen Reims GERMANY Dni R.

epe .
nR
R.
Paris r R.
Do
ne
AT L A N T I C Tours Converted to Christianity Ca

Rhi
GAUL (341–381), followed by s

OC EAN Ligugé
St. Gall migration to Spain and Italy Se pi
a
an
Lyons
Milan CAUC
GOTHS ASUS MTS
E LOMBARDS
Narbonne (5th & 7th cen.) .
br
R.
Danube Black Sea
o
Marseilles Cannes
R.
SPAIN 40°
N
Nursia Sinope ARMENIA
Toledo Corsica THRACE
Tarragona
Rome Constantinople Chalcedon
Córdoba Naples Nicaea
Sardinia Tig
r
10°W
is
Caesarea Hippo Sicily

R
Athens Ephesus
.
Regius Euphra
tes
Syracuse Corinth
Antioch
R.
Carthage Ctesiphon
SYRIA
Me Crete Seleucia
VANDALS dite Damascus
(409–429) rrane Cyprus
an Sea
Cyrene 30°N
Jerusalem
Alexandria
N
Converted to Islam, Memphis
0 250 500 Km.
7th century EGYPT
Ni
Re
0 250 500 Mi. le

d
NORTH AFRICA
R.
Se
0° 10°E 20°E 30°E 40°E

a
the Father” and of the same substance as the Father. Arius and those who refused
to accept the creed were banished, the first case of civil punishment for heresy.
This participation of the emperor in a theological dispute within the church paved
the way for later emperors to do the same.
In 380 the emperor Theodosius made Christianity the official religion of the
empire. Theodosius stripped Roman pagan temples of statues, made the practice
of the old Roman state religion a treasonable offense, and persecuted Christians
who dissented from orthodox doctrine. Most significant, he allowed the church to
establish its own courts and to use its own body of law, called “canon law.” These
courts, not the Roman government, had jurisdiction over the clergy and ecclesias-
tical disputes. At the death of Theodosius, the Christian church was considerably
independent of the Roman state. The foundation for later growth in church power
had been laid.
Later Byzantine emperors continued the pattern of active involvement in
church affairs. They appointed the highest officials of the church hierarchy and
presided over ecumenical councils, where bishops would gather to make decisions
on matters of faith and practice. The emperors also controlled some of the mate-
rial resources of the church—land, rents, and indebted peasants. On the other
hand, the emperors had minimal involvement in church services and rarely tried
to impose their views in theological disputes. Greek churchmen vigorously de-
fended the church’s independence; some even asserted the superiority of the bish-
op’s authority over the emperor’s; and the church possessed such enormous
economic wealth and influence over the population that it could block govern-
Orthodox church Eastern orthodox ment decisions. The Orthodox church, the name generally given to the Eastern
church in the Byzantine empire. Christian church, was less independent of secular control than the Western Chris-
tian church, but it was not simply a branch of the Byzantine state.
Christianity began and spread as a city religion. Since

The Development the first century, however, some especially pious Chris-
of Christian tians had felt that the only alternative to the decadence
Monasticism of urban life was complete separation from the world.
All-consuming pursuit of material things, sexual promiscuity, and general political
corruption disgusted them. They believed that the Christian life as set forth in the
Gospel could not be lived in the midst of such immorality. They rejected the val-
ues of Roman society and were the first real nonconformists in the church.
This desire to withdraw from ordinary life led to the development of the mo-
nastic life. Some scholars believe that the monastic life of extreme material sacri-
fice appealed to Christians who wanted to make a total response to Christ’s
teachings; the monks became the new martyrs. Saint Anthony of Egypt (251?–
356), the earliest monk for whom there is concrete evidence and the man later
considered the father of monasticism, went to Alexandria during the persecutions
of the Emperor Diocletian in the hope of gaining martyrdom. Christians believed
that monks like the martyrs before them, could speak to God and that their prayers
eremitical A form of monasticism that had special influence.
began in Egypt in the third century
where individuals and small groups Monasticism began in Egypt in the third century. At first individuals and small
withdrew from cities and organized groups withdrew from cities and from organized society to seek God through
society to seek God through prayer. The prayer in desert or mountain caves and shelters. Gradually large colonies of monks
people who lived in caves and sought
gathered in the deserts of Upper Egypt. These monks were called hermits, from
shelter in the desert and mountains
were called hermits, from the Greek the Greek word eremos, meaning “desert.” Many devout women also were at-
word eremos. tracted to this eremitical (er-uh-MIT-ik-ul) type of monasticism.
The Egyptian ascetic Pachomius (puh-KOH-mee-uhs) (290–346?) drew thou-

sands of men and women to the monastic life at Tabennisi on the Upper Nile.
There were too many for them to live as hermits, and Pachomius organized com-
munities of men and women, creating a second type of monasticism, known as
coenobitic (seh-nuh-BIT-ik) (communal). Saint Basil (329?–379), the scholarly coenobitic monasticism Communal
bishop from Asia Minor, encouraged coenobitic monasticism, as he and the church living in monasteries, encouraged by
Saint Basil and the church because it
hierarchy thought that communal living provided an environment for training the provided an environment for training the
aspirant in the virtues of charity, poverty, and freedom from self-deception. aspirant in the virtues of charity, poverty,
and freedom from self-deception.
In the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries, information

Western and Eastern about Egyptian monasticism came to the West, and
Monasticism both men and women sought the monastic life. Be-
cause of the difficulties and dangers of living alone in the forests of northern Eu-
rope, the eremitical form of monasticism did not take root. Most of the monasticism
that developed in Gaul, Italy, Spain, England, and Ireland was coenobitic.
In 529 Benedict of Nursia (480–543), who had experimented with both the
eremitical and the communal forms of monastic life, wrote a brief set of regula-
tions for the monks who had gathered around him at Monte Cassino between
Rome and Naples. Benedict’s guide for monastic life, known as the Rule of Saint
Benedict, slowly replaced all others. The Rule of Saint Benedict came to influence
all forms of organized religious life in the Roman church. Men and women who
lived in monastic houses all followed sets of rules, first those of Benedict and later
those written by other individuals, and because of this came to be called regular regular clergy Men and women who
clergy, from the Latin word regulus (rule). Priests and bishops who staffed churches lived in monastic houses and followed
sets of rules, first those of Benedict and
in which people worshiped and who were not cut off from the world were called later those written by other individuals.
secular clergy. (According to official church doctrine, women are not members of
the clergy, but this distinction was not clear to most medieval people.) secular clergy Priests and bishops who
staffed churches where people worshiped
The Rule of Saint Benedict offered a simple code for ordinary men. It outlined
and were not cut off from the world.
a monastic life of regularity, discipline, and moderation in an atmosphere of si-
lence. Each monk had ample food and adequate sleep. The monk spent part of
each day in formal prayer, which Benedict called the Opus Dei (Work of God)
and Christians later termed the divine office, the public prayer of the church. This
consisted of chanting psalms and other prayers from the Bible in the part of the
monastery church called the “choir.” The rest of the day was passed in manual
labor, study, and private prayer.
Why did the Benedictine form of monasticism eventually replace other forms
of Western monasticism? The monastic life as conceived by Saint Benedict struck
a balance between asceticism and activity. It thus provided opportunities for men
of entirely different abilities and talents—from mechanics to gardeners to literary
scholars. The Benedictine form of religious life also proved congenial to women.
Five miles from Monte Cassino at Plombariola, Benedict’s twin sister Scholastica
(skoh-LAS-tih-kuh) (480–543) adapted the Rule for use by her community of nuns.
Benedictine monasticism also succeeded partly because it was so materially
successful. In the seventh and eighth centuries monasteries pushed back forests and
wastelands, drained swamps, and experimented with crop rotation. Benedictine
houses made a significant contribution to the agricultural development of Europe.
The communal nature of their organization, whereby property was held in com-
mon and profits were pooled and reinvested, made this contribution possible.
Finally, monasteries conducted schools for local young people. Some students
learned about prescriptions and herbal remedies and went on to provide medical
Sec tion Review treatment in their localities. A few copied manuscripts and wrote books. Local and
royal governments drew on the services of the literate men and able administrators
• Early Christian communities elected the monasteries produced. This was not what Saint Benedict had intended, but
their leaders, or bishops, who oversaw
the doctrine, preaching, and other
perhaps the effectiveness of the institution he designed made it inevitable.
community functions of their Monasticism in the Greek Orthodox world differed in fundamental ways from
jurisdiction (diocese). the monasticism that evolved in western Europe. First, while The Rule of Saint
• The bishops of Rome, known as Benedict gradually became the universal guide for all western European monaster-
“popes,” exercised more and more ies, each individual house in the Byzantine world developed its own set of rules for
power, claiming to speak and act as the organization and behavior, including rules about diet, clothing, liturgical func-
unitary source of authority for all Chris- tions, commemorative services for benefactors, the training of monks and nuns,
tians, while enjoying the benefits of the
emperor’s support.
and the election of officials. Second, education never became a central feature
of the Greek houses. Monks and nuns had to be literate to perform the services of
• Constantine set up and presided over
the council of Nicaea, producing the
the choir, but no monastery assumed responsibility for the general training of the
Nicene Creed, which declared Jesus to local young.
be divine and settled a dispute between There were also similarities between Western and Eastern monasticism. As in
two Christian factions by banishing the West, Eastern monasteries became wealthy, with fields, pastures, livestock, and
anyone who refused to accept it. buildings. Since bishops and patriarchs of the Greek church were recruited only
• Those who wanted to separate from the monasteries, Greek houses also exercised cultural influence.
themselves from perceived corruption
in society chose one of the two
monastic lifestyles: eremitical (isolated)
or coenobitic (communal). Christian Ideas and Practices
• The monk Benedict of Nursia wrote a How did Christian thinkers adapt Greco-Roman ideas to Christian
set of regulations for monks that
became favored for both monks (men) theology?
and nuns (women) because of its
balance between asceticism and The evolution of Christianity was not simply a matter of institutions such as the
activity.
papacy and monasteries, but also of ideas. Initially, Christians had believed that
• Monasteries were successful in both the end of the world was near and that they should dissociate themselves from the
the East and West but only the Western
“filth” of Roman culture. The church father Tertullian (ter-TUHL-ee-uhn) (ca.
monasteries provided schools with
educational training for local 160–220) claimed: “We have no need for curiosity since Jesus Christ, nor for in-
young people. quiry since the gospel.” Gradually, however, Christians developed a culture of
ideas that drew upon classical influences. The distinguished theologian Saint Je-
rome (340–419) translated the Old and New Testaments from Hebrew and Greek
into vernacular Latin; his edition is known as the “Vulgate.” The synthesis of
Greco-Roman and Christian ideas found greatest expression in the writings of
Saint Augustine, whose work had a profound influence on Christian theology.
Christian attitudes toward gender and sexuality pro-

Christian Notions of vide a good example of the ways early Christians both
Gender and Sexuality adopted and adapted the views of their contemporary
world. In his plan of salvation, Jesus considered women the equal of men. He at-
tributed no disreputable qualities to women and did not refer to them as inferior
creatures. On the contrary, women were among his earliest and most faithful con-
verts. He discussed his mission with them (John 4:21–25), and the first persons to
whom he revealed himself after his resurrection were women (Matthew 28:9–10).
Women took an active role in the spread of Christianity, preaching, acting as
missionaries, being martyred alongside men, and perhaps even baptizing believ-
ers. Because early Christians believed that the Second Coming of Christ was im-
minent, they devoted their energies to their new spiritual family of co-believers.
Early Christians often met in people’s homes and called one another brother and
sister, a metaphorical use of family terms that was new to the Roman Empire.
Christian Ideas and Practices 145
Some women embraced the ideal of virginity and either singly or

in monastic communities declared themselves “virgins in the ser-
vice of Christ.” All this made Christianity seem dangerous to many
Romans, especially when becoming Christian actually led some
young people to avoid marriage, which was viewed by Romans as
the foundation of society and the proper patriarchal order.
Not all Christian teachings about gender were radical, how-
ever. In the first century c.e. male church leaders began to place
restrictions on female believers. Paul and later writers forbade
women to preach, and women were gradually excluded from hold-
ing official positions in Christianity other than in women’s monas-
teries. In so limiting the activities of female believers Christianity
was following classical Mediterranean culture, just as it patterned
its official hierarchy after that of the Roman Empire.
Christian teachings about sexuality also built on classical cul-
ture. Many early church leaders, who are often called the church
fathers, renounced marriage and sought to live chaste lives not
only because they expected the Second Coming imminently, but
also because they accepted the hostility toward the body that de-
rived from certain strains of Hellenistic philosophy. Just as spirit
was superior to matter, the mind was superior to the body. Though
God had clearly sanctioned marriage, celibacy was the highest
good. This emphasis on self-denial led to a strong streak of misog-
yny (hatred of women) in their writings, for they saw women and
female sexuality as the chief obstacles to their preferred existence.
They also saw intercourse as little more than animal lust, the triumph
of the inferior body over the superior mind. Same-sex relations—
which were generally acceptable in the Greco-Roman world, es-
pecially if they were between socially unequal individuals—were
evil. The church fathers’ misogyny and hostility toward sexuality
had a greater influence on the formation of later attitudes than did
the relatively egalitarian actions and words of Jesus.
The most influential church father in

Saint Augustine the West was Saint Augustine of Hippo
on Human Nature, (354–430). Saint Augustine was born
Will, and Sin into an urban family in what is now Al-
geria in North Africa. His father, a minor civil servant, was a pagan; The Marys at Jesus’ Tomb
his mother, Monica, a devout Christian. It was not until adulthood This late-fourth-century ivory panel tells the story of Mary
that he converted to his mother’s religion. As bishop of the city of Magdalene and another Mary who went to Jesus’ tomb to
Hippo Regius, he was a renowned preacher, a vigorous defender of anoint the body (Matthew 28:1–7). At the top, guards
orthodox Christianity, and the author of more than ninety-three collapse when an angel descends from Heaven, and at the
books and treatises. bottom, the Marys listen to the angel telling them that Jesus
Augustine’s autobiography, The Confessions, is a literary mas- had risen. Immediately after this, according to Matthew’s
Gospel, Jesus appears to the women. Here the artist uses
terpiece. Written in the rhetorical style and language of late Ro-
Roman artistic styles to convey Christian subject matter, an
man antiquity, it marks the synthesis of Greco-Roman forms and example of the assimilation of classical form and Christian
Christian thought. The Confessions describes Augustine’s moral teaching. (Castello Sforzesco/Scala/Art Resource, NY)
struggle, the conflict between his spiritual aspirations and his sen-
sual self. Many Greek and Roman philosophers had taught that knowledge and
virtue are the same: a person who knows what is right will do what is right. Augus-
tine rejected this idea. People do not always act on the basis of rational knowledge.
For example, Augustine regarded a life of chastity as the best possible life even
before he became a Christian. As he notes in The Confessions, as a young man he
sacraments Certain rituals defined by prayed to God for “chastity and continency” and added “but not yet.” His educa-
the church in which God bestows
benefits on the believer through grace. tion had not made his will strong enough to avoid temptation; that would come
only through God’s power and grace.
Augustine’s ideas on sin, grace, and redemption became the foundation of all
Sec tion Review subsequent Western Christian theology, Protestant as well as Catholic. He wrote
• Christians at first thought the end of the that the basic or dynamic force in any individual is the will. When Adam ate the
world was near so they should separate fruit forbidden by God in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:6), he committed the
themselves from Roman culture, but “original sin” and corrupted the will. Adam’s sin was not simply his own, but was
gradually they developed a culture of passed on to all later humans through sexual intercourse; even infants were tainted.
ideas that included classical influences.
Augustine viewed sexual desire as the result of Adam and Eve’s disobedience, link-
• Initially, both men and women played ing sexuality even more clearly with sin than had earlier church fathers. Because
important roles, with women preaching
and acting as missionaries, but in the Adam disobeyed God, all human beings have an innate tendency to sin: their will
first century c.e. male leaders, following is weak. But according to Augustine, God restores the strength of the will through
classical culture, began to restrict grace, which is transmitted in certain rituals that the church defined as sacra-
women’s participation in official ments. Grace results from God’s decisions, not from any merit on the part of the
positions. individual.
• Christian teachings on sexuality also When the Visigothic (viz-ee-GOTH-ic) chieftain Alaric (AL-er-ik) conquered
adopted ideas from certain strains of Rome in 410, horrified pagans blamed the disaster on the Christians. In response,
Hellenistic philosophy, prescribing
celibacy and self-denial as the highest Augustine wrote City of God. This original work contrasts Christianity with the
good, leading to misogyny and hostility secular society in which it existed. According to Augustine, history is the account
toward women and same-sex relations. of God acting in time. Human history reveals that there are two kinds of people:
• Augustine’s ideas about sin (the result of those who live the life of the flesh in the City of Babylon and those who live the
will) and grace (the result of God, not life of the spirit in the City of God. The former will endure eternal hellfire; the
humans) became the foundation for latter will enjoy eternal bliss.
Western Christian theology. Augustine maintained that states came into existence as the result of people’s
• Augustine argued in his work City of inclination to sin. The state provides the peace, justice, and order that Christians
God that the state is the result of need in order to pursue their pilgrimage to the City of God. The church, while not
people’s will to sin and that the church
is responsible for the salvation of all, the equivalent of the City of God, is responsible for the salvation of all—including
leading to the church’s political view Christian rulers. Churches later used Augustine’s theory to argue their superiority
that it was superior to secular authority. over secular authority. This remained the dominant political theory until the late
thirteenth century.
Christian Missionaries and Conversion

What techniques did missionaries develop to convert barbarian peoples
to Christianity?
The word catholic derives from a Greek word meaning “general,” “universal,” or
“worldwide.” Christ had said that his teaching was for all peoples, and Christians
sought to make their faith catholic—that is, believed everywhere. This could be
accomplished only through missionary activity. As Saint Paul had written to the
Christian community at Colossae (kuh-LOS-ee) in Asia Minor, “there is no room
for distinction between Greek and Jew, between the circumcised or the uncircum-
cised, or between barbarian or Scythian (SITH-ee-uhn), slave and free man. There
is only Christ; he is everything and he is in everything.”2 Paul urged Christians to
bring the “good news” of Christ to all peoples. The Mediterranean served as the
highway over which Christianity spread to the cities of the Roman Empire. From
there missionaries took Christian teachings to the countryside, and then to areas
beyond the borders of the empire.
Christian Missionaries and Conversion 147
Among the Germanic tribes of western Europe, reli-

Missionaries on gion was not a private or individual matter. It was a so-
the Continent cial affair, and the religion of the chieftain or king
determined the religion of the people. Thus missionaries concentrated their initial
efforts not on the people, but on kings or tribal chieftains. According to custom,
kings negotiated with all foreign powers, including the gods. Because Christian
missionaries represented a “foreign” power (the Christian God), the king dealt
with them. Germanic kings accepted Christianity because they believed that the
Christian God was more powerful than pagan gods and that the Christian God
would deliver victory in battle, or because Christianity taught obedience to (kingly)
authority, or because Christian priests possessed knowledge and a charisma that
could be associated with kingly power. Kings who converted, such as Ethelbert of
Kent and the Frankish chieftain Clovis (KLOH-vis), sometimes had Christian
wives. Conversion may also have indicated that barbarian kings wanted to enjoy
the cultural advantages that Christianity brought, such as literate assistants and an
ideological basis for their rule.
In eastern Europe, missionaries traveled far beyond the boundaries of the Byz-
antine Empire. In 863 the emperor Michael III sent the brothers Cyril (826–869)
and Methodius (815–885) (muh-THOH-dee-uhs) to preach Christianity in Mora-
via (a region of the modern central Czech Republic). Other missionaries suc-
ceeded in converting the Russians in the tenth century. Cyril invented a Slavic
alphabet using Greek characters; this script, called the “Cyrillic (sih-RIL-ik) alpha-
bet,” is still in use today. Cyrillic script made possible the birth of Russian litera-
ture. Similarly, Byzantine art and architecture became the basis and inspiration of Ardagh Silver Chalice
Russian forms. The Byzantines were so successful that the Russians claimed to be This chalice, crafted about 800 c.e. and
the successors of the Byzantine Empire. For a time Moscow was even known as used for wine in Christian ceremonies,
formed part of the treasure of Ardagh
the “Third Rome” (the second Rome being Constantinople).
Cathedral in County Limerick, Ireland.
Made of several types of metal, it is
decorated with Celtic patterns in the
Tradition identifies the conversion of the Celts of Ire- same way as Irish manuscripts from this
Missionaries in land with Saint Patrick (ca. 385–461). After a vision era. Christianity was widespread in
the British Isles urged him to Christianize Ireland, Patrick studied in Ireland long before anywhere else in
Gaul and was consecrated a bishop in 432. He returned to Ireland, where he con- northern Europe, and Celtic traditions
verted the Irish tribe by tribe, first baptizing the king. By the time of Patrick’s and practices differed significantly from
death, the majority of the Irish people had received Christian baptism. In those of Rome. (National Museum of Ireland)
his missionary work, Patrick had the strong support of
Bridget of Kildare (kil-DAIR) (ca. 450–ca. 528), daugh-
ter of a wealthy chieftain. Bridget defied parental
pressure to marry and became a nun. She and the
other nuns at Kildare instructed relatives and friends
in basic Christian doctrine, made religious vestments
for churches, copied books, taught children, and above
all set a religious example by their lives of prayer. In Ireland
and later in continental Europe, women shared in the process
of conversion.
The Christianization of the English began in 597, when Pope
Gregory I (590–604) sent a delegation of monks under the Roman
Augustine to Britain. Augustine’s approach, like Patrick’s, was to
concentrate on converting the king. When he succeeded in
converting Ethelbert, king of Kent, the baptism of Ethelbert’s
people took place as a matter of course. Augustine established
his headquarters, or see, at Canterbury, the capital of Kent.
In the course of the seventh century, two Christian forces competed for the
conversion of the pagan Anglo-Saxons: Roman-oriented missionaries traveling
north from Canterbury, and Celtic monks from Ireland and northwestern Britain.
The Roman and Celtic church organization, types of monastic life, and methods
of arriving at the date of the central feast of the Christian calendar (Easter) differed
completely. Through the influence of King Oswiu of Northumbria (nawr-THUHM-
bree-uh) and the energetic abbess Hilda of Whitby, the Synod (ecclesiastical
council) held at Whitby in 664 opted to follow the Roman practices. The conver-
sion of the English and the close attachment of the English church to Rome had
far-reaching consequences because Britain later served as a base for the full-scale
Christianization of the continent (see Map 7.2).
Between the fifth and tenth centuries, the great major-

Conversion and ity of peoples living on the European continent and
Assimilation the nearby islands were baptized as Christians. When
a ruler marched his people to the waters of baptism, though, the work of Chris-
tianization had only begun. Baptism meant either sprinkling the head or immers-
ing the body in water. Conversion meant awareness and acceptance of the beliefs
of Christianity, including those that seemed strange or radical, such as “love your
enemies” or “do good to those that hate you.”
How did missionaries and priests get masses of pagan and illiterate peoples to
understand and live by Christian ideals and teachings? They did so through
preaching, assimilation, and the penitential system. Preaching aimed at present-
ing the basic teachings of Christianity and strengthening the newly baptized in
their faith through stories about the lives of Christ and the saints. But deeply in-
grained pagan customs and practices could not be stamped out by words alone or
even by imperial edicts. Christian missionaries often pursued a policy of assimila-
Procession to a New Church

In this sixth-century ivory carving, two men in a wagon, accompanied by a procession of people holding candles, carry a relic
casket to a church under construction. Workers are putting tiles on the church roof. New churches often received holy items
when they were dedicated, and processions were common ways in which people expressed community devotion. (Cathedral
Treasury, Trier. Photo: Ann Muenchow)
Migrating Peoples 149
tion, easing the conversion of pagan men and women by stressing similarities be- penitentials Manuals for the
tween their customs and beliefs and those of Christianity. In the same way that examination of conscience.
classically trained scholars such as Jerome and Augustine blended Greco-Roman relics Bones, articles of clothing, or
and Christian ideas, missionaries and converts mixed pagan ideas and practices other objects associated with the life
with Christian ones. Bogs and lakes sacred to Germanic gods became associated of a saint.
with saints, as did various aspects of ordinary life, such as traveling,
planting crops, and worrying about a sick child. Aspects of existing mid- Sec tion Review
winter celebrations, which often centered on the return of the sun as
the days became longer, were incorporated into celebrations of Christ- • St. Paul urged Christians to make their faith
mas. Spring rituals involving eggs and rabbits (both symbols of fertility) Catholic, meaning “universal” or “worldwide.”
were added to Easter. • Christian missionaries spread their faith
Also instrumental in converting pagans was the rite of reconcilia- throughout the Roman Empire and beyond.
tion in which the sinner was able to receive God’s forgiveness. The • In western Europe missionaries gained influence
penitent knelt individually before the priest, who questioned the peni- by converting leaders; in eastern Europe Chris-
tianity spread to Moravia and Russia, bringing
tent about the sins he or she might have committed. A penance such as with it the Cyrillic alphabet and inspiring Russian
fasting on bread and water for a period of time or saying specific prayers literature.
was imposed as medicine for the soul. The priest and penitent were • Saint Patrick brought Christianity to Ireland
guided by manuals known as penitentials (pen-uh-TENT-shuls), which while the nun Bridget of Kildare and other
included lists of sins and the appropriate penance. Penitentials gave women worked to spread it there.
pagans a sense of expected behavior. The penitential system also en- • Roman and Celtic church organization differed
couraged the private examination of conscience and offered relief from in types of monastic life and dates of the Christian
the burden of sinful deeds. calendar, but after an ecclesiastical council in
Most religious observances continued to be community matters, 664, the British followed the Roman practices,
tying the English church to Rome.
however, as they had been in the ancient world. People joined with
family members, friends, and neighbors to celebrate baptisms and fu- • Christian missionaries accomplished conversion
of pagans by preaching and by assimilating
nerals, presided over by a priest. They prayed to saints or to the Virgin existing pagan customs.
Mary to intercede with God, or they simply asked the saints for protec-
• The rite of reconciliation forgave individual sins
tion and blessing. The entire village participated in processions mark- through penance and confession to a priest, yet
ing saints’ days or points in the agricultural year, often carrying images religion continued to be mostly a community
of saints or their relics—bones, articles of clothing, or other objects as- matter.
sociated with the life of a saint—around the houses and fields.
Migrating Peoples
What were some of the causes of the barbarian migrations and how did
they affect the regions of Europe?
The migration of peoples from one area to another has been a dominant and con-
tinuing feature of Western history. Mass movements of Europeans occurred in the
fourth through sixth centuries, in the ninth and tenth centuries, and in the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries. From the sixteenth century to the present, such move-
ments have been almost continuous, involving not just the European continent
but the entire world. The causes of early migrations varied and are not thoroughly
understood by scholars. But there is no question that the migrations profoundly
affected both the regions to which peoples moved and the ones they left behind.
In surveying the world around them, the ancient

Celts, Germans, Greeks often conceptualized things in dichotomies, or
and Huns sets of opposites: light/dark, hot/cold, wet/dry, mind/
body, male/female, and so on. One of their key dichotomies was Greek/non-Greek,
and the Greeks coined the word barbaros for those whose native language was not
Greek, because they seemed to the Greeks to be speaking nonsense syllables—bar,
bar, bar. (“Bar-bar” is the Greek equivalent to “blah-blah” or “yada-yada.”) Bar-
baros originally meant simply not speaking Greek, but gradually it also implied
unruly, savage, and more primitive than the advanced civilization of Greece. The
word brought this meaning with it when it came into Latin and other European
languages, with the Romans referring to those who lived beyond the northeastern
barbarians A name given by the boundary of Roman territory as barbarians. Migrating groups that the Romans
Romans to all peoples living outside the labeled as barbarians had pressed along the Rhine-Danube frontier of the Roman
frontiers of the Roman Empire (except
the Persians).
Empire since about 150 c.e. (see page 109). In the third and fourth centuries, in-
creasing pressures on the frontiers from the east and north placed greater demands
on Roman military manpower, which plague and a declining birthrate had re-
duced. Therefore, Roman generals recruited barbarian refugees and tribes allied
with the Romans to serve in the Roman army, and some rose to the highest ranks.
As Julius Caesar advanced through Gaul between 58 and 50 b.c.e. (see page
102), the largest barbarian groups he encountered were Celts (whom the Romans
called Gauls) and Germans. Modern historians have tended to use the terms Ger-
man and Celt in a racial sense, but recent research stresses that Celt and German
are linguistic terms, a Celt being a person who spoke a Celtic language, an ances-
tor of the modern Gaelic or Breton language, and a German one who spoke a
Germanic language, an ancestor of modern German, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, or
Norwegian.
Celts and Germans were similar to one another in many ways. In the first
century c.e., the Celts lived east of the Rhine River in an area bounded by the
Main Valley and extending westward to the Somme (sawm) River. Germans were
more numerous along the North and Baltic Seas. Both Germans and Celts used
wheeled plows and a three-field system of crop rotation. Before the introduction of
Christianity, both Celtic and Germanic peoples were polytheistic, with hundreds
of gods and goddesses with specialized functions whose celebrations were often
linked to points in the yearly agricultural cycle. Worship was often outdoors at sa-
cred springs, groves, or lakes.
Vandal Landowner
In this mosaic, a Vandal landowner rides
out from his Roman-style house. His
clothing—Roman short tunic, cloak, and
sandals—reflects the way some Celtic
and Germanic tribes accepted Roman
lifestyles, though his beard is more
typical of barbarian men’s fashion.
(Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum)
The Celts had developed iron manufacturing, using shaft furnaces as sophisti-
cated as those of the Romans to produce iron swords and spears. Celtic priests,
called druids (DROO-idz), had legal and educational as well as religious functions,
orally passing down laws and traditions from generation to generation. Bards sing-
ing poems and ballads also passed down stories of heroes and gods, which were
written down much later. Celtic peoples conquered by the Romans often assimi-
lated to Roman ways, adapting the Latin language and other aspects of Roman
culture. By the fourth century c.e., under pressure from Germanic groups, the
Celts had moved westward, settling in Brittany (modern northwestern France)
and throughout the British Isles (England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland). The
Picts of Scotland as well as the Welsh, Britons, and Irish were peoples of Celtic
descent. (See Map 7.3.)
MAPPING THE PAST

MAP 7.3 The Barbarian Migrations
This map shows the migrations of various barbarian groups in late antiquity and can be used to answer the following questions: [1] The map
has no political boundaries. What does this suggest about the impact of barbarian migrations on political structures? [2] Human migration is
caused by a combination of push factors (circumstances that lead people to leave a place) and pull factors (things that attract people to a new
location). Based on the information in this and earlier chapters, what push and pull factors might have shaped the migration patterns you see on
the map? [3] The movements of barbarian peoples used to be labeled “invasions” and are now usually described as “migrations.” How do the
dates on the map support the newer understanding of these movements?
North
Sea
a
IRELAND BRITAIN Frankish Kingdom

Se
CELTS N
37 6 – 5 0 0 c
i Areas conquered by Clovis
ANGLO– B alt
SAXONS 450 Major battle
Elb
0 FRISIA e
Monastery
–50 358
376
R.
Od
Rh
English Channel er
ine R
Tournai Dn 50°N
R.
Rouen i ep
AT L A N T I C
.
Reims Mainz er 375

FRANKS Paris 451 Trier R . .
OC E AN 40 406 340 nR
Loire R
. 0– Do
486 50
Besançon 0 MOLDAVIA
Autun
Geneva OSTROGOTHS
568 DACIA
Lyons Milan
452
9
10°W Toulouse LOMBARDS Danu

40
489 b e R.
39
Narbonne Lérins Ravenna 375 Black Sea

7
Adrianople
418 Corsica 410 Monte 378
VISIGOTHS Tarragona Rome Cassino
455 Constantinople 40°N
Córdoba
Nicaea
Seville Cartagena Sardinia Naples
395
BYZANTINE EMPIRE
Hippo
Regius Ephesus
Sicily
429 Carthage
439
VANDALS Me Crete 40°E
dite
rrane
an Sea
Huns Ostrogoths
Vandals Franks
Visigoths Lombards
Angles, Saxons, Jutes FRANKS Area where tribe settled 0 250 500 Km. 30°N
0 250 500 Mi.

0° 10°E 20°E 30°E
The migrations of the Germanic peoples were important in the political and
social transformations of late antiquity. Many modern scholars have tried to ex-
plain who the Germans were and why they migrated. The present consensus,
based on the study of linguistic and archaeological evidence, is that there was not
one but rather many Germanic peoples with very different cultural traditions. The
largest Germanic tribe, the Goths, was a polyethnic group of about one hundred
thousand people, including perhaps fifteen thousand to twenty thousand warriors.
The tribe was supplemented by slaves, who, because of their desperate situation
under Roman rule, joined the Goths during their migrations.3
Why did the Germans migrate? Like the Celts, in part they were pushed by
groups living farther eastward, especially by the Huns from central Asia in the
fourth and fifth centuries. In part, they were searching for more regular supplies of
food, better farmland, and a warmer climate. Conflicts within and among Ger-
manic groups also led to war and disruption, which motivated groups to move.
Franks fought Alemanni (al-uh-MAN-ahy) in Gaul; Visigoths fought Vandals in
the Iberian Peninsula and across North Africa; and Angles and Saxons fought
Celtic-speaking Britons in England.
All these factors can be seen in the movement of the Visigoths, one of the
Germanic tribes, from an area north of the Black Sea southeastward into the Ro-
man Empire. Pressured by defeat in battle, starvation, and the movement of the
Huns, the Visigoths petitioned the emperor Valens to admit them to the empire.
Seeing in the hordes of warriors the solution to his manpower problem, Valens
agreed. Once the Visigoths were inside the empire, Roman authorities exploited
their hunger by forcing them to sell their own people as slaves in exchange for dog
flesh: “the going rate was one dog for one Goth.” Still, the Visigoths sought peace.
Fritigern offered himself as a friend and ally of Rome in exchange for the province
of Thrace—land, crops, and livestock. Confident of victory over a considerably
smaller army, Valens and his council chose to battle the Visigoths and lost.
Alaric I’s invasion of Italy and sack of Rome in 410 represents the culmination
of hostility between the Visigoths and the Romans. The Goths burned and looted
the city for three days, which caused many Romans to wonder whether God had
deserted them. This led the imperial government to pull its troops from the British
Isles and many areas north of the Alps, leaving these northern areas more vulner-
able and open to migrating groups. A year later Alaric died, and his successor led
his people into southwestern Gaul.4 Establishing their headquarters at Toulouse,
they exercised a weak domination over Spain until a Muslim victory at Guadalete
in 711 ended Visigothic rule.
One significant factor in Germanic migration was pressure from nomadic
steppe peoples from central Asia. This included the Alans, Avars, Bulghars, Kha-
zars, and most prominently the Huns, who attacked the Black Sea area and the
Eastern Roman Empire beginning in the fourth century. Under the leadership of
their warrior-king Attila, the Huns swept into central Europe in 451, attacking Ro-
man settlements in the Balkans and Germanic settlements along the Danube and
Rhine Rivers. After Attila turned his army southward and crossed the Alps into Italy,
a papal delegation, including Pope Leo I himself, asked him not to attack Rome.
Though papal diplomacy was later credited with stopping the advance of the Huns,
a plague that spread among Hunnic troops and their dwindling food supplies were
probably much more important. The Huns retreated from Italy, and within a year
Attila was dead. Later leaders were not as effective, and the Huns were never again
an important factor in European history. Their conquests had slowed down the
movements of various Germanic groups, however, allowing barbarian peoples to
absorb more of Roman culture as they picked the Western Roman Empire apart.
Between 450 and 565, the Germans established a

Germanic Kingdoms number of kingdoms, but none—other than the Frank-
ish kingdom—lasted very long. The Germanic king-
doms did not have definite geographical boundaries, and their locations are
approximate. The Vandals, whose destructive ways are commemorated in the
word vandal, settled in North Africa. In northern and western Europe in the sixth
century, the Burgundians (ber-GUHN-dee-uhns) ruled over lands roughly cir-
cumscribed by the old Roman army camps at Lyons, Besançon (buh-zahn-
SAWN), Geneva, and Autun.
In northern Italy the Ostrogothic king Theodoric (r. 471–526) established his
residence at Ravenna and gradually won control of all Italy, Sicily, and the terri-
tory north and east of the upper Adriatic. Although attached to the customs of his
people, Theodoric pursued a policy of assimilation between Germans and Ro-
mans. He maintained close relations with the emperor at Constantinople and at-
tracted able scholars such as Cassiodorus (kas-ee-uh-DAWR-uhs) (see page 212)
to his administration. Theodoric’s accomplishments were significant, but his ad-
ministration fell apart after his death.
The kingdom established by the Franks in the sixth century, in spite of later
civil wars, proved to be the most powerful and enduring of all the Germanic king-
doms. In the fourth and fifth centuries, they settled within the empire and allied
with the Romans, some attaining high military and civil positions. In the sixth
century one group, the Salian (SAY-lee-uhn) Franks, issued a law code called the
Salic (SAL-ik) Law, the earliest description of Germanic customs. Chlodio (fifth Salic Law A law code issued by Salian
century) is the first member of the Frankish dynasty for whom evidence survives. Franks that provides us with the earliest
description of Germanic customs.
According to legend, Chlodio’s wife went swimming, encountered a sea monster,
and conceived Merowig. The Franks believed that Merowig, a man of supernatu- Merovingian The Frankish dynasty
ral origins, founded their ruling dynasty, which was thus called Merovingian named after its founder, Merowig, a man
of mythical origins.
(mer-uh-VIN-jee-uhn).
The reign of Clovis (ca. 481–511) marks the decisive period in the develop-
ment of the Franks as a unified people. Through military campaigns, Clovis ac-
quired the central provinces of Roman Gaul. Clovis’s conversion to Christianity
also brought him the crucial support of the papacy and of the bishops of Gaul.
(See the feature “Listening to the Past: The Conversion of Clovis” on pages 160–
161.) The next two centuries witnessed the steady assimilation of Franks and
Gallo-Romans, as many Franks adopted the Latin language and Roman ways, and
Gallo-Romans copied Frankish customs and Frankish personal names. These cen-
turies also saw Frankish acquisition of the Burgundian kingdom and of territory
held by the Goths in Provence.5
The island of Britain was populated by various Celtic-

Anglo-Saxon England speaking tribes when it was conquered by Rome dur-
ing the reign of Claudius. During the first four centuries
c.e., it shared fully in the life of the Roman Empire. Towns were planned in the
Roman fashion, with temples, public baths, theaters, and amphitheaters. In the
countryside large manors controlled the surrounding lands. Roman merchants
brought Eastern luxury goods and Eastern religions—including Christianity—into
Britain. The Romans suppressed the Celtic chieftains, and a military aristocracy
governed. In the course of the second and third centuries, many Celts assimilated
to Roman culture, becoming Roman citizens and joining the Roman army.
When imperial troops withdrew from Britain in order to defend Rome from
the Visigoths, the Picts from Scotland and the Scots from Ireland invaded British
Celtic territory. According to the eighth-century historian Bede (beed) (see page
181), the Celtic king Vortigern invited the Saxons from Denmark to help him
against his rivals in Britain. Saxons and other Germanic tribes from modern-day
Norway, Sweden, and Denmark turned from assistance to conquest, attacking in
a hit-and-run fashion. Their goal was plunder, and at first their invasions led to no
permanent settlements. As more Germanic peoples arrived, however, they took
over the best lands and eventually conquered most of Britain. Some Britons fled
to Wales and the westernmost parts of England, north toward Scotland, and across
the English Channel to Brittany. Others remained and eventually intermarried
with Germanic peoples.
Historians have labeled the period 500 to 1066, the years of the Norman Con-
quest, as the “Anglo-Saxon” period, after the two largest Germanic tribes, the An-
gles and the Saxons. The Germanic tribes destroyed Roman culture in Britain.
Christianity disappeared, large urban buildings were allowed to fall apart, and
Sec tion Review tribal custom superseded Roman law.
• “Barbaros,” the Greek word that is the Anglo-Saxon England was divided along ethnic and political lines. The Ger-
origin of “barbarian” originally meant manic kingdoms in the south, east, and center were opposed by the Britons in the
not speaking Greek, but later implied west, who wanted to get rid of the invaders. The Anglo-Saxon kingdoms also fought
savage and primitive. among themselves, causing boundaries to shift constantly. Finally, in the ninth
• Celts and Germans were similar in century, under pressure from the Viking invasions, the Celtic Britons and the
their polytheism and origins but the Germanic Anglo-Saxons were molded together under the leadership of King Al-
Celts moved westward under pressure fred of Wessex (WES-iks) (r. 871–899).
from Germanic groups.
The Anglo-Saxon invasion gave rise to a rich body of Celtic mythology, par-
• Germanic peoples migrated to search ticularly legends about the Celtic King Arthur, who first appeared in Welsh poetry
for better food and climate and because
of conflicts with other groups, such as in the sixth century and later in histories, epics, and saints’ lives. Most scholars see
the Huns. Arthur as a composite figure who evolved over the centuries in songs and stories.
• The longest-lasting of the Germanic According to these texts, Arthur was the illegitimate son of the king of Britain
kingdoms was the Frankish kingdom whose royal parentage was revealed when he successfully drew the invincible
under Clovis, who settled within sword Excalibur from a stone. Arthur won recognition as king and used Excalibur
Roman Gaul and assimilated with the to win many battles. His quests included a search for the Holy Grail, the dish sup-
Gallo-Romans. posedly used by Jesus at the Last Supper, which was said to have miraculous pow-
• The Germanic Anglo-Saxons in Britain ers. Arthur held his court at Camelot, where his knights were seated at the Round
destroyed Roman culture as they fought Table, where all were equal. Those knights included Sir Tristan, Sir Galahad, Sir
among themselves and with the Britons
to the west, before Viking invasions Percival (Parsifal), and Sir Lancelot; Lancelot’s romance with Arthur’s wife Guine-
united them under King Alfred. vere (GWIN-uh-veer) led to the end of the Arthurian kingdom. In their earliest
• Celtic mythology and the legend of form as Welsh poems, the Arthurian legends may represent Celtic hostility to Anglo-
King Arthur may represent Celtic Saxon invaders, but they later came to be more important as representations of the
hostility toward Anglo-Saxon influence. ideal of medieval knightly chivalry and as great stories whose retelling has contin-
ued to the present.
Barbarian Society
What patterns of social, political, and economic life characterized
barbarian society?
Germanic and Celtic society had originated in the northern parts of central and
western Europe and the southern regions of Scandinavia during the Iron Age
(800–500 b.c.e.). After Germanic kingdoms replaced the Roman Empire as the
primary political structure throughout much of Europe, barbarian customs and
traditions formed the basis of European society for centuries.
Barbarian Society 155
Runic (ROO-nik) Inscriptions runic alphabet Writings that help to

This eighth-century chest made of whalebone depicts warriors, other human figures, and a horse, give a more accurate picture of barbarian
society; the oldest come from shortly
with a border of runic letters. This chest tells a story in both pictures and words. The runes are one of
after the time of Tacitus.
the varieties from the British Isles, from a time and place in which the Latin alphabet was known
as well. Runes and Latin letters were used side-by-side in some parts of northern Europe for
centuries. (Erich Lessing /Art Resource, NY)
Barbarians generally had no notion of the state as we

Kinship, Custom, use the term today; they thought in social, not political,
and Class terms. The basic social unit was the tribe, a group
whose members believed that they were all descended from a common ancestor.
Blood united them; kinship protected them. Law was custom—unwritten, pre-
served in the minds of the elders of the tribe, and handed down by word of mouth
from generation to generation. Every tribe had its customs, and every member of
the tribe knew what they were. Members were subject to their tribe’s customary
laws wherever they went, and friendly tribes respected one another’s laws.
Barbarian tribes were led by tribal chieftains, who are often called kings,
though this implies broader power than they actually had. The chief was the mem-
ber recognized as the strongest and bravest in battle and was elected from among
the male members of the strongest family. He led the tribe in war, settled disputes
among its members, conducted negotiations with outside powers, and offered sac-
rifices to the gods. The period of migrations and conquests of the Western Roman
Empire witnessed the strengthening of kingship among tribes.
Closely associated with the king in some southern tribes was the comitatus, or comitatus A war band, a group of
“war band.” Writing at the end of the first century, Tacitus (TAS-ee-tuhs) described young men who were closely associated
with the king in some southern tribes
the war band as the bravest young men in the tribe. They swore loyalty to the chief, and who swore loyalty to the chief,
fought with him in battle, and were not supposed to leave the battlefield without fought with him in battle, and were
him; to do so implied cowardice, disloyalty, and social disgrace. A social egalitari- not supposed to leave the battlefield
anism existed among members of the war band. The comitatus had importance without him.
for the later development of feudalism.
During the migrations of the third and fourth centuries, however, and as a re-
sult of constant warfare, the war band was transformed into a system of stratified
ranks. During the Ostrogothic conquest of Italy under Theodoric, warrior-nobles

also sought to acquire land as both a mark of prestige and a means to power. As
land and wealth came into the hands of a small elite class, social inequalities
emerged and gradually grew stronger.6 These inequalities help explain the origins
of the European noble class (see pages 234).
Early barbarian tribes had no written laws, but begin-

Law ning in the late sixth century some tribal chieftains
began to collect, write, and publish lists of their cus-
toms at the urging of Christian missionaries. The churchmen wanted to under-
stand barbarian ways in order to assimilate the tribes into Christianity. Augustine
of Canterbury, for example, persuaded King Ethelbert of Kent to have his folk laws
written down; these Dooms of Ethelbert date from between 601 and 604, roughly
five years after Augustine’s arrival in Britain. Moreover, by the sixth century many
barbarian kings needed regulations for the Romans under their jurisdiction as well
as for their own people.
According to the code of the Salian Franks, every person had a particular mon-
wergeld Man-money or money to buy etary value to the tribe. This value was called the wergeld (WUR-gild), which liter-
off the spear; according to the code of ally means “man-money” or “money to buy off the spear.” Men of fighting age had
Salian Franks, this is the particular
monetary value that every person had
the highest wergeld, then women of childbearing age, children, and finally the
in the tribe. aged. Everyone’s value reflected his or her potential military worthiness. If a person
accused of a crime agreed to pay the wergeld and if the victim and his or her family
accepted the payment, there was peace. If the accused refused to pay the wergeld
or if the victim’s family refused to accept it, a blood feud ensued. Individuals de-
pended on their kin for protection, and kinship served as a force of social control.
Some codes had specific clauses that protected the virtue of women. For ex-
ample, the Salic Law of the Franks fined a man the large amount of 15 solidi (SOL-
ih-dee) if he pressed the hand of a woman, and 35 if he touched her above the
elbow. The very high fine of 600 solidi for the murder of a woman of childbearing
years—the same value attached to military officers of the king, to priests, and to
boys preparing to become warriors—suggests the importance of women in Frank-
ish society, at least for their childbearing capacity.
At first, Romans had been subject to Roman law and Germans to Germanic
custom. As German kings accepted Christianity and as Romans and barbarians
increasingly intermarried, the distinction between the two laws blurred and, in the
course of the seventh and eighth centuries, disappeared. The result would be the
new feudal law, to which all who lived in certain areas were subject.
Barbarian groups usually resided in small villages, and

Social and climate and geography determined the basic patterns
Economic Structures of agricultural and pastoral life. Many tribes lived in
small settlements on the edges of clearings where they raised barley, wheat, oats,
peas, and beans. Men and women tilled their fields with simple wooden scratch
plows and harvested their grains with small iron sickles. The kernels of grain were
eaten as porridge, ground up for flour, or fermented into strong, thick beer; the
vast majority of people’s caloric intake came from grain in some form.
Within the small villages, there were great differences in wealth and status. Free
men and their families constituted the largest class. The number of cattle a man
possessed indicated his wealth and determined his social status. Free men also
Chapter Review 157
shared in tribal warfare. Slaves (prisoners of war) worked as farm laborers, herds-
men, and household servants.
Did the barbarians produce goods for trade and exchange? Ironworking repre-
sented the most advanced craft; much of northern Europe had iron deposits, and
the dense forests provided wood for charcoal. Most villages had an oven and smiths
who produced agricultural tools and instruments of war—one-edged swords, ar-
rowheads, and shields. In the first two centuries c.e., the quantity and quality of
Germanic goods increased dramatically, and the first steel swords were superior to
the weapons of Roman troops. These goods were produced for war and for the
subsistence economy, not for trade. Goods were also used for gift giving, a major Sec tion Review
social custom. Gift giving conferred status on the giver, who, in giving, showed his • Barbarian society was based on the
higher (economic) status, cemented friendship, and placed the receiver in his tribe, led by a tribal chieftain (king)
debt.7 Goods that could not be produced in the village were acquired by raiding and a loyal and egalitarian comitatus
and warfare rather than by commercial exchanges. (war band), though later it became
stratified into ranks and landholding
Barbarian tribes were understood to be made up of kin groups, and those kin warrior-nobles eventually gained
groups were made up of families, the basic social unit in barbarian society. Fami- power.
lies were responsible for the debts and actions of their members and for keeping • Barbarian tribes began to produce
the peace in general. Barbarian law codes set strict rules of inheritance based on written collections of their laws and
position in the family and often set aside a portion of land that could not be sold customs to rule better and for
or given away by any family member. missionaries, who wanted to assimilate
Germanic society was patriarchal: within each household the father had au- the tribes into Christianity.
thority over his wife, children, and slaves. Some wealthy and powerful men had • Franks protected themselves through
more than one wife, a pattern that continued even after they became Christian, Germanic customs and the Salic Law
and eventually incorporated Roman
but polygamy was not widespread among ordinary people. A woman was consid- law, as German kings became Chris-
ered to be under the legal guardianship of a man, and she had fewer rights to own tians and intermarried with Romans.
property than did Roman women in the late Empire. However, once they were • Barbarians lived in kin groups of
widowed (and there must have been many widows in such a violent, warring soci- families from small agricultural
ety), women sometimes assumed their husbands’ rights over family property and villages with free men owning cattle
held the guardianship of their children. and fighting, while slaves (prisoners of
Women found outlets for their talents in monasteries and convents as writers, war) worked as laborers and servants.
copyists, artists, embroiderers, teachers, and estate managers. Some houses of reli- • Barbarians worked with iron to
gious women, such as Mauberge in northern Francia under Abbess Aldegund (ca. produce steel swords and other tools
for war but not for trade, relying on
661), produced important scholarship. The dowry required for entrance to a con- raiding and warfare to obtain goods
vent restricted admission as full sisters to upper-class women, but poorer women they could not produce.
were taken in as lay sisters. Many women viewed the convent as a place of refuge • Women had few rights but many
from family pressures or tribal violence. The sixth-century Queen Radegund, for found outlets for their creative talents
example, was forced to marry Chlotar I, the murderer of several of her relatives. and leadership abilities in convents.
Radegund later escaped her polygamous union and lived out her life in a convent.
Chapter Review
How was the Byzantine Empire able to survive for so long, and what were its Key Terms
most important achievements? (page 134) Petrine Doctrine (p. 140)
Late antiquity was a period of rupture and transformation, but also of continuities Arianism (p. 141)
and assimilation. Migrating barbarian groups broke the Western Roman Empire apart, heresy (p. 141)
creating much smaller states and more localized economies. As they encountered Ro-
(continued)
man culture and became Christian, their own ways of doing things were transformed,
and the result was a blend of barbarian and Roman culture. In eastern Europe, the
Byzantine Empire thrived throughout late antiquity, maintaining Roman traditions. Orthodox church (p. 142)
Throughout Europe, leaders in the Christian Church energetically developed more
complex ideas and stronger institutional structures, transforming Christianity into the eremitical (p. 142)
most powerful agent in the making of Europe. In the east, the Byzantine Empire with- coenobitic monasticism (p. 143)
stood attacks from Germanic tribes and steppe peoples and remained a state until regular clergy (p. 143)
1453, a thousand years longer than the Western Roman Empire. Byzantium preserved secular clergy (p. 143)
the philosophical and scientific texts of the ancient world—which later formed the
basis for study in science and medicine in both Europe and the Arabic world—and sacraments (p. 146)
produced a great synthesis of Roman law, the Justinian Code, which shapes legal struc- penitentials (p. 149)
tures in much of Europe and former European colonies to this day. relics (p. 149)
barbarians (p. 150)
What factors enabled the Christian church to expand and thrive? (page 137) Salic Law (p. 153)
Merovingian (p. 153)
Christianity gained the support of the fourth-century emperors and gradually ad-
opted the Roman system of hierarchical organization. The church possessed able ad- runic alphabet (p. 155)
ministrators and leaders whose skills were tested in the chaotic environment of the end comitatus (p. 155)
of the Roman Empire in the West. Bishops expanded their activities, and in the fifth wergeld (p. 156)
century the bishops of Rome began to stress their supremacy over other Christian com-
munities. Monasteries offered opportunities for individuals to develop deeper spiritual
devotion and also provided a model of Christian living, a pattern of agricultural devel-
opment, and a place for education and learning.
How did Christian thinkers adapt Greco-Roman ideas to Christian theology?

(page 144)
Christian thinkers reinterpreted the classics in a Christian sense, incorporating ele-
ments of Greek and Roman philosophy and of various pagan religious groups into
Christian teachings. Prime among these were certain aspects of Greco-Roman notions
of gender and sexuality. Most Christian thinkers accepted Greco-Roman ideas that
men were superior to women, though they viewed sexuality and the body with greater
suspicion than had ancient pagans and developed a strong sense that chastity and an
ascetic life were superior to marriage and family life. Of these early thinkers, Augustine
of Hippo was the most influential. His ideas about sin, free will, sexuality, and the role
of government shaped western European thought from the fifth century on.
What techniques did missionaries develop to convert barbarian peoples to

Christianity? (page 146)
Christianity had a dynamic missionary policy, and the church slowly succeeded in
assimilating—that is, adapting—barbarian peoples into Christian teaching. Christian
missionaries preached the Gospel to Germanic, Celtic, and Slavic peoples, instructed
them in the basic tenets of the Christian faith, and used penitentials to give them a
sense of expected behavior. Christianity refashioned the Germanic and classical lega-
cies, creating new rituals and practices that were meaningful to people.
What were some of the causes of the barbarian migrations and how did they
affect the regions of Europe? (page 149)
The migration of barbarian groups into Europe from the East affected both the re-
gions into which peoples moved and the ones they left behind. Migrations were caused
by many factors, including food shortages, disputes among groups, and pressure from
outside, and they sometimes involved military actions, though not always. Barbarians
are often divided into large linguistic groups, such as the Celtic and Germanic tribes,
with ties to other tribes based on kinship and military alliances, not on loyalty to a
Chapter Review 159
particular government. Most barbarian states were weak and short-lived, though that of
the Salian Franks was relatively more unified and powerful. Germanic-speaking An-
gles and Saxons invaded Celtic-speaking England and established a group of small
kingdoms that slowly became more unified.
What patterns of social, political, and economic life characterized barbarian

society? (page 154)
Though barbarian states were generally feeble politically, barbarian customs and tra-
ditions formed the basis of European society for centuries. Barbarian law codes, written
down for the first time in the sixth century, set out social and gender distinctions and
held the family responsible for the actions of an individual. Most people lived in family
groups in villages, where men, women, and children shared in the agricultural labor
that sustained society. Christianity and the barbarian states absorbed many aspects of
Roman culture, and the Byzantine Empire continued to thrive, but western Europe
was very different in 600 from how it had been in 350.
Notes
1. Matthew 16:18–19.
2. Colossians 3:9–11.
3. Wolfram, History of the Goths (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), pp. 6–10.
4. Ibid., pp. 125–131.
5. E. James, The Franks (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1988), pp. 3, 7–10, 58.
6. P. J. Geary, Before France and Germany: The Creation and Transformation of the Merovingian
World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 108–112.
7. Ibid., p. 50.

The Conversion of Clovis
those who trust in you, in faith I beg the glory of
your help. If you will give me victory over my ene-
M odern Christian doctrine holds that conversion is a
gradual process of turning toward Jesus and his teach-
ings. But in the early medieval world, conversion was per-
mies, and if I may have evidence to that miraculous
power which the people dedicated to your name
ceived more as a one-time event determined by the tribal say that they have experienced, then I will believe
chieftain. This selection about the Frankish king Clovis is in you and I will be baptized in your name. I have
from The History of the Franks by Gregory, bishop of Tours called upon my own gods, but, as I see only too
(ca. 504–594), written about a century after the events it clearly, they have no intention of helping me. I
describes. therefore cannot believe that they possess any
power for they do not come to the assistance of
those who trust them. I now call upon you. I want
Queen Clotild continued to pray that her hus- to believe in you, but I must first be saved from my
band might recognize the true God and give up his enemies.” Even as he said this the Alamanni turned
idol-worship. Nothing could persuade him to ac- their backs and began to run away. As soon as they
cept Christianity. Finally war broke out against the saw that their King was killed, they submitted to
Alamanni and in this conflict he was forced by ne- Clovis. “We beg you,” they said, “to put an end to
cessity to accept what he had refused of his own this slaughter. We are prepared to obey you.” Clovis
free will. It so turned out that when the two armies stopped the war. He made a speech in which he
met on the battlefield there was a great slaughter called for peace. Then he went home. He told the
and the troops of Clovis were rapidly being annihi- Queen how he had won a victory by calling on the
lated. He raised his eyes to Heaven when he saw name of Christ. This happened in the fifteenth
this, felt compunction in his heart and was moved year of his reign (496).
to tears. “Jesus Christ,” he said, “you who Clotild The Queen then ordered Saint Remigius,
maintains to be the Son of the living God, you who Bishop of the town of Rheims (reemz), to be sum-
deign to give help to those in travail and victory to moned in secret. She begged him to impart the
Ninth-century ivory carving showing Clovis being baptized by Saint Remi. (Musée Condé, Chantilly/Laurie Platt Winfrey, Inc.)
160
word of salvation to the King. The Bishop asked pleased and he ordered the baptismal pool to be
Clovis to meet him in private and began to urge made ready.
him to believe in the true God, Maker of Heaven
and earth, and to forsake his idols, which were pow-
erless to help him or anyone else. The King replied: Questions for Analysis
“I have listened to you willingly, holy father. There 1. According to this account, why did Clovis
remains one obstacle. The people under my com- ultimately accept Christianity?
mand will not agree to forsake their gods. I will go 2. For the Salian Franks, what was the best proof
and put to them what you have just said to me.” He of divine power?
arranged a meeting with his people, but God in his 3. On the basis of this selection, do you consider
power had preceded him, and before he could say The History of the Franks reliable history? Why?
a word all those present shouted in unison: “We
will give up worshipping our mortal gods, pious Sources: L. Thorpe, trans., The History of the Franks by
Gregory of Tours (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin,
King, and we are prepared to follow the immortal
1974), p. 159; P. J. Geary, ed., Readings in Medieval His-
God about whom Remigius preaches.” This tory (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 1991),
news was reported to the Bishop. He was greatly pp. 165–166.
161
Chapter 8
Europe in the Early
Middle Ages
600–1000
Chapter Preview
The Spread of Islam
How did Islam take root in the Middle
East and then spread to Europe?
The Frankish Kingdom

How did Frankish rulers govern
their kingdoms?
The Empire of Charlemagne

How did Charlemagne gain control of a
large part of Europe and how did power
become decentralized after his death?
Early Medieval Scholarship and Culture

What were the significant
intellectual and cultural changes
in Charlemagne’s era?
Invasions and Migrations

What effects did the assaults and
migrations of the Vikings, Magyars, and
Muslims have on the rest of Europe?
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY: Ebo of Reims

Garden built by Muslim rulers in Seville, Spain. Tranquil gardens
LISTENING TO THE PAST: Feudal Homage and Fealty such as this one represented paradise in Islamic culture, perhaps
because of the religion’s desert origins. (Ric Ergenbright/Corbis)
162
The Spread of Islam 163
I n the fifteenth century writers and scholars in the growing cities of northern
Italy began to think that they were living in a new era, one in which the glo-
ries of ancient Greece and Rome were being reborn. What separated their own
time from classical antiquity, in their opinion, was a long period of darkness, to
which a seventeenth-century professor gave the name “Middle Ages” (Medium
Aevum in Latin). In this conceptualization, Western history was divided into three
periods—ancient, medieval (a word derived from the Latin), and modern.
This three-part schema is still the primary way of organizing Western history.
Exactly what marked the dividing lines between these periods was not very clear,
however. For a long time the end of the Roman Empire in the West in 476 was
seen as the division between the classical period and the Middle Ages, but as we
saw in the last chapter, more recent historians have emphasized continuities as
well as changes in the fifth and sixth centuries. The transition from ancient to
medieval was a slow process, not a single event. The agents in this process in-
cluded not only the Germanic tribes whose migrations broke the Roman Empire
apart but also the new religion of Islam, Slavic and steppe (step) peoples in eastern
Europe, and Christian officials and missionaries. The period from the end of an-
tiquity to about 1000, conventionally know as the “Early Middle Ages,” was a time
of disorder and destruction, but also of the creation of a new type of society.
The Spread of Islam

How did Islam take root in the Middle East and then spread to Europe?
In the seventh century c.e. two empires dominated the area today called the Middle
East: the Byzantine-Greek-Christian empire and the Sasanian-Persian-Zoroastrian
empire. The Arabian peninsula lay between the two.
Around 610 in the Arabian city of Mecca, a merchant called Muhammad be-
gan to have religious visions. By the time he died in 632, all Arabia had accepted
his creed. A century later his followers controlled Syria, Palestine, Egypt, North
Africa, Spain, and part of France. This Arabic expansion profoundly affected the
development of Western civilization as well as the history of Africa and Asia.
In Muhammad’s time Arabia was inhabited by various

The Arabs tribes, most of them Bedouins (BED-oo-inz). These
nomadic peoples grazed goats and sheep on the sparse
patches of grass that dotted the vast semiarid peninsula. Other Arabs lived in the
southern valleys and coastal towns along the Red Sea in Yemen, Mecca, Medina,
and the northwestern region called “Hejaz” (HEE-jaz). The Hejazi supported
themselves by agriculture and trade. Their caravan routes crisscrossed Arabia and
carried goods to Byzantium, Persia, and Syria. The Hejazi had wide commercial
dealings but avoided cultural contacts with their Jewish, Christian, and Persian
neighbors. The wealth produced by their business transactions led to luxurious
living in the towns.
Although the nomadic Bedouins condemned the urbanized lifestyle of the
Hejazi as immoral and corrupt, Arabs of both types respected one another’s local
tribal customs. In addition, they had certain religious rules in common. For ex-
ample, all Arabs kept three months of the year as sacred; during that time fighting
stopped so that everyone could attend holy ceremonies in peace. The city of
164 Chapter 8 Europe in the Early Middle Ages, 600–1000
Mecca in what is now Saudi Arabia was the religious center of the Arab world, and
Kaaba A sanctuary in Mecca where fighting was never tolerated there. All Arabs prayed at the Kaaba (KAH-buh), the
Arabs prayed. sanctuary in Mecca. Within the Kaaba was a sacred black stone that Arabs revered
because they believed it had fallen from heaven.
What eventually molded the diverse Arab tribes into a powerful political and
social unity was the religion based on the teachings of Muhammad.
Qur’an The sacred book of Islam. Except for a few vague remarks in the Qur’an (kuh-
The Prophet RAHN), the sacred book of Islam, Muhammad (ca.
Muhammad 571–632) left no account of his life. Arab tradition ac-
cepts some of the sacred legends that developed about him as historically true, but
those legends were not written down until about a century after his death. Or-
phaned at the age of six, Muhammad was brought up by his grandfather. When he
was a young man, he became a merchant in the caravan trade. Later he entered
the service of a wealthy widow, and their subsequent marriage brought him finan-
cial independence. The Qur’an reveals him to be an extremely devout man, as-
cetic, self-disciplined, and literate.
Since childhood Muhammad had been subject to seizures during which he
lost consciousness and had visions. After 610 these visions apparently became
more frequent. Unsure for a time about what he should do, Muhammad discov-
ered his mission after a vision in which the angel Gabriel instructed him to preach.
Muhammad and the Earlier Prophets

Muhammad, with his head surrounded by fire representing religious fervor, leads Abraham, Moses, and Jesus in prayer. Islamic tradition holds that
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all derive from the pure religion of Abraham, but humankind has strayed from that faith. Therefore, Muhammad, as
“the seal (last) of the prophets,” had to transmit God’s revelations to humankind. (Bibliothèque nationale de France)
Chronology
Muhammad described his visions in a stylized and often ca. 571–632 Life of the Prophet Muhammad
rhyming prose and used this literary medium as his Qur’an,
or “prayer recitation.” Muhammad’s revelations were writ- 700 Lindisfarne Gospel produced in
Northumbria
ten down by his followers during his lifetime and organ-
ized into chapters shortly after his death. In 651 Muhammad’s 711–720 Muslim conquest of Spain
third successor as religious leader, Othman, arranged to have ca. 720 Venerable Bede writes Ecclesiastical
an official version published. The Qur’an is regarded by History of the English People
Muslims as the direct words of God to his Prophet Mu- 760s–840s Carolingian Renaissance
hammad and is therefore especially revered. (These reve-
lations were in Arabic. When Muslims use translations in 768–814 Reign of Charlemagne
other languages, they do so alongside the original Arabic.) 800–900 Free peasants in western Europe
At the same time, other sayings and accounts of Muham- increasingly tied to the land as serfs
mad, which gave advice on matters that went beyond the 820 Muslim mathematician al-Khwarizmi
Qur’an, were collected into books termed hadith (hah- writes first treatise on algebra
DEETH). Muslim tradition (Sunna) consists of both the Treaty of Verdun divides Carolingian
843
Qur’an and the hadith. kingdom
Muhammad’s visions ordered him to preach a message
850–1000 Most extensive Viking raids
of a single God and to become God’s prophet, which he be-
gan to do in his hometown of Mecca. He gathered followers ca. 900 Establishment of Kievan Rus
slowly but also provoked a great deal of resistance, and in 622 950 Muslim Córdoba is Europe’s largest and
he migrated with his followers to Medina, an event termed most prosperous city
the hijra (HIJ-ruh) that marks the beginning of the Muslim Establishment of kingdom of Hungary
1001
calendar. At Medina Muhammad was much more success-
ful, gaining converts and working out the basic principles of
the faith. In 630 Muhammad returned to Mecca at the head
of a large army, and by his death in 632 he had unified most
of the Arabian peninsula into a religious/political community of Muslims, a word
meaning those who comply with God’s will. The religion itself came to be called
Islam, which means “submission to God.” The Kaaba was rededicated as a Mus-
lim holy place, and Mecca became the most holy city in Islam. According to
Muslim tradition, the Kaaba predates the creation of the world and represents the
earthly counterpart of God’s heavenly throne, to which “pilgrims come dishev-
elled and dusty on every kind of camel.”1
Muhammad’s religion eventually attracted great num-

The Teachings bers of people, partly because of the straightforward
of Islam nature of its doctrines. The strictly monotheistic theol-
ogy outlined in the Qur’an has only a few central tenets. Allah, the Arabic word for
God, is all-powerful and all-knowing. Muhammad, Allah’s prophet, preached his
word and carried his message. Muhammad described himself as the successor
both of the Jewish patriarch Abraham and of Christ, and he claimed that his teach-
ings replaced theirs. He invited and won converts from Judaism and Christianity.
Because Allah is all-powerful, believers must submit themselves to him. All
Muslims have the obligation of the jihad (jee-HAHD) (literally “self-exertion”) to
strive or struggle to lead a virtuous life and to spread God’s rule and law. In some
cases striving was individual against sin; in others it was social and communal and
could involve armed conflict, though this was not an essential part of jihad. The
Islamic belief of “striving in the path of God” is closely related to the central fea-
ture of Muslim doctrine, the coming Day of Judgment. Muslims need not be
concerned about when judgment will occur, but they must believe with absolute
and total conviction that the Day of Judgment will come. Consequently, all of a
Muslim’s thoughts and actions should be oriented toward the Last Judgment and
the rewards of Heaven.
To merit the rewards of heaven, a person must follow the strict code of moral
behavior that Muhammad prescribed. The Muslim must recite a profession of
faith in God and in Muhammad as God’s prophet: “There is no god but God and
Muhammad is his prophet.” The believer must pray five times a day, fast and pray
during the sacred month of Ramadan, and contribute alms to the poor and needy.
If possible, the believer must make a pilgrimage to Mecca once during his or her
lifetime. According to the Muslim shari’a (sha-REE-ah), or sacred law, these five
practices—the profession of faith, prayer, fasting, giving alms to the poor, and pil-
Five Pillars of Islam The five practices grimage to Mecca—constitute the Five Pillars of Islam.
according to the Muslim shari’a, or The Qur’an forbids alcoholic beverages and gambling. It condemns business
sacred law, including the profession of
faith, prayer, fasting, giving alms to the
usury—that is, lending money at interest rates or taking advantage of market de-
poor, and a pilgrimage to Mecca. mand for products by charging high prices for them. A number of foods, such as
pork, are also forbidden, a dietary regulation adopted from the Hebrews.
The Qur’an also sets forth an austere sexual morality. Muslim jurisprudence
condemned licentious behavior on the part of men as well as women, which en-
hanced the status of women in Muslim society. So, too, did Muhammad’s opposi-
tion to female infanticide. Polygyny, the practice of men having more than one
wife, was common in Arab society, but the Qur’an restricted the number of wives
to four—or even one, if the man could not treat all fairly. In a military society
where there were apt to be many widows, polygyny provided women with a mea-
sure of security.
With respect to matters of property, Muslim women were more emancipated
than Western women. For example, a Muslim woman retained complete jurisdic-
tion over one-third of her property when she married and could dispose of it in any
way she wished. Women in most European countries and the United States did
not gain these rights until the nineteenth century.2
What did early Muslims think of Jesus? He is described in the Qur’an as a right-
eous prophet who was born of Mary the Virgin, performed miracles, and contin-
ued the work of Abraham and Moses, and he was a sign of the coming Day of
Judgment. But Muslims held that Jesus was an apostle only, not God, and that
those who called Jesus divine committed blasphemy (showing contempt for God).
Muslims esteemed the Judeo-Christian Scriptures as part of God’s revelation, al-
though they believed that Christian communities had corrupted the Scriptures
and that the Qur’an superseded them. The Christian doctrine of the Trinity—that
there is one God in three persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit)—conflicts with
the Muslim idea of monotheism.3
By the time Muhammad died in 632, he had united

Expansion and the nomads of the desert and the merchants of the cit-
Schism ies. The doctrines of Islam, instead of the ties of local
custom, bound all Arabs. The crescent of Islam, the Muslim symbol, prevailed
throughout the Arabian peninsula. During the next century one rich province of
the old Roman Empire after another came under Muslim domination—first Syria,
then Egypt, and then all of North Africa (see Map 8.1). Long and bitter wars
(572–591, 606–630) between the Byzantine and Persian Empires left both so weak
and exhausted that they easily fell to Muslim attack. The government headquar-
ters of this vast new empire was established at Damascus in Syria by the ruling
Umayyad (oo-MY-ad) family. By the early tenth century a Muslim proverb spoke
of the Mediterranean Sea as a Muslim lake, though the Greeks at Constantinople
20°E 40°E 60°E 80°E
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iep R.
Danub er
CAROLINGIAN e R .
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ga
EMPIRE R.
ATL A N T IC Poitiers Venice KHAZAR Jax
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Ca
Sea R.
Marseilles forced to withdraw
Black Sea CAUCA
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Antioch AZERBAIJAN
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is R
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iterr Cyprus Eup
hra Qum KHURASAN
.
anean Homs tes R Baghdad
Tripoli Sea . Nihawand Kabul
AcreDamascus
Kufa Ctesiphon Isfahan Kandahar Lahore
Jerusalem
Alexandria Cairo Hira
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Pe
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ia Hormuz us
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ARABIAN
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a
Under Muhammad, 622–632
N Arabian Sea
632–656
AFRICA YEMEN
656–750 I N DIAN
750–900 OC EAN
Major battle HORN OF
AFRICA
MAP 8.1 The Islamic World, ca. 900

The rapid expansion of Islam in a relatively short span of time testifies to the Arabs’ superior fighting
skills, religious zeal, and economic organization as well as to their enemies’ weakness.
contested that notion. From the Arabian peninsula, Muslims carried their faith
deep into Africa and across Asia all the way to India.
Despite the clarity and unifying force of Muslim doctrine, a schism soon de-
veloped within the Islamic faith. Neither the Qur’an nor the hadith gave clear
guidance about how successors to Muhammad were to be chosen, but a group of
Muhammad’s closest followers elected Abu Bakr (a-BOO BAK-uhr), who was a
close friend of the Prophet’s and a member of a small tribe affiliated with the
Prophet’s tribe, as caliph (KEY-lif, KAL-if), a word meaning successor. This election caliph A successor, as chosen by a group
set a precedent for the ratification of the subsequent patriarchal caliphs, though of Muhammad’s closest followers.
other Arab tribes unsuccessfully opposed it militarily.
A more serious opposition developed later among supporters of the fourth ca-
liph, Ali. Ali claimed the caliphate because of his blood ties with Muhammad—he
was Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law—and because the Prophet had desig-
nated him as imam (ee-MAHM), or leader. Ali was assassinated shortly after be-
coming caliph, and some of his supporters began to assert that he should rightly
have been the first caliph and that all subsequent caliphs were usurpers. These
supporters of Ali—called Shi’ites (SHE-ites) or Shi’a (SHE-ah) from Arabic terms Shi’ites Muslims who regard
meaning “supporters” or “partisans” of Ali—saw Ali and subsequent imams as the Muhammad’s cousin Ali as the rightful
successor to the position as caliph.
divinely inspired leaders of the community. The larger body of Muslims who ac-
cepted the first elections—called Sunnis (SUN-nees), a word derived from Sunna, Sunnis Muslims who regard the
the traditional beliefs and practices of the community—saw the caliphs as political succession of leadership through Abu
Bakr as legitimate.
leaders. Since Islam did not have an organized church and priesthood, the caliphs
had an additional function of safeguarding and enforcing the religious law (shari’a)
with the advice of scholars (ulama), particularly the jurists, judges, and scholastics
who were knowledgeable about the Qur’an and hadith. Over the centuries, many
different kinds of Shi’ites appeared, and enmity between Sunni and Shi’a Muslims
sometimes erupted into violence.
In Europe, Muslim political and cultural influence

Muslim Spain was felt most strongly in the Iberian peninsula. In 711
a Muslim force crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and eas-
ily defeated the weak Visigothic kingdom. A few Christian princes supported by
the Frankish rulers held out in northern mountain fortresses, but the Muslims
took over most of Spain. A member of the Umayyad dynasty, Abd al-Rahman
(AHB-d al-ruh-MAHN) (r. 756–788), established a kingdom in Spain with its cap-
ital at Córdoba (KAWR-doh-buh).
Throughout the Islamic world, Muslims used the term al-Andalus to describe
the part of the Iberian Peninsula under Muslim control. The name al-Andalus
probably derives from the Arabic for “land of the Vandals,” the Germanic people
who swept across Spain in the fifth century. In the eighth century, al-Andalus in-
cluded the entire peninsula from Gibraltar in the south to the Cantabrian Moun-
tains in the north (see Map 8.1). Today we often use the word Andalusia
(an-duh-LOO-zhuh) to refer especially to southern Spain, but eighth-century
Christians throughout Europe called the peninsula “Moorish Spain” because the
people who invaded and conquered it were Moors—Berbers from northwest Af-
rica. The ethnic term Moorish can be misleading, however, because the peninsula
was home to sizable numbers of Jews and Christians as well as (Muslim) Moors.
In business transactions and in much of daily life, all peoples used the Arabic
language. With Muslims, Christians, and Jews trading with and learning from one
another and occasionally intermarrying, Moorish Spain and Norman Sicily (see
Chapter 9) were the only distinctly pluralistic societies in medieval Europe. Be-
tween roughly the eighth and twelfth centuries, Muslims, Christians, and Jews
lived close together in Andalusia, and some scholars believe that the early part of
this period was an era of remarkable interfaith harmony. Jews in Muslim Spain
were generally treated well, and Córdoba became a center of Jewish as well as
Muslim learning. Many Christians adopted Arabic patterns of speech and dress,
gave up the practice of eating pork, and developed a special appreciation for
Arabic music and poetry. Some Christian women of elite status chose the
Muslim practice of veiling their faces in public. Records describe Muslim
and Christian youths joining in celebrations and merrymaking.
From the sophisticated centers of Muslim culture in Baghdad, Damas-
cus, and Cairo (founded 969), al-Andalus seemed a provincial backwater, a
frontier outpost with little significance in the wide context of Islamic civili-
zation. To European peoples, however, Spanish culture was dazzling. For
example, the Saxon nun and writer Hroswita of Gandersheim (GAND-ers-
haym) called the city of Córdoba “the ornament of the world.” It became
Europe’s largest and most prosperous city. With a population of about half
a million; with well-paved and well-lighted streets and an abundance of
Harvesting Dates
This detail from an ivory casket given to a Córdoban prince reflects the importance of fruit
cultivation in the Muslim-inspired agricultural expansion in southern Europe in the ninth and
tenth centuries. (Louvre/Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, NY)
The Spread of Islam 169
fresh water; with 1,000 mosques, 900 public baths, 213,177 houses for ordinary
people, and 60,000 mansions for officials and the wealthy; with 80,455 shops and
13,000 weavers producing silks, woolens, and brocades; with 27 free schools and a
library containing 400,000 volumes (the largest library in northern Europe, at the
Benedictine abbey of St. Gall in Switzerland, had 600 books), Córdoba was in-
deed an ornament, and the Western world had no comparable urban center. In
Spain, as elsewhere in the Arab world, the Muslims had an enormous impact on
agricultural development. They began the cultivation of rice, sugar cane, citrus
fruits, dates, figs, eggplants, carrots, and, after the eleventh century, cotton. These
crops, together with new methods of field irrigation, provided the urban popula-
tion with food products unknown in the rest of Europe.
In about 950, Caliph Abd al-Rahman III (912–961) of the Umayyad dynasty of
Córdoba ruled most of the Iberian Peninsula. Christian Spain consisted of the tiny
kingdoms of Castile, León, Catalonia, Aragon, Navarre, and Portugal. However,
civil wars among al-Rahman’s descendents weakened the caliphate, and the small
northern Christian kingdoms expanded southward.
The Islamic world, both in Spain and elsewhere, pro-

Science and Medicine foundly shaped Christian European culture. Toledo,
for example, became an important center of learning
through which Arab intellectual achievements entered and influenced western
Europe. Arabic knowledge of science and mathematics, derived from the Chi-
nese, Greeks, and Hindus, was highly sophisticated. The Muslim mathematician
al-Khwarizmi (al-KHWAHR-iz-mee) (d. 830) wrote the important treatise Algebra,
the first work in which the word algebra is used mathematically. Al-Khwarizmi
adopted the Hindu system of numbers (1, 2, 3, 4), used it in his Algebra, and ap-
plied mathematics to problems of physics and astronomy. Scholars at Baghdad
translated Euclid’s Elements, the basic text for plane and solid geometry. Muslims
also instructed Westerners in the use of the zero, which permitted the execution of
complicated problems of multiplication and long division. Use of the zero repre-
sented an enormous advance over clumsy Roman numerals. (Since our system of
numbers is actually Hindu in origin, the term Arabic numerals, coined about 1847,
is a misnomer.)
Middle Eastern Arabs translated and codified the scientific and philosophical
learning of Greek and Persian antiquity. In the ninth and tenth centuries that
knowledge was brought to Spain, where between 1150 and 1250 it was translated
into Latin. Europeans’ knowledge of Aristotle changed the entire direction of Eu-
ropean philosophy and theology (see page 60). Isaac Newton’s discoveries in math-
ematics in the seventeenth century rested on ancient Greek theories translated
in Spain.
In the transmission of Greek learning, one Muslim technological accomplish-
ment played a most significant role—paper. Building on techniques invented by
the Chinese, Muslims brought their papermaking method to the major hubs of
their empire, and it eventually entered Spain. Even before the invention of print-
ing (see page 317), papermaking had a revolutionary impact on the collection and
diffusion of knowledge and thus on the transformation of society.4
Muslim medical knowledge far surpassed that of the West. By the ninth cen-
tury Arab physicians had translated most of the treatises of Hippocrates, and later
generations made their own advances in the diagnosis and treatment of illnesses
and in surgical techniques. Arabic science reached its peak in the physician, phi-
lologist, philosopher, poet, and scientist ibn-Sina of Bukhara (980–1037), known
in the West as Avicenna. His al-Qanun codified all Greco-Arabic medical thought,
described the contagious nature of tuberculosis and the spreading of diseases, and
listed 760 pharmaceutical drugs.
Unfortunately, many of these treatises came to the West as translations from
Greek to Arabic and then to Latin and inevitably lost a great deal in translation.
Nevertheless, in the ninth and tenth centuries Arabic knowledge and experience
in anatomy and pharmaceutical prescriptions much enriched Western knowledge.
Beyond Andalusian Spain, mutual animosity restricted

Muslim-Christian contact between Muslims and Christians. The Mus-
Relations lim expansion into Christian Europe in the eighth and
ninth centuries left a legacy of bitter hostility. Christians felt threatened by a faith
that denied the doctrine of the Trinity and Christ’s divinity. Europeans’ perception
of Islam as a menace helped inspire the Crusades of the eleventh through thir-
infidel An unbeliever, a word carrying a teenth centuries (see pages 209–214).
pejorative or disparaging connotation. By the thirteenth century Western literature sometimes displayed a sympa-
thetic view of Islam. The Bavarian knight Wolfram von Eschenbach’s (ESH-en-
Sec tion Review bak) Parzival (PAHR-tsi-fahl) and the Englishman William Langland’s Piers the
Plowman—two poems that survive in scores of manuscripts, suggesting that they
• Two tribes—the nomadic Bedouins and circulated widely—reveal some broad mindedness and tolerance toward Muslims.
the city-dwelling Hejaz—respected Some travelers in the Middle East were impressed by the kindness and generosity
each other’s religious rules, sharing the
city of Mecca as the religious center of of Muslims and with the strictness and devotion with which Muslims observed
the Arab world. their faith.5
• Muhammad founded the religion of More frequently, however, Christian literature portrayed Muslims as the most
Islam, which unified the Arabian dreadful of Europe’s enemies, guilty of every kind of crime. In his Inferno, the
peninsula into a political and religious great Florentine poet Dante placed the Muslim philosophers Avicenna (av-uh-
group known as Muslims, based on a SEN-uh) and Averroes (uh-VERR-oh-eez) with other virtuous “heathens,” among
belief that he was a prophet of God, them Socrates and Aristotle, in the first circle of hell, where they endured only mod-
and his visions were written down in
the Qur’an and other teachings known erate punishment. Muhammad, however, was consigned to the ninth circle, near
as the hadith. Satan himself, where he was condemned as a spreader of discord and scandal.
• Islam teaches the Five Pillars of Islam: Muslim views of Christians were also mixed, but here disinterest may have
the profession of faith (that there is been more common than hostility. Muslim historical writing reflects strong knowl-
only one God and Muhammad is his edge of European geography but shows an almost total lack of interest in Euro-
prophet), prayer, fasting, giving alms to pean languages, life, and culture. Commercially, from the Muslim perspective,
the poor, and the pilgrimage to Mecca. Europe had very little to offer apart from woolens from the Frisian (FRIZH-uhn)
• Islam expanded rapidly, but upon Islands in the North Sea and some slaves from central and southeastern Europe.
Muhammad’s death, a sometimes Animosity began to develop between Muslims and Christians in Spain after
violent succession dispute developed,
the Sunnis accepting an elected line of the initial period of harmony. Muslim teachers feared that close contact between
leadership and the Shi’ites following the two peoples would lead to Muslim contamination and become a threat to the
Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law, Ali. Islamic faith. Christian bishops worried that knowledge of Islam would lead to ig-
• The region of Andalusia in the Span- norance of essential Christian doctrines.
ish peninsula enjoyed a unique and Thus, beginning in the late tenth century, Muslim regulations increasingly
peaceful blend of Muslims, Christians, defined what Christians and Muslims could do. A Christian, however much as-
and Jews, with a flourishing capital similated, remained an infidel. An infidel was an unbeliever, and the word carried
in Córdoba.
a pejorative or disparaging connotation. Such divisions were enhanced in the
• After a period of peace, discord began twelfth century when al-Andalus was taken over by the Almohad dynasty, an ex-
to grow between Muslims and Chris-
tians when each thought of the other as tremist group from Morocco that outlawed Judaism and Christianity. When Chris-
infidels (unbelievers) who corrupted tian forces conquered Muslim territory in subsequent centuries, Christian rulers
their respective faiths. regarded their Muslim and Jewish subjects as infidels and enacted similar restric-
tive measures.
The Frankish Kingdom 171
The Frankish Kingdom

How did Frankish rulers govern their kingdoms?
Several centuries before the Muslim conquest of Spain, the Frankish king Clovis
converted to Roman Christianity and established a large kingdom in what had
been Roman Gaul (see page 153). Though at the time the Frankish kingdom was
established it was simply one barbarian kingdom among many, it became the most
important state in Europe, expanding to become an empire. Rulers after Clovis
used a variety of tactics to enhance their authority and create a stable system.
Clovis established the Merovingian dynasty, named

The Merovingians after a mythical founder Merowig. Before he died,
Clovis arranged for his kingdom to be divided among
his four sons, a decision that led to civil wars and chronic violence as Clovis’s de-
scendants fought among themselves. Still, the royal family and the royal court
served as the focus around which conflicts arose, so that the dynasty itself was not
threatened.6
A Merovingian ruler had multiple sources of income. These included reve-
nues from the royal estates, which were especially large in the north, and the
“gifts” of subject peoples, such as plunder and tribute paid by peoples east of the
Rhine River. New lands might be conquered and confiscated in order to replenish
revenues lost when the ruler endowed land to monasteries or other religious insti-
tutions. Fines imposed for criminal offenses and tolls and customs duties on roads,
bridges, and waterways (and the goods transported over them) also yielded in-
come. As with the Romans, the minting of coins was a royal monopoly, with dras-
tic penalties for counterfeiting.
The responsibility for collecting royal revenues in a civitas (SIV-i-tas)—a city civitas The city and surrounding
and surrounding territory—fell to a senior official or royal companion known as a territory that served as a basis of the
administrative system in the Frankish
comites (KOH-meh-tehs). A comites presided over the civitas and was also respon- kingdom.
sible for hearing lawsuits, enforcing justice, and raising troops. A military leader,
known as a dux (dooks) or duke, commanded troops from several civitates and was comites A senior official or royal
companion later called a count that
responsible for both defending the kingdom and conquering new lands. The
presided over the civitas.
bishop of the civitas also played an important role in the community, and the king
depended on him for local information. Merovingian, Carolingian (below), and
later medieval rulers traveled constantly to check up on local administrators and
peoples. Their hosts were required to provide for the king and his entourage of
wives, children, servants, court officials, and warriors and their horses. These visits
no doubt strained the local resources.
The court or household of Merovingian kings included scribes who kept
records, legal advisors, and treasury agents responsible for aspects of royal finance.
These officials could all read and write Latin. Over them all presided the mayor of
the palace, the most important secular figure after the king in the kingdom. Usu-
ally a leader of one of the great aristocratic families, the mayor also governed in the
king’s absence.
Kings consulted regularly with the leaders of the aristocracy. This class repre-
sented a fusion of Franks and the old Gallo-Roman leadership. Its members pos-
sessed landed wealth—villas over which they exercised lordship and dispensed
local customary, rather than royal, law—and they often had lavish lifestyles. When
they were with the king, they constituted the royal court. If the king consulted
them and they were in agreement, there was peace. Failure to consult could result
in civil war.
From this aristocracy one family gradually emerged

The Rise of the to replace the Merovingian dynasty. The rise of the
Carolingians Carolingians—whose name comes from the Latin Car-
olus, or Charles—rests on several factors. First, beginning with Pippin I (d. 640),
the head of the Carolingian family acquired and held onto the powerful position
of mayor of the palace. Second, a series of advantageous marriage alliances brought
the family estates and influence in different parts of the Frankish world. The
landed wealth and treasure acquired by Pippin II (d. 714), his son Charles Martel
(r. 714–741), and Pippin III (r. 751–768) formed the basis of Carolingian power.
Military victories over supporters of the Merovingians ensured their dominance.
Charles Martel’s successful wars against the Saxons, Frisians, Alamanni, and
Bavarians further enhanced the family’s prestige. But it was his victory, in 732, over
a Muslim force near Poitiers (pwa-TYEY) in central France that was most signifi-
cant. For Christians, the Frankish victory was one of the great battles of history,
halting Muslim expansion in Europe. (Muslims, however, viewed it as a minor
skirmish.) Charles Martel and later Carolingians used it to portray themselves as
defenders of Christendom against the Muslims.
The battle of Poitiers helped the Carolingians acquire the support of the
church, perhaps their most important asset. Charles Martel and Pippin III further
strengthened their ties to the church by supporting the work
of missionaries who preached Christianity to pagan peoples,
along with the Christian duty to obey secular authorities.
The most famous of these missionaries was the Englishman
Boniface (BON-uh-feys) (680–754), who had close ties to
the Roman pope. Boniface ordered the oak of Thor, a tree
sacred to many pagans, cut down and the wood used to build
a church. When the god Thor did not respond by killing Bon-
iface with his lightning bolts, Boniface won many converts.
As mayor of the palace, Charles Martel had exercised the
power of king of the Franks. His son Pippin III aspired to
have the title as well as its powers. His diplomats were able to
convince an embattled Pope Zacharius to rule in his favor in
exchange for military support against the Lombards. Chil-
peric, the last Merovingian ruler, was consigned to a monas-
tery. An assembly of Frankish magnates elected Pippin king,
and he was anointed by the missionary Boniface at Soissons.
Saint Boniface
The upper panel of this piece from an early-eleventh-century Fulda Mass
book shows the great missionary to Germany baptizing, apparently by
full immersion. The lower panel shows his death scene, with the saint
protecting himself with a Gospel book. The fluttering robes are similar to
those in earlier Anglo-Saxon books, probably modeled on illustrations in
books that Boniface brought to Fulda Abbey from England. (Staatsbibliothek
Bamberg, Ms. Lit. I, fol. 126v)
The Empire of Charlemagne 173
When, in 754, Lombard expansion again threatened the papacy, Pope Stephen II Sec tion Review
journeyed to the Frankish kingdom seeking help. On this occasion, he personally
anointed Pippin with the sacred oils and gave him the title “Patrician of the Ro- • The Frankish king Clovis, a Roman
Christian, established his Merovin-
mans.” Pippin promised restitution of the papal lands and later made a gift of es- gian kingdom in what was Roman
tates in central Italy. Gaul; while his four sons fought over
Prior to Pippin, only priests and bishops had received anointment. Pippin be- it, the dynasty remained.
came the first monarch to be acknowledged as rex et sacerdos (reks et SAK-er-dose), • Merovingian rulers amassed wealth as
meaning king and priest. Anointment, rather than royal blood, set the Christian they collected revenues, conquered
king apart. By having himself anointed, Pippin cleverly eliminated possible threats new land, imposed fines and tolls, and
to the Frankish throne coming from other claimants, and the pope promised him minted coins.
support in the future. When Pippin died, his son Charles succeeded him. • In many Frankish territories, a
comites (royal official) oversaw
cities, a dux (duke) commanded the
troops, and a bishop relayed local
The Empire of Charlemagne information to the king; the bishop
also had religious and community
How did Charlemagne gain control of a large part of Europe and how did duties.
power become decentralized after his death? • The Merovingian king’s court
included scribes, legal advisors,
Charles the Great (r. 768–814), generally known by the French version of his treasury agents, the mayor of the
palace (who was second to the king),
name, Charlemagne (SHAHR-leh-mane), built on the military and diplomatic
and the leaders of the aristocracy.
foundations of his ancestors and on the administrative machinery of the Merovin-
• Charles Martel, of the aristocratic
gian kings. He expanded the Frankish kingdom into what is now Germany and
Carolingian family, gained strength
Italy and, late in his long reign, was crowned emperor by the pope. through wealth, advantageous land
position, marriage, and most impor-
tantly the church; he put his son
Charlemagne’s secretary and biographer, Einhard, Pippin on the Frankish throne.
Charlemagne’s wrote a lengthy idealization of this warrior-ruler. It is
Personal Qualities and the earliest medieval biography of a layman, and histo-
Marriage Strategies rians consider it generally accurate:
Charles was large and strong, and of lofty stature, though not disproportionately
tall . . . the upper part of his head was round, his eyes very large and animated,
nose a little long, hair fair, and face laughing and merry. Thus his appearance was
always stately and dignified . . . although his neck was thick and somewhat short,
and his belly rather prominent; but the symmetry of the rest of his body concealed
these defects. His gait was firm, his whole carriage manly and his voice clear, but
not so strong as his size led one to expect. His health was excellent, except during
the four years preceding his death. . . .7
Though crude and brutal, Charlemagne was a man of enormous intelligence. He
appreciated good literature, such as Saint Augustine’s City of God, and Einhard
considered him an unusually effective speaker.
The security and continuation of his dynasty and the need for diplomatic alli-
ances governed Charlemagne’s complicated marriage pattern. Charlemagne had
a total of four legal wives and six concubines, and even after the age of sixty-five he
continued to sire children. Though three sons reached adulthood, only one out-
lived him. Four surviving grandsons ensured perpetuation of the dynasty.
Continuing the expansionist policies of his ancestors,

Territorial Expansion Charlemagne fought more than fifty campaigns and
became the greatest warrior of the early Middle Ages.
He subdued all of the north of modern France, but his greatest successes were in
today’s Germany. In the course of a thirty-year war against the Saxons, he added
most of the northwestern German tribes to the Frankish kingdom. Charlemagne

also achieved spectacular results in the south, incorporating Lombardy into the
Frankish kingdom. He ended Bavarian independence and defeated the nomadic
Avars, opening the Danubian plain for later settlement. He successfully fought the
Byzantine Empire for Venetia (excluding the city of Venice itself), Istria, and
Dalmatia, and temporarily annexed those areas to his kingdom.
Charlemagne’s only defeat came at the hands of the Basques of northwest-
ern Spain, as he was withdrawing after an unsuccessful siege of their territory.
Although it was a forbidden topic during Charlemagne’s lifetime, the ill-fated
expedition inspired the great medieval epic, The Song of Roland. Based on
legend and written in about 1100 at the beginning of the European crusading
movement, the poem portrays the Frankish Count Roland as the ideal chival-
ric knight and Charlemagne as exercising a sacred kind of kingship. Although
many of the epic’s details differ from the historical evidence, The Song of
Roland is important because it reveals the popular image of Charlemagne in
later centuries.
By around 805 the Frankish kingdom included all of northwestern
Europe except Scandinavia (see Map 8.2). Not since the third cen-
tury c.e. had any ruler controlled so much of the Western world.
Charlemagne ruled a vast rural world

The Government dotted with isolated estates and small
of the Carolingian villages and characterized by constant
Empire warfare. According to the chroniclers of
the time, only seven years between 714 and 814 were peaceful.
Reliquary Bust of Charlemagne Charlemagne’s empire was not a state as people today understand
This splendid twelfth-century gothic idealization portrays that term; it was a collection of peoples and tribes. Apart from a
the emperor of legend and myth rather than the squat, small class of warrior-aristocrats and clergy and a tiny minority of
potbellied ruler described by his contemporary, Einhard. Jews, almost everyone engaged in agriculture. Towns served as the
The jeweled helmet or crown is symbolic of Charlemagne’s headquarters of bishops, as ecclesiastical centers.
role as defender of church and people. (Photo: Ann Münchow,
The Carolingian rulers inherited the functions of both the king
© Domkapitel Aachen)
and the mayor of the palace. The scholar-adviser Alcuin (AL-kwin)
(see page 183) wrote that “a king should be strong against his ene-
mies, humble to Christians, feared by pagans, loved by the poor and judicious in
counsel and maintaining justice.”8 Charlemagne worked to realize that ideal. By
military expeditions that brought wealth—lands, booty, slaves, and tribute—and
by peaceful travel, personal appearances, and the sheer force of his personality,
Charlemagne sought to awe newly conquered peoples and rebellious domestic
enemies.
The political power of the Carolingians rested on the cooperation of the dom-
inant social class, the Frankish aristocracy. The lands and booty with which
Charles Martel and Charlemagne rewarded their followers in these families en-
abled the nobles to improve their economic position, but it was only with noble
help that the Carolingians were able to wage wars of expansion and suppress rebel-
lions. In short, Carolingian success was a matter of reciprocal help and reward.9
For administrative purposes, Charlemagne divided his entire kingdom into
counties based closely on the old Merovingian civitas (see page 171). Each of the
approximately six hundred counties was governed by a count (or in his absence by
a viscount) whose responsibilities were similar to those of a Merovingian comites.
Counts were at first sent out from the royal court; later a person native to the re-
gion was appointed.
MAP 8.2 Charlemagne’s

10˚W 0˚ 10˚E 20˚E Conquests
N
Though Charlemagne’s hold on
60˚N much of his territory was relatively
Iona SCOTLAND NORWAY
weak, the size of his empire was
North not equaled again until the
Armagh SWEDEN
Limerick IRELAND Jarrow
S e a DENMARK nineteenth-century conquests of
Dublin NORTHUMBRIA
DANISH MARCH
Napoleon. (Source: Some data from
York Baltic
Sea Michael McCormick, Origins of the
WALES
MERCIA European Economy: Communications and
EAST
DEVON ANGLIA
CORNWALL WESSEX ESSEX
Commerce, a.d. 300–900 [Cambridge:
Canterbury SAXONY
SUSSEX KENT Utrecht 804 Cambridge University Press, 2001], p. 762.)
RS Elb
D E O
AN
eR
L
de
F Aachen rR
.
AT L A N T I C Rouen AUSTRASIA
Fulda .
BRITTANY
TR
Echternach Mainz
O C EA N Paris
IB
R.
NEUSTRIA Orléans 50˚N
UT
e
Rhin
AR
Tours Dan
ALEMANNIA ub
Y
Poitiers BAVARIA e R.
St.
788
PEO
AQUITAINE BURGUNDY Gall
Oviedo Bordeaux Lyons
PL
R.
GASCONY VENETIA
ES
ASTURIAS Milan
Rhône
Pavia Venice ISTRIA

Roncesvalles Aniane Genoa
LOMBARDY
Eb
DA
SPANISH Marseilles Lérins PAPAL Ravenna
ro
C A L I P HATE OF M
L
MARCH 811 STATES AT
R.
C ÓR DOB A Barcelona IA
DUCHY OF
Toledo Corsica Spoleto SPOLETO
Rome
Monte Cassino DUCHY OF
Córdoba BENEVENTO
Sardinia Naples
Balearic Is. Salerno
40˚N
Medite
rran BY Z ANTI N E EM P I R E
ea
n
Se Sicily
0 200 400 Km. a
0 200 400 Mi.
10˚W 0˚ 10˚E 20˚E
Frankish Kingdom, 768 TREATY OF VERDUN, 843
N
50˚
N
Areas conquered by Charlemagne
TR
Tributary peoples Aachen KINGDOM

IB
UT
Byzantine territory Paris Verdun OF LOUIS

AR
THE GERMAN
Strasbourg
Y
Viking settlement
PEO
Early Viking raids, trade, and KINGDOM OF

colonization routes CHARLES
PLES
THE BALD
KINGDOM
OF LOTHAIR
PAPAL
STATES
40˚N
Rome
Charles the Bald

Lothair
Louis the German 0 200 400 Km.
Tributary peoples
0 200 400 Mi.
As a link between local authorities and the central government, Charlemagne

appointed officials called missi dominici (miss-ee doh-MEH-nee-chee), “agents missi dominici Officials sent by
of the lord king.” Each year beginning in 802, two missi (singular: missus), usually Charlemagne to report on local districts.
a count and a bishop or abbot, visited assigned districts to check up on the local
counts. They held courts; investigated the district’s judicial, financial, and clerical
activities; and organized commissions to regulate crime, moral conduct, the clergy,
education, the poor, and many other matters.
In autumn of the year 800, Charlemagne paid a mo-

The Imperial mentous visit to Rome. Einhard gives this account of
Coronation of what happened:
Charlemagne
His last journey there [to Rome] was due to another factor, namely that the Romans,
having inflicted many injuries on Pope Leo—plucking out his eyes and tearing out
his tongue, he had been compelled to beg the assistance of the king. Accordingly,
coming to Rome in order that he might set in order those things which had exceed-
ingly disturbed the condition of the Church, he remained there the whole winter. It
was at the time that he accepted the name of Emperor and Augustus. At first he
was so much opposed to this that he insisted that although that day was a great
[Christian] feast, he would not have entered the Church if he had known before-
hand the pope’s intention. But he bore very patiently the jealousy of the Roman
Emperors [that is, the Byzantine rulers] who were indignant when he received
these titles. He overcame their arrogant haughtiness with magnanimity.10
For centuries scholars have debated the significance of the imperial corona-
tion of Charlemagne. Did Charlemagne plan the ceremony in Saint Peter’s on
Christmas Day, or did he merely accept the title of emperor? If, as Einhard im-
plies, the coronation displeased Charlemagne, was that because it put the pope in
the superior position of conferring power on the emperor? What were Pope Leo’s
motives in arranging the coronation?
Though final answers will probably never be found, several things seem cer-
tain. First, Charlemagne gained the imperial title of Holy Roman emperor and
the pope gained a military protector. Charlemagne considered himself a Christian
king ruling a Christian people. Through his motto, Renovatio romani imperi (Re-
vival of the Roman Empire), Charlemagne was consciously perpetuating old Ro-
man imperial notions while at the same time identifying with the new Rome of
the Christian church. Second, later German rulers were eager to gain the imperial
title and to associate themselves with the legends of Charlemagne and ancient
Rome. Finally, ecclesiastical authorities continually cited the event as proof that
the dignity of the imperial crown could be granted only by the pope.
From Baghdad, Harun al Rashid (hah-ROON al-rah-SHEED), caliph of the
Abbasid (ah-BASS-id) Empire (786–809), congratulated Charlemagne on his
coronation with the gift of an elephant. But although the Muslim caliph recognized
Charlemagne as a fellow sovereign, the Greeks regarded the papal acts as rebellious
and Charlemagne as a usurper. The imperial coronation thus marks a decisive break
between Rome and Constantinople. The coronation of Charlemagne, whether
planned by the Carolingian court or by the papacy, was to have a profound effect on
the course of German history and on the later history of Europe.
Charlemagne left his vast empire to his sole surviving

Decentralization son, Louis the Pious (r. 814–840), who attempted to
and “Feudalism” keep the empire intact. This proved to be impossible.
Members of the nobility engaged in plots and open warfare against the emperor,
often allying themselves with one of Louis’s three sons. (See the feature “Individu-
als in Society: Ebo of Reims.”) In 843, shortly after Louis’s death, those sons agreed
to the Treaty of Verdun (ver-DUHN), which divided the empire into three parts: Treaty of Verdun Treaty signed in 843
Charles the Bald received the western part, Lothair the middle part plus the title by Louis’s three sons, dividing the empire
into three parts and setting the pattern
of emperor, and Louis the eastern part, from which he acquired the title “the Ger- for political boundaries in Europe that
man.” Though of course no one knew it at the time, this treaty set the pattern for has been maintained until today.
political boundaries in Europe that has been maintained until today. Other than
brief periods under Napoleon and Hitler, Europe would never again see as large a
unified state as it had under Charlemagne, which is one reason he has become a
symbol of European unity in the twenty-first century.
The large-scale division of Charlemagne’s empire was accompanied by a de-
centralization of power at the local level. Civil wars weakened the power and
prestige of kings, who could do little about local violence. Likewise, the great inva-
sions of the ninth century, especially the Viking invasions (see page 169), weak-
ened royal authority. The western Frankish kings could do little to halt the invaders,
and the local aristocracy had to assume responsibility for defense. Common people
turned for protection to the strongest power, the local counts, whom they consid-
ered their rightful rulers. Thus, in the ninth and tenth centuries great aristocratic
families increased their authority in the regions of their vested interests. They built
private castles for defense and to live in, and they governed virtually independent
territories in which distant and weak kings could not interfere.
The most powerful nobles were those able to gain the allegiance of warriors,
often symbolized in an oath-swearing ceremony of homage and fealty that grew
out of earlier Germanic oaths of loyalty. In this ceremony, a warrior (knight) swore
his loyalty as a vassal—from a Celtic term meaning “servant”—to the more power- vassal A warrior who swore loyalty to a
ful individual, who became his lord. In return for the vassal’s loyalty, aid, and noble in exchange for protection and
support.
military assistance, the lord promised him protection and material support. This
support might be a place in the lord’s household but was more likely land of the
vassal’s own, called a fief (feef). The fief might contain forests, churches, and fief A piece of land granted by a feudal
towns. The fief theoretically still belonged to the lord, and the vassal only had the lord in return for service.
use of it. Peasants living on a fief produced the food and other goods necessary to
maintain the knight.
Though historians debate this, fiefs appear to have been granted extensively
first by Charles Martel and then by his successors, including Charlemagne and his
grandsons. These fiefs went to their most powerful nobles, who often took the title
of count. As the Carolingians’ control of their territories weakened, the practice of
granting fiefs moved to the local level, with lay lords, bishops, and abbots granting
fiefs as well as kings.
This system, later named feudalism, was based on personal ties of loyalty ce- feudalism A political system in which a
mented by grants of land rather than on allegiance to an abstract state or govern- vassal was promised protection and
material support by a lord in return for
mental system. In some parts of Europe, such as Ireland and the Baltic area, his loyalty, aid, and military assistance.
warrior-aristocrats or clan chieftains who controlled relatively small regions were
the ultimate political authorities; they generally did not grant fiefs to secure loyalty
but relied on strictly personal ties. Thus the word feudal does not properly apply to
these areas.
Some historians argue, in fact, that the word feudalism should not be used at
all, as it was unknown in the Middle Ages. In addition, the system that would later
be called feudalism changed considerably in form and pattern between the ninth
and fifteenth centuries, and differed from place to place. The feudalism of Eng-
land in 1100, for example, differed greatly from that of France, scarcely fifty miles
away, at the same time. The problem is that no one has come up with a better term
for this loose arrangement of personal and property ties.
Whether one chooses to use the word feudalism or not, this system functioned
as a way to organize political authority, particularly because vassals also owed
Ebo of Reims
T he term social mobility came into broad use only in
the twentieth century, but what it signifies—having
the opportunity for an upward shift in status within
Ebo served both church and state when, acting on be-
half of Pope Pascal I and Louis the Pious, he led a mis-
sion to King Harold of Denmark, whose goal was the
society—is probably as old as organized society itself. conversion of the Danes to Christianity and peaceful
“In all ages, service to the state and to relations with the Franks. When Harold and a large
men of power has raised some indi- Danish entourage visited Louis in 826, the Danes were
viduals and has enabled them to baptized, and Harold became Louis’s vassal.
share in the social prestige that at- In 830 Louis was past fifty, an old man by contempo-
taches to power.”* In the Christian rary standards. Louis had three adult sons. Adult sons
Middle Ages the Catholic Church often posed a test of medieval kingship. Sons wanted
provided the widest path for social power on their own, resented paternal control, and often
advancement, and the archbishop rebelled. In 833 Archbishop Ebo served as counselor to
symbolized political as well as reli- the sons of Louis the Pious in their plot to remove Louis
gious prestige. Ebo of Reims (ca. 775– and replace him with Lothar. Ebo headed a commis-
851) represents one such individual. sion of bishops that drew up charges against the emperor,
Ebo’s father was a serf freed by accusing him of failing in his imperial responsibilities,
Charlemagne; his mother, Himil- promoting discord among the Frankish people, and tol-
Emperor Louis the Pious truda, was the nurse of Louis the Pi- erating his (second) wife Judith’s adultery, thereby bring-
confers with bishops and ous. Ebo’s mother probably launched ing moral scandal to the kingdom. Louis was forced to
lay magnates. (Bibliothèque
nationale de France)
his career, for Ebo was brought up renounce the throne and to do public penance. The
with Louis at the “palace school” at charges proved false, and within months Louis regained
Aachen (AH-kuhn), where nobles his throne. A church council deposed Ebo, consigning
and others were trained for administrative and judicial him to a monastery. When Louis the Pious died, Lothar
service to the emperor. A bond was forged between Ebo restored Ebo to Reims, but the pope refused to approve
and Louis. When Louis became king of Aquitaine, he the appointment. Then a dispute with Lothar led Ebo to
made Ebo his librarian; when Louis succeeded as em- seek the support of Louis the German, who made him
peror in 814, he secured for Ebo the important archbishop of Hildesheim. Ebo died at Hildesheim.
episcopal see of Reims. Why did Ebo betray his boyhood friend and great
Ebo proved himself a very competent administrator. benefactor? Was he resentful about some real or per-
He began construction of a new cathedral, gaining impe- ceived slight and did he desire revenge? Was he willing
rial permission to use the city walls as building blocks. to listen to dangerous advice? Did he wish to show him-
Ebo organized the cathedral chapter—the local clergy self the equal of any magnate who opposed the emperor?
who handled routine business of the diocese under the The Annals of St.-Bertin, the chief source of informa-
bishop. He reformed the monasteries in his see, ending tion about these events, describes Ebo as ungrateful,
the diverse forms of religious life by enforcing the Rule disobedient, disloyal, and cruel. What do you think?
of Saint Benedict in all houses. Ebo also patronized
learning and the arts. He supported the production of Questions for Analysis
manuscripts and the school long associated with the ca- 1. How does the career of Ebo of Reims illustrate
thedral, and he commissioned the production of a book social mobility?
that bears his name, the Ebo Gospels. 2. What do Ebo’s church appointments tell us about
Ebo served the emperor as missus in his province, the Frankish state? What secular functions did
where he worked to extend royal authority. Archbishop bishops perform?
Sources: R. McKitterick, The Frankish Kingdoms Under the

* K. Bosl, “On Social Mobility in Medieval Society,” in Early Carolingians (New York: Longman, 1983); J. L. Nelson,
Medieval Society, ed. S. L. Thrupp (New York: Appleton- Politics and Ritual in Early Medieval Europe (London:
Century-Crofts, 1967). Ronceverte, 1986).
178
obligations other than military service to the lord. They served as advisers and
judges at the lord’s court, provided lodging for the lord when he was traveling
through their fief, gave him gifts at important family events, and might contribute
ransom money if the lord was captured.
Along with granting fiefs to knights, lords gave fiefs to the clergy for spiritual
services or promises of allegiance. In addition, the church held pieces of land on
its own and granted fiefs to its own knightly vassals. Abbots and abbesses of monas-
teries, bishops, and archbishops were either lords or vassals in many feudal ar-
rangements.
Women other than abbesses were generally not granted fiefs, but in most parts
of Europe they could inherit them if their fathers had no sons. Occasionally,
women did go through services swearing homage and fealty and swore to send
fighters when the lord demanded them. More commonly, women acted as their
husbands’ surrogates when the men were away, defending the territory from attack
and carrying out his administrative duties.
Feudalism existed at two social levels: at the higher level were the lords of great
feudal principalities; below them were their knights, holding fiefs that may have
been no larger than a small village with its surrounding land. In fact, some knights
were landless and lived in the households of their lords. A wide and deep gap in
social standing and political function separated these levels.
The vast majority of people in medieval Europe were

Manorialism, peasants who lived in family groups in villages or small
Serfdom, and the towns, raising crops and animals. The village and the
Slave Trade land surrounding it were called a manor, from the
Latin word for “dwelling” or “homestead.” Some fiefs might include only one
manor, while great lords or kings might have hundreds of manors under their di-
rect control. Residents of manors provided work for their lord in exchange for
protection, a system that was later referred to as manorialism. Peasants surren- manorialism A system in which
dered themselves and their lands to the lord’s jurisdiction. The land was returned residents of manors provided work for
their lord in exchange for protection.
to them to work, but the peasants became tied to the land by various kinds of pay-
ments and services. Like feudalism, manorialism involved an exchange. Because
the economic power of the feudal lord and vassal rested on the work of peasants,
feudalism and manorialism were inextricably linked.
In France, England, Germany, and Italy, local custom determined precisely
what services peasants would provide to their lord, but certain practices became
common everywhere. The peasant was obliged to give the lord a percentage of the
annual harvest, usually in produce, sometimes in cash. The peasant paid a fee to
marry someone from outside the lord’s estate. To inherit property, the peasant paid
a fine, often the best beast the person owned. Above all, the peasant became part
of the lord’s permanent labor force. With vast stretches of uncultivated virgin land
and a tiny labor population, lords encouraged population growth and immigra-
tion. The most profitable form of capital was not land but laborers.
In entering into a relationship with a feudal lord, free farmers lost status. Their
position became servile, and they became serfs. That is, they were bound to the serfs Free farmers in the feudal
land and could not leave it without the lord’s permission. Serfdom was not the relationship who lost status, therefore
becoming servile and bound to the land.
same as slavery in that lords did not own the person of the serf, but serfs were sub-
ject to the jurisdiction of the lord’s court in any dispute over property and in any
case of suspected criminal behavior.
The transition from freedom to serfdom was slow; its speed was closely related
to the degree of political order in a given region. In the late eighth century there
Balkan Neck Shackle (tenth century)

The slave trader restrained the captive by slipping the chain through the
loops in the neck collar (top), fastening it securely, and then attaching the
chain to the captive’s limbs. Similar devices for controlling slaves while
allowing them to walk were later used in other parts of the world. (The
National Museum of History, Sofia, Bulgaria)
were still many free peasants. And within the legal category of
serfdom there were many economic levels, ranging from the
highly prosperous to the desperately poor. Nevertheless, a
social and legal revolution was taking place. By the year 800
perhaps 60 percent of the population of western Europe—
completely free a century before—had been reduced to serf-
dom. The ninth-century Viking assaults on Europe, discussed
later in this chapter, created a vast climate of fear and led more
people to accept serfdom in exchange for protection.
Persons captured in war often became actual slaves, who
were then traded by merchants. Charlemagne’s long wars
against the Lombards, Avars, Saxons, and other groups pro-
duced thousands of prisoners who were exchanged for the
Eastern luxury goods that nobles and the clergy desired. When
Frankish conquests declined in the tenth century, slave mer-
chants obtained people from the empire’s eastern border who
spoke Slavic languages; this was the origin of our word slave.
Slaves sold across the Mediterranean fetched three or four
times the amounts brought within the Carolingian Empire,
Sec tion Review so most slaves were sold to Muslims. For Europeans and
Arabs alike, selling captives and other slaves was standard pro-
• Charlemagne was a brutal but intelligent ruler who fought cedure. Christian moralists sometimes complained about the
over fifty military campaigns and used diplomatic alliances
so that by 805 the Frankish kingdom extended over all of sale of Christians to non-Christians, but they did not object to
northwestern Europe except Scandinavia. slavery itself.
• The Carolingian empire was primarily an agricultural In general, the Carolingian period witnessed moderate
society, divided into counties ruled by counts and regulated population growth, as indicated by the steady reduction of for-
by missi dominici (agents of the king) who made regular ests and wasteland. The highest aristocrats and church offi-
inspection tours. cials lived well, with fine clothing and at least a few rooms
• The pope gained military protection from Charlemagne by heated by firewood. Male nobles hunted and managed their
granting him the imperial title Holy Roman Emperor, which estates, while female nobles generally oversaw the education
the Muslims recognized but the Greeks resented, causing a of their children and sometimes inherited and controlled land
rift between Rome and Constantinople.
on their own. Craftsmen and craftswomen on manorial estates
• After Charlemagne’s death, his grandsons divided his empire manufactured textiles, weapons, glass, and pottery, primarily
into three parts: Charles the Bald took the west, Lothair the
middle with the title of emperor, and Louis the east and the for local consumption. Sometimes abbeys and manors served
title “the German.” as markets; goods were shipped away to towns and fairs for
• This division led to decentralization of power as the most sale; and a good deal of interregional commerce existed. In
powerful nobles gained the support of vassals (warriors) in the towns, which were generally small, artisans and merchants
return for fiefs (land that could contain forests, churches, and produced and traded luxury goods for noble and clerical
towns), in a system known today as feudalism. patrons. The modest economic expansion benefited towns-
• Under feudalism and manorialism, free farmers gained people and nobles, but it did not alter the lives of most people
protection but lost ownership of their land and became serfs; very much.
in addition, many prisoners of war were sold and traded
as slaves.
Early Medieval Scholarship and Culture 181
Early Medieval Scholarship and Culture

What were the significant intellectual and cultural changes in
Charlemagne’s era?
It is perhaps ironic that Charlemagne’s most enduring legacy was the stimulus
he gave to scholarship and learning. Barely literate himself, preoccupied with the
control of vast territories, much more a warrior than an intellectual, he never-
theless set in motion a cultural revival that had widespread and long-lasting
consequences.
The Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria in medi-

Scholarship and eval England was the original source of the Carolin-
Religious Life gian intellectual revival. Northumbrian creativity owes
in Northumbria a great deal to Saint Benet Biscop (ca. 628–689), who
brought manuscripts and other treasures back from Italy. These formed the library
on which much later study rested.
Northumbrian monasteries produced scores of books: missals (used for the
celebration of the Mass), psalters (SAL-ters) (which contained the 150 psalms and
other prayers used by the monks in their devotions), commentaries on the Scrip-
tures, law codes, and collections of letters and sermons. The finest product of
Northumbrian art is probably the illuminated manuscript of the Gospel produced
at Lindisfarne (LIN-duhs-farn) around 700. The incredible expense involved in
the publication of such a book—for vellum (calfskin or lambskin specially pre-
pared for writing), coloring, and gold leaf—represents in part an aristocratic dis-
play of wealth. The illustrations have a strong Eastern quality, combining the
abstract, nonrepresentational style of the Christian Middle East and the narrative
(storytelling) approach of classical Roman art. Likewise, the use of geometrical
decorative designs shows the influence of Syrian art. Many scribes and artists must
have participated in the book’s preparation.
In Gaul and Anglo-Saxon England, women shared with men the work of evan-
gelization and the new Christian learning. Kings and nobles, seeking suitable oc-
cupations for daughters who did not or would not marry, founded monasteries for
nuns, some of which were double monasteries. A double monastery housed men double monastery A monastery that
and women in two adjoining establishments and was governed by one superior, an housed both men and women in two
adjoining establishments and was
abbess. Nuns looked after the children given to the monastery as oblates (OB- governed by one superior, an abbess.
laytz) (offerings), the elderly who retired at the monastery, and travelers who
needed hospitality. Monks provided protection, since an isolated house of women
invited attack in a violent age. Monks also did the heavy work on the land.
Perhaps the most famous abbess of the Anglo-Saxon period was Saint Hilda
(614–680). A noblewoman of considerable learning and administrative ability, she
ruled the double monastery of Whitby on the Northumbrian coast, advised kings
and princes, hosted the famous synod of 664, and encouraged scholars and poets.
Several generations after Hilda, Saint Boniface (see page 172) wrote many letters
to Whitby and other houses of nuns pleading for copies of books; these letters attest
to the nuns’ intellectual reputations.11
The finest representative of Northumbrian—and indeed all Anglo-Saxon—
scholarship is the Venerable Bede (ca. 673–735). When he was seven his parents
gave him as an oblate to Benet Biscop’s monastery at Wearmouth. Later he was
Nuns and Learning

In this tenth-century manuscript, the scholar Saint Aldhelm offers his book In Praise of Holy Virgins to a group of nuns, one of
whom already holds a book. Early medieval nuns and monks spent much of their time copying manuscripts, preserving much
of the learning of the classical world as well as Christian texts. (His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Trustees of Lambeth Palace
Library. MS 200, fol. 68v)
sent to the new monastery at Jarrow five miles away. Surrounded by the books
Benet Biscop had brought from Italy, Bede spent the rest of his life there.
Modern scholars praise Bede for his Ecclesiastical History of the English People
(ca. 720), the chief source of information about early Britain. Bede searched far
and wide for his information, discussed the validity of his evidence, compared
various sources, and exercised rare critical judgment.
Bede popularized the system of dating events from the birth of Christ, rather
than from the foundation of the city of Rome, as the Romans had done, or from
the regnal years of kings, as the Germans did. He introduced the term anno
Domini, “in the year of the Lord,” abbreviated a.d. He fitted the entire history of
the world into this new dating method. (The reverse dating system of b.c., “before
Christ,” does not seem to have been widely used before 1700.)
At about the time the monks at Lindisfarne were producing their Gospel book
and Bede was writing his History at Jarrow, another Northumbrian monk was at
work on a nonreligious epic poem that provides considerable information about
the society that produced it. In contrast to the works of Bede, which were written
in Latin, the poem Beowulf (BEY-uh-woolf) was written in the vernacular Anglo-
Saxon. Although Beowulf is the only native English heroic epic, all the events take
place in Denmark and Sweden, suggesting the close relationship between Eng-
land and the continent in the eighth century. A classic of Western literature,
Beowulf is the story of the hero’s progress from valiant warrior to wise ruler.
Early Medieval Scholarship and Culture 183
Had they remained entirely insular, Northumbrian cultural achievements

would have been of slight significance. But an Englishman from Northumbria—
Alcuin—played a decisive role in the transmission of English learning to the
Carolingian Empire and continental Europe.
In Roman Gaul through the fifth century, the general

The Carolingian culture rested on an education that stressed grammar;
Renaissance the works of the Greco-Roman orators, poets, drama-
tists, and historians; and the legal and medical treatises of the Roman world. Be-
ginning in the seventh and eighth centuries, a new cultural tradition common to
Gaul, Italy, the British Isles, and to some extent Spain emerged. This culture was
based primarily on Christian sources. Scholars have called this new Christian
and ecclesiastical culture, and the educational foundation on which it was based,
the “Carolingian Renaissance,” because Charlemagne was its
major patron.
Charlemagne directed that every monastery in his king-
dom “should cultivate learning and educate the monks and
secular clergy so that they might have a better understanding
of the Christian writings.” He also urged the establishment of
cathedral and monastic schools where boys might learn to
read and to pray properly. Thus the main purpose of this re-
birth of learning was to promote an understanding of the
Scriptures and of Christian writers.
At his court at Aachen, Charlemagne assembled learned
men from all over Europe. The most important scholar and
the leader of the palace school was the Northumbrian Alcuin
(ca. 735–804). From 781 until his death, Alcuin was the em-
peror’s chief adviser on religious and educational matters. An
unusually prolific writer, he prepared some of the emperor’s
official documents and wrote many moral exempla, or “mod-
els,” that set high standards for royal behavior and constitute
a treatise on kingship. Alcuin’s letters to Charlemagne set
forth political theories on the authority, power, and responsi-
bilities of a Christian ruler.
The scholars at Charlemagne’s court also built up librar-
ies, by hand copying books and manuscripts. They used the
beautifully clear handwriting known as “caroline minuscule,”
from which modern Roman type is derived. Unlike the
Merovingian majuscule, which had letters of equal size, min-
uscule had both uppercase and lowercase letters. Caroline
minuscule improved the legibility of texts and meant that a
sheet of vellum could contain more words and thus be used Saint Luke from the Ada Gospels (late eighth to
early ninth century)
more efficiently. With the materials at hand, many more
In this lavishly illuminated painting from a manuscript of the four
manuscripts could be copied. Book production on this scale
Gospels of the New Testament, a statuesque Saint Luke sits
represents a major manifestation of the revival of learning.
enthroned, his clothing falling in distinct folds reminiscent of
Caroline minuscule illustrates the way a seemingly small Byzantine art. He is surrounded by an elaborate architectural
technological change has broad cultural consequences. framework, and above him is a winged ox, the symbol of Luke in
Although scholars worked with Latin, the common people early Christian art. The Ada school of painting was attached to the
spoke local or vernacular languages. The Bretons, for exam- court of Charlemagne and gets its name from Ada, a sister of
ple, retained their local dialect, and the Saxons and Bavarians Charlemagne who commissioned some of the school’s
could not understand each other. Some scholars believe that work. (Municipal Library, Trier, HS 22fol. 85r)
Sec tion Review Latin words and phrases gradually penetrated the various vernacular languages,
facilitating communication among diverse peoples.
• Northumbria was the center of Caro- Once basic literacy was established, monastic and other scholars went on
lingian intellectual life thanks to Saint
Benet Biscop and the monasteries,
to more difficult work. By the middle years of the ninth century, there was a
which produced many books. great outpouring of more sophisticated books. Ecclesiastical writers imbued with
the legal ideas of ancient Rome and the theocratic ideals of Saint Augustine in-
• Double monasteries sheltered men and
women in adjoining houses; the men structed the rulers of the West. And it is no accident that medical study in the West
provided protection and did heavy work began at Salerno in southern Italy in the late ninth century, after the Carolingian
while the women looked after children Renaissance.
given to the monastery, the elderly, Alcuin completed the work of his countryman Boniface—the Christianization
and travelers.
of northern Europe. Latin Christian attitudes penetrated deeply into the con-
• The Venerable Bede was a Northum- sciousness of European peoples. By the tenth century the patterns of thought
brian monk and historical scholar
known as the main source of infor-
and the lifestyles of educated western Europeans were those of Rome and Latin
mation about early Britain and for Christianity.
introducing the anno Domini (a.d.)
dating system.
• The Carolingian Renaissance was a
rebirth of learning, based on Chris-
Invasions and Migrations
tian and ecclesiastical culture, that What effects did the assaults and migrations of the Vikings, Magyars, and
promoted a better understanding of Muslims have on the rest of Europe?
scriptures and Christian writings and
expanded production of manuscripts.
After the Treaty of Verdun (843), continental Europe was fractured politically.
• After establishing basic literacy,
monks and other scholars wrote more All three kingdoms controlled by the sons of Louis the Pious were torn by domes-
sophisticated books and advised the tic dissension and disorder. The frontier and coastal defenses erected by Char-
rulers of the West. lemagne and maintained by Louis the Pious were neglected. No European
political power was strong enough to put up effective resistance to external attacks.
Three groups attacked Europe: Vikings from Scandinavia, representing the final
wave of Germanic migrants; Muslims from the Mediterranean; and Magyars
forced westward by other peoples (see Map 8.3).
From the moors of Scotland to the mountains of Sicily,

Vikings in there arose in the ninth century the prayer, “Save us, O
Western Europe God, from the violence of the Northmen.” The North-
men, also known as Vikings, were Germanic peoples from Norway, Sweden, and
Denmark who had remained beyond the sway of the Christianizing influences of
the Carolingian Empire. Some scholars believe that the name Viking derives from
the old Norse word vik, meaning “creek.” A Viking, then, was a pirate who waited
in a creek or bay to attack passing vessels.
Viking boats were built for great speed and maneuverability. Propelled either
by oars or by sails, deckless, and about sixty-five feet long, a Viking ship could carry
between forty and sixty men—enough to harass an isolated monastery or village.
These ships, navigated by thoroughly experienced and utterly fearless sailors,
moved through the most complicated rivers, estuaries, and waterways in Europe.
The Carolingian Empire, with no navy and no notion of the importance of sea power,
was helpless. The Vikings moved swiftly, attacked, and escaped to return again.
Scholars disagree about the reasons for Viking attacks and migrations. Recent
research asserts that a very unstable Danish kingship and disputes over the succes-
sion led to civil war and disorder, which drove warriors abroad in search of booty
and supporters. Other writers insist that the Vikings were looking for trade and
new commercial contacts. In that case, there were no better targets than the mer-
cantile centers of Francia and Frisia.
Invasions and Migrations 185
Viking attacks were savage. The Vikings burned, looted, and did extensive
short-term property damage, but there is little evidence that they caused long-term
destruction—perhaps because, arriving in small bands, they lacked the manpower
to do so. They seized magnates and high churchmen and held them for ransom;
they also demanded tribute from kings. In 844–845 Charles the Bald had to raise
seven thousand pounds of silver, and across the English Channel Anglo-Saxon
Mapping the Past

MAP 8.3 Invasions and Migrations of the Ninth Century
This map shows the Viking, Magyar, and Arab invasions and migrations in the ninth century.
Compare it with Map 7.3 (page 151) on the barbarian migrations of late antiquity to answer the
following questions: [1] What similarities do you see in the patterns of migration in these two
periods? What significant differences? [2] How is Viking expertise in shipbuilding and sailing
reflected on this map? Based on the information in Map 7.3, what would you assume about the
maritime skills of earlier Germanic tribes?
To Greenland
and North America
ICELAND
874
N
Faeroe Is.
800
Trondheim
Shetland Is.
700
VI KI NGS 60˚E
Bergen
Oslo
Uppsala
SCOTLAND
Iona Novgorod
North 820
Sea
Lindisfarne
ic
878
Sea
Durrow
B a lt
Jarrow 8 59 – Lund
IRELAND Dublin
4
88
839 York RUSSIA ˚N

50
1–
Humber
84
Estuary Hamburg
Tha Bremen El b
me V is
sR SAXONY t ula
e R.
.
O Don R.
Saint Wandrille de
R.
rR 50˚E
Aachen Fulda . 882 Vo
Rouen Echternach Kiev lg aR
Jumièges
AT L A N T I C NORMANDYS
Saint- Dni
ep .
8 95
R.
ei Denis er R
ne .
ne
OCEAN Loire R. R.
BAVARIA
Rhi
Ca
8 43– 8 8 2 Reichenau
sp
896–911
BURGUNDY Saint Gall 900 MAGYARS
ia
883
Santiago 7
n
HUNGARY
R.
Bordeaux ne 899
91
Se
41
Rhô
7 9
Po R. a
Garonne LO 895
R. PROVENCE
866 90
M
Marseilles Black Sea

Ad
BA
Lérins N
Lisbon Tagu
s R. Barcelona R. 40˚
D an u be
R
a
ri
ti
DY
844 Corsica Rome c

844 e S
859–861 Balearic Is. 846
Monte a Constantinople
10˚W Sardinia Cassino
827 BY
Ceuta Hippo ZAN
Regius TINE EM
PIRE
96
842 Carthage Sicily

–8
40
M USLI MS 8
Monastery Med
iterr an ea n Sea
Vikings 30˚N
0˚
Magyars 0 200 400 Km. Alexandria
Muslims
0 200 400 Mi. 20˚E
10˚E 30˚E 40˚E
rulers collected a land tax, the Danegeld, to buy off the Vi-
kings. In the Seine and Loire Valleys the frequent presence of
Viking war bands seems to have had economic consequences,
stimulating the production of food and wine and possibly the
manufacture (for sale) of weapons and the breeding of horses.
In the early tenth century Danish Vikings besieged Paris with
fleets of more than a hundred highly maneuverable ships,
and the Frankish king Charles the Simple bought them off
with a large part of northern France. The Vikings established
the province of “Northmanland,” or Normandy as it was later
known, intermarrying with the local population and creating
a distinctive Norman culture. From there they sailed around
Spain and into the Mediterranean, eventually conquering
Sicily from the Muslim Arabs in 1060–1090, while other Nor-
mans crossed the English Channel, defeating Anglo-Saxon
forces in 1066.
Between 876 and 954 Viking control extended from Dub-
Animal Headpost from Viking Ship lin across northern Britain to the Vikings’ Scandinavian
Skilled woodcarvers produced ornamental headposts for ships, homelands. Norwegian Vikings moved farther west than any
sledges, wagons, and bedsteads. The fearsome quality of many Europeans had before, establishing permanent settlements
carvings suggests that they were intended to ward off evil spirits on Iceland and short-lived settlements in Greenland and
and to terrify. (© University Museum of Cultural Heritage, Oslo. Photographer: Newfoundland, in what is now Canada.
Eirik Irgens Johnsen) In their initial attacks on isolated settlements, the Vikings
took thralls (slaves) for the markets of Europe, and for trade
with the Muslim world. The slave trade represented an important part of Viking
commerce. The Icelander Hoskuld Dala-Kolsson paid three marks of silver, three
times the price of a common concubine, for a pretty Irish girl; she was one of
twelve offered by a Viking trader. No wonder many communities bought peace by
paying tribute.
Along with destruction, the Vikings made positive contributions to the areas
they settled. They carried their unrivaled knowledge of shipbuilding and seaman-
ship everywhere. The northeastern and central parts of England where the Vikings
settled became known as the Danelaw because Danish, not English, law and cus-
toms prevailed there. Scholars believe that some legal institutions, such as the
ancestor of the modern grand jury, originated in the Danelaw. Thriving centers of
Viking trade emerged in England and Ireland.
In antiquity the Slavs lived in central Europe, farming

Slavs and Vikings in with iron technology, building fortified towns, and
Eastern Europe worshiping a variety of deities. With the start of the
mass migrations of the late Roman Empire, the Slavs moved in different directions
and split into what later historians identified as three groups: West, South, and
East Slavs.
The group labeled the West Slavs included the Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, and
Wends. The South Slavs, comprising peoples who became the Serbs, Croats, Slo-
venes, Macedonians, and Bosnians, migrated southward into the Balkans. In the
seventh century Slavic peoples created the state of Moravia along the banks of the
Danube River, and by the tenth century it was Roman Christian. Most of the other
West and South Slavs also slowly became Roman Christian. The pattern was sim-
ilar to that of the Germanic tribes: first the ruler was baptized, and then missionar-
ies preached, built churches, and spread Christian teachings among the common
Invasions and Migrations 187
people. The ruler of the Poland was able to convince the pope to establish an inde-
pendent archbishopric there in 1000, the beginning of a long-lasting connection
between Poland and the Roman church. In the Balkans the Serbs accepted Ortho-
dox Christianity, while the Croats became Roman Christian, a division that has
had a long impact; it was one of the factors in the civil war in this area in the late
twentieth century.
Between the fifth and ninth centuries, the eastern Slavs moved into the practi-
cally uninhabited area of present-day European Russia and Ukraine. This enor-
mous area consisted of an immense virgin forest to the north, where most of the
eastern Slavs settled, and a vast prairie grassland to the south.
In the ninth century the Vikings appeared in the lands of the eastern Slavs.
Called “Varangians” (va-RAN-gee-anz) in the old Russian chronicles, their initial
raids for plunder gradually turned into trading missions. Moving up and down the
rivers, they linked Scandinavia and northern Europe to the Black Sea and to the
Byzantine Empire with its capital at Constantinople.
In order to increase and protect their international commerce, the Vikings
declared themselves the rulers of the eastern Slavs. According to tradition, the
semi-legendary chieftain Ruirik founded a princely dynasty about 860. In any
event, the Varangian ruler Oleg (r. 878–912) established his residence at Kiev in
modern-day Ukraine. He and his successors ruled over a loosely united confedera-
tion of Slavic territories known as Rus with its capital at Kiev until 1054. (The
word Russia comes from Rus, though the origins of Rus are hotly debated, with
some historians linking it with Swedish words and others with Slavic words.)
The Viking prince and his clansmen quickly became assimilated into the
Slavic population, taking local wives and emerging as the noble class. Missionar-
ies of the Byzantine Empire converted the Vikings and local Slavs to Eastern Or-
thodox Christianity, accelerating the unification of the two groups. Thus the
rapidly Slavified Vikings left two important legacies for the future: they created a
loose unification of Slavic territories under a single ruling prince and a single rul-
ing dynasty, and they imposed a basic religious unity by accepting Orthodox Chris-
tianity (as opposed to Roman Catholicism) for themselves and the eastern Slavs.
Even at its height under Great Prince Iaroslav the Wise (r. 1019–1054), the
unity of Kievan Rus was extremely tenuous. Trade, not government, was the main
concern of the rulers. Moreover, the Slavified Vikings failed to find a way of peace-
fully transferring power from one generation to the next. In medieval western Eu-
rope, this fundamental problem of government was increasingly resolved by
resorting to the principle of primogeniture (pry-muh-JEN-ee-choor): the king’s primogeniture A system in which the
eldest son received the crown as his rightful inheritance when his father died. king’s eldest son inherited the crown
when his father died.
Civil war was thus averted; order was preserved. In early Rus, however, there were
apparently no fixed rules, and much strife accompanied each succession.
Possibly to avoid such chaos, Great Prince Iaroslav, before his death in 1054,
divided Kievan Rus among his five sons, who in turn divided their properties when
they died. Between 1054 and 1237, Kievan Rus disintegrated into more and more
competing units, each ruled by a prince claiming to be a descendant of Ruirik.
The princes thought of their land as private property. A given prince owned a
certain number of farms or landed estates and had them worked directly by his
people, mainly slaves. Outside of these estates, which constituted the princely
domain, the prince exercised only limited authority in his principality. Excluding
the clergy, two kinds of people lived there: the noble boyars (BOY-arz) and the
commoner peasants.
boyars Descendants of the original
The boyars were descendants of the original Viking warriors, and they also Viking warriors, they held their lands as
held their lands as free and clear private property. Although the boyars normally free and clear private property.
fought in princely armies, the customary law declared that they could serve any
prince they wished. The ordinary peasants were also truly free. They could move
at will wherever opportunities were greatest. In the touching phrase of the times,
theirs was “a clean road, without boundaries.”12 In short, fragmented princely
power, private property, and personal freedom all went together.
Groups of central European steppe peoples known as

Magyars and Muslims Magyars also raided villages in the late ninth century,
taking plunder and captives, and forcing leaders to pay
tribute in an effort to prevent further looting and destruction. Moving westward,
small bands of Magyars on horseback reached as far as Spain and the Atlantic
coast. They subdued northern Italy, compelled Bavaria and Saxony to pay tribute,
and even penetrated into the Rhineland and Burgundy. Magyar forces were de-
feated by a combined army of Frankish and other Germanic troops at the Battle of
Lechfeld near Augsburg in southern Germany in 955, and the Magyars settled in
the area that is now Hungary in eastern Europe.
Much as Clovis had centuries earlier, the Magyar ruler Géza (GEE-za) (r. 970–
997), who had been a pagan, decided to become a Roman Christian. This gave
him the support of the papacy and offered prospects for alliances with other Ro-
man Christian rulers against the Byzantine Empire, Hungary’s southern neighbor.
Géza’s son Stephen I (r. 997–1038) was officially crowned the king of Hungary by
Sec tion Review a papal representative on Christmas Day of 1001. He supported the building of
• Three groups attacked Europe: Vikings churches and monasteries, built up royal power, and encouraged the use of Latin
from Scandinavia, Muslims from the and the Roman alphabet. Hungary’s alliance with the papacy shaped the later his-
Mediterranean, and Magyars from tory of eastern Europe just as Charlemagne’s alliance with the papacy shaped
the east. western European history. The Hungarians adopted settled agriculture, wrote law
• With Europe fractured politically, the codes, and built towns, and Hungary became an important crossroads of trade for
Vikings attacked the Carolingian German and Muslim merchants.
empire in their highly maneuverable
boats in search of booty and new The ninth century also saw invasions into western Europe from the south.
commerce. Muslim fleets had attacked Sicily, which was part of the Byzantine Empire, begin-
• The Vikings spread into what is now ning in the seventh century, and by the end of the ninth century they controlled
Normandy, Sicily, and England, most of the island. The Muslims drove northward and sacked Rome in 846. Ex-
moving north and west, trading in pert seamen, they sailed around the Iberian Peninsula from North Africa and cap-
slaves, and displaying their vast tured towns along the Adriatic coast nearly all the way to Venice. They attacked
maritime and naval skills. Mediterranean settlements along the coast of Provence and advanced on land as
• Vikings also moved eastward into lands far as the Alps. In the tenth century Frankish, papal, and Byzantine forces were
populated by Slavic peoples, where they able to retake much territory, though the Muslims continued to hold Sicily. Dis-
raided, traded, intermarried with Slavic
peoples, and eventually assimilated. putes among the Muslim rulers on the island led one faction to ask the Normans
for assistance, and between 1060 and 1090 the Normans gradually conquered all
• Magyars were central European steppe
peoples who moved westward until of Sicily.
Franks and Germans defeated them at What was the effect of these invasions on the structure of European society?
Lechfeld in 955 in Germany; they From the perspective of those living in what had been Charlemagne’s empire,
settled in Hungary under the rule of Viking, Magyar, and Muslim attacks accelerated the fragmentation of political
Géza, who converted to Roman power. Lords capable of rallying fighting men, supporting them, and putting up
Christianity, gaining the support of
the papacy. resistance to the invaders did so. They also assumed political power in their terri-
tories. Weak and defenseless people sought the protection of local strongmen, and
• Muslim fleets attacked Sicily and
moved northward as far as the Alps but free peasants sank to the level of serfs. This period is thus often seen as one of terror
were only able to hold on to Sicily, and chaos.
which later fell to the Normans. People in other parts of Europe might have had a different opinion, however.
In Muslim Spain, scholars worked in thriving cities, and new crops such as cotton
Chapter Review 189
and sugar enhanced ordinary people’s lives. In eastern Europe, states such as
Moravia and Hungary became strong kingdoms. A Viking point of view might be
the most positive, for by 1100 descendents of the Vikings not only ruled their
homelands in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, but also ruled Normandy, Eng-
land, Sicily, Iceland, and Kievan Rus, with an outpost in Greenland and occa-
sional voyages to North America.
Chapter Review
How did Islam take root in the Middle East and then spread to Europe?
(page 163) Key Terms
In the seventh century the diverse Arab tribes were transformed into a powerful po- Kaaba (p. 164)
litical and social force by the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad. They conquered Qur’an (p. 164)
much of the Middle East and North Africa, and in the eighth century they crossed into Five Pillars of Islam (p. 166)
Europe, eventually gaining control of most of the Iberian Peninsula. Muslim-controlled
Spain, known as al-Andalus, was the most advanced society in Europe in terms of agri- caliph (p. 167)
culture, science, and medicine. Some Christian residents assimilated to Muslim prac- Shi’ites (p. 167)
tices, but hostility between the two groups was also evident as each increasingly regarded Sunnis (p. 167)
members of the other as infidels.
infidel (p. 170)
civitas (p. 171)
How did Frankish rulers govern their kingdoms? (page 171) comites (p. 173)
In western Europe, Frankish rulers of the Merovingian dynasty built on the founda- missi dominici (p. 175)
tions established by Clovis in the fifth century, dividing their territories into regions Treaty of Verdun (p. 177)
and sending out royal officials, later called counts, to administer the regions. Their vassal (p. 177)
authority was frequently challenged by civil wars and rebellions by nobles. One of
these nobles, Charles Martel, held the important position of mayor of the palace, and fief (p. 177)
in the eighth century he took power and established a new dynasty, the Carolingians. feudalism (p. 177)
The Carolingians used both military victories and strategic marriage alliances to en- manorialism (p. 179)
hance their authority. serfs (p. 179)
double monastery (p. 181)
How did Charlemagne gain control of a large part of Europe and how did power primogeniture (p. 187)
become decentralized after his death? (page 173) boyars (p. 187)
Carolingian government reached the peak of its development under Charles Martel’s
grandson, Charlemagne. Building on the military and diplomatic foundations of his
ancestors, Charlemagne waged constant warfare to expand his kingdom, eventually
coming to control most of central and western continental Europe except Muslim
Spain. Christian missionary activity among the Germanic peoples continued, and
strong ties were forged with the Roman papacy, which eventually resulted in Char-
lemagne’s coronation as emperor. After his son’s death, Charlemagne’s empire was
divided between his grandsons in the Treaty of Verdun (843). This division of Char-
lemagne’s empire was accompanied by a decentralization of power at the local level,
and a new political form involving mutual obligations, later called “feudalism,” devel-
oped. The power of the local nobles in the feudal structure rested on landed estates
worked by peasants in another system of mutual obligation termed “manorialism.” An
overwhelmingly agricultural economy supplied food for local needs, but there was
some interregional trade in glass, pottery, and woolens and a sizable long-distance
trade in slaves.
What were the significant intellectual and cultural changes in Charlemagne’s

era? (page 181)
Charlemagne’s support of education and learning proved his most enduring leg-
acy. The revival of learning associated with Charlemagne and his court at Aachen,
sometimes styled the “Carolingian Renaissance,” drew its greatest inspiration from
seventh- and eighth-century intellectual developments in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom
of Northumbria in northern England. Here women and men in monasteries produced
beautiful illustrated texts, and the Venerable Bede popularized the Christian dating
system now in use in most of the world. After the Treaty of Verdun, continental Europe
was fractured politically, with no European political power strong enough to put up
effective resistance to external attack.
What effects did the assaults and migrations of the Vikings, Magyars, and Mus-
lims have on the rest of Europe? (page 184)
Vikings from Scandinavia carried out raids for plunder along the coasts and rivers of
western Europe and traveled as far as Iceland, Greenland, and North America. Even-
tually they settled in England and France, where they established the state of Nor-
mandy. In eastern Europe Vikings traded down the rivers as far as Constantinople and
formed the state of Kievan Rus, assimilating to Slavic culture and converting to the
Orthodox religion. Like the Vikings, the Magyars initially invaded Europe for plunder
and then established a permanent state; their ruler Stephen I was crowned as king by
a papal representative two hundred years after Charlemagne’s coronation. Thus, in
both western and eastern Europe, civil rulers and church leaders supported each oth-
er’s goals and utilized each other’s prestige and power, though their alliances and dis-
putes had little effect on the daily life of most people in early medieval Europe.
Notes
1. F. E. Peters, A Reader on Classical Islam (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994),
pp. 208–209.
2. J. O’Faolain and L. Martines, eds., Not in God’s Image: Women in History from the Greeks to
the Victorians (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), pp. 108–114.
3. See Jane I. Smith, “Islam and Christendom: Historical, Cultural, and Religious Interaction
from the Seventh to the Fifteenth Centuries,” in The Oxford History of Islam, ed. John L.
Esposito (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 317–321.
4. J. M. Bloom, Paper Before Print: The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), pp. 9–10, 17, 45, 85–89.
5. JoAnn Hoeppner Moran Cruz, “Western Views of Islam in Medieval Europe,” in Perceptions
of Islam, ed. D. Blanks and M. Frassetto (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), pp. 55–81.
6. I. Wood, The Merovingian Kingdoms, 450–751 (New York: Longman, 1994), p. 101.
7. Einhard, The Life of Charlemagne, with a foreword by S. Painter (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 1960), pp. 50–51.
8. Quoted in R. McKitterick, The Frankish Kingdoms Under the Carolingians, 751–987 (New
York: Longman, 1983), p. 77.
9. See K. F. Werner, “Important Noble Families in the Kingdom of Charlemagne,” in The
Medieval Nobility: Studies on the Ruling Class of France and Germany from the Sixth to the
Twelfth Century, ed. and trans. T. Reuter (New York: North-Holland, 1978), pp. 174–184.
10. Quoted in B. D. Hill, ed., Church and State in the Middle Ages (New York: John Wiley &
Sons, 1970), pp. 46–47.
11. J. Nicholson, “Feminae Glorisae: Women in the Age of Bede,” in Medieval Women, ed.
D. Baker (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978), pp. 15–31, esp. p. 19; and C. Fell, Women in
Anglo-Saxon England and the Impact of 1066 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1984), p. 109.
12. Quoted in R. Pipes, Russia Under the Old Regime (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons,
1974), p. 48.

Feudal Homage and Fealty
estates which are . . . called Cavaliacus, in the
county of Limoges (lee-MOHZH). Giving assent to
F eudalism developed in the ninth century during the
disintegration of the Carolingian Empire because rulers
needed fighting men and officials. A king, lay lord, bishop, or
his prayers for reason of his meritorious service, we
have ordered this charter to be written, through
abbot would grant lands or estates to a noble or knight. In which we grant to him the estates already men-
return, the recipient became the vassal of the lord and agreed tioned, in all their entirety, with lands, vineyards,
to perform certain services. In a society that lacked an ad- forests, meadows, pastures, and with the men living
equate government bureaucracy, a sophisticated method of upon them, so that, without causing any damage
taxation, or even the beginnings of national consciousness, through exchanges or diminishing or lessening the
personal ties provided some degree of cohesiveness. In the first land, he for all the days of his life and his son after
document, a charter dated 876, the emperor Charles the Bald him, as we have said, may hold and possess them in
(r. 843–877), Charlemagne’s grandson, grants a benefice, or right of benefice and usufruct. . . .
fief. In the second document, dated 1127, the Flemish
notary Galbert of Bruges describes homage
and fealty before Count Charles the Good of
Flanders (r. 1119–1127). The ceremony
consists of three parts: the act of homage; the
oath of fealty, intended to reinforce the act; and
the investiture (apparently with property). Be-
cause all three parts are present, historians
consider this evidence of a fully mature
feudal system.
In the name of the holy and

undivided Trinity. Charles by the
mercy of Almighty God august
emperor . . . let it be known to all
the faithful of the holy church of
God and to our now, present and to
come, that one of our faithful sub-
jects, by name of Hildebertus, has
approached our throne and has be-
seeched our serenity that through
this command of our authority we
grant to him for all the days of his
life and to his son after him, in right
of usufruct and benefice, certain
The hand of God blesses Charles the Bald

as he receives the Bible, symbolic of his
connection with Israelite kings David and
Solomon. (Bibliothèque nationale de France)
191
On Thursday, the seventh of the ides of April given assurance and due homage to the count, and
[April 7, 1127], acts of homage were again made to had taken the oath.
the count, which were brought to a conclusion
through this method of giving faith and assurance.
First, they performed homage in this fashion: the 1. Why was the charter drawn up? Why did
count inquired if [the prospective vassal] wished Charles grant the benefice?
completely to become his man. He replied, “I do 2. Who were the “men living on it,” and what
wish it,” and with his hands joined and covered by economic functions did they perform?
the hands of the count, the two were united by a 3. What did the joined hands of the prospective
kiss. Second, he who had done the homage gave vassal and the kiss symbolize?
faith to the representative of the count in these 4. In the oath of fealty, what was meant by the
words: “I promise in my faith that I shall hence- phrase “in my faith”? Why did the vassal swear
forth be faithful to Count William, and I shall fully on relics of the saints?
observe the homage owed him against all men, in 5. What does this ceremony tell us about the
good faith and without deceit.” Third, he took an society that used it?
oath on the relics of the saints. Then the count, Source: The History of Feudalism by David Herlihy, ed.
with the rod which he had in his right hand, gave Copyright © 1970 by David Herlihy. Reprinted by per-
investiture to all those who by this promise had mission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
192
Chapter 9
State and Church
in the High
Middle Ages
1000–1300
Chapter Preview
Political Revival
How did medieval rulers create larger
and more stable territories?
Law and Justice

How did the administration of law
contribute to the development of
national states?
The Papacy
How did the papacy attempt to reform
the church, and what was the response
from other powerful rulers?
The Crusades
How did the motives, course, and
consequences of the Crusades reflect
and shape developments in Europe?
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY: The Jews of Speyer:

In this thirteenth-century manuscript, knights of King Henry II stab A Collective Biography
Archbishop Thomas Becket in 1170 in Canterbury Cathedral, a
LISTENING TO THE PAST: An Arab View of the
dramatic example of church/state conflict. Becket was soon made a
Crusades
saint, and the spot where the murder occurred became a pilgrimage
site; it is still a top tourist destination. (British Library, London)
193
194 Chapter 9 State and Church in the High Middle Ages, 1000–1300
B eginning in the last half of the tenth century, the Viking, Muslim, and
Magyar invasions that had contributed to the fragmentation of Europe
gradually ended. Feudal rulers began to develop new institutions of government
that enabled them to assert their power over lesser lords and the general popula-
tion. Centralized states slowly crystallized, first in western Europe, and then in
eastern and northern Europe as well. At the same time, energetic popes built their
power within the Western Christian church and asserted their superiority over
kings and emperors. A papal call to retake the holy city of Jerusalem led to nearly
two centuries of warfare between Christians and Muslims. Christian warriors,
clergy, and settlers moved out in all directions from western and central Europe,
so that through conquest and colonization border regions were gradually incorpo-
rated into a more uniform European culture.
Political Revival
How did medieval rulers create larger and more stable territories?
The eleventh century witnessed the beginnings of new political stability. Rulers in
France, England, and Germany worked to reduce private warfare and civil anar-
chy. Domestic disorder subsided, and external invasions gradually declined. In
some parts of Europe, lords in control of large territories began to manipulate
feudal institutions to build up their power even further, becoming kings over grow-
ing and slowly centralizing states.
As medieval rulers expanded their territories and extended their authority, they
developed institutions to rule more effectively, including an enlarged bureaucracy
of officials and larger armies. Officials and armies cost money, and rulers in var-
ious countries developed slightly different ways of acquiring more revenue and
handling financial matters, some more successful than others.
Rome’s great legacy to Western civilization had been

Medieval Origins of the concepts of the state and the law, but for almost
the Modern State five hundred years after the disintegration of the Ro-
man Empire in the West, the state as a reality did not exist. Political authority was
completely decentralized. Power was spread among many lords who gave their
localities such protection and security as their strength allowed. There existed
many, frequently overlapping layers of authority—earls, counts, barons, knights—
between a king and the ordinary people.
In these circumstances, medieval rulers had common goals. The rulers of Eng-
land, France, and Germany wanted to strengthen and extend royal authority in
their territories. They wanted to establish an effective means of communication
with all peoples in order to increase public order. They wanted more revenue and
efficient bureaucracies. The solutions they found to these problems laid the foun-
dations for modern national states.
The modern state is an organized territory with definite geographical boundar-
ies that are recognized by other states. It has a body of law and jurisdiction over
many people. The modern national state counts on the loyalty of its citizens, or at
least a majority of them. In return it provides order so that citizens can go about
their daily work and other activities. It protects its citizens and their property. The
state tries to prevent violence and to apprehend and punish those who commit it.
Chronology
It supplies a currency or medium of exchange that permits 936–973 Reign of Otto I in Germany
financial and commercial transactions. It conducts relations
with foreign governments. To accomplish these minimal 1059 Lateran Council restricts election of the
pope to the College of Cardinals
functions, the state must have officials, bureaucracies, laws,
courts of law, soldiers, information, and money. By the twelfth 1066 Norman conquest of England
century medieval kingdoms and some lesser lordships pos- 1073–1085 Gregory VII; strengthening of the papal
sessed these attributes, at least to the extent that most modern reform movement
states have them. 1085–1492 Reconquista; Muslim rulers pushed out
of Spain
1095–1291 Crusades
Before the Viking invasions, Eng-
England land had never been united un- 1154–1189 Reign of Henry II in England; revision of
der a single ruler. The victory of legal procedure; beginnings of common law
the remarkable Alfred, king of the West Saxons (or Wessex), 1180–1223 Reign of Philip II (Philip Augustus);
over the Vikings in 878 inaugurated a great political revival. unification efforts in France
Alfred and his immediate successors built a system of local 1198–1216 Innocent III; height of the medieval papacy
defenses and slowly extended royal rule beyond Wessex to
1215 Magna Carta
other Anglo-Saxon peoples until one law, royal law, took
precedence over local custom. England was divided into lo- 1230s Papacy creates the Inquisition
cal units called “shires,” or counties, each under the jurisdic- 1290 Jews expelled from England
tion of a shire-reeve (a word that soon evolved into “sheriff”)
1306 Jews expelled from France
appointed by the king. Sheriffs were unpaid officials from
well-off families responsible for collecting taxes, catching
and trying criminals, and raising infantry.
The Bayeux (bay-YUH) Tapestry

William’s conquest of England was recorded in thread on a narrative embroidery panel measuring 231 feet by 19 inches. In
this scene, two nobles and a bishop acclaim Harold Godwinson as king of England. The nobles hold a sword, symbol of
military power, and the bishop holds a stole, symbol of clerical power. Harold himself holds a scepter and an orb, both
symbols of royal power. The embroidery provides an important historical source for the clothing, armor, and lifestyles of the
Norman and Anglo-Saxon warrior class. It eventually ended up in Bayeux in northern France, where it is displayed in a
museum today and is incorrectly called a “tapestry,” which is a different kind of needlework. (Tapisserie de Bayeux et avec
autorisation spéciale de la Ville de Bayeux)
Domesday Book A surviving record of The Viking invasions of England did not end, however, and the island eventu-
a general inquiry ordered by William of ally came under Viking rule. The Viking Canute (kuh-NOOT) made England the
Normandy; it serves as a source of social
and economic information about center of his empire while promoting a policy of assimilation and reconciliation
medieval England. between Anglo-Saxons and Vikings. When Canute’s heir Edward died childless,
there were a number of claimants to the throne of England—the Anglo-Saxon
Exchequer The bureau of finance
established by Henry I, becoming the
noble Harold Godwinson (ca. 1022–1066), who had been crowned by English
first institution of the governmental nobles, the Norwegian king Harald III (r. 1045–1066), grandson of Canute, and
bureaucracy of England. Duke William of Normandy, who was the illegitimate son of
Edward’s cousin.
In 1066 William invaded England with his Norman vas-
sals, met the exhausted forces of Harold Godwinson, and de-
feated them—an event now known as the Norman conquest.
In both England and Normandy, William the Conqueror
limited the power of his noble vassals and church officials and
transformed the feudal system into a unified monarchy. In
England he replaced Anglo-Saxon sheriffs with Normans. He
retained another Anglo-Saxon device, the writ, through which
the central government communicated with people at the lo-
cal level, using the local tongue.
In addition to retaining Anglo-Saxon institutions that
served his purposes, William also introduced a major innova-
tion, the Norman inquest or general inquiry. William wanted
to determine how much wealth there was in his new king-
dom, who held what land, and what land had been disputed
among his vassals since the Conquest of 1066. Groups of royal
officials were sent to every part of the country. The resulting
record, called the Domesday Book (DOOMZ-day) from the
Anglo-Saxon word doom, meaning “judgment,” still survives.
It is an invaluable source of social and economic information
about medieval England.
The Domesday Book provided William and his descen-
dants with information vital for the exploitation and govern-
ment of the country. Knowing the amount of wealth every
area possessed, the king could tax accordingly. Knowing the
amount of land his vassals had, he could allot knight service
fairly. The book helped English kings regard their country as
one unit.
William’s son Henry I (r. 1100–1135) established a bu-
reau of finance called the Exchequer (EKS-chek-er) (for the
checkered cloth at which his officials collected and audited
royal accounts), which became the first institution of the gov-
ernment bureaucracy of England. In addition to various taxes
and annual gifts, Henry’s income came from money paid to
The Pipe Rolls
the crown for settling disputes and as penalties for crimes, as
Twice yearly English medieval sheriffs appeared before the Barons
well as money due to Henry in his private position as feudal
of the Exchequer to account for the monies they had collected
from the royal estates and from fines for civil and criminal
lord. The latter would include the fee paid by a vassal’s son in
offenses. Clerks recorded these revenues and royal expenditures order to inherit the father’s properties and the fee paid by a
on the pipe rolls, whose name derives from the pipelike form of knight who wished to avoid military service. Henry, like other
the rolled parchments. A roll exists for 1129–1130, then continuously medieval kings, made no distinction between his private in-
from 1156 to 1832, representing the largest series of English public come and state revenues, though the officials of the Ex-
records. (Crown copyright material in the Public Record Office is reproduced by chequer began to keep careful records of the monies paid into
permission of the Controller of the Britannic Majesty’s Stationery Office [E40 1/1565]) and out of the royal treasury.
Political Revival 197
In 1128 William’s granddaughter Matilda was married to Geoffrey of Anjou;

their son became Henry II of England and inaugurated the Angevin (AN-juh-vin)
(from Anjou, his father’s county) dynasty. Henry inherited the French provinces of
Anjou, Normandy, Maine, and Touraine in northwestern France, and then in
1152 he claimed lordship over Aquitaine, Poitou (pwa-TOO), and Gascony in
southwestern France through his marriage to the great heiress Eleanor of Aqui-
taine (see Map 9.1). Each of the provinces in Henry’s Angevin empire was sepa-
rate and was only loosely linked to the others by dynastic law and personal oaths.
The histories of England and France became closely intertwined, however, lead-
ing to disputes and conflicts down to the fifteenth century.
France also became increasingly unified in this era.

France Following the death of the last Carolingian ruler in
987, an assembly of nobles selected Hugh Capet (ka-
PAY) as his successor. Soon after his own coronation, Hugh crowned his son Rob-
ert to ensure the succession and prevent disputes after his death and to weaken the
feudal principle of elective kingship. The Capetian kings were weak, but they laid
the foundation for later political stability.
5°W 0° 5°E
ENGLAND Bruges Crown lands in 1180
Ypres Ghent
Calais FLANDERS
Added by Phillip
ARTOIS Bouvines Augustus, 1180–1223
nel Arras
1214 Added 1223–1270
Chan
50°N
h Amiens
Englis
M Added 1270–1314
VERMANDOIS
eu
Rouen PICARDY
se
Bayeux Se Soissons Royal fiefs

R
in Reims
.
Caen eR Major battle

CHAMPAGNE
NORMANDY Paris Lagny
.
ÎLE-DE- Provins
Chartres
FRANCE Troyes HOLY
Rennes BLOIS (ROYAL
MAINE DOMAIN) Sens Bar-sur-seine
BRITTANY ROMAN
R. Orléans
re
ANJOU Loi
Tours BURGUNDY EMPIRE
Nantes TOURAINE Bourges
POITOU
Bay Poitiers Cluny
BOURBON
of
Biscay Clermont
Lyons
AQUITAINE
N 45°N
.
Bordeaux
Rhône R
Ga r o
nn
TOULOUSE Avignon
eR
GASCONY PROVENCE
Montpelier
.
Toulouse
Marseilles
0 50 100 Km. SPAIN LANGUEDOC M e d ite rra n e a n

Sea
0 50 100 Mi.
MAP 9.1 The Growth of the Kingdom of France

Some scholars believe that Philip II received the title “Augustus” (from a Latin word meaning “to
increase”) because he vastly expanded the territories of the kingdom of France. The province of
Toulouse (too-LOOZ) in the south became part of France as a result of the crusade against the
Albigensians (see page 212).
This stability came slowly. In the early twelfth century France still consisted of
a number of virtually independent provinces. Each was governed by a local ruler;
each had its own laws, customs, coinage, and dialect. Unlike the king of England,
the king of France had jurisdiction over a very small area. Chroniclers called King
Louis VI (r. 1108–1137) roi de Saint-Denis (wah duh san-duh-NEE), king of
Saint-Denis, because the territory he controlled was limited to Paris and the Saint-
Denis area surrounding the city (see Map 9.1). This region, called the Île-de-France
(EEL-duh-franz), or royal domain, became the nucleus of the French state. The
clear goal of the medieval French king was to increase the royal domain and ex-
tend his authority.
The work of unifying France began under Louis VI’s grandson Philip II
(r. 1180–1223). Rigord, Philip’s biographer, gave him the title “Augustus” (from a
Latin word meaning “to increase”) because he vastly enlarged the territory of
the kingdom of France. When King John of England, who was Philip’s vassal
for the rich province of Normandy, defaulted on his feudal obligation to come to
the French court, Philip declared Normandy forfeit to the French crown. He en-
forced his declaration militarily, and in 1204 Normandy fell to the French. He
gained other northern provinces as well, and by the end of his reign Philip was
effectively master of northern France.
In the thirteenth century Philip Augustus’s descendants acquired important
holdings in the south. By the end of the thirteenth century most of the provinces
of modern France had been added to the royal domain through diplomacy, mar-
riage, war, and inheritance. The king of France was stronger than any group of
nobles who might try to challenge his authority.
Philip Augustus devised a method of governing the provinces and providing for
communication between the central government in Paris and local communities.
Each province retained its own institutions and laws, but royal agents were sent
from Paris into the provinces as the king’s official representatives with authority to
act for him. These agents were often middle-class lawyers who possessed full judi-
cial, financial, and military jurisdiction in their districts. They were never natives
of the provinces to which they were assigned, and they could not own land there.
This policy reflected the fundamental principle of French administration that
royal interests superseded local interests.
Medieval people believed that a good king lived on the income of his own land
and taxed only in time of a grave emergency—that is, a just war. Because the
church, and not the state, performed what we call social services—such as educa-
tion and care of the sick, the aged, and orphaned children—there was no ordinary
need for the government to tax. Taxation meant war financing. The French mon-
archy could not continually justify taxing the people on the grounds of the needs
of war. Thus the French kings were slow to develop an efficient bureau of finance.
French provincial laws and institutions—in contrast to England’s early unification—
also retarded the growth of a central financial agency. Not until the fourteenth
century, as a result of the Hundred Years’ War, did a state financial bureau
emerge—the Chamber of Accounts.
In central Europe, the German king Otto I (r. 936–

Central Europe 973) defeated many other lords to build up his power.
To do this, Otto relied on the church, getting financial
support and the bulk of his army from ecclesiastical lands. Otto asserted the right
to control ecclesiastical appointments. Before receiving religious consecration and
being invested with the staff and ring symbolic of their offices, bishops and abbots
had to perform feudal homage for the lands that accompanied the church office.
This practice, later known as “lay investiture,” created a grave crisis in the eleventh
century, as we will see later in this chapter. Holy Roman Empire The loose
Some of our knowledge of Otto derives from The Deeds of Otto, a history of his confederation of principalities, duchies,
reign in heroic verse written by a nun, Hroswita of Gandersheim (ca. 935–ca. 1003). cities, bishoprics, and other types of
regional governments stretching from
A learned poet, she also produced six verse plays, and she is considered the first
Denmark to Rome and from Burgundy
dramatist writing in Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. to Poland.
In 955 Otto I inflicted a crushing defeat on the Magyars in the battle of Lech-
feld (see page 188), which made Otto a great hero to the Germans. He used MAP 9.2 The Holy Roman
this victory to have himself crowned emperor in 962 by the pope in Aachen, Empire and the Kingdom of
which had been the capital of the Carolingian empire. He chose this site to sym- Sicily, ca. 1200
bolize his intention to continue the tradition of Charlemagne and to demonstrate Frederick Barbarossa greatly expanded
papal support for his rule. It was not exactly clear what Otto was the emperor of, the size of the Holy Roman Empire, but
however, though by the eleventh century people were increasingly using the term it remained a loose collection of various
Holy Roman Empire to refer to a loose confederation of principalities, duchies types of governments. The kingdom
(DUTCH-eez), cities, bishoprics, and other types of regional governments stretch- of Sicily included mainland areas as
ing from Denmark to Rome and from Burgundy to Poland (see Map 9.2). well as the island in 1200, with an
ethnically mixed population ruled by
Norman kings.
N O R W AY
10°W 0° SWEDEN 20°E 40°E
10°E 30°E
SCOTLAND GERMAN
ORDERS
North
Sea
IRELAND LITHUANIA
DENMARK Baltic LITHUANIANS
WALES Sea R USSIAN
Nottingham Elb
e P R I N C I PA L I T I E S
ENGLAND R. ANS
U SS I
London PR
NY N
Canterbury Bruges SA XO Brunswick 50°
Antwerp
Bouvines Ghent Cologne
1214
H O LY POLAND
Rh
AT L A N T I C NOR MAN D
Y CH Liège
Kiev
ine
AM
PA N
OC E AN Paris Kraków
R.
ANJOU GN
Loire E Worms BO H E M I A
R. Orléans
SWABIA ROMAN
DY
FRANCE
UN
Constance
AQUITAINE Vienna
RG
BAVARIA
S
BU
L P EMPIRE
Bordeaux
Gar o
Lyons
A Milan Legnano H U NGARY
nn
LEÓN
Albi
e
Toulouse 1176
DY
R.
AL
AV Venice
BAR
N
AR
LOM
UG
RE Rhône R. Bologna
R E VE
OF
RT
GEORGIA
PU NIC
Florence
ck Sea
CASTILE Pisa
PO
BI E
Marseilles Siena
Bla
C
ARAGON
TUSCANY Danube R.
ND
Assisi Trebizond
O
Corsica SERBIA BULGARIA BI
Z
Rome EMPIRE OF TRE
Las Navas 40°N
de Tolosa Constantinople
DO
PAPAL
1212 IA Sardinia STATES
A
Córdoba C Melfi
M
M
AE
EN Naples
N L RU
I
IC
GRANADA I O VA RE
PI OF
N
N KINGDOM OF EM OF
S E OM
EPIRUS PIR GD
OF Palermo THE TWO
I N EM KI N
NIA
AT ME
SICILIES L AR
TH R
E SE
L ES
ALM Antioch
OHA
DS TRIPOLI
Crete
M e (Venice)
Cyprus
d i t e
S
BID
r r a n e a
0 200 400 Km.
n S e a
YU
Jerusalem
AY
0 200 400 Mi.

30°N
E
TH
N AND
Major battle OF SALADI ARABIA
S U LT A N A T E
Boundary of the Holy Roman Empire
In this large area of central Europe, unified nation-states did not develop until
the nineteenth century. The Holy Roman emperors shared power with princes,
dukes, archbishops, counts, bishops, abbots, and cities. The office of emperor re-
mained an elected one, though the electors included only seven men—four secu-
lar rulers of large territories within the empire and three archbishops.
Through most of the first half of the twelfth century, civil war wracked Ger-
many. When Conrad III died in 1152, the resulting anarchy was so terrible that the
electors decided the only alternative to continued chaos was the selection of a
strong ruler. They chose Frederick Barbarossa of the house of Hohenstaufen (hoh-
uhn-SHTOU-fen) (r. 1152–1190).
Like William the Conqueror in England and Philip in France, Frederick re-
quired vassals to take an oath of allegiance to him as emperor and appointed offi-
cials to exercise full imperial authority over local communities. He forbade private
warfare and established sworn peace associations with the princes of various re-
gions. These peace associations punished those who breached the peace and
criminals, with penalties ranging from maiming to execution.
Frederick Barbarossa surrounded himself with men trained in Roman law (see
page 203), and he used Roman law to justify his assertion of imperial rights over
the towns of northern Italy. Between 1154 and 1188 Frederick made six expedi-
tions into Italy. While he initially made significant conquests in the north, the
brutality of his methods provoked revolts, and the Italian cities formed an alliance
with the papacy. In 1176 Frederick suffered a defeat at Legnano (see Map 9.2).
This battle marked the first time a feudal cavalry of armed knights was decisively
defeated by bourgeois (boor-zwah) infantrymen. Frederick was forced to recog-
nize the municipal autonomy of the northern Italian cities.
The kingdom of Sicily is a good example of how a strong

Sicily government could be built on a feudal base by deter-
mined rulers. Between 1061 and 1091 a bold Norman
knight, Roger de Hauteville, and a small band of mercenaries defeated the Mus-
lims and Greeks who controlled Sicily. Roger then governed a heterogeneous
population of Sicilians, Italians, Greeks, Jews, Arabs, and Normans. Roger distrib-
uted scattered fiefs to his followers so no vassal would have a centralized power
base. He took an inquest of royal property and rights and forbade private warfare. To
these Norman practices, Roger fused Arabic and Greek governmental devices. For
example, he retained the main financial agency of the previous Muslim rulers, the
diwān A sophisticated Muslim bureau diwān (di-WAHN), a sophisticated bureau for record keeping and administration.
for record keeping and administration. In the multicultural society of medieval Sicily, Muslims and Greeks, as well as
Normans, staffed the diwān, as well as the army and judiciary. The diwān kept of-
ficial documents in Greek, Latin, and Arabic. It supervised the royal estates in
Sicily, collected revenues, managed the state monopoly of the sale of salt and
lumber, and registered all income to the treasury. With revenues derived from
those products, Roger hired mercenaries. He encouraged appeals from local courts
to his royal court because such appeals implied respect for his authority.
In 1137 Roger’s forces took the city of Naples and much of the surrounding
territory in southern Italy. The entire area came to be known as the kingdom of
Sicily (or sometimes the kingdom of the Two Sicilies), and was often caught up in
conflicts between the pope, the Holy Roman emperor, and the kings of France
and Spain over control of Italy.
Roger’s grandson Frederick II (r. 1212–1250), who was also the grandson of
Frederick Barbarossa of Germany, was crowned king of the Germans at Aachen
(1216) and Holy Roman emperor at Rome (1220). He concentrated his attention
on Sicily and showed little interest in the northern part of the Holy Roman Em-
pire. Frederick banned private warfare and placed all castles and towers under
royal administration. He also replaced town officials with royal governors and sub-
ordinated feudal and ecclesiastical courts to the king’s courts. Royal control of the
nobility, of the towns, and of the judicial system added up to great centralization,
which required a professional bureaucracy and sound state financing.
In 1224 Frederick founded the University of Naples to train officials for his
bureaucracy. He too continued the use of Muslim institutions such as the diwān,
and he tried to administer justice fairly to all his subjects, declaring, “We cannot in
the least permit Jews and Saracens (Muslims) to be defrauded of the power of our
protection and to be deprived of all other help, just because the difference of
their religious practices makes them hateful to Christians,”1 implying a degree
of toleration exceedingly rare at the time.
Frederick’s contemporaries called him the “Wonder of the World.” He cer-
tainly transformed the kingdom of Sicily. But Sicily required constant attention,
and Frederick’s absences on crusades and on campaigns in mainland Italy took
their toll. Shortly after he died, the unsupervised bureaucracy fell to pieces. The
pope, as feudal overlord of Sicily, called in a French prince to rule. Frederick’s
reign had also weakened imperial power in the German parts of the empire, and
in the later Middle Ages lay and ecclesiastical princes held sway in the Holy Ro-
man Empire. Germany and Italy did not become unified states until the nine- reconquista The Christian term for the
conquest of Muslim territories in the
teenth century. Iberian peninsula by Christian forces.
From the eleventh to the thirteenth centu- Sec tion Review

The Iberian Peninsula ries, power in the Iberian peninsula shifted • In 1066 William conquered England and trans-
from Muslim to Christian rulers. Castile, formed the feudal system into a monarchy, in-
in the north-central part of the peninsula, became the strongest of troducing the Domesday Book to record wealth
the growing Christian kingdoms, and Aragon, in the northeast, the and land; later bureaucratic innovations included
the Exchequer, to audit royal accounts, and the
second most powerful. In 1085 King Alfonso VI of Castile and León pipe rolls, to audit the sheriffs.
captured Toledo in central Spain. Alfonso VIII (1158–1214), aided by
• France became unified and expanded under
the kings of Aragon, Navarre, and Portugal, crushed the Muslims at Phillip II, who governed using royal agents assigned
Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212, accelerating the Christian push south- to provinces, giving priority to royal needs over
ward. James the Conqueror of Aragon (r. 1213–1276) captured Valen- local interests, but the limitation that taxation be
cia on the Mediterranean coast in 1233, and three years later Ferdinand used only for wars hindered royal growth.
of Castile and León captured the great Muslim city Córdoba in the • The German king Otto I became the Holy Roman
heart of Andalusia. With the fall of Seville in 1248, Christians con- Emperor after defeating the Magyars; later, follow-
trolled the entire Iberian Peninsula, save for the small state of Granada ing a series of civil wars in central Europe, Em-
peror Frederick Barbarossa forbade private warfare
(see Map 9.3). and required a sworn peace, using experts in Roman
Muslim Spain had had more cities than any other country in law to extend his dominion over northern Italy.
Europe, and Christian Spain became highly urbanized. The chief • In Sicily Roger de Hauteville gained political
mosques in these cities became cathedrals and Muslim art was de- strength by distributing scattered fiefs to his
stroyed. Victorious Christian rulers expelled the Muslims and re- followers, forbidding private warfare, and using
cruited immigrants from France and elsewhere in Iberia. The Muslim bookkeeping methods, a policy his
thirteenth century thus witnessed a huge migration of peoples from grandson Frederick II continued while also
founding the University of Naples to train
the north to the depopulated cities of the central and southern parts of bureaucratic officials.
the peninsula.
• The Christian conquest of Spain (the reconquista)
Fourteenth-century clerical propagandists called the movement to linked the peninsula to Christian Europe and the
expel the Muslims the reconquista (reconquest)—a sacred and patri- Roman papacy, while introducing new immigrants
otic crusade to wrest the country from “alien” Muslim hands. This to replace the expelled Muslims.
religious myth became part of Spanish political culture and of the
Date of reconquest: Diocese Major battle

Before 914 1210–1250 Monastery Commercial and
Toledo
914–1080 1250–1480 intellectual center
1080–1130 After 1480 45˚N
1130–1210 0 100 200 Km.
0 100 200 Mi.
F R AN C E
Santiago de Compostela
BASQ U E Pamplona
León (882) (778)
LE Ó N Logroño
Las Huelgas N AVA R R E N
10˚W Valladolid Burgos Huesca
(10th century) AR AGO N A
Porto Lerida O NI
L
Duero R. Saragossa L
(1118) Ebr TA Barcelona
GA
Poblet
C AST I L E o CA
Coimbra R. Caspe
Salamanca
TU
Tarragona
(1047) Guadalajara .
Ávila
R
PO
a
Cuenca Minorca
Turi
Tagus R. 40˚N
Caceres Toledo
Alcobaça Santarem
Gu Valencia (1238) Majorca
Lisbon a di
ana
(1147) Badajoz R.
Ibiza a
C Ó R D O BA e
Las Navas de Tolosa S
vir R. Córdoba (1236) Murcia 5˚E
qu i
al
AN DALU SIA n
d
Gu a
Seville Granada (1492) a

e
AT L A N T I C (1248) GR ANADA n
a
Cádiz Málaga (1487) r r
OCEAN Salado Gibraltar i t e
d
Tangier Ceuta M e
A F R I C A
35˚N
5˚W 0˚
MAP 9.3 The Reconquista

The Christian conquest of Muslim Spain was followed by ecclesiastical reorganization, with the
establishment of dioceses, monasteries, and the Latin liturgy, which gradually tied the peninsula to the
heartland of Christian Europe and to the Roman papacy. (Source: Adapted from David Nicholas, The Evolution of the
Medieval World. Copyright © 1992. Reprinted by permission of Pearson Education.)
national psychology. As a consequence of the reconquista, the Spanish and Portu-

guese learned how to administer vast tracts of newly acquired territory. Later, in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they would impose these medieval meth-
ods on colonial Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Angola, and the Philippines.
Law and Justice

How did the administration of law contribute to the development of
national states?
In the early Middle Ages society perceived of major crimes as acts against an indi-
vidual, and a major crime was settled when the accused made a cash payment to
the victim or his or her kindred. In the High Middle Ages suspects were pursued
and punished for acting against the public interest. Throughout Europe, however,
the form and application of laws depended on local and provincial custom and
practice. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the law was a hodgepodge of
Germanic customs, feudal rights, and provincial practices. Kings in France and
Law and Justice 203
England wanted to blend these elements into a uniform sys-

tem of rules acceptable and applicable to all of their peoples.
Legal developments in continental countries like France
were strongly influenced by Roman law, while England
slowly built up a unique and unwritten common law.
The French king Louis IX

France and the Holy (r. 1226–1270) was famous in his
Roman Empire time for his concern for justice.
Each French province, even after being made part of the
kingdom of France, retained its unique laws and procedures,
but Louis IX created a royal judicial system. He established
the Parlement of Paris, a kind of supreme court that wel-
comed appeals from local administrators and from the courts
of feudal lords throughout France. By the very act of appeal-
ing the decisions of feudal courts to the Parlement of Paris,
French people in far-flung provinces were recognizing the
superiority of royal justice.
Louis was the first French monarch to publish laws for the The Customs of Aragon
entire kingdom. The Parlement of Paris registered (or an- This illumination, imitating the style of Parisian court art, shows
nounced) these laws, which forbade private warfare, judicial King James of Aragon (r. 1213–1276) presiding over a law court.
King James—called “the Conqueror” because of his victories over
duels, gambling, blaspheming, and prostitution. Louis sought
Catalonia, Valencia, and Majorca—ordered several codifications of
to identify justice with the kingship, and gradually royal jus-
law. The most important of these, the Customs of Aragon (1247),
tice touched all parts of the kingdom. drew on Roman canonical practice for legal procedures. (Initial N:
In the Holy Roman Empire, justice was administered at King James of Aragon Overseeing Court Law of Vidal Mayor, 83.MQ.165, folio 72v.
two levels. The manorial or seigneurial court, presided over © The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles)
by the lay or ecclesiastical lord, dealt with such common con-
flicts as damage to crops and fields, trespass, boundary dis-
putes, and debt. The court of high justice, staffed by regional rather than local
magistrates, dispensed justice in serious criminal cases involving theft, arson, as-
sault with a weapon, rape, and homicide. The imposition of the death penalty by
hanging was the distinctive feature of this court.
Under Henry II (r. 1154–1189) England developed

Henry II and and extended a common law, a law that originated in, common law A body of English law
Thomas Becket and was applied by, the king’s court and that in the that originated in, and was applied by,
King Henry II’s court and in the next two
next two or three centuries became common to the entire country. England was or three centuries became common to
unusual in developing one system of royal courts and one secular law. Henry I had the entire country.
occasionally sent out circuit judges (royal officials who traveled a given circuit
or district) to hear civil and criminal cases. Every year royal judges left London circuit judges Royal officials who
traveled a given circuit or district to hear
and set up court in the counties. Wherever the king’s judges sat, there sat the civil and criminal cases.
king’s court.
Henry also improved procedure in criminal justice. In 1166 he instructed the jury Group of men in medieval Eng-
land that conducted inquiries into
sheriffs to summon local juries to conduct inquests and draw up lists of known or criminal activities, similar to today’s
suspected criminals. These lists, or indictments, sworn to by the juries, were to be grand jury.
presented to the royal judges when they arrived in the community. This accusing
jury is the ancestor of the modern grand jury.
Judges determined guilt or innocence in a number of ways. They heard testi-
mony, sought witnesses, and read written evidence. If these were lacking and if
a suspect had a bad public reputation, he or she might be submitted to trial by
ordeal. An accused person could be tried by fire or water. In the latter case, the
accused was tied hand and foot and dropped in a lake or river. People believed that
water was a pure substance and would reject anything foul or unclean. Thus a per-
son who sank was considered innocent; a person who floated was found guilty. Trial
by ordeal was a ritual that appealed to the supernatural for judgment. God deter-
mined guilt or innocence, and thus a priest had to be present to bless the water.
Henry II disliked ordeal, and it was used less during his reign than it was on the
continent. Gradually, in the course of the thirteenth century, the king’s judges
adopted the practice of calling on twelve people (other than the accusing jury) to
consider the question of innocence or guilt. This became the jury of trial, but it
was very slowly accepted because medieval people had more confidence in the
judgment of God than in the judgment of twelve ordinary people.
One aspect of Henry’s judicial reforms encountered stiff resistance from an
unexpected source: the friend and former chief adviser whom Henry had made
archbishop of Canterbury—Thomas Becket. In 1164 Henry II insisted that
everyone, including clerics, be subject to the royal courts. Becket vigorously pro-
tested that church law required clerics to be subject to church courts. The dis-
agreement between Henry II and Becket dragged on for years. Late in December
1170, in a fit of rage, Henry expressed the wish that Becket be
destroyed. Four knights took the king at his word. They rode
to Canterbury Cathedral and, as the archbishop was leaving
evening services, slashed off the crown of his head and scat-
tered his brains on the pavement.
What Thomas Becket could not achieve in life, he gained
in death. The assassination of an archbishop turned public
opinion in England and throughout western Europe against
the king. Miracles were recorded at Becket’s tomb; Becket
was made a saint; and in a short time Canterbury Cathedral
became a major pilgrimage and tourist site. Henry had to back
down. He did public penance for the murder and gave up his
attempts to bring clerics under the authority of the royal court.
Henry II’s sons Richard I, known

King John and as Lion-Hearted (r. 1189–1199),
Magna Carta and John (r. 1199–1216) lacked
their father’s interest in the work of government. Richard
looked on England as a source of revenue for his military en-
terprises. Soon after his accession, he departed on crusade to
the Holy Land. During his reign he spent only six months in
England, and the government was run by ministers trained
under Henry II.
John’s basic problems were financial. King John inherited
a heavy debt from his father and brother, and his efforts to
Thieves Plunder Saint Edmund’s Chapel
squeeze money from knights, widows, and merchants created
an atmosphere of resentment. In July 1214 John’s cavalry suf-
This eleventh-century painting shows thieves searching for jewelry
and rich burial fabrics and even pulling the iron nails out of the
fered a severe defeat at the hands of Philip Augustus of France
wooden structure. They are also trying to dig up the coffin of Saint at Bouvines in Flanders. This battle ended English hopes
Edmund, the king of East Anglia (r. 841–869), who was defeated for the recovery of territories from France and also strength-
in battle and executed by Danish invaders and whose bones could ened the opposition to John. His ineptitude as a soldier in a
be sold as relics. Crime and violence preoccupied secular and society that idealized military glory was the final straw. Rebel-
religious authorities alike. (Pierpont Morgan Library/Art Resource, NY) lion begun by northern barons eventually grew to involve many
The Papacy 205
key members of the English nobility. After lengthy negotiations, John met the Magna Carta A long and detailed
barons in 1215 at Runnymede and was forced to approve the peace treaty called peace treaty intended to redress the
grievances that particular groups had
Magna Carta, “Magna” (great or large) because it was so long and detailed. against King John.
For contemporaries, Magna Carta was intended to redress the grievances that
particular groups—the barons, the clergy, the merchants of London—had against
King John. Charters were not unusual: many kings and lords at the time issued Sec tion Review
them and then sometimes revoked them, as John did almost immediately. This • In the early Middle Ages crime con-
revocation was largely ignored, however, and every English king until 1485 resisted of acts against an individual,
issued Magna Carta as evidence of his promise to observe the law. Thus, this but by the High Middle Ages crime
charter alone acquired enduring importance. It came to signify the principle that also included acts against the public
interest.
everyone, including the king and the government, must obey the law.
In the later Middle Ages references to Magna Carta underlined the old Augus- • In France, King Louis IX established
public laws and set up a court of ap-
tinian theory that a government, to be legitimate, must promote law, order, and peals system called the Parlement of
justice. An English king may not disregard or arbitrarily suspend the law to suit his Paris.
convenience. The Magna Carta also contains the germ of the idea of “due process • In England, there was a system of
of law,” meaning that a person has the right to be heard and defended in court and royal courts and one of secular law
is entitled to the protection of the law. Because later generations referred to Magna with an accusing jury that sought out
Carta as a written statement of English liberties, it gradually came to have an al- criminals and a trial jury of twelve
most sacred importance as a guarantee of law and justice. ordinary men who decided a case.
• King Henry II wanted everyone,
including clerics, to be subject to
the royal courts but his friend, the
The Papacy archbishop Thomas Becket, defied
him, arguing that clerics were only
How did the papacy attempt to reform the church, and what was the subject to church courts; Henry’s
response from other powerful rulers? knights went too far when they
murdered Becket, enraging the public.
Kings and emperors were not the only rulers consolidating their power in the High • King John was financially and mili-
Middle Ages. Under the leadership of a series of reforming popes in the eleventh tarily inept, inspiring a rebellion and
lengthy negotiations that produced
century, the church tried to assert control over the clergy and regain its spiritual the Magna Carta, a treaty that
and political strength. Church control had diminished during the ninth and tenth concerned the interests of certain
centuries when kings and feudal lords chose the priests and bishops in their terri- groups, but eventually came to have
tories, granting them fiefs and expecting loyalty and service in return. Church of- wider significance.
fices from village priest to pope brought with them the right to collect taxes and
fees and often the profits from land under the officeholder’s control. They were
thus sometimes sold outright—a practice called simony (SY-muh-nee), after Si- simony The sale of church offices.
mon Magus, a New Testament figure who wanted to buy his way into heaven. Not
surprisingly, clergy at all levels who had bought their positions or had been granted
them for political reasons were rarely effective moral or spiritual guides. Nonethe-
less, the popes’ efforts to reform their institution were sometimes challenged by
medieval kings.
The papal reform movement of the eleventh century is

The Gregorian frequently called the Gregorian reform movement, af-
Reforms ter Pope Gregory VII (1073–1085), its most prominent
advocate. Serious efforts at reform actually began somewhat earlier, under Pope
Leo IX (1049–1054).
During the ninth and tenth centuries the papacy provided little leadership to
the Christian peoples of western Europe. Popes were appointed to advance the
political ambitions of their families—the great aristocratic families of Rome—and
not because of special spiritual qualifications. A combination of political machina-
tions and sexual immorality damaged the papacy’s moral prestige.
At the local parish level, there were many married priests. Taking Christ as the
model for the priestly life, the Roman church had always encouraged clerical
celibacy, and celibacy had been an obligation for ordination since the fourth cen-
tury. But in the tenth and eleventh centuries probably a majority of European
priests were married or living with women, and in some cases they were handing
down church positions and property to their children.
Pope Leo and his successors believed that lay control was largely responsible
for the church’s problems, so they proclaimed the church independent from secu-
lar rulers. The Lateran Council of 1059 decreed that the authority and power to
college of cardinals A special group elect the pope rested solely in the college of cardinals, a special group of priests
of high clergy that has the authority from the major churches in and around Rome. The college retains that power
and power to elect the pope and who
otherwise are responsible for governing
today. In the Middle Ages the college of cardinals numbered around twenty-five or
the church when the office of the pope thirty, most of them from Italy. In 1586 the figure was set at seventy, though today
is vacant. it is much larger, with cardinals from around the world. When the office of pope
was vacant, the cardinals were responsible for governing the church.
While reform began long before Gregory’s pontificate and continued after it,
Gregory VII was the first pope to emphasize the political authority of the papacy.
His belief that kings had failed to promote reform in the church prompted him to
claim an active role in the politics of Western Christendom. He believed that the
pope, as the successor of Saint Peter, was the vicar of God on earth and that papal
lay investiture The selection and orders were the orders of God. Gregory was particularly opposed to lay investiture—
appointment of church officials by the selection and appointment of church officials by secular authority, often sym-
secular authority.
bolized by laymen giving bishops and abbots their symbols of office, such as a staff
and ring. In February 1075 Pope Gregory held a council at Rome that decreed that
clerics who accepted investiture from laymen were to be deposed, and laymen
Emperor Otto III Handing a Staff to Archbishop Adalbert of Prague (tenth century)
The staff, or crozier (KROH-zher), symbolized a bishop’s spiritual authority. Receiving the staff from the emperor gave
the appearance that the bishop gained his spiritual rights from the secular power. Pope Gregory VII vigorously objected to
this practice. (Bildarchiv Marburg/Art Resource, NY)
The Papacy 207
who invested clerics were to be excommunicated (cut off from the sacraments and
all Christian worship).
The church’s penalty of excommunication relied for its effectiveness on pub- excommunication A penalty used by
lic opinion. Gregory believed that the strong support he enjoyed for his moral re- the Catholic Church that meant being
cut off from the sacraments and all
forms would carry over to his political ones; he thought that excommunication Christian worship.
would compel rulers to abide by his changes. Immediately, however, Henry IV in
the Holy Roman Empire, William the Conqueror in England (see page 196), and
Philip I in France protested. Gregory’s reforms would deprive them not only of
church income but also of the right to choose which monks and clerics would
help them administer their kingdoms. The tension between the papacy and the
monarchy would have a major impact on both institutions and on society.
Meanwhile, the Gregorian reform movement built a strict hierarchical church
structure with bishops and ordained priests higher in status than nuns, who could
not be ordained. Church councils in the eleventh and twelfth centuries forbade
monks and nuns to sing church services together and ordered priests to limit their
visits to convents, heightening the sense that contact with nuns should be viewed
with suspicion and avoided when possible. Church reformers put a greater em-
phasis on clerical celibacy and chastity. As part of these measures, Pope Boniface
VIII’s papal decree of 1298, Periculoso, ordered all female religious persons to be
strictly cloistered. This meant that the nuns were to remain permanently inside cloistered Cut off from the outside
the walls of the convent and that visits with those from outside the house, includ- world.
ing family members, would be limited. Periculoso was not enforced everywhere,
but it did mean that convents became more cut off from medieval society. People
also gave more donations to male monastic houses where monks who had been
ordained as priests could say memorial masses, and fewer to women’s houses,
many of which became impoverished.
The strongest reaction to Gregory’s moves came from

Emperor versus Pope the Holy Roman Empire. Pope Gregory accused
Henry of lack of respect for the papacy and insisted
that disobedience to the pope was disobedience to God. Henry argued that Greg-
ory’s type of reform undermined royal authority and that the pope “was deter-
mined to rob me of my soul and my kingdom or die in the attempt.”2
Within the empire, those who had the most to gain from the dispute quickly
took advantage of it. In January 1076 many of the German bishops who had been
invested by Henry withdrew their allegiance from the pope. Gregory replied by
excommunicating them and suspending Henry from the emperorship. The lay
nobility delighted in the bind the emperor had been put in: with Henry IV excom-
municated and cast outside the Christian fold, they did not have to obey him and
could advance their own interests. Powerful nobles invited the pope to come to
Germany to settle their dispute with Henry. Gregory hastened to support them.
The Christmas season of 1076 witnessed an ironic situation in Germany: the
clergy supported the emperor, while the great nobility favored the pope.
Henry outwitted the pope. Crossing the Alps in January 1077, he approached
the castle of Countess Matilda of Tuscany, where the pope was staying. According
to legend, Henry stood for three days in the snow seeking forgiveness. As a priest,
Pope Gregory was obliged to grant absolution and to readmit the emperor to the
Christian community. When the sentence of excommunication was lifted, Henry
regained the emperorship and authority over his rebellious subjects. Some histori-
ans claim that this incident marked the peak of papal power because the most
powerful ruler in Europe, the emperor, had bowed before the pope.
The battle between the pope and the emperor raged on,
however. In 1080 Gregory VII again excommunicated and
deposed the emperor. In return, Henry invaded Italy, cap-
tured Rome, and controlled the city when Gregory died in
1085. But Henry won no lasting victory. Gregory’s successors
encouraged Henry’s sons to revolt against their father. With
lay investiture the ostensible issue, the conflict between the
papacy and the successors of Henry IV continued into the
twelfth century.
Finally, in 1122 at a conference held at Worms, the issue
was settled by compromise. Bishops were to be chosen ac-
cording to canon law—that is, by the clergy—in the presence
of the emperor or his delegate. The emperor surrendered the
right of investing bishops with the ring and staff. But since lay
rulers were permitted to be present at ecclesiastical elections
and to accept or refuse feudal homage from the new prelates,
they still possessed an effective veto over ecclesiastical ap-
pointments. Papal power was enhanced, but neither side won
a clear victory.
The long controversy had tremendous social and political
consequences in Germany. The lengthy struggle between pa-
pacy and emperor allowed emerging noble dynasties to en-
Countess Matilda
hance their position. To control their lands, the great lords
A staunch supporter of the reforming ideals of the papacy,
built castles, symbolizing their increased power and growing
Countess Matilda (ca. 1046–1115) planned this dramatic meeting
independence. (In no European country do more castles sur-
at her castle at Canossa in the Apennines (AP-uh-nines). The
arrangement of the figures—King Henry kneeling, Abbot Hugh of vive today.) The German high aristocracy subordinated the
Cluny lecturing, and Matilda persuading—suggests contemporary knights, enhanced restrictions on peasants, and compelled
understanding of the scene in which Henry received absolution. Henry IV and Henry V to surrender certain rights and privi-
Matilda’s vast estates in northern Italy and her political contacts leges. When the papal-imperial conflict ended in 1122, the
in Rome made her a person of considerable influence in the late nobility held the balance of power in Germany, and later
eleventh century. (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana) German kings, such as Frederick Barbarossa (see page 200),
would fail in their efforts to strengthen the monarchy against
the princely families. For these reasons, particularism, localism, and feudal inde-
pendence characterized the Holy Roman Empire in the High Middle Ages. The
investiture controversy had a catastrophic effect there.
The most powerful pope in history was Innocent III

Innocent III and (1198–1216). During his pontificate the church in
His Successors Rome declared itself to be supreme, united, and “cath-
olic” (worldwide), responsible for the earthly well-
Christendom The term used by early being and eternal salvation of all citizens of Christendom (the Christian world).
medieval writers to refer to the realm Innocent pushed the kings of France, Portugal, and England to do his will, com-
of Christianity.
pelling King Philip Augustus of France to take back his wife, Ingeborg of Den-
mark. He forced King John of England to accept as archbishop of Canterbury a
man John did not want.
Innocent called the fourth Lateran Council in 1215, which affirmed the idea
that ordained priests had the power to transform bread and wine during church
ceremonies into the body and blood of Christ (a change termed “transubstantia-
tion”). This power was possessed by no other group in society, not even kings. Ac-
cording to papal doctrine, priests now had the power to mediate for everyone with
God, which set the spiritual hierarchy of the church above the secular hierarchies
The Crusades 209
of kings and other rulers. The council also affirmed that Christians should confess Sec tion Review
their sins to a priest at least once a year and ordered Jews and Muslims to wear
special clothing that set them apart from Christians (see page 252). • Pope Leo proclaimed the church
independent of secular rulers in a
Some of Innocent III’s successors abused their prerogatives to such an extent papal reform movement, an effort to
that their moral impact was seriously weakened. Even worse, Innocent IV (1243– restore morality to the church by
1254) used secular weapons, including military force, to maintain his leadership. establishing papal election by the
These popes badly damaged papal prestige and influence. By the early fourteenth college of cardinals; Gregory VII
century cries for reform would be heard once again. continued this emphasis on the
political authority of the church.
• Gregory’s reforms also enforced the
church penalty of excommunication,
The Crusades and established a strict hierarchical
structure with bishops and ordained
How did the motives, course, and consequences of the Crusades reflect priests higher than nuns, who could
and shape developments in Europe? not be ordained.
• Within the empire, Pope Gregory VII
The Crusades of the eleventh and twelfth centuries were wars sponsored by excommunicated Emperor Henry IV
the papacy for the recovery of the holy city of Jerusalem from the Muslim Turks. over the investiture (appointment) of
bishops until Henry backed down; the
The word crusade was not actually used at the time and did not appear in English
great nobles in Germany sided with
until the late sixteenth century. It means literally “taking the cross,” from the cross the Pope and the clergy supported
that soldiers sewed on their garments as a Christian symbol. At the time, people the emperor.
going off to fight simply said they were taking “the way of the cross” or “the road to • The controversy ended with a com-
Jerusalem.” promise in which the clergy chose
Though the reconquista in Spain (see page 201) did not directly inspire the bishops in the presence of the em-
Crusades to the Middle East, the pope did sponsor groups of soldiers in the Span- peror, but the long struggle over this
issue had brought increased power
ish campaign as well as in the Norman campaign against the Muslims in Sicily. In
to the German nobility.
both campaigns Pope Gregory VII asserted that any land conquered from the
• Pope Innocent III was the most
Muslims belonged to the papacy because it had been a territory held by infidels.
powerful pope in history, forcing kings
Thus these earlier wars set a pattern for the centuries-long Crusades. to do his will, setting up practices
elevating the church above the state
and using military force to maintain
The Roman papacy had been involved in the bitter his leadership.
Background struggle over church reform and lay investiture with
the German emperors. If the pope could muster a large
army against the enemies of Christianity, his claim to be leader of Christian society Crusades Holy wars sponsored by the
in the West would be strengthened. Moreover, in 1054 a serious theological dis- papacy for the recovery of the Holy Land
from the Muslims from the late eleventh
agreement had split the Greek church of Byzantium and the Roman church of to the late thirteenth century.
the West. The pope and the patriarch of Constantinople excommunicated each
other and declared the beliefs of the other to be anathema (uh-NATH-uh-muh),
that is, totally unacceptable for Christians. The pope believed that a crusade would
lead to strong Roman influence in Greek territories and eventually the reunion of
the two churches.
In 1071 Turkish soldiers defeated a Greek army at Manzikert in eastern Anato-
lia and occupied much of Asia Minor (see Map 9.4). The emperor at Constanti-
nople appealed to the West for support. Shortly afterward the holy city of Jerusalem
fell to the Turks. Pilgrimages to holy places in the Middle East became very dan-
gerous, and the papacy claimed to be outraged that the holy city was in the hands
of unbelievers. Because the Muslims had held Palestine since the eighth century,
the papacy actually feared that the Seljuk (SEL-jook) Turks would be less accom-
modating to Christian pilgrims than the previous Muslim rulers had been.
In 1095 Pope Urban II called for a great Christian holy war against the infi-
dels. He urged Christian knights who had been fighting one another to direct their
energies against the true enemies of God, the Muslims. Urban proclaimed an
50˚ N
N
AT L A N T I C
Paris Conrad I
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CHRISTIAN
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ORTHODOX VI
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Tunis R ic
First Crusade, 1096–1099 ha TURKS
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Second Crusade, 1147–1149 –5 -hearted d
ed 4 III Tripoli
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Third Crusade, 1189–1192
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Fourth Crusade, 1202–1204 Se ne Philip Augu
stus Acre 1191
a an Jerusalem
Crusade of Frederick II, 1228–1229 0 200 400 Km. Damietta 1099, 1189
Ascalon 30˚N
Crusades of Louis IX, 1248–1254 and 1270 0 200 400 Mi. Alexandria Mansura 1099
ISLAMIC
Crusader kingdoms in the East KINGDOM OF THE
EGYPTIAN FATIMIDS
Major battle
10˚E 20˚E 30˚E
Mapping the Past

Map 9.4 The Routes of the Crusades
This map shows the many different routes that Western Christians took over the centuries to reach Jerusalem. Use it and the information in
the text to answer the following questions: [1] How were the results of the various Crusades shaped by the routes that the Crusaders took?
[2] How did the routes offer opportunities for profit for Venetian and other Italian merchants? [3] Why might the Byzantines have worried
about the Crusaders even before the Fourth Crusade?
indulgence Remission of the temporal indulgence, or a waiver from having to do penance for sin, to those who would
penalties imposed by the church for sin. fight for and regain the holy city of Jerusalem.
Thousands of people of all classes joined the crusade. Although most of the
Crusaders were French, pilgrims from many regions streamed southward from
the Rhineland, through Germany and the Balkans. Of all of the developments
of the High Middle Ages, none better reveals Europeans’ religious and emotional
fervor and the influence of the reformed papacy than the extraordinary outpouring
of support for the First Crusade.
Many Crusaders were inspired by the possibility of for-

Motives and Course eign adventure as well as by religious fervor. Kings,
of the Crusades who were trying to establish order and build states, saw
the Crusades as an opportunity to get rid of troublemaking knights. Land-hungry
younger sons seized upon the chance to acquire fiefs in the Middle East.
The First Crusade was successful, mostly because of the dynamic enthusiasm
of the participants. The Crusaders had little more than religious zeal. They knew
nothing about the geography or climate of the Middle East. Although there were
several counts with military experience among the host, the Crusaders could never
The Crusades 211
agree on a leader. Lines of supply were never set up. Starvation and disease wracked
the army. Nevertheless, convinced that “God wills it,” the war cry of the Crusad-
ers, the army pressed on, defeating the Turks in several land battles and besieging
a few larger towns. (See the feature “Listening to the Past: An Arab View of the
Crusades” on pages 218–219.) Finally in 1099, after a three-year trek, they reached
Jerusalem, and after a month-long siege they penetrated the city, where they
slaughtered the Muslim defenders as well as civilian women and children.
With Jerusalem taken, many Crusaders set off for home again. Only the ap-
pearance of Egyptian troops convinced them that they needed to stay, and slowly
institutions were set up to rule territories and the Muslim population. Four small
“Crusader states”—Jerusalem, Edessa, Tripoli, and Antioch (AN-tee-ok)—were
established; castles and fortified towns were built to defend against Muslim recon-
quest (see Map 9.4). Reinforcements arrived in the form of pilgrims and fighters
from Europe, so that there was constant coming and going by land and more often
by sea after the Crusaders conquered port cities such as Acre. Between 1096 and
1270 the crusading ideal was expressed in eight papally approved expeditions to
the East, though none after the First Crusade accomplished very much. Despite
this lack of success, for roughly two hundred years members of noble families in
Europe went nearly every generation.
Women from all walks of life participated in the Crusades. In war zones some
women concealed their sex by donning chain mail and helmets and fought with
the knights. Others joined in the besieging of towns and castles. They assisted in
filling the moats surrounding fortified places with earth so that ladders and war
engines could be brought close. More typically, women provided water to fighting
men, a service not to be underestimated in the hot, dry climate of the Middle East.
They worked as washerwomen, foraged for food, and provided sexual services.
There were many more European men than women, however, so there was a fair
amount of intermarriage or at least sexual relations between Christian men and
Muslim women.
The Muslim states in the Middle East were politically fragmented when the
Crusaders first came, and it took about a century for them to reorganize. They did
so dramatically under Saladin (Salah al-Din) (SAL-uh-din), who unified Egypt
and Syria, and in 1187 the Muslims retook Jerusalem. Christians immediately at-
tempted to take it back in what was later called the Third Crusade (1189–1192).
Frederick Barbarossa of the Holy Roman Empire, Richard the Lion-Hearted of
England, and Philip Augustus of France participated, and the Third Crusade was
better financed than previous ones. But disputes among the leaders and strategic
problems prevented any lasting results. The Crusaders were not successful in re-
taking Jerusalem, but they did keep their hold on port towns, and Saladin allowed
pilgrims safe passage to Jerusalem. He also made an agreement with Christian
rulers for keeping the peace. From that point on, the Crusader states were more
important economically than politically or religiously, giving Italian and French
merchants direct access to Eastern products such as perfumes and silk.
In 1202 Innocent III sent out preachers who called on Christian knights
to retake Jerusalem. Those who responded—in what would become the Fourth
Crusade—decided that going by sea would be better than going by land, and they
stopped in Constantinople for supplies. The supplies never materialized, and in
1204 the Crusaders decided to capture and sack Constantinople instead, destroy-
ing its magnificent library and shipping gold, silver, and relics home. The Byzan-
tine Empire, as a political unit, never recovered from this destruction. Although
the Crusader Baldwin IX of Flanders was chosen emperor, the empire splintered
into three parts and soon consisted of little more than the city of Constantinople.
Moreover, the assault by one Christian people on another—even though one of

the goals of the Crusades was reunion of the Greek and Latin churches—made
the split between the churches permanent. It also helped discredit the entire cru-
sading movement.
In the late thirteenth century Turkish armies gradually conquered all other
Muslim rulers and then turned against the Crusader states. In 1291 the last Cru-
sader stronghold, the port of Acre, fell in a battle that was just as bloody as the first
battle for Jerusalem two centuries earlier. Knights then needed a new battlefield
for military actions, which some found in Spain, where the rulers of Aragon and
Castile continued fighting Muslims until 1492.
Crusades were also mounted against groups within

Crusades Within Europe that were perceived as threats. In 1208 Pope
Europe and the Innocent III proclaimed a crusade against a group in
Expansion of southern France known either as the Cathars (from the
Albigensians A heretical sect that
Christendom Greek katharos, meaning “pure”) or as the Albigensi-
rejected orthodox doctrine on the ans (al-bi-JEN-see-uhns) (from the town of Albi in southern France). The Albi-
relationship of God and man, the
sacraments, and clerical hierarchy.
gensians asserted that the material world was created not by the good God of the
New Testament, but by a different evil God of the Old Testament. The good God
had created spiritual things, and the evil God or the Devil had created material
things; in this dualistic understanding, the soul was good and the body evil. Forces
of good and evil battled constantly, and leading a perfect life meant being stripped
of all physical and material things. To free oneself from the power of evil, a person
had to lead a life of extreme asceticism. Albigensians were divided into the “per-
fect,” who followed the principles strictly, and the “believers,” who led ordinary
lives until their deaths, when they repented and were saved. They used the teach-
ings of Jesus about the evils of material goods to call for the church to give up its
property, rejected the authority of the pope and the sacraments of the church, and
began setting up their own bishoprics.
The Albigensians won many adherents in southern France. Faced with wide-
spread defection, Pope Innocent III proclaimed a crusade against them. Fearing
that religious division would lead to civil disorder, the French monarchy joined
the crusade against the Albigensians. The French inflicted a savage defeat on the
Albigensians in 1213. After more years of fighting, the leaders agreed to terms of
peace, which left the French monarchy the primary beneficiary.
The end of the war did not mean an end to Albigensianism, but the papacy
decided to combat heresy through education and individual punishment. The
pope founded the University of Toulouse, which he hoped would promote knowl-
edge of correct belief. In the 1230s and 1240s the papacy established the papal
Inquisition Court established by the Inquisition, sending out inquisitors with the power to seek out suspected heretics,
papacy with power to investigate and question them in private without revealing who had denounced them, and sen-
try individuals for heresy and other
religious crimes.
tence them to punishments ranging from penance to life imprisonment. Heretics
who did not repent were handed over to the secular government to be burned, and
their property was confiscated. These measures were very successful, and the last
Albigensian leaders were burned in the 1320s, though their beliefs did not die out
completely.
Fearful of encirclement by imperial territories, the popes also promoted cru-
sades against Emperor Frederick II in 1227 and 1239. This use of force backfired,
damaging papal credibility as the sponsor of peace.
Along with the papal Inquisition, the Crusades also inspired the establishment
of new religious orders. For example, the Knights Templars, founded in 1118 with
The Crusades 213
the strong backing of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (klar-VOW) (see page 239), com-
bined the monastic ideals of obedience and self-denial with the crusading practice
of military aggression. Another order, the Teutonic (too-TON-ik) Knights, waged
wars against the pagan Prussians in the Baltic region. After 1230, and from a base
in Poland, they established a new territory, Christian Prussia, and gradually the
entire eastern shore of the Baltic Sea came under their hegemony. Military orders
served to unify Christian Europe.
Christianity also spread into northern and eastern Europe by more peaceful
means. Latin Christian influences entered Scandinavian and Baltic regions pri-
marily through the appointment of bishops and the establishment of dioceses.
This took place in Denmark in the tenth and eleventh centuries, and the institu-
tional church spread rather quickly due to the support offered by the strong throne.
Dioceses were established in Norway and Sweden in the eleventh century, and in
1164 Uppsala, long the center of the pagan cults of Odin and Thor, became a
Catholic archdiocese, though pagan and Christian practices existed side-by-side
for centuries in more remote parts of Scandinavia.
Otto I (see page 198) planted a string of dioceses along his northern and east-
ern frontiers, hoping to pacify the newly conquered Slavs in eastern Europe. Fre-
quent Slavic revolts illustrate the people’s resentment of German lords and clerics
and indicate that the church did not easily penetrate the region. In the same way
that French knights had been used to crush the Albigensians, German nobles built
castles and ruthlessly crushed revolts. The church also moved into central Europe,
first in Bohemia in the tenth century and from there into Poland and Hungary in
the eleventh. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, thousands of settlers poured
into eastern Europe. New immigrants were German in descent, name, language,
and law. Hundreds of small market towns populated by these newcomers supplied
the needs of the rural countryside. Larger towns such as Cracow and Riga engaged
in long-distance trade and gradually grew into large urban centers.
The Crusades provided the means for what one scholar

Consequences of has called “the aristocratic diaspora,” the movement of
the Crusades knights from their homes in France to areas then on
the frontiers of Christian Europe.3 Wars of foreign conquest had occurred before
the Crusades, as the Norman Conquest of England in 1066 illustrates (see page
196), but for many knights migration began with the taking of the cross. Restless,
ambitious knights, many of them younger sons with no prospects, left on crusade
to the Holy Land, and some of them were able to carve out lordships in Palestine,
Syria, and Greece. Along the Syrian and Palestinian coasts, the Crusaders set up a
string of feudal states that managed to survive for about two centuries before the
Muslims reconquered them; many of the castles they built still stand today.
The Crusades introduced some Europeans to Eastern luxury goods, but their
immediate cultural impact on the West remains debatable. Strong economic and
intellectual ties with the East had already been developed by the late eleventh
century. The Crusades were a boon to Italian merchants, who profited from outfit-
ting military expeditions, the opening of new trade routes, and the establishment
of trading communities in the Crusader states. After those kingdoms collapsed,
Muslim rulers still encouraged trade with European businessmen. Commerce with
the West benefited both Muslims and Europeans, and it continued to flourish.
The Crusades proved to be a disaster for Jewish-Christian relations. In the
eleventh century Jews played a major role in the international trade between the
Muslim Middle East and the West. Jews also lent money to peasants, townspeople,
and nobles. When the First Crusade was launched, many poor knights had to bor-
row from Jews to equip themselves for the expedition. Debt bred resentment.
The experience of the Rhenish Jews during the First Crusade (see the feature
“Individuals in Society: The Jews of Speyer: A Collective Biography”) was not
unusual; later Crusades brought similar violence against Jewish communities. In
addition to resenting Jewish business competition, Christians harbored the belief
that Jews engaged in the ritual murder of Christians to use their blood in religious
rituals. These accusations, termed the “blood libel,” were condemned by Chris-
tian rulers and higher church officials, but were often spread through sermons
preached by local priests. They also charged Jews with being “Christ killers” and
Sec tion Review
of using the communion host for diabolical counter-rituals. Such accusations led
• In 1095 Pope Urban II offered an to the killing of Jewish families and sometimes entire Jewish communities, some-
indulgence, or sin waiver, to any who times by burning people alive in the synagogue or Jewish section of town.
would fight in a great crusade against
Legal restrictions on Jews gradually increased. Jews were forbidden to have
“God’s enemy” the Muslims, and
thousands joined in. Christian servants or employees, to hold public office, to appear in public on
Christian holy days, or to enter Christian parts of town without a badge marking
• Jews who had moved into Speyer at the
invitation of the bishop lived separately them as Jews. Jews were prohibited from engaging in any trade with Christians
but were resented by Christians as eco- except money-lending—which only fueled popular resentment—and in 1275
nomic competition and they became King Edward I of England prohibited that as well. In 1290 he expelled the Jews
the victims of vicious attacks by Cru- from England in return for a large parliamentary grant; it would be four centuries
saders and burghers.
before they would be allowed back in. King Philip the Fair of France followed
• The First Crusade was successful Edward’s example in 1306, and many Jews went to the area of southern France
mostly due to religious enthusiasm,
known as Provence, which was not yet part of the French kingdom. In July 1315
not skill, but the Crusaders pressed
on, taking Jerusalem, slaughtering the king’s need for revenue led him to readmit the Jews to France in return for a
Muslims, and fortifying towns to huge lump sum and for an annual financial subsidy, but the returning Jews faced
prevent recapture. hostility and increasing pressure to convert.
• Saladin helped the Muslims reorgan- The Crusades also left an inheritance of deep bitterness in Christian-Muslim
ize and take back Jerusalem, but the relations. Each side dehumanized the other, viewing those who followed the other
Crusaders held the port towns; the religion as unbelievers. Whereas Europeans perceived the Crusades as sacred reli-
Third Crusade failed and the Fourth
gious movements, Muslims saw them as expansionist and imperialistic. The ideal
Crusade never made it to the Holy
Land, instead sacking Constantinople, of a sacred mission to conquer or convert Muslim peoples entered Europeans’
splintering the Byzantine Empire. consciousness and became a continuing goal. When in 1492 Christopher Colum-
• The papacy sent Crusaders against bus sailed west, hoping to reach India, he used the language of the Crusades in his
other groups within western Europe, diaries, which shows that he was preoccupied with the conquest of Jerusalem (see
such as the Albigensians, using in- Chapter 15). Columbus wanted to establish a Christian base in India from which
quisitors (the Inquisition) to seek out a new crusade against Islam could be launched.
and punish heretics.
The battles in the High Middle Ages between popes and kings, between Chris-
• The Crusades left deep animosity tians and Muslims, and between Christians and pagans were signs of how deeply
between Jews and Christians as well as
Christianity had replaced tribal, political, and ethnic structures as the essence of
between Muslims and Christians and
contributed to Christianity’s replacing Western culture. Christian Europeans identified themselves first and foremost as
tribal, political, or ethnic affiliation as citizens of “Christendom,” or even described themselves as belonging to “the
the basis for Western culture. Christian race.”4 Whether Europeans were Christian in their observance of the
Gospels remains another matter.
The Jews of Speyer: A Collective Biography
I n the winter of 1095–1096 news of Pope Urban II’s
call for a crusade spread. In the spring of 1096 the
Jews of northern France, fearing that a crusade would
century anti-Semitism was an old and deeply rooted ele-
ment in Western society.
Late in April 1096 Emich of Leisingen, a petty lord
arouse anti-Semitic hostility, sent a circular letter to the from the Rhineland who had the reputation of being a
Rhineland’s Jewish community seeking its prayers. Jew- lawless thug, approached Speyer with
ish leaders in Mainz responded, “All the (Jewish) com- a large band of Crusaders. Joined by a
munities have decreed a fast. . . . May God save us and mob of burghers, they planned to sur-
save you from all distress and hardship. We are deeply prise the Jews in their synagogue on
fearful for you. We, however, have less reason to fear (for Saturday morning, May 3, but the
ourselves), for we have heard not even a rumor of the Jews prayed early and left before the
crusade.”* Ironically, French Jewry survived almost un- attackers arrived. Furious, the mob
scathed, while the Rhenish Jewry suffered frightfully. randomly murdered eleven Jews. The
Beginning in the late tenth century Jews trickled into bishop took the entire Jewish com-
Speyer (SHPAHY-uhr)—partly through Jewish percep- munity into his castle, arrested some
tion of opportunity and partly because of the direct invi- of the burghers, and cut off their
tation of the bishop of Speyer. The bishop’s charter hands. News of these events raced up
meant that Jews could openly practice their religion, the Rhine to Worms, creating confu-
could not be assaulted, and could buy and sell goods. sion in the Jewish community. Some
But they could not proselytize their faith, as Christians took refuge with Christian friends; An engraving (18th
could. Jews also extended credit on a small scale and, in others sought the bishop’s protection. century) of the mass
an expanding economy with many coins circulating, de- A combination of Crusaders and suicide of the Jews of
termined the relative value of currencies. Unlike their burghers killed a large number of Worms in 1096, when
they were overwhelmed
Christian counterparts, many Jewish women were liter- Jews, looted and burned synagogues,
by Crusaders (with
ate and acted as moneylenders. Jews also worked as and desecrated the Torah and other shields). (Bildarchiv
skilled masons, carpenters, and jewelers. As the bishop books. Proceeding on to the old and Preussischer Kulturbesitz/Art
had promised, the Jews of Speyer lived apart from Chris- prosperous city of Mainz, Crusaders Resource, NY)
tians in a walled enclave where they exercised auton- continued attacking Jews. Facing
omy: they maintained law and order, raised taxes, and overwhelming odds, eleven hundred
provided religious, social, and educational services for Jews killed their families and themselves. Crusaders and
their community. (This organization lasted in Germany burghers vented their hatred by inflicting barbaric tor-
until the nineteenth century.) Jewish immigration to tures on the wounded and dying. The Jews were never
Speyer accelerated; everyday relations between Jews passive; everywhere they resisted. If the Crusades had
and Christians were peaceful. begun as opposition to Islam, after 1096 that hostility ex-
But Christians resented Jews as newcomers, outsid- tended to all those who Christians saw as enemies of so-
ers, and aliens; for enjoying the special protection of the ciety, including heretics, Jews, and lepers. But Jews
bishop; and for providing economic competition. Anti- continued to move to the Rhineland and to make impor-
Semitic ideology had received enormous impetus from tant economic and intellectual contributions. Crusader-
the virulent anti-Semitic writings of Christian apologists burgher attacks served as harbingers of events to come in
in the first six centuries c.e. Jews, they argued, were dei- the later Middle Ages and well into modern times.
cides (DAY-ah-sides) (Christ killers); worse, Jews could
understand the truth of Christianity but deliberately re- Questions for Analysis
jected it; thus they were inhuman. By the late eleventh 1. How do you explain Christian attacks on the Jews of
Speyer? Were they defenses of faith?
*Quoted in R. Chazan, In the Year 1096: The First Crusade 2. How did Christian views of the Jews as outsiders
and the Jews (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1996), contribute to these events? Can you think of more
p. 28. recent examples of similar developments?
215
Chapter Review
How did medieval rulers create larger and more stable territories? (page 194)
The end of the great invasions signaled the beginning of profound changes in Euro- Key Terms
pean society. As domestic disorder slowly subsided, feudal rulers began to develop new Domesday Book (p. 196)
institutions of government that enabled them to assert their power over lesser lords and Exchequer (p. 196)
the general population. Centralized states slowly crystallized, first in England and
Holy Roman Empire (p. 199)
France, where rulers such as William the Conqueror and Philip Augustus manipu-
lated feudal institutions to build up their power. In central Europe the German king diwān (p. 200)
Otto had himself declared emperor and tried to follow a similar path, but unified nation- reconquista (p. 201)
states did not develop until the nineteenth century. Emperors instead shared power common law (p. 203)
with princes, dukes, archbishops, counts, bishops, abbots, and cities. In the Iberian
circuit judges (p. 203)
peninsula Christian rulers of small states slowly expanded their territories, taking over
land from Muslim rulers in the reconquista. jury (p. 203)
Magna Carta (p. 205)
simony (p. 205)
How did the administration of law contribute to the development of national
college of cardinals (p. 206)
states? (page 202)
lay investiture (p. 206)
As medieval rulers expanded territories and extended authority, they required more
officials, larger armies, and more money with which to pay for them. They developed excommunication (p. 207)
different sorts of financial institutions to provide taxes and other income. The most cloistered (p. 207)
effective financial bureaucracies were those developed in England, including a bureau Christendom (p. 208)
of finance called the Exchequer, and in Sicily, where Norman rulers retained the Crusades (p. 209)
main financial agency that had been created by their Muslim predecessors. By con-
trast, the rulers of France and other continental states continued to rely primarily on indulgence (p. 210)
the income from their own property to support their military endeavors, so their finan- Albigensians (p. 212)
cial institutions were less sophisticated. Inquisition (p. 212)
How did the papacy attempt to reform the church, and what was the response
from other powerful rulers? (page 205)
In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries rulers in Europe sought to transform a hodge-
podge of oral and written customs and rules into a uniform system of laws acceptable
and applicable to all their peoples. In England such changes caused conflict with
church officials, personified in the dispute between King Henry II and Thomas Becket,
the archbishop of Canterbury. Fiscal and legal measures by Henry’s son John led to
opposition from the high nobles of England, who forced him to sign Magna Carta,
agreeing to promise to observe the law. Magna Carta had little immediate impact, but
it came to signify the principle that everyone, including the king and the government,
must obey the law. At the same time that kings were creating more centralized realms,
energetic popes built up their power within the Western Christian church and asserted
their superiority over kings and emperors. The Gregorian reform movement led to a
grave conflict with kings over lay investiture. The papacy achieved a technical success
on the religious issue, but in Germany the greatly increased power of the nobility, at
the expense of the emperor, represents the significant social consequence. Having
put its own house in order, the Roman papacy built the first strong government
bureaucracy in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In the High Middle Ages, the
church exercised general leadership of European society.
Chapter Review 217
How did the motives, course, and consequences of the Crusades reflect and
shape developments in Europe? (page 209)
A papal call to retake the holy city of Jerusalem led to the Crusades, nearly two cen-
turies of warfare between Christians and Muslims. The enormous popular response to
papal calls for crusading reveals the influence of the reformed papacy and a new sense
that war against the church’s enemies was a duty of nobles. The Crusades were initially
successful, and small Christian states were established in the Middle East. These did
not last very long, however, and other effects of the Crusades were disastrous. Jewish
communities in Europe were regularly attacked; relations between the Western and
Eastern Christian churches were poisoned by the Crusaders’ attack on Constan-
tinople; and Christian-Muslim relations became more uniformly hostile than they had
been earlier.
Notes
1. J. Johns, Arabic Administration in Norman Sicily: The Royal Diwān (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2002), p. 293.
2. I. S. Robinson, The Papacy, 1073–1198: Continuity and Innovation (New York: Cambridge
3. Bartlett, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change, 950–1350
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 24.
4. Ibid., pp. 250–255.

An Arab View of the Crusades
people of the city would react, so he made the Mus-
lims go outside the city on their own to dig trenches,
T o medieval Christians the Crusades were papally ap-
proved military expeditions for the recovery of the Holy
Land; to the Arabs these campaigns were “Frankish wars” or
and the next day sent the Christians out alone to
continue the task. When they were ready to return
“Frankish invasions” for the acquisition of territory. The Arab home at the end of the day he refused to allow
perspective is illustrated in a history of the First Crusade by them. “Antioch is yours,” he said, “but you will
Ibn Al-Athir (1160–1223). Al-Athir, a native of Mosul in have to leave it to me until I see what happens be-
northern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), relied on Arab sources tween us and the Franks.” “Who will protect our
for the events he described. Here is his account of the Crusad- children and our wives?” they said. “I shall look af-
ers’ capture of Antioch in Syria. ter them for you.” So they resigned themselves to
their fate, and lived in the Frankish camp for nine
months, while the city was under siege.
The power of the Franks first became apparent Yaghi Siyan showed unparalleled courage and
when in the year 478/1085–86* they invaded the wisdom, strength and judgment. If all the Franks
territories of Islam and took Toledo and other parts who died had survived they would have overrun all
of Andalusia. Then in 484/1091 they attacked and the lands of Islam. He protected the families of the
conquered the island of Sicily and turned their at- Christians in Antioch and would not allow a hair of
tention to the African coast. Certain of their con- their heads to be touched.
quests there were won back again but they had After the siege had been going on for a long
other successes, as you will see. time the Franks made a deal with . . . a cuirass
In 490/1097 the Franks attacked Syria. . . . [armor]-maker called Ruzbih whom they bribed
When Yaghi Siyan, the ruler of Antioch, heard of with a fortune in money and lands. He worked in
their approach, he was not sure how the Christian the tower that stood over the riverbed, where the
Miniature showing
heavily armored knights
fighting Muslims.
(Bibliothèque nationale
de France)
*Muslims traditionally date events from Muhammad’s hegira, or emigration, to Medina, which occurred in 622 according
to the Christian calendar.
218
river flowed out of the city into the valley. The It was the discord between the Muslim princes . . .
Franks sealed their pact with the cuirass-maker, that enabled the Franks to overrun the country.
God damn him! and made their way to the water-
gate. They opened it and entered the city. Another
gang of them climbed the tower with their ropes. Questions for Analysis
At dawn, when more than 500 of them were in 1. From the Arab perspective, when did the Cru-
the city and the defenders were worn out after the sades begin?
night watch, they sounded their trumpets. . . . Panic 2. Why did Antioch fall to the Crusaders?
seized Yaghi Siyan and he opened the city gates
3. The use of dialogue in historical narrative is a
and fled in terror, with an escort of thirty pages. His
very old device dating from the Greek historian
army commander arrived, but when he discovered Thucydides (fifth century b.c.e.). Assess the
on enquiry that Yaghi Siyan had fled, he made his value of Ibn Al-Athir’s dialogues for the modern
escape by another gate. This was of great help to historian.
the Franks, for if he had stood firm for an hour,
they would have been wiped out. They entered the Sources: P. J. Geary, ed., Readings in Medieval History
(Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 1991), pp. 443–
city by the gates and sacked it, slaughtering all the
444; E. J. Costello, trans., Arab Historians of the Crusades
Muslims they found there. This happened in ju- (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press,
mada I (491/April/May 1098). . . . 1969).
219
CHAPTER 10
The Changing Life of the People
in the High
Middle Ages
Chapter Preview
Village Life
What was life like for the rural common
people of medieval Europe?
Popular Religion
How did religious practices and
attitudes permeate everyday life?
Nobles
How were the lives of nobles different
from the lives of common people?
Monasteries and Convents

What roles did the men and women
affiliated with religious orders play in
medieval society?
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY: Hildegard of Bingen
LISTENING TO THE PAST: The Pilgrim’s Guide to

Santiago de Compostela
In these scenes from a German manuscript, Speculum Virginum, ca.
1190, the artist shows men, women, and children harvesting, raking,
sowing, and digging. All residents in a village engaged in agricultural
tasks. (Rheinisches Landesmuseum, Bonn)
220
Village Life 221
I
orders Divisions of society in the High
n a text produced at the court of Anglo-Saxon king Alfred, Christian society is Middle Ages, including those who pray,
those who fight, and those who work.
described as composed of three orders: those who pray, those who fight, and
those who work. This image of society became popular in the High Middle Ages,
especially among people who were worried about the changes they saw around
them. They asserted that the three orders had been established by God and that
every person had been assigned a fixed place in the social order.
This tripartite model does not fully describe medieval society, however. There
were degrees of wealth and status within each group. The model does not take
townspeople and the emerging commercial classes (see pages 246–259) into con-
sideration. It completely excludes those who were not Christian, such as Jews,
Muslims, and pagans. Those who used the model, generally bishops and other
church officials, ignored the fact that each of these groups was made up of both
women and men; they spoke only of warriors, monks, and farmers. Despite—or
perhaps because of—these limitations, the model of the three orders was a power-
ful mental construct. We can use it to organize our investigation of life in the High
Middle Ages, though we can broaden our categories to include groups and issues
that medieval authors did not.
Village Life
What was life like for the rural common people of medieval Europe?
The evolution of localized feudal systems into more centralized states had rela-
tively little impact on the daily lives of peasants except when it involved warfare.
While only nobles fought, their battles often destroyed the houses, barns, and
fields of ordinary people, who might also be killed either directly or as a result of
the famine and disease that often accompanied war. People might seek protection
in the local castle during times of warfare, but typically they worked and lived
without paying much attention to the political developments under way there.
This lack of attention went in the other direction as well. Since villagers did
not perform what were considered “noble” deeds, the aristocratic monks and cler-
ics who wrote the records that serve as historical sources did not spend time or
precious writing materials on them. When common people were mentioned, it
was usually with contempt or in terms of the services and obligations they owed.
Usually—but not always. In the early twelfth century Honorius (hoh-NAWR-ee-
uhs), a monk and teacher at the monastery of Autun, wrote: “What do you say
about the agricultural classes? Most of them will be saved because they live simply
and feed God’s people by means of their sweat.”1
The Three Orders of Society
(fourteenth century)
Medieval theologians lumped everyone who worked
Slavery, Serfdom, the land into the category of “those who work,” but in
This book illustration shows the most
and Upward Mobility fact there were many levels of peasants, ranging from
common image of medieval society:
those who fight, those who pray, and
complete slaves to free and very rich farmers. The High Middle Ages was a period those who work. The group of clergy
of considerable fluidity with significant social mobility. shown here includes a veiled nun; nuns
The number of slaves who worked the land declined steadily in the High were technically not members of the
Middle Ages. Most rural people in western Europe during this period were serfs clergy, but most people considered
rather than slaves, though the distinction between slave and serf was not always clear. them as such. (Copyright Royal Library
Both lacked freedom—the power to do as they wished—and both were subject to of Belgium)
222 Chapter 10 The Changing Life of the People in the High Middle Ages
the arbitrary will of one person, the lord. Unlike a slave, however, a serf could not
be bought and sold like an animal.
People’s legal status was based on memory and traditions, not on written docu-
ments. The serf was required to perform labor services on the lord’s land, usually
three days a week except during the planting or harvest seasons, when it was more.
Serfs frequently had to pay arbitrary levies. When a man married, he had to pay his
lord a fee. When he died, his son or heir had to pay an inheritance tax to inherit
his parcels of land. The precise amounts of tax paid to the lord on these important
occasions depended on local custom and tradition. A free person had to pay rent
to the lord but could move and live as he or she wished.
Serfdom was a hereditary condition. A person born a serf was likely to die a
serf, though many serfs did secure their freedom. More than anything else, the
economic revival that began in the eleventh century (see pages 255–259) advanced
the cause of freedom for serfs. The revival saw the rise of towns, increased land
productivity, the growth of long-distance trade, and the development of a money
economy. With the advent of a money economy, serfs could save money and,
through a third-person intermediary, use it to buy their freedom. Many energetic
and hard-working serfs acquired their freedom through this method of manumis-
sion in the High Middle Ages.
Another opportunity for increased personal freedom came when lords organ-
ized groups of villagers to cut down forests or fill in swamps and marshes between
villages to make more land available for farming. In some parts of Europe, peas-
ants migrated to these new areas. The thirteenth century witnessed German peas-
ant migrations into Brandenburg, Pomerania, Prussia, and the Baltic States, with
Germans establishing new villages between existing Slavic villages or pushing the
Slavs eastward. In the Iberian peninsula, Christian villagers followed after the
Christian armies that were gaining areas from Muslims. In Scandinavia, farms
were established in areas that had previously been used to harvest furs or lumber.
This type of agricultural advancement frequently improved the peasants’ social and
legal condition. A serf could clear a patch of fen or forestland, make it productive,
and, through prudent saving, buy more land and eventually purchase freedom.
Peasants who remained in the villages of their birth often benefited because
landlords, threatened with the loss of serfs, relaxed ancient obligations and duties.
While it would be unwise to exaggerate the social impact of the settling of new
territories, frontier lands in the Middle Ages did provide opportunities for upward
mobility.
In the High Middle Ages most European peasants, free

The Manor and unfree, lived in family groups in small villages.
One or more villages, and the land surrounding them,
made up a manor, controlled by a noble or a church official such as a bishop, ab-
bot, or abbess. Sometimes a single village would be divided among several lords
into small manors, for manors varied from several thousand to as few as one hun-
dred acres. The manor was the basic unit of medieval rural organization and the
center of rural life. All other generalizations about manors and manorial life have
to be limited by variations in the quality of the soil, local climatic conditions, and
methods of cultivation. The arable land of the manor was divided into two sec-
tions. The demesne (di-MAIN), or home farm, was cultivated for the lord. The
other part was held by the peasantry. Usually the peasants’ portion was larger and
was held on condition that they cultivate the lord’s demesne. All of the arable land,
both the lord’s and the peasants’, was divided into strips that were scattered through-
Chronology
out the manor. If one strip yielded little, other strips (with 909 Abbey of Cluny established
better soil) might be more bountiful. All peasants cooperated
in the cultivation of the land, working it as a group. This 1050–1300 Steady rise in population
meant that all shared in any disaster as well as in any large 1080–1180 Period of milder climate
harvest. 1098–1179 Life of Hildegard of Bingen
The peasants’ work was typically divided according to
Early 1100s Production of iron increases greatly
gender. Men were responsible for clearing new land, plow-
ing, and the care of large animals, and women were respon- 1100–1200 Rapid expansion of the Cistercian Order
sible for the care of small animals, spinning, and food 1200 Notion of chivalry begins to develop
preparation. Both sexes harvested and planted, though often Fourth Lateran Council accepts seven
1215
there were gender-specific tasks within each of these major sacraments
undertakings. Women and men worked in the vineyards and
in the harvest and preparation of crops needed by the textile
industry—flax and plants used for dyeing cloth. In fishing
communities wives and daughters dried and salted fish for
later use, while husbands and sons went out in boats.
In western and central Europe, villages were generally made up of small
houses for individual families, with one married couple, their children (including
stepchildren), and perhaps one or two other relatives—a grandmother, a cousin
whose parents had died, an unmarried sister or brother of one of the spouses. The
household thus contained primarily a nuclear family and some households con- nuclear family Family group consisting
tained only an unmarried person, a widow, or several unmarried people living toof parents and their children, but no
other relatives.
gether. Villages themselves were also nucleated—that is, the houses were clumped
together, with the fields stretching out beyond the group of houses. In southern
and eastern Europe, extended families were more likely to
live in the same household or very near to one another. Fa-
ther and son, or two married brothers, might share a house
with the families of both, forming what demographers call a
stem, or complex household.
A manor usually held pasture or meadowland for the graz-
ing of cattle, sheep, and sometimes goats. Often the manor
had some forestland as well. Forests were the source of wood
for building and for fuel, resin for lighting, ash for candles,
ash and lime for fertilizers and all sorts of sterilizing products,
and bark for the manufacture of rope. From the forests came
wood for the construction of barrels, vats, and all sorts of stor-
age containers. Last but hardly least, the forests were used for
feeding pigs, cattle, and domestic animals on nuts, roots, and
wild berries. If the manor was intersected by a river, it had a
welcome source of fish and eels.
The medieval village had no police as we know them, so
villagers who saw a crime or infraction were expected to chase
Boarstall Manor, Buckinghamshire

In 1440 Edmund Rede, lord of this estate, had a map made showing his
ancestor receiving the title from King Edward I (lower field ). Note the
manor house, church, and peasants’ cottages along the central road. In the
common fields, divided by hedges, peasants cultivated on a three-year
rotation cycle: winter wheat, spring oats, a year fallow. Peasants’ pigs
grazed freely in the woods, indicated by trees. We don’t know whether
peasants were allowed to hunt the deer. (Buckinghamshire Record Office, Aylesbury)
the perpetrator and yell to others to join in what was termed raising the hue and cry.
Villages in many parts of Europe also developed institutions of self-government to
handle issues such as crop rotation, and they chose additional officials such as
constables and ale-tasters without the lord’s interference. We do not know how
these officials were chosen or elected in many cases, but we do know that they
were always adult men and were generally heads of households. Women had no
official voice in running the village, nor did slaves or servants (female or male),
who often worked for and lived with wealthier village families. Women did buy,
sell, and hold land independently and, especially as widows, headed households;
when they did they were required to pay all rents and taxes. In areas of Europe
where men were gone fishing or foresting for long periods of time, or where men
left seasonally or more permanently in search of work elsewhere, women made
decisions about the way village affairs were to be run, though they did not set up
formal institutions to do this.
Manors do not represent the only form of medieval rural economy. In parts of
Germany and the Netherlands, and in much of southern France, free indepen-
dent farmers owned land outright, free of rents and services. These farms tended
to be small and were surrounded by large estates that gradually swallowed them
up. In Scandinavia the soil was so poor and the climate so harsh that people tended
to live on widely scattered farms rather than in villages, but they still lived in rela-
tively small family groups.
Medieval farmers employed what historians term the

open-field system System in which
Agricultural Methods open-field system, a pattern that differs sharply from
the arable land of a manor was divided and Improvements modern farming practices. In the open-field system,
into two or three fields without hedges or
fences to mark the individual holdings of
the arable land of a manor was divided into two or three fields without hedges or
the lord, serfs, and freemen. fences to mark the individual holdings of the lord, serfs, and freemen. The village
as a whole decided what would be planted in each field, rotating the crops accord-
ing to tradition and need. Some fields would be planted in crops such as wheat,
rye, peas, or barley for human consumption, some in oats or other crops for both
animals and humans, and some would be left unworked or fallow to allow the soil
to rejuvenate. The exact pattern of this rotation varied by location, but in most
areas with open-field agriculture the holdings farmed by any one family did not
consist of a whole field but, instead, of strips in many fields.
The milder climate of the Mediterranean area allowed for more frequent
planting and a greater range of agricultural products; families tended to farm indi-
vidual square plots rather than long strips. Milder climate also meant that more
work (and play) could take place outdoors, which may have somewhat alleviated
crowding in households with many family members.
While not approaching the temperatures of the Mediterrarean area, England,
France, and Germany experienced exceptionally clement weather in the tenth
and eleventh centuries. Meteorologists believe that a slow but steady retreat of
polar ice occurred between the ninth and eleventh centuries. The mild winters
and dry summers associated with this warming trend helped to increase agricul-
tural output throughout Europe.
The tenth and eleventh centuries also witnessed a number of agricultural im-
provements, especially in the development of mechanisms that replaced or aided
human labor. Water mills were one important part of this. In the ancient world,
slaves ground the grain for bread; as slavery was replaced by serfdom, grinding
became a woman’s task. Water mills replaced human energy and increased pro-
ductivity. A water mill unearthed near Monte Cassino in Italy could grind about
Village Life 225
Windmill
The mill was constructed on a pivot so that it could turn in the direction of the wind. Used primarily to grind grain, as shown here with a man
carrying a sack of grain to be ground into flour, windmills were also used to process cloth, brew beer, drive saws, and provide power for iron
forges. (Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, MS Bodl. 264, fol. 81r)
1.5 tons of grain in ten hours, a quantity that would formerly have required the
exertions of forty people.
Cloth production in medieval Europe grew because of water power. Women
freed from the task of grinding grain could spend more time spinning yarn—the
bottleneck in cloth production, as each weaver needed at least six spinners. Water
mills were also well suited to the process known as fulling—scouring, cleansing, and
thickening cloth—enabling men and women to full cloth at a much faster rate.
Next, medieval engineers harnessed wind power. Many windmills were erected
in the flat areas of northern Europe, including Holland, that lacked fast-flowing
streams.
In the early twelfth century the production of iron increased greatly. Iron was
first used in agriculture for plowshares (the part of the plow that cuts the furrow and
grinds up the earth), and then for pitchforks, spades, and axes. Harrows—cultivating
instruments with heavy teeth that broke up and smoothed the soil—began to have
iron instead of wooden teeth.
Plows and harrows were increasingly drawn by horses rather than oxen. The
development of the padded horse collar that rested on the horse’s shoulders and
was attached to the load by shafts led to dramatic improvements. The horse collar
meant that the animal could put its entire weight into the task of pulling. The use
of horses spread in the twelfth century because horses’ greater speed brought
greater efficiency to farming and reduced the amount of human labor involved.
Oxen were still used in areas where the soil was heavy and muddy.
The thirteenth century witnessed a tremendous spurt in the use of horses to
haul carts to market. Consequently, goods reached market faster, and the number
of markets to which the peasant had access increased. Peasants not only sold prod-
ucts, but also bought them as their opportunities for spending on at least a few
nonagricultural goods multiplied.
By twenty-first-century standards, medieval agricultural yields were very low, but

there was striking improvement over time. Increased agricultural output had a pro-
found impact on society, improving Europeans’ health, commerce, industry, and
general lifestyle. A better diet had an enormous impact on women’s lives: it meant
increased body fat, which increased fertility; also, more iron in the diet meant that
women were less anemic and less subject to opportunistic diseases. Some research-
ers believe that it was during the High Middle Ages that Western women began to
outlive men. Improved opportunities also encouraged people to marry somewhat
earlier, which meant larger families and further population growth.
Life for most people in medieval Europe meant coun-

Households, Work, try life. Most people rarely traveled more than twenty-
and Food five miles beyond their villages. Everyone’s world was
small, narrow, and provincial in the original sense of the word: limited by the
boundaries of the province. This way of life did not have entirely unfortunate re-
sults. People had a strong sense of family and the certainty of its support and help
in time of trouble. They had a sense of place, and pride in that place was reflected
in adornment of the village church.
Life on the manor may have been stable, but it was dull. Medieval men and
women often sought escape in heavy drinking. English judicial records of the
thirteenth century reveal a surprisingly large number of “accidental” deaths.
Strong, robust, commonsensible people do not ordinarily fall on their knives and
stab themselves, or slip out of boats and drown, or get lost in the woods on a win-
ter’s night, or fall from horses and get trampled. The victims were probably drunk.
Many of these accidents occurred, as the court records say, “coming from an ale.”
Brawls and violent fights were frequent at taverns.
The size and quality of peasants’ houses varied according to their relative pros-
perity, and that prosperity usually depended on the amount of land held. Poorer
Baking Bread
Bread and beer or ale were the main manorial products for local consumption. While women dominated the making of ale and beer, men
and women cooperated in the making and baking of bread—the staple of the diet. Most people did not have ovens in their own homes
because of the danger of fire, but instead used the communal manorial oven, which, like a modern pizza oven, could bake several loaves at
once. (Bibliothèque nationale de France)
Village Life 227
peasants lived in windowless one-room cottages built of wood and clay or wattle
(poles interwoven with branches or reeds) and thatched with straw. Prosperous
peasants added rooms, and some wealthy peasants in the early fourteenth century
had two-story houses with separate bedrooms for parents and children. For most
people, however, living space—especially living space close enough to a fire to
feel some warmth in cold weather—was cramped, dark, smoky, and smelly, with
animals and people both sharing tight quarters, sometimes with each other.
Every house had a small garden and an outbuilding. Onions, garlic, turnips,
and carrots were grown and stored through the winter in the main room of the
dwelling or in the shed attached to it. Cabbage was shredded and salted for stor-
age. Chickens and eggs were highly valued in the prudently managed household.
Animals were too valuable to be used for food on a regular basis, but weaker ani-
mals were often slaughtered in the fall so that they did not need to be fed through
the winter, and their meat was salted and eaten on great feast days such as Christmas
and Easter. The rest of the household’s needs—cloth, metal, leather goods, addi-
tional food, and copious quantities of ale—was purchased from village market stalls.
Scholars are only beginning to explore questions of

Health Care medieval health care, and there are still many aspects
of public health that we know little about. The steady
rise in population between the mid-eleventh and fourteenth centuries, usually at-
tributed to warmer climate, increased food supply, and a reduction of violence
with growing political stability, may also be ascribed partly to better health care. A
recent study of skeletal remains in the village of Brandes in Burgundy showed that
peasants enjoyed very good health: they were well built and had excellent teeth,
and their bones revealed no signs of chronic disease. Obviously we cannot general-
ize about the health of all people on the basis of evidence from one village, but
such research indicates that medieval adults were tough.
What care existed for the sick? As in the past, the sick everywhere depended
above all on the private nursing care of relatives and friends. Beginning in the
twelfth century in the British Isles, however, the royal family, the clergy, noble
men and women, and newly rich merchants also established institutions to care
for the sick or for those who for some reason could not take care of themselves.
Within city walls they built hospitals, which were not hospitals in the modern
sense, but rather places where those with chronic diseases that were not conta-
gious, poor expectant mothers, the handicapped, people recovering from injuries,
foundling children, and mentally retarded or psychologically disturbed children
or adults went for care. Outside city walls they built leprosariums or small hospices
for people with leprosy and other contagious diseases.
Such institutions might be staffed by members of religious orders, people who
had less formally devoted themselves to lives of service, laymen and laywomen
who were paid for their work, or a combination of the three. In the twelfth century
medical personnel at hospitals were trained on the job, but by the thirteenth cen-
tury some had been trained in faculties of medicine at Europe’s new universities
(see page 259). Outside of hospitals, people suffering from wounds, skin diseases,
or broken bones turned to barber-surgeons who were trained in an apprenticeship
system. For other internal ailments people used apothecaries—also trained through
an apprenticeship system—to suggest and mix drugs, which combined herbs, salts,
metals, and more fanciful ingredients such as “dragon’s blood.”
People also relied on men and women who had no official training at all, but
who had learned healing techniques from their parents or other older people.
Monastic Entrance
In a world with few career opportunities for “superfluous
children,” monasteries served a valuable social function. Because
a dowry was expected, monastic life was generally limited to the
children of the affluent. Here a father—advising his son to be
obedient and holding a bag of money for the monastery—hands
his son over to the abbot. The boy does not look enthusiastic.
(The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Unknown illuminator, Initial Q: An Abbot
Receiving a Child Decretum, ca. 1170–1180 [83.MQ.163.fol.63])
Their treatments were often mixtures of herbal rem-

edies, sayings, specific foods, prayers, amulets, and
ritual healing activities. Such combinations were also
what people prescribed for themselves, for most treat-
ment of illness was handled by home remedies handed
down orally or perhaps through a cherished hand-
written family herbal, cookbook, or household guide.
The most dangerous pe-

Childbirth and riod of life for any person,
Child Abandonment peasant or noble, was in-
fancy and early childhood. In normal years perhaps
as many as one-third of all children died before age five, and
in years with plagues, droughts, or famines this share climbed
Sec tion Review to more than half. Children often died from accidents as well
as from malnutrition and illness, wandering into cooking
• The incidence of slavery was decreasing, as most of the slaves fires, drowning in potholes in the road, or getting in the way
became serfs, an inherited condition, buying their freedom of horses or cattle. Reaching adulthood meant that people
by saving money or migrating to new areas.
had survived the most dangerous part of their lives, and many
• The manor was the basic form of rural medieval life and lived well into their fifties and sixties.
contained land for the lord (the demesne) and additional
land for the peasants, who farmed as a group, with separate Childbirth was dangerous for mothers as well as for in-
jobs for men and women. fants. Though mortality statistics are difficult to determine,
• In agriculture, production gradually increased as villages every woman would have known someone who died in child-
rotated crops in an open-field system, and improvements— birth, and most would have seen such a death. Women de-
such as water and windmills for grinding grain and processing veloped prayers, rituals, and special sayings to ensure safe
cloth; the use of iron implements such as plows, pitchforks, and speedy childbirth. Village women helped one another
and spades; and the increased use of horses—resulted in through childbirth, and women who were more capable ac-
healthier lifestyles. Most people lived in the country in small,
dark, smoky, smelly houses, often sharing space with animals, quired specialized midwifery skills. In larger towns and cities,
growing goods in small gardens, and purchasing things they such women gradually developed into professional midwives
could not produce at the market. The lifestyle was often dull, who were paid for their services and who trained younger
and heavy drinking was a common problem. women as apprentices, just as barber-surgeons and apothe-
• Health care for most people was handled through home caries trained their male apprentices. For most women, how-
remedies given by friends and relatives, but a few hospitals ever, childbirth was handled by female friends and family,
and hospices provided care, and physicians, apothecaries, and not by professionals.
barber-surgeons offered a variety of treatments to those who
could afford them. The abandonment of infant children seems to have been
the most favored form of family limitation and was widely
• Childbirth was dangerous for mothers and infants, and in-
fancy and early childhood were the most dangerous times of practiced throughout the Middle Ages. Parents or guardians
life, as many children died from illness, famine, accidents, or left children somewhere, sold them, or legally gave authority
abandonment, which was a common practice. to some other person or institution. Sometimes parents be-
lieved that someone of greater means or status might find
Popular Religion 229
the child and bring it up in better circumstances than the natal parents could
provide.
Disappointment in the sex of the child or its physical weakness or deformity
might have also led parents to abandon it. Among Christians, superfluous children
could be given to monasteries as oblates. The word oblate derives from the Latin oblates Children who were given to
oblatio, meaning “offering.” Boys and girls were given to monasteries or convents monasteries as offerings or permanent
gifts.
as permanent gifts. But oblation also served social and economic functions. The
monastery nurtured and educated the child in a familial atmosphere, and it pro-
vided career opportunities for the mature monk or nun whatever his or her origins.
Oblation has justifiably been described as “in many ways the most humane form
of abandonment ever devised in the West.”2 The abandonment of children re-
mained socially acceptable, and church and state authorities never legislated
against it.
Popular Religion
How did religious practices and attitudes permeate everyday life?
Apart from the land, the weather, and local legal and social conditions, religion
had the greatest impact on the daily lives of ordinary people in the High Middle
Ages. Religious practices varied widely from country to country and even from
province to province. But nowhere was religion a one-hour-a-week affair. Most
people in medieval Europe were Christian, but there were small Jewish communi-
ties scattered in many parts of Europe and Muslims in the Iberian peninsula, Sic-
ily, other Mediterranean islands, and southeastern Europe.
For Christians the village church was the center of

Village Churches and community life—social, political, and economic, as well
Christian Symbols as religious—with the parish priest in charge of a host
of activities. Although church law placed the priest under the bishop’s authority,
the manorial lord appointed him and financed any education in Latin, Scriptures,
and liturgy that he might receive. Parish priests were peasants and often were
poor. Since they often worked in the fields with the people, they understood the
people’s labor, needs, and frustrations. The parish priest was also responsible for
the upkeep of the church and for taking the lead in providing aid to the poorest of
the village.
The center of the Christian religious life was the Mass, the re-enactment of
Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. Every Sunday and on holy days, the villagers stood
at Mass or squatted on the floor (there were no chairs), breaking the painful rou-
tine of work. The feasts that accompanied baptisms, weddings, funerals, and other
celebrations were commonly held in the churchyard. Medieval drama originated
in the church. Mystery plays, based on biblical episodes, were performed first in
the sanctuary, then on the church porch, which was often in front of the west door,
and then at stations around the town.
From the church porch the priest read orders and messages from royal and
ecclesiastical authorities to his parishioners. The west front of the church, with its
scenes of the Last Judgment, was the background against which royal judges trav-
eling on circuit disposed of civil and criminal cases. In busy mercantile centers
such as London, business agreements and commercial exchanges were made in
the aisles of the church itself, as at Saint Paul’s.
Popular religion consisted largely of rituals heavy with symbolism. Before slic-
ing a loaf of bread, the pious woman tapped the sign of the cross on it with her
knife. Before planting, the village priest customarily went out and sprinkled the
fields with water, symbolizing refreshment and life. Everyone participated in vil-
lage processions. The entire calendar was designed with reference to Christmas,
Easter, and Pentecost, events in the life of Jesus and his disciples. The varying
colors of the vestments the priests wore at Mass gave villagers a sense of the chang-
ing seasons of the church’s liturgical year. The signs and symbols of Christianity
were visible everywhere.
Along with days marking events in the life of Jesus, the

saints Individuals thought to have lived
Saints and Christian calendar was filled with saints’ days. Saints
particularly holy lives and regarded as Sacraments were individuals who had lived particularly holy lives
having the power to work miracles.
and were honored locally or more widely for their connection with the divine. The
cult of the saints, which developed in a rural and uneducated environment, repre-
sents a central feature of popular culture in the Middle Ages. People believed that
the saints possessed supernatural powers that enabled them to perform miracles,
and the saint became the special property of the locality in which his or her relics
rested. Relics such as bones, articles of clothing, the saint’s tears, saliva, and even
the dust from the saint’s tomb were enclosed in the church altar. In return for the
saint’s healing and support, peasants would offer the saint prayers, loyalty, and
gifts. (See the feature “Listening to the Past: The Pilgrim’s Guide to Santiago de
Compostela” on pages 244–245.)
In the later Middle Ages popular hagiographies (hag-ee-OG-ruh-fees) (biog-
raphies of saints based on myths, legends, and popular stories) attributed special-
ized functions to the saints. Saint Elmo (ca. 300), who
supposedly had preached unharmed during a thunder and
lightning storm, became the patron of sailors. Saint Agatha
(third century), whose breasts were torn with shears because
she rejected the attentions of a powerful suitor, became the
patron of wet nurses, women with breast difficulties, and bell
ringers (because of the resemblance of breasts to bells).
Along with the veneration of saints, a new religious
understanding developed in the High Middle Ages. Twelfth-
century theologians expanded on Saint Augustine’s under-
standing of sacraments—outward and visible signs regarded
as instituted by Christ to give grace—and created an entire
sacramental system. Only a priest could dispense a sacra-
ment (except when someone was in danger of death), and
the list of seven sacraments (baptism, penance, the Eucha-
rist, confirmation, matrimony, ordination, anointment of
the dying) was formally accepted by the Fourth Lateran
Council in 1215.
Medieval Christians believed that these seven sacra-
ments brought grace, the divine assistance or help needed to
lead a good Christian life and to merit salvation. At the cen-
The Eucharist ter of the sacramental system stood the Eucharist, the small
The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 encouraged all Christians to piece of bread that through the words of priestly consecra-
receive the Eucharist at least once a year after confession and tion at the Mass became the living body of Christ and, when
penance. Here a priest places the consecrated bread, called a host, worthily consumed, became a channel of Christ’s grace. The
on people’s tongues. (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana) ritual of consecration, repeated at every altar of Christendom,
became a unifying symbol in a complex world. The sacramental system, however,

did not replace strong devotion to the saints.
Peasants had a strong sense of the presence of God.

Beliefs They believed that God rewarded the virtuous with
peace, health, and material prosperity and punished
sinners with disease, poor harvests, and war. Sin was caused by the Devil, who
lurked everywhere and constantly incited people to evil deeds. Sin frequently took
place in the dark. Thus evil and the Devil were connected in the peasant’s mind
with darkness or blackness. In some medieval literature, the Devil is portrayed as
black, an identification that has had a profound and sorry impact on Western ra-
cial attitudes.
In the eleventh century theologians began to emphasize Mary’s spiritual moth-
erhood of all Christians. The huge outpouring of popular devotions to Mary con-
centrated on her special relationship to Christ as all-powerful intercessor with
him. The most famous prayer, “Salve Regina,” perfectly expresses medieval
people’s confidence in Mary, their advocate with Christ:
Hail, holy Queen, Mother of Mercy! Our life, our sweetness, and our hope. To
thee we cry, poor banished children of Eve; to thee we send up our sighs, mourning
and weeping in this valley of tears. Turn, then, most gracious advocate, thy merci-
ful eyes upon us; and after this our exile show us the blessed fruit of thy womb,
Jesus. O merciful, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary!
The Mass was in Latin, but the priest delivered sermons in the vernacular.
However, a common complaint was that priests did a poor job of preaching the
Gospel. Nevertheless, people grasped the meaning of biblical stories and church
doctrines from the paintings on the church walls or, in wealthy parishes, the scenes
in stained-glass windows. Illiterate and uneducated, they certainly could not rea-
son out the increasingly sophisticated propositions of clever theologians. Still,
scriptural references and proverbs dotted everyone’s language. The English good-
bye, the French adieu, and the Spanish adios all derive from words meaning “God
be with you.” Christianity was the foundation of the common people’s culture for
most Europeans.
The interpenetration of Christian ceremonies and

Muslims and Jews daily life for most Europeans meant that those who did
not participate or who had different religious rituals
were clearly marked as outsiders. This included Muslims in the Iberian peninsula,
where Christian rulers were establishing kingdoms in territory won through the
reconquista (see page 201). Islam was outlawed in their territories, and some of the
Muslims left Spain, leaving room for new settlers from elsewhere in Christian
Europe. Other Muslims converted. In more isolated villages, people simply con-
tinued their Muslim rituals and practices, including abstaining from pork, reciting
verses from the Qur’an, praying at specified times of the day, and observing Mus-
lim holy days, though they might hide this from the local priest or visiting church
or government officials.
Islam was geographically limited in medieval Europe, but by the late tenth
century Jews could be found in many areas, often brought in from other parts of
Europe as clients of rulers because of their skills as merchants. There were Jewish
communities in Italian cities and in the cities along the Rhine such as Cologne,
Worms, Speyer, and Mainz. Jews migrated from there to England and France,
where they generally lived in the growing towns, often separate from the larger
Christian community.
Jewish dietary laws require meat to be handled in a specific way, so Jews had
their own butchers; there were Jewish artisans in many other trades as well, though
Jews were forbidden to join Christian guilds. Jews held weekly religious services
on Saturday, the Sabbath holy day of rest, and celebrated an annual cycle of holi-
days, including the High Holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur in the fall
and Passover in the spring. Each of these holidays involved special prayers, services,
and often foods, and many of them commemorated specific events from Jewish
history, including various times when Jews had been rescued from captivity.
The Crusades brought violence against Jews in many cities (see pages 209–
214), and restrictions on Jews increased in much of Europe. When Jews were ex-
pelled from England and later from France, many of them went to Muslim and
Christian areas of the Iberian peninsula. The rulers of both faiths initially wel-
comed them, though restrictions and violence gradually became more common
there as well. Jews continued to live in the independent cities of the Holy Roman
Empire and Italy, and some migrated eastward into new towns that were being
established in Slavic areas.
In the Middle Ages, every major life transition was

Marriage and marked by a ceremony. The sacrament of marriage
Children was followed by a wedding party that often included
secular rituals. Some rituals symbolized the “proper” hierarchical relations be-
tween the spouses—such as placing the husband’s shoe on the bedstead over the
couple, symbolizing his authority—or worked to ensure the couple’s fertility—
such as untying all the knots in the household, for tying knots was one way that
people reputed to have magical powers bound up the reproductive power of a
man. All this came together in what was often the final event of a wedding, the
priest blessing the couple in their marriage bed, often with family and friends
standing around or banging on pans, yelling, or otherwise making as much noise
as possible. The friends and family members had generally been part of the discus-
sions, negotiations, and activities leading up to the marriage; marriage united two
families and was far too important to leave up to two young people alone.
The involvement of family and friends in choosing one’s spouse might lead to
conflict, but more often the wishes of the young people and their parents, kin, and
community were quite similar; all hoped for marriages that provided economic
security, honorable standing, and a good number of healthy children. The best
marriages offered companionship, emotional support, and even love, but these
were understood to grow out of the marriage, not necessarily precede it. Breaking
up a marriage meant breaking up the basic production and consumption unit,
which was a very serious matter, so marital dissolution by any means other than
the death of one spouse was rare.
Most brides hoped to be pregnant soon after their wedding, and if the rituals
during the wedding had not been effective in bringing this about, there were other
avenues to try. Christian women hoping for children said special prayers to the
Virgin Mary or her mother Anne; wore amulets of amber, bone, or mistletoe,
thought to increase fertility; repeated charms and verses they had learned from
other women; or, in desperate cases, went on pilgrimages to make special suppli-
cations. Muslim and Jewish women wore small cases with sacred verses or asked
for blessings from religious leaders. Women continued these prayers and rituals
through pregnancy and childbirth, often combining religious traditions with folk
beliefs handed down orally.
Religious ceremonies also welcomed children into the community. Among
Christian families, infants were baptized soon after they were born, for without the
sacrament of baptism they could not enter heaven. Thus midwives who delivered
children who looked especially weak and sickly often baptized them in an emer-
gency service. In normal baptisms, the women who had assisted the mother in the
birth often carried the baby to church, where carefully chosen godparents vowed
their support. Godparents were often close friends or relatives, but parents might
also choose prominent villagers or even the local lord in the hope that he might
later look favorably on the child and provide for it in some way.
Within Judaism, a boy was circumcised and given his name in a ceremony
when he was in his eighth day of life. This brit milah, or “covenant of circumci-
sion,” was viewed as a reminder of the covenant between God and Abraham de-
scribed in Hebrew Scripture. Muslims also circumcised boys in a special ritual,
though the timing varied from a few days after birth to adolescence.
Death was similarly marked by religious ceremonies.

Death and Christians called for a priest to perform the sacrament
the Afterlife of extreme unction when they
thought the hour of death was near. The priest brought a num-
ber of objects and substances regarded as having power over
death and the sin related to it. Holy water, holy oil, and a cen-
ser with incense all connected to rites that purified and blessed
the dying. Lighted candles drove back the darkness both figu-
ratively and literally. A crucifix served to remind the dying of
Christ’s own agony and the promise of salvation. Most impor-
tant, the priest gave the dying person a last communion host.
Once the person had died, the body was washed and
dressed in special clothing or a sack of plain cloth and buried
within a day or two. Family and friends joined in a funeral
procession, again with candles, holy water, incense, and a
crucifix and marked by the ringing of church bells; sometimes
extra women were hired so that the mourning and wailing
were especially loud. The procession carried the body into
the church, where there were psalms, prayers, and a funeral
Mass, and then to a consecrated space for burial, the wealthy
sometimes inside the church—in the walls, under the floor,
or under the building itself in a crypt—but most often in the
churchyard or a cemetery close by. Standing at the graveside,
the priest asked for God’s grace on the soul of the deceased
and also asked that soul to “rest in peace.”
This final request was made not only for the benefit of the
dead, but also for that of the living. The souls of the dead were
widely believed to return to earth: mothers who had died in
childbed might come back seeking to take their children with Jewish Cemetery
them; executed criminals to gain revenge on those who had Tomb in Worms of a thirteenth-century German Jewish rabbi who
brought them to justice (for this reason they were buried at was imprisoned by the emperor and died in prison. Jewish and
crossroads, permanently under the sign of the cross, or under Christian cemeteries were separated in medieval Europe, with
the gallows itself); everyday people came seeking help from Christian cemeteries generally next to churches and Jewish ones
surviving family members in achieving their final salvation. often outside town walls. (Erich Lessing /Art Resource, NY)
Priests were hired to say memorial masses on anniversaries of family deaths, espe-
purgatory A place where souls on their
way to heaven went after death to make cially one week, one month, and one year afterward; large churches had a number
amends for their earthly sins. of side altars so that many masses could be going on at one time.
Learned theologians sometimes denied that souls actually returned, and dur-
ing the twelfth century they increasingly emphasized the idea of purgatory, a place
Sec tion Review
where souls on their way to heaven went after death to make amends for their earthly
• The village church was the center of sins. (Those on their way to hell went straight there.) Souls safely in purgatory did
life for the people, with priest-led not wander the earth, but they could still benefit from earthly activities; memorial
Masses, feasts, dramas, and sometimes masses, prayers, and donations made in their names could shorten their time in
business exchanges, all of which pro-
vided distractions from daily toil. purgatory and hasten their way to heaven. So could indulgences, documents bear-
ing the pope’s name that released the souls from purgatory. (Indulgences, it was
• Medieval people worshiped saints,
offering them prayers and gifts, and believed, also relieved the living of penalties imposed by the priest in confession
believed that the sacraments brought for serious sins.) Indulgences could be secured for a small fee, and people came to
divine help and salvation. believe that indulgences and pilgrimages to the shrines of saints could ensure a
• Peasants believed that God rewarded place in heaven for their deceased relatives (and also, perhaps, for themselves).
the just and punished evildoers, that Thus the bodies of the dead on earth and their souls in purgatory both required
sin was from the Devil, and that Chris- things from the living, for death did not sever family obligations and connections.
tianity was the basis for common The living also had obligations to the dead among Muslims and Jews. In both
people’s lives.
groups, deceased people were to be buried quickly, and special prayers were to be
• Christians treated Muslims and Jews as said by mourners and family members. Muslims fasted on behalf of the dead and
outsiders, so Muslims practiced in secret
while Jews lived with many restrictions maintained a brief period of official mourning. The Qur’an promises an eternal
and often experienced violence. paradise with flowing rivers to “those who believe and do good deeds” (Qur’an,
• Marriage was a celebration involving 4:57) and a hell of eternal torment to those who do not.
both families and divorce was a rarity. Jews observed specified periods of mourning during which the normal activities
Couples welcomed children, Christians of daily life were curtailed. Every day for eleven months after a death and every year
baptizing them soon after birth, while after that on the anniversary of the death, a son of the deceased was to recite Kaddish,
Jewish and Muslim parents circumcised a special prayer of praise and glorification of God. Judaism emphasized this life
their infant sons.
more than an afterlife, so beliefs about what happens to the soul after death were
• After Christians died, rituals and sym- more varied; the very righteous might go directly to a place of spiritual reward, but
bols were thought to help them move
through purgatory; Muslims fasted and most souls went first to a place of punishment and purification generally referred to
said special prayers, and Jews observed as Gehinnom. After a period that did not exceed twelve months, the soul ascended
specific mourning rites. to the world to come. Those who were completely wicked during their lifetime
might simply go out of existence or continue in an eternal state of remorse.
Nobles
How were the lives of nobles different from the lives of common people?
nobility A small group of people at the The nobility, though a small fraction of the total population, strongly influenced
top of the medieval social structure, all aspects of medieval culture—political, economic, religious, educational, and
whose official role was fighting.
artistic. Despite political, scientific, and industrial revolutions, the nobility contin-
ued to hold real political and social power in Europe into the nineteenth century.
In order to account for this continuing influence, it is important to understand the
development of the nobility in the High Middle Ages.
In the early Middle Ages noble status was generally

Origins and Status limited to very few families who were either descended
of the Nobility from officials at the Carolingian court or leading fami-
lies among Germanic tribes. Beginning in the eleventh century, knights in the
service of higher nobles or kings began to claim noble status. The noble class grew
Nobles 235
larger and more diverse, ranging from poor knights who held tiny pieces of land
(or sometimes none at all) to dukes and counts with vast territories.
Originally, most knights focused solely on military skills, but gradually a differ-
ent ideal of knighthood emerged, usually termed chivalry (SHIV-uhl-ree). Chiv- chivalry Code of conduct originally
alry was a code of conduct originally devised by the clergy to transform the devised by the clergy to transform the
crude and brutal behavior of the
crude and brutal behavior of the knightly class. It may have originated in oaths knightly class.
administered to Crusaders in which fighting was declared to have a sacred pur-
pose and knights vowed loyalty to the church as well as to their lords. Other quali-
ties gradually became part of chivalry: bravery, generosity, honor, graciousness,
mercy, and eventually gallantry toward women. The chivalric
ideal—and it was an ideal, not a standard pattern of behavior—
created a new standard of masculinity for nobles, in which loy-
alty and honor remained the most important qualities, but
graceful dancing and intelligent conversation were not consid-
ered unmanly.
For children of aristocratic birth, the

Childhood years from infancy to around the age
of seven or eight were primarily years
of play. Infants had rattles, as the twelfth-century monk Guibert
of Nogent reports, and young children had special toys.
At about the age of seven, a boy of the noble class who was
not intended for the church was placed in the household of
one of his father’s friends or relatives. There he became a ser-
vant to the lord and received formal training in arms. He was
expected to serve the lord at the table, to assist him as a private
valet, and, as he gained experience, to care for the lord’s horses
and equipment.
Training was in the arts of war. The boy learned to ride and
to manage a horse. He had to acquire skill in wielding a sword,
which sometimes weighed as much as twenty-five pounds. He
had to be able to hurl a lance, shoot with a bow and arrow, and
care for armor and other equipment. Increasingly, in the elev-
enth and twelfth centuries, noble youths learned to read and
write some Latin. Still, on thousands of charters from that period,
nobles signed with a cross (+) or some other mark. Literacy
among the nobility became more common in the thirteenth cen-
tury. Formal training was concluded around the age of twenty- Saint Maurice
one with the ceremony of knighthood. The custom of knighting, Certain individuals were held up to young men as models
though never universal, seems to have been widespread in France of ideal chivalry. One of these was Saint Maurice (d. 287),
and England but not in Germany. a soldier apparently executed by the Romans for refusing
Noble girls were also trained in preparation for their future to renounce his Christian faith. He first emerges in the
tasks. They were often taught to read the local language and per- Carolingian period, and later he was held up as a model
knight and declared a patron of the Holy Roman Empire and
haps some Latin and to write and do enough arithmetic to keep
protector of the imperial (German) army in wars against the
household accounts. They also learned music, dancing, and em- pagan Slavs. Until 1240 he was portrayed as a white man, but
broidery and how to ride and hunt, both common noble pursuits. after that he was usually represented as a black man, as in this
Much of this took place in the girl’s own home, but, like boys, sandstone statue from Magdeburg Cathedral (ca. 1250). We
noble girls were often sent to the homes of relatives or higher have no idea why this change happened. Who commissioned
nobles to act as servants or ladies in waiting. While her brothers this statue? Who carved it? Did an actual person serve as the
cared for armor and horses, a noble girl looked after clothing and model, and if so what was he doing in Magdeburg? (Image of
household goods and learned how to run a household. She often the Black Project, Harvard University/Hickey-Robertson, Houston)
learned from experience that she could expect to spend weeks, months, or even
years running a castle and a manor on her own while her future husband was away
fighting.
The ceremony of knighthood was one of the most im-

Youth and Marriage portant in a man’s life, but knighthood did not neces-
sarily mean adulthood, power, and responsibility. Sons
were completely dependent on their fathers for support. A young man remained
a youth until he was in a financial position to marry—that is, until his father
died. That might not happen until he was in his late thirties, and marriage at forty
was not uncommon. Increasingly, families adopted primogeniture, with property
passing to the oldest son. Younger sons might be forced into the clergy or simply
forbidden to marry. One factor—the inheritance of land and the division of
properties—determined the lifestyles of the aristocratic nobility. The result was
tension, frustration, and sometimes violence.
Once knighted, the young man traveled for two to three years. His father se-
lected a group of friends to accompany, guide, and protect him. The band’s chief
pursuit was fighting. They meddled in local conflicts, sometimes departed on cru-
tournament An arena for knights to sades, hunted, and did the tournament circuit. The tournament, in which a num-
compete on horseback giving them ber of men competed from horseback (in contrast to the joust, which involved
valuable experience in pitched battle.
only two competitors), gave the young knight experience in pitched battle. Since
joust A competition between two the horses and equipment of the vanquished were forfeited to the victors, the
knights on horseback. knight could also gain a reputation and a profit. Young knights took great delight
in spending money on horses, armor, gambling, drinking, and women. Every-
where they went, they stirred up trouble, for chivalric ideals of honorable valor and
gallant masculinity rarely served as a check on actual behavior.
Parents often wanted to settle daughters’ futures as soon as possible. Men
tended to prefer young brides. A woman in her late twenties or thirties would have
fewer years of married fertility, limiting the number of children she could produce
and thus threatening the family’s continuation. Therefore, aristocratic girls in the
High Middle Ages were married at around the age of sixteen, often to much older
men. In the early Middle Ages the custom was for the groom to present a dowry to
the bride and her family, but by the late twelfth century the process was reversed
because men were in greater demand. Thereafter, the sizes of dowries offered by
brides and their families rose higher and higher. Families engaged in complicated
marriage strategies to balance the money they paid out to marry off daughters with
the money they received in marrying off sons.
When society included so many married young women and unmarried young
men, sexual tensions also arose. The young male noble, unable to marry for a long
time, could satisfy his lust with peasant girls or prostitutes. But what was a young
woman unhappily married to a much older man to do? Medieval literature is filled
with stories of young bachelors in love with young married women and of cuck-
olded husbands who are not able to see what is going on in their households.
Scholars disagree, however, about whether this reflected social realities or was
simply wishful thinking.
A male member of the nobility became an adult when

Power and he came into the possession of his property. He then
Responsibility acquired vast authority over lands and people. With it
went responsibility. In the words of Honorius of Autun:
Nobles 237
Soldiers: You are the arm of the Church, because you should
defend it against its enemies. Your duty is to aid the oppressed,
to restrain yourself from rapine and fornication, to repress
those who impugn the Church with evil acts, and to resist
those who are rebels against priests. Performing such a service,
you will obtain the most splendid of benefices from the great-
est of Kings.3
The responsibilities of a nobleman in the High Middle Ages
depended on the size and extent of his estates, the number of
dependents, and his position in his territory relative to others
of his class and to the king. As a vassal, he was required to
fight for his lord or for the king when called on to do so. By
the mid-twelfth century this service was limited to forty days a
year in most parts of western Europe. The noble was obliged
to attend his lord’s court on important occasions when the
lord wanted to put on great displays, such as at Easter, Pente-
cost, and Christmas. When the lord knighted his eldest son or
married off his eldest daughter, he called his vassals to his court.
The vassals were expected to attend and to present a contri-
Elephant Ivory Mirror Case
bution known as a “gracious aid.”
The mirror case, forerunner of the modern woman’s compact,
Until the late thirteenth century, when royal authority
protected a polished metal disk used by wealthy ladies as a looking
intervened, a noble in France or England had great power glass. In this mid-fourteenth-century case, the French artist created
over those on his estates. He maintained order among them a chivalric hunting scene. An aristocratic couple on horseback,
and dispensed justice to them. Holding the manorial court, holding falcons and accompanied by attendants, is portrayed in a
which punished criminal acts and settled disputes, was one forested landscape that is held in an eight-lobed frame with lions
of his gravest obligations. The quality of justice varied widely: around the disk. Amazingly, the diameter of the case is less than
some lords were vicious tyrants who exploited and perse- four inches. Elephant ivory came from sub-Saharan Africa via the
cuted their peasants; others were reasonable and even- Mediterranean trade. (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of George M.
handed. In any case, the quality of life on the manor and its Blumenthal, 1941 [41.100.160]. Photograph © 1995 The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
productivity were related in no small way to the tempera-

ment and decency of the lord—and his lady.
Women played a large and important role in the functioning of Sec tion Review
the estate. They were responsible for the practical management of • Originally, nobility was restricted to a few high aristo-
the household’s “inner economy”—cooking, brewing, spinning, crats such as dukes and counts, but then it expanded
weaving, caring for yard animals. When the lord was away for long to include knights, who aspired to follow the chival-
ric code of conduct with loyalty and honor, their
periods, the women frequently managed the herds, barns, granaries,
most important virtues.
and outlying fields as well. Often the responsibilities of the estate fell
• Boys of the noble class began training for knighthood
to them permanently, as the number of men slain in medieval war-
at about age seven, when they became pages to
fare ran high. knights, managing their horses and acting as valets
Throughout the High Middle Ages, fighting remained the dom- or servants, while girls received domestic training.
inant feature of the noble lifestyle. The church’s preaching and • The young noblemen were eligible to become full-
condemnations reduced but did not stop violence. Lateness of in- fledged knights by age twenty-one, while daughters
heritance, depriving nobles of constructive outlets for their energy, married starting around age sixteen, often paying
together with the military ethos of their culture, encouraged petty dowries to the groom’s family.
warfare and disorder. The nobility thus represented a constant source • Noble sons could not marry or inherit property until
of trouble for the monarchy. In the thirteenth century kings drew on the death of their father, so they often had many
years to travel, participate in tournaments, and cause
the financial support of the middle classes to build the administrative
trouble before they could settle down.
machinery that gradually laid the foundations of strong royal govern-
• A nobleman’s power and responsibility were deter-
ment. The Crusades relieved the rulers of France, England, and
mined by the size of his estate, where he maintained
the German Empire of some of their most dangerous elements. order and dispensed justice to his peasants when he
Complete royal control of the nobility, however, came only in mod- was not away fighting.
ern times.
Monasteries and Convents

What roles did the men and women affiliated with religious orders play
in medieval society?
Priests, bishops, monks, and nuns played significant roles in medieval society, both
as individuals and as members of institutions. In the previous chapter we traced
the evolution of the papacy and the church hierarchy in the High Middle Ages;
here we focus on monks, nuns, and others who lived in religious houses.
In the fifth century Saints Benedict and Scholastica had written rules (regulus
in Latin) for the men and women living in monasteries and convents (see page
148), who were known as regular clergy. In the early Middle Ages many religious
houses followed the Benedictine Rule, while others developed their own patterns.
religious orders Groups of monastic In the High Middle Ages this diversity became more formalized, and religious
houses following a particular rule. orders, groups of monastic houses following a particular rule, were established.
Historians term the foundation, strengthening, and reform of religious orders in
the High Middle Ages the “monastic revival.” They link it with the simultaneous
expansion of papal power (see pages 205–209), because many of the same indi-
viduals were important in both.
Medieval people believed that monks and nuns performed an important social
service—prayer. In the Middle Ages prayer was looked on as a vital service, as
crucial as the labor of peasants and the military might of nobles. Just as the knights
protected and defended society with the sword and the peasants provided suste-
nance through their toil, so the monks and nuns worked to secure God’s blessing
for society with their prayers and chants.
In the early Middle Ages the best Benedictine monas-

Monastic Revival teries had been centers of learning, copying and pre-
serving manuscripts, maintaining schools, and setting
high standards of monastic observance. Charlemagne had encouraged and sup-
ported these monastic activities, and the collapse of the Carolingian Empire had
disastrous effects.
The Viking, Magyar, and Muslim invaders attacked and ransacked many
monasteries across Europe. Some communities fled and dispersed. In the period
of political disorder that followed the disintegration of the Carolingian Empire,
many religious houses fell under the control and domination of local lords. Power-
ful laymen appointed themselves or their relatives as abbots, took the lands and
goods of monasteries, and spent monastic revenues. The level of spiritual obser-
vance and intellectual activity in monasteries and convents declined.
The secular powers who selected church officials compelled them to become
their vassals. Abbots, bishops, and archbishops thus had military responsibilities
that required them to fight with their lords, or at least to send contingents of sol-
diers when called on to do so. As feudal lords themselves, ecclesiastical officials
also had judicial authority over knights and peasants on their lands. The conflict
between a prelate’s religious duties on the one hand and his judicial and military
obligations on the other posed a serious dilemma.
An opportunity for reform came in 909, when William the Pious, duke of
Aquitaine, established the abbey of Cluny in Burgundy. Duke William declared
that the monastery was to be free from any feudal responsibilities to him or any
other lord, its members subordinate only to the pope.
Monasteries and Convents 239
The monastery at Cluny came to exert vast religious influ-

ence. The first two abbots of Cluny, Berno (910–927) and
Odo (927–942), followed the Benedictine Rule closely and
set very high standards of religious behavior. Cluny gradually
came to stand for clerical celibacy and the suppression of si-
mony (the sale of church offices). In the eleventh century
Cluny was fortunate in having a series of highly able abbots
who ruled for a long time. In a disorderly world, the monas-
tery gradually came to represent stability. Therefore, layper-
sons placed lands under its custody and monastic priories (a
priory is a religious house, usually smaller in number than an
abbey, governed by a prior or prioress) under its jurisdiction
for reform. Benefactors wanted to be associated with Cluniac
piety, and monasteries under Cluny’s jurisdiction enjoyed
special protection, at least theoretically, from violence. In this
way, hundreds of monasteries, primarily in France and Spain,
came under Cluny’s authority.
Deeply impressed laypeople showered gifts on monaster-
ies with good reputations, such as Cluny and its many daugh-
ter houses. But as the monasteries became richer, the lifestyle
of the monks grew increasingly luxurious. Monastic obser-
vance and spiritual fervor declined. Soon fresh demands for
reform were heard, and the result was the founding of new
religious orders in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries.
The Cistercians (si-STUR-shuhns), because of their phe-
nomenal expansion and the great economic, political, and Monastery of Saint Martin de Canigou
spiritual influence they exerted, are the best representatives of The Benedictine monastery of Saint Martin de Canigou was
the new reforming spirit. In 1098 a group of monks left the constructed in 1009 in the eastern Pyrenees (PIR-uh-neez) by a
rich abbey of Molesmes in Burgundy and founded a new nobleman from one of the small Christian kingdoms in northern
house in the swampy forest of Cîteaux (sit-OH). They planned Spain. Like hundreds of other monasteries, it came under the
to avoid all involvement with secular feudal society. They de- influence of the abbey of Cluny (KLOO-nee). With its thick walls
cided to accept only uncultivated lands far from regular habi- and strategic position, it served as a Christian defensive fortress
tation. They intended to refuse all gifts of mills, serfs, tithes, against the Muslims in battles of the reconquista. (Editions Gaud)
and ovens—the traditional manorial sources of income. The
early Cistercians (the word is derived from Cîteaux) deter-
mined to avoid elaborate liturgy and ceremony and to keep their chant simple.
Finally, they refused to allow the presence of powerful laypeople in their monas-
teries because such influence was usually harmful to careful observance.
The first monks at Cîteaux experienced sickness, a dearth of recruits, and ter-
rible privations. But their obvious sincerity and high ideals eventually attracted
attention. In 1112 a twenty-three-year-old nobleman called Bernard joined the
community at Cîteaux, together with some of his brothers and other noblemen.
Three years later Bernard was appointed founding abbot of Clairvaux (klare-VOH)
in Champagne. From this position he conducted a vast correspondence, attacked
the theological views of Peter Abelard (see page 261), intervened in the disputed
papal election of 1130, drafted a constitution for the Knights Templars, and
preached the Second Crusade. This reforming movement gained impetus. Cît-
eaux founded 525 new monasteries in the course of the twelfth century, and its
influence on European society was profound. In England Saint Gilbert (1085?–
1189) organized a community of nuns at Sempringham that followed the more
rigorous Cistercian Rule “as far as the weakness of their sex allowed,” as Gilbert
put it. This convent established several daughter houses, and Gilbert asked the
Cistercians to take them all on as official female branches. They refused, saying
that they did not want the burden of overseeing women, setting a pattern for other
men’s religious orders.
Unavoidably, however, Cistercian success brought wealth, and wealth brought
power. By the later twelfth century economic prosperity and political power had
begun to compromise the original Cistercian ideals.
Throughout the Middle Ages social class also defined

Life in Convents the kinds of religious life open to women. Kings and
and Monasteries nobles usually established convents for their daugh-
ters, sisters, aunts, or aging mothers. Entrance was restricted to women of the
founder’s class. Like monks, many nuns came into the convent as children, and
very often sisters, cousins, aunts, and nieces could all be found in the same place.
Thus, though nuns were to some degree cut off from their families because they
were cloistered, family relationships were maintained within the convent.
abbess/prioress Head of convent for The office of abbess or prioress was the most powerful position a woman could
women, usually a nun of considerable hold in medieval society (see the feature “Individuals in Society: Hildegard of
social standing.
Bingen”). Abbesses were part of the feudal structure in the same way that bishops
and abbots were, with manors under their financial and legal control. They ap-
pointed tax collectors, bailiffs, judges, and often priests in the territory under their
control; some abbesses in the Holy Roman Empire even had the right to name
bishops and send representatives to the imperial assemblies. Abbesses also opened
and supported hospitals, orphanages, and schools; they hired builders, sculptors,
and painters to construct and decorate residences and churches.
abbot/prior Head of a monastery for Monasteries for men were headed by an abbot or prior, who was generally a
men, who was generally a member of a member of a noble family, often a younger brother in a family with several sons.
noble family.
The main body of monks, known as choir monks, were aristocrats and did not till
the land themselves. In each house one monk, the cellarer, or general financial
manager, was responsible for supervising the peasants or lay brothers who did the
lay brothers/lay sisters Peasants agricultural labor. Lay brothers were generally peasants and had simpler religious
who did the agricultural labor for the and intellectual obligations than did the choir monks. In women’s houses, a nun
monastery since choir monks were
aristocrats and therefore could not till
acted as cellarer and was in charge of lay sisters who did the actual physical work.
the land themselves. The novice master or novice mistress was responsible for the training of recruits,
instructing them in the Rule, the chant, the Scriptures, and the history and tradi-
tions of the house. The efficient operation of a monastic house also required the
services of cooks, laundresses, gardeners, seamstresses, mechanics, blacksmiths, phar-
macists, and others whose essential work has left, unfortunately, no written trace.
The pattern of life within individual monasteries varied widely from house to
house and from region to region. One central activity, however, was performed
everywhere. Daily life centered on the liturgy or Divine Office, psalms and other
prayers prescribed by Saint Benedict that monks and nuns prayed seven times a
day and once during the night. Prayers were offered for peace, rain, good harvests,
the civil authorities, the monks’ families, and their benefactors. Monastic patrons
in turn lavished gifts on the monasteries, which often became very wealthy.
Monks and nuns also performed social services. Monasteries often ran schools
that gave primary education to young boys, while convents took in girls. Abbeys
like Saint Albans, situated north of London on a busy thoroughfare, served as ho-
tels and resting places for travelers. Monasteries frequently operated “hospitals”
and leprosaria, which provided care and attention to the sick, the aged, and the
afflicted—primitive care, it is true, but often all that was available. Monastaries and
convents also fed the poor; at the French abbey of Saint-Requier in the eleventh
Hildegard of Bingen
T he tenth child of a lesser noble family, Hildegard
(1098–1179) (HIL-duh-gahrd), was given as an ob-
late to an abbey in the Rhineland when she was eight
Hildegard’s visions
have been explored by
theologians and also by
years old; there she learned Latin and received a good neurologists, who judge
education. She spent most of her life in various women’s that they may have origi-
religious communities, two of which she founded her- nated in migraine head-
self. When she was a child, she began having mystical aches, as she reported
visions, often of light in the sky, but told few people many of the same phe-
about them. In middle age, however, her visions be- nomena that migraine
came more dramatic: “And it came to pass . . . when I sufferers do: auras of light
was 42 years and 7 months old, that the heavens were around objects, areas of
opened and a blinding light of exceptional brilliance blindness, feelings of in-
flowed through my entire brain. And so it kindled my tense doubt and intense
whole heart and breast like a flame, not burning but euphoria. The interpreta-
warming . . . and suddenly I understood of the meaning tions that she developed
of expositions of the books.”* She wanted the church to come from her theologi-
approve of her visions and wrote first to Saint Bernard of cal insight and learning,
Clairvaux, who answered her briefly and dismissively, however, not illness. That
and then to Pope Eugenius, who encouraged her to same insight also emerged
write them down. Her first work was Scivias (Know the in her music, which is In one of her visions, Hildegard saw
Ways of the Lord), a record of her mystical visions that what she is best known the metaphorical figure Synagogue as
incorporates vast theological learning. for today. Eighty of her a very tall woman who holds in her
Obviously possessed of leadership and administrative compositions survive—a arms Moses with the stone tablets of
the Ten Commandments. (Reinisches
talents, Hildegard left her abbey in 1147 to found the huge number for a medi- Bildarchiv, Koln, RBA-13 328)
convent of Rupertsberg near Bingen. There she pro- eval composer—most of
duced Physica (On the Physical Elements) and Causa them written to be sung
et Curae (Causes and Cures), scientific works on the by the nuns in her convent, so they have strong lines for
curative properties of natural elements, poems, a mys- female voices.
tery play, and several more works of mysticism. She car-
ried on a huge correspondence with scholars, prelates,
and ordinary people. When she was over fifty she left Questions for Analysis
her community to preach to audiences of clergy and la-
1. Why do you think Hildegard might have kept her
ity, and she was the only woman of her time whose opin-
visions secret? Why do you think she sought church
ions on religious matters were considered authoritative
approval for them?
by the church.
2. In what ways might Hildegard’s vision of Synagogue
* From Scivias, trans. Mother Columba Hart and Jane Bishop, have been shaped by her own experiences? How
The Classics of Western Spirituality (New York/Mahwah: does this vision compare with other ideas about the
Paulist Press, 1990). Jews that you have read about in this chapter?
241
century, for example, 110 persons were given food daily.

Sec tion Review
In short, monasteries and convents performed a variety of
• In the High Middle Ages, monasteries and convents became social services in an age when there was no “state” and no
affiliated with certain religious orders, which set the pattern of life conception of social welfare as a public responsibility.
for the men and women who lived in these religious houses. The agricultural recession of the fourteenth century
• Monasteries gained wealth through donations, which often led to (see pages 278–280) forced the lay nobility to reduce their
a decline in spiritual ideals; this in turn led to reform movements endowment of monasteries. This development, combined
that sought to return the monasteries to stricter standards of pov-
erty and separation from society. with internal mismanagement, compelled many houses
to restrict the number of recruits so that they could live
• Convents were home to many women and were led by an abbess
or prioress, one of the few positions of power for women in this age. within their incomes. Since the nobility continued to
send their children to monasteries, there was no shortage
• Daily life in a convent or monastery centered on prayers said seven
times a day or more, and on performing social services such as of applicants for the limited number of places. Wide-
running schools and hospitals and feeding the poor. spread relaxation in the observance of the Benedictine
• Hildegard of Bingen, the nun believed to have mystical powers, Rule and the weakening of community life, however,
wrote books and composed music, becoming a woman of influ- meant that the atmosphere in many monasteries re-
ence with a large following. sembled that of a comfortable and secure rooming house
rather than an austere religious establishment.
Chapter Review
What was life like for the rural common people of medieval Europe? (page 221)
Generalizations about peasant life in the High Middle Ages must always be qualified Key Terms
according to manorial customs, the weather and geography, and the personalities of orders (p. 221)
local lords. Everywhere, however, the performance of agricultural services and the nuclear family (p. 223)
payment of rents preoccupied peasants, with men, women, and children all working
open-field system (p. 224)
the land. Though peasants led hard lives, the reclamation of wastelands and forest-
lands, migration to frontier territory, or manumission offered means of social mobility. oblates (p. 229)
The warmer climate of the High Middle Ages and technological improvements such saints (p. 230)
as water mills and horse-drawn plows increased the available food supply, though the purgatory (p. 234)
mainstay of the peasant diet was still coarse bread. Death in childbirth of both infant
and mother was a common occurrence, though there were some improvements in nobility (p. 234)
health care through the opening of hospitals. chivalry (p. 235)
tournament (p. 236)
joust (p. 236)
How did religious practices and attitudes permeate everyday life? (page 229)
religious orders (p. 238)
Religion provided strong emotional and spiritual solace for the majority of Europe-
abbess/prioress (p. 240)
ans who were Christians as well as for Muslims and Jews. Within Christianity, the vil-
lage church was the center of community life, where people attended services, honored abbot/prior (p. 240)
the saints, and experienced the sacraments. People also carried out rituals full of reli- lay brothers/lay sisters (p. 241)
gious meaning in their daily lives, and every major life transition—childbirth, wed-
dings, death—was marked by a ceremony that included religious elements. This was
true for Muslims and Jews as well as Christians, but the centrality of Christian ceremo-
nies for most people meant that Muslims and Jews were increasingly marked as outsid-
ers, and Christian persecution of Jews increased in the late eleventh century.
How were the lives of nobles different from the lives of common people?
(page 234)
Nobles were a tiny fraction of the total population, but they exerted great power over
all aspects of life. Aristocratic values and attitudes, often described as chivalry, shaded
Chapter Review 243
all aspects of medieval culture. By 1100 the knightly class was united in its ability to
fight on horseback, its insistence that each member was descended from a valorous
ancestor, its privileges, and its position at the top of the social hierarchy. Noble chil-
dren were trained for their later roles in life, with boys trained for war and women for
marriage and running estates. Noblemen often devoted considerable time to fighting,
and intergenerational squabbles were common. Yet noblemen, and sometimes noble-
women, also had heavy judicial, political, and economic responsibilities.
What roles did the men and women affiliated with religious orders play in
medieval society? (page 238)
Monks and nuns exercised a profound influence on medieval society. In their prayers,
monks and nuns battled for the Lord, just as the chivalrous knights did on the battle-
field. In their chants and rich ceremonials and in their architecture and literary pro-
ductions, monasteries and convents inspired Christian peoples. In the tenth century,
under the leadership of the Abbey of Cluny, many monasteries shook off the domi-
nance of local lords and became independent institutions. Cluny’s success led people
to donate land and goods, and it became wealthier, leading those who sought a more
rigorous life to found a new religious order, the Cistercians. Monks and nuns were
generally members of the upper classes and spent much of their days in group prayer
and other religious activities, while lay brothers and sisters worked the lands owned by
the monastery. Monasteries were an important part of the economy of medieval Eu-
rope, though sometimes the inhabitants lived beyond their means, which was also true
of nobles and people who lived in Europe’s growing towns.
Notes
1. Honorius of Autun, “Elucidarium sive Dialogus de Summa Totius Christianae Theologiae,”
in Patrologia Latina, ed. J. P. Migne (Paris: Garnier Brothers, 1854), vol. 172, col. 1149.
2. S. R. Scargill Bird, ed., Custumals of Battle Abbey in the Reigns of Edward I and Edward II
(London: Camden Society, 1887), pp. 238–239.
3. Honorius of Autun, “Elucidarium sive Dialogus,” vol. 172, col. 1148.

The Pilgrim’s Guide to Santiago de Compostela
M aking pilgrimages to the shrines of holy persons is a

common practice in many religions. Christian shrines
often contained a body understood to be that of a saint or
objects that had been in physical contact with the saint; thus
believers perceived shrines as places where Heaven and earth
met. A visit to a shrine and veneration of the saint’s relics,
Christians believed, would lead to the saint’s intercession with
God. After Jerusalem and Rome, the shrine of Saint James
(Sant’Iago in Spanish) at Compostela in the Iberian penin-
sula became the most famous in the Christian world. Saint
James was one of the twelve apostles and was said to have
carried Christianity to Spain. Santiago de Compostela was
situated in the kingdom of Galicia, close to the west coast Pilgrims’ badge from Santiago de Compostela. Enterprising
of Spain. smiths began making metal badges for pilgrims to buy as
In the twelfth century an unknown French author put proof of their journey and evidence of their piety. The scallop
shell became particularly associated with St. James and
together a sort of guidebook for the streams of pilgrims who
eventually with pilgrimages in general. Pilgrims who had
travelled to Santiago from all over Europe. This excerpt from visited many shrines would clink from the badges worn on
the Pilgrim’s Guide details the characteristics of people one their hats or capes, sometimes becoming objects of satire just
would meet on the way. as tourists laden with souvenirs are today. (Institut Amatller d’Art
Hispanic)
After this valley is found the land of Na-

varre [nuh-VAHR], which abounds in bread Pilgrims’ routes: monasteries in Cluny, Vézelay (vay-zuh-LAY), Saint-Gilles, and
Moissac served as inns for pilgrims.
and wine, milk and cattle. The Navarrese
and Basques [baskz] are held to be exactly
alike in their food, their clothing and their Cologne
Southampton Canterbury
language, but the Basques are held to be of Aachen
50˚N
whiter complexion than the Navarrese. The Trier
Verdun
Navarrese wear short black garments extend- Metz
ing just down to the knee, like the Scots, and Paris Sein
Chartres Toul
e
they wear sandals which they call lavarcas

R.
Vézelay N
Loire R.
made of raw hide with the hair on and are Dijon
Poitiers
bound around the foot with thongs, covering AT L A N T I C
Cluny
only the soles of the feet and leaving the up- OCEAN
Lyons
per foot bare. In truth, they wear black wool- Le Puy
Périgueux 45˚N
Rhône R.
Santiago de Bordeaux Conques

len hooded and fringed capes, reaching to Compostela
Avignon
their elbows, which they call saias. These Bayonne
Moissac
Saint-Gilles
people, in truth, are repulsively dressed, and Pamplona
Toulouse
0 50 100 Km.
they eat and drink repulsively. For in fact
Burgos
0 50 100 Mi.
all those who dwell in the household of a Due r o R.
Eb
ro
R.
Navarrese, servant as well as master, maid as Pilgrims’ routes
5˚W 0˚ 5˚E
well as mistress, are accustomed to eat all
244
their food mixed together from one pot, not with wine, bountiful in rye bread and cider, well-stocked
spoons but with their own hands, and they drink with cattle and horses, milk and honey, ocean fish
with one cup. If you saw them eat you would think both gigantic and small, and wealthy in gold, silver,
them dogs or pigs. If you heard them speak, you fabrics, and furs of forest animals and other riches,
would be reminded of the barking of dogs. For their as well as Saracen treasures. The Galicians, in
speech is utterly barbarous. . . . truth, more than all the other uncultivated Spanish
This is a barbarous race unlike all other races in peoples, are those who most closely resemble our
customs and in character, full of malice, swarthy in French race by their manners, but they are alleged
color, evil of face, depraved, perverse, perfidious, to be irascible and very litigious. . . .
empty of faith and corrupt, libidinous, drunken,
experienced in all violence, ferocious and wild, dis-
honest and reprobate, impious and harsh, cruel Questions for Analysis
and contentious, unversed in anything good, well- 1. How would you evaluate the author’s opinion
trained in all vices and iniquities, like the Geats of the people of Navarre? of Galicia? How do
and Saracens in malice. . . . these people compare with his own country-
men, the French?
However, they are considered good on the
battlefield, bad at assaulting fortresses, regular in 2. Pilgrimages were in many ways the precursors
giving tithes, accustomed to making offerings for of modern tourism. How would you compare
the two in terms of economic effects and the
altars. For, each day, when the Navarrese goes to
expectations of the travelers?
church, he makes God an offering of bread or wine
or wheat or some other substance. . . . Sources: From The Pilgrim’s Guide to Santiago de Com-
Then comes Galicia [guh-LISH-ee-uh] . . . this postela, critical edition and annotated translation by
is wooded and has rivers and is well-provided with Paula Gerson, Jeanne Krochalis, Annie Shaver-Crandell,
and Alison Stones. Reprinted by permission of the au-
meadows and excellent orchards, with equally good
thors. Data for map from Jonathan Sumption, Pilgrim-
fruits and very clear springs; there are few cities, age: An Image of Medieval Religion (Totowa, N.J.:
towns or cornfields. It is short of wheaten bread and Rowman and Littlefield, 1975).
245
CHAPTER 11
The Creativity and Challenges
of Medieval
Cities
Chapter Preview
Towns and Economic Revival
How did medieval cities originate, and
what impact did they have on the
economy and on culture?
Medieval Universities
How did universities evolve, and
what needs of medieval society did
they serve?
Arts and Architecture

How did the arts and architecture
express the ideals, attitudes, and
interests of medieval people?
Cities and the Church

Why did towns become the center of
religious heresy, and what was the
church’s response?
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY: Francesco Datini
IMAGES IN SOCIETY: From Romanesque to Gothic
LISTENING TO THE PAST: Courtly Love
This manuscript illumination shows a street scene of a medieval

town, with a barber, cloth merchants, and an apothecary all offering
their wares and services on the ground floor of their household-
workshops. (Snark/Art Resource, NY)
246
Towns and Economic Revival 247
T he High Middle Ages witnessed some of the most remarkable achieve-

ments in the entire history of Western society. Europeans displayed tremen-
dous creativity and vitality in many facets of culture. Relative security and an
increasing food supply allowed for the growth and development of towns and a
revival of long-distance trade. The university, a new—and very long-lasting—type
of educational institution came into being, providing advanced training in theol-
ogy, medicine, and law. Traditions and values were spread orally through stories
and songs, some of which were written down as part of the development of ver-
nacular literature. Gothic cathedrals manifested medieval people’s deep Christian
faith and their pride in their own cities, though the cities were also home to he-
retical movements that challenged church power.
Towns and Economic Revival

How did medieval cities originate, and what impact did they have on the
economy and on culture?
The rise of towns and the growth of a new business and commercial class was a
central part of Europe’s recovery after the disorders of the tenth century. The
growth of towns was made possible by some of the changes we have already traced:
a rise in population; increased agricultural output, which provided an adequate
food supply for new town dwellers; and a minimum of peace and political stability,
which allowed merchants to transport and sell goods. The development of towns
was to lay the foundations for Europe’s transformation, centuries later, from a rural
agricultural society into an urban industrial society—a change with global impli-
cations. In their backgrounds and abilities, townspeople represented diversity and
change. Their occupations and their preoccupations were different from those of
the feudal nobility and the laboring peasantry.
Early medieval society was agricultural and rural. The

The Rise of Towns emergence of a new class that was neither of these con-
stituted a social revolution. Most of the members of
the new class—artisans and merchants—came from the peasantry. The landless
younger sons of large families were driven away by land shortage. Some were
forced by war and famine to seek new possibilities. As in central Europe and Spain
after the reconquista (see page 201), others were immigrants colonizing newly
conquered lands. And some were unusually enterprising and adventurous, curi-
ous, and willing to take a chance.
Medieval towns began in many different ways. Some were fortifications erected
during the ninth-century Viking invasions. Such towns were at first places of de-
fense into which farmers from the surrounding countryside moved when their
area was attacked. Later, merchants were attracted to the fortifications because
they had something to sell and wanted to be where the customers were. They set-
tled just outside the walls, in the faubourgs (foh-BOORS) or suburbs—both of which
mean “outside” or “in the shelter of the walls.” Other towns grew up around great
cathedrals and monasteries whose schools drew students—potential customers—
from far and wide. Many other towns grew from the sites of earlier Roman army
camps. The restoration of order and political stability promoted rebirth and new
development in these locations.
248 Chapter 11 The Creativity and Challenges of Medieval Cities
Carcassonne (kar-ka-SAWN)
This town in Languedoc (southern France) originated in pre-Roman times. Its thick double walls are an excellent example of the fortified
medieval town. (Guido Alberto Rossi/TIPS Images)
Whether evolving from a newly fortified place or an old Roman army camp,
from a cathedral site, a river junction, or a place where several overland routes
met, medieval towns had a few common characteristics. Walls enclosed the town.
(The terms burgher (BUR-ger) and bourgeois derive from the Old English and Old
German words burg, burgh, borg, and borough for “a walled or fortified place.”
Thus a burgher or bourgeois was originally a person who lived or worked inside
the walls.) The town had a marketplace. It often had a mint for the coining of
money and a court to settle disputes.
As population increased, towns rebuilt their walls, expanding the living space
to accommodate growing numbers. Through an archaeological investigation of
the amount of land gradually enclosed by walls, historians have extrapolated rough
estimates of medieval towns’ populations. For example, the walled area of the Ger-
man city of Cologne equaled 100 hectares in the tenth century (1 hectare = 2.471
acres), about 320 hectares in the twelfth, and 397 hectares in the fourteenth cen-
tury. In the late twelfth century Cologne’s population was at least 32,000; in the
mid-fourteenth century it was perhaps 40,000. The concentration of the textile
industry in the Low Countries brought into being the most populous cluster of
cities in western Europe: Ghent, Bruges, Tournai, and Brussels. Venice, Florence,
and Paris, each with about 110,000 people, and Milan with possibly 200,000, led
all Europe in population.
The history of towns in the eleventh through thirteenth

Town Liberties and centuries consists largely of merchants’ efforts to ac-
Merchant Guilds quire liberties. In the Middle Ages liberties meant spe-
town liberties Privileges that included
living and trading on the lord’s land and, cial privileges. Town liberties included the privilege of living and trading on the
most importantly, personal freedom. lord’s land. The most important privilege a medieval townsperson could gain was
Chronology
personal freedom. It gradually developed that an individual 1100–1200 Merchant guilds founded in many cities
who lived in a town for a year and a day, and was accepted by
the townspeople, was free of servile obligations and status. 1143 Founding of Lübeck, first city in the
Hanseatic League
More than anything else, perhaps, the freedom that came
with residence in a town contributed to the emancipation of 1180–1270 Height of construction of cathedrals
the serfs in the High Middle Ages. Merchants joined together in France
to form a merchant guild that prohibited nonmembers from 1200–1300 Craft guilds founded in many cities
trading in the town, and they often made up the earliest town ca. 1200 Founding of first universities
government, serving as mayors and members of the city
council, so that a town’s economic policies were determined 1216 Papal recognition of Dominican order
by its merchants’ self-interest. 1221 Papal recognition of Franciscan order
By the late eleventh century, especially in the towns of 1225–1274 Life of Thomas Aquinas; Summa
the Low Countries and northern Italy, the leaders of the mer- Theologica
chant guilds were rich and powerful. They constituted an
1233 Papacy creates new ecclesiastical court,
oligarchy in their towns, controlling economic life and bar- the Inquisition
gaining with kings and lords for political independence. Full
rights of self-government included the right to hold a town 1302 Pope Boniface VIII declares all Christians
subject to the pope in Unam Sanctam
court that alone could judge members of the town, the right
to select the mayor and other municipal officials, and the
right to tax residents.
A charter that King Henry II of England granted to the merchant guild A band of merchants
merchants of Lincoln around 1157 nicely illustrates the town’s rights. The quoted prohibiting nonmembers from trading in
passages clearly suggest that the merchant guild had been the governing body in the town, and often serving as the earliest
town government.
the city for almost a century and that anyone who lived in Lincoln for a year and a
day was considered free:
Henry, by the grace of God, etc. . . . Know that I have granted to my citizens of
Lincoln all their liberties and customs and laws which they had in the time of
Edward [King Edward the Confessor] and William and Henry, kings of England.
And I have granted them their gild-merchant, comprising men of the city and other
merchants of the shire, as well and freely as they had it in the time of our aforesaid
predecessors. . . . And all the men who live within the four divisions of the city and
attend the market, shall stand in relation to gelds [taxes] and customs and the
assizes [ordinances or laws] of the city as well as ever they stood in the time of
Edward, William and Henry, kings of England. I also confirm to them that if
anyone has lived in Lincoln for a year and a day without dispute from any claim-
ant, and has paid the city taxes, and if the citizens can show by the laws and
customs of the city that the claimant has remained in England during that period
and has made no claim, then let the defendant remain in peace in my city of
Lincoln as my citizen, without [having to defend his] right.1
Feudal lords were reluctant to grant towns self-government, fearing loss of au-
thority and revenue if they gave the merchant guilds full independence. When
burghers bargained for a town’s political independence, however, they offered siz-
able amounts of ready cash and sometimes promised payments for years to come.
Consequently, feudal lords ultimately agreed to the burghers’ requests.
While most towns were initially established as trading

Craft Guilds centers, they quickly became centers of production as
well. Peasants left their villages—either with their lord’s
approval or without it—and moved to towns, providing both workers and custom-
ers. Some of them began to specialize in certain types of food and clothing pro-
duction; others purchased and butchered cattle to sell meat and leather; others
made metal arms, armor, and tableware. Wealthy merchants then bought these
products for their own use, or they exported the finished products to other areas;
certain cities became known for their fine fabrics, their reliable arms and armor,
or their elegant gold and silver work.
Like merchants, producers recognized that organizing would bring benefits,
craft guild A band of producers that and beginning in the twelfth century in many cities they developed craft guilds.
regulated most aspects of production. These guilds set quality standards for their particular product, and they regulated
the size of workshops, the training period, and the conduct of members. In most
cities individual guilds, such as those of shoemakers or blacksmiths, achieved a
monopoly in the production of one particular product, forbidding nonmembers to
work. The craft guild then chose some of its members to act as inspectors and set
up a court to hear disputes between members, though the city court remained the
final arbiter.
Each guild set the pattern by which members were trained. A person who
wanted to become a shoemaker, for instance, spent four to seven years as an ap-
prentice, then at least that long as a journeyman, working in the shop of a master
dyer, after which the person could theoretically make a “masterpiece.” If the
masterpiece—in the case of a shoemaker, of course, the masterpiece was a pair
of shoes—was approved by the other master shoemakers and if they thought the
market in their town was large enough to support another shoemaker, the person
could then become a master and start a shop. Though the time required as an
apprentice and as a journeyman varied slightly from guild to guild, all guilds fol-
Spanish Apothecary
Town life meant variety—of peoples and
products. Within the town walls, a
Spanish pharmacist, seated outside his
shop, describes the merits of his
goods to a crowd of Christians and
Muslims. (From the Cantigas of Alfonso X, ca.
1283. El Escorial/Laurie Platt Winfrey, Inc.)
lowed this same three-stage process. Guilds limited the amount of raw materials
each master could have and the size of the workshop, thus assuring each master
that his household-workshop would be able to support itself.
Many guilds required that masters be married, as they recognized the vital role
of the master’s wife. She assisted in running the shop, often selling the goods her
husband had produced. Their children, both male and female, also worked along-
side the apprentices and journeymen. The sons were sometimes formally appren-
ticed, but the daughters were generally not because many guilds limited formal
membership to males. Most guilds did allow a master’s widow to continue operat-
ing a shop for a set period of time after her husband’s death, for they recognized
that she had the necessary skills and experience. Such widows paid all guild dues,
but they were not considered full members and could not vote or hold office in the
guilds. The fact that women were not formally guild members did not mean that
they did not work in guild shops, however, for alongside the master’s wife and
daughters female domestic servants often performed the lesser-skilled tasks. In ad-
dition, there were a few all-female guilds in several European cities, particularly in
Cologne and Paris, in which girls were formally apprenticed in the same way boys
were in regular craft guilds.
Both craft and merchant guilds provided their members with protection and
social support. They took care of elderly masters who could no longer work, and
they often supported masters’ widows and orphans. They maintained an altar at a
city church and provided for the funerals of members and baptisms of their chil-
dren. Guild members marched together in city parades and reinforced their feel-
ings of solidarity with one another by special ceremonies and distinctive dress.
Most streets in a medieval town were marketplaces as

City Life much as passages for transit. At the main marketplace
just inside the city gates, poor people selling soap,
candles, wooden dishes, and similar cheap products stood next to farmers from the
surrounding countryside with eggs, chickens, or vegetables, people selling fire-
wood or mushrooms they had gathered, and pawnbrokers selling used clothing
and household goods. Because there was no way to preserve food easily, people—
usually female family members or servants—had to shop every day, and the market
was where they met their neighbors, exchanged information, and talked over re-
cent events.
In some respects the entire city was a marketplace. A window or door in a
craftsman’s home opened onto the street and displayed the finished product made
within to attract passersby. The family lived above the business on the second or
third floor. As the business and the family expanded, additional stories were added.
Second and third stories were built jutting out over the ground floor and thus
over the street. Since the streets were narrow to begin with, houses lacked fresh air
and light. Initially, houses were made of wood and thatched with straw. Fire was a
constant danger; because houses were built so close to one another, fires spread
rapidly. Municipal governments consequently urged construction in stone or brick.
Most medieval cities developed with little town planning. As the population
increased, space became more and more limited. Air and water pollution pre-
sented serious problems. Many families raised pigs for household consumption in
sties next to the house. Horses and oxen, the chief means of transportation and
power, dropped tons of dung on the streets every year. It was universal practice in
the early towns to dump household waste, both animal and human, into the road
in front of one’s house. The stench must have been abominable.
People of all sorts, from beggars to fabulously wealthy merchants, regularly

rubbed shoulders in the narrow streets and alleys of crowded medieval cities. This
interaction did not mean that people were unaware of social differences, however,
for clothing was a clear marker of social standing and sometimes of occupation.
Monks, nuns, and friars wore black, white, or grey woolen clothing that marked
them as members of a particular religious order, while priests and bishops wore
layers of specialized clothing, especially when they were officiating at religious
services. Military men and servants who lived in noble households wore dress with
livery Dress of distinctive colors worn distinctive colors known as livery (LIV-uh-ree). Wealthier urban residents wore
by military men and servants who lived bright colors, imported silk or fine woolen fabrics, and fancy headgear, while
in noble households.
poorer ones wore darker clothing made of rough linen or linen and wool blends.
When universities developed in European cities, students wore clothing and head-
gear that marked their status. University graduates—lawyers, physicians, and uni-
versity professors—often wore dark robes, trimmed with fur if they could afford it;
the robes worn in contemporary academic ceremonies are descended from this
medieval dress.
In the later Middle Ages many cities attempted to make clothing distinctions a
sumptuary laws Laws that regulated matter of law as well as of habit. They passed sumptuary laws that regulated the
the value and style of clothing that value of clothing and jewelry that people of different social groups could wear.
various social groups could wear, and the
amount they could spend on family
Only members of high social groups could wear velvet, satin, pearls, or fur, for
celebrations. example, or have clothing embroidered with gold thread or dyed in colors that
were especially expensive to produce, such as the purple dye that came from mol-
lusk shells. Along with enforcing social differences, sumptuary laws also attempted
to impose moral standards by prohibiting plunging necklines on women or
doublets that were too short on men and to protect local industries by restricting the
use of imported fabrics or other materials. Some of these laws marked certain in-
dividuals as members of groups not fully acceptable in urban society—prostitutes
might be required to wear red or yellow bands on their clothes that were supposed
to represent the flames of hell, and Jews to wear yellow circles or stars to distin-
guish them from their Christian neighbors. (Many Jewish communities also devel-
oped their own sumptuary laws prohibiting extravagant or ostentatious dress.) In
some cities, sumptuary laws were expanded to include restrictions on expenditures
for parties and family celebrations, again set by social class. Weddings for members
of the nobility or the urban elite could include imported wine, fancy food, musi-
cians, and hundreds of guests, while those for the children of artisans could serve
only local beer to several dozen guests.
Many urban households hired domestic servants, with

Servants and a less wealthy household employing one woman who
the Poor assisted in all aspects of running the household and a
wealthier one employing a large staff of male and female servants with specific
duties. In Italian cities, household servants included slaves, usually young women
brought in from areas outside of western Christianity, such as the Balkans. (Like
Islam, Christianity favored slaves who were not believers.)
Along with permanent servants, many households hired additional workers to
do specific tasks—laundering clothing and household linens, caring for children
or invalids, repairing houses and walls, and carrying messages or packages around
the city or the surrounding countryside. In contrast to rural peasants, who raised
most of their own food, urban workers bought all their food, so they felt any in-
crease in the price of ale or bread immediately. Their wages were generally low,
and children from such families sought work at very young ages.
In cities with extensive cloth production, such as Florence or the towns of

Flanders, the urban poor included workers who were paid by the piece. If prices
dipped, merchants simply did not pay workers, who were left with thread or unfin-
ished cloth that they technically did not own, and who had no wages with which
to buy food.
The possibilities for legitimate employment were often very limited, and ille-
gal activities offered another way for people to support themselves. They stole
merchandise from houses, wagons, and storage facilities, fencing it to local pawn-
brokers or taking it to the next town to sell. They stole goods or money directly
from people, cutting the strings of their bags or purses. They sold sex for money—
what later came to be called prostitution—standing on street corners or moving
into houses that by the fifteenth century became official city brothels (see page
298). They made and sold mixtures of herbs and drugs offering to heal all sorts of
ailments, perhaps combining this with a puppet show, trained animals, magic
tricks, or music to draw customers. Or they did all these things, and also worked as
laundresses, day laborers, porters, peddlers, or street vendors when they could. Cit-
ies also drew in orphans, blind people, and the elderly, who resorted to begging for
food and money.
The growth of towns went hand in hand with a remark-

The Revival of able revival of trade as artisans and craftsmen manufac-
Long-Distance Trade tured goods for local and foreign consumption (see
Map 11.1). Most trade centered in towns and was controlled by professional trad-
ers. Long-distance trade was risky and required large investments of capital. Ship-
wrecks were common. Pirates infested the sea-lanes, and robbers and thieves
roamed virtually all of the land routes. Since the risks were so great, merchants
preferred to share them. A group of people would thus pool their capital to finance
an expedition to a distant place. When the ship or caravan returned and the goods
brought back were sold, the investors would share the profits. If disaster struck the
caravan, an investor’s loss was limited to the amount of that individual’s investment.
Which towns took the lead in medieval “international” trade? In the late elev-
enth century the Italian cities, especially Venice, led the West in trade in general
and completely dominated trade with the East. Lombard and Tuscan merchants
exchanged those goods at the town markets and regional fairs of France, Flanders,
and England. (Fairs were periodic gatherings that attracted buyers, sellers, and
goods from all over Europe.) The towns of Bruges (BROOGH), Ghent, and Ypres
(EE-pruh) in Flanders were also leaders in long-distance trade, and built up a vast
industry in the manufacture of cloth.
Two circumstances help explain the lead Venice and the Flemish towns gained
in long-distance trade. Both enjoyed a high degree of peace and political stability.
Geographical factors were equally, if not more, important. Venice was ideally lo-
cated at the northwestern end of the Adriatic Sea, with easy access to the transal-
pine land routes as well as the Adriatic and Mediterranean sea-lanes. The markets
of North Africa, Byzantium, and Russia and the great fairs of Ghent in Flanders
and Champagne in France provided commercial opportunities that Venice quickly
seized. The geographical situation of Flanders also offered unusual possibilities:
just across the channel from England, Flanders had easy access to English wool.
Indeed, Flanders and England developed a very close economic relationship.
Wool was the cornerstone of the English medieval economy. Population
growth in the twelfth century and the success of the Flemish and Italian textile
industries created foreign demand for English wool. The production of English
Bergen
Furs Textile and manufacturing areas
Fish Oslo Copper Hemp Flax Honey Northern sea routes
Stockholm Reval Novgorod
Pitch
Wax Venetian sea routes
N Pitch
Fish Genoese sea routes
Edinburgh
Gotland Riga Moscow
Carlisle North Furs
Other sea routes
Ireland Fish
Lead
Durham S e a Grain B altic Flax Overland routes
York Copenhagen Sea
Chester Fish
Wool Lübeck Fish Königsberg
Fish Flax
Iron Danzig
Iron Bremen Hamburg
Bristol London Hemp Hemp Aral
Lead Amsterdam Frankfurt
Tin Calais Warsaw Sea
Southampton Bruges Magdeburg Grain
Brussels Cologne Salt Tar
AT L A N T I C Fish Rouen Wine Copper Leipzig Breslau Kiev
Slave market
Iron Iron
Salt Prague Iron
O C E A N Rennes
Flax Paris
Paper
Wheat Silver
Nuremberg Kraków
Pitch
Rostov
Wine Wheat Iron Strasbourg Paper Silver C
Nantes Orléans Slave market
Tours
Salt Augsburg Fish as
B ay of Vienna Iron
Basel Salt
Slaves Sea of pi
Biscay Limoges Wine Buda Pest Azov an 40°
N
Bordeaux Clermont Geneva Wine Wheat
Santiago
Wine Lyons Mfd. wares Mfd. wares Skins+hides
Saffa Se
Fruits+foodstuffs
León Bayonne Wool Milan Venice Horses a
Mfd. wares
Iron Avignon Genoa Glass Belgrade Black Sea
Wine Toulouse Bologna
Wine Pisa
Wool Marseilles Florence Silver Horses Trebizond
Slaves Sinope
Fruits+foodstuffs Artwares Ragusa
Corsica
Lisbon Toledo Metalwares Barcelona Timber Adriatic
Leather Pitch Rome Fruits+foodstuffs
Paper Wine Sea Constantinople
Copper Balearic Is. Naples Cotton Taranto Olives Sivas
Cork Cotton Valencia Silver Ankara
Córdoba Horses
Slave Cotton Carpets+rugs
Seville Olives market
Olives Sardinia Wine
Silk Granada Cartagena
Aegean Opium
Fruits+foodstuffs
Almeira Raisins Smyrna
Ceuta Palermo Sicily Sea
Slave market Algiers Messina Currants Fruits+foodstuffs
Olives Antioch
Olives Slave market Slave market Wine Baghdad
Olives Tunis Syracuse Cyprus
Olives 50°E
Fish Rhodes Tripoli N
10°W Iron Glassware 30°
Beirut
Wool Crete Sidon Damascus
Dates Tyre
M e dit e rrane an S e a Precious woods
Jerusalem
Gold Skins+hides Tripoli 20°E 30°E Fish
Slaves Slave market Alexandria Silk Horses
Fish Wool Paper
0 200 400 Km.
Gold Slaves Gold Cairo
10°E Slave market Indigo
0 200 200 Mi. 0° Slaves Gold Slaves Cotton Cotton 40°E
MAPPING THE PAST

MAP 11.1 Trade and Manufacturing in Medieval Europe
The development of towns and the reinvigoration of trade were directly related in medieval
Europe. Using both of the maps in this chapter and the information in your text, answer the
following questions: [1] What part of Europe had the highest density of towns? Why?
[2] Which towns were the largest and most important centers of long-distance trade (see
p. 253)? [3] What role did textile and other sorts of manufacturing play in the growth of
towns? [4] Does the development of towns seem more closely related to that of universities,
monastery schools, or cathedral schools? Why?
wool stimulated Flemish manufacturing, and the expansion of the Flemish cloth
industry in turn spurred the production of English wool. The availability of raw wool
also encouraged the development of domestic cloth manufacture in England.
The growth of a money economy made possible the

Business Procedures steadily expanding volume of international trade in the
High Middle Ages. Beginning in the 1160s the open-
ing of new silver mines in Germany, Bohemia, northern Italy, northern France,
and western England led to the minting and circulation of vast quantities of silver
coins. Demand for sugar (to replace honey), pepper, cloves, and Asian spices to
season a bland diet; for fine wines from the Rhineland, Burgundy, and Bordeaux;
for luxury woolens from Flanders and Tuscany; for furs from Ireland and Russia;
for brocades and tapestries from Flanders and silks from Constantinople and even
China; for household furnishings such as silver plate—not to mention the desire
for products associated with a military aristocracy such as swords and armor—
surged markedly.
To meet the greater volume, the work of merchants became specialized. Three
separate types of merchants emerged: the sedentary merchant who ran the “home
office,” financing and organizing the firm’s entire export-import trade; the carriers
who transported goods by land and sea; and the company agents living abroad
who, on the advice of the home office, looked after sales and procurements.
Business procedures changed radically. Commercial correspondence prolifer-
ated and regular courier service among commercial cities began. Commercial
accounting became more complex when firms had to deal with shareholders,
manufacturers, customers, branch offices, employees, and competing firms. Tolls
on roads became high enough to finance what has been called a “road revolu-
tion,” involving new surfaces, bridges, new passes through the Alps, and new inns
and hospices for travelers. The growth of mutual confidence among merchants
facilitated the growth of sales on credit.
In all these transformations, merchants of the Italian cities led the way. (See the
feature “Individuals in Society: Francesco Datini.”) They formalized their agree-
ments with new types of contracts, including permanent partnerships termed com-
pagnie (kahm-pa-NYEE) (literally “bread together,” that is, sharing bread, and the root
of the English word company). Many of these compagnie began as agreements
between brothers or other relatives and in-laws, but quickly grew to include people
who were not family members. In addition, they began to involve individuals—
including a few women—who invested only their money, leaving the actual run-
ning of the business to the active partners.
Francesco Datini
I n 1348, when he was a young teenager, Francesco
Datini (1335–1410) lost his father, his mother, a
brother, and a sister to the Black Death epidemic that
the young man: “Do your duty well, and you will ac-
quire honor and profit, and you can count on me as if I
were your own father. But if you do not, then do not
swept through Europe (see pages 280–285). Leaving his count on me; it will be as if I had never known you.”
hometown of Prato in northern Italy, When Datini was away from home, which was often,
he apprenticed himself to merchants in he wrote to his wife every day, and she sometimes re-
nearby Florence for several years to sponded in ways that were less deferential than we might
learn accounting and other business expect of a woman who was many years younger. “I
skills. At fifteen, he moved to the city of think it is not necessary,” she wrote at one point, “to send
Avignon (ah-vee-NYON) in southern me a message every Wednesday to say that you will be
France. The popes were living in Avi- here on Sunday, for it seems to me that on every Friday
gnon instead of Rome, and the city you change your mind.”
offered many opportunities for an en- Datini’s obsessive record-keeping lasted beyond his
ergetic and enterprising young man. death, for someone put all of his records—hundreds of
Datini first became involved in the ledgers and contracts, eleven thousand business letters,
weapons trade, which offered steady and over a hundred thousand personal letters—in sacks
profits, and then handled spices, wool in his opulent house in Prato, where they were found in
and silk cloth, and jewels. He was very the nineteenth century. They provide a detailed picture
successful, and when he was thirty-one of medieval business practices and also reveal much
he married the young daughter of an- about Datini as a person. Ambitious, calculating, luxury-
Statue of Franceso
other merchant in an elaborate wed- loving, and a workaholic, Datini seems similar to a mod-
Datini outside the city
hall in Prato. (© Peter ding that was the talk of Avignon. ern CEO. Like many of today’s self-made super-rich
Horree/Alamy) In 1378 the papacy returned to Italy, people, at the end of his life Datini began to think a bit
and Datini soon followed, setting up more about God and less about profit. In his will, he set
trading companies in Prato, Pisa, Flor- up a foundation for the poor in Prato and a home for
ence, and eventually other cities as well. He focused on orphans in Florence, both of which are still in operation.
cloth and leather and sought to control the trade in In 1967 scholars established an institute for economic
products used for preparation as well, especially the rare history in Prato, naming it in Datini’s honor; the insti-
dyes that created the brilliant colors favored by wealthy tute now manages the collection of Datini documents
noblemen and townspeople. He eventually had offices and gathers other relevant materials in its archives.
all over Europe and became one of the richest men of
his day, opening a mercantile bank and a company that Questions for Analysis
produced cloth, as well as his many branch offices. 1. How would you evaluate Datini’s motto: as an hon-
Datini was more successful than most, but what makes est statement of his aims, a hypocritical justification
him particularly stand out was his record-keeping. He of greed, a blend of both, or something else?
kept careful account books and ledgers, all of them 2. Changes in business procedures in the Middle Ages
headed by the phrase “in the name of God and profit.” have been described as a “commercial revolution.”
He wrote to the managers of each of his offices every Do Datini’s activities support this assessment? Why?
week, providing them with careful advice and blunt
criticism: “You cannot see a crow in a bowl of milk.” Tak- Source: Iris Origo, The Merchant of Prato: Francesco di Marco
ing on the son of a friend as an employee, he wrote to Datini, 1335–1410 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf Inc., 1957).
256
The ventures of the German Hanseatic League also illustrate these new busi-
ness procedures. The Hanseatic (han-see-AT-ik) League was a mercantile asso- Hanseatic League A mercantile
ciation of towns. Initially the towns of Lübeck and Hamburg wanted mutual association of towns that allowed for
mutual protection and security.
security, exclusive trading rights, and, where possible, a monopoly. During the
next century, perhaps two hundred cities from Holland to Poland joined the
league, but Lübeck always remained the dominant member. From the thirteenth
to the sixteenth centuries, the Hanseatic League controlled the trade of northern
Europe (see Map 11.1). In the fourteenth century the Hanseatics branched out
into southern Germany and Italy by land and into French, Spanish, and Portu-
guese ports by sea.
At cities such as Bruges and London, Hanseatic merchants secured special
trading concessions exempting them from all tolls and allowing them to trade at
local fairs. Hanseatic merchants established foreign trading centers, called “facto-
ries,” the most famous of which was the London Steelyard, a walled community
with warehouses, offices, a church, and residential quarters for company represen-
tatives. By the late thirteenth century Hanseatic merchants had developed an im-
portant business technique, the business register. Merchants publicly recorded
their debts and contracts and received a league guarantee for them.
The dramatic increase in trade ran into two serious difficulties in medieval
Europe. One was the problem of money. Despite investment in mining operations
to increase the production of metals, the amount of gold, silver, and copper avail-
able for coins was simply not adequate for the increased flow of commerce. Mer-
chants developed paper letters of exchange, in which coins or goods in one location
were exchanged for a sealed letter (much like a modern deposit statement), which
could be used in place of metal coinage elsewhere. This made the long, slow, and
very dangerous shipment of coins unnecessary. Begun in the late twelfth century,
the bill of exchange was the normal method of making commercial payments by
the early fourteenth century among the cities of western Europe, and it proved to
be a decisive factor in the later development of credit and commerce in northern
Europe.
The second problem was a moral and theological one. Church doctrine
frowned on lending money at interest, termed usury (YOO-zhuh-ree). This restric- usury Lending money at interest.
tion on Christians is one reason why Jews were frequently the moneylenders
in early medieval society; it was one of the few occupations not forbidden them
by Christian authorities. As money lending became more important to commer-
cial ventures, the church relaxed its position. It declared that some interest was
legitimate as a payment for the risk the investor was taking, and that only interest
above a certain level would be considered usury. (This definition of usury has
continued; modern governments generally set limits on the rate legitimate busi-
nesses may charge for loaning money.) The church itself then got into the money-
lending business, opening pawnshops in cities and declaring that the shops were
benefiting the poor by charging a lower rate of interest than that available from
secular moneylenders. In rural areas, Cistercian monasteries loaned money at
interest.
The stigma attached to lending money was in many ways attached to all the
activities of a medieval merchant. Medieval people were uneasy about a person
making a profit merely from the investment of money rather than labor, skill, and
time. Merchants themselves shared these ideas to some degree, so they gave gener-
ous donations to the church and to charities. They also took pains not to flaunt
their wealth through flashy dress and homes. By the end of the Middle Ages, soci-
ety had begun to accept the role of the merchant.
Changes in business procedures, combined with the

The Commercial growth in trade, led to a transformation of the Euro-
commercial revolution The transfor-
Revolution pean economy, often called the commercial revolu-
mation of the European economy as a tion by historians, who see it as the beginning of the modern capitalist economy.
result of changes in business procedures
and growth in trade.
Though you may be most familiar with using revolution to describe a violent po-
litical rebellion such as the American Revolution or the French Revolution, the
word is also used more broadly to describe economic and intellectual changes
such as the Industrial Revolution and the scientific revolution. These do not nec-
mercantile capitalism Capitalism
essarily involve violence and may last much longer than political revolutions. What
primarily involving trade rather than makes them revolutions is the extent of their effects on society. In calling this trans-
production. formation the “commercial revolution,” historians point not only to an increase in
the sheer volume of trade and in the complexity and sophistica-
tion of business procedures, but also to the new attitude toward
business and making money. Some even detect a “capitalist
spirit” in which making a profit is regarded as a good thing in
itself, regardless of the uses to which that profit is put.
Part of this capitalist spirit was a new attitude toward time.
Country people needed only approximate times—dawn,
noon, sunset—for their work. Monasteries needed much
more precise times to call monks together for the recitation of
the Divine Office. In the early Middle Ages monks used a
combination of hourglasses, sundials, and water-clocks to de-
termine the time, and then rang bells by hand. About 1280
new types of mechanical mechanisms seem to have been de-
vised in which weights replaced falling water and bells were
rung automatically. Records begin to use the word clock (from
the Latin word for bell) for these machines, which sometimes
figured the movement of astronomical bodies as well as the
hours. The merchants who ran city councils quickly saw
clocks as both useful and a symbol of their prosperity. Beauti-
ful and elaborate mechanical clocks, usually installed on the
cathedral or town church, were in general use in Italy by the
1320s, in Germany by the 1330s, in England by the 1370s,
and in France by the 1380s. Buying and selling goods had
initiated city people into the practice of quantification, and
clocks contributed to the development of a mentality that
conceived of the universe in quantitative terms.
Capitalism in the Middle Ages primarily involved trade
rather than production, so it is termed mercantile capital-
ism. In a few places, such as Florence, cloth production was
organized along capitalist lines, with a cloth merchant own-
ing the raw materials, the finished product, and sometimes
the tools, and with workers paid simply for their labor. Most
production in the Middle Ages was carried out by craft guilds
or by people working on their own, however.
Mechanical Clock
Slowly falling weights provide the force that pushes the hand on the face
of this large, twenty-four-hour clock. Accurate time was important to
monks such as the one seated here, although this clock appears to be in a
public place, not a monastery, a reflection of the increasing importance of
time-keeping to many social groups. (Biblíothèque royale Albert 1er, Brussels)
Medieval Universities 259
The commercial revolution created a great deal of Sec tion Review

new wealth, which did not escape the attention of kings
and other rulers. Wealth could be taxed, and through • Merchant guilds were organized groups of merchants within a
taxation kings could create strong and centralized states. town, controlling the economic life and working to gain political
independence for their town in order to have their own court,
In the years to come, alliances with the middle classes mayor, officials, and taxes.
enabled kings to defeat feudal powers and aristocratic
• Craft guilds developed in each trade, allowing members to set
interests and to build the states that came to be called quality standards, open shops, offer apprenticeships, and provide
“modern.” The commercial revolution also provided the care and protection to members and their families.
opportunity for thousands of serfs to improve their social • Towns built up with little planning, resulting in crowded, unsani-
position. The slow but steady transformation of European tary conditions where all members of society intermingled, while
society from almost completely rural and isolated to rela- laws regulated what clothes you could wear, depending on your
tively more sophisticated constituted the greatest effect of social class, profession, or ethnic group.
the commercial revolution that began in the eleventh • Wealthy households hired servants, and poor people were paid
century. by the day for their labor, but since wages were low, they some-
Even so, merchants and business people did not run times also engaged in theft, begging, and prostitution.
medieval communities other than in central and northern • Trade offered the possibility of great wealth, but it was risky,
Italy and in the county of Flanders. Most towns remained making merchants frequently vulnerable to robbers and
pirates.
small, and urban residents were never more than 10 per-
cent of the population. The castle, the manorial village, • The largest trade centers were in Venice and the Flemish towns,
where merchants specialized and formed more formalized part-
and the monastery dominated the landscape. The feudal nerships called companies.
nobility and churchmen determined the preponderant
• Increased trade spurred a commercial revolution and the begin-
social attitudes, values, and patterns of thought and be- nings of modern capitalism as merchants developed new busi-
havior. The commercial changes of the eleventh through ness procedures, paper letters of exchange to substitute for metal
thirteenth centuries did, however, lay the economic foun- coins, and a new attitude toward wealth and time.
dations for the development of urban life and culture.
Medieval Universities
How did universities evolve, and what needs of medieval society did
they serve?
Just as the first strong secular states emerged in the thirteenth century, so did the
first universities. This was no coincidence. The new bureaucratic states and the
church needed educated administrators, and universities were a response to this
need. The word university derives from the Latin universitas (oo-nee-VERS-ee-
tas), meaning “corporation” or “guild.” Medieval universities were educational
guilds that produced educated and trained individuals, and they continue to influ-
ence institutionalized learning in the Western world.
In the early Middle Ages, outside of the aristocratic

Origins court or the monastery, anyone who received an edu-
cation got it from a priest. Priests taught the rudiments
of reading and writing as well as the Latin words of the Mass. Few boys acquired
elementary literacy, however, and peasant girls did not obtain even that. The peas-
ant father who wished to send his son to school had to secure the permission of his
lord. Because the lord stood to lose the services of educated peasants, he limited
the number of serfs sent to school.
Since the time of the Carolingian Empire, monasteries and cathedral schools
had offered most of the available formal instruction, which focused on the Scrip-
tures and the writings of the church fathers. Monasteries were unwilling to accept
University
60˚N
Uppsala Monastery school
NO RWAY
SCOTL AN D Cathedral school
N
St. Andrews
Glasgow
North S WE DE N
I R E L AN D Durham Jarrow Sea DE N MA R K Baltic
Rievaulx Copenhagen
Sea
York
E N GL AN D
Petersborough
Bury
Cambridge St. Edmunds
Oxford
Salisbury Canterbury
Winchester Berlin
Magdeburg
Louvain Cologne POLAND
Ypres
Brussels Leipzig
Amiens
Mont Jumièges
Bec
Laon Fulda H OLY
St. Michel Notre Mainz Bamberg
Reims
AT L A N T I C Savigny Dame
Paris St.-Denis Heidelberg
Prague Kraków
50˚N
Chartres
Beauvais
ROM A N
Orléans
OCEAN Hirsau Lorch
Regensburg
Tours Fleury Clairvaux
Poitiers
Bourges EMPIRE
Cîteaux Basel Munich Vienna
F R ANCE St.-Gall
Cluny H U N GA RY
Santiago de Bordeaux
Compostela
Cahors Grenoble
Pavia Padua
León Piacenza
Toulouse
Bologna
10˚W Valladolid Montpellier Avignon
Coimbra Salamanca Florence
Vallombrosa
Avila 0 100 200 Km.
Perugia
SPAI N Corsica
Barcelona 0 100 200 Mi.
Toledo
Rome
Monte
Cassino
Valencia 20˚E
Naples
Seville Sardinia
Salerno
40˚N
Me
dite
rranean Sea
Palermo
Sicily
0˚ 10˚E
MAP 11.2 Intellectual Centers of Medieval Europe

Universities provided more sophisticated instruction than did monastery and cathedral schools. What other factors distinguished the three kinds of
intellectual centers?
large numbers of noisy lay students. In contrast, schools attached to cathedrals and
run by the bishop and his clergy were frequently situated in bustling cities, and in
the eleventh century in Italian cities like Bologna (boe-LOAN-yuh), wealthy busi-
nessmen had established municipal schools. In the course of the twelfth century,
cathedral schools in France and municipal schools in Italy developed into educa-
tional institutions that attracted students from a wide area (see Map 11.2). These
schools were called studium generale (“general center of study”) or universitas
magistrorum et scholarium (“universal society of teachers and students”), the origin
of the English word university. The first European universities appeared in Italy in
Bologna and Salerno.
The growth of the University of Bologna coincided with a revival of interest

in Roman law during the investiture controversy. The study of Roman law as em-
bodied in the Justinian Code had never completely died out in the West, but in the
late eleventh century a complete manuscript of the Code was discovered in a
library in Pisa. This discovery led scholars in nearby Bologna, beginning with
Irnerius (ca. 1055–ca. 1130) (er-NEHR-ee-us), to study and teach Roman law in-
tently again. His fame attracted students from all over Europe. Irnerius not only
explained the Roman law of the Justinian Code, but he also applied it to difficult
practical situations.
At Salerno in southern Italy interest in medicine had persisted for centuries.
Medical practitioners—mostly men, but apparently also a few women—received
training first through apprenticeship and then in an organized medical school.
Individuals associated with Salerno, such as Constantine the African (fl. 1065–
1085)—who was a convert from Islam and later a Benedictine monk—began to
translate medical works out of Arabic. These translations included writings by
the ancient Greek physicians and Muslim medical writers. Students of medi-
cine poured into Salerno and soon attracted royal attention. In 1140, when King
Roger II of Sicily took the practice of medicine under royal control, his ordinance
stated:
Who, from now on, wishes to practice medicine, has to present himself before our
officials and examiners, in order to pass their judgment. Should he be bold enough
to disregard this, he will be punished by imprisonment and confiscation of his
entire property. In this way we are taking care that our subjects are not endangered
by the inexperience of the physicians.2
In the first decades of the twelfth century, students converged on Paris. They
crowded into the cathedral school of Notre Dame (noh-truh DAHM) and spilled
over into the area later called the “Latin Quarter”—whose name reflects either the
Italian origin of many of the students attracted to Paris by the surge of interest in
the classics, logic, and theology, or the Latin language spoken in the area. The
cathedral school’s international reputation drew scholars from all over Europe
to Paris.
One of the young men drawn to Paris was Peter Abe-

Abelard and Heloise lard (AB-uh-lahrd) (1079–1142), the son of a minor
Breton knight. He was fascinated by logic, which he
believed could be used to solve most problems. He had a brilliant mind and,
though orthodox in his philosophical teaching, appeared to challenge ecclesiasti-
cal authorities. His book Sic et Non (seek et nohn) (Yes and No) was a list of ap-
parently contradictory propositions drawn from the Bible and the writings of the
church fathers. One such proposition, for example, stated that sin is pleasing to
God and is not pleasing to God. Abelard used a method of systematic doubting in
his writing and teaching. As he put it in the preface to Sic et Non, “By doubting we
come to questioning, and by questioning we perceive the truth.” While other
scholars merely asserted theological principles, Abelard discussed and analyzed
them. Through reasoning he even tried to describe the attributes of the three per-
sons of the Trinity, the central mystery of the Christian faith. Abelard was severely
censured by a church council, but his cleverness, boldness, and imagination made
him a highly popular figure among students.
In a supposedly autobiographical statement, A History of My Calamities, Abe-
lard described his academic career and his private life. He was hired by one of the
Law Lecture at Bologna

This beautifully carved marble sculpture, with the fluid drapery characteristic of late Gothic style, suggests
the students’ intellectual intensity. Medieval students often varied widely in age; here some have
moustaches and some look like adolescents. (Museo Civico, Bologna/Scala/Art Resource, NY)
cathedral priests, Fulbert, to tutor his clever niece Heloise. The relationship be-
tween teacher and pupil passed beyond the intellectual. She became pregnant,
and Fulbert pressured the couple to marry. Abelard insisted that the union be kept
secret for the sake of his career, an arrangement Heloise much resented. Distrust-
ing Abelard, Fulbert hired men to castrate him. Wounded in spirit as well as body,
Abelard persuaded Heloise to enter a convent. He entered a monastery, and their
baby, baptized Astrolabe (AS-truh-layb) for a recent Muslim navigational inven-
tion, was adopted by her family. The lovers were later buried together in a ceme-
tery in Paris. Some scholars consider A History of My Calamities the most famous
autobiography of the twelfth century, a fine example of the new self-awareness of
the period’s rebirth of learning. Other scholars believe the entire History a forgery,
the source of a romantic legend with no basis in historical fact.3
The influx of students eager for learning, together

Instruction and with dedicated and imaginative teachers, created the
Curriculum atmosphere in which universities grew. In northern
Europe—at Paris and later at Oxford and Cambridge in England—associations or
guilds of professors organized universities. They established the curriculum, set
the length of time for study, and determined the form and content of examina-
tions. By the end of the fifteenth century there were at least eighty universities in
Europe. Some universities also offered younger students training in the liberal arts
that could serve as a foundation for more specialized study in all areas.
Universities were all-male communities. The few women trained at Salerno
during its early years of development were the last women in Europe to receive
formal university training in any subject until the nineteenth century, although a
handful of professor’s daughters in one or two places were reputed to have listened
to lectures from behind a curtain. (Most European universities did not admit or
grant degrees to women until after World War I.) Though university classes were
not especially expensive, the many years that university required meant that the
sons of peasants or artisans could rarely attend, unless they could find wealthy pa-
trons who would pay their expenses while they studied. Most students were the
sons of urban merchants or lower-level nobles, especially the younger sons who
would not inherit family lands.
University faculties grouped themselves according to academic disciplines—
law, medicine, arts, and theology. The professors (a term first used in the four-
teenth century) were known as “schoolmen” or Scholastics. They developed a Scholastics University professors
method of thinking, reasoning, and writing in which questions were raised and who developed a method of thinking,
reasoning, and writing in which
authorities cited on both sides of the question. The goal of the Scholastic method questions were raised and authorities
was to arrive at definitive answers and to provide a rational explanation for what cited on both sides of the question.
was believed on faith. Schoolmen held that reason and faith constituted two har-
monious realms whose truths complemented each other.
The Scholastic approach rested on the recovery of classical philosophical texts.
Ancient Greek and Arabic texts had entered Europe in the early twelfth century.
Knowledge of Aristotle and other Greek philosophers came to Paris and Oxford by
way of Islamic intellectual centers at Baghdad, Córdoba, and Toledo. These texts,
which formed the basis of Western philosophical and theological speculation,
were not the only Islamic gifts. The major contribution of Arabic culture to the new
currents of Western thought rested in the stimulus Arabic philosophers and com-
mentators gave to Europeans’ reflection on the Greek texts. Aristotle had stressed
the importance of the direct observation of nature, as well as the principles that
theory must follow fact and that knowledge of a thing requires an explanation of its
causes. The schoolmen reinterpreted Aristotelian texts in a Christian sense. But in
their exploration of the natural world, they did not precisely follow Aristotle’s axioms.
Medieval scientists argued from authority, such as the Bible, the Justinian Code, or
an ancient scientific treatise, rather than from direct observation and experimenta-
tion as modern scientists do. Thus the conclusions of medieval scientists were of-
ten wrong. Nevertheless, natural science gradually emerged as a discipline distinct
from philosophy, and Scholastics laid the foundations for later scientific work.
At all universities the standard method of teaching was the lecture—that is, a
reading. The syllabus consisted of a core of ancient texts. The professor read a pas-
sage from the Bible, the Justinian Code, or one of Aristotle’s treatises. He then ex-
plained and interpreted the passage; his interpretation was called a gloss. Texts and
glosses were sometimes collected and reproduced as textbooks. For example, the
Italian Peter Lombard (d. 1160), a professor at Paris, wrote what became the stan-
dard textbook in theology, Sententiae (sen-TEN-shee-uh) (The Sentences), a com-
pilation of basic theological principles.
Examinations were given after three, four, or five years of study, when the stu-
dent applied for a degree. The professors determined the amount of material stu-
dents had to know for each degree, and students frequently insisted that the
professors specify precisely what that material was. Examinations were oral and
very difficult. If the candidate passed, he was awarded a license to teach, which was
the earliest form of academic degree. Initially these licenses granted the title of
master or doctor, still in use today and both derived from Latin words meaning
“teach.” Bachelor’s degrees came later. Most students, however, did not become
teachers. They staffed the expanding diocesan, royal, and papal administrations.
Jewish scholars as well as Christian ones produced elaborate commentaries on
law and religious tradition. Medieval universities were closed to Jews, but in some
cities in the eleventh century special rabbinic academies opened that concen-
trated particularly on the study of the Talmud, a compilation of legal arguments,
proverbs, sayings, and folklore that had been produced in the fifth century in Bab-
ylon (present-day Iraq). The Talmud was written in Aramaic, so that simply learn-
ing to read it required years of study, and medieval scholars began to produce
commentaries on the Talmud to help facilitate this. The most famous of these was
that of Rabbi Solomon bar Isaac, known as Rashi (1040–1105), who lived in
Troyes, a city in France. Men seeking to become rabbis—highly respected figures
within the Jewish community with authority over economic and social as well as
religious matters—spent long periods of time studying the Talmud, which served
as the basis for their legal decisions in all areas of life.
Thirteenth-century Scholastics devoted an enormous

Thomas Aquinas amount of time to collecting and organizing knowl-
and the Teaching edge on all topics. These collections were published as
summa Reference books created
of Theology summa (SOOM-uh), or reference books. There were
by Scholastics on the topics of law, summa on law, philosophy, vegetation, animal life, and theology. Saint Thomas
philosophy, vegetation, animal life,
and theology.
Aquinas (1225–1274), a professor at Paris, produced the most famous collection,
the Summa Theologica, which deals with a vast number of theological questions.
Aquinas drew an important distinction between faith and reason. He main-
Sec tion Review tained that, although reason can demonstrate many basic Christian principles
such as the existence of God, other fundamental teachings such as the Trinity and
• Universities became the primary cen-
ters of advanced learning, providing original sin cannot be proved by logic. That reason cannot establish them does
educated administrators for church not, however, mean they are contrary to reason. Rather, people understand such
and state. doctrines through revelation embodied in Scripture. Scripture cannot contradict
• Peter Abelard was a brilliant scholar reason, nor reason Scripture:
whose writings on logic fascinated
students though they displeased the The light of faith that is freely infused into us does not destroy the light of natural
church; his autobiography describing knowledge [reason] implanted in us naturally. For although the natural light of
his love affair with equally brilliant the human mind is insufficient to show us these things made manifest by faith, it
Heloise was widely read. is nevertheless impossible that these things which the divine principle gives us by
• Universities were all-male and grouped faith are contrary to these implanted in us by nature [reason]. Indeed, were that
by disciplines such as law, medicine, the case, one or the other would have to be false, and, since both are given to us by
the arts, and theology, each having their God, God would have to be the author of untruth, which is impossible. . . . [I]t is
own distinct curriculum; upon gradua- impossible that those things which are of philosophy can be contrary to those
tion, students earned a license to teach. things which are of faith.4
The scholastic method of teaching
posed questions and then discussed Aquinas also investigated the branch of philosophy called epistemology (ee-pis-
both sides of the issue to provide a tuh-MOL-uh-jee), which is concerned with how a person knows something. Aqui-
rational answer, combining lectures nas stated that one knows, first, through sensory perception of the physical
with readings, many of which became
textbooks. world—seeing, hearing, touching, and so on. He maintained that there can be
nothing in the mind that is not first in the senses. Second, knowledge comes
• Saint Thomas Aquinas was a professor
whose works dealt with theological through reason, the mind exercising its natural abilities. Aquinas stressed the
questions depicting the difference power of human reason to know, even to know God. His five proofs for God’s exis-
between faith and reason. tence exemplify the Scholastic method of knowing. His work later became the
fundamental text of Roman Catholic doctrine.
Arts and Architecture 265
Arts and Architecture

How did the arts and architecture express the ideals, attitudes, and
interests of medieval people?
The High Middle Ages saw the creation of new types of literature, architecture, and
music. Technological advances in such areas as papermaking and stone masonry
made innovations possible, but so did the growing wealth and sophistication of
patrons. Artists and artisans flourished in the more secure environment of the High
Middle Ages, producing works that celebrated the glories of love, war, and God.
Latin was the language used in university education,

Vernacular Literature scholarly writing, and works of literature; in short, it
and Entertainment was the language of high culture. In contrast to Roman
times, however, by the High Middle Ages no one spoke Latin as his or her original
mother tongue. The barbarian invasions, the mixture of peoples, and evolution
over time had resulted in a variety of local dialects that blended words and linguis- dialect A regional variety of a language,
tic forms in various ways. These dialects were specific to one region, and as kings with differences in vocabulary, grammar,
and pronunciation.
increased the size of their holdings they often ruled people who spoke many differ-
ent dialects. In the early Middle Ages almost all written works continued to be in
Latin, but in the High Middle Ages some authors began to write in their local dia-
lect, that is, in the everyday language of their region, which linguistic historians
call the vernacular. This new vernacular literature gradually transformed some vernacular literature Writings in the
local dialects into literary languages, such as French, German, Italian, and Eng- author’s local dialect, that is, in the
everyday language of the region.
lish, while other dialects remained (and remain to this day) simply means of oral
communication. Most people in the High Middle Ages could no more read ver-
nacular literature than they could read Latin, however, so oral transmission con-
tinued to be the most important way information was conveyed and traditions
passed down.
By the thirteenth century, however, techniques of making paper from old linen
cloth and rags began to spread from Spain, where they had been developed by the
Arabs, providing a much cheaper material on which to write. People started to
write down things that were more mundane and less serious—personal letters,
lists, poems, songs, recipes, rules, instructions—in various vernacular dialects, us-
ing spellings that were often personal and idiosyncratic. The writings included
fables, legends, stories, and myths that had circulated orally for generations, and
slowly a body of written vernacular literature developed. Stories and songs in the
vernacular were performed and composed at the courts of nobles and rulers. In
Germany and most of northern Europe, they favored stories and songs recounting
the great deeds of warrior heroes, such as the knight Roland who fought against the
Muslims and Hildebrand who fought the Huns. These epics, known as chansons
de geste (SHAN-suhn duh jest) (“songs of great deeds”), celebrate violence, slaugh-
ter, revenge, and physical power. In southern Europe, especially in the area of
southern France known as Provence, poets who called themselves troubadours troubadours Poets who wrote and sang
(TROO-bah-door) wrote and sang lyric verses celebrating love, desire, beauty, and lyric verses celebrating love, desire,
beauty, and gallantry.
gallantry. (See the feature “Listening to the Past: Courtly Love” on pages 275–
276.) A troubadour was a poet who wrote lyric verse in Provençal (proh-vuhn-
SAHL), the regional spoken language of southern France, and sang it at one of the
noble courts. Troubadours included a few women, called trobairitz, most of whose
exact identities are not known.
Eleanor of Aquitaine may have taken troubadour poetry from France to Eng-
land when she married Henry II. Since the songs of the troubadours were widely
imitated in Italy, England, and Germany, they spurred the development of ver-
nacular literature there as well. The romantic motifs of the troubadours also influ-
enced the northern French trouvères (troo-VAIR), who wrote adventure-romances
in the form of epic poems in a language we call Old French, the ancestor of mod-
ern French. At the court of his patron, Marie of Champagne, Chrétien de Troyes
(krey-TYEN duh trwah) (ca. 1135–ca. 1190) used the legends of the fifth-century
British king Arthur (see page 154) as the basis for innovative tales of battle and
forbidden love. His most popular story is that of the noble Lancelot, whose love for
Guinevere, the wife of King Arthur, his lord, became physical as well as spiritual.
Most of the troubadours and trouvères came from and wrote for the aristocratic
classes, and their poetry suggests the interests and values of noble culture. Their
influence eventually extended to all social groups, however, for people who could
not read heard the poems and stories from people who could, so that what had
originally come from oral culture was recycled back into it every generation.
Drama, derived from the church’s liturgy, emerged as a distinct art form dur-
ing the High Middle Ages. Plays based on biblical themes and on the lives of the
saints were performed in the towns. Mystery plays were financed and performed by
“misteries,” members of the craft guilds, and miracle plays were acted by amateurs
or professional actors, not guild members.. By combining comical farce based on
ordinary life with serious religious scenes, plays gave ordinary people an opportu-
nity to identify with religious figures and think about the mysteries of their faith.
Games and sports were common forms of entertainment and relaxation. There
were games akin to modern football, rugby, and soccer in which balls were kicked
and thrown, wrestling matches, and dog fights. People played card and board
games of all types, gambling on these and on games with dice. Dancing was part
of religious and family celebrations.
The visual arts, especially architecture, flourished as

Churches and expressions of religious ideas as well. Tens of thousands
Cathedrals of churches, chapels, abbeys, and, most spectacularly,
cathedral The church of a bishop cathedrals were built in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. (A cathedral is the
and the administrative headquarters church of a bishop and the administrative headquarters of a diocese, a church
of a diocese.
district headed by a bishop. The word comes from the Greek word kathedra,
meaning seat, because the bishop’s throne, a symbol of the office, is located in the
cathedral.)
Most of the churches in the early Middle Ages had been built primarily of
wood, which meant they were very susceptible to fire. They were often small, with
a flat roof, in a rectangular or slightly cross-shaped form called a basilica (buh-SIL-
eh-kuh), based on earlier Roman public buildings. With the end of the Viking
and Magyar invasions and the increasing political stability of the eleventh century,
bishops and abbots supported the construction of larger and more fire-resistant
churches made almost completely out of stone. These were based on the basilican
style, but features were added that made the cross shape more pronounced. As
the size of the church grew horizontally, it also grew vertically. Builders adapted
Romanesque An architectural style, Roman-style rounded barrel vaults made of stone for the ceiling; this use of Roman
with rounded arches and small windows. forms led this style to be labeled Romanesque.
Gothic An architectural style typified by The next architectural style was Gothic, so named by a later scholar who in-
pointed arches and large, stained glass correctly attributed the style to Gothic tribes. In Gothic churches the solid stone
windows. barrel-vaulted roof was replaced by a roof made of stone ribs with plaster in be-
Arts and Architecture 267
tween. This made the ceiling much lighter, so that the side pillars and walls did
not need to carry so much weight. Solid walls could be replaced by windows,
which let in great amounts of light. (See the feature “Images in Society: From
Romanesque to Gothic.”)
Begun in the Île-de-France, Gothic architecture spread throughout France
with the expansion of royal power. From France the new style spread to England,
Germany, Italy, Spain, and eastern Europe. In those countries, the Gothic style
competed with strong indigenous architectural traditions and thus underwent
transformations that changed it to fit local usage. French master masons (MAY-
sens) were soon invited to design and supervise the construction of churches in master mason Man in charge of the
other parts of Europe. design and construction of cathedrals
and other major buildings.
Extraordinary amounts of money were needed to build these houses of wor-
ship. Consider, for example, the expense and labor involved in quarrying and
transporting the stone alone. More stone was quarried for churches in medieval
France than had been mined in ancient Egypt, where the Great Pyramid alone
consumed 40.5 million cubic feet of stone.
Money was not the only need. A great number of artisans had to be as-
sembled: quarrymen, sculptors, stonecutters, masons, mortar makers, carpen-
ters, blacksmiths, glassmakers, roofers. Each master craftsman had apprentices,
and unskilled laborers had to be recruited for the heavy work. The construc-
tion of a large cathedral was rarely completed in a lifetime; many were never
finished at all. Because generation after generation added to the building,
many Gothic churches show the architectural influences of two or even three
centuries. (These variations in style were one of the aspects of Gothic build-
ings hated by later Renaissance architects, who regarded unity of style as es-
sential in an attractive building.)
Bishops and abbots sketched out what they wanted and set general guide-
lines, but they left practical needs and aesthetic considerations to the master
mason. He held overall responsibility for supervision of the project. (Medieval
chroniclers applied the term architect to the abbots and bishops who commis-
sioned the projects or the lay patrons who financed them, not to the draftsmen
who designed them.) Master masons were paid higher wages than other ma-
sons; their contracts usually ran for several years, and great care was taken in
their selection. Being neither gentlemen, clerics, nor laborers, master masons
fit uneasily into the social hierarchy.
Since cathedrals were symbols of civic pride, towns competed to build the
largest and most splendid church. In northern France in the late twelfth and
early thirteenth centuries, cathedrals grew progressively taller. In 1163 the
citizens of Paris began Notre Dame Cathedral, planning it to reach the height
of 114 feet. When reconstruction on Chartres Cathedral was begun in 1194,
it was to be 119 feet. Many cathedrals well over 100 feet tall were built as each
bishop and town sought to outdo the neighbors. Medieval people built cathe-
drals to glorify God—and if mortals were impressed, all the better.
Tree of Jesse
In Christian symbolism, a tree stands for either life or death. Glassmakers depicted the ancestors
of Christ as a tree’s branches, based on the prophecy of Isaiah (11:1–2)—“a shoot shall sprout
from the stump of Jesse, and from his roots a bud shall blossom, the spirit of the Lord shall rest
upon him”—and the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew (1:1–16). In this stained glass from the west
façade of Chartres Cathedral (ca. 1150–1170), Jesse, David, and Solomon are shown from
bottom to top; a fourth panel (not shown) depicts Mary holding the Christ child. (© Clive Hicks)
Images in Society
From Romanesque to Gothic
T he word church has several meanings: assembly,

congregation, sect. The Greek term from which it
is derived means “a thing belonging to the Lord,” and
this concept was applied to the building where a congre-
gation assembled. In the Middle Ages people under-
stood the church building to be “the house of God and
the gate to Heaven”; it served as an image or representa-
tion of supernatural reality (Heaven). A church symbol-
ized faith. Christians revealed and exercised faith; they
communicated with God through prayer—that is, by
raising their minds and hearts to God. The church
building seemed the ideal place for prayer: communal
prayer built faith, and faith encouraged prayer.
Architecture became the dominant art form of the
Middle Ages. Nineteenth-century architectural histori-
ans coined the term Romanesque, meaning “in the Ro-
man manner,” to describe church architecture in most
of Europe between the tenth and twelfth centuries. The
main features of the Romanesque style—solid walls,
rounded arches, and masonry vaults—had been the
characteristics of large Roman buildings. With the mas-
sive barrel vaulting of the roof, heavy walls were required
to carry the weight (see Image 1). Romanesque churches
IMAGE 1 Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe (Romanesque), Early Twelfth
had a massive quality, reflecting the increasing political Century. (Editions Gaud)
and economic stability of the period and suggesting that
they were places of refuge and security in times of at-
tack. A Romanesque church was a “fortress of God.” of the church (the laypeople’s area). See Image 2. So
Gothic churches, by contrast, were walls of light. that the flow of pilgrims would not disturb the clergy in
Visitors and worshipers approached the west end of the their chants, ambulatories (walkways) were constructed
building, noticing the carved statues in the tympanum around the sanctuary. Off the ambulatories, radiating
(TIM-puh-nuhm) (space above the portal, or door), chapels surrounded the apse (aps), the semicircular
perhaps awestruck by the lancets and rose window over domed projection at the east end of the building. Apsi-
the portal. Inside, a long row of columns directed their dal chapels, each dedicated to and containing the relics
gaze down the nave (center aisle), and they proceeded of a particular saint, were visible from the exterior, as
to the transept (cross aisle), which separated the sanctu- were the flying buttresses that supported the outward
ary and the choir (reserved for the clergy) from the body thrusts of the interior vaults. Above the apse and the
268
North Apse
portal East
Floor Plan
Transept
Choir and
sanctuary
Nave
West Ambulatory
portal
South
portal
Spire
Ribbed vaulting
IMAGE 2 Amiens Cathedral, Mid-Thirteenth Century. (Editions Gaud)

Rose
window
Rose
west, south, and north portals, circular windows emerged Lancets
window
from the radiating stone tracery in the form of roses.

South
Compare the interior of the abbey church of Saint- Tympanum
Flying
portal
West portal
Savin-sur-Gartempe (Image 1), a Romanesque church Pointed
buttress
arch
IMAGE 4 Elements of a Gothic Church (Chartres Cathedral).
built in about 1100 in Poitou (pwa-TOO), France, and

the interior of Amiens (AM-ee-uhnz) Cathedral (Im-
age 2), a Gothic church built from 1220 to 1288. What
are the most striking differences? What developments
made the changes from Romanesque to Gothic struc-
turally possible?
Architecture reveals the interests and values of a soci-
ety, its goals and aspirations. What does Sainte-Chapelle
(Image 4), built by King Louis IX of France to house
relics—the crown of thorns placed on Jesus’ head before
the Crucifixion, a nail from the Crucifixion, a fragment
of Jesus’ cross—tell us about the values and aspirations
of thirteenth-century French society?
A Gothic church represents more than a house of
prayer or worship. Medieval people did not compart-
mentalize the various aspects of their lives as modern
IMAGE 3 Sainte-Chapelle, Paris, Mid-Thirteenth Century. (Scala/Art
people tend to do. What civic, social, economic, and
Resource, NY) political functions did a church building serve?
269
Sec tion Review Stained glass beautifully reflects the creative energy of the High Middle Ages.
It is both an integral part of Gothic architecture and a distinct form of painting. As
• All the arts, including literature, archi- Gothic churches became more skeletal and had more windows, stained glass re-
tecture, and music, flourished in the
High Middle Ages through technologi-
placed manuscript illumination as the leading form of painting. At Chartres the
cal advances, increased wealth, and a craft and merchant guilds—drapers, furriers, haberdashers, tanners, butchers, bak-
more stable society. ers, fishmongers, and wine merchants—donated money and are memorialized in
• Latin was the language of high culture stained-glass windows. Thousands of scenes in the cathedral celebrate nature,
and education, but with advances in country life, and the activities of ordinary people.
papermaking, a cheaper writing mate- Tapestry making also came into its own in the fourteenth century. Heavy
rial was available, and literature from woolen tapestries were first made in the monasteries and convents as wall hang-
oral transmissions was written down
gradually in vernacular or local dialects.
ings for churches. Because they could be moved and lent an atmosphere of
warmth, they replaced mural paintings. Early tapestries depicted religious scenes,
• Troubadours and female trobairitz were
poets who wrote and sang lyric verse
but later hangings produced for the knightly class bore secular designs, especially
and provided a form of entertainment romantic forests and hunting spectacles.
to the aristocratic classes along with Once at least part of a Gothic cathedral had been built, the building began to
dramas, games, and sports. be used for religious services. The Mass and other services became increasingly
• Architecture provides the longest-lasting complex to fit with their new surroundings. Originally, services were chanted in
form of medieval art, most spectacularly unison, termed plainsong or Gregorian chant, but by the eleventh century addi-
in Romanesque cathedrals, which were tional voices singing on different pitches were added to create polyphony (puh-LIF-
massive “fortresses of God,” and in
uh-nee). Certain parts of the service were broken off into stand-alone polyphonic
Gothic cathedrals, which had many
windows and were full of light. pieces called motets, a style that composers soon adapted to secular music as well
• Cathedrals required huge amounts of
as ecclesiastical. Church leaders sometimes fumed that motets and polyphony
money, skilled workers, and many years made the text impossible to understand—Pope John XXII called this style an “ava-
to complete, and were built to glorify lanche of notes” in 1324—but, along with incense, candles, stained-glass win-
God and to impress people. dows, and the building itself, music made any service in a Gothic cathedral a rich
• Stained glass windows along with elabo- experience.
rate tapestries were a focal point in
Gothic churches, reflecting everyday
life and scripture to enhance religious
life and teachings. Cities and the Church
Why did towns become the center of religious heresy, and what was the
church’s response?
The soaring towers of Gothic cathedrals were visible symbols of the Christian faith
and civic pride of medieval urban residents, but many city people also felt that the
church did not meet their spiritual needs. The bishops, usually drawn from the
feudal nobility, did not understand urban culture and were suspicious of it. Chris-
tian theology, formulated for an earlier rural age, did not address the problems of
the more sophisticated mercantile society. The new monastic orders of the twelfth
century, such as the Cistercians, situated in remote, isolated areas had little rele-
vance to the towns. Townspeople wanted a pious clergy capable of preaching the
Gospel, and they disapproved of clerical ignorance and luxurious living. Critical
of the clergy, neglected, and spiritually unfulfilled, townspeople turned to hereti-
cal sects.
Ironically, the eleventh-century Gregorian reform

Heretical Groups movement, which had worked to purify the church of
disorder, led to some twelfth- and thirteenth-century
heretical movements. Papal efforts to improve the sexual morality of the clergy, for
example, had largely succeeded. When Gregory VII forbade married priests to
celebrate church ceremonies, he expected public opinion to force priests to put
Cities and the Church 271
aside their wives and concubines. But Gregory did not foresee the consequences
of this order. Laypersons assumed they could, and indeed should, remove priests
for any type of immorality or for not living according to standards that the parish-
ioners judged appropriate.
In northern Italian towns, Arnold of Brescia (BREH-shee-uh), a vigorous advo-
cate of strict clerical poverty, denounced clerical wealth. In France, Peter Waldo,
a rich merchant of Lyons, gave his money to the poor and preached that only
prayers, not sacraments, were needed for salvation. The Waldensians (wawl-DEN- Waldensians The followers of Peter
see-uhnz)—as Peter’s followers were called—bitterly attacked the sacraments and Waldo, a French merchant who gave his
money to the poor and preached that
church hierarchy, and they carried these ideas across Europe. As we saw in Chap-
only prayers were needed for salvation.
ter 9, the Albigensians asserted that the material world was evil and that religious
leaders should be those who rejected worldly things, not the wealthy bishops or
the papacy (see page 212).
In its continuing struggle against heresy, the church

The Friars gained the support of two remarkable men, Saint
Dominic (DOM-uh-nik) and Saint Francis, and of the
orders they founded. Born in Castile, a province of Spain famous for its zealous
Christianity, Domingo de Gúzman (1170?–1221) received a sound education and
was ordained a priest. In 1206 he accompanied his bishop on an unsuccessful mis-
sion to win back the Albigensian heretics of Languedoc in France. Determined to
succeed through ardent preaching, Dominic subsequently returned to France
with a few followers. In 1216 the group—officially known as the “Preaching Fri-
ars” though often called Dominicans (DOM-mihn-uh-kuns)—won papal recog- Dominicans The followers of
nition as a new religious order. Dominic, officially known as the
“Preaching Friars.”
Francesco di Bernardone (1181–1226), son of a wealthy Italian cloth mer-
chant, was particularly inspired by two biblical texts: “If you seek perfection, go,
sell your possessions, and give to the poor. You will have treasure in heaven. After-
ward, come back and follow me.” (Matthew 19:21); and Jesus’ advice to his dis-
ciples as they went out to preach, “Take nothing for the journey, neither walking
staff nor travelling bag, nor bread, nor money” (Luke 9:3). Francis’s asceticism did
not emphasize withdrawal from the world, but joyful devotion; in contrast to the
Albigensians, who saw the material world as evil, Francis saw all creation as God-
given and good. He wrote hymns to natural objects such as “brother moon” and
was widely reported to perform miracles involving animals.
The simplicity, humility, and joyful devotion with which Francis carried out
his mission soon attracted companions. Although he resisted pressure to establish
an order, his followers became so numerous that he was obliged to develop some
formal structure. In 1221 the papacy approved the “Rule of the Little Brothers of
Saint Francis,” as the Franciscans (fran-SIS-kenz) were known. Franciscans The followers of Francis
The new Dominican and Franciscan orders differed significantly from older and his mission of simplicity, humility,
and joyful devotion.
monastic orders such as the Benedictines and the Cistercians. First, the Domini-
cans and Franciscans were friars, not monks. Their lives and work focused on the friars Men belonging to certain
cities and university towns, the busy centers of commercial and intellectual life, religious orders who did not live in
monasteries but out in the world.
not the secluded and cloistered world of monks. They thought that more contact
with ordinary Christians, not less, was a better spiritual path.
Second, the friars stressed apostolic poverty, a life based on the Gospel’s teach-
ings, in which they would own no property and depend on Christian people for
their material needs. Hence they were called mendicants or mendicant orders, mendicants Begging friars.
that is, begging friars. Benedictine and Cistercian abbeys, on the other hand, held
land—not infrequently great tracts of land. Finally, the friars usually drew their
members largely from the burgher class, from small property owners and shop-
keepers. The monastic orders, by contrast, gathered their members (at least until
the thirteenth century) overwhelmingly from the nobility.
The friars represented a response to the spiritual and intellectual needs of the
thirteenth century. The Dominicans preferred that their friars be university gradu-
ates in order to better preach to a sophisticated urban society. The Dominicans
soon held professorial chairs at leading universities, and they count Thomas Aqui-
nas, probably the greatest medieval philosopher in Europe, as their most famous
member. The Franciscans followed suit at the universities and also produced intel-
lectual leaders. Women sought to develop similar orders devoted to active service
out in the world. Clare of Assisi (1193–1253) sought to live in poverty and became
a follower of Francis, who established a place for her to live in a nearby church.
She was joined by other women, and they attempted to establish a rule for life in
their community that would follow Francis’s ideals of absolute poverty and allow
them to serve the poor. Her rule was accepted by the papacy only after many dec-
Poor Clares A women’s order ades, and then only because she agreed that the order, called the Poor Clares,
established by Clare of Assisi, in devotion would be enclosed.
to active service out in the world.
In the growing cities of Europe, especially in the Netherlands, groups of
women seeking to live a religious life came together as what later came to be
Beguines Groups of women seeking to known as Beguines (bih-GEENS). (The origins of the word are debated.) They
live a religious life in the growing cities lived communally in small houses called beguinages, combining a life of prayer
of Europe.
with service to the needy. In a few cities these beguinages grew quite large, eventu-
ally incorporating churches and other buildings as well as housing for several hun-
dred women. Beguine spirituality emphasized direct personal
communication with God, sometimes through mystical expe-
riences, rather than through the intercession of a saint or of-
ficial church rituals. Many Beguines were also devoted to the
church’s sacraments, however, especially the Eucharist, and
initially some church officials gave guarded approval of the
movement. By the fourteenth century, however, they were
declared heretical and much of their property was confis-
cated, for church officials were clearly uncomfortable with
women who were neither married nor cloistered nuns.
Beginning in 1233 the papacy

The Friars and used the friars to staff its new ec-
Papal Power clesiastical court, the Inquisition
(see page 212). Popes selected the friars to direct the Inquisi-
tion because bishops proved unreliable and because special
theological training was needed. Inquisition means “investi-
gation,” and the Franciscans and Dominicans developed ex-
Saint Dominic and the Inquisition

The fifteenth-century court painter to the Spanish rulers Ferdinand and
Isabella, Pedro Berruguete here portrays an event from the life of Saint
Dominic: Dominic presides at the trial of Count Raymond of Toulouse, who
had supported the Albigensian heretics. Raymond, helmeted and on
horseback, repented and was pardoned; his companions, who would not
repent, were burned. Smoke from the fire has put one of the judges to
sleep, and other officials, impervious to the human tragedy, chat among
themselves. (Museo del Prado, Madrid/Institut Amatller d’Art Hispanic)
Chapter Review 273
pert methods of rooting out unorthodox thought. Ironically, within a hundred Sec tion Review
years of Francis’s death one of the Inquisition’s targets was the Spiritual Francis-
cans, a breakaway group that wanted to follow Francis’s original ideals of poverty • People increasingly turned to hereti-
cal sects to meet their spiritual needs
and denied the pope’s right to countermand that ideal. as traditional Christianity lost touch
Modern Americans consider the procedures of the Inquisition exceedingly un- with laypeople.
just, and there was substantial criticism of it in the Middle Ages. The accused did • The Dominican and Franciscan friars
not learn the evidence against them or see their accusers; they were subjected to sought to counteract heresy through
lengthy interrogations often designed to trap them; and torture could be used to vigorous preaching, services to lay-
extract confessions. Medieval people, however, believed that heretics destroyed people, and devotion to poverty; they
the souls of their neighbors. By attacking religion, it was also thought, heretics lived out in the world instead of in
cloistered monasteries.
destroyed the very bonds of society. By the mid-thirteenth century secular govern-
ments steadily pressed for social conformity, and they had the resources to search • The Beguines were groups of women
who came together to live a life of
out and punish heretics. So successful was the Inquisition as a tool of royal power prayer and service to the needy;
that within a century heresy had been virtually extinguished. though the church initially approved
Popes and kings jointly supported the Inquisition, but in the late thirteenth of them, it later declared them
century the papacy came into a violent dispute with several of Europe’s leading heretical.
rulers. Pope Boniface VIII (1294–1303), arguing from precedent, insisted that • The Inquisition, the church’s re-
King Edward I of England and Philip the Fair of France obtain his consent for sponse to heresy, had the support of
taxes they had imposed on the clergy. Edward immediately denied the clergy the both popes and kings even though it
used cruel and unjust methods to seek
protection of the law, and Philip halted the shipment of all ecclesiastical revenue out and punish heretics.
to Rome. Boniface had to back down.
• The struggle for power between the
The battle for power between the papacy and the French monarchy became a papacy and the monarchy was an
bitter war of propaganda. Finally, in 1302, in a letter titled Unam Sanctam (because ongoing problem.
its opening sentence spoke of one holy Catholic Church), Boniface insisted that all
Christians—including kings—were subject to the pope. Philip maintained that he
was completely sovereign in his kingdom and responsible to God alone. French Unam Sanctam An official letter issued
mercenary troops assaulted and arrested the aged pope at Anagni in Italy. Although by Pope Boniface VIII claiming that all
Christians were subject to the pope.
Boniface was soon freed, he died shortly afterward. The confrontation at Anagni
foreshadowed serious difficulties in the Christian church, but religious struggle was
only one of the crises that would face Western society in the fourteenth century.
Chapter Review
How did medieval cities originate, and what impact did they have on the econ-
omy and on culture? (page 247) Key Terms
Medieval cities—whether beginning around the sites of cathedrals, fortifications, or town liberties (p. 248)
market towns—recruited people from the countryside with the promise of greater free- merchant guild (p. 249)
dom and new possibilities. Cities provided economic opportunity, which, together craft guild (p. 250)
with the revival of long-distance trade and a new capitalistic spirit, led to greater wealth,
livery (p. 252)
a higher standard of living, and upward social mobility for many people. Merchants
and artisans formed guilds to protect their means of livelihood. Not everyone in medi- sumptuary laws (p. 252)
eval cities shared in the prosperity, however; many residents lived hand-to-mouth on Hanseatic League (p. 257)
low wages. usury (p. 257)
commercial revolution (p. 258)
How did universities evolve, and what needs of medieval society did they serve? mercantile capitalism (p. 258)
(page 259) Scholastics (p. 263)
The towns that became centers of trade and production in the High Middle Ages (continued)
developed into cultural and intellectual centers. Trade brought in new ideas as well as
merchandise, and in many cities a new type of educational institution—the university— summa (p. 264)
emerged from cathedral and municipal schools. Universities developed theological,
legal, and medical courses of study based on classical models and provided trained of- dialect (p. 264)
ficials for the new government bureaucracies. University-trained professionals joined vernacular literature (p. 265)
merchants and guild masters as well-off members of the urban elite, heading large troubadours (p. 265)
households staffed with servants and charging high prices for their services.
cathedral (p. 266)
Romanesque (p. 266)
How did the arts and architecture express the ideals, attitudes, and interests of Gothic (p. 266)
medieval people? (page 265)
master masons (p. 267)
University education was in Latin and was limited to men, but the High Middle Ages Waldensians (p. 271)
also saw the creation of new types of vernacular literature. Poems, songs, and stories,
written down in local dialects, celebrated things of concern to ordinary people. In this, Dominicans (p. 271)
the troubadours of southern France led the way, using Arabic models to create roman- Franciscans (p. 271)
tic stories of heterosexual love. The ability to read the vernacular was still limited, friars (p. 271)
however, so oral transmission continued as the most important way that information mendicants (p. 271)
was conveyed and traditions passed down. The oral culture of medieval cities included
plays with religious themes and also games, songs, and dancing. Poor Clares (p. 272)
Economic growth meant that merchants, nobles, and guild masters had disposable Beguines (p. 272)
income they could spend on artistic products and more elaborate consumer goods. They Unam Sanctam (p. 273)
supported the building of churches and cathedrals as visible symbols of their Christian
faith and their civic pride; cathedrals in particular grew larger and more sumptuous,
with high towers, stained-glass windows, and multiple altars. The sturdy Romanesque
style was replaced by the soaring Gothic, in which sophisticated building techniques
allowed windows to grow ever taller and wider. Cathedrals were places for socializing
as well as worship, and increasingly complex music added to the experience.
Why did towns become the center of religious heresy, and what was the church’s
response? (page 270)
Town residents demonstrated their deep religious faith in the construction of Gothic
cathedrals, but many urban people thought that the church did not fulfill their spiri-
tual needs. They turned instead to heresies, many of which taught that the church had
grown too powerful and wealthy. Combating heresy became a principal task of new
types of religious orders, most prominently the Dominicans and Franciscans, who
preached, ministered to city dwellers, and also staffed the papal Inquisition, a special
court designed to root out heresy. These efforts were largely successful, and the church
continued to exercise leadership of Christian society in the High Middle Ages, though
the clash between the papacy and the kings of France and England at the end of the
thirteenth century seriously challenged papal power.
Notes
1. D. C. Douglas and G. W. Greenaway, English Historical Documents, vol. 2, pp. 969–970.
2. Quoted in H. E. Sigerist, Civilization and Disease (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1943), p. 102.
3. See John F. Benton, “Fraud, Fiction and Borrowing in the Correspondence of Abelard and
Heloise,” in Culture, Power and Personality in Medieval France, ed. T. N. Bisson (London and
Rio Grande: The Hambledon Press, 1991), pp. 417–449, esp. pp. 430–443, which convinc-
ingly demonstrate that “the most personal parts of the correspondence are not genuine” and
that the letters were probably written in the later thirteenth century; and the same scholar’s
“The Correspondence of Abelard and Heloise,” in the same volume, pp. 487–512.
4. Quoted in J. H. Mundy, Europe in the High Middle Ages, 1150–1309 (New York: Basic Books,
1973), pp. 474–475.

Courtly Love
W hether female or male, the troubadour poets celebrated

fin’amor, a Provençal word for the pure or perfect love
a knight was supposed to feel for his lady, which has in Eng-
lish come to be called chivalry or “courtly love.” In courtly love
lyrics, the writer praises his or her love object, idealizing the
beloved and promising loyalty and great deeds. Most of these
songs are written by, or from the perspective of, a male lover
who is socially beneath his female beloved; her higher status
makes her unattainable, so the lover’s devotion can remain
chaste and pure, rewarded by her handkerchief, or perhaps a
kiss, but nothing more. The noblemen and noblewomen who
listened to these songs viewed such love as ennobling, and
some authors even wrote courtly love lyrics directed to the
Virgin Mary, the ultimate unattainable woman.
Scholars generally agree that poetry praising perfect love
originated in the Muslim culture of the Iberian Peninsula,
where heterosexual romantic love had long been the subject of
poems and songs. Southern France was a border area where In this fourteenth-century painting, a lady puts the
Christian and Muslim culture mixed; Spanish Muslim poets helmet on her beloved knight. (akg-images)
sang at the courts of Christian nobles, and Provençal poets
picked up their romantic themes. To the sight of other women I am blind, deaf to
It is very difficult to know whether courtly love literature hearing them
influenced the treatment of real women to any great extent— since her only I see, and hear and heed,
peasant women were certainly no less in danger of rape from and in that I am surely not a false slanderer,
knightly armies in the thirteenth century than they had been since heart desires her more than mouth may say;
in the tenth—but it did introduce an ideal of heterosexual wherever I may roam through fields and valleys,
romance into Western literature that had not been there in the plains and mountains
classical or early medieval period. The following excerpt is I shan’t find in a single person all those qualities
from a poem written by Arnaut Daniel, a thirteenth-century which God wanted to select and place in her.
troubadour. Not much is known about him, but the songs that
I have been in many a good court,
have survived capture courtly love conventions perfectly.
but here by her I find much more to praise:
measure and wit and other good virtues,
I only know the grief that comes to me, beauty and youth, worthy deeds and fair disport;
to my love-ridden heart, out of over-loving, so well kindness taught and instructed her
since my will is so firm and whole that it has rooted every ill manner out of her:
that it never parted or grew distant from her I don’t think she lacks anything good. . . .
whom I craved at first sight, and afterwards:
and now, in her absence, I tell her burning words; Far fewer poems by female troubadours (trobair-
then, when I see her, I don’t know, so much I have itz) have survived than by male, but those that have
to, what to say. express strong physical and emotional feelings. The
275
following excerpt is from the twelfth-century Count- Questions for Analysis
ess of Dia. 1. Both of these songs focus on a beloved who
does not return the lover’s affection. What
I’ve suffered great distress similarities and differences do you see in them?
From a knight whom I once owned. 2. How does courtly love reinforce other aspects
Now, for all time, be it known: of medieval society? Are there aspects of medi-
I loved him—yes, to excess. eval society it contradicts?
His jilting I’ve regretted,
Yet his love I never really returned. 3. Can you find examples from current popular
Now for my sin I can only burn: music that parallel the sentiments expressed in
Dressed, or in my bed . . . these two songs?
Sources: First poem: Leonardo Malcovati, Prosody in Eng-

Lovely lover, gracious, kind, land and Elsewhere: A Comparative Approach (London:
When will I overcome your fight? Gival Press, 2006), and online at http://www.trobar.org/
O if I could lie with you one night! troubadours/; second poem: quoted in J. J. Wilhelm, ed.,
Feel those loving lips on mine! Lyrics of the Middle Ages: An Anthology (New York:
Listen, one thing sets me afire: Garland Publishers, 1993), pp. 83–84.
Here in my husband’s place I want you,
If you’ll just keep your promise true:
Give me everything I desire.
276
CHAPTER 12
The Crisis of the Later
Middle Ages
1300–1450
Chapter Preview
Prelude to Disaster
What were the demographic, social,
and economic consequences of
climate change?
The Black Death

How did the spread of the plague shape
European society?
The Hundred Years’ War

What were the causes of the Hundred
Years’ War, and how did the war affect
European politics, economics, and
cultural life?
Challenges to the Church

What were the causes of the Great
Schism, and how did church leaders,
intellectuals, and ordinary people
respond?
In this lavishly illustrated French chronicle, Wat Tyler, the leader of
the English Peasant’s Revolt, is stabbed during a meeting with the
king. Tyler died soon afterward, and the revolt was ruthlessly Economic and Social Change
crushed. (Bibliothèque nationale de France) How did economic and social tensions
contribute to revolts, crime, violence,
and a growing sense of ethnic and
national distinctions?
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY: Jan Hus
LISTENING TO THE PAST: Christine de Pizan
277
278 Chapter 12 The Crisis of the Later Middle Ages, 1300–1450
D uring the later Middle Ages the last book of the New Testament, the Book
of Revelation, inspired thousands of sermons and hundreds of religious
tracts. The Book of Revelation deals with visions of the end of the world, with
disease, war, famine, and death. It is no wonder this part of the Bible was so popu-
lar. Between 1300 and 1450 Europeans experienced a frightful series of shocks:
climate change, economic dislocation, plague, war, social upheaval, and increased
crime and violence. Death and preoccupation with death make the fourteenth
century one of the most wrenching periods of Western civilization. Yet, in spite of
the pessimism and crises, important institutions and cultural forms, including rep-
resentative assemblies and national literatures, emerged. Even institutions that
experienced severe crisis, such as the Christian church, saw new types of vitality.
Prelude to Disaster
What were the demographic, social, and economic consequences of
climate change?
In the first half of the fourteenth century, Europe experienced a series of climate
changes that led to lower levels of food production, which had dramatic and disas-
trous ripple effects. Political leaders attempted to find solutions, but were unable
to deal with the economic and social problems that resulted.
The period from about 1000 to about 1300 saw a warmer than usual climate
in Europe, which underlay all the changes and vitality of the High Middle Ages.
About 1300 the climate changed, becoming colder and wetter. Historical geogra-
phers refer to the period from 1300 to 1450 as a “little ice age.”
An unusual number of storms brought torrential rains, ruining the wheat, oat,
and hay crops on which people and animals almost everywhere depended. Since
long-distance transportation of food was expensive and difficult, most urban areas
depended for bread and meat on areas no more than a day’s journey away. Poor
harvests—and one in four was likely to be poor—led to scarcity and starvation.
Great Famine A terrible famine that hit Almost all of northern Europe suffered a “Great Famine” in the years 1315–1322,
much of Europe after a period of climate which contemporaries interpreted as a recurrence of the biblical “seven lean
change (1315–1322).
years” (Genesis 42). Even in non-famine years, the cost of grain, livestock, and
dairy products rose sharply.
Reduced caloric intake meant increased susceptibility to disease, especially for
infants, children, and the elderly. Workers on reduced diets had less energy, which
in turn meant lower productivity, lower output, and higher grain prices.
Hardly had western Europe begun to recover from this disaster when another
struck: an epidemic of typhoid fever carried away thousands. Then in 1318 disease
hit cattle and sheep, drastically reducing the herds and flocks. Another bad harvest
in 1321 brought famine and death.
The catastrophes of the fourteenth century had grave social consequences. In
parts of the Low Countries and in the Scottish-English borderlands, entire villages
were abandoned. In Flanders and East Anglia (eastern England), some peasants
were forced to mortgage, sublease, or sell their holdings to richer farmers in order
to buy food. Throughout the affected areas, young men and women sought work
in the towns. Overall, the population declined because of the deaths caused by
famine and disease; postponement of marriages may have also played a part.
Meanwhile, the international character of trade and commerce meant that a
disaster in one country had serious implications elsewhere. For example, the infec-
Chronology
tion that attacked English sheep in 1318 caused a sharp de- 1309–1376 Babylonian Captivity; papacy in Avignon
cline in wool exports in the following years. Without wool,
Flemish weavers could not work, and thousands were laid 1310–1320 Dante, Divine Comedy
off. Without woolen cloth, the businesses of Flemish, Hanse- 1315–1322 Famine in northern Europe
atic, and Italian merchants suffered. Unemployment encour- 1324 Marsiglio of Padua, Defensor Pacis
aged people to turn to crime.
1337–1453 Hundred Years’ War
As the subsistence crisis deepened, popular discontent
and paranoia increased. In France, starving people focused 1348 Black Death arrives in mainland Europe
their anger on the rich, speculators, and the Jews, who were 1358 Jacquerie peasant uprising in France
targeted as creditors fleecing the poor through pawnbroking.
1378–1417 Great Schism
(Expelled from France in 1306, Jews were readmitted in
1315 and were granted the privilege of lending at high inter- 1381 Peasants’ Revolt in England
est rates.) Rumors spread of a plot by Jews and their agents, 1387–1400 Chaucer, Canterbury Tales
the lepers, to kill Christians by poisoning the wells. Based on 1405 Christine de Pizan, The Treasure of the
“evidence” collected by torture, many lepers and Jews were City of Ladies
killed, beaten, or hit with heavy fines.
1415 English smash the French at Agincourt
Government responses to these crises were ineffectual.
The three sons of Philip the Fair who sat on the French 1429 French victory at Orléans; Charles VII
throne between 1314 and 1328 condemned speculators, who crowned king
held stocks of grain back until conditions were desperate and 1431 Joan of Arc declared a heretic and burned
prices high; forbade the sale of grain abroad; and published at the stake
legislation prohibiting fishing with traps that took large
catches. These measures had few positive results.
Death from Famine

In this fifteenth-century painting, dead bodies lie in the middle of a path, while a funeral procession at the right includes
a man with an adult’s coffin and a woman with the coffin of an infant under her arm. People did not simply allow the
dead to lie in the street in medieval Europe, though during famines and epidemics it was sometimes difficult to maintain
normal burial procedures. (Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY)
Sec tion Review In England, Edward I’s incompetent son, Edward II (r. 1307–1327), also con-
demned speculators, after his attempts to set price controls on livestock and ale
• About 1300 the climate of Europe proved futile. He did try to buy grain abroad, but little was available: yields in the
changed from an era of warmer tem-
peratures to a “little ice age,” becoming
Baltic were low; the French crown, as we have seen, forbade exports; and the grain
colder and wetter. shipped from northern Spain was grabbed by pirates. Such grain as reached south-
ern English ports was stolen by looters and sold on the black market. The Crown’s
• An increase in rainfall ruined grain
crops and led to widespread famine. efforts at famine relief failed.
• Typhoid fever claimed the lives of many
people, cattle, and sheep, bringing even
more famine and death from disease or
starvation.
The Black Death
• Decreased farm yields led to a decrease How did the spread of the plague shape European society?
in international trade, which affected
economies throughout Europe, result- Royal attempts to provide food from abroad were unsuccessful, but they indicate
ing in unemployment, crime, and
the extent of long-distance shipping by the beginning of the fourteenth century. In
paranoia.
1291 Genoese (JEN-oh-eez) sailors had opened the Strait of Gibraltar to Italian
• Governments attempted to forbid
shipping by defeating the Moroccans. Then, shortly after 1300, important ad-
grain sales abroad and condemned
speculators, but most measures proved vances were made in the design of Italian merchant ships. A square rig was added
to have little effect. to the mainmast, and ships began to carry three masts instead of just one. Addi-
tional sails better utilized wind power to propel the ship. The improved design
meant that cargo could now move quickly and regularly across great distances. So,
however, could disease pathogens carried by the vermin that stowed away on these
vessels. The most frightful of these diseases first emerged in western Europe in
Black Death Bubonic plague that first 1347 and was later called the Black Death. (Sometime in the fifteenth century,
struck Europe in 1347 and was spread the Latin phrase atra mors, meaning “dreadful death,” was translated as “black
mainly by rats and fleas. In less virulent
forms, the disease reappeared many
death,” and the phrase stuck.)
times until 1721.
Most historians and almost all microbiologists identify

Spread of the Disease the disease that spread in the fourteenth century as the
bubonic (byoo-BON-ik) plague, caused by the bacillus
Yersinia pestis. The disease normally afflicts rats. Fleas living on the infected rats
drink their blood; the bacteria that cause the plague multiply in the flea’s gut; and
the flea passes them on to the next rat it bites by throwing up into the bite. Usually
the disease is limited to rats and other rodents, but at certain points in history—
perhaps when most rats have been killed off—the fleas have jumped from their
rodent hosts to humans and other animals.
The classic symptom of the bubonic plague was a growth the size of a nut or
an apple in the armpit, in the groin, or on the neck. This was the boil, or bubo, that
gave the disease its name and caused agonizing pain. If the bubo was lanced and
the pus thoroughly drained, the victim had a chance of recovery. The next stage
was the appearance of black spots or blotches caused by bleeding under the skin.
Finally, the victim began to cough violently and spit blood. This stage, indicating
the presence of millions of bacilli in the bloodstream, signaled the end, and death
followed in two or three days.
Plague symptoms were first described in 1331 in southwestern China, part of
the Mongol Empire. Plague-infested rats accompanied Mongol armies and mer-
chant caravans carrying silk, spices, and gold across central Asia in the 1330s.
Then they stowed away on ships, carrying the disease to the ports of the Black Sea
by the 1340s. Later stories told of more dramatic means of spreading the disease as
well, reporting that Mongol armies besieging the city of Kaffa on the shores of the
Black Sea catapulted plague-infected corpses over the walls to infect those inside.
The Black Death 281
The city’s residents dumped the corpses into the sea as fast as they could, but they
were already infected.
In October 1347 Genoese ships brought the plague from Kaffa to Messina,
from which it spread across Sicily. Venice and Genoa were hit in January 1348,
and from the port of Pisa (PEE-zuh) the disease spread south to Rome and east to
Florence and all of Tuscany. By late spring southern Germany was attacked.
Frightened French authorities chased a galley bearing the disease away from the
port of Marseilles, but not before plague had infected the city, from which it spread
to Languedoc (lahng-DAWK) and Spain. In June 1348 two ships entered the Bris-
tol Channel and introduced it into England. All Europe felt the scourge of this
horrible disease (see Map 12.1).
Although urban authorities from London to Paris to Rome had begun to try to
achieve a primitive level of sanitation by the fourteenth century, urban conditions
remained ideal for the spread of disease. Narrow streets filled with refuse and hu-
man excrement were as much cesspools as thoroughfares. Dead animals and sore-
covered beggars greeted the traveler. Houses whose upper stories projected over
MAPPING THE PAST

MAP 12.1 The Course of the Black Death in Fourteenth-Century Europe
Use the map and the information in the text to answer the following questions: [1] How did the expansion of trade that resulted from the
commercial revolution contribute to the spread of the Black Death? [2] When did the plague reach Paris? Why do you think it got to Paris before
it spread to the rest of northern France or to southern Germany? [3] Which cities were spared? What might account for this? [4] Which regions
were spared? Would the reasons for this be the same as those for cities, or might other causes have been operating in rural areas?
10˚W 0˚ 10˚E 20˚E 30˚E 40˚E 50˚E ˚N

60
1346
Bergen 1347
1348
N
1349
1350
No r t h
Sea Riga After 1350
Durham
Dublin Lancaster Baltic City or area partially
York Sea or totally spared
Königsberg
Leicester N
Lübeck
Danzig
Major trade route 50˚
Bristol Norwich Hamburg
London
Dnie
Do
Bruges
Sarai
nR
AT L A N T I C Warsaw
pe r R.
Calais Liège
.
Erfurt
OC EAN Cologne
Wroclaw Volga
R.
Paris Würzburg
Strasbourg Prague Cracow
Nuremberg Caspian
Vienna Sea
Zurich
Bordeaux
Lyons
Milan Caffa
E Venice
Montpellier Avignon Genoa
br
Pisa R. Sea
a nube
o
ck
Bla
D
R.
Florence
Lisbon Marseilles Siena 40˚N
Toledo Barcelona Corsica Dubrovnik Trebisond
Rome Constantinople
Valencia
Sardinia Naples
Seville Tigris R
Balearic Is. .
Strait of Antioch
Gibraltar Messina Athens
Salé Sicily Eu
phr
Tunis ates
R.
0 200 400 Km. M
ed Malta Rhodes
ite Candia Cyprus
rrane
0 200 400 Mi. an Sea Crete
Damascus
the lower ones blocked light and air. And extreme overcrowding was common-
place. When all members of an aristocratic family lived and slept in one room, it
should not be surprising that six or eight persons in a middle-class or poor house-
hold slept in one bed—if they had one. Closeness, after all, provided warmth.
Houses were beginning to be constructed of brick, but many wood, clay, and mud
houses remained. A determined rat had little trouble entering such a house.
Standards of personal hygiene remained frightfully low. Fleas and body lice
were universal afflictions: everyone from peasants to archbishops had them. One
more bite did not cause much alarm. But if that nibble came from a bacillus-bearing
flea, an entire household or area was doomed.
Mortality rates cannot be specified because population figures for the period
before the arrival of the plague do not exist for most countries and cities. Of a total
English population of perhaps 4.2 million, probably 1.4 million died of the Black
Death in its several visits. Densely populated Italian cities endured incredible losses.
Florence lost between one-half and two-thirds of its population when the plague
visited in 1348. The most widely accepted estimate for western Europe is that the
plague killed about one-third of the population in the first wave of infection.
Nor did central and eastern Europe escape the ravages of the disease. One
chronicler records that, in the summer and autumn of 1349, between five hun-
dred and six hundred died every day in Vienna. Styria, in what today is central
Austria, was very hard hit, with cattle straying unattended in the fields.
As the Black Death took its toll on the German Empire, waves of emigrants
fled to Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary. The situation there was better, though
disease was not completely absent. The plague seems to have entered Poland
through the Baltic seaports and spread from there. Still, population losses were
lower than elsewhere in Europe. The plague spread from Poland to Russia, reach-
ing Pskov, Novgorod, and Moscow. In Serbia, though, the plague left vast tracts of
land unattended, which prompted an increase in Albanian immigration to meet
the labor shortage.
Across Europe the Black Death recurred intermittently from the 1360s to
1400. It reappeared with reduced virulence from time to time over the following
centuries, making its last appearance in the French port city of Marseilles in 1721.
Survivors became more prudent. Because periods of famine had caused malnutri-
tion, making people vulnerable to disease, Europeans controlled population
growth so that population did not outstrip food supply. Western Europeans im-
proved navigation techniques and increased long-distance trade, which permitted
the importation of grain from sparsely populated Baltic regions (see page 281).
They strictly enforced quarantine measures. They worked on the development of
vaccines. But it was only in 1947, six centuries after the arrival of the plague in the
West, that the American microbiologist Selman Waksman discovered an effective
vaccine, streptomycin. Plague continues to infect rodent and human populations
sporadically today.
Fourteenth-century medical literature indicates that

Care physicians could sometimes ease the pain, but they
had no cure. Medical doctors observed that crowded
cities had high death rates, especially when the weather was warm and moist. We
understand that warm, moist conditions make it easier for germs, viruses, and bac-
teria to grow and spread, but fourteenth-century people thought in terms of “poi-
sons” in the air or “corrupted air” rather than germs. The poisons caused illness,
which doctors thought of as an imbalance in the fluids in the body, especially
The Black Death 283
blood. Certain symptoms of the plague, especially bleeding and vomiting, were
believed to be the body’s natural reaction to too much fluid. Doctors frequently
prescribed bloodletting—that is, taking blood from the body by applying leeches
or making small cuts in veins—as standard treatment.
If the plague came from poisoned air, people reasoned, then strong-smelling
herbs or other substances held in front of the nose or burned as incense might stop
it. Perhaps loud sounds like ringing church bells or firing the newly invented can-
non might help. Medicines made from plants that were bumpy or that oozed liq-
uid might work, keeping the more dangerous swelling and oozing of the plague
away. Magical letter and number combinations, called cryptograms, were espe-
cially popular in Muslim areas. They were often the first letters of words in prayers
or religious sayings, and they gave people a sense of order when faced with the
randomness with which the plague seemed to strike.
Wealthier people often fled cities for the countryside, though sometimes this
simply spread the plague faster. Some cities tried shutting their gates to prevent
infected people and animals from coming in, which worked in a few cities. They
also walled up houses in which there was plague, trying to isolate those who were
sick from those who were still healthy. Along with looking for medical causes and
cures, people also searched for scapegoats, and savage cruelty sometimes resulted.
Many people believed that the Jews had poisoned the wells of Christian communi-
ties and thereby infected the drinking water. This charge led to the murder of
thousands of Jews across Europe.
Patients in a Hospital Ward, Fifteenth Century

In the thirteenth century, merchants donated some of their fortunes to establish hospitals, which filled past
capacity when the plague struck. The practice of putting two or more adults in the same bed, as shown here,
contributed to the spread of the disease. At the Hôtel-Dieu (oh-tel-DEW) in Paris, nurses complained of
being forced to put eight to ten children in a single bed in which a patient had recently died. (Giraudon/The
Bridgeman Art Library)
Many people did not see the plague as a medical issue, but instead interpreted
it as the result of something within themselves. God must be punishing them for
terrible sins, they thought, so the best remedies were religious ones: asking for
forgiveness, prayer, trust in God, making donations to churches, and trying to live
better lives. In Muslim areas, religious leaders urged virtuous living in the face of
death: give to the poor, reconcile with your enemies, free your slaves, and say a
proper goodbye to your friends and family.
It is noteworthy that, in an age of mounting criticism of

Social, Economic, clerical wealth (see page 291), the behavior of the
and Cultural clergy during the plague was often exemplary. Priests,
Consequences monks, and nuns cared for the sick and buried the
dead. In places like Venice, from which even physicians fled, priests remained to
give what ministrations they could. Consequently, their mortality rate was phe-
nomenally high. The German clergy especially suffered a severe decline in per-
sonnel in the years after 1350.
Economic historians and demographers sharply dispute the impact of the
plague on the economy in the late fourteenth century. The traditional view that
the plague had a disastrous effect has been greatly modified. The clearest evidence
comes from England, where by the early fifteenth century most landlords enjoyed
the highest revenues of the medieval period. Why? The answer appears to lie in the
fact that England and many parts of Europe suffered from overpopulation in the
early fourteenth century. Population losses caused by the Black Death led to in-
creased productivity by restoring a more efficient balance between labor, land,
and capital.
What impact did visits of the plague have on urban populations? The rich evi-
dence from a census of the city of Florence and its surrounding territory taken
between 1427 and 1430 is fascinating. The region had suffered repeated epidem-
ics since 1347. The census showed a high proportion of people who were age sixty
or older, suggesting that the plague took the young rather than the mature. The
high mortality rate of adults between the ages of twenty and fifty-nine led Floren-
tine guilds to recruit many new members. It appears that economic organizations
tried to keep their numbers constant, even though the size of the population, and
its pool of potential guild members, was shrinking. Moreover, in contrast to the
pre-1348 period, many new members of the guilds were not related to existing
members. Thus the post-plague years represent an age of “new men.”
The Black Death brought on a general European inflation. High mortality
produced a fall in production, shortages of goods, and a general rise in prices. The
price of wheat in most of Europe increased, as did the costs of meat, sausage, and
cheese. This inflation continued to the end of the fourteenth century. But labor
shortages meant that workers could demand better wages, and the broad mass of
people enjoyed a higher standard of living. The greater demand for labor also
meant greater mobility for peasants in rural areas and for industrial workers in the
towns and cities.
The psychological consequences of the plague were profound. Imagine an
entire society in the grip of the belief that it was at the mercy of a frightful affliction
about which nothing could be done. It is not surprising that some sought release
in wild living, while others turned to the severest forms of asceticism and frenzied
flagellants People who believed that religious fervor. Some extremists joined groups of flagellants (FLAJ-eh-lents), who
the plague was God’s punishment for sin
and sought to do penance by flagellating whipped and scourged themselves as penance for their and society’s sins in the
(whipping) themselves. belief that the Black Death was God’s punishment for humanity’s wickedness.
The Black Death 285
Flagellants
In this manuscript illumination from 1349, shirtless flagellants scourge themselves with whips as they walk through the streets of the
Flemish city of Tournai. The text notes that they are asking for God’s grace to return to the city after it had been struck with the “most
grave” illness. (Ann Ronan Picture Library, London/HIP/Art Resource, NY)
Groups of flagellants traveled from town to town, often provoking

Sec tion Review
hysteria against Jews and growing into unruly mobs. Officials wor-
ried that they would provoke violence and riots, and ordered groups • Improvements in ship design meant food and goods
to disband or forbade them to enter cities. could now travel long distances, but rodents and fleas
Elaborate funeral services, which had provided comfort to the carrying the Black Death (bubonic plague) could also
travel on these ships.
mourners as well as tribute to the dead, were abandoned in favor of
hasty burials, sometimes in mass graves. Hospitality to travelers was • The Black Death first appeared in China and then
spread via Mongol armies and merchant caravans to
replaced with hostility and suspicion, and European port cities be- ships across the Black Sea, Sicily, and into all of
gan quarantining arriving ships to determine whether passengers Europe.
brought the plague. • Crowded living conditions, poor sanitation, and low
Popular endowments of educational institutions multiplied. levels of personal hygiene helped the disease to spread,
The years of the Black Death witnessed the foundation of new col- causing widespread population losses.
leges at old universities and of entirely new universities. The foun- • Various attempted cures included bloodletting, herbal
dation charters specifically mention the shortage of priests and the concoctions, quarantines, religious fervor to appease
decay of learning. Whereas universities such as those at Bologna God, and victimizing Jews suspected of poisoning
and Paris had international student bodies, new institutions estab- Christian wells.
lished in the wake of the Black Death had more national or local • The population decrease meant new guild members,
constituencies. Thus the international character of medieval cul- high inflation rates, and shortages of goods, but labor
shortages resulted in better wages and greater mobility.
ture weakened, paving the way for schism (SKIZ-uhm) in the Cath-
olic Church even before the Reformation. • New universities and colleges arose to resupply the
shortage of priests and the learned, but the fear of
The literature and art of the fourteenth century reveal a terribly outsiders who might bring the plague led to more
morbid concern with death. One highly popular artistic motif, the national and local student bodies, weakening interna-
Dance of Death, depicted a dancing skeleton leading away a living tional bonds.
person.
The Hundred Years’ War

What were the causes of the Hundred Years’ War, and how did the war
affect European politics, economics, and cultural life?
The plague ravaged populations in Asia, North Africa, and Europe; in western
Europe a long international war added further death and destruction. England
and France had engaged in sporadic military hostilities from the time of the Nor-
man Conquest in 1066, and in the middle of the fourteenth century these became
more intense. From 1337 to 1453, the two countries intermittently fought one
another in what was the longest war in European history, ultimately dubbed the
Hundred Years’ War though it actually lasted 116 years.
The Hundred Years’ War had both distant and imme-

Causes diate causes. The distant cause was that in 1259, France
and England had signed the Treaty of Paris, in which
the English king agreed to become—for himself and his successors—vassal of the
French crown for the duchy of Aquitaine (AK-wi-tain). The English claimed
Aquitaine as an ancient inheritance. French policy, however, was strongly expan-
sionist, and the French kings resolved to absorb the duchy into the kingdom of
France so Aquitaine became disputed territory.
The immediate cause of the war was a dispute over who would inherit the
French throne after Charles IV of France, the last surviving son of Philip the Fair,
died childless in 1328. With him ended the Capetian (kuh-PEE-shuhn) dynasty of
France. Charles IV did have a sister, however—Isabella—and her son was Edward
III, king of England. An assembly of French barons, meaning to exclude Isabella
and Edward from the French throne, proclaimed that “no woman nor her son could
succeed to the [French] monarchy.” The barons passed the crown to Philip VI of
Valois (r. 1328–1350), a nephew of Philip the Fair.
In 1329 Edward III paid homage to Philip VI for Aquitaine. In 1337 Philip,
eager to exercise full French jurisdiction in Aquitaine, confiscated the duchy.
Edward III interpreted this action as a
gross violation of the treaty of 1259 and
as a cause for war. Moreover, Edward ar-
gued, as the eldest directly surviving
male descendant of Philip the Fair, he
English Merchants in Flanders

In this 1387 illustration, an English merchant
requests concessions from the count of Flanders
to trade English wool at a favorable price.
Flanders was officially on the French side during
the Hundred Years’ War, but Flemish cities
depended heavily on English wool for their
textile manufacturing. Hence the count of
Flanders agreed to the establishment of the
Merchant Staple, an English trading company
with a monopoly on trade in wool.
(Copyright © British Library Board)
The Hundred Years’ War 287
deserved the title of king of France. Edward III’s dynastic argument upset the
feudal order in France: to increase their independent power, French vassals of
Philip VI used the excuse that they had to transfer their loyalty to a more legitimate
overlord, Edward III. One reason the war lasted so long was that it became a
French civil war, with some French barons supporting English monarchs in order
to thwart the centralizing goals of the French crown.
The governments of both England and France ma-

The Popular nipulated public opinion to support the war. The Eng-
Response lish public was convinced that the war was waged for
one reason: to secure for King Edward the French crown he had been unjustly
denied. Edward III issued letters to the sheriffs describing the evil deeds of the
French in graphic terms and listing royal needs. Kings in both countries instructed
the clergy to deliver sermons filled with patriotic sentiment. Philip VI sent agents
to warn communities about the dangers of invasion and to stress the French
crown’s revenue needs to meet the attack. The English were led to believe that
King Philip intended “to have seized and slaughtered the entire realm of Eng-
land.” Both sides developed a deep hatred of the other.
Most important of all, the Hundred Years’ War was popular because it pre-
sented unusual opportunities for wealth and advancement. Poor knights and
knights who were unemployed were promised regular wages. Criminals who en-
listed were granted pardons. The great nobles expected to be rewarded with es-
tates. Royal exhortations to the troops before battles repeatedly stressed that, if
victorious, the men might keep whatever they seized. The French chronicler Jean
Froissart (FROI-sahrt) wrote that, at the time of Edward III’s expedition of 1359,
men of all ranks flocked to the English king’s banner. Some came to acquire
honor, but many came “to loot and pillage the fair and plenteous land of France.”1
The war was fought almost entirely in France and the

The Course of the Low Countries (see Map 12.2). It consisted mainly of
War to 1419 a series of random sieges and cavalry raids. In 1335 the
French began ravaging the countryside in Aquitaine, sacking and burning coastal
towns in southern England, and supporting Scottish incursions into northern Eng-
land. Such tactics lent weight to Edward III’s propaganda campaign. In fact, royal
propaganda on both sides fostered a kind of early nationalism.
During the war’s early stages, England was highly successful. At Crécy
(KRES-ee) in northern France in 1346, English longbowmen scored a great victory
over French knights and crossbowmen. Although the aim of the longbow was not
very accurate, it allowed for rapid reloading, and an English archer could send off
three arrows to the French crossbowman’s one. The result was a blinding shower
of arrows that unhorsed the French knights and caused mass confusion. The ring
of cannon—probably the first use of artillery in the West—created further panic.
Thereupon the English horsemen charged and butchered the French.
This was not war according to the chivalric rules that Edward III would have
preferred. Nevertheless, his son, Edward the Black Prince, used the same tactics
ten years later to smash the French at Poitiers, where he captured the French king
and held him for ransom. Again, at Agincourt (AJ-in-kawrt) near Arras (AR-uhs) Agincourt The location near Arras in
in 1415, the chivalric English soldier-king Henry V (r. 1413–1422) gained the Flanders where an English victory in
1415 led to the reconquest of Normandy.
field over vastly superior numbers. Henry followed up his triumph at Agincourt
with the reconquest of Normandy. By 1419 the English had advanced to the walls
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nn
nn
e Saint-Sardos eR
R .
GASCONY GASCONY
LANGUEDOC LANGUEDOC
.
0 50 100 Mi.
Toulouse Toulouse
S PAI N
S PA I N
1337
(before the Battle of Crécy) 1360
English holdings
(after the Battle of Poitiers)
Mediterranean Mediterranean
Sea English holdings Sea
French holdings
French holdings
Extent of English holdings
after Treaty of Paris, 1259 40°N Major battle 40°N
5°W E N GL A N D 5°E 5°W E NGL A N D 5°E

0° S 0° BRABANT
R S
Calais N DE Calais ER
FLA ND
Agincourt FLA
nel
a nnel 1415 50°N sh Chan 50°N
sh Ch Engli
Engli Rouen
HO LY LUXEMBOURG
Se
in Reims RO M A N HOLY
NORMANDY e
CHAMPAGNE NORMANDY
Paris . Domrémy EMPIRE Paris
CHAMPAGNE
e ROMA N
Sein
R
R.
BRITTANY
MAINE
BRITTANY EMPIRE
Orléans MAINE
ANJOU R. ANJOU R.
Loire DUCHY OF COUNTY OF Loire COUNTY OF
Bourges BURGUNDY BURGUNDY DUCHY OF BURGUNDY
TOURAINE TOURAINE BURGUNDY
POITOU POITOU
AUVERGNE
AUVERGNE
AQUITAINE
Rhône R.
Rhône R.
AQUITAINE
45°N Castillon-sur-Dordogne 45°N
Bordeaux Gar DAUPHINÉ Bordeaux DAUPHINÉ
o Ga1453
ro
nn
eR nn
. e
GASCONY GASCONY
LANGUEDOC LANGUEDOC
R.
Toulouse Toulouse
S PAI N Mediterranean 1453 (end of war)

ca. 1429 Sea
English holdings
(after the siege of Orléans) French holdings
English holdings Burgundian lands allied
with England to 1435 Burgundian lands reconciled
French holdings with France after 1453
Major battle 40°N Last battle
40°N
MAP 12.2 English Holdings in France During the Hundred Years’ War
The year 1429 marked the greatest extent of English holdings in France.
288
The Hundred Years’ War 289
of Paris (see Map 12.2). But the French cause was not lost. Though England had
scored the initial victories, France won the war.
The ultimate French success rests heavily on the ac-

Joan of Arc and tions of an obscure French peasant girl, Joan of Arc,
France’s Victory whose vision and work revived French fortunes and led
to victory. A great deal of pious and popular legend surrounds Joan the Maid be-
cause of her peculiar appearance on the scene, her astonishing success, her mar-
tyrdom, and her canonization by the Catholic Church. The historical fact is that
she saved the French monarchy, which was the embodiment of France.
Born in 1412 to well-to-do peasants in the village of Domrémy in Champagne,
Joan of Arc grew up in a religious household. During adolescence she began to
hear voices, which she later said belonged to Saint Michael, Saint Catherine, and
Saint Margaret. In 1428 these voices spoke to her with great urgency, telling her
that the dauphin (DAW-fin) (the uncrowned King Charles VII) had to be crowned
and the English expelled from France. Joan went to the French court, persuaded
the king to reject the rumor that he was illegitimate, and secured his support for
her relief of the besieged city of Orléans (AWR-lee-uhn).
Joan arrived before Orléans on April 28, 1429. Seventeen years old, she knew
little of warfare and believed that if she could keep the French troops from swear-
ing and frequenting brothels, victory would be theirs. On May 8 the English,
weakened by disease and lack of supplies, withdrew from Orléans. Ten days later
Charles VII was crowned king at Reims. These two events marked the turning
point in the war.
Joan’s presence at Orléans, her strong belief in her mission, and the fact that
she was wounded enhanced her reputation and strengthened the morale of the
army. In 1430 England’s allies, the Burgundians, captured Joan and sold her to the
English. When the English handed her over to the ecclesiastical authorities for
trial, the French court did not intervene. In 1431 the court condemned her as a
heretic—her claim of direct inspiration from God, thereby denying the authority
of church officials, constituted heresy—and burned her at the stake. The relief
of Orléans stimulated French pride and rallied French resources. As the war
dragged on, demands for an end increased in England. The clergy and intellectu-
als pressed for peace. Parliamentary opposition to additional war grants stiffened.
Slowly the French reconquered Normandy and, finally, ejected the English from
Aquitaine. At the war’s end in 1453, only the town of Calais (KAL-lay) remained in
English hands.
In France thousands of soldiers and civilians had been

Costs and slaughtered and hundreds of thousands of acres of
Consequences rich farmland were ruined, leaving the rural economy
of many parts of France a shambles. The war had disrupted trade and the great
fairs, resulting in the drastic reduction of French participation in international
commerce.
The war had wreaked havoc in England as well, even though only the south-
ern coastal ports saw battle. England spent the huge sum of over £5 million on the
war effort, and despite the money raised by some victories, the net result was an
enormous financial loss. The government attempted to finance the war by raising
taxes on the wool crop, which priced wool out of the export market. In addition,
the social order was disrupted as the knights who ordinarily served as sheriffs, coro-
ners, jurymen, and justices of the peace were abroad. The war stimulated techno-
logical experimentation, especially with artillery. Cannon revolutionized warfare,
making the stone castle no longer impregnable. Because only central governments,
not private nobles, could afford cannon, they strengthened the military power of
national states.
The long war also had a profound impact on the political and cultural lives of
the two countries. Most notably, it stimulated the development of the English
representative assemblies Parliament. Between 1250 and 1450, representative assemblies flourished in
Deliberative meetings of lords and many European countries. In the English Parliament, German diets, and Spanish
wealthy urban residents that flourished
in many European countries between
cortes, deliberative practices developed that laid the foundations for the represen-
1250 and 1450 and were the precursors tative institutions of modern liberal-democratic nations. While representative as-
to the English Parliament, German diets, semblies declined in most countries after the fifteenth century, the English
and Spanish cortes. Parliament endured. Edward III’s constant need for money to pay for the war
compelled him to summon not only the great barons and bishops, but knights of
the shires and burgesses from the towns as well. Parliament met in thirty-seven of
the fifty years of Edward’s reign.2
The frequency of the meetings is significant. Representative assemblies were
becoming a habit. Knights and wealthy urban residents—or the “Commons,” as
they came to be called—recognized their mutual interests and began to meet apart
from the great lords. The Commons gradually realized that they held the country’s
nationalism A sense of unity among a purse strings, and a parliamentary statute of 1341 required that all nonfeudal levies
people living in a particular area, based have parliamentary approval. By signing the law, Edward III acknowledged that
on language, shared customs, and
the king of England could not tax without Parliament’s consent. During the course
culture, and often accompanied by
hostility to outsiders. of the war, money grants were increasingly tied to royal redress of grievances:
to raise money, the government had to correct the wrongs its subjects
protested.
Sec tion Review In England, theoretical consent to taxation and legislation was
• Animosity arose between England and France in- given in one assembly for the entire country. France had no such single
volving the duchy of Aquitaine and the question assembly; instead, there were many regional or provincial assemblies.
of succession to the French Capetian dynasty in Why did a national representative assembly fail to develop in France?
1328; the resulting standoff led to the Hundred Linguistic, geographical, economic, legal, and political differences
Years’ War.
were very strong. People tended to think of themselves as Breton, Nor-
• Even though each side feared invasion and slaughter, man, Burgundian, or whatever, rather than French. Provincial assem-
they each believed their cause was just and many
benefited from the war, gaining land, regular wages, blies, highly jealous of their independence, did not want a national
or simply the spoils of looting and pillaging. assembly. The costs of sending delegates to it would be high, and the
• The combatants fought most of the war in France, result was likely to be increased taxation. In addition, the initiative for
the English gaining an early lead using sieges and convening assemblies rested with the king. But some monarchs lacked
raids with longbow and cannon fire and advancing the power to call such an assembly, and others, including Charles VI,
all the way to Paris, but eventually the French won. found the idea of representative assemblies thoroughly distasteful.
• Joan of Arc saved the French monarchy and contrib- In both countries, however, the war did promote the growth of
uted to ending the war, but the English burned her nationalism—the feeling of unity and identity that binds together a
at the stake as a heretic for claiming a direct connec- people. After victories, each country experienced a surge of pride in its
tion with God.
military strength. Just as English patriotism ran strong after Crécy and
• Economic costs of the war were high in both coun- Poitiers, so French national confidence rose after Orléans. French na-
tries, with farms ruined and trade disrupted, but this
period saw the beginning of the English parliament tional feeling demanded the expulsion of the enemy not merely from
and the growth of nationalism and pride in both Normandy and Aquitaine but from all French soil. Perhaps no one
France and England. expressed this national consciousness better than Joan of Arc when
she exulted that the enemy had been “driven out of France.”
Challenges to the Church 291
Challenges to the Church

What were the causes of the Great Schism, and how did church leaders,
intellectuals, and ordinary people respond?
In times of crisis or disaster, people of all faiths have sought the consolation of
religion. While local clergy eased the suffering of many, a dispute over who was
the legitimate pope weakened the church as an institution. New ideas about
church government took root.
In order to control the church and its policies, Philip

The Babylonian the Fair of France pressured Pope Clement V to settle
Captivity and permanently in Avignon in southeastern France, where
Great Schism the popes already had their summer residence (see
Map 11.2 ). Clement, critically ill with cancer, lacked the will to resist Philip. The
popes lived in Avignon from 1309 to 1376, a period in church history often called
the Babylonian Captivity (referring to the seventy years the ancient Hebrews were Babylonian Captivity The period
held captive in Mesopotamian Babylon). from 1309 to 1376 when the popes
resided in Avignon, rather than in Rome.
The Babylonian Captivity badly damaged papal prestige. The Avignon papacy The phrase refers to the seventy years
reformed its financial administration and centralized its government. But the when the Hebrews were held captive
seven popes at Avignon concentrated on bureaucratic matters to the exclusion of in Babylon.
spiritual objectives. Though some of the popes led austere lives, the general atmos-
phere was one of luxury and extravagance. The leadership of the church was cut
off from its historic roots and the source of its ancient authority, the city of Rome.
In 1377 Pope Gregory XI brought the papal court back to Rome. Unfortunately,
he died shortly after the return. At Gregory’s death, Roman citizens demanded an
Italian pope who would remain in Rome. Between the time of Gregory’s death
and the opening of the conclave, great pressure was put on the cardinals to elect
an Italian. At the time, none of them protested this pressure, and they chose a
distinguished administrator, the archbishop of Bari, Bartolomeo Prignano, who
took the name Urban VI.
Urban VI (1378–1389) had excellent intentions for church reform, but he
went about this in a tactless and bullheaded manner. He attacked clerical luxury,
denouncing individual cardinals by name, and even threatened to excommuni-
cate certain cardinals.
The cardinals slipped away from Rome and met at Anagni. They declared
Urban’s election invalid because it had come about under threats from the Roman
mob, and they asserted that Urban himself was excommunicated. The cardinals
then elected Cardinal Robert of Geneva, the cousin of King Charles V of France,
as pope. Cardinal Robert took the name Clement VII. There were thus two
popes—Urban at Rome and Clement VII (1378–1394), who set himself up at
Avignon in opposition to Urban. So began the Great Schism, which divided West- Great Schism The division, or split, in
ern Christendom until 1417. church leadership (1378–1417) when
there were two, then three, popes.
The powers of Europe aligned themselves with Urban or Clement along
strictly political lines. France naturally recognized the French pope, Clement.
England, France’s historic enemy, recognized the Italian pope, Urban. Scotland,
whose attacks on England were subsidized by France, followed the French and
supported Clement. Aragon, Castile, and Portugal hesitated before deciding for
Clement at Avignon. The German emperor, who bore ancient hostility to France,
recognized Urban. At first the Italian city-states recognized Urban; when he alien-
ated them, they opted for Clement.
John of Spoleto, a professor at the law school at Bologna, eloquently summed
up intellectual opinion of the schism, or division: “The longer this schism lasts,
the more it appears to be costing, and the more harm it does; scandal, massacres,
ruination, agitations, troubles and disturbances.”3 The common people, wracked
by inflation, wars, and plague, were thoroughly confused about which pope was
legitimate. The schism weakened the religious faith of many Christians and
brought church leadership into serious disrepute. The schism also brought to the
fore conciliar ideas about church government.
Theories about the nature of the Christian church and

The Conciliar its government originated in the very early church, but
Movement the years of the Great Schism witnessed their maturity.
conciliarists People who believed that Conciliarists believed that reform of the church could best be achieved through
the authority in the Roman church periodic assemblies, or general councils, representing all the Christian people.
should rest in a general council
composed of clergy, theologians, and
While acknowledging that the pope was head of the church, conciliarists favored
laypeople, rather than in the pope alone. a balanced or constitutional form of church government, with papal authority
shared with a general council, in contrast to the monarchical one that prevailed.
The intellectual roots of the conciliar movement can be traced to the rector
Marsiglio of Padua a half century earlier. In his Defensor Pacis (The Defender of
the Peace), Marsiglio argued against the medieval idea of a society governed by
both church and state, with church supreme. Instead, Marsiglio claimed, the state
was the great unifying power in society and the church should be subordinate to it.
Church leadership should rest in a general council, made up of laymen as well as
priests, and superior to the pope. Marsiglio was excommunicated for these radical
ideas and his work was condemned.
The English scholar and theologian John Wyclif (WIK-lif) (ca. 1330–1384)
went even further than Marsiglio of Padua in his argument against medieval
church structure. Wyclif wrote that Scripture alone should be the standard of
Christian belief and practice, and papal claims of temporal power had no founda-
tion in the Scriptures. He urged that the church be stripped of its property. He
wanted Christians to read the Bible for themselves, and pro-
duced the first complete translation of the Bible into English.
Wyclif has been hailed as the precursor of the Reforma-
tion of the sixteenth century. Although his ideas were con-
demned by church leaders, they were spread by humble
clerics and enjoyed great popularity in the early fifteenth cen-
tury. His followers, known as Lollards, spread his ideas and
Spoon with Fox Preaching to Geese (southern

Netherlands, ca. 1430)
Taking as his text a contemporary proverb, “When the fox preaches,
beware your geese,” the artist shows, in the bowl of a spoon, a fox dressed
as a monk or friar, preaching with three dead geese in his hood, while
another fox grabs one of the congregation. The preaching fox reads from a
scroll bearing the word pax (peace), implying the perceived hypocrisy of
the clergy. The object suggests the widespread criticism of churchmen in
the later Middle Ages. (Painted enamel and gilding on silver; 17.6 x 4.9 x 2.6 cm, Museum
of Fine Arts, Boston, Helen and Alice Colburn Fund, 51.2472)
Economic and Social Change 293
made many copies of his Bible. Lollard teaching allowed women to preach, and confraternities Voluntary lay groups
they played a significant role in the movement. After Anne, sister of Wenceslaus organized by occupation, devotional
preference, neighborhood, or charitable
(WEN-sis-laws), king of Germany and Bohemia, married Richard II of England, activity.
members of her household carried Lollard books back to Bohemia.
In response to continued calls throughout Europe for a council, the cardinals Sec tion Review
of Rome and Avignon summoned a council at Pisa in 1409. That gathering of
prelates and theologians deposed both popes and selected another. Neither the • The so-called Babylonian Captivity
was a period when the popes resided
Avignon pope nor the Roman pope would resign, however, and the appalling re-
in Avignon instead of Rome, worked
sult was the creation of a threefold schism. on bureaucratic reforms, lived in
Finally, under pressure from the German emperor Sigismund (SEE-gis-muhnd), luxury, and lost their focus on spiritual
a great council met at the imperial city of Constance (KON-stuhns) (1414–1418). objectives.
It had three objectives: to end the schism, to reform the church “in head and • The papacy relocated to Rome under
members” (from top to bottom), and to wipe out heresy. The council condemned Pope Gregory, but his death saw the
the Czech reformer Jan Hus (yahn HOOS) (see the feature “Individuals in Society: beginning of the Great Schism
(1378–1417) when two popes, Urban
Jan Hus”), and he was burned at the stake. The council eventually deposed both
VI and Clement VII, competed to be
the Roman pope and the successor of the pope chosen at Pisa, and it isolated the the true pope.
Avignon antipope. A conclave elected a new leader, the Roman cardinal Colonna,
• Conciliarists Rector Marsiglio, who
who took the name Martin V (1417–1431). advocated a general council to share
Martin proceeded to dissolve the council. Nothing was done about reform. In power with the pope, and John
the later fifteenth century the papacy concentrated on Italian problems to the ex- Wyclif, who wrote that scripture was
clusion of universal Christian interests. Though the church was reunited, the the basis of religion and translated the
first Bible into English, both argued
spiritual mystique of the clergy had weakened, and lay people were not willing to
against medieval church structure.
rely on the clergy or church hierarchy for their salvation. Pious men and women
• A third council (Pisa, 1409) calling for
increasingly formed confraternities (kon-fruh-TUR-nih-teez), voluntary groups of
an end to the schism only resulted in
lay people designed to express devotion through prayer, charitable giving, and a tri-fold schism, which ended when a
devotional activities. fourth council at Constance (1414–
1418) finally united the church, but
the church’s reputation was damaged
and the faithful began to meet in
Economic and Social Change small groups for devotional services.
How did economic and social tensions contribute to revolts, crime, • The priest Jan Hus denounced
violence, and a growing sense of ethnic and national distinctions? church abuses and papal authority,
and when the church burned him at
the stake in 1415, despite a promise of
In the fourteenth century economic and political difficulties, disease, and war pro- safe conduct, the nobility publicly
foundly affected the lives of European peoples. Decades of slaughter and destruc- made their first protest to ecclesiasti-
cal authority.
tion, punctuated by the decimating visits of the Black Death, made a grave economic
situation virtually disastrous. In many parts of France and the Low Countries, fields
lay in ruin or untilled for lack of labor power. In England, as taxes increased, criti-
cisms of government policy and mismanagement multiplied. Crime and new forms
of business organization aggravated economic troubles, and throughout Europe the
frustrations of the common people erupted into widespread revolts.
Nobles and clergy lived on the produce of peasant la-

Peasant Revolts bor, thinking little of adding taxes to the burden of
peasant life. While peasants had endured centuries of
exploitation, the difficult conditions of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
spurred a wave of peasant revolts across Europe. Peasants were sometimes joined peasant revolts Revolts by peasants in
by their urban counterparts on the social ladder, resulting in a wider revolution of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,
often caused by social and economic
poor against rich. conditions.
The first large-scale rebellion was in Flanders in the 1320s. In order to satisfy
peace agreements, Flemish peasants were forced to pay taxes to the French, who
Jan Hus
an overendowed church appealing. Hus consid-
I n May 1990 the Czech Republic’s parliament
declared July 6, the date of Jan Hus’s execution
in 1415, a Czech national holiday. The son of free
ered the issues theological; his listeners saw them as
socioeconomic.
farmers, Hus (ca. 1369–1415) was born in Husinec Church officials in Prague were split about
in southern Bohemia, an area of heavy German Hus’s ideas, and popular unrest grew. The king
settlement, and grew up conscious of the ethnic dif- forced Hus to leave the city, but he continued to
ferences between Czechs and Germans. Most of preach and write. He disputed papal authority, de-
his professors at Charles nounced abuses, and argued that everyone should
University in Prague were receive both bread and wine in the Eucharist
Germans. In 1396 he re- (YOO-kuh-rist). (By this time, in standard Western
ceived a master’s degree, Christian practice, the laity received only the bread;
and just before his ordina- the priest received the wine for the laity, a mark of
tion as a priest in 1400 he his distinctiveness.) Hus also defended transubstan-
wrote that he would not tiation (see page 341); insisted that church author-
be a “clerical careerist,” ity rested on Scripture, conscience, and tradition
implying that ambition (in contrast to sixteenth-century Protestant reform-
for church offices moti- ers, who placed authority in Scripture alone); and
vated many of his peers. made it clear that he had no intention of leaving
The execution of Jan Hus. (University of The young priest lec- the church or inciting a popular movement.
Prague/The Art Archive) tured at the university and In 1413 the emperor Sigismund urged the call-
preached at the private ing of a general council to end the schism. Hus was
Bethlehem Chapel. Dur- invited, and, given the emperor’s safe conduct (pro-
ing his twelve years there Hus preached only in tection from attack or arrest), agreed to go. What he
Czech. He denounced superstition, the sale of in- found was an atmosphere of inquisition. The safe
dulgences, and other abuses, but his remarks were conduct was disregarded, and Hus was arrested.
thoroughly orthodox. He attracted attention among Under questioning about his acceptance of Wyclif’s
artisans and the small Czech middle class, but not ideas, Hus repeatedly replied, “I have not held; I do
Germans. His austere life and lack of ambition en- not hold.” Council members were more interested
hanced his reputation. in proving Hus a Wyclite than in his responses.
Around 1400 Czech students returning from They took away his priesthood, banned his teach-
study at Oxford introduced into Bohemia the re- ings, burned his books, and burned Hus himself at
forming ideas of the English theologian John the stake. He then belonged to the ages.
Wyclif. When German professors condemned The ages have made good use of him. His death
Wyclif’s ideas as heretical, Hus and the Czechs aggravated the divisions between the bishops at
argued “academic freedom,” the right to read and Constance and the Czech clerics and people. In
teach Wyclif’s works regardless of their particular September 1415, 452 nobles from all parts of Bohe-
merits. When popular demonstrations against eccle- mia signed a letter saying that Hus had been un-
siastical abuses and German influence at the univer- justly executed and rejecting council rulings. This
sity erupted, King Vaclav (vah-SLAV) IV (1378–1419) event marks the first time that an ecclesiastical
placed control of the university in Czech hands. Hus decision was publicly defied. Revolution swept
was elected rector, the top administrative official. through Bohemia, with Hussites—Czech nobles
The people of Prague, with perhaps the largest and people—insisting on clerical poverty and both
urban population in central Europe, 40 percent of the bread and wine at the Eucharist, and with Ger-
it living below the poverty line and entirely depen- man citizens remaining loyal to the Roman church.
dent on casual labor, found Hus’s denunciations of In the sixteenth century reformers hailed Hus as
294
the forerunner of Protestantism. In the eighteenth Questions for Analysis
century Enlightenment philosophes evoked Hus 1. Since Jan Hus lived and died insisting that his
as a defender of freedom of expression. In the nine- religious teaching was thoroughly orthodox,
teenth century central European nationalists used why has he been hailed as a reformer?
Hus’s name to defend national sentiment against
2. What political and cultural interests did the
Habsburg rule. And in the twentieth century Hus’s
martyred Hus serve?
name was used against German fascist and Russian
communist tyranny.
295
claimed fiscal rights over the county of Flanders. Monasteries also pressed peas-
ants for additional money, above their customary tithes. In retaliation, peasants
burned and pillaged castles and aristocratic country houses. A French army
crushed peasant forces, and savage repression and the confiscation of peasant
property followed in the 1330s.
In 1358, when French taxation for the Hundred Years’ War fell heavily on the
poor, the frustrations of the French peasantry exploded in a massive uprising called
Jacquerie A massive uprising by French the Jacquerie (zhahk-REE), after a mythical agricultural laborer, Jacques Bon-
peasants in 1358 protesting heavy homme (Good Fellow). Peasants blamed the nobility for oppressive taxes, for the
taxation.
criminal brigandage of the countryside, for losses on the battlefield, and for the
general misery. Crowds swept through the countryside, slashing the throats of
nobles, burning their castles, raping their wives and daughters, and killing or
maiming their horses and cattle. Artisans, small merchants, and parish priests
joined the peasants. Urban and rural groups committed terrible destruction, and
for several weeks the nobles were on the defensive. Then the upper class united
to repress the revolt with merciless ferocity. Thousands of the “Jacques,” innocent
as well as guilty, were cut down. That forcible suppression of social rebellion,
without any effort to alleviate its underlying causes, served to drive protest under-
ground.
The Peasants’ Revolt in England in 1381 involved thousands of people. Its
causes were complex and varied from place to place. In general, though, the thir-
teenth century had witnessed the steady commutation of labor services for cash
rents, and the Black Death had drastically cut the labor supply. As a result, peas-
ants demanded higher wages and fewer manorial obligations. Their lords coun-
tered with a law freezing wages and binding workers to their manors. Unable to
climb higher, the peasants sought release for their economic frustrations in revolt.
Economic grievances combined with other factors. The south of England, where
the revolt broke out, had been subjected to destructive French raids. The English
government did little to protect the south, and villagers grew increasingly fright-
ened and insecure. Moreover, decades of aristocratic violence against the weak
peasantry had bred hostility and bitterness. Social and religious agitation by the
popular preacher John Ball fanned the embers of discontent. Ball’s famous
couplet “When Adam delved and Eve span; Who was then the gentleman?” re-
flected real revolutionary sentiment.
The English revolt was ignited by the reimposition of a head tax on all adult
males. Despite widespread opposition to the tax in 1380, the royal council ordered
the sheriffs to collect it again in 1381 on penalty of a huge fine. Beginning with
assaults on the tax collectors, the uprising in England followed a course similar to
that of the Jacquerie in France. Castles and manors were sacked. Manorial records
were destroyed. Many nobles, including the archbishop of Canterbury (KAN-ter-
ber-ee), who had ordered the collection of the tax, were murdered.
The center of the revolt lay in the highly populated and economically ad-
vanced south and east, but sections of the north and the Midlands also witnessed
rebellions. Violence took different forms in different places. Urban discontent
merged with rural violence. In English towns where skilled Flemish craftsmen
were employed, fear of competition led to their being attacked and murdered. Ap-
prentices and journeymen, frustrated because the highest positions in the guilds
were closed to them, rioted.
The boy-king Richard II (r. 1377–1399) met the leaders of the revolt, agreed
to charters ensuring peasants’ freedom, tricked them with false promises, and
then crushed the uprising with terrible ferocity. The nobility tried to restore an-
cient duties of serfdom, but nearly a century of freedom had elapsed, and the
commutation of manorial services continued. Rural serfdom disappeared in Eng-

land by 1550.
In Flanders, France, and England, peasant revolts often

Urban Conflicts blended with conflicts involving workers in cities. Unrest
also occurred in Italian, Spanish, and German cities.
These revolts typically flared up in urban centers where the conditions of work
were changing for many people. In the thirteenth century craft guilds had orga-
nized the production of most goods, with masters, journeymen, and apprentices
working side by side. In the fourteenth century a new system evolved to make
products on a larger scale. Capitalist investors hired many households, with each
household performing only one step of the process. Initially these investors were
wealthy bankers and merchants, but eventually shop masters embraced the sys-
tem. This promoted a greater division within guilds between wealthier masters
and the poorer masters and journeymen they hired. Some masters became so
wealthy that they no longer had to work in a shop themselves, nor did their wives
and family members, though they still generally belonged to the craft guild.
While capitalism provided opportunities for some artisans to become investors
and entrepreneurs, especially in cloth production, for many it led to a decrease in
income and status. Guilds often responded to competition by limiting member-
ship to existing guild families, which meant that journeymen who were not mas-
ter’s sons or who could not find a master’s widow or daughter to marry could never
become masters themselves. They remained journeymen their entire lives, losing
their sense of solidarity with the masters of their craft. Resentment led to rebellion
over economic issues.
Urban uprisings were also sparked by issues involving honor, such as employ-
ers’ requiring workers to do tasks they regarded as beneath them. As their actual
status and economic prospects declined and their work became basically wage
labor, journeymen and poorer masters emphasized skill and honor as qualities that
set them apart from less-skilled workers.
Guilds increasingly came to view the honor of their work as tied to an all-male
workplace. When urban economies were expanding in the High Middle Ages, the
master’s wife and daughters worked alongside him, and female domestic servants
also carried out productive tasks. (See the feature “Listening to the Past: Christine
de Pizan” on pages 305–306.) Masters’ widows ran shops after the death of their
husbands. But in the fourteenth century, a woman’s right to work slowly eroded.
First, masters’ widows were limited in the amount of time they could keep operat-
ing a shop or were prohibited from hiring journeymen; then female domestic
servants were excluded from any productive tasks; then the number of daughters a
master craftsman could employ was limited. When women were allowed to work,
it was viewed as a substitute for charity.
Peasant and urban revolts and riots had clear economic

Sex in the City bases, but some historians have suggested that late me-
dieval marital patterns may have also played a role in
unrest. In northwestern Europe, people believed that couples should be economi-
cally independent before they married, so both spouses spent long periods as ser-
vants or workers in other households saving money and learning skills, or they
waited until their own parents had died and the family property was distributed.
The most unusual feature of this pattern was the late age of marriage for
women. Women entered marriage as adults and took charge of running a house-
hold immediately. They were thus not as dependent on their husbands or their
mothers-in-law as were women who married at younger ages. They had fewer
pregnancies than women who married earlier, though not necessarily fewer sur-
viving children.
Men of all social groups were older when they married. In general, men were
in their middle or late twenties at first marriage, with wealthier urban merchants
often much older. Journeymen and apprentices were often explicitly prohibited
from marrying, as were the students at universities, as they were understood to be
in “minor orders” and thus like clergy, even if they were not intending on careers
in the church.
The prohibitions on marriage for certain groups of men and the late age of
marriage for most men meant that cities and villages were filled with large num-
bers of young adult men with no family responsibilities who often formed the core
of riots and unrest. Not surprisingly, this situation also contributed to a steady
market for sexual services outside of marriage, what in later centuries was termed
prostitution. Research on the southern French province of Languedoc in the four-
teenth and fifteenth centuries has revealed the establishment of legal houses of
prostitution in many cities. Municipal authorities set up houses or red-light dis-
tricts either outside the city walls or away from respectable neighborhoods. For
example, authorities in Montpellier set aside Hot Street for prostitution, required
public women to live there, and forbade anyone to molest them. Prostitution thus
passed from being a private concern to a social matter requiring public supervi-
sion. The towns of Languedoc were not unique. Public authorities in Amiens,
Dijon, Paris, Venice, Genoa, London, Florence, Rome, most of the larger Ger-
man towns, and the English port of Sandwich set up brothels.
Visiting brothels was associated with achieving manhood in the eyes of young
men, though for the women themselves their activities were work. Indeed, in some
cases the women had no choice, for they had been traded to the brothel manager
by their parents or other people in payment for debt, or had quickly become in-
debted to him (or, more rarely, her) for the clothes and other finery regarded as
essential to their occupation. Poor women—and men—also sold sex illegally out-
side of city brothels, combining this with other sorts of part-time work such as
laundering or sewing. Prostitution was an urban phenomenon because only popu-
lous towns had large numbers of unmarried young men, communities of transient
merchants, and a culture accustomed to a cash exchange.
Though selling sex for money was legal in the Middle Ages, the position of
women who did so was always marginal. In the late fifteenth century cities began
to limit brothel residents’ freedom of movement and choice of clothing, requiring
them to wear distinctive head coverings or bands on their clothing so that they
would not be mistaken for “honorable” women. The cities also began to impose
harsher penalties on women who did not live in the designated house or section of
town. A few prostitutes did earn enough to donate money to charity or buy prop-
erty, but most were very poor.
Along with buying sex, young men also took it by force. Unmarried women
often found it difficult to avoid sexual contact. Many of them worked as domestic
servants, where their employers or employers’ sons or male relatives could easily
coerce them, or they worked in proximity to men. Notions of female honor kept
upper-class women secluded in their homes, particularly in southern and eastern
Europe, but there was little attempt anywhere to keep female servants or day labor-
ers from the risk of seduction or rape. Rape was a capital crime in many parts of
Europe, but the actual sentences handed out were more likely to be fines and brief
Prostitute Invites a Traveling

Merchant
Poverty drove women into prostitution, which,
though denounced by moralists, was accepted as
a normal part of the medieval social fabric. In
the cities and larger towns where prostitution
flourished, public officials passed laws requiring
prostitutes to wear a special mark on their clothing,
regulated hours of business, forbade women to
drag men into their houses, and denied business
to women with the “burning sickness,” gonorrhea.
(Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS. Bodl. 264, fol. 245V)
imprisonment, with the severity of the sentence dependent on the social status of
the victim and the perpetrator.
Same-sex relations—what in the late nineteenth century would be termed
“homosexuality”—were another feature of medieval urban life (and of village life,
though there are very few sources relating to sexual relations of any type in the
rural context). Same-sex relations were of relatively little concern to church or
state authorities in the early Middle Ages, but this attitude changed beginning in
the late twelfth century. By 1300 most areas had defined such actions as “crimes
against nature.” Same-sex relations, usually termed “sodomy,” became a capital
crime in most of Europe, with adult offenders threatened with execution by fire.
The Italian cities of Venice, Florence, and Lucca created special courts to deal
with sodomy, which saw thousands of investigations.
Sodomy was not a marginal practice, which may account for the fact that, de-
spite harsh laws and special courts, actual executions for sodomy were rare. Same-
sex relations often developed within the context of all-male environments, such as
the army, the craft shop, and the artistic workshop, and were part of the collective
male experience. Homoerotic relationships played important roles in defining
stages of life, expressing distinctions of status, and shaping masculine gender iden-
tity. Same-sex relations involving women almost never came to the attention of
legal authorities, so it is difficult to find out how common they were. However,
female-female desire was expressed in songs, plays, and stories, as was male-male
desire, offering evidence of the way people understood same-sex relations.
The Hundred Years’ War had provided employment and

Fur-Collar Crime opportunity for thousands of idle and fortune-seeking
knights. But during periods of truce and after the war
finally ended, many nobles once again had little to do. Inflation hurt them. Al-
though many were living on fixed incomes, their chivalric code demanded lavish
generosity and an aristocratic lifestyle. Many nobles turned to crime as a way of

raising money. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries witnessed a great deal of
“fur-collar crime,” so called for the miniver fur nobles alone were allowed to wear
on their collars.
Groups of noble brigands roamed the English countryside stealing from both
rich and poor. Operating like modern urban racketeers, knightly gangs demanded
that peasants pay “protection money” or else have their hovels burned and their
fields destroyed. They seized wealthy travelers and held them for ransom.
When accused of wrongdoing, fur-collar criminals intimidated witnesses,
threatened jurors, and used “pull” or cash to bribe judges. As a fourteenth-century
English judge wrote to a young nobleman, “For the love of your father I have
hindered charges being brought against you and have prevented execution of in-
dictment actually made.”4 Criminal activity by nobles continued decade after
decade because governments were too weak to stop it.
The ballads of Robin Hood, a collection of folk legends from late medieval
England, describe the adventures of the outlaw hero and his merry men as they
avenge the common people against fur-collar criminals—grasping landlords,
wicked sheriffs, and mercenary churchmen. Robin Hood was a popular figure
because he symbolized the deep resentment of aristocratic corruption and abuse;
he represented the struggle against tyranny and oppression.
Large numbers of people in the twelfth and thirteenth

Ethnic Tensions centuries migrated from one part of Europe to another:
and Restrictions the English into Scotland and Ireland; Germans,
French, and Flemings into Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary; the French into
Spain. The colonization of frontier regions meant that peoples of different ethnic
backgrounds lived side by side. Everywhere in Europe, towns recruited people
from the countryside (see page 249). In frontier regions, townspeople were usually
long-distance immigrants and, in eastern Europe, Ireland, and Scotland, ethni-
cally different from the surrounding rural population. In eastern Europe, German
was the language of the towns; in Irish towns, French, the tongue of Norman or
English settlers, predominated.
In the early periods of conquest and colonization, and in all regions with ex-
tensive migrations, a legal dualism existed: native peoples remained subject to
their traditional laws; newcomers brought and were subject to the laws of the coun-
tries from which they came. On the Prussian and Polish frontier, for example, the
law was that “men who come there . . . should be judged on account of any crime
or contract engaged in there according to Polish custom if they are Poles and ac-
cording to German custom if they are Germans.”5 Likewise, the conquered Mus-
lim subjects of Christian kings in Spain had the right to be judged under Muslim
law by Muslim judges.
The great exception to this broad pattern was Ireland. From the start, the Eng-
lish practiced an extreme form of discrimination toward the native Irish. The Eng-
lish distinguished between the free and the unfree, and the entire Irish population,
simply by the fact of Irish birth, was unfree. When an English legal structure was
established, the Irish were denied access to the common-law courts. In civil (prop-
erty) disputes, an English defendant need not respond to his Irish plaintiff; no Irish
person could make a will. In criminal procedures, the murder of an Irishman was
not considered a felony. Other than in Ireland, although native peoples commonly
held humbler positions, both immigrant and native townspeople prospered during
the expanding economy of the thirteenth century. But when economic recession
hit during the fourteenth century, ethnic tensions multiplied.
The later Middle Ages witnessed a movement away from legal pluralism or
dualism and toward legal homogeneity and an emphasis on blood descent. The
dominant ethnic group in an area tried to bar the other from positions of church
leadership and guild membership. Marriage laws were instituted that attempted
to maintain ethnic purity and some church leaders actively promoted ethnic
discrimination.
The most extensive attempt to prevent intermarriage and protect ethnic purity
is embodied in Ireland’s Statute of Kilkenny (kil-KEN-ee) (1366), which states Statute of Kilkenny Laws issued in
that “there were to be no marriages between those of immigrant and native stock; 1366 that discriminated against the Irish,
forbidding marriage between the English
that the English inhabitants of Ireland must employ the English language and and the Irish, requiring the use of the
bear English names; that they must ride in the English way (i.e., with saddles) and English language, and denying the Irish
have English apparel; that no Irishmen were to be granted ecclesiastical benefices access to ecclesiastical offices.
or admitted to monasteries in the English parts of Ireland. . . .”6
Late medieval chroniclers used words such as gens (zhahn) (race or clan) and
natio (NAHT-ee-oh) (species, stock, or kind) to refer to different groups. They held
that peoples differed according to language, traditions, customs, and laws. None of
these were unchangeable, however, and commentators increasingly also described
ethnic differences in terms of “blood”—“German blood,” “English blood,” and so
on—which made ethnicity heritable. Religious beliefs also came to be conceptu-
alized as blood, with people regarded as having Jewish blood, Muslim blood, or
Christian blood. The most dramatic expression of this was in Spain, where “purity
of the blood”—having no Muslim or Jewish ancestors—became an obsession.
Blood was also used as a way to talk about social differences, especially for nobles.
Just as Irish and English were prohibited from marrying each other, those of “no-
ble blood” were prohibited from marrying commoners in many parts of Europe.
As Europeans increasingly came into contact with people from Africa and Asia,
and particularly as they developed colonial empires, these notions of blood also
became a way of conceptualizing racial categories (see page 325).
The development of ethnic identities had many nega-

Literacy and tive consequences, but a more positive effect was the
Vernacular Literature increasing use of the vernacular. Two masterpieces of
European culture, Dante’s (DAHN-tay) Divine Comedy (1310–1320) and Chau-
cer’s (CHAW-ser) Canterbury Tales (1387–1400), illustrate a sophisticated use of
the rhythms and rhymes of the vernacular.
Dante Alighieri (ah-lee-ghee-AIR-ee) (1265–1321) called his work a “com-
edy” because he wrote it in Italian and in a different style from the “tragic” Latin;
a later generation added the adjective divine, referring both to its sacred subject
and to Dante’s artistry. The Divine Comedy is an epic poem of one hundred cantos
(verses) each of whose three equal parts (1 + 33 + 33 + 33) describes one of the
realms of the next world: Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. The Roman poet Virgil,
representing reason, leads Dante through Hell, where Dante observes the tor-
ments of the damned and denounces the disorders of his own time, especially ec-
clesiastical ambition and corruption. Passing up into Purgatory, Virgil shows the
poet how souls are purified of their disordered inclinations. From Purgatory, Bea-
trice (BEE-uh-triss), a woman Dante once loved and the symbol of divine revela-
tion in the poem, leads him to Paradise. In Paradise, home of the angels and saints,
Saint Bernard —representing mystic contemplation—leads Dante to the Virgin
Mary. Through her intercession, he at last attains a vision of God.
The Divine Comedy portrays contemporary and historical figures, comments
on secular and ecclesiastical affairs, and draws on Scholastic philosophy. Within
the framework of a symbolic pilgrimage to the City of God, the Divine Comedy
embodies the psychological tensions of the age. A profoundly Christian poem, it

also contains bitter criticism of some church authorities. In its symmetrical struc-
ture and use of figures from the ancient world, such as Virgil, the poem perpetu-
ates the classical tradition, but as the first major work of literature in the Italian
vernacular, it is distinctly modern.
Geoffrey Chaucer (1342–1400) was an official in the administrations of the
English kings Edward III and Richard II and wrote poetry as an avocation. Chau-
cer’s Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories in lengthy rhymed narrative. On a
pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury (see page 203),
thirty people of various social backgrounds tell tales. For example, the gross Miller
tells a vulgar story about a deceived husband; the earthy Wife of Bath, who has
buried five husbands, sketches a fable about the selection of a spouse; and the el-
egant Prioress, who violates her vows by wearing jewelry, delivers a homily on the
Virgin. In depicting the interests and behavior of all types of people, Chaucer
presents a rich panorama of English social life in the fourteenth century. Like the
Divine Comedy, the Canterbury Tales reflects the cultural tensions of the times.
Ostensibly Christian, many of the pilgrims are also materialistic, sensual, and
worldly, suggesting the ambivalence of the broader society’s concern for the next
world and frank enjoyment of this one.
Beginning in the fourteenth century, a variety of evidence attests to the in-
creasing literacy of laypeople. Wills and inventories reveal that many people, not
just nobles, possessed books—mainly devotional, but also romances, manuals on
manners and etiquette, histories, and sometimes legal and philosophical texts. In
England the number of schools in the diocese of York quadrupled between 1350
and 1500. Information from Flemish and German towns is similar: children were
sent to schools and were taught the fundamentals of reading, writing, and arithme-
Schoolmaster and Schoolmistress Teaching

Ambrosius Holbein (HOHL-bine), elder brother of the more famous Hans Holbein, produced this signboard for the Swiss educator Myconius; it is
an excellent example of what we would call commercial art—art used to advertise, in this case Myconius’s profession. The German script above
promised that all who enrolled, girls and boys, would learn to read and write. Most schools were for boys only, but a few offered instruction for girls
as well. By modern standards the classroom seems bleak: the windows have glass panes but they don’t admit much light, and the schoolmaster is
prepared to use the sticks if the boy makes a mistake. (Kunstmuseum Basel, Acc. No. 311/Martin Buhler, photographer)
Chapter Review 303
tic. Laymen increasingly served as managers or stewards

Sec tion Review
of estates and as clerks to guilds and town governments;
such positions obviously required that they be able to keep • Peasant revolts due to increased taxes, economic frustration, and
administrative and financial records. fear, resulted in widespread violence and destruction, leading to
a backlash of repression by the nobility.
The penetration of laymen into the higher positions
of governmental administration, long the preserve of cler- • Urban conflict occurred as capitalism magnified the disparity
between rich and poor and caused limits on entry into guilds and
ics, also illustrates rising lay literacy. With growing fre-
on women’s right to work in guild shops.
quency, the upper classes sent their daughters to convent
• Poor women were forced into prostitution in urban centers, and
schools, where, in addition to instruction in singing, reli-
homosexuality and rape were common.
gion, needlework, deportment, and household manage-
• After the Hundred Years’ War, unemployed young nobles, called
ment, girls gained the rudiments of reading and sometimes
fur-collar criminals, roamed the countryside, stealing and caus-
writing. ing trouble.
The spread of literacy represents a response to the
• The large migrations of different ethnicities brought with them
needs of an increasingly complex society. Trade, com- the laws of their countries of origin, except in Ireland, where
merce, and expanding government bureaucracies re- English law discriminated against the Irish.
quired more and more literate people. Late medieval • Ethnic identities increased the use of vernacular language, and
culture remained an oral culture in which most people great works of literature such as Dante’s Divine Comedy and
received information by word of mouth. But by the mid- Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales reflected the tensions of the era.
fifteenth century, even before the printing press was turn- • With the advancements in trade, commerce, and government,
ing out large quantities of reading materials, the evolution literacy increased and more books became available.
toward a literary culture was already perceptible.
Chapter Review
What were the demographic, social, and economic consequences of climate
change? (page 278) Key Terms
The crises of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were acids that burned deeply Great Famine (p. 278)
into the fabric of traditional medieval society. Bad weather brought poor harvests, Black Death (p. 280)
which contributed to widespread famine and disease and an international economic flagellants (p. 284)
depression. Political leaders attempted to find solutions, but were unable to deal with
the economic and social problems that resulted. Agincourt (p. 287)
representative assemblies (p. 290)
nationalism (p. 290)
How did the spread of the plague shape European society? (page 280)
Babylonian Captivity (p. 291)
In 1348 a new disease, most likely the bubonic plague, came to mainland Europe, Great Schism (p. 291)
carried from the Black Sea by ships. It spread quickly by land and sea and within two
conciliarists (p. 292)
years may have killed as much as one-third of the European population. Contempo-
rary medical explanations for the plague linked it to poisoned air or water, and treat- confraternities (p. 293)
ments were ineffective. Many people regarded the plague as a divine punishment and peasant revolts (p. 293)
sought remedies in religious practices such as prayer, pilgrimages, or donations to Jacquerie (p. 296)
churches. Population losses caused by the Black Death led to inflation but in the long
Statute of Kilkenny (p. 301)
run may have contributed to more opportunities for the peasants and urban workers
who survived the disease.
What were the causes of the Hundred Years’ War, and how did the war affect
European politics, economics, and cultural life? (page 286)
The miseries of the plague were enhanced in England and France by the Hundred
Years’ War, which was fought intermittently in France from 1337 to 1453. The war
began as a dispute over the succession to the French crown, and royal propaganda on
both sides fostered a kind of early nationalism. The English won most of the battles
and in 1419 advanced to the walls of Paris. The appearance of Joan of Arc rallied the
French cause, and French troops eventually pushed English forces out of all of France
except the port of Calais. The war served as a catalyst for the development of represen-
tative government in England. In France, on the other hand, the war stiffened opposi-
tion to national assemblies.
What were the causes of the Great Schism, and how did church leaders, intellec-
tuals, and ordinary people respond? (page 291)
Religious beliefs offered people solace through these difficult times, but the Western
Christian church was going through a particularly difficult period in the fourteenth
and early fifteenth centuries. The papacy moved to Avignon in France, where it was
dominated by the French monarchy. This led eventually to some cardinals electing a
second, Roman pope, a division in the church called the Great Schism. The Avignon
papacy and the Great Schism weakened the prestige of the church and people’s faith
in papal authority. The conciliar movement, by denying the church’s universal sover-
eignty, strengthened the claims of secular governments to jurisdiction over all their
peoples. As members of the clergy challenged the power of the pope, laypeople chal-
lenged the authority of the church itself. Women and men increasingly relied on direct
approaches to God, often through mystical encounters, rather than on the institutional
church. Some, including John Wyclif and Jan Hus, questioned basic church doctrines.
How did economic and social tensions contribute to revolts, crime, violence, and
a growing sense of ethnic and national distinctions? (page 293)
The plague and the war both led to higher taxes and economic dislocations, which
sparked peasant revolts in Flanders, France, and England. Peasant revolts often blended
with conflicts involving workers in cities, where working conditions were changing to
create a greater gap between wealthy merchant-producers and poor workers. Unrest in
the countryside and cities may have been further exacerbated by marriage patterns that
left large numbers of young men unmarried and rootless. The pattern of late marriage
for men contributed to a growth in prostitution, which was an accepted feature of
medieval urban society. Along with peasant revolts and urban crime and unrest, vio-
lence perpetrated by nobles was a common part of late medieval life. The economic
and demographic crises of the fourteenth century also contributed to increasing ethnic
tensions in the many parts of Europe where migration had brought different popula-
tion groups together. A growing sense of ethnic and national identity led to restrictions
and occasionally to violence, but also to the increasing use of vernacular languages for
works of literature. The increasing number of schools that led to the growth of lay lit-
eracy represents another positive achievement of the later Middle Ages.
Notes
1. Quoted in J. Barnie, War in Medieval English Society: Social Values and the Hundred Years’
War (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1974), p. 34.
2. See G. O. Sayles, The King’s Parliament of England (New York: W. W. Norton, 1974), app.,
pp. 137–141.
3. Quoted in J. H. Smith, The Great Schism, 1378: The Disintegration of the Medieval Papacy
(New York: Weybright & Talley, 1970), p. 15.
4. Quoted in B. A. Hanawalt, “Fur Collar Crime: The Pattern of Crime Among the
Fourteenth-Century English Nobility,” Journal of Social History 8 (Spring 1975): p. 7.
5. Quoted in R. Bartlett, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change,
950–1350 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 205.
6. Quoted ibid., p. 239.

Christine de Pizan
not make a bad deal. She should advise him to be
hristine de Pizan (duh PEE-zahn) (1364?–1430; earlier chary of giving too much credit if he does not know
C spelled “Pisan”) was the well-educated daughter and
wife of men who held positions at the court of the king of
precisely where and to whom it is going, for in this
way many come to poverty, although sometimes
France. Widowed at twenty-five, Christine decided to support the greed to earn more or to accept a tempting
her family through writing. She began to write prose works proposition makes them do it.
and poetry, sending them to wealthy individuals in the hope In addition, she ought to keep her husband’s
of receiving their support. Her efforts resulted in commissions love as much as she can, to this end: that he will
to write specific works, including a biography of the French stay at home more willingly and that he may not
king Charles V and a book of military tactics. She became the have any reason to join the foolish crowds of other
first woman in Europe to make her living as a writer, a diffi- young men in taverns and indulge in unnecessary
cult profession for anyone in this era before the printing press.
Among Christine’s many works were several in which she
considered women’s nature and proper role in society, which
had been a topic of debate since ancient times. The following
selection is from The Treasure of the City of Ladies (1405,
also called The Book of Three Virtues), which provides
moral suggestions and practical advice on behavior and
household management. Most of the book is directed toward
princesses and court ladies (who would have been able to read
it), but she also includes shorter sections for the wives of mer-
chants and artisans, serving-women, female peasants, and
even prostitutes. This is her advice to the wives of artisans,
whose husbands were generally members of urban craft guilds.
All wives of artisans should be very painstaking

and diligent if they wish to have the necessities of
life. They should encourage their husbands or their
workmen to get to work early in the morning and
work until late, for mark our words, there is no
trade so good that if you neglect your work you will
not have difficulty putting bread on the table. And
besides encouraging the others, the wife herself
should be involved in the work to the extent that
she knows all about it, so that she may know how
to oversee his workers if her husband is absent,
and to reprove them if they do not do well. She
ought to oversee them to keep them from idleness,
for through careless workers the master is some-
times ruined. And when customers come to her Several manuscripts of Christine’s works included illustrations showing
husband and try to drive a hard bargain, she ought her writing, which would have increased their appeal to the wealthy
to warn him solicitously to take care that he does individuals who purchased them. (Copyright © British Library Board)
305
and extravagant expense, as many tradesmen do, Questions
especially in Paris. By treating him kindly she 1. How would you describe Christine’s view of
should protect him as well as she can from this. It is the ideal artisan’s wife?
said that three things drive a man from his home: a 2. The regulations of craft guilds often required
quarrelsome wife, a smoking fireplace and a leak- that masters who ran workshops be married.
ing roof. She too ought to stay at home gladly and What evidence does Christine’s advice provide
not go every day traipsing hither and yon gossiping for why guilds would have stipulated this?
with the neighbours and visiting her chums to find 3. How are economic and moral virtues linked for
out what everyone is doing. That is done by slov- Christine?
enly housewives roaming about the town in groups.
Nor should she go off on these pilgrimages got up Source: Christine de Pisan, The Treasure of the City of
Ladies, translated with an introduction by Sarah Lawson
for no good reason and involving a lot of needless (Penguin Classics, 1985). Translation copyright © Sarah
expense. Furthermore, she ought to remind her Lawson, 1985. Reproduced by permission of Penguin
husband that they should live so frugally that their Books Ltd. For more on Christine, see: C. C. Willard,
expenditure does not exceed their income, so that Christine de Pisan: Her Life and Works (1984), and
S. Bell, The Lost Tapestries of the City of Ladies: Christine
at the end of the year they do not find themselves
de Pizan’s Renaissance Legacy (2004).
in debt.
306
CHAPTER 13
European Society in
the Age of the
Renaissance
1350–1550
Chapter Preview
Economic and Political Developments
What economic and political
developments in Italy provided the
setting for the Renaissance?
Intellectual Change
What were the key ideas of the
Renaissance, and how were they
different for men and women and for
southern and northern Europeans?
Art and the Artist

How did changes in art both reflect and
shape new ideas?
Social Hierarchies
What were the key social hierarchies in
Renaissance Europe, and how did ideas
about hierarchy shape people’s lives?
Michelangelo’s frescoes in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican,
commissioned by the pope. The huge ceiling includes biblical
scenes, and the far wall, painted much later, shows a dramatic Politics and the State in the Renaissance
and violent Last Judgment. (Vatican Museum) (ca. 1450–1521)
How did the nation-states of western
Europe evolve in this period?
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY: Leonardo da Vinci
LISTENING TO THE PAST: An Age of Gold
307
308 Chapter 13 European Society in the Age of the Renaissance, 1350–1550
W hile the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse seemed to be carrying war,

plague, famine, and death across northern Europe, a new culture was
emerging in southern Europe. The fourteenth century witnessed the beginnings
of remarkable changes in many aspects of Italian intellectual, artistic, and cultural
life. Artists and writers thought that they were living in a new golden age, but
not until the sixteenth century was this change given the label we use today—the
Renaissance A French word, translated Renaissance, from the French version of a word meaning rebirth.
from the Italian rinascita, first used by The word Renaissance was first used by the artist and art historian Giorgio
art historian and critic Giorgio Vasari
(1511–1574), meaning rebirth of the
Vasari (vuh-ZAHR-ee) (1511–1574) to describe the art of “rare men of genius,”
culture of classical antiquity; English- such as his contemporary, Michelangelo (my-kuhl-AN-juh-low). Through their
speaking students adopted the works, Vasari judged, the glory of the classical past had been reborn—or perhaps
French term. even surpassed—after centuries of darkness. Vasari used Renaissance to describe
painting, sculpture, and architecture, what he termed the “Major Arts.” Gradually,
however, the word was used to refer to many aspects of life at this time, first in Italy
and then in the rest of Europe. This new attitude had a slow diffusion out of Italy,
with the result that the Renaissance “happened” at different times in different parts
of Europe: Italian art of the fourteenth through the early sixteenth centuries is
described as “Renaissance,” and so is English literature of the late sixteenth cen-
tury, including Shakespeare’s plays and poetry.
Although Vasari viewed the Renaissance as a sharp break with the Middle
Ages, some contemporary historians have chosen to view the Renaissance as a
bridge between the medieval and modern eras because it corresponded chrono-
logically with the late medieval period and because there were many continuities
along with the changes. Others have questioned whether the word Renaissance
should be used at all to describe an era in which many social groups saw decline
rather than advance. These debates remind us that these labels—medieval, Ren-
aissance, modern—while offering a useful framework for viewing various periods,
are also laden with value judgments.
Economic and Political Developments

What economic and political developments in Italy provided the setting
for the Renaissance?
The cultural achievements of the Renaissance rest on the economic and political
developments of earlier centuries. Economic growth laid the material basis for the
Italian Renaissance, and ambitious merchants gained political power to match
their economic power. They then used their money and power to buy luxuries and
hire talent.
Scholars tend to agree that the first artistic and literary

Commercial manifestations of the Italian Renaissance appeared in
Developments Florence, which possessed enormous wealth because
Florentine merchants and bankers had acquired control of papal banking toward
the end of the thirteenth century. From their position as tax collectors for the pa-
pacy, Florentine mercantile families began to dominate European banking on
both sides of the Alps, setting up offices in major European and North African
cities. The profits from loans, investments, and money exchanges that poured back
to Florence were pumped into urban industries. Such profits contributed to the
Chronology
city’s economic vitality and allowed banking families to con- 1350–1353 Boccaccio, The Decameron
trol the city’s politics and culture.
By the first quarter of the fourteenth century, the eco- 1434–1494 Medici family in power in Florence
nomic foundations of Florence were so strong that even 1440s Invention of movable metal type
severe crises could not destroy the city. In 1344 King Ed- 1486 Pico della Mirandola, On the Dignity
ward III of England repudiated his huge debts to Florentine of Man
bankers and forced some of them into bankruptcy. Florence
1492 End of the reconquista in Spain;
suffered frightfully from the Black Death, losing at least half Ferdinand and Isabella expel all
its population. Serious labor unrest shook the political estab- practicing Jews
lishment. Nevertheless, the basic Florentine economic struc-
1494 Invasion of Italy by Charles VIII of France
ture remained stable.
1508–1512 Michelangelo paints ceiling of
Sistine Chapel
The northern Italian cities were 1513 Machiavelli, The Prince
Communes and communes, sworn associations of
Republics 1516 More, Utopia
free men seeking complete politi-
cal and economic independence from local nobles. The 1528 Castiglione, The Courtier
merchant guilds that formed the communes built and main-
tained the city walls, regulated trade, raised taxes, and kept
civil order. The local nobles frequently moved into the cities,
marrying into rich commercial families and starting their own businesses. This communes Associations of merchants
merger of the northern Italian feudal nobility and the commercial elite created a in Italian cities such as Milan, Florence,
Genoa, and Pisa who sought political
powerful oligarchy that ruled the city and surrounding countryside. Yet because of and economic independence from local
rivalries among different powerful families, Italian communes were often politi- nobles; members of communes wanted
cally unstable. self-government.
Unrest coming from below exacerbated the instability. Merchant elites made
citizenship in the communes dependent on a property qualification, years of resi- popolo Disenfranchised, common
dence within the city, and social connections. Only a tiny percentage of the male people in Italian cities who resented
population possessed these qualifications and thus could hold office in the com- their exclusion from power.
mune’s political councils. The common people,
called the popolo, were disenfranchised and heavily
taxed, and they bitterly resented their exclusion
from power. Throughout most of the thirteenth cen-
tury, in city after city, the popolo used armed force
and violence to take over the city governments. Re-
publican governments—in which political power
theoretically resides in the people and is exercised
by their chosen representatives—were established
in Bologna, Siena, Parma, Florence, Genoa, and
other cities. The victory of the popolo proved tem-
porary, however, because they could not establish
civil order within their cities. Merchant oligarchies
A Bank Scene, Florence

Originally a “bank” was just a counter; moneychangers who sat
behind the counter became “bankers,” exchanging different
currencies and holding deposits for merchants and business-
people. In this scene from fifteenth-century Florence, the bank
is covered with an imported Ottoman geometric rug, one of
many imported luxury items handled by Florentine merchants.
(Prato, San Francesco/Scala/Art Resource, NY)
reasserted their power and sometimes brought in powerful military leaders to es-
condottieri Military leaders in Italian tablish order. These military leaders, called condottieri (kawn-duh-TYAIR-ey)
city-states who often took over political (singular, condottiero), had their own mercenary armies, and in many cities they
control as well.
took over political power as well.
signori Government by one-man rule Many cities in Italy became signori (see-YOHR- ee), in which one man ruled
in Italian cities such as Milan, in which and handed down the right to rule to his son. Some signori (the word is plural in
the ruler handed power down to his son.
Italian and is used both for persons and forms of government) kept the institutions
of communal government in place, but these had no actual power.
In the fifteenth century the signori in many cities and the most powerful mer-
courts Magnificent households and chant oligarchs in others transformed their households into courts. They built
palaces where the signori and the most magnificent palaces in the centers of cities and required all political business to be
powerful merchant oligarchs required
political business to be conducted.
done there. They became patrons of the arts, hiring architects to design and build
these palaces, artists to fill them with paintings and sculptures, and musicians and
patrons Patrician merchants and composers to fill them with music. They supported writers and philosophers,
bankers, popes and princes, who
flaunting their patronage of learning and the arts. They used ceremonies con-
supported the arts as a means of
glorifying themselves and their nected with family births, baptisms, marriages, funerals, or triumphant entrances
families. into the city as occasions for magnificent pageantry and elaborate ritual. Courtly
culture afforded signori and oligarchs the opportunity to display and assert their
wealth and power. The courts of the rulers of Milan, Florence, and other cities
were models for those developed later by rulers of nation-states.
In the fifteenth century five powers dominated the Ital-

The Balance of Power ian peninsula: Venice, Milan, Florence, the Papal States,
Among the Italian and the kingdom of Naples (see Map 13.1). Venice,
City-States with its enormous trade empire ranked as an interna-
tional power. Though Venice was a republic in name, an oligarchy of merchant
aristocrats actually ran the city. Milan was also called a republic, but the con-
dottieri turned signori of the Sforza (SFAWRT-suh) family ruled harshly and domi-
nated the smaller cities of the north. Likewise, in Florence the form of government
was republican, with authority vested in several councils of state. In reality, be-
tween 1434 and 1494, power in Florence was held by the great Medici (MED-ih-
chee) banking family. Though not public officers, Cosimo (1434–1464) and
Lorenzo (1469–1492) ruled from behind the scenes. In central Italy Pope Alexan-
der VI (1492–1503), aided militarily and politically by his son Cesare Borgia
(CHE-zah-reh BAWR-zhuh), reasserted papal authority in the papal lands. South
of the Papal States, the kingdom of Naples was under the control of Aragon.
The major Italian city-states controlled the smaller ones, such as Siena, Man-
tua, Ferrara, and Modena, and competed furiously among themselves for territory.
The large cities used diplomacy, spies, paid informers, and any other available
means to get information that could be used to advance their ambitions. While the
states of northern Europe were moving toward centralization and consolidation,
the world of Italian politics resembled a jungle where the powerful dominated
the weak.
In one significant respect, however, the Italian city-states anticipated future
relations among competing European states after 1500. Whenever one Italian
state appeared to gain a predominant position within the peninsula, other states
combined to establish a balance of power against the major threat. In the forma-
tion of these alliances, Renaissance Italians invented the machinery of modern
diplomacy: permanent embassies with resident ambassadors in capitals where po-
litical relations and commercial ties needed continual monitoring. The resident
ambassador was one of the great achievements of the Italian Renaissance.
Economic and Political Developments 311
5°E 10°E 15°E 20°E

HOLY R OM AN E M P I R E
0 50 100 Km.
Major city-states
0 50 100 Mi. Minor city-states
DUCHY
Milan Brescia
DUCHY Padua
R
OF Venice 45°N
OF Lodi Este
E
Pavia M. OF
Turin Po R. MANTUA
P
F R ANCE SAVOY MILAN D. OF OT TO M A N
N
U
Parma FERRARA EMPIRE
Modena
B
SALUZZO D.
Genoa
L
OF Bologna Ravenna
REPUBLIC OF
I
G E N OA MODENA
REP. OF
C
REP. OF LUCCA Florence O
Urbino F
Ligurian Pisa Arno R.FLORENCE
Sea Arezzo
Siena PAPAL V
REP. Perugia E
Assisi N
OF A I
STATES d C
Elba
SIENA
Ti
ri E
a
ti
be
CORSICA
c
r R.
(to Genoa)
Se
Rome a
KINGDOM Bari
Naples
OF
Salerno
SARDINIA NAPLES 40°N
Ty r r h e n i a n S e a
Me
dit
er
ra Palermo
ne
an KINGDOM
Se OF
a SICILY
MAP 13.1 The Italian City-States, ca. 1494

In the fifteenth century the Italian city-states represented great wealth and cultural sophistication. The political divisions of the peninsula invited
foreign intervention.
At the end of the fifteenth century Venice, Florence, Milan, and the papacy
possessed great wealth and represented high cultural achievement. Wealthy and
divided, however, they were also an inviting target for invasion. When Florence
and Naples entered into an agreement to acquire Milanese territories, Milan
called on France for support.
The invasion of Italy in 1494 by the French king Charles VIII (r. 1483–1498)
inaugurated a new period in Italian and European power politics. Italy became
the focus of international ambitions and the battleground of foreign armies, par-
ticularly those of France and the Holy Roman Empire in a series of conflicts called
the Habsburg-Valois (HABZ-berg VAL-wah) Wars (named for the German and
Sec tion Review French dynasties). The Italian cities suffered severely from continual warfare, es-
pecially in the frightful sack of Rome in 1527 by imperial forces under the em-
• The first signs of the Renaissance ap- peror Charles V. Thus the failure of the city-states to form some federal system, to
peared in the city of Florence, Italy, a
city with wealthy merchants and papal
consolidate, or at least to establish a common foreign policy led to centuries of
bankers. subjection by outside invaders. Italy was not to achieve unification until 1870.
• To maintain order in the cities, mer-
chant guilds formed communes and
merged with the Italian feudal nobility
to create a powerful but politically
Intellectual Change
unstable oligarchy resented by the What were the key ideas of the Renaissance, and how were they different
common people. for men and women and for southern and northern Europeans?
• Italian cities were ruled by signori
(merchant oligarchs) who changed
The Renaissance was characterized by self-conscious awareness among fourteenth-
their households into courts, where
they could display their wealth through and fifteenth-century Italians that they were living in a new era. The realization
art, sculpture, architecture, painting, that something new and unique was happening first came to writers in the four-
music, and literature. teenth century, especially to the poet and humanist Francesco Petrarch (PEE-
• In Italy, the five powerful city-states of trahrk) (1304–1374). Petrarch thought that he was living at the start of a new age,
Venice, Milan, Florence, the kingdom a period of light following a long night of Gothic gloom. For Petrarch, the Ger-
of Naples, and the Papal States vied to manic migrations had caused a sharp cultural break with the glories of Rome and
expand their territories through alli-
inaugurated what he called the “Dark Ages.” Along with many of his contempo-
ances and ambassadors.
raries, Petrarch believed that he was witnessing a new golden age of intellectual
• Italy’s wealth, culture, and division of
achievement.
power made it a prime target for inva-
sion, resulting in the Habsburg-Valois
Wars, causing centuries of suffering and
rule by outsiders. Petrarch and other poets, writers, and artists showed a
Humanism deep interest in the ancient past, in both the physical
remains of the Roman Empire and classical Latin texts.
The study of Latin classics became known as the studia humanitates, usually trans-
lated as “liberal studies” or the “liberal arts.” Like all programs of study, the liberal
humanism The new philosophy that arts contained an implicit philosophy, which was generally known as humanism.
emphasized the critical study of Latin Humanism emphasized human beings, their achievements, interests, and capa-
and Greek literature with the goal of
understanding human nature.
bilities. Whereas medieval writers looked to the classics to reveal God, Renais-
sance humanists studied the classics to understand human nature.
Renaissance humanists retained a Christian perspective, however: men (and
women, though to a lesser degree) were made in the image and likeness of God.
For example, in a remarkable essay, On the Dignity of Man (1486), the Florentine
writer Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494) stressed that man possesses
great dignity because he was made as Adam in the image of God before the Fall
and as Christ after the Resurrection. According to Pico, man’s place in the uni-
verse is somewhere between the beasts and the angels, but because of the divine
image planted in him, there are no limits to what he can accomplish. Humanists
generally rejected classical ideas that were opposed to Christianity, or they sought
through reinterpretation an underlying harmony between the pagan and secular
and the Christian faith.
Interest in human achievement led humanists to emphasize the importance of
the individual. Groups such as families, guilds, and religious organizations contin-
ued to provide strong support for the individual and to exercise great social influ-
ence. Yet in the Renaissance, artists and intellectuals, unlike their counterparts in
individualism A basic feature of the Middle Ages, prized their own uniqueness. This attitude of individualism
the Italian Renaissance that stressed stressed the full development of one’s special capabilities and talents. The idea of
personality, uniqueness, genius, and
self-consciousness.
the “genius” who transcends traditions and rules is believed to have originated in
this period. Thirst for fame and the quest for glory drove Italian creativity. (See the
feature “Individuals in Society: Leonardo da Vinci.”)
Leonardo da Vinci
W hat makes a genius? An infinite capacity for tak-
ing pains? A deep curiosity about an extensive
variety of subjects? A divine spark as manifested by tal-
plans for hundreds of inventions, many of which would
become reality centuries later, such as the helicopter,
tank, machine gun, and parachute. He was hired by one
ents that far exceed the norm? Or is it just “one percent of the powerful new rulers in Italy, Duke Ludovico
inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration,” as Sforza of Milan, to design practical things
Thomas Edison said? To most observers, Leonardo da that the duke needed, including weapons,
Vinci was one of the greatest geniuses in the history of fortresses, and water systems, as well as to
the Western world. In fact, Leonardo was one of the in- produce works of art. Leonardo left Milan
dividuals that the Renaissance label “genius” was de- when Sforza was overthrown in war and
signed to describe: a special kind of human being with spent the last years of his life painting,
exceptional creative powers. drawing, and designing for the pope and
Leonardo (who, despite the title of a recent bestseller the French king.
and movie, is always called by his first name) was born in Leonardo experimented with new ma-
Vinci, near Florence, the illegitimate son of Caterina, a terials for painting and sculpture, some of
local peasant girl, and Ser Piero da Vinci, a notary pub- which worked and some of which did
lic. Caterina later married another native of Vinci. When not. The experimental method he used to
Ser Piero’s marriage to Donna Albrussia produced no paint The Last Supper caused the picture
children, he and his wife took in Leonardo. Ser Piero to deteriorate rapidly, and it began to
secured Leonardo’s apprenticeship with the painter and flake off the wall as soon as it was finished. Leonardo da Vinci, Lady
sculptor Andrea del Verrocchio in Florence. In 1472, Leonardo actually regarded it as never with an Ermine. The
when Leonardo was just twenty years old, he was listed as quite completed, for he could not find a enigmatic smile and
a master in Florence’s “Company of Artists.” model for the face of Christ that would smoky quality of this
portrait can be found in
Leonardo’s most famous portrait, Mona Lisa, shows a evoke the spiritual depth he felt it de-
many of Leonardo’s
woman with an enigmatic smile that Giorgio Vasari deserved. His gigantic equestrian statue in works. (Czartoryski
scribed as “so pleasing that it seemed divine rather than honor of Ludovico’s father, Duke Fran- Museum, Krakow/ The
human.” The portrait, probably of the young wife of a rich cesco Sforza, was never made. The clay Bridgeman Art Library)
Florentine merchant (her exact identity is hotly debated), model collapsed, and only notes survived.
may actually be the best-known painting in the history of He planned to write books on many sub-
art. One of its competitors in that designation would be jects but never finished any of them, leaving only note-
another work of Leonardo’s, The Last Supper, which has books. Leonardo once said that “a painter is not admirable
been called “the most revered painting in the world.” unless he is universal.” The patrons who supported
Leonardo’s reputation as a genius does not rest simply him—and he was supported very well—perhaps wished
on his paintings, however, which are actually few in that his inspirations would have been a bit less universal
number, but rather on the breadth of his abilities and in scope, or at least accompanied by more perspiration.
interests. In these, he is often understood to be the first
“Renaissance man,” a phrase we still use for a multi-
talented individual. He wanted to reproduce what the Questions for Analysis
eye can see, and he drew everything he saw around him, 1. In what ways do the notion of a “genius” and of a
including executed criminals hanging on gallows as well “Renaissance man” support one another? In what
as the beauties of nature. Trying to understand how the ways do they contradict one another? Which seems
human body worked, Leonardo studied live and dead a better description of Leonardo?
bodies, doing autopsies and dissections to investigate mus-
2. Has the idea of artistic genius changed since the
cles and circulation. He carefully analyzed the effects of
Renaissance? How?
light, using his analysis to paint strong contrasts of light
and shadow, and he experimented with perspective. Sources: Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Artists, vol. 1, trans. G. Bull
Leonardo used his drawings as the basis for his paint- (London: Penguin Books, 1965); S. B. Nuland, Leonardo da
ings and also as a tool of scientific investigation. He drew Vinci (New York: Lipper/Viking, 2000).
313
One of the central preoccupations of the humanists

Education was education and moral behavior. Humanists poured
out treatises, often in the form of letters, on the struc-
ture and goals of education and the training of rulers. They taught that a life active
in the world should be the aim of all educated individuals and that education was
not simply for private or religious purposes, but benefited the public good.
Humanists put their ideas into practice. They opened schools and academies
in Italian cities and courts in which pupils began with Latin grammar and rheto-
ric, went on to study Roman history and political philosophy, and then learned
Greek in order to study Greek literature and philosophy. These classics, humanists
taught, would provide models of how to write clearly, argue effectively, and speak
persuasively, important skills for future diplomats, lawyers, military leaders, busi-
nessmen, and politicians. Gradually, humanist education became the basis for
intermediate and advanced education for a large share of the males of the middle
and upper classes.
Humanists were ambivalent about education for women. While they saw the
value of exposing women to classical models of moral behavior and reasoning, they
also thought that a program of study that emphasized eloquence and action was
not proper for women, whose sphere was private and domestic. Humanists never
established schools for girls, though a few women of very high social status did gain
a humanist education from private tutors. The ideal Renaissance woman looked a
great deal more like her medieval counterpart than did the Renaissance man.
The Prince A treatise by Machiavelli on No book on education had broader influence than Baldassare Castiglione’s
ways to gain, keep, and expand power;
because of its subsequent impact it is
(ball-duh-SAH-ree kah-stee-lee-OW-nee ) The Courtier (1528). This treatise sought
probably the most important literary to train, discipline, and fashion the young man into the courtly ideal, the gentle-
work of the Renaissance. man. According to Castiglione, who himself was a courtier serving several differ-
ent rulers, the educated man of the upper class should have a
broad background in many academic subjects, and his spiri-
tual and physical as well as intellectual capabilities should be
trained. Castiglione envisioned a man who could compose a
sonnet, wrestle, sing a song and accompany himself on an
instrument, ride expertly, solve difficult mathematical prob-
lems, and, above all, speak and write eloquently. Castiglione
also included discussion of the perfect court lady, who, like
the courtier, was to be well educated and able to play a musi-
cal instrument, to paint, and to dance. Physical beauty, deli-
cacy, affability, and modesty were also important qualities for
court ladies.
No Renaissance book on any topic

Political Thought has been more widely read than
the short political treatise The
Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli (NICK-oh-loh mak-ee-uh-
VEL-ee) (1469–1527). The subject of The Prince (1513) is
Raphael: Portrait of Castiglione

In this portrait by Raphael, the most sought-after portrait painter of the
Renaissance, Castiglione is shown dressed exactly as he advised courtiers
to dress, in elegant, but subdued clothing that would enhance the splendor
of the court, but never outshine the ruler. (Scala/Art Resource, NY)
Intellectual Change 315
political power: how the ruler should gain, maintain, and increase it. Its hero is
Cesare Borgia, who ruthlessly conquered the Papal States and exacted total obedi-
ence from them (see page 310). As a good humanist, Machiavelli explores the
problems of human nature and concludes that human beings are selfish and out
to advance their own interests. This pessimistic view of humanity led him to main-
tain that the prince might have to manipulate the people in any way he finds
necessary:
For a man who, in all respects, will carry out only his professions of good, will be
apt to be ruined amongst so many who are evil. A prince therefore who desires to
maintain himself must learn to be not always good, but to be so or not as necessity
may require.1
The prince should combine the cunning of a fox with the ferocity of a lion to
achieve his goals. Asking rhetorically whether it is better for a ruler to be loved or
feared, Machiavelli writes, “It will naturally be answered that it would be desirable
to be both the one and the other; but as it is difficult to be both at the same time,
it is much more safe to be feared than to be loved, when you have to choose be-
tween the two.”2
Unlike medieval political theorists, Machiavelli maintained that the ruler
should be concerned with the way things actually are rather than aiming for an
ethical ideal. The sole test of a “good” government is whether it is effective,
whether the ruler increases his power. Machiavelli did not advocate amoral behav-
ior, but he believed that political action cannot be restricted by moral consider-
ations. Nevertheless, on the basis of a crude interpretation of The Prince, the word
Machiavellian entered the language as a synonym for the politically devious, cor-
rupt, and crafty, indicating actions in which the end justifies the means. The ulti-
mate significance of Machiavelli rests on two ideas: first, that one permanent social
order reflecting God’s will cannot be established, and second, that politics has its
own laws, based on expediency, not morality.
Machiavelli’s The Prince is often seen as a prime ex-

Secular Spirit ample of another aspect of the Renaissance, secularism.
Secularism involves a basic concern with the material secularism A way of thinking that
world instead of with the eternal world of spirit. A secular way of thinking tends to tends to find the ultimate explanation
of everything and the final end of human
find the ultimate explanation of everything and the final end of human beings beings in what reason and the senses can
within the limits of what the senses can discover. Even though medieval business discover, rather than in any spiritual or
people ruthlessly pursued profits and medieval monks fought fiercely over prop- transcendental belief.
erty, the dominant ideals focused on the otherworldly, on life after death. Renais-
sance people often had strong and deep spiritual interests, but in their increasingly
secular society, attention was concentrated on the here and now. Wealth allowed
greater material pleasures, a more comfortable life, and the leisure time to appre-
ciate and patronize the arts. The rich, social-climbing residents of Venice, Flor-
ence, Genoa, and Rome came to see life more as an opportunity to be enjoyed
than as a painful pilgrimage to the City of God.
In On Pleasure, humanist Lorenzo Valla (VAHL-lah) (1406–1457) defends the
pleasures of the senses as the highest good. Scholars praise Valla as a father of
modern historical criticism. His study On the False Donation of Constantine (1444)
demonstrates by careful textual examination that an anonymous eighth-century
document supposedly giving the papacy jurisdiction over vast territories in western
Europe was a forgery. Medieval people had accepted the Donation of Constantine
as a reality, and the proof that it was an invention weakened the foundations of
Bennozzo Gozzoli: Procession of the Magi, 1461

This segment of a huge fresco covering three walls of a chapel in the
Medici Palace in Florence shows members of the Medici family and other
contemporary individuals in a procession accompanying the biblical
three wise men as they brought gifts to the infant Jesus. Reflecting the
self-confidence of his patrons, Gozzoli places the elderly Cosimo and
Piero at the head of the procession, accompanied by their grooms.
(Scala/Art Resource, NY)
papal claims to temporal authority. Lorenzo Valla’s work ex-

emplifies the application of critical scholarship to old and
almost sacred writings as well as the new secular spirit of the
Renaissance.
The tales in The Decameron (1350–1353), by the Floren-
tine Giovanni Boccaccio (jo-VAH-nee boh-KAH-chee-oh)
(1313–1375), which describe ambitious merchants, lecher-
ous friars, and cuckolded husbands, portray a frankly ac-
quisitive, sensual, and worldly society. Although Boccaccio’s
figures were stock literary characters, The Decameron con-
tains none of the “contempt of the world” theme so perva-
sive in medieval literature. Renaissance writers justified the
accumulation and enjoyment of wealth with references to
ancient authors.
Nor did church leaders do much to combat the new
secular spirit. In the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries,
the papal court and the households of the cardinals were
just as worldly as those of great urban patricians. Of course,
most of the popes and higher church officials had come
from the bourgeois aristocracy. Renaissance popes beauti-
fied the city of Rome, patronized artists and men of letters,
and expended enormous enthusiasm and huge sums of
money. Pope Julius II (1503–1513) tore down the old Saint
Peter’s Basilica and began work on the present structure in
1506. Michelangelo’s dome for Saint Peter’s is still considered his greatest archi-
tectural work.
Despite their interest in secular matters, however, few people (including Ma-
chiavelli) questioned the basic tenets of the Christian religion. The thousands of
pious paintings, sculptures, processions, and pilgrimages of the Renaissance pe-
riod prove that strong religious feeling persisted.
In the last quarter of the fifteenth century, students

Christian Humanism from the Low Countries, France, Germany, and Eng-
land flocked to Italy, imbibed the “new learning,” and
Christian humanists Northern carried it back to their own countries. Northern humanists, often called Christian
humanists who interpreted Italian ideas humanists, interpreted Italian ideas about and attitudes toward classical antiquity,
about and attitudes toward classical
antiquity, individualism, and humanism
individualism, and humanism in terms of their own traditions. They developed a
in terms of their own traditions. program for broad social reform based on Christian ideals.
Christian humanists were interested in an ethical way of life. To achieve it,
they believed that the best elements of classical and Christian cultures should be
combined. For example, the classical ideals of calmness, stoical patience, and
Intellectual Change 317
broad-mindedness should be joined in human conduct with the Christian virtues

of love, faith, and hope. Northern humanists also stressed the use of reason, rather
than acceptance of dogma, as the foundation for an ethical way of life. They be-
lieved that, although human nature had been corrupted by sin, it was fundamen-
tally good and capable of improvement through education.
The Englishman Thomas More (1478–1535) envisioned a society that would
bring out this inherent goodness in his revolutionary book Utopia (1516). Utopia,
whose title means both “a good place” and “nowhere,” describes an ideal com-
munity on an island somewhere off the mainland of the New World. All children
receive a good education, primarily in the Greco-Roman classics, and learning
does not cease with maturity, for the goal of all education is to develop rational
faculties. Adults divide their days between manual labor or business pursuits and
intellectual activities. Because profits from business and property are held in com-
mon, there is absolute social equality. Citizens of Utopia lead an ideal, nearly
perfect existence because they live by reason; their institutions are perfect.
Contrary to the long-prevailing view that vice and violence existed because
people were basically corrupt, More maintained that acquisitiveness and private
property promoted all sorts of vices and civil disorders. Since society protected
private property, society’s flawed institutions were responsible for corruption and
war. According to More, the key to improvement and reform of the individual was
reform of the social institutions that molded the individual. His ideas were pro-
foundly original in the sixteenth century.
Better known by contemporaries than Thomas More was the Dutch humanist
Desiderius Erasmus (dez-ih-DARE-ee-us uh-RAZ-muhs) (1466?–1536) of Rotter-
dam. His fame rested largely on his exceptional knowledge of Greek and the Bible.
Erasmus’s long list of publications includes The Education of a Christian Prince
(1504), a book combining idealistic and practical suggestions for the formation of
a ruler’s character through the careful study of Plutarch, Aristotle, Cicero, and
Plato; The Praise of Folly (1509), a satire of worldly wisdom and a plea for the
simple and spontaneous Christian faith of children; and, most important, a criti-
cal edition of the Greek New Testament (1516). In the preface to the New Testa-
ment, Erasmus explained the purpose of his great work:
I wish that even the weakest woman should read the Gospel—should read the
epistles of Paul. And I wish these were translated into all languages, so that they
might be read and understood, not only by Scots and Irishmen, but also by Turks
and Saracens.3
Two fundamental themes run through all of Erasmus’s work. First, education
is the means to reform, the key to moral and intellectual improvement. The core
of education ought to be study of the Bible and the classics. (See the feature “Lis-
tening to the Past: An Age of Gold” on pages 335–336.) Second, the essence of
Erasmus’s thought is, in his own phrase, “the philosophy of Christ.” By this Eras-
mus meant that Christianity is an inner attitude of the heart or spirit. Christianity
is not formalism, special ceremonies, or law; Christianity is Christ—his life and
what he said and did, not what theologians have written.
The fourteenth-century humanist Petrarch and the

The Printed Word sixteenth-century humanist Erasmus had similar ideas
about many things, but the immediate impact of their
ideas was very different because of one thing: the printing press with movable
metal type. The ideas of Petrarch were spread slowly from person to person by
The Print Shop

This sixteenth-century engraving
captures the busy world of a print
shop. On the left, men set pieces of
type, and an individual wearing
glasses checks a copy. At the rear,
another applies ink to the type, while
a man carries in fresh paper on his
head. At the right, the master printer
operates the press, while a boy
removes the printed pages and sets
them to dry. The well-dressed figure
in the right foreground may be the
patron checking to see whether his
job is done. (Giraudon/Art Resource, NY)
hand copying. The ideas of Erasmus were spread quickly through print, in which
hundreds or thousands of identical copies could be made in a short time. Print
shops were gathering places for those interested in new ideas. Though printers
were trained through apprenticeships just like blacksmiths or butchers, they had
connections to the world of politics, art, and scholarship that other craftsmen
did not.
Printing with movable metal type developed in Germany in the middle of the
fifteenth century as a combination of existing technologies. Several metalsmiths,
most prominently Johan Gutenberg, recognized that the metal stamps used to
mark signs on jewelry could be covered with ink and used to mark symbols onto a
surface, in the same way that other craftsmen were using carved wood stamps to
print books. (This woodblock printing technique originated in China and Korea
centuries earlier.) Gutenberg and his assistants made stamps—later called type—
for every letter of the alphabet and built racks that held the type in rows. This type
could be rearranged for every page and so used over and over. The printing revolu-
tion was also enabled by the ready availability of paper, which was also made using
techniques that had originated in China.
Gutenberg’s invention involved no special secret technology or materials, and
he was not the only one to recognize the huge market for books. Other craftsmen
made their own type, built their own presses, and bought their own paper, setting
themselves up in business (see Map 13.2). Historians estimate that somewhere
between 8 million and 20 million books were printed in this manner in Europe
before 1500, many more than the number of books produced in all of Western
history up to that point.
The effects of the invention of movable-type printing were not felt overnight.
Nevertheless, within a half century of the publication of Gutenberg’s Bible of
1456, movable type had brought about radical changes. Printing transformed both
the private and the public lives of Europeans. It gave hundreds or even thousands
of people identical books, so that they could more easily discuss the ideas that the
0˚ 10˚E 20˚E
Printing centers with
N O R WAY date of establishment
SWEDEN 15th century
60˚N
10˚W
16th century
SCOTLAND Stockholm
1483 Political boundaries
Edinburgh in 1490
1507
North
D
Sea
N
A
DENMARK Baltic
EL
30˚E
Dublin Copenhagen
IR
1551 1493
Sea
ENGLAND
Oxford Lübeck 1475

1478 Amsterdam Emden
1554 Hamburg 1491
1523
London 1480 Deventer 1477 H O LY Berlin
Utrecht 1472 R O MAN 1540
Antwerp 1470 EM P I R E PO L AN D
Bruges 1474 Leipzig
Cologne 1466
Brussels 1474 Bonn 1543 1481
AT L A N T I C Wroclaw 1475 50˚N
Frankfurt 1478
Mainz
OC E AN Paris 1448
Bamberg Prague 1478 Kraków 1474
1470 1460 Nuremberg
.
eR
Strasbourg 1470
in
1460 Augsburg 1468
Rh
FRANCE Basel 1462 Munich
Bern 1482 Vienna
Cluny 1483 Zurich 1482 Buda
1525 1508 1473 H U N GARY MOLDAVIA
Lyons 1473 Geneva
1478
R.
Milan Venice
V
R hô ne
1470 1469 Belgrade

E
AL
NAVARRE 1552
N
UG
I
C
E D an u b e R . Black Sea
RT
Florence
Madrid 1471
PO
1499 ARAGON PAPAL

STATES
Lisbon Barcelona OTTOMAN
1489 1475
C ASTI LE Subiaco EMPIRE
Constantinople
Rome 1465 1488
Valencia 1467 Thessalonica
1473 1515
Naples NAPLES 40˚N
1471
GRANADA
Medi
ter
ran
N
ea Reggio di Calabria
n 1480
NORTH AFRICA
Se
0 150 300 Km.
a
0 150 300 Mi.
MAPPING THE PAST

MAP 13.2 The Growth of Printing in Europe
The speed with which artisans spread printing technology across Europe provides strong evidence for the existing market in reading material.
Presses in the Ottoman Empire were first established by Jewish immigrants who printed works in Hebrew, Greek, and Spanish. Use this map and
those in other chapters to answer the following questions: [1] What part of Europe had the greatest number of printing presses by 1550? Why
might this be? [2] Printing was developed in response to a market for reading materials. Use Maps 11.1 and 11.2 (pages 254 and 260) to help
explain why printing spread the way it did. [3] Many historians also see printing as an important factor in the spread of the Protestant
Reformation. Use Map 14.2 (page 358) to test this assertion.
books contained with one another in person or through letters. Printed materials
reached an invisible public, allowing silent individuals to join causes and groups
of individuals widely separated by geography to form a common identity; this new
group consciousness could compete with older, localized loyalties.
Government and church leaders both used and worried about printing. They
printed laws, declarations of war, battle accounts, and propaganda, and they also
attempted to censor books and authors whose ideas they thought were wrong. Of-
ficials developed lists of prohibited books and authors, enforcing their prohibitions
Sec tion Review by confiscating books, arresting printers and booksellers, or destroying the presses
of printers who disobeyed. None of this was very effective, and books were printed
• Humanist artists sought to understand secretly, with fake title pages, authors, and places of publication, and smuggled all
human nature by using the idea of
genius to develop their talents.
over Europe.
Printing also stimulated the literacy of laypeople and eventually came to have
• Humanists worked for the common
a deep effect on their private lives. Although most of the earliest books and pam-
good, setting up schools to enhance
human mental, spiritual, and physical phlets dealt with religious subjects, printers produced anything that would sell.
capabilities. They printed professional reference sets for lawyers, doctors, and students, and
• Machiavelli’s The Prince concludes that historical romances, biographies, and how-to manuals for the general public. They
humans are selfish and a Godly social discovered that illustrations increased a book’s sales, so they published both history
order cannot exist, thus acknowledging and pornography full of woodcuts and engravings. Single-page broadsides and fly-
that politics is power, not morality. sheets allowed great public events and “wonders” such as comets or two-headed
• Secularism marked a shift from con- calves to be experienced vicariously by a stay-at-home readership. Since books and
cern with the spiritual to an interest other printed materials were read aloud to illiterate listeners, print bridged the gap
in pleasure, as expressed in Valla’s
between the written and oral cultures.
On Pleasure and Boccaccio’s The
Decameron.
• Christian humanists believed that
Christian virtues (faith, hope, love) and Art and the Artist
humanist ideals (education and reason)
together were the means to reform How did changes in art both reflect and shape new ideas?
social institutions.
• Movable-type printing and a ready sup- No feature of the Renaissance evokes greater admiration than its artistic master-
ply of paper meant the easy distribution pieces. The 1400s (quattrocento) and 1500s (cinquecento) bore witness to dazzling
and reading aloud of books, enhancing
creativity in painting, architecture, and sculpture. In all the arts, the city of Flor-
the exchange of ideas between the
literate and the nonliterate. ence led the way. But Florence was not the only artistic center, for Rome and
Venice also became important, and northern Europeans perfected their own styles.
In early Renaissance Italy, powerful urban groups com-

Art and Power missioned works of art. The Florentine cloth mer-
chants, for example, delegated Filippo Brunelleschi
(Fill-EEP-oh broon-el-ES-kee) to build the magnificent dome on the cathedral of
Florence and selected Lorenzo Ghiberti (law-REN-tsow gee-BER-tee) to design
the bronze doors of the Baptistery. These works represented the merchants’ domi-
nant influence in the community.
Increasingly in the later fifteenth century, individuals and oligarchs, rather
than corporate groups, sponsored works of art. Patrician merchants and bankers
and popes and princes spent vast sums on the arts as a means of glorifying them-
selves and their families. Patrons varied in their level of involvement as a work
progressed; some simply ordered a specific subject or scene, while others oversaw
the work of the artist or architect very closely, suggesting themes and styles and
demanding changes while the work was in progress.
In addition to power, art reveals changing patterns of consumption in Renais-
sance Italy. In the rural world of the Middle Ages, society had been organized for
war and men of wealth spent their money on military gear. As Italian nobles settled
in towns (see page 248), they adjusted to an urban culture. Rather than employing
knights for warfare, cities hired mercenaries. Expenditure on military hardware
declined. For the rich merchant or the noble recently arrived from the country-
side, a grand urban palace represented the greatest outlay of cash. Wealthy indi-
viduals and families ordered gold dishes, embroidered tablecloths, wall tapestries,
paintings on canvas (an innovation), and sculptural decorations to adorn their
homes. By the late sixteenth century the Strozzi banking family of Florence spent
Art and the Artist 321
more on household goods than on anything else except food; the value of those
furnishings was three times that of their silver and jewelry.
After the palace itself, the private chapel within the palace symbolized the larg-
est expenditure for the wealthy of the sixteenth century. Decorated with religious
scenes and equipped with ecclesiastical furniture, the chapel served as the center
of the household’s religious life and its cult of remembrance of the dead.
The content and style of Renaissance art were often

Subjects and Style different from those of the Middle Ages. The individ-
ual portrait emerged as a distinct artistic genre. In the
fifteenth century members of the newly rich middle class often had themselves
painted in scenes of romantic chivalry or courtly society. Rather than reflecting a
spiritual ideal, as medieval painting and sculpture tended to do, Renaissance por-
traits showed human ideals, often portrayed in a more realistic style. The Floren-
tine painter Giotto (JAW-toh) (1276–1337) led the way in the use of realism; his
treatment of the human body and face replaced the formal stiffness and artificiality
that had long characterized representation of the human body. Piero della Fran-
cesca (1420–1492) and Andrea Mantegna (1430/31–1506) seem to have pioneered
perspective in painting, the linear representation of distance and space on a flat
surface. The sculptor Donatello (1386–1466) revived the classical figure, with its
balance and self-awareness. In architecture, Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1446)
looked to the classical past for inspiration, designing a hospital for orphans and
Botticelli: Primavera, or Spring (ca. 1482)

Venus, the Roman goddess of love, is flanked on her left by Flora, goddess of flowers and fertility, and on her right by
the Three Graces, goddesses of banquets, dance, and social occasions. Above, Venus’s son Cupid, the god of love,
shoots darts of desire, while at the far right the wind god Zephyrus chases the nymph Chloris. Botticelli captured the
ideal for female beauty in the Renaissance: slender, with pale skin, a high forehead, red-blond hair, and sloping
shoulders. (Digital image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by Scala/Art Resource, NY)
Rogier van der Weyden: Deposition

Taking as his subject the suffering and death of Jesus, a popular theme of Netherlandish piety, van der Weyden describes
(in an inverted T) Christ’s descent from the cross, surrounded by nine sorrowing figures. An appreciation of human anatomy,
the rich fabrics of the clothes, and the pierced and bloody hands of Jesus were all intended to touch the viewers’
emotions. (Museo del Prado/Scala/Art Resource, NY)
foundlings in which all proportions—of the windows, height, floor plan, and covered
walkway with a series of rounded arches—were carefully thought out to achieve a
sense of balance and harmony. As the fifteenth century advanced, classical themes
and motifs, such as the lives and loves of pagan gods and goddesses, figured in-
creasingly in painting and sculpture. Religious topics, such as the Annunciation of
the Virgin and the Nativity, remained popular among both patrons and artists, but
frequently the patron had himself and his family portrayed in the scene.
Art produced in northern Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
tended to be more religious in orientation than that produced in Italy. Some
Flemish painters, notably Rogier van der Weyden (1399/1400–1464) and Jan van
Eyck (1366–1441), were considered the artistic equals of Italian painters and were
much admired in Italy. Van Eyck, one of the earliest artists to use oil-based paints
successfully, shows the Flemish love for detail in paintings such as Ghent Altar-
piece and the portrait Giovanni Arnolfini and His Bride; the effect is great realism
and remarkable attention to human personality. Northern architecture was little
influenced by the classical revival so obvious in Renaissance Italy.
In the fifteenth century the center of the new art shifted to Rome, where
wealthy cardinals and popes wanted visual expression of the church’s and their
own families’ power and piety. Michelangelo, a Florentine who had spent his
Art and the Artist 323
young adulthood at the court of Lorenzo de’ Medici, went to Rome in about 1500
and began the series of statues, paintings, and architectural projects from which
he gained an international reputation: the Pieta, Moses, the redesigning of the
Capitoline Hill in central Rome, and, most famously, the ceiling and altar wall of
the Sistine Chapel. Pope Julius II, who commissioned the Sistine Chapel, de-
manded that Michelangelo work as fast as he could and frequently visited the artist
at his work with suggestions and criticisms. Michelangelo complained in person
and by letter about the pope’s meddling, but his reputation did not match the
power of the pope, and he kept working.
Raphael Sanzio (rah-fahy-EL) (1483–1520), another Florentine, got the com-
mission for frescoes in the papal apartments, and in his relatively short life he
painted hundreds of portraits and devotional images, becoming the most sought-
after artist in Europe. Raphael also oversaw a large workshop with many collab-
orators and apprentices—who assisted on the less difficult sections of some
paintings—and wrote treatises on his philosophy of art in which he emphasized
the importance of imitating nature and developing an orderly sequence of design
and proportion.
Venice became another artistic center in the sixteenth century. Titian (TISH-
uhn) (1490–1576) produced portraits, religious subjects, and mythological scenes,
developing techniques of painting in oil without doing elaborate drawings first,
which speeded up the process and pleased patrons eager to display their acquisi-
tion. Titian and other sixteenth-century painters developed an artistic style known
in English as “mannerism” (from maniera or “style” in Italian) in which artists
sometimes distorted figures, exaggerated musculature, and heightened color to
express emotion and drama more intently. (This is the style in which Michelan-
gelo painted the Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel, shown in the frontispiece to
this chapter.)
Whether in Italy or northern Europe, most Renaissance artists trained in the
workshops of older artists; Botticelli, Raphael, Titian, and at times even Michelan-
gelo were known for their large, well-run, and prolific workshops. Though they
might be “men of genius,” artists were still expected to be well trained in proper
artistic techniques and stylistic conventions, for the notion that artistic genius
could show up in the work of an untrained artist did not emerge until the twenti-
eth century. Beginning artists spent years copying drawings and paintings, learning
how to prepare paint and other artistic materials, and, by the sixteenth century,
reading books about design and composition. Younger artists gathered together in
the evenings for further drawing practice; by the later sixteenth century some of
these informal groups had turned into more formal artistic “academies,” the first
of which was begun in 1563 in Florence by Vasari under the patronage of the
Medicis.
The types of art in which more women were active, such as textiles, needle-
work, and painting on porcelain, were not regarded as “major arts,” but only as
“minor” or “decorative” arts. Like painting, embroidery changed in the Renais-
sance to become more classical in its subject matter, naturalistic, and visually
complex. Embroiderers were not trained to view their work as products of indi-
vidual genius, however, so they rarely included their names on their works, and
there is no way to discover who they were.
Several women did become well known as painters in their day. Stylistically,
their works are different from one another, but their careers show many similari-
ties. The majority of female painters were the daughters of painters or of minor
noblemen with ties to artistic circles. Many were eldest daughters or came from
families in which there were no sons, so their fathers took unusual interest in their
Artemisia Gentileschi: Esther

Before Ahasuerus (ca. 1630)
In this oil painting, Gentileschi
(jen-tee-LES-kee) shows an Old
Testament scene of the Jewish woman
Esther who saved her people from being
killed by her husband, King Ahasuerus.
This deliverance is celebrated in the
Jewish holiday of Purim. Both figures
are in the elaborate dress worn in
Renaissance courts. Typical of a female
painter, Artemisia Gentileschi was
trained by her father. She mastered
the dramatic style favored in the early
seventeenth century and became known
especially for her portraits of strong
biblical and mythological heroines.
(Image copyright © The Metropolitan Museum
of Art /Art Resource, NY)
careers. Many women began their careers before they were twenty and produced
far fewer paintings after they married, or stopped painting entirely. Women were
Sec tion Review not allowed to study the male nude, which was viewed as essential if one wanted
• Individuals and oligarchs spent elabo- to paint large history paintings with many figures. Women could also not learn the
rate sums on works of art to display their technique of fresco, in which colors are applied directly to wet plaster walls, be-
wealth and power. cause such works had to be done out in public, which was judged inappropriate
• Art began to be more realistic and show for women. Joining a group of male artists for informal practice was also seen as
human ideals, often portraying indi- improper, and the artistic academies that were established were for men only. Like
viduals or families. universities, humanist academies, and most craft guild shops, artistic workshops
• Rome and Venice gained international were male-only settings in which men of different ages came together for training
fame as art centers, producing artists and created bonds of friendship, influence, patronage, and sometimes intimacy.
such as Michelangelo, Raphael Sanzio,
and the “mannerism” painter, Titian. Women were not alone in being excluded from the institutions of Renaissance
culture. Though a few “rare men of genius” such as Leonardo or Michelangelo
• Leonardo da Vinci epitomized the
“Renaissance man” as a painter, scien- emerged from artisanal backgrounds, most scholars and artists came from families
tist, and inventor. with at least some money. Renaissance culture did not influence the lives of most
• Young artists became apprentices, people in cities and did not affect life in the villages at all. A small, highly educated
creating formal groups called “acad- minority of literary humanists and artists created the culture of and for an exclusive
emies” that excluded women. elite. The Renaissance maintained, or indeed enhanced, a gulf between the learned
minority and the uneducated multitude that has survived for many centuries.
Social Hierarchies
What were the key social hierarchies in Renaissance Europe, and how did
ideas about hierarchy shape people’s lives?
The division between educated and uneducated people was only one of many
social hierarchies evident in the Renaissance. Every society has social hierarchies;
in ancient Rome, for example, there were patricians and plebeians (see page 89).
Social Hierarchies 325
Such hierarchies are to some degree descriptions of social reality, but they are also
idealizations—that is, they describe how people imagined their society to be, with-
out all the messy reality of social-climbing plebeians or groups that did not fit the
standard categories. Social hierarchies in the Renaissance built on those of the
Middle Ages but also developed new features that contributed to modern social
hierarchies.
Renaissance people did not use the word race the way
Race we do, but often used “race,” “people,” and “nation”
interchangeably for ethnic, national, and religious
groups—the French race, the Jewish nation, the Irish people, and so on. They did
make distinctions based on skin color that provide some of the background for
later conceptualizations of race, but these distinctions were interwoven with other
characteristics when people thought about human differences.
Ever since the time of the Roman republic, a few black Africans had lived in
western Europe. They had come, along with white slaves, as the spoils of war. Even
after the collapse of the Roman Empire, Muslim and Christian merchants contin-
ued to import them. Unstable political conditions in many parts of Africa enabled
enterprising merchants to seize people and sell them into slavery. Local authorities
afforded them no protection. Long tradition, moreover, sanctioned the practice of
slavery. The evidence of medieval art attests to the continued presence of Africans
in Europe throughout the Middle Ages and to Europeans’ awareness of them.
Beginning in the fifteenth century sizable numbers of black slaves entered
Europe. Portuguese sailors brought perhaps a thousand Africans a year to the mar-
kets of Seville, Barcelona, Marseilles (mahr-SAY), and Genoa. In the late fifteenth
century this flow increased, with thousands of people leaving the west African
coast. By 1530 between four thousand and five thousand were being sold to
the Portuguese each year. By the mid-sixteenth century blacks, slave and free,
Carpaccio: Black Laborers on

the Venetian Docks (detail)
Enslaved and free blacks, besides
working as gondoliers on the Venetian
canals, served on the docks: here, seven
black men careen—clean, caulk, and
repair—a ship. Carpaccio’s (kahr-
PAH-choh) reputation as one of
Venice’s outstanding painters rests on
his eye for details of everyday life.
(Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice/Scala/Art
Resource, NY)
constituted about 10 percent of the population of the Portuguese cities of Lis-

bon and Évora and roughly 3 percent of the Portuguese population. In the Iberian
peninsula, African slaves intermingled with the people they lived among and
sometimes intermarried. Cities such as Lisbon had significant numbers of people
of mixed African and European descent.
Although blacks were concentrated in the Iberian Peninsula, there must have
been some Africans in northern Europe as well. In the 1580s, for example, Queen
Elizabeth I of England complained that there were too many “blackamoores”
competing with needy English people for places as domestic servants.4 Black ser-
vants were much sought after; the medieval interest in curiosities, the exotic, and
the marvelous continued in the Renaissance. Italian aristocrats had their portraits
painted with their black pageboys to indicate their wealth (see the illustration on
page 316, in which Gozzoli’s depiction of Cosimo de’ Medici shows him with a
black groom). Blacks were so greatly in demand at the Renaissance courts of
northern Italy, in fact, that the Venetians defied papal threats of excommunica-
tion to secure them. In 1491 Isabella of Este, duchess of Mantua, instructed her
agent to secure a black girl between four and eight years old, “shapely and as black
as possible.” The duchess saw the child as a source of entertainment: “We shall
make her very happy and shall have great fun with her.” She hoped the girl would
become “the best buffoon in the world,”5 as the cruel ancient practice of a noble
household’s retaining a professional “fool” for the family’s amusement persisted
through the Renaissance—and down to the twentieth century. Tradition, stretch-
ing back at least as far as the thirteenth century, connected blacks with music and
dance. In Renaissance Spain and Italy, blacks performed as dancers, as actors
and actresses in courtly dramas, and as musicians, sometimes making up full
orchestras.
Africans were not simply amusements at court. In Portugal, Spain, and Italy,
slaves supplemented the labor force in virtually all occupations—as servants, agri-
cultural laborers, craftsmen, and as seamen on ships going to Lisbon and Africa.
Agriculture in Europe did not involve large plantations, so large-scale agricultural
slavery did not develop there; African slaves formed the primary work force on the
sugar plantations set up by Europeans on the Atlantic islands in the late fifteenth
century, however (see page 386).
Until the voyages down the African coast in the late fifteenth century, Europe-
ans had little concrete knowledge of Africans and their cultures. They perceived
Africa as a remote place, the home of strange people isolated by heresy and Islam
from superior European civilization. Africans’ contact, even as slaves, with Chris-
tian Europeans could only “improve” the blacks, they thought. The expanding
slave trade only reinforced negative preconceptions about the inferiority of black
Africans.
The notion of class—working class, middle class, up-

Class per class—did not exist in the Renaissance. By the thir-
teenth century, however, and even more so by the
fifteenth, the idea of a changeable hierarchy based on wealth, what would later
come to be termed “social class,” was emerging alongside the medieval concept of
orders (see page 221). This was particularly true in towns. Most residents of towns
were technically members of the “third estate,” that is “those who work” rather
than “those who fight” and “those who pray.” However, this group now included
wealthy merchants who oversaw vast trading empires and lived in splendor that
rivaled the richest nobles. As we saw earlier, in many cities these merchants had
Social Hierarchies 327
Italian City Scene

In this detail from a fresco by the Italian painter Lorenzo Lotto,
the artist captures the mixing of social groups in a Renaissance
Italian city. The crowd of men in the right foreground includes
wealthy merchants in elaborate hats and colorful coats. Two
mercenary soldiers (carrying a sword and a pike), probably
in hire to a condottiero, wear short doublets and tight hose
stylishly slit to reveal colored undergarments, while boys play
with toy weapons at their feet. Clothing like that of the soldiers,
which emphasized the masculine form, was frequently the
target of sumptuary laws both for its expense and its
“indecency.” At the left, women sell vegetables and bread,
which would have been a common sight at any city
marketplace. (Scala/Art Resource, NY)
gained political power to match their economic

might, becoming merchant oligarchs who ruled
through city councils.
The development of a hierarchy of wealth did
not mean an end to the hierarchy of orders, however,
and even poorer nobility still had higher status. If
this had not been the case, wealthy Italian merchants
would not have bothered to buy noble titles and
country villas as they began doing in the fifteenth
century, nor would wealthy English or Spanish mer-
chants have been eager to marry their daughters and
sons into often impoverished noble families. The no-
bility maintained its status in most parts of Europe not by maintaining rigid
boundaries, but by taking in and integrating the new social elite of wealth.
Along with being tied to the hierarchy of orders, social status was also linked
with considerations of honor. Among the nobility, for example, certain weapons
and battle tactics were favored because they were viewed as more honorable.
Among urban dwellers, certain occupations, such as city executioner or manager
of the municipal brothel, might be well paid but were understood to be “dishonor-
able” and so of low status.
Renaissance people would not have understood the

Gender word gender to refer to categories of people, but they
would have easily grasped the concept. Toward the
end of the fourteenth century, learned men (and a few women) began what was
termed the “debate about women” (querelle des femmes), a debate about women’s debate about women Debate among
character and nature that would last for centuries. Misogynist (mi-SOJ-uh-nist) writers and thinkers about women’s
qualities and proper role in society.
critiques of women from both clerical and secular authors denounced females as
devious, domineering, and demanding. In answer, several authors compiled long
lists of famous and praiseworthy women exemplary for their loyalty, bravery, and
morality. Christine de Pizan was among those writers who were not only interested
in defending women, but also in exploring the reasons behind women’s secondary
status—that is, why the great philosophers, statesmen, and poets had generally
been men. In this they were anticipating recent discussions about the “social con-
struction of gender” by six hundred years. (See the feature “Listening to the Past:
Christine de Pizan” in Chapter 12 on pages 305–306.)
With the development of the printing press, popular interest in the debate
about women grew, and works were translated, reprinted, and shared around Eu-
rope. Prints that juxtaposed female virtues and vices were also very popular, with
the virtuous women depicted as those of the classical or biblical past and the vice-
ridden dressed in contemporary clothes. The favorite metaphor for the virtuous
wife was either the snail or the tortoise, both animals that never leave their “houses”
and are totally silent, although such images were never as widespread as those
depicting wives beating their husbands or hiding their lovers from them.
Beginning in the sixteenth century, the debate about women also became one
about female rulers, sparked primarily by dynastic accidents in many countries,
including Spain, England, France, and Scotland, which led to women serving as
advisers to child kings or ruling in their own right (see pages 330 and 353). The
questions were vigorously and at times viciously disputed. They directly concerned
the social construction of gender: could a woman’s being born into a royal family
Sec tion Review
and educated to rule allow her to overcome the limitations of her sex? Should it?
• Social hierarchies of the Renaissance Or stated another way: which was (or should be) the stronger determinant of char-
were based on how people imagined acter and social role, gender or rank? There were no successful rebellions against
their societies to be, not on how soci- female rulers simply because they were women, but in part this was because fe-
ety actually worked.
male rulers, especially Queen Elizabeth I of England, emphasized qualities re-
• Black Africans first came to Europe garded as masculine—physical bravery, stamina, wisdom, duty—whenever they
in Roman times as spoils of war, but
were not present in great numbers appeared in public.
until the Renaissance and the onset Ideas about women’s and men’s proper roles determined the actions of ordi-
of the slave trade. nary men and women even more forcefully. The dominant notion of the “true”
• Free and enslaved blacks worked in man was that of the married head of household, so men whose class and age would
all occupations, but the wealthy have normally conferred political power but who remained unmarried did not
sought them as exotic household participate to the same level as their married brothers. Unmarried men in Venice,
novelties. for example, could not be part of the ruling council. Women were also understood
• The nobility maintained its status by as “married or to be married,” even if the actual marriage patterns in Europe left
integrating the newly economically many women (and men) unmarried until quite late in life (see page 298). This
and politically powerful merchant
class. meant that women’s work was not viewed as supporting a family—even if it did—
and was valued less than men’s. If they worked for wages, and many women did,
• Female rulers maintained their power
by assuming masculine qualities but women earned about half to two-thirds of what men did even for the same work.
debates emerged about women’s Of all the ways in which Renaissance society was hierarchically arranged—class,
secondary status. age, level of education, rank, race, occupation—gender was regarded as the most
“natural” and therefore the most important to defend.
Politics and the State in the Renaissance

(ca. 1450–1521)
How did the nation-states of western Europe evolve in this period?
The High Middle Ages had witnessed the origins of many of the basic institutions
of the modern state. Sheriffs, inquests, juries, circuit judges, professional bureau-
cracies, and representative assemblies all trace their origins to the twelfth and thir-
teenth centuries. The linchpin for the development of states, however, was strong
monarchy, and during the period of the Hundred Years’ War, no ruler in western
Europe was able to provide effective leadership. The resurgent power of feudal
nobilities weakened the centralizing work begun earlier.
Beginning in the fifteenth century, rulers utilized aggressive methods to re-
build their governments. First in Italy, then in France, England, and Spain, rulers
Politics and the State in the Renaissance (ca. 1450–1521) 329
began the work of reducing violence, curbing unruly nobles, and establishing
domestic order. They emphasized royal majesty and royal sovereignty and insisted
on the respect and loyalty of all subjects.
The Hundred Years’ War left France drastically depop-

France ulated, commercially ruined, and agriculturally weak.
Nonetheless, the ruler whom Joan of Arc had seen
crowned at Reims, Charles VII (r. 1422–1461), revived the monarchy and France.
He seemed an unlikely person to do so. Frail, indecisive, and burdened with ques-
tions about his paternity (his father had been deranged; his mother, notoriously
promiscuous), Charles VII nevertheless began France’s long recovery.
Charles reconciled the Burgundians and Armagnacs (ahr-muhn-YAKZ), who
had been waging civil war for thirty years. By 1453 French armies had expelled the
English from French soil except in Calais. Charles reorganized the royal council,
giving increased influence to middle-class men, and strengthened royal finances
through such taxes as the gabelle (guh-BEL) (on salt) and the taille (teyl) (land
tax). These taxes remained the Crown’s chief sources of income until the Revolu-
tion of 1789.
By establishing regular companies of cavalry and archers—recruited, paid,
and inspected by the state—Charles created the first permanent royal army. His
son Louis XI (r. 1461–1483), called the “Spider King” because of his treacherous
character, improved upon Charles’s army and used it to stop aristocratic brigand-
age and to curb urban independence. The army was also employed in 1477, when
Louis conquered Burgundy upon the death of its ruler Charles the Bold. Three
years later, the extinction of the house of Anjou (AN-joo) brought Louis the coun-
ties of Anjou, Bar, Maine, and Provence.
Two further developments strengthened the French monarchy. The marriage
of Louis XII (r. 1498–1515) and Anne of Brittany added the large western duchy
of Brittany to the state. Then the French king Francis I and Pope Leo X reached a
mutually satisfactory agreement about church and state powers in 1516. The new
treaty, the Concordat of Bologna, approved the pope’s right to receive the first
year’s income of new bishops and abbots. In return, Leo X recognized the French
ruler’s right to select French bishops and abbots. French kings thereafter effec-
tively controlled the appointment and thus the policies of church officials in the
kingdom.
English society suffered severely from the disorders of

England the fifteenth century. The aristocracy dominated the
government of Henry IV (r. 1399–1413) and indulged
in mischievous violence at the local level. Population, decimated by the Black
Death, continued to decline. Between 1455 and 1471 adherents of the ducal
houses of York and Lancaster waged civil war, commonly called the Wars of the Wars of the Roses Civil war in
Roses because the symbol of the Yorkists was a white rose and that of the Lancas- England over who would become the
next king.
trians a red one. The chronic disorder hurt trade, agriculture, and domestic indus-
try. Under the pious but mentally disturbed Henry VI (r. 1422–1461), the authority
of the monarchy sank lower than it had been in centuries.
The Yorkist Edward IV (r. 1461–1483) began establishing domestic tranquil-
ity. He succeeded in defeating the Lancastrian forces and after 1471 began to re-
construct the monarchy. Edward, his brother Richard III (r. 1483–1485), and
Henry VII (r. 1485–1509) of the Welsh house of Tudor worked to restore royal
prestige, to crush the power of the nobility, and to establish order and law at the
local level. All three rulers used methods that Machiavelli himself would have
praised—ruthlessness, efficiency, and secrecy.
Edward IV and subsequently the Tudors, excepting Henry VIII, conducted
foreign policy on the basis of diplomacy, avoiding expensive wars. Thus the Eng-
lish monarchy did not depend on Parliament for money, and the Crown undercut
that source of aristocratic influence.
Henry VII did summon several meetings of Parliament in the early years of his
royal council The body of men who reign, primarily to confirm laws, but the center of royal authority was the royal
represented the center of royal authority; council, which governed at the national level. There Henry VII revealed his dis-
Renaissance princes tended to prefer
middle-class councilors to noble ones.
trust of the nobility: though not completely excluded, very few great lords were
among the king’s closest advisers. Regular representatives on the council num-
bered between twelve and fifteen men, and while many gained high ecclesiastical
rank, their origins were in the lesser landowning class, and their education was in
law. They were, in a sense, middle class.
The royal council handled any business the king put before it—executive,
legislative, and judicial. For example, the council conducted negotiations with
foreign governments and secured international recognition of the Tudor dynasty
through the marriage in 1501 of Henry VII’s eldest son Arthur to Catherine of
Aragon, the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. The council dealt with
court of Star Chamber A division of real or potential aristocratic threats through a judicial offshoot, the court of Star
the English royal council, a court that Chamber, so called because of the stars painted on the ceiling of the room. The
used Roman legal procedures to curb
real or potential threats from the nobility,
court applied principles of Roman law, and its methods were sometimes terrifying:
so named because of the stars painted accused persons were not entitled to see evidence against them; sessions were se-
on the ceiling of the chamber in which cret; torture could be applied to extract confessions; and juries were not called.
the court sat. These procedures ran directly counter to English common-law precedents, but
they effectively reduced aristocratic troublemaking. Because the government
halted the long period of anarchy, it won the key support of the merchant and
agricultural upper middle class.
Secretive, cautious, and thrifty, Henry VII rebuilt the monarchy. He encour-
aged the cloth industry and built up the English merchant marine. English exports
of wool and the royal export tax on that wool steadily increased. Henry crushed an
invasion from Ireland and secured peace with Scotland through the marriage of his
daughter Margaret to the Scottish king. When Henry VII died in 1509, he left a
country at peace both domestically and internationally, a substantially augmented
treasury, and the dignity and role of the royal majesty much enhanced.
While England and France laid the foundations of

Spain unified nation-states during the Renaissance, Spain
remained a conglomerate of independent kingdoms.
By the middle of the fifteenth century, the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon domi-
nated the weaker Navarre, Portugal, and Granada, and the Iberian Peninsula, with
the exception of Granada, had been won for Christianity. But even the wedding in
1469 of the dynamic and aggressive Isabella of Castile and the crafty and persistent
Ferdinand of Aragon did not bring about administrative unity. Rather, their mar-
riage constituted a dynastic union of two royal houses, not the political union of
two peoples. Although Ferdinand and Isabella (r. 1474–1516) pursued a common
foreign policy, until about 1700 Spain existed as a loose confederation of separate
kingdoms, each maintaining its own cortes (parliament), laws, courts, and systems
of coinage and taxation. Ferdinand and Isabella were able to exert their authority
Politics and the State in the Renaissance (ca. 1450–1521) 331
in ways similar to the rulers of France and England, however. They curbed aristo-
cratic power by excluding aristocrats and great territorial magnates from the royal
council, which had full executive, judicial, and legislative powers under the mon-
archy. Instead they appointed only people of middle-class background to the coun-
cil. The council and various government boards recruited men trained in Roman
law, which exalted the power of the Crown. They also secured from the Spanish
pope Alexander VI the right to appoint bishops in Spain and in the Hispanic ter-
ritories in America, enabling them to establish the equivalent of a national church.
And with the revenues from ecclesiastical estates, they were able to expand their
territories to include the remaining land held by Arabs in southern Spain. The
victorious entry of Ferdinand and Isabella into Granada on January 6, 1492, sig-
naled the conclusion of the reconquista (see Map 9.3 on page 202). Granada in
the south was incorporated into the Spanish kingdom, and in 1512 Ferdinand
conquered Navarre in the north.
There still remained a sizable and, in the view of the majority of the Spanish
people, potentially dangerous minority, the Jews. When the kings of France and
England had expelled the Jews from their kingdoms (see page 214), many had
sought refuge in Spain. During the long centuries of the reconquista, Christian
kings had renewed Jewish rights and privileges; in fact, Jewish industry, intelli-
gence, and money had supported royal power. While Christians of all classes bor-
rowed from Jewish moneylenders and while all who could afford them sought
Jewish physicians, a strong undercurrent of resentment of Jewish influence and
wealth festered.
In the fourteenth century anti-Semitism in Spain was aggravated by fiery anti-
Jewish preaching, by economic dislocation, and by the search for a scapegoat dur-
ing the Black Death. Anti-Semitic pogroms swept the towns of Spain; one scholar
estimates that 40 percent of the Jewish population was killed or forced to convert.6
Those converted were called conversos (kon-VER-sowz) or New Christians. Con- New Christians A term applied to Jews
versos were often well educated and held prominent positions in government, the who accepted Christianity, but since
many were from families who had
church, medicine, law, and business. Numbering perhaps two hundred thousand become Christian centuries earlier,
in a total Spanish population of about 7.5 million, New Christians and Jews exer- the word new is not accurate.
cised influence disproportionate to their numbers.
Such successes bred resentment. Aristocratic grandees resented their financial
dependence; the poor hated the converso tax collectors; and churchmen doubted
the sincerity of their conversions. Queen Isabella shared these suspicions, and she
and Ferdinand received permission from Pope Sixtus IV to establish an Inquisition
to “search out and punish converts from Judaism who had transgressed against
Christianity by secretly adhering to Jewish beliefs and performing rites of the
Jews.”7 Investigations and trials began immediately, as officials of the Inquisition
looked for conversos who showed any sign of incomplete conversion, such as not
eating pork.
Recent scholarship has carefully analyzed documents of the Inquisition. Most
conversos identified themselves as sincere Christians; many came from families
that had received baptism generations before. In response, officials of the Inquisi-
tion developed a new type of anti-Semitism. A person’s status as a Jew, they argued,
could not be changed by religious conversion, but was in their blood and was
heritable, so Jews could never be true Christians. In what were known as “purity
of the blood” laws, having pure Christian blood became a requirement for noble
status. Ideas about Jews developed in Spain were important components in Euro-
pean concepts of race, and discussions of “Jewish blood” later expanded into no-
tions of the “Jewish race.”
Felipe Bigarny: Ferdinand and Isabella

In these wooden sculptures, the Burgundian artist Felipe Bigarny portrays Ferdinand and Isabella as paragons of Chris-
tian piety, kneeling at prayer. Ferdinand is shown in armor, a symbol of his military accomplishments and masculinity.
Isabella wears a simple white head-covering rather than something more elaborate to indicate her modesty, a key
virtue for women, though her actions and writings indicate that she was more determined and forceful than Ferdinand.
(Capilla Real, Granada/Laurie Platt Winfrey, Inc.)
Shortly after the conquest of Granada, Isabella and

Sec tion Review
Ferdinand issued an edict expelling all practicing Jews
• Charles VII reorganized France by creating the first permanent royal from Spain. Of the community of perhaps 200,000
army, with later kings adding strength by coming to terms with the Jews, 150,000 fled. Absolute religious orthodoxy and
pope over church and state power. purity of blood (“untainted” by Jews or Muslims)
• The Wars of the Roses in England damaged English trade, agricul- served as the theoretical foundation of the Spanish na-
ture, and industry. tional state.
• Edward VII strengthened the monarchy and brought domestic and The diplomacy of the Catholic rulers of Spain
international peace. achieved a success they never anticipated. In 1496
• Ferdinand and Isabella in Spain decreased aristocratic power, Ferdinand and Isabella married their second daughter
strengthened the monarchy, and gained favor with the pope to expand Joanna, heiress to Castile, to the archduke Philip, heir
their territories.
to the Burgundian Netherlands and the Holy Roman
• The financial success of the Spanish Jews who converted to Chris- Empire. Philip and Joanna’s son, Charles V (r. 1519–
tianity for protection against anti-Semitism incurred jealousy, so
Ferdinand and Isabella ordered an Inquisition to eliminate these Jews, 1556) thus succeeded to a vast patrimony. When
leading to the notion that being Jewish was by “blood,” so a Jew could Charles’s son Philip II joined Portugal to the Spanish
never truly convert to Christianity. crown in 1580, the Iberian Peninsula was at last politi-
cally united.
Chapter Review 333
Chapter Review
What economic and political developments in Italy provided the setting for the
Renaissance? (page 308) Key Terms
The Italian Renaissance rested on the phenomenal economic growth of the High Renaissance (p. 308)
Middle Ages. In the period from about 1050 to 1300, a new economy emerged based communes (p. 309)
on Venetian and Genoese shipping and long-distance trade and on Florentine bank- popolo (p. 309)
ing. These commercial activities, combined with the struggle of urban communes for
political independence from surrounding feudal lords, led to the appearance of a new condottieri (p. 310)
ruling group in Italian cities—merchant oligarchs. Unrest in some cities led to their signori (p. 310)
being taken over by single rulers, but however Italian cities were governed, they jock- courts (p. 310)
eyed for power with one another and prevented the establishment of a single Italian
patrons (p. 310)
nation-state.
humanism (p. 312)
individualism (p. 312)
What were the key ideas of the Renaissance, and how were they different for The Prince (p. 314)
men and women and for southern and northern Europeans? (page 312)
secularism (p. 315)
The Renaissance was characterized by self-conscious awareness among fourteenth- Christian humanists (p. 316)
and fifteenth-century Italians, particularly scholars and writers known as humanists,
debate about women (p. 327)
that they were living in a new era. Key to this attitude was a serious interest in the Latin
classics, a belief in individual potential, and a more secular attitude toward life. All Wars of the Roses (p. 329)
these are evident in political theory developed during the Renaissance, particularly royal council (p. 330)
that of Machiavelli. Humanists opened schools for boys and young men to train them court of Star Chamber (p. 330)
for an active life of public service, but they had doubts about whether humanist educa-
tion was appropriate for women. As humanism spread to northern Europe, religious New Christians (p. 331)
concerns became more pronounced, and Christian humanists set out plans for the
reform of church and society. Their ideas were spread to a much wider audience than
those of early humanists because of the development of the printing press with mov-
able metal type, which revolutionized communication.
How did changes in art both reflect and shape new ideas? (page 320)
Interest in the classical past and in the individual also shaped Renaissance art in
terms of style and subject matter. Painting became more naturalistic, and the individ-
ual portrait emerged as a distinct artistic genre. Wealthy merchants, cultured rulers,
and powerful popes all hired painters, sculptors, and architects to design and ornament
public and private buildings. Art in Italy became more secular and classical, while that
in northern Europe retained a more religious tone. Artists began to understand them-
selves as having a special creative genius, though they continued to produce works on
order for patrons, who often determined the content and form.
What were the key social hierarchies in Renaissance Europe, and how did ideas
about hierarchy shape people’s lives? (page 324)
Social hierarchies in the Renaissance built on those of the Middle Ages, but new
features also developed that contributed to the modern social hierarchies of race, class,
and gender. Black Africans entered Europe in sizable numbers for the first time since
the collapse of the Roman Empire, and Europeans fit them into changing understand-
ings of ethnicity and race. The medieval hierarchy of orders based on function in soci-
ety intermingled with a new hierarchy based on wealth, with new types of elites
becoming more powerful. The Renaissance debate about women led many to discuss
women’s nature and proper role in society, a discussion sharpened by the presence of
a number of ruling queens in this era.
How did the nation-states of western Europe evolve in this period? (page 328)
With taxes provided by business people, kings in western Europe established greater
peace and order, both essential for trade. Feudal monarchies gradually evolved in the
direction of nation-states. In Spain, France, and England, rulers also emphasized royal
dignity and authority, and they utilized Machiavellian ideas to ensure the preservation
and continuation of their governments. Like the merchant oligarchs and signori of
Italian city-states, Renaissance monarchs manipulated culture to enhance their power.
Notes
1. C. E. Detmold, trans., The Historical, Political and Diplomatic Writings of Niccolò Machia-
velli (Boston: J. R. Osgood, 1882), pp. 51–52.
2. Ibid., pp. 54–55.
3. Quoted in F. Seebohm, The Oxford Reformers (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1867), p. 256.
4. J. Hale, The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance (New York: Atheneum, 1994), p. 44.
5. Quoted in J. Devisse and M. Mollat, The Image of the Black in Western Art, vol. 2, trans.
W. G. Ryan (New York: William Morrow, 1979), pt. 2, pp. 187–188.
6. See B. F. Reilly, The Medieval Spains (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993),
pp. 198–203.
7. B. Netanyahu, The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth Century Spain (New York: Random
House, 1995), p. 921.

An Age of Gold
A s the foremost scholar of the early sixteenth century and a

writer with international contacts, Desiderius Erasmus
(1466?–1536) maintained a vast correspondence. In the
following letter to Wolfgang Capito (1478?–1541), a German
scholar and professor of theology at the University of Basel,
he explains his belief that Europe was entering a golden age.
The letter also reflects the spiritual ideals of northern
European humanists.
To Capito
It is no part of my nature, most learned Wolfgang,
to be excessively fond of life; whether it is that I
have, to my own mind, lived nearly long enough,
having entered my fifty-first year, or that I see noth-
ing in this life so splendid or delightful that it
should be desired by one who is convinced by the
Christian faith that a happier life awaits those who
in this world earnestly attach themselves to piety.
But at the present moment I could almost wish to Hans Holbein the Younger, Erasmus (ca. 1521). Holbein
be young again, for no other reason but this, that I persuaded his close friend Erasmus to sit for this
anticipate the near approach of a golden age, so portrait and portrayed him at his characteristic work,
writing. (Louvre/Scala/Art Resource, NY)
clearly do we see the minds of princes, as if changed
by inspiration, devoting all their energies to the
pursuit of peace. The chief movers in this matter
are Pope Leo and Francis, King of France. upon a given signal, men of genius are arising and
There is nothing this king does not do or does conspiring together to restore the best literature.
not suffer in his desire to avert war and consolidate Polite letters, which were almost extinct, are
peace . . . and exhibiting in this, as in everything now cultivated and embraced by Scots, by Danes,
else, a magnanimous and truly royal character. and by Irishmen. Medicine has a host of champi-
Therefore, when I see that the highest sovereigns of ons. . . . The Imperial Law is restored at Paris by
Europe—Francis of France, Charles the King William Budé, in Germany by Udalric Zasy; and
Catholic, Henry [VIII] of England, and the Em- mathematics at Basel by Henry of Glaris. In the
peror Maximilian—have set all their warlike prep- theological sphere there was no little to be done,
arations aside and established peace upon solid because this science has been hitherto mainly pro-
and, as I trust, adamantine foundations, I am led to fessed by those who are most pertinacious in their
a confident hope that not only morality and Chris- abhorrence of the better literature,* and are the
tian piety, but also a genuine and purer literature, more successful in defending their own ignorance
may come to renewed life or greater splendour; es- as they do it under pretext of piety, the unlearned
pecially as this object is pursued with equal zeal in
various regions of the world. . . . To the piety of
these princes it is due, that we see everywhere, as if * Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.
335
vulgar being induced to believe that violence is of- happen. . . . I know that your sincere piety will have
fered to religion if anyone begins an assault upon regard to nothing but Christ, to whom all your
their barbarism. . . . But even here I am confident studies are devoted. . . .
of success if the knowledge of the three languages
continues to be received in schools, as it has now
begun. . . . 1. What does Erasmus mean by a “golden age”?
But one doubt still possesses my mind. I am 2. Do education and learning ensure improve-
afraid that, under cover of a revival of ancient litera- ment in the human condition, in his opinion?
ture, paganism may attempt to rear its head—as Do you agree?
there are some among Christians that acknowledge 3. What would you say are the essential differ-
Christ in name but breathe inwardly a heathen ences between Erasmus’s educational goals and
spirit—or, on the other hand, that the restoration of those of modern society?
Hebrew learning may give occasion to a revival of
Source: Epistles 522 and 530, from The Epistles of Eras-
Judaism. This would be a plague as much opposed mus, trans. F. M. Nichols (London: Longmans, Green &
to the doctrine of Christ as anything that could Co., 1901).
336
CHAPTER 14
Reformations
and Religious
Wars
1500–1600
Chapter Preview
The Early Reformation
What were the central ideas of the
reformers, and why were they appealing
to different social groups?
The Reformation and German Politics

How did the political situation in
Germany shape the course of the
Reformation?
The Spread of the Protestant Reformation

How did Protestant ideas and
institutions spread beyond German-
speaking lands?
The Catholic Reformation

How did the Catholic Church respond to
the new religious situation?
Religious Violence
What were the causes and
Giorgio Vasari: Massacre of Coligny and the Huguenots (1573). This
consequences of religious violence,
fresco shows the Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre in Paris, one of including riots, wars, and witch hunts?
many bloody events in the religious wars that accompanied the
Reformation. (Vatican Palace/Scala/Art Resource, NY)
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY: Teresa of Ávila
IMAGES IN SOCIETY: Art in the Reformation
LISTENING TO THE PAST: Martin Luther, On Christian

Liberty
337
338 Chapter 14 Reformations and Religious Wars, 1500–1600
I n 1500 there was one Christian church in western Europe to which all Chris-
tians at least nominally belonged. Fifty years later there were many, as a result
of a religious reform movement that gained wide acceptance and caused Chris-
tianity to break into many divisions.
Along with the Renaissance, the Reformation is often seen as a key element in
the creation of the “modern” world. This radical change contained many ele-
ments of continuity, however. Sixteenth-century reformers looked back to the early
Christian church for their inspiration, and many of their reforming ideas had been
advocated for centuries.
The Early Reformation

What were the central ideas of the reformers, and why were they
appealing to different social groups?
Calls for reform in the church came from many quarters in early-sixteenth-century
Europe—from educated laypeople such as Christian humanists and urban resi-
dents, from villagers and artisans, and from church officials themselves. This dis-
satisfaction helps explain why the ideas of Martin Luther, an obscure professor
from a new and not very prestigious German university, found a ready audience.
Within a decade of his first publishing his ideas (using the new technology of the
printing press), much of central Europe and Scandinavia had broken with the
Catholic Church and even more radical concepts of the Christian message were
being developed and linked to calls for social change.
Sixteenth-century Europeans of all social classes de-

The Christian voted an enormous amount of their time and income
Church in the Early to religious causes and foundations. Despite—or per-
Sixteenth Century haps because of—the depth of their piety, many people
were also highly critical of the Roman Catholic Church and its clergy. The papal
conflict with the German emperor Frederick II in the thirteenth century, followed
by the Babylonian Captivity and then the Great Schism, badly damaged the pres-
tige of church leaders. Humanists denounced corruption in the church. In The
Praise of Folly, Erasmus condemned the superstitions of the parish clergy and the
excessive rituals of the monks. Many ordinary people agreed. Court records, bish-
op’s visitations of parishes, and even popular songs and printed images show wide-
anticlericalism Opposition to the spread anticlericalism, or opposition to the clergy.
clergy. In the early sixteenth century critics of the church concentrated their attacks
on three disorders—clerical immorality, clerical ignorance, and clerical plural-
ism, with the related problem of absenteeism. Charges of clerical immorality were
aimed at a number of priests who were drunkards, neglected the rule of celibacy,
gambled, or indulged in fancy dress. Charges of clerical ignorance applied to
barely literate priests who delivered sermons of poor quality and who were obvi-
ously ignorant of the Latin words of the Mass.
pluralism The clerical practice of In regard to absenteeism and pluralism, many clerics, especially higher eccle-
holding more than one church benefice siastics, held several benefices (BEN-ah-fiss-es) (or offices) simultaneously but sel-
(or office) at the same time and enjoying
the income from each.
dom visited the benefices, let alone performed the spiritual responsibilities those
offices entailed. Instead, they collected revenues from all of them and hired a poor
priest, paying him just a fraction of the income to fulfill the spiritual duties of a
Chronology
particular local church. Many Italian officials in the papal 1477 Union of Burgundian and Habsburg
curia held benefices in England, Spain, and Germany. Rev- dynasties
enues from those countries paid the Italian priests’ salaries,
1517 Martin Luther, “Ninety-five Theses on the
provoking not only charges of absenteeism but also national-
Power of Indulgences”
istic resentment.
There was also local resentment of clerical privileges and 1521 Diet of Worms
immunities. Priests, monks, and nuns were exempt from civic 1521–1559 Habsburg-Valois Wars
responsibilities, such as defending the city and paying taxes. 1525 Peasants’ War in Germany
Yet religious orders frequently held large amounts of urban
property, in some cities as much as one-third. City govern- 1526 Turkish victory at Mohács, which allows
spread of Protestantism in Hungary
ments were increasingly determined to integrate the clergy
into civic life. This brought city leaders into opposition with 1536 John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian
bishops and the papacy, which for centuries had stressed the Religion
independence of the church from lay control and the distinc- 1540 Papal approval of Society of Jesus
tion between members of the clergy and laypeople. (Jesuits)
1542 Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office
and Roman Inquisition
By itself, widespread criticism of
1545–1563 Council of Trent
Martin Luther the church did not lead to the
dramatic changes of the sixteenth 1555 Peace of Augsburg, official recognition of
century. Those resulted from the personal religious struggle Lutheranism
of a German university professor, Martin Luther (1483– 1558–1603 Reign of Elizabeth in England
1546), who was also a priest. Martin Luther was born at Eisle- 1560–1660 Height of the European witch hunt
ben in Saxony. At considerable sacrifice, his father sent him
1568–1578 Civil war in the Netherlands
to school and then to the University of Erfurt, where he
earned a master’s degree with distinction. Luther was to pro- 1572 Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre
ceed to the study of law and a legal career, which for centu- 1598 Edict of Nantes
ries had been the stepping-stone to public office and material
success. Instead, however, a sense of religious calling led him
to join the Augustinian friars, an order whose members often
preached, taught, and assisted the poor. Luther was ordained a priest in 1507 and
after additional study earned a doctorate of theology. From 1512 until his death in
1546, he served as professor of the Scriptures at the new University of Wittenberg.
Throughout his life, he frequently cited his professorship as justification for his
reforming work.
Martin Luther was a very conscientious friar. His scrupulous observance of the
religious routine, frequent confessions, and fasting, however, gave him only tem-
porary relief from anxieties about sin and his ability to meet God’s demands.
Through his study of Saint Paul’s letters in the New Testament, he gradually ar-
rived at a new understanding of Christian doctrine. His understanding is often
summarized as “faith alone, grace alone, Scripture alone.” He believed that salva-
tion and justification come through faith. Faith is a free gift of God, not the result
of human effort. God’s word is revealed only in Scripture, not in the traditions of
the church.
At the same time that Luther was engaged in scholarly reflections and profes-
sorial lecturing, Pope Leo X authorized the sale of a special St. Peter’s indulgence indulgence A papal statement
to finance his building plans in Rome. An indulgence was a document, signed by (a document addressed to an individual)
the pope or another church official, that substituted for penance. The archbishop granting remission of priest-imposed
who controlled the area in which Wittenberg was located, Albert of Mainz, was an penalty for sin (no one knew what penalty
God would impose after death). Popular
enthusiastic promoter of this indulgence sale. He received a share of the profits in belief, however, held that an indulgence
order to pay off a debt from a wealthy banking family, a debt he had incurred in secured complete remission of all
order to purchase a papal dispensation allowing him to become the bishop of penalties for sin, before and after death.
The Folly of Indulgences

In this woodcut from the early Reformation, the church’s sale
of indulgences is viciously satirized. With one claw in holy
water, another resting on the coins paid for indulgences, and
a third stretched out for offerings, the church, in the form of a
rapacious bird, writes out an indulgence with excrement. The
creature’s head and gaping mouth represent Hell, with foolish
Christians inside, others being cooked in a pot above, and a
demon delivering the pope in a three-tiered crown and
holding the keys to Heaven, a symbol of papal authority.
Illustrations such as this, often printed as single-sheet
broadsides and sold very cheaply, clearly conveyed criticism
of the church to people who could not read. (Kunstsammlungen
der Veste Coburg)
several other territories as well. Albert’s indulgence

sale, run by a Dominican friar who mounted an ad-
vertising blitz, promised that the purchase of indul-
gences would bring full forgiveness for one’s own
sins or release from purgatory for a loved one. One
of the slogans—“As soon as coin in coffer rings, the
soul from purgatory springs”—brought phenome-
nal success.
Luther was severely troubled that many people
believed they had no further need for repentance
once they had purchased indulgences. He wrote a
letter to Archbishop Albert on the subject and en-
closed in Latin his “Ninety-five Theses on the
Power of Indulgences.” His argument was that in-
dulgences undermined the seriousness of the sacra-
ment of penance, competed with the preaching of the Gospel, and downplayed
the importance of charity in Christian life. After Luther’s death, biographies re-
ported that the theses were also posted on the door of the church at Wittenberg
Castle on October 31, 1517. Such an act would have been very strange—they were
in Latin and written for those learned in theology, not for normal churchgoers—
but it has become a standard part of Luther lore. In any case, Luther intended the
theses for academic debate, but by December 1517 they had been translated into
German and were read throughout the Holy Roman Empire.
Luther was ordered to come to Rome, which he was able to avoid because of
the political situation in the empire, but he did engage in formal scholarly debate
with a representative of the church, Johann Eck, at Leipzig in 1519. He denied both
the authority of the pope and the infallibility of a general council. The Council of
Constance, he said, had erred when it had condemned Jan Hus (see page 294).
The papacy responded with a letter condemning some of Luther’s proposi-
tions, ordering that his books be burned, and giving him two months to recant or
be excommunicated. Luther retaliated by publicly burning the letter. By January 3,
1521, when the excommunication was supposed to become final, the controversy
involved more than theological issues. The papal legate wrote, “All Germany is in
revolution. Nine-tenths shout ‘Luther’ as their war cry; and the other tenth cares
nothing about Luther, and cries ‘Death to the court of Rome.’”1 In this highly
charged atmosphere, the twenty-one-year-old emperor Charles V held his first diet
(assembly of the Estates of the empire) in the German city of Worms. Charles
The Early Reformation 341
summoned Luther to appear before the Diet of Worms. When ordered to recant, Diet of Worms An assembly held by
Luther replied in language that rang all over Europe: Charles V (1521) in the German city
of Worms where Luther defended his
Unless I am convinced by the evidence of Scripture or by plain reason—for I do doctrines before the emperor, refusing
to recant.
not accept the authority of the Pope or the councils alone, since it is established
that they have often erred and contradicted themselves—I am bound by the Scrip-
tures I have cited and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and
will not recant anything, for it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience.
God help me. Amen.2
As he developed his ideas, Luther gathered followers,

Protestant Thought who came to be called Protestants. The word Protes- Protestant The name originally given
tant derives from the protest drawn up by a small group to Lutherans, after a group of reforming
princes protested decisions of the
of reforming German princes at the Diet of Speyer in 1529. The princes “pro- Catholic princes at the Diet of Speyer
tested” the decisions of the Catholic majority. At first Protestant meant “Lutheran,” (1529); as other reforming groups
but with the appearance of many protesting sects, it became a general term ap- appeared, the term came to mean all
plied to all non-Catholic western European Christians. non-Catholic western Christian groups.
The most important early reformer other than Luther was the Swiss humanist,
priest, and admirer of Erasmus, Ulrich Zwingli (ZWING-glee) (1484–1531).
Zwingli announced in 1519 that he would preach not from the church’s pre-
scribed readings but, relying on Erasmus’s New Testament, go right through the
New Testament “from A to Z,” that is, from Matthew to Revelation. Zwingli was
convinced that Christian life rested on the Scriptures, which were the pure words
of God and the sole basis of religious truth. He went on to attack indulgences, the
Mass, the institution of monasticism, and clerical celibacy. In his gradual reform
of the church in Zurich, he had the strong support of the city authorities, who had
long resented the privileges of the clergy.
Luther, Zwingli, and other Protestants agreed on many things. First, how is a
person to be saved? Traditional Catholic teaching held that salvation is achieved
by both faith and good works. Protestants held that salvation comes by faith alone,
irrespective of good works or the sacraments. God, not people, initiates salvation.
(See the feature “Listening to the Past: Martin Luther, On Christian Liberty” on
pages 368–369.) Second, where does religious authority reside? Christian doctrine
had long maintained that authority rests both in the Bible and in the traditional
teaching of the church. For Protestants, authority rested in the Bible alone. For a
doctrine or issue to be valid, it had to have a scriptural basis. Because of this, most
Protestants rejected Catholic teachings about the sacraments (see page 368), hold-
ing that only baptism and the Eucharist have scriptural support. Third, what is the
church? Protestants held that the church is a spiritual priesthood of all believers, an
invisible fellowship not fixed in any place or person, which differed markedly from
the Roman Catholic practice of a clerical, hierarchical institution headed by the
pope in Rome. Fourth, what is the highest form of Christian life? The medieval
church had stressed the superiority of the monastic and religious life over the
secular. Luther disagreed and argued that every person should serve God in his or
her individual calling.
Protestants did not agree on everything. One important area of dispute was the
ritual of the Eucharist (also called communion, or the Lord’s Supper). Catholi-
cism holds the dogma of transubstantiation: by the consecrating words of the transubstantiation Catholic doctrine
of the Eucharist, that when the bread
priest during the Mass, the bread and wine become the actual body and blood of and wine are consecrated by the priest
Christ, who is then fully present in the bread and wine. In opposition, Luther beat Mass, they are transformed into the
lieved that Christ is really present in the consecrated bread and wine, but this is actual body and blood of Christ.
Lucas Cranach the Elder: The Ten Commandments, 1516

Cranach, who was the court painter for the Elector of Saxony from 1505 to 1553, painted this giant illustration of the Ten Commandments (more
than 5 feet by 11 feet) for the city hall in Wittenberg just at the point when Luther was beginning to question Catholic doctrine. Cranach became an
early supporter of Luther, and many of his later works depict the reformer and his ideas. This close association, and the fact that the painting captures
the Protestant emphasis on biblical texts very well, led it to be moved to the Luther House in Wittenberg, the largest museum of the Protestant
Reformation in the world. Paintings were used by both Protestants and Catholics to teach religious ideas. (Lutherhalle, Wittenberg/The Bridgeman Art Library)
the result of God’s mystery, not the actions of a priest. Zwingli understood the
Lord’s Supper as a memorial, in which Christ was present in spirit among the faith-
ful, but not in the bread and wine. The Colloquy of Marburg, summoned in 1529
to unite Protestants, failed to resolve these differences, though Protestants reached
agreement on almost everything else.
Pulpits and printing presses spread Luther’s message

The Appeal of all over Germany. By the time of his death, people of
Protestant Ideas all social classes had become Lutheran. What was the
immense appeal of Luther’s religious ideas and those of other Protestants?
Educated people and humanists were much attracted by Luther’s ideas. He
advocated a simpler personal religion based on faith, a return to the spirit of the
early church, the centrality of the Scriptures in the liturgy and in Christian life,
and the abolition of elaborate ceremonies—precisely the reforms the Christian
humanists had been calling for. His insistence that everyone should read and re-
flect on the Scriptures attracted the literate and thoughtful middle classes partly
because Luther appealed to their intelligence. This included many priests and
monks, who became clergy in the new Protestant churches. Luther’s ideas also
appealed to townspeople who envied the church’s wealth and resented paying for
it. After Zurich became Protestant, the city council taxed the clergy and placed
them under the jurisdiction of civil courts.
Scholars in many disciplines have attributed Luther’s fame and success to the
invention of the printing press, which rapidly reproduced and made known his
ideas. Many printed works included woodcuts and other illustrations, so that even
those who could not read could grasp the main ideas. (See the feature “Images in
Society: Art in the Reformation” on pages 344–345.) Equally important was Lu-
ther’s incredible skill with language, as seen in his two catechisms (1529), com-
pendiums of basic religious knowledge. Hymns such as “A Mighty Fortress Is Our
God” (which Luther wrote) were also important means of conveying central points
of doctrine. Luther’s linguistic skill, together with his translation of the New Testa-
ment into German in 1523, led to the acceptance of his dialect of German as the
standard version of the German language.
Both Luther and Zwingli recognized that if reforms were going to be perma-
nent, political authorities as well as concerned individuals and religious leaders
would have to accept them. Zwingli worked closely with the city council of
Zurich, and in other cities and towns of Switzerland and south Germany city
councils similarly took the lead. They appointed pastors that they knew had
accepted Protestant ideas, required them to swear an oath of loyalty to the
council, and oversaw their preaching and teaching.
Luther lived in a territory ruled by a noble—the Elector of Saxony—and he
also worked closely with political authorities, viewing them as fully justified in as-
serting control over the church in their territories. Indeed, he demanded that Ger-
man rulers reform the papacy and ecclesiastical institutions, and he instructed all
Christians to obey their secular rulers, whom he saw as divinely ordained to main-
tain order. Individuals may have been convinced of the truth of Protestant teachings
by hearing sermons, listening to hymns, or reading pamphlets, but a territory became
Protestant when its ruler, whether a noble or a city council, brought in a reformer or
two to reeducate the territory’s clergy, sponsored public sermons, and confiscated
church property. This happened in many of the states of the empire during the 1520s
and then moved beyond the empire to Denmark-Norway and Sweden.
Some individuals and groups rejected the idea that

The Radical church and state needed to be united, and sought to
Reformation create a voluntary community of believers as they un-
derstood it to have existed in New Testament times. In terms of theology and
spiritual practices, these individuals and groups varied widely, though they are
generally termed “radicals” for their insistence on a more extensive break with the
past. Some adopted the baptism of believers—for which they were given the title
of “Anabaptists” or rebaptizers by their enemies—while others saw all outward
sacraments or rituals as misguided. Some groups attempted communal ownership
of property, living very simply and rejecting anything they thought unbiblical.
Some reacted harshly to members who deviated, but others argued for complete
religious toleration and individualism.
Religious radicals were met with fanatical hatred and bitter persecution. Prot-
estants and Catholics alike saw—quite correctly—that the radicals’ call for the
separation of church and state would lead ultimately to the secularization of soci-
ety. In Saxony, in Strasbourg, and in the Swiss cities, radicals were either banished
or cruelly executed by burning, beating, or drowning. Their community spirit and
the edifying example of their lives, however, contributed to the survival of radical
ideas. Later, the Quakers, with their gentle pacifism; the Baptists, with their em-
phasis on inner spiritual light; the Congregationalists, with their democratic
church organization; and in 1787 the authors of the U.S. Constitution, with their
opposition to the “establishment of religion” (state churches), would all trace their
origins, in part, to the radicals of the sixteenth century.
Images in Society
Art in the Reformation
I n the Reformation era, controversy raged over the

purpose and function of art. Protestants and Catho-
lics disagreed, and Protestant groups disagreed with one
scene at the left actually suggests another kind of “false
church,” however. Cranach shows a crucified Christ
emerging out of the “lamb of God” on the altar as people
another. The Bible specifically prohibits making images are receiving communion. This image represents the
of anything “in the heavens above or the earth below or Lutheran understanding of the Lord’s Supper, in which
the waters beneath the earth” (Exodus 20:4–6 and Deu- Christ is really present in the bread and wine, in con-
teronomy 5:8–10). Based on this, some Protestant lead- trast to other Protestants who saw the ceremony as a me-
ers, including Ulrich Zwingli, stressed that “the Word of morial (see page 342). The woodcut thus could be
God” should be the only instrument used in the work of understood on different levels by different viewers,
evangelization. Martin Luther disagreed, saying he was which is true of much effective religious art.
not “of the opinion that the Gospel should blight and For John Calvin, the utter transcendence of God
destroy all the arts.” Luther believed that painting and made impossible any attempt to bring God down to hu-
sculpture had value in spreading the Gospel message man level through visual portraiture; to domesticate or
because “children and simple folk are more apt to retain to humanize God would deprive him of his glory. In
the divine stories when taught by pictures and parables houses of worship Calvin emphasized the centrality of
than merely by words or instruction.” Similar debates the divine word, allowing wall inscriptions from the
involved music, with Luther supporting and even writ- Bible. In later life, Calvin tolerated narrative biblical
ing hymns, and Swiss Protestants removing organs from scenes as long as they did not include pictures of God or
their churches. Jesus Christ. In the Netherlands, which adopted a Cal-
Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472–1553), a close vinist version of Protestantism, many formerly Catholic
friend of Luther’s, is the finest representative of Protes- churches were stripped of all statues, images, and deco-
tant Reformation artists. He and Luther collaborated ration and were redesigned with a stark, bare simplicity
on the production of woodcuts and paintings, such as that mirrored the Calvinist ideal. Notice the interior of
The Ten Commandments (see page 342), that spread the church of Saint Bavo in Haarlem (Image 2).
the new evangelical theology. Each square in
Cranach’s painting represents one of the Ten IMAGE 1 Lucas Cranach the Younger: The True and False Churches (Staatliche
Commandments. Kunstsammlungen Dresden)
Lucas Cranach the Younger (1515–1586)

continued his father’s work of spreading Luther’s
message. His woodcut The True and False
Churches (Image 1) contains blatant and more
subtle messages. At the center Luther stands in a
pulpit, preaching the word of God from an open
Bible. At the right, a flaming open mouth sym-
bolizing the jaws of Hell engulfs the pope, cardi-
nals, and friars, one kind of “false church.” The
344
IMAGE 2 Church of Saint Bavo, Haarlem (Pieter Jansz. Saenredam, S. Bavo in IMAGE 3 Jesuit Priest Distributing Holy Pictures (From
Haarlem. John G. Johnson Collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art) Pierre Chenu, The Reformation [New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986])
The Catholic Church officially addressed the sub- (Image 4). This triumphant, elaborate, and flamboyant
ject of art at the Council of Trent in December 1563. church celebrates both the Catholic baroque and Rome
The church declared that honor and veneration should as the artistic capital of Europe. How would you com-
be given to likenesses of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and pare the Gesù with the Saint Bavo church (Image 2)?
the saints; that images would remind people of the
saints’ virtues, which should be imitated; and that picto-
rial art would promote piety and the love of God. Exam-
ine the painting Jesuit Priest Distributing Holy Pictures
(Image 3). Such pictures and images of saints were of-
ten given to children to help educate them on matters
of doctrine. How do these pictures serve the same func-
tion as the Protestant Ten Commandments shown on
page 342?
Both Protestants and Catholics used religious art for
propaganda purposes, to oppose religious heterodoxy,
and to arouse piety in laypeople. Catholic Reformation
art came into full flowering with the style later known as
baroque (buh-ROKE) (see page 415). Baroque art origi-
nated in Rome and reflected the dynamic and prosely-
tizing spirit of the Counter-Reformation. The church
encouraged artists to appeal to the senses, to touch the
souls and kindle the faith of ordinary people while pro-
claiming the power and confidence of the reformed
Catholic Church.
In addition to this underlying religious emotional-
ism, the baroque drew from the Catholic Reformation
a sense of drama, motion, and ceaseless striving. The
interior of the Jesuit church of Jesus—the Gesù (JAY-
soo)—combined all these characteristics in its lavish,
shimmering, wildly active decorations and frescoes IMAGE 4 Ceiling of the Gesù (Scala/Art Resource, NY)
345
In the early sixteenth century the economic condition

The German of the peasantry varied from place to place but was gen-
Peasants’ War erally worse than it had been in the fifteenth century
and was deteriorating. Crop failures in 1523 and 1524 aggravated an explosive
situation. Nobles had aggrieved peasants by seizing village common lands, impos-
ing new rents and requiring additional services, and by taking the peasants’ best
horses or cows in payment for death duties. The peasants made demands that they
believed conformed to the Scriptures, and they cited Luther as a theologian who
could prove that they did.
Luther wanted to prevent rebellion. Initially he sided with the peasants, blast-
ing the lords for robbing their subjects. But when rebellion broke out, the peasants
who expected Luther’s support were soon disillusioned. Freedom for Luther meant
independence from the authority of the Roman church; it did not mean opposi-
tion to legally established secular powers. Firmly convinced that rebellion would
hasten the end of civilized society, he wrote the tract Against the Murderous, Thiev-
ing Hordes of the Peasants: “Let everyone who can smite, slay, and stab [the peas-
ants], secretly and openly, remembering that nothing can be more poisonous,
hurtful or devilish than a rebel.”3 The nobility ferociously crushed the revolt. Histo-
rians estimate that more than seventy-five thousand peasants were killed in 1525.
The German Peasants’ War of 1525 greatly strengthened the authority of lay
rulers. Not surprisingly, the Reformation lost much of its popular appeal after
1525, though peasants and urban rebels sometimes found a place for their social
and religious ideas in radical groups. Peasants’ economic conditions did moder-
ately improve, however. For example, in many parts of Germany, enclosed fields,
meadows, and forests were returned to common use.
Luther and Zwingli both believed that a priest or nun’s

The Reformation vows of celibacy went against human nature and God’s
and Marriage commandments. Luther married a former nun, Katha-
rina von Bora (1499–1532), and Zwingli married a Zurich widow, Anna Reinhart
(1491–1538). Both women quickly had several children. Most other Protestant
reformers also married, and their wives had to create a new and respectable role
for themselves—pastor’s wife—to overcome being viewed as simply a new type of
priest’s concubine. They were living demonstrations of their husband’s convic-
tions about the superiority of marriage to celibacy, and they were expected to be
models of wifely obedience and Christian charity.
Protestants did not break with medieval scholastic theologians in their idea
that women were to be subject to men. Women were advised to be cheerful rather
than grudging in their obedience, for in doing so they demonstrated their willing-
ness to follow God’s plan. Men were urged to treat their wives kindly and consid-
erately, but also to enforce their authority, through physical coercion if necessary.
Both continental and English marriage manuals use the metaphor of breaking a
horse for teaching a wife obedience, though laws did set limits on the husband’s
power to do so. A few women took Luther’s idea about the priesthood of all believ-
ers to heart and wrote religious pamphlets and hymns, but no sixteenth-century
Protestants officially allowed women to hold positions of religious authority. Mon-
archs such as Elizabeth I of England and female territorial rulers of the states of
the Holy Roman Empire did determine religious policies, however.
Catholics viewed marriage as a sacramental union that, if validly entered into,
could not be dissolved. Protestants saw marriage as a contract in which each part-
Sec tion Review

• Many people were discontented with
the Catholic Church and charged
that the clergy were immoral, unedu-
cated, and concerned more with
wealth than fulfilling their spiritual
duties.
• Martin Luther was a priest and theol-
ogy professor who initially wanted to
reform abuses in the Catholic
Church, but came to break with the
church; leading a movement later
termed the Protestant Reformation.
• Both Luther and the Swiss reformer
Ulrich Zwingli advocated that salva-
tion was from God, that the Scripture
and not the popes held all truth, that
the church was what the people
believed and not a physical place, and
opposed the hierarchy of the priests
over believers.
Lucas Cranach the Elder: Martin Luther and Katharina von Bora • Disputes arose over the proper role
Cranach painted this double marriage portrait to celebrate Luther’s wedding in 1525 to Katharina von of the arts in religion, with Luther
Bora, a former nun. The artist was one of the witnesses at the wedding and, in fact, had presented allowing music, painting, and sculp-
Luther’s marriage proposal to Katharina. Using a go-between for proposals was very common, as ture, while Zwingli and the stricter
was having a double wedding portrait painted. This particular couple quickly became a model of the Calvinists banned religious images.
ideal marriage, and many churches wanted their portraits. More than sixty similar paintings, with • The printing press greatly boosted the
slight variations, were produced by Cranach’s workshop and hung in churches and wealthy homes. spread of Protestant ideas and both
(Uffizi, Florence/Scala/Art Resource, NY) Luther and Zwingli targeted political
rulers to ensure the success of their
reforms.
• Radical groups such as the Anabap-
ner promised the other support, companionship, and the sharing of mutual goods. tists, wanting communal living and
complete separation of church and
Because, in Protestant eyes, marriage was created by God as a remedy for human state, experienced harsh persecution,
weakness, marriages in which spouses did not comfort or support one another although their ideas survived.
physically, materially, or emotionally endangered their own souls and the sur- • German peasants lost interest in the
rounding community. The only solution might be divorce and remarriage, which Reformation when Luther failed to
most Protestants came to allow, although divorce remained rare everywhere in back their demands for better condi-
Europe as marriage was such an important social and economic institution. tions and the nobility viciously
The Reformation generally brought the closing of monasteries and convents, and crushed their rebellion during the
German Peasants’ War of 1525.
marriage became virtually the only occupation for upper-class Protestant women.
Women in some convents recognized this and fought the Reformation, or argued • Protestants thought celibacy was
against human nature and God and
that they could still be pious Protestants within convent walls. Most nuns left, allowed church leaders to marry, but
however, and we do not know what happened to them. The Protestant emphasis still believed women were inferior
on marriage made unmarried women (and men) suspect, for they did not belong to men.
to the type of household regarded as the cornerstone of a proper, godly society.
The Reformation and German Politics

How did the political situation in Germany shape the course of the
Reformation?
Criticism of the church was widespread in Europe in the early sixteenth century,
and calls for reform came from many areas. Yet such movements could be more
easily squelched by the strong central governments of Spain, France, and England.
The Holy Roman Empire, in contrast, included hundreds of largely independent
states. Against this background of decentralization and strong local power, Martin
Luther had launched a movement to reform the church. Two years after Luther
published the “Ninety-five Theses,” the electors chose as emperor a nineteen-year-
old Habsburg prince who ruled as Charles V. The course of the Reformation was
shaped by this election and by the political relationships surrounding it.
War and diplomacy were important ways that states

The Rise of the increased their power in sixteenth-century Europe, but
Habsburg Dynasty so was marriage. The benefits of an advantageous mar-
riage stretched across generations, a process that can be seen most dramatically
with the Habsburgs. The Holy Roman emperor Frederick III, a Habsburg who was
the ruler of most of Austria, acquired only a small amount of territory—but a great
deal of money—with his marriage to Princess Eleonore of Portugal in 1452. He
arranged for his son Maximilian to marry Europe’s most prominent heiress, Mary
of Burgundy, in 1477; she inherited the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and the
County of Burgundy in what is now eastern France. Through this union with the
rich and powerful duchy of Burgundy, the Austrian house of Habsburg, already
the strongest ruling family in the empire, became an international power. The
marriage of Maximilian and Mary angered the French, however, who considered
Burgundy French territory, and inaugurated centuries of conflict between the Aus-
trian house of Habsburg and the kings of France.
Maximilian learned the lesson of marital politics well, marrying his son and
daughter to the children of Ferdinand and Isabella, the rulers of Spain, much of
southern Italy, and eventually the Spanish New World empire. His grandson
Charles V (1500–1558) fell heir to a vast and incredibly diverse collection of states
and peoples, each governed in a different manner and held together only by the
person of the emperor (see Map 14.1 on page 349). Charles’s Italian adviser, the
grand chancellor Gattinara, told the young ruler, “God has set you on the path toward
world monarchy.” Charles not only believed this but also was convinced that it was
his duty to maintain the political and religious unity of Western Christendom.
In the sixteenth century the practice of religion re-

The Political Impact mained a public matter. Rulers determined the official
of the Protestant form of religious practice in his (or occasionally her)
Reformation jurisdiction. Almost everyone believed that the pres-
ence of a faith different from that of the majority represented a political threat to
the security of the state. Few believed in religious liberty.
Luther’s ideas appealed to German rulers for a variety of reasons. Though
Germany was not a nation, people did have an understanding of being German
because of their language and traditions. Luther frequently used the phrase “we
SCOTLAND NORTH AND SOUTH 80°W 60°W 40°W ˚N
50
AMERICA
0 150 300 Km.
North
0 150 300 Mi. IRELAND N 40°N
Sea
Baltic
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Ri
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ENGLAND Gr AT L A N T I C
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Hamburg O C E A N
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de
G u lf o f FLORIDA
Amsterdam POLAND
Dnie
London M e x ic o
R.
BRANDENBURG
NETHERLANDS Havana Tropic of Cancer
per R.
ANHALT Guadalajara 20°N
AT L A N T I C Antwerp
Mexico City Veracruz
CUBA
Santiago ESPAÑOLA
HESSE- LUSATIA
Volg PUERTO RICO
O C EAN RHINE
KASSEL
SILESIA N Oaxaca
Guatemala
C a r i b b e a n S e a a R.
Paris PALATINATE
UPPER BOHEMIA TRINIDAD
PALATINATE Cartagena
LORRAINE WÜRTTEMBERG MORAVIA Panama C aCaracas
spian
FRANCE FRANCHE- BAVARIA Vienna HUNGARY Bogotá Sea
COMTÉ AUSTRIA
SWISS TYROL
CHAROLAIS CONFED. SALZBURG Equator 0°
Quito R.
azon ˚N
Am 40
SAVOY REP. OF
MILAN Recife
VENICE (Pernambuco)
NAVARRE GENOA
PORT U G A L P A C I F I C ea Lima Cuzco Salvador
Danu be R. k S (Bahia)
O CB El aAc N
MODENA PAPAL
ANDORRA STATES
Madrid
Ad
Lisbon AR AGON
CORSICA at
OT TOMA N Potosí
ri
20°S
(to Genoa) ic E M P I R E São Paulo
CASTILE Rome Se Tropic of Capricorn Rio de
a Janeiro
NAPLES
Seville SARDINIA Naples T i g r i s R.
BALEARIC IS. Otranto Santiago
GRANADA
Buenos
Tangiers Aires
Melilla 40°S
Algiers SICILY Eu
Oran Bougie Bona Tunis Spanish holdings, 1550 ph
rate
ALGIERS s R.
MOR O CCO
M Rhodes
0 1,000 Km.
TUNIS e d Malta Crete N
N O R T H A F R I C A i t e Cyprus
S t r a it o f M a g e l l a n Cape Horn 30˚
0 1,000 Mi.
r r a
n e a n
S e a
Lands inherited by Charles V
Lands gained by Charles V, 1519 –1556 Misurata
States favorable to Charles V TR Benghazi C YR ENA I C A Alexandria OT TO M A N
IP
Enemies of Charles V O E M P I R E
LI
Boundary of the Holy Roman Empire EGYPT
0˚ 10˚E 20˚E 30˚E 40˚E
MAP 14.1 The Global Empire of Charles V

Charles V exercised theoretical jurisdiction over more European territory than anyone since Charlemagne. He also claimed authority over large parts of North and South America, though actual
Spanish control was weak in much of this area.
Germans” in his attacks on the papacy. Luther’s appeal to national feeling influ-
enced many rulers otherwise confused by or indifferent to the complexities of the
religious issues. Some German rulers were sincerely attracted to Lutheran ideas, but
material considerations swayed many others to embrace the new faith. The rejec-
tion of Roman Catholicism and adoption of Protestantism would mean the legal
confiscation of lush farmlands, rich monasteries, and wealthy shrines. Thus many
political authorities in the empire used the religious issue to extend their financial
and political power and to enhance their independence from the emperor.
Charles V was a vigorous defender of Catholicism, however, so it is not surpris-
ing that the Reformation led to religious wars. The first battleground was Switzer-
land, which was officially part of the Holy Roman Empire, though it was really a
loose confederation of thirteen largely autonomous territories called “cantons.”
Some cantons remained Catholic, and some became Protestant, and in the late
1520s the two sides went to war. Zwingli was killed on the battlefield in 1531, and
both sides quickly decided that a treaty was preferable to further fighting. The
treaty basically allowed each canton to determine its own religion and ordered
each side to give up its foreign alliances, a policy of neutrality that has been char-
acteristic of modern Switzerland.
Trying to halt the spread of religious division, Charles V called an Imperial Diet
in 1530, to meet at Augsburg. The Lutherans developed a statement of faith, later
called the Augsburg Confession, and the Protestant princes presented this to the
emperor. (The Augsburg Confession remained an authoritative statement of belief
for many Lutheran churches for centuries.) Charles refused to accept it and ordered
all Protestants to return to the Catholic Church and give up any confiscated church
property. This demand backfired, and Protestant territories in the empire—mostly
northern German principalities and southern German cities—formed a military
alliance. The emperor could not respond militarily, as he was in the midst of a series
of wars with the French: the Habsburg-Valois wars, fought in Italy along the eastern
and southern borders of France and eventually in Germany. The Ottoman Turks
had also taken much of Hungary and in 1529 were besieging Vienna.
The 1530s and early 1540s saw complicated political maneuvering among
Sec tion Review many of the powers of Europe. Various attempts were made to heal the religious
• The strong central governments of split with a church council, but intransigence on both sides made it increasingly
Spain, France, and England initially clear that this would not be possible and that war was inevitable. Charles V real-
crushed calls for reform, but in the ized that he was fighting not only for religious unity, but also for a more unified
decentralized independent states of state, against territorial rulers who wanted to maintain their independence. He
the Holy Roman Empire, Luther was thus defending both church and empire.
found the right conditions for
reform. Fighting began in 1546, and initially the emperor was very successful. This
success alarmed both France and the pope, however, who did not want Charles to
• Through politically advantageous
marriages, the House of Habsburg become even more powerful. The pope withdrew papal troops, and the Catholic
acquired much land and money, be- king of France sent money and troops to the Lutheran princes. Finally, in 1555
coming an international power. Charles agreed to the Peace of Augsburg, which, in accepting the status quo, offi-
• In the sixteenth century, religion con- cially recognized Lutheranism. The political authority in each territory was per-
tinued to be a public matter more than mitted to decide whether the territory would be Catholic or Lutheran. Most of
a personal choice, and the Reformation northern and central Germany became Lutheran, while the south remained Ro-
led to religious wars. man Catholic. There was no freedom of religion, however. Princes or town coun-
• As a result of the religious wars, the cils established state churches to which all subjects of the area had to belong.
ruler of each territory chose whether it Dissidents had to convert or leave.
would be Catholic or Lutheran; there
was no personal religious freedom The Peace of Augsburg ended religious war in Germany for many decades.
within each area, so dissenters had to His hope of uniting his empire under a single church dashed, Charles V abdicated
convert or leave. in 1556, transferring power over his Spanish and Netherlandish holdings to his son
Philip and his imperial power to his brother Ferdinand.
The Spread of the Protestant Reformation 351
The Spread of the Protestant Reformation

How did Protestant ideas and institutions spread beyond German-
speaking lands?
States within the Holy Roman Empire and the kingdom of Denmark-Norway
were the earliest territories to accept the Protestant Reformation, but by the later
1520s religious change came to England, France, and eastern Europe. In all of
these areas, a second generation of reformers built on Lutheran and Zwinglian
ideas to develop their own theology and plans for institutional change. The most
important of the second-generation reformers was John Calvin, whose ideas would
profoundly influence the social thought and attitudes of European and English-
speaking peoples all over the world, especially in Canada and the United States.
As on the continent, the Reformation in England had

The Reformation in economic as well as religious causes. However, the im-
England and Ireland petus for England’s break with Rome was the ruler’s
desire for a new wife.
King Henry VIII (r. 1509–1547) was married to Catherine of Aragon, the
daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella and widow of his older brother Arthur. Mar-
riage to a brother’s widow went against canon law, and Henry had been required
to obtain a special papal dispensation to marry Catherine. The marriage had pro-
duced only one living heir, a daughter, Mary. By 1527 Henry decided that God
was showing his displeasure with the marriage by denying him a son, and he ap-
pealed to the pope to have the marriage annulled. He was also in love with a court
lady-in-waiting, Anne Boleyn, and assumed that she would give him the son he
wanted. Normally an annulment would not have been a problem, but the troops
of Emperor Charles V were in Rome at that point, and Pope Clement VII was es-
sentially their prisoner. Charles V was the nephew of Catherine of Aragon and
thus was vigorously opposed to an annulment, which would have declared his
aunt a fornicator and his cousin Mary a bastard. The pope stalled.
Since Rome appeared to be thwarting Henry’s matrimonial plans, he decided
to remove the English church from papal jurisdiction. Henry used Parliament to
legalize the Reformation in England and to make himself the supreme head of the
Church of England. Some opposed the king and were beheaded, among them
Thomas More, the king’s chancellor and author of Utopia (see page 317). When
Anne Boleyn failed twice to produce a male child, Henry VIII charged her with
adulterous incest and in 1536 had her beheaded. His third wife, Jane Seymour,
gave Henry the desired son, Edward, but she died in childbirth. Henry went on to
three more wives. Between 1535 and 1539, under the influence of his chief min-
ister, Thomas Cromwell, Henry decided to dissolve the English monasteries be-
cause he wanted their wealth. The king ended nine hundred years of English
monastic life, dispersing the monks and nuns and confiscating their lands. Hun-
dreds of properties were sold to the middle and upper classes and the proceeds
enriched the Exchequer. The dissolution of the monasteries did not achieve a
more equitable distribution of land and wealth. Rather, the redistribution of land
strengthened the upper classes and tied them to the Tudor dynasty.
Henry’s motives combined personal, political, social, and economic elements.
Theologically, he retained such traditional Catholic practices and doctrines as con-
fession, clerical celibacy, and transubstantiation. Meanwhile, Protestant literature
Allegory of the Tudor Dynasty

The unknown creator of this work intended to glorify the virtues of the Protestant succession; the painting has no historical
reality. Enthroned Henry VIII (r. 1509–1547) hands the sword of justice to his Protestant son Edward VI (r. 1547–1553). The
Catholic Queen Mary (r. 1553–1558) and her husband Philip of Spain are followed by Mars, god of war, signifying violence
and civil disorder. At right the figures of Peace and Plenty accompany the Protestant Elizabeth I (r. 1558–1603), symbolizing
England’s happy fate under her rule. (Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library)
circulated, and Henry approved the selection of men of Protestant sympathies as

tutors for his son.
Most clergy and officials accepted Henry’s moves, but all did not quietly acqui-
esce. In 1536 popular opposition in the north to the religious changes led to the
Pilgrimage of Grace, a massive multiclass rebellion that proved the largest in Eng-
lish history. The “pilgrims” accepted a truce, but their leaders were arrested, tried,
and executed. Recent scholarship points out that people rarely “converted” from
Catholicism to Protestantism overnight. People responded to an action of the
crown that was played out in their own neighborhood—the closing of a monastery,
the ending of masses for the dead—with a combination of resistance, acceptance,
and collaboration.
Loyalty to the Catholic Church was particularly strong in Ireland. Ireland had
been claimed by English kings since the twelfth century, but in reality the English
had firm control of only the area around Dublin, known as the Pale. In 1536, on
orders from London, the Irish parliament, which represented only the English
landlords and the people of the Pale, approved the English laws severing the
church from Rome. The Church of Ireland was established on the English pat-
tern, and the (English) ruling class adopted the new reformed faith. Most of the
Irish people remained Roman Catholic, thus adding religious antagonism to the
ethnic hostility that had been a feature of English policy toward Ireland for centu-
ries (see page 300). Irish armed opposition to the Reformation led to harsh repres-
sion by the English. Catholic property was confiscated and sold, and the profits
were shipped to England. With the Roman church driven underground, Catholic
clergy acted as national as well as religious leaders.
The nationalization of the church and the dissolution of the monasteries led
to important changes in government administration in both England and Ireland.
Vast tracts of formerly monastic land came temporarily under the Crown’s jurisdic-
tion, and new bureaucratic machinery had to be developed to manage those prop-
erties. Cromwell reformed and centralized the king’s household, the council, the
secretariats, and the Exchequer. New departments of state were set up. Surplus
funds from all departments went into a liquid fund to be applied to areas where
there were deficits. This balancing resulted in greater efficiency and economy.
Henry VIII’s reign saw the growth of the modern centralized bureaucratic state.
In the short reign of Henry’s sickly son, Edward VI (r. 1547–1553), strongly
Protestant ideas exerted a significant influence on the religious life of the country.
Archbishop Thomas Cranmer simplified the liturgy, invited Protestant theolo-
gians to England, and prepared the first Book of Common Prayer (1549). In Book of Common Prayer The official
stately and dignified English, the Book of Common Prayer included, together with (parliament-approved) prayer book of
the Church of England, containing the
the Psalter, the order for all services of the Church of England. prayers for all services, the forms for
The equally brief reign of Mary Tudor (r. 1553–1558) witnessed a sharp move administration of the sacraments, and
back to Catholicism. The devoutly Catholic daughter of Catherine of Aragon, a manual for the ordination of deacons,
Mary rescinded the Reformation legislation of her father’s reign and restored priests, and bishops.
Roman Catholicism. Mary’s marriage to her cousin Philip of Spain, son of the
emperor Charles V, proved highly unpopular in England, and her execution of
several hundred Protestants further alienated her subjects. During her reign, many
Protestants fled to the continent. Mary’s death raised to the throne her sister Eliza-
beth (r. 1558–1603) and inaugurated the beginnings of religious stability.
Elizabeth, Henry’s daughter with Anne Boleyn, had been raised a Protestant,
but at the start of her reign sharp differences existed in England. On the one
hand, Catholics wanted a Roman Catholic ruler. On the other hand, a vocal num-
ber of returning exiles wanted all Catholic elements in the Church of England
eliminated. The latter, because they wanted to “purify” the church, were called
“Puritans.”
Shrewdly, Elizabeth chose a middle course between Catholic and Puritan
extremes. She referred to herself as the “supreme governor of the Church of Eng-
land,” which allowed Catholics to remain loyal to her without denying the pope.
She required her subjects to attend church or risk a fine, but did not interfere with
their privately held beliefs. The Anglican Church, as the Church of England was
called, moved in a moderately Protestant direction. Services were conducted in
English, monasteries were not re-established, and clergymen were (grudgingly)
allowed to marry. But the episcopate was not abolished, and the bishops remained
as church officials, and church services were quite traditional.
Elizabeth’s reign was threatened by European powers attempting to re-establish
Catholicism. In 1586 Elizabeth’s cousin and heir to the crown, Mary, Queen of
Scots, became implicated in a plot to assassinate Elizabeth. Hoping to reunite Eng-
land with Catholic Europe through Mary, Philip of Spain (Philip II) gave the
conspiracy his full backing. When the English executed Mary, the Catholic pope
urged Philip to retaliate.
Philip prepared a vast fleet to sail from Lisbon to Flanders, where a large army
of Spanish troops were stationed, and then escort barges carrying the troops across Spanish Armada The fleet sent by
Philip II of Spain in 1588 against
the English Channel. On May 9, 1588, la felícissima armada—“the most fortu- England as a religious crusade against
nate fleet,” as it was ironically called in official documents—sailed from Lisbon Protestantism. Weather and the English
harbor composed of more than 130 vessels. The Spanish Armada met an English fleet defeated it.
fleet in the channel before it reached Flanders. The English ships were smaller,
faster, and more maneuverable, and many of them had greater firing power than
their Spanish counterparts. A combination of storms and squalls, spoiled food and
rank water, inadequate Spanish ammunition, and, to a lesser extent, English fire
ships that caused the Spanish to scatter, gave England the victory. On the journey
home many Spanish ships went down around Ireland; perhaps 65 managed to
reach home ports.
The battle in the English Channel has frequently been described as one of the
decisive battles in world history. In fact, it had mixed consequences. Spain soon
rebuilt its navy, and after 1588 the quality of the Spanish fleet improved. The war
between England and Spain dragged on for years. Yet the defeat of the Spanish
Armada prevented Philip II from reimposing Catholicism on England by force. In
England the victory contributed to a David and Goliath legend that enhanced
English national sentiment.
In 1509, while Luther was preparing for a doctorate

Calvinism at Wittenberg, John Calvin (1509–1564) was born in
Noyon in northwestern France. As a young man he stud-
ied law, which had a decisive impact on his mind and later his thought. In 1533 he
experienced a religious crisis, as a result of which he converted to Protestantism.
Calvin believed that God had specifically selected him to reform the church.
Accordingly, he accepted an invitation to assist in the reformation of the city of
Geneva. There, beginning in 1541, Calvin worked assiduously to establish a Chris-
tian society ruled by God through civil magistrates and reformed ministers. Ge-
neva, “a city that was a church,” became the model of a Christian community for
sixteenth-century Protestant reformers.
To understand Calvin’s Geneva, it is necessary to understand Calvin’s ideas.
The Institutes of the Christian These he embodied in The Institutes of the Christian Religion, first published in
Religion Calvin’s formulation of Chris- 1536 and definitively issued in 1559. The cornerstone of Calvin’s theology was his
tian doctrine, which became a systematic
theology for Protestantism.
belief in the absolute sovereignty and omnipotence of God and the total weakness
of humanity. Before the infinite power of God, he asserted, men and women are
as insignificant as grains of sand.
Calvin did not ascribe free will to human beings because that would detract
from the sovereignty of God. Men and women cannot actively work to achieve
salvation; rather, God in his infinite wisdom decided at the beginning of time who
would be saved and who damned. This viewpoint constitutes the theological prin-
predestination The teaching that ciple called predestination.
God has determined the salvation or Many people consider the doctrine of predestination, which dates back to
damnation of individuals based on His
will and purpose, not on their merit
Saint Augustine and Saint Paul, to be a pessimistic view of the nature of God. But
of works. “this terrible decree,” as even Calvin called it, did not lead to pessimism or fatal-
ism. Rather, the Calvinist believed in the redemptive work of Christ and was con-
fident that God had elected (saved) him or her. Predestination served as an
energizing dynamic, forcing a person to undergo hardships in the constant
struggle against evil.
Calvin aroused Genevans to a high standard of morality. He had two remark-
able assets: complete mastery of the Scriptures and exceptional eloquence. In the
reformation of the city, the Genevan Consistory also exercised a powerful role.
This body of laymen and pastors was assembled “to keep watch over every man’s
life [and] to admonish amiably those whom they see leading a disorderly life.”4
Although all municipal governments in early modern Europe regulated citi-
zens’ conduct, none did so with the severity of Geneva’s Consistory under Calvin’s
leadership. Absence from sermons, criticism of minis-

ters, dancing, card playing, family quarrels, and heavy
drinking were all investigated and punished by the
Consistory. Serious crimes and heresy were handled by
the civil authorities, which, with the Consistory’s ap-
proval, sometimes used torture to extract confessions.
Between 1542 and 1546 alone seventy-six persons were
banished from Geneva and fifty-eight executed for her-
esy, adultery, blasphemy, and witchcraft. Among them
was the Spanish humanist Michael Servetus, who was
burned at the stake for denying the scriptural basis for
the Trinity, rejecting child baptism, and insisting that a
person under twenty cannot commit a mortal sin. This
last idea was considered especially dangerous to public
morality.
Religious refugees from France, England, Spain,
Scotland, and Italy visited Calvin’s Geneva. Subse-
quently, the Reformed church of Calvin served as the
model for the Presbyterian church in Scotland, the
Huguenot church in France, and the Puritan churches
in England and New England.
Calvinism became the compelling force in inter-
national Protestantism. The Calvinist ethic of the “call-
ing” dignified all work with a religious aspect. Hard
work, well done, was pleasing to God. This doctrine
encouraged an aggressive, vigorous activism. These
factors, together with the social and economic applica- Young John Calvin
tions of Calvin’s theology, made Calvinism the most Even in youth, Calvin’s face showed the strength and determination that
dynamic force in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century were later to characterize his religious zeal. (Bibliothèque de Genève,
Protestantism. Département Iconographique)
Calvinism found a ready audience in Scotland, where

The Establishment the Scottish nobles supported reform. One man, John
of the Church Knox (1505?–1572), dominated the reform movement,
of Scotland which led to the establishment of a state church.
Knox was determined to structure the Scottish church after the model of Ge-
neva, where he had studied and worked with Calvin. The Presbyterian Church of
Scotland was strictly Calvinist in doctrine, adopted a simple and dignified service
of worship, and laid great emphasis on preaching. Its name describes its gover-
nance by presbyters, or ministers, instead of bishops. Knox’s Book of Common Or-
der (1564) became the liturgical directory for the church.
While political and economic issues determined the

The Reformation in course of the Reformation in western and northern
Eastern Europe Europe, ethnic factors often proved decisive in eastern
Europe, where people of diverse backgrounds had settled in the later Middle Ages.
In Bohemia in the fifteenth century, a Czech majority was ruled by Germans.
Most Czechs had adopted the ideas of Jan Hus, and the emperor had been forced
to recognize a separate Hussite church. Yet Lutheranism appealed to Germans
in Bohemia in the 1520s and 1530s, and the nobility embraced Lutheranism in
opposition to the Catholic Habsburgs. The forces of the Catholic Reformation

(see page 357) promoted a Catholic spiritual revival in Bohemia, and some areas
reconverted. This complicated situation would be one of the causes of the Thirty
Years’ War (see pages 435–437).
By 1500 Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania were jointly governed by
king, senate, and diet (parliament), but the two territories retained separate offi-
cials, judicial systems, armies, and forms of citizenship. The combined realms
covered about 440,150 square miles, making Poland-Lithuania the largest Euro-
pean polity. A population of only about 7.5 million people was very thinly scat-
tered over that land.
The population of Poland-Lithuania was also very diverse; Germans, Italians,
Tartars, and Jews lived with Poles and Lithuanians. Such peoples had come as
merchants, invited by medieval rulers because of their wealth or to make agricul-
tural improvements. Each group spoke its native language, though all educated
people spoke Latin. Luther’s ideas took root in Germanized towns but were op-
posed by King Sigismund I (r. 1506-1548) as well as by ordinary Poles who held
strong anti-German feeling. The Reformed tradition of John Calvin, with its stress
on the power of church elders, appealed to the Polish nobility, however. The fact
that Calvinism originated in France, not in Germany, also made it more attractive
than Lutheranism. But doctrinal differences among Calvinists, Lutherans, and other
groups prevented united opposition to Catholicism, and a Counter-Reformation
gained momentum. By 1650, due to the efforts of Stanislaus Hosius (1505–1579)
and those of the Jesuits (see page 359), the identification of Poland and Roman
Catholicism was well established.
Hungary’s experience with the Reformation was even more complex. Luther-
anism was spread by Hungarian students who had studied at Wittenberg, but the
Catholic hierarchy and Hungarian magnates threatened to execute all Lutherans.
However, a military event on August 26, 1526, had pro-
found consequences for both the Hungarian state and the
Protestant Reformation there. On the plain of Mohács in
Sec tion Review southern Hungary, the Ottoman sultan Suleiman the
• John Calvin and others who developed their own theology led the Magnificent (see page 439) inflicted a crushing defeat on
spread of the Protestant Reformation beyond Germany to Eng- the Hungarians, killing King Louis II, many of the mag-
land, France, and eastern Europe. nates, and more than sixteen thousand ordinary soldiers.
• In England, King Henry VIII broke with Rome over his desire to The Hungarian kingdom was then divided into three parts:
divorce his wife Catherine of Aragon, using Parliament to legalize the Ottoman Turks absorbed the great plains, including the
the Reformation and make himself the head of the Church of capital, Buda; the Habsburgs ruled the north and west; and
England. Ottoman-supported Janos Zapolya held eastern Hungary
• Following Henry’s death, England returned to Catholicism briefly and Transylvania.
while his daughter Mary was queen, then adopted moderate Pro- The Turks were indifferent to the religious conflicts of
testantism under his daughter Elizabeth.
the infidels. Many Magyar (Hungarian) magnates ac-
• In Geneva, John Calvin emphasized the absolute power of God cepted Lutheranism; Lutheran schools and parishes
and demanded high standards of morality; Calvinism encouraged
hard work and dynamic activism. headed by men educated at Wittenberg multiplied; and
peasants welcomed the new faith. The majority of people
• Calvinism was the model for the Presbyterian Church of Scotland
established by John Knox who advocated a simple service, an were Protestant until the late seventeenth century, when
emphasis on preaching, and governance by ministers instead Hungarian nobles recognized Habsburg (Catholic) rule
of bishops. and Ottoman Turkish withdrawal in 1699 led to Catholic
restoration.
The Catholic Reformation 357
The Catholic Reformation

How did the Catholic Church respond to the new religious situation?
Between 1517 and 1547 Protestantism made remarkable advances. Nevertheless,

the Roman Catholic Church made a significant comeback. After about 1540 no
new large areas of Europe, other than the Netherlands, accepted Protestant beliefs
(see Map 14.2). Many historians see the developments within the Catholic Church
after the Protestant Reformation as two interrelated movements, one a drive for
internal reform linked to earlier reform efforts, and the other a Counter-Reformation
that opposed Protestants intellectually, politically, militarily, and institutionally. In
both movements, the papacy, new religious orders, and the Council of Trent that
met from 1545 to 1563 were important agents.
Renaissance popes and advisers were not blind to the

The Reformed Papacy need for church reforms, but they resisted calls for a
general council representing the entire church, fearing
loss of power, revenue, and prestige. This changed beginning with Pope Paul III
(1534–1549), and the papal court became the center of the reform movement
rather than its chief opponent. The lives of the pope and his reform-minded cardi-
nals, abbots, and bishops were models of decorum and piety.
In 1542 Pope Paul III established the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office, Holy Office The official Roman
with jurisdiction over the Roman Inquisition, a powerful instrument of the Catho- Catholic agency founded in 1542 to
combat international doctrinal heresy
lic Reformation. The Inquisition was a committee of six cardinals with judicial and to promote sound doctrine on faith
authority over all Catholics and the power to arrest, imprison, and execute. Within and morals.
the Papal States, the Inquisition effectively destroyed heresy (and some heretics).
Pope Paul III also called an ecumenical council, which

The Council of Trent met intermittently from 1545 to 1563 at Trent, an im-
perial city close to Italy. It was called not only to reform
the church but also to secure reconciliation with the Protestants. Lutherans and
Calvinists were invited to participate, but their insistence that the Scriptures be the
sole basis for discussion made reconciliation impossible.
Nonetheless, the decrees of the Council of Trent laid a solid basis for the
spiritual renewal of the Catholic Church. It gave equal validity to the Scriptures
and to tradition as sources of religious truth and authority. It reaffirmed the seven
sacraments and the traditional Catholic teaching on transubstantiation. It tackled
the disciplinary matters that had disillusioned the faithful, requiring bishops to
reside in their own dioceses, suppressing pluralism and simony, and forbidding the
sale of indulgences. Clerics who kept concubines were to give them up. In a highly
original decree, the council required every diocese to establish a seminary for the
education and training of the clergy. Seminary professors were to determine
whether candidates for ordination had vocations, genuine callings to the priest-
hood. This was a novel idea, since from the time of the early church, parents had
determined their sons’ (and daughters’) religious careers. Finally, great emphasis
was laid on preaching and instructing the laity, especially the uneducated.
One decision had especially important social consequences for laypeople. The
Council of Trent stipulated that for a marriage to be valid, consent (the essence of
marriage) as given in the vows had to be made publicly before witnesses, one of
Bergen 60°N
E N Predominant religion
NORWAY D Helsinki in 1555
1536/1607 E 0 200 400 Km.
W Lutheran
SCOTLAND S Stockholm
1560 0 200 400 Mi.
Calvinist (Reformed)
Edinburgh
North
Church of England
John Knox,
1505–1572 Sea
a
IRELAND Roman Catholic
Se
Penetration of Calvinism
DENMARK Riga
to England after 1558 Orthodox
Dublin
i
c
t
al
Copenhagen Muslim
ENGLAND B
LITHUANIA N Spread of Calvinism
1536
Oxford Hamburg Huguenot center
John Wyclif, BRANDENBURG
1320–1384 London Amsterdam SAXONY PRUSSIA Ottoman Empire, 1566
Wittenberg
Plymouth NETHERLANDS Martin Luther
Antwerp Münster Birthplace of Warsaw

Brussels
Martin Luther,
Eisleben 1483–1546 50°N
Birthplace of Erfurt Leipzig
Noyon John Calvin, Marburg POLAND
1509 –1564 HOLY ROMAN
AT L A N T I C Rennes
Paris
Worms
Edict of Worms,
EMPIRE Prague
1521 Speyer Nuremberg Jan Hus,
OCEAN Nantes Orléans
Strasbourg Stuttgart
1369–1415
Edict of Nantes,
1598
BOHEMIA
Augsburg MORAVIA
La Rochelle Basel
FRANCE Zurich Munich
Vienna
MOLDAVIA
Ulrich Zwingli,
1484–1531
AUSTRIA Pest
Bordeaux Buda
Geneva Council of Trent, TRANSYLVANIA
John Calvin 1545 –1563 HUNGARY
Milan Trent BESSARABIA
AL
Loyola Pavia
Venice
Birthplace of Toulouse
UG
Ignatius Loyola, Avignon Genoa Belgrade

WALLACHIA
1491–1556 SERBIA
RT
Pisa . Black Sea

Ad
Marseilles
SPAIN D a nu b e R
PO
Florence
ri
Lisbon Madrid ti
a
ITALY c
Toledo Barcelona Corsica Se OT 40°N
a BULGARIA TO
Rome
Roman Inquisition M
established, 1542 A
Valencia
Sardinia Bari N
Seville Naples 40°E
Balearic Is.
Granada
E
10°W
M
GREECE
P
IR
E
ALGIERS
Sicily
OTTOMAN EMPIRE
MOROCCO Med
TUNIS iterranean Sea
0° 10°E 20°E 30°E
The Catholic Reformation 359
Mapping the Past

MAP 14.2 Religious Divisions in Europe
The Reformations shattered the religious unity of Western Christendom. The situation was even
more complicated than a map of this scale can show. Many cities within the Holy Roman Empire,
for example, accepted a different faith than the surrounding countryside; Augsburg, Basel, and
Strasbourg were all Protestant, though surrounded by territory ruled by Catholic nobles. Use the
map and the information in the book to answer the following questions: [1] Why was the Holy
Roman Empire the first arena of religious conflict in sixteenth-century Europe? [2] Are there
similarities in regions where a particular branch of the Christian faith was maintained or took
root? [3] To what degree can nonreligious factors be used as an explanation for the religious
divisions in sixteenth-century Europe?
whom had to be the parish priest. Trent thereby ended the widespread practice of
secret marriages in Catholic countries. The decrees of the Council of Trent laid a
solid basis for the spiritual renewal of the church. For four centuries the doctrinal
and disciplinary legislation of Trent served as the basis for Roman Catholic faith,
organization, and practice.
The establishment of new religious orders within the

New Religious Orders church reveals a central feature of the Catholic Refor-
mation. Most of these new orders developed in re- Jesuits Members of the Society of
sponse to one crying need: to raise the moral and intellectual level of the clergy Jesus, founded by Ignatius Loyola and
and people. (See the feature “Individuals in Society: Teresa of Ávila.”) Education approved by the papacy in 1540, whose
was a major goal of the two most famous orders. goal was the spread of the Roman
Catholic faith through humanistic
The Ursuline order of nuns, founded by Angela Merici (1474–1540), attained schools and missionary activity.
enormous prestige for the education of women. The daughter of a country gentle-
man, Angela Merici worked for many years among the poor, sick, and uneducated
around her native Brescia in northern Italy. In 1535 she established the first wom- Sec tion Review
en’s religious order concentrating exclusively on teaching young girls, with the • The Council at Trent (1545–1563)
goal of re-Christianizing society by training future wives and mothers. After receiv- failed to reconcile Protestants and
ing papal approval in 1565, the Ursulines rapidly spread to France and the New Catholics but succeeded in renewing
World. the spirituality of the Catholic
Church.
The Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, founded by Ignatius Loyola (1491–1556),
played a powerful international role in strengthening Catholicism in Europe and • The reforms of Trent included estab-
lishing seminaries to train young
spreading the faith around the world. While recuperating from a severe battle clergy, determining “callings” or
wound in his legs, Loyola studied a life of Christ and other religious books and church vocations, and reforming
decided to give up his military career and become a soldier of Christ. The first marriage laws, which ended secret
Jesuits, whom Loyola recruited primarily from the wealthy merchant and profes- marriages.
sional classes, saw the Reformation as a pastoral problem, its causes and cures re- • The mystical Carmelite nun Teresa
lated not to doctrinal issues but to people’s spiritual condition. Reform of the of Ávila reformed her order, stressing
church, as Luther and Calvin understood that term, played no role in the future poverty, enclosure, obedience, and
social equality.
the Jesuits planned for themselves. Their goal was “to help souls.”
The Society of Jesus developed into a highly centralized, tightly knit organiza- • The Ursuline nuns were the first
order solely dedicated to the educa-
tion. In addition to the traditional vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, pro- tion of young women.
fessed members vowed to go anywhere the pope said they were needed. They
• The Jesuits contributed to the spread
attracted many recruits and achieved phenomenal success for the papacy and the of Catholicism and strengthened the
reformed Catholic Church, carrying Christianity to India and Japan before 1550 papacy by travelling throughout much
and to Brazil, North America, and the Congo in the seventeenth century. Within of the world preaching and teaching.
Europe the Jesuits brought southern Germany and much of eastern Europe back
Teresa of Ávila
H er family derived from Toledo, center of the Moor-
ish, Jewish, and Christian cultures in medieval
Spain. Her grandfather, Juan Sanchez, made a fortune
penetrated to my entrails. When he drew it out . . . he
left me completely afire with the great love of God.*
Teresa responded with a new sense of purpose: al-
in the cloth trade. A “New Christian” (see pages 330–
though she encountered stiff opposition, she resolved to
332), he was accused of secretly practicing Judaism.
found a reformed house. Four basic principles were to
Although he endured the humiliation of a public
guide the new convent. First, poverty was to be fully ob-
repentance, he moved his family
served, symbolized by the nuns’ being barefoot, hence
south to Ávila. Beginning again, he
discalced. Charity and the nuns’ own work must support
recouped his wealth and, aspiring
the community. Second, the convent must keep strict
to the prestige of an “Old Chris-
enclosure; the visits of powerful benefactors with mate-
tian,” bought noble status. Juan’s
rial demands were forbidden. Third, Teresa intended an
son Alzonzo Sanchez de Cepeda
egalitarian atmosphere in which class distinctions were
married a woman of thoroughly
forbidden. She had always rejected the emphasis on
Christian background, giving his
“purity of blood,” a distinctive and racist feature of Span-
family an aura of impeccable or-
ish society that was especially out of place in the cloister.
thodoxy. The third of their nine
All sisters, including those of aristocratic background,
children, Teresa, became a saint
must share the manual chores. Finally, like Ignatius
and in 1970 was the first woman
Loyola and the Jesuits, Teresa placed great emphasis on
declared a Doctor of the Church,
obedience, especially to one’s confessor.
a title given to a theologian of out-
Between 1562 and Teresa’s death in 1582, she founded
standing merit.
or reformed fourteen other houses of nuns, traveling
At age twenty, inspired more by
Seventeenth-century widely to do so. Though Teresa did not advocate institu-
the fear of Hell than the love of
cloisonné enamelwork tionalized roles for women outside the convent, she did
illustrating Teresa of Ávila’s God, Teresa (1515–1582) entered
chafe at the restrictions placed on her because of her
famous vision of an angel the Carmelite Convent of the In-
sex, and she thought of the new religious houses she
piercing her heart. (By carnation in Ávila. Most of the
gracious permission of Catherine
founded as answers to the Protestant takeover of Catho-
nuns were daughters of Ávila’s
Hamilton Kappauf) lic churches elsewhere in Europe. From her brother,
leading citizens; they had entered
who had obtained wealth in the Spanish colonies,
the convent because of a family de-
Teresa learned about conditions in Peru and instructed
cision about which daughters would marry and which
her nuns “to pray unceasingly for the missionaries work-
would become nuns. Their lives were much like those
ing among the heathens.” Through prayer, Teresa wrote,
of female family members outside the convent walls,
her nuns could share in the exciting tasks of evangeliza-
with good food, comfortable surroundings, and frequent
tion and missionary work otherwise closed to women.
visits from family and friends. Teresa was frequently ill,
Her books, along with her five hundred extant letters,
but she lived quietly in the convent for many years. In
show her as a practical and down-to-earth woman as
her late thirties, she began to read devotional literature
well as a mystic and a creative theologian.
intensely and had profound mystical experiences—
visions and voices in which Christ chastised her for her
frivolous life and friends. She described one such experi-
ence in 1560: 1. How did sixteenth-century convent life reflect the
values of Spanish society?
It pleased the Lord that I should see an angel. . . .
2. How is the life of Teresa of Ávila typical of develop-
Short, and very beautiful, his face was so aflame that
ments in the Catholic Reformation? How is her life
he appeared to be one of the highest types of angels. . . .
unusual?
In his hands I saw a long golden spear and at the end
of an iron tip I seemed to see a point of fire. With this * The Autobiography of St. Teresa of Ávila, trans. and ed. E. A.
he seemed to pierce my heart several times so that it Peers (New York: Doubleday, 1960, pp. 273–274).
360
Religious Violence 361
to Catholicism. Jesuit schools adopted the modern humanist curricula and meth-
ods, educating the sons of the nobility as well as the poor. As confessors and spiri-
tual directors to kings, Jesuits exerted great political influence.
Religious Violence
What were the causes and consequences of religious violence, including
riots, wars, and witch hunts?
In 1559 France and Spain signed the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis (cah-toh-kam-

BRIE-sees), which ended the long conflict known as the Habsburg-Valois Wars.
Spain was the victor. France, exhausted by the struggle, had to acknowledge Span-
ish dominance in Italy, where much of the fighting had taken place. However,
over the next century religious differences led to riots, civil wars, and international
conflicts. Especially in France and the Netherlands, Protestants and Catholics
used violent actions as well as preaching and teaching against each other, for each
side regarded the other as a poison in the community that would provoke the
wrath of God. Catholics continued to believe that Calvinists and Lutherans could
be reconverted; Protestants persisted in thinking that the Roman church should
be destroyed. Catholics and Protestants alike feared people of other faiths, who
they often saw as agents of Satan. Even more, they feared those who were explicitly
identified with Satan: witches living in their midst. This era was the time of the
most virulent witch persecutions in European history, as both Protestants and
Catholics tried to make their cities and states more godly.
The costs of the Habsburg-Valois Wars, waged inter-

French Religious Wars mittently through the first half of the sixteenth century,
forced the French to increase taxes and borrow heav-
ily. King Francis I (r. 1515–1547) also tried two new devices to raise revenue: the
sale of public offices and a treaty with the papacy. The former proved to be only a
temporary source of money: once a man bought an office he and his heirs were
exempt from taxation. But the latter, known as the Concordat of Bologna (see
page 329), gave the French crown the right to appoint all French bishops and
abbots, ensuring a rich supplement of money and offices. Because French rulers
possessed control over appointments and had a vested financial interest in Ca-
tholicism, they had no need to revolt against Rome.
Significant numbers of those ruled, however, were attracted to the “reformed
religion,” as Calvinism was called. Initially, Calvinism drew converts from among
reform-minded members of the Catholic clergy, the industrious middle classes,
and artisan groups. Most French Calvinists (called Huguenots) lived in major cit- Huguenots Originally a pejorative term
ies, such as Paris, Lyons, and Rouen. When Henry II died in 1559, perhaps one- for French Calvinists, later the official
title for members of this group.
tenth of the population had become Calvinist.
The feebleness of the French monarchy was the seed from which the weeds of
civil violence sprang. The three weak sons of Henry II who occupied the throne
could not provide the necessary leadership, and they were often dominated by
their mother, Catherine de’ Medici. The French nobility took advantage of this
monarchical weakness. Just as German princes in the Holy Roman Empire had
adopted Lutheranism as a means of opposition to Emperor Charles V, so French
nobles frequently adopted the reformed religion as a religious cloak for their
independence. Armed clashes between Catholic royalist lords and Calvinist
antimonarchical lords occurred in many parts of France. Both Calvinists and Cath-
olics believed that the others’ books, services, and ministers polluted the com-
munity. Preachers incited violence, and religious ceremonies such as baptisms,
marriages, and funerals triggered it.
Calvinist teachings called the power of sacred images into question, and mobs
in many cities took down and smashed statues, stained-glass windows, and paint-
iconoclasm Ridicule and destruction of ings. Though it was often inspired by fiery Protestant sermons, this iconoclasm is
religious images. an example of men and women carrying out the Reformation themselves, rethink-
ing the church’s system of meaning and the relationship between the unseen and
the seen. Catholic mobs responded by defending images, and crowds on both
sides killed their opponents, often in gruesome ways.
A savage Catholic attack on Calvinists in Paris on August 24, 1572 (Saint Bar-
tholomew’s Day), followed the usual pattern. The occasion was the marriage cer-
emony of the king’s sister Margaret of Valois to the Protestant Henry of Navarre,
which was intended to help reconcile Catholics and Huguenots. Instead, Hugue-
not wedding guests in Paris were massacred, and other Protestants were slaugh-
tered by mobs. Religious violence spread to the provinces, where thousands were
Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre killed. This Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre led to a civil war that dragged on
Massacre of thousands of Protestants in for fifteen years. Agriculture in many areas was destroyed; commercial life de-
Paris and other cities by Catholics,
beginning on Saint Bartholomew’s Day
clined severely; and starvation and death haunted the land.
(August 24) 1572. What ultimately saved France was a small group of moderates of both faiths,
called politiques, who believed that only the restoration of strong monarchy could
politiques Moderates of both religious reverse the trend toward collapse. The politiques also favored accepting the Hu-
faiths who held that only a strong
monarchy could save France from guenots as an officially recognized and organized pressure group. The death of
total collapse. Catherine de’ Medici, followed by the assassination of King Henry III, paved the
way for the accession of Henry of Navarre (the unfortunate bridegroom of the St.
Bartholomew’s Day massacre), a politique who became Henry IV (r. 1589–1610).
Henry’s willingness to sacrifice religious principles to political necessity saved
Edict of Nantes A document issued by France. He converted to Catholicism but also issued the Edict of Nantes, which
Henry IV of France in 1598, granting granted liberty of conscience and liberty of public worship to Huguenots in 150
liberty of conscience and of public
worship to Calvinists in 150 towns; it
fortified towns. The reign of Henry IV and the Edict of Nantes prepared the way
helped restore peace in France. for French absolutism in the seventeenth century by helping restore internal peace
in France.
In the Netherlands, what began as a movement for the

The Netherlands reformation of the church developed into a struggle for
Under Charles V Dutch independence. Emperor Charles V had inher-
ited the seventeen provinces that compose present-day Belgium and the Nether-
lands (see page 348). Each was self-governing and enjoyed the right to make its
own laws and collect its own taxes. They were united politically only in recogni-
tion of a common ruler, the emperor. The cities of the Netherlands made their
living by trade and industry.
In the Low Countries as elsewhere, corruption in the Roman church and the
critical spirit of the Renaissance provoked pressure for reform, and Lutheran ideas
took root. Charles V had grown up in the Netherlands, however, and he was able
to limit their impact. But Charles V abdicated in 1556 and transferred power over
the Netherlands to his son Philip, who had grown up in Spain. Protestant ideas
spread.
By the 1560s Protestants in the Netherlands were primarily Calvinists. Calvin-
ism’s intellectual seriousness, moral gravity, and emphasis on any form of labor
well done appealed to middle-class merchants and financiers and working-class
Religious Violence 363
Iconoclasm in the Netherlands

Calvinist men and women break stained-glass windows, remove
statues, and carry off devotional altarpieces. Iconoclasm, or the
destruction of religious images, is often described as a “riot,” but
here the participants seem very purposeful. Calvinist Protestants
regarded pictures and statues as sacrilegious and saw removing
them as a way to purify the church. (The Fotomas Index/The Bridgeman
Art Library)
people. Whereas Lutherans taught respect for the pow-

ers that be, Calvinism tended to encourage opposition
to “illegal” civil authorities.
In the 1560s Spanish authorities attempted to sup-
press Calvinist worship and raised taxes, which sparked
riots. Thirty churches in Antwerp were sacked and
the religious images in them destroyed in a wave of
iconoclasm. From Antwerp the destruction spread.
Philip II sent twenty thousand Spanish troops under the
duke of Alva to pacify the Low Countries. Alva inter-
preted “pacification” to mean the ruthless extermina-
tion of religious and political dissidents. On top of the
Inquisition, he opened his own tribunal, soon called
the “Council of Blood.” On March 3, 1568, fifteen
hundred men were executed.
For ten years, civil war raged in the Netherlands
between Catholics and Protestants and between the
seventeen provinces and Spain. Eventually the ten
southern provinces, the Spanish Netherlands (the fu-
ture Belgium), came under the control of the Spanish
Habsburg forces. The seven northern provinces, led by Holland, formed the
Union of Utrecht and in 1581 declared their independence from Spain. The Union of Utrecht The alliance of seven
north was Protestant; the south remained Catholic. Philip did not accept this, northern provinces (led by Holland) that
declared its independence from Spain
and war continued. England was even drawn into the conflict, supplying money and formed the United Provinces of
and troops to the northern United Provinces. (Spain launched an unsuccessful the Netherlands.
invasion of England in response; see pages 353–354.) Hostilities ended in 1609
when Spain agreed to a truce that recognized the independence of the United
Provinces.
The relationship between the Reformation and the up-

The Great European surge in trials for witchcraft that occurred at roughly
Witch Hunt the same time is complex. Increasing persecution for
witchcraft actually began before the Reformation in the 1480s, but it became es-
pecially common about 1560. Religious reformers’ extreme notions of the Devil’s
powers and the insecurity created by the religious wars contributed to this in-
crease. Both Protestants and Catholics tried and executed witches, with church
officials and secular authorities acting together.
The heightened sense of God’s power and divine wrath in the Reformation era
was an important factor in the witch hunts, but other factors were also significant.
One of these was a change in the idea of what a witch was. Nearly all premodern
societies believe in witchcraft and make some attempts to control witches, who are
Hans Baldung Grien: Witches’ Sabbat (1510)

In this woodcut, Grien combines learned and popular beliefs about
witches: they traveled at night, met at sabbats (or assemblies),
feasted on infants (in dish held high), concocted strange potions,
and had animal “familiars” that were really demons (here, a cat).
Grien also highlights the sexual nature of witchcraft by portraying
the women naked and showing them with goats, which were
common symbols of sexuality. (Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nürnberg)
understood to be people who use magical forces. In the

later Middle Ages, however, many educated Christian
theologians, canon lawyers, and officials added a de-
monological component to this notion of what a witch
was. For them, the essence of witchcraft was making a
pact with the Devil that required the witch to do the
Devil’s bidding. Witches were no longer simply people
who used magical power to get what they wanted, but
rather people used by the Devil to do what he wanted.
Some demonological theorists also claimed that witches
were organized in an international conspiracy to over-
throw Christianity. Witchcraft was thus spiritualized, and
witches became the ultimate heretics, enemies of God.
Trials involving this new notion of witchcraft as dia-
bolical heresy began in Switzerland and southern Ger-
many in the late fifteenth century, became less numerous
in the early decades of the Reformation when Protes-
tants and Catholics were busy fighting each other, and
then picked up again in about 1560. Scholars estimate
that during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 people were
officially tried for witchcraft and between 40,000 and
60,000 were executed. While the trials were secret, executions were not, and the
lists of charges were read out for all to hear.
Though the gender balance varied widely in different parts of Europe, be-
tween 75 and 85 percent of those tried and executed were women. Ideas about
women, and the roles women actually played in society, were thus important fac-
misogyny Hatred of women. tors shaping the witch hunts. Some demonologists expressed virulent misogyny,
or hatred of women, and particularly emphasized women’s powerful sexual desire,
which could be satisfied only by a demonic lover. Most people viewed women as
weaker and so more likely to give in to any kind of offer by the Devil, including
better food or nicer clothing. Women were associated with nature, disorder, and
the body, all of which were linked with the demonic.
Most witch trials began with a single accusation in a village or town. Individu-
als accused someone they knew of using magic to spoil food, make children ill, kill
animals, raise a hailstorm, or do other types of harm. Tensions within families,
households, and neighborhoods often played a role in these accusations. Women
number very prominently among accusers and witnesses as well as among those
accused of witchcraft because the actions witches were initially charged with, such
as harming children or curdling milk, were generally part of women’s sphere. A
woman also gained economic and social security by conforming to the standard of
the good wife and mother and by confronting women who deviated from it.
Chapter Review 365
Once a charge was made, judges began to question other neighbors and ac-
quaintances, building up a list of suspicious incidents that might have taken place
over decades. Historians have pointed out that one of the reasons those accused of
witchcraft were often older was that it took years to build up a reputation as a
witch. At this point, the suspect was brought in for questioning by legal authorities.
Judges and inquisitors sought the exact details of a witch’s demonic contacts, in-
cluding sexual ones. Suspects were generally stripped and shaved in a search for a
“witch’s mark,” or “pricked” to find a spot insensitive to pain, and then tortured.
Once the initial suspect had been questioned, and particularly if he or she had
been tortured, the people who had been implicated were brought in for question-
ing. This might lead to a small hunt, involving from five to ten victims, and it Sec tion Review
sometimes grew into a much larger hunt, what historians have called a “witch • The religious differences between
panic.” Panics were most common in the part of Europe that saw the most witch Catholics and Protestants led to con-
accusations in general—the Holy Roman Empire, Switzerland, and parts of flict and violence, each side viewing
France. Most of this area consisted of very small governmental units, which were the other as wrong.
jealous of each other and after the Reformation were divided by religion. The rul- • The French Calvinist Huguenots
ers of these small territories often felt more threatened than did the monarchs of clashed with the Catholic majority in
western Europe, and they saw persecuting witches as a way to demonstrate their bloody riots and massacres, ending
only when moderates of both faiths
piety and concern for order. aided in securing official recognition
Sometimes witch panics were the result of legal authorities’ rounding up a for the minority.
group of suspects together. Such panics often occurred after some type of climatic • Protestant ideas spread to the Nether-
disaster, such as an unusually cold and wet summer, and they came in waves. In lands, where civil war raged for years
large-scale panics a wider variety of suspects were taken in—wealthier people, between the Dutch and Spain, ending
children, a greater proportion of men. Mass panics tended to end when it became when Spain recognized the indepen-
clear to legal authorities, or to the community itself, that the people being ques- dence of the United Provinces.
tioned or executed were not what they understood witches to be, or that the scope • Witch hunts intensified with the
of accusations was beyond belief. Some from their community might be in league belief that witches did the bidding of
the Devil, and all were in danger of
with Satan, they thought, but not this type of person and not as many as this. experiencing God’s wrath as a result
Similar skepticism led to the gradual end of witch hunts in Europe. Even in of their acts.
the sixteenth century a few individuals questioned whether witches could ever do • Witch hunts began with an accusa-
harm, make a pact with the Devil, or engage in the wild activities attributed to tion (usually of a woman), then an
them. Doubts about whether secret denunciations were valid or torture would investigation, often under torture,
ever yield a truthful confession gradually spread among the same type of religious and sometimes grew to a “witch
and legal authorities who had so vigorously persecuted witches. Prosecutions for panic” involving more people, until
the whole witch hunt movement
witchcraft became less common and were gradually outlawed. The last official gradually faded with the growth of
execution for witchcraft in England was in 1682, though the last one in the Holy scepticism.
Roman Empire was not until 1775.
Chapter Review
What were the central ideas of the reformers, and why were they appealing to
different social groups? (page 338) Key Terms
The Catholic Church in the early sixteenth century had serious problems, and many anticlericalism (p. 338)
individuals and groups had long called for reform. This background of discontent pluralism (p. 338)
helps explain why Martin Luther’s ideas found such a ready audience. Luther and indulgence (p. 339)
other Protestants developed a new understanding of Christian doctrine that empha-
sized faith, the power of God’s grace, and the centrality of the Bible. Protestant ideas Diet of Worms (p. 341)
were attractive to educated people and urban residents, and they spread rapidly through (continued)
preaching, hymns, and the printing press. By 1530 many parts of the Holy Roman
Empire and Scandinavia had broken with the Catholic Church. Some reformers de- Protestant (p. 341)
veloped more radical ideas about infant baptism, the ownership of property, and sepa-
ration between church and state. Both Protestants and Catholics regarded these as transubstantiation (p. 341)
dangerous, and radicals were banished or executed. The German Peasants’ War, in Book of Common Prayer (p. 353)
which Luther’s ideas were linked to calls for social and economic reform, was similarly Spanish Armada (p. 353)
put down harshly. The Protestant reformers did not break with medieval ideas about
The Institutes of the Christian
the proper gender hierarchy, though they did elevate the status of marriage and viewed
Religion (p. 354)
orderly households as the key building blocks of society.
predestination (p. 354)
Holy Office (p. 357)
How did the political situation in Germany shape the course of the Jesuits (p. 359)
Reformation? (page 348)
Huguenots (p. 361)
The progress of the Reformation was shaped by the political situation in the Holy iconoclasm (p. 362)
Roman Empire. The Habsburg emperor, Charles V, ruled almost half of Europe along
Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre
with Spain’s overseas colonies. Within the empire his authority was limited, however,
(p. 362)
and local princes, nobles, and cities actually held most power. This decentralization
allowed the Reformation to spread. Charles remained firmly Catholic, and in the politiques (p. 362)
1530s religious wars began in Germany. These were brought to an end with the Peace Edict of Nantes (p. 362)
of Augsburg in 1555, which allowed rulers in each territory to choose whether their Union of Utrecht (p. 363)
territory would be Catholic or Lutheran.
misogyny (p. 364)
How did Protestant ideas and institutions spread beyond German-speaking

lands? (page 351)
In England, Henry VIII’s desire for a son who would succeed to his throne triggered
the break with Rome, and a Protestant church was established. Protestant ideas also
spread into France and eastern Europe. In all these areas, a second generation of re-
formers built on Lutheran and Zwinglian ideas to develop their own theology and
plans for institutional change. The most important of the second-generation reformers
was John Calvin, whose ideas would come to shape Christianity over a much wider
area than did Luther’s.
How did the Catholic Church respond to the new religious situation? (page 357)
The Roman Catholic Church responded slowly to the Protestant challenge, but by
the 1530s the papacy was leading a movement for reform within the church instead of
blocking it. Catholic doctrine was reaffirmed at the Council of Trent, and reform mea-
sures such as the opening of seminaries for priests and a ban on holding multiple
church offices were introduced. New religious orders such as the Jesuits and the Ursu-
lines spread Catholic ideas through teaching, and in the case of the Jesuits through
missionary work.
What were the causes and consequences of religious violence, including riots,
wars, and witch hunts? (page 361)
Religious differences led to riots, civil wars, and international conflicts in the later
sixteenth century. In France and the Netherlands, Calvinist Protestants and Catholics
used violent actions against one another, and religious differences mixed with political
and economic grievances. Long civil wars resulted, which in the case of the Nether-
lands became an international conflict. War ended in France with the Edict of Nantes
in which Protestants were given some civil rights, and in the Netherlands with a divi-
sion of the country into a Protestant north and Catholic south. The era of religious
wars was also the time of the most extensive witch persecutions in European history, as
Chapter Review 367
both Protestants and Catholics tried to rid their cities and states of people they regarded
as linked to the Devil.
Notes
1. Quoted in O. Chadwick, The Reformation (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1976), p. 55.
2. Quoted in E. H. Harbison, The Age of Reformation (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press,
1963), p. 52.
3. Quoted in S. E. Ozment, The Age of Reform, 1250–1550: An Intellectual and Religious His-
tory of Late Medieval and Reformation Europe (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press,
1980), p. 284.
4. E. W. Monter, Calvin’s Geneva (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1967), p. 137.

Martin Luther, On Christian Liberty
T he idea of liberty or freedom has played a powerful role

in the history of Western society and culture, but the
meaning and understanding of liberty has undergone con-
tinual change and interpretation. In the Roman world, where
slavery was a basic institution, liberty meant the condition
of being a free man, independent of obligations to a master.
In the Middle Ages possessing liberty meant having special
privileges or rights that other persons or institutions did
not have.
The idea of liberty also has a religious dimension, and the
reformer Martin Luther formulated a classic interpretation of On effective preaching, especially to the uneducated, Luther
liberty in his treatise On Christian Liberty (sometimes trans- urged the minister “to keep it simple for the simple.” (Church
of St. Marien, Wittenberg / The Bridgeman Art Library)
lated On the Freedom of a Christian). Luther writes that
Christians were freed from sin and death through Christ, not
through their own actions.
A Christian man is the most free lord of all, and opposing statements are made concerning the
subject to none; a Christian man is the most dutiful same man, the fact being that in the same man
servant of all, and subject to everyone. these two men are opposed to one another; the
Although these statements appear contradictory, flesh lusting against the spirit, and the spirit against
yet, when they are found to agree together, they the flesh (Gal. 5:17).
will do excellently for my purpose. They are both We first approach the subject of the inward
the statements of Paul himself, who says, “Though man, that we may see by what means a man be-
I be free from all men, yet have I made myself a comes justified, free, and a true Christian; that is, a
servant unto all” (I Cor. 9:19), and “Owe no man spiritual, new, and inward man. It is certain that
anything but to love one another” (Rom. 13:8). absolutely none among outward things, under
Now love is by its own nature dutiful and obedient whatever name they may be reckoned, has any in-
to the beloved object. Thus even Christ, though fluence in producing Christian righteousness or
Lord of all things, was yet made of a woman; made liberty, nor, on the other hand, unrighteousness or
under the law; at once free and a servant; at once in slavery. This can be shown by an easy argument.
the form of God and in the form of a servant. What can it profit to the soul that the body
Let us examine the subject on a deeper and less should be in good condition, free, and full of life,
simple principle. Man is composed of a twofold na- that it should eat, drink, and act according to its
ture, a spiritual and a bodily. As regards the spiritual pleasure, when even the most impious slaves of
nature, which they name the soul, he is called the every kind of vice are prosperous in these matters?
spiritual, inward, new man; as regards the bodily Again, what harm can ill health, bondage, hunger,
nature, which they name the flesh, he is called the thirst, or any other outward evil, do to the soul,
fleshly, outward, old man. The Apostle speaks of when even the most pious of men, and the freest in
this: “Though our outward man perish, yet the in- the purity of their conscience, are harassed by these
ward man is renewed day by day” (II Cor. 4:16). things? Neither of these states of things has to do
The result of this diversity is that in the Scriptures with the liberty or the slavery of the soul.
368
. . . [A]nd since it [faith] alone justifies, it is evi- Questions for Analysis
dent that by no outward work or labour can the 1. What did Luther mean by liberty?
inward man be at all justified, made free, and saved; 2. What aspects of Luther’s message might espe-
and that no works whatever have any relation to cially appeal to the poor and powerless?
him. . . . Therefore the first care of every Christian
ought to be to lay aside all reliance on works, and Source: Luther’s Primary Works, ed. H. Wace and C. A.
strengthen his faith alone more and more, and by it Buchheim (London: Holder and Stoughton, 1896). Re-
printed in The Portable Renaissance Reader, ed. James
grow in knowledge, not of works, but of Christ Je- Bruce Ross and Mary Martin McLaughlin (New York:
sus, who has suffered and risen again for him, as Penguin Books, 1981), pp. 721–726.
Peter teaches (I Peter 5).
369
CHAPTER 15
European Exploration
and Conquest
1450–1650
Chapter Preview
World Contacts Before Columbus
What was the Afro-Eurasian trading
world before Columbus?
The European Voyages of Discovery

How and why did Europeans undertake
ambitious voyages of expansion that
would usher in a new era of global
contact?
Europe and the World After Columbus

What effect did overseas expansion
have on the conquered societies, on
enslaved Africans, and on world trade?
Changing Attitudes and Beliefs

How did culture and art in this period
respond to social and cultural
transformation?
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY: Juan de Pareja

A detail from an early-seventeenth-century Flemish painting
LISTENING TO THE PAST: Columbus Describes His
First Voyage depicting maps, illustrated travel books, a globe, a compass, and an
astrolabe. (Reproduced by courtesy of the Trustees, The National Gallery, London)
370
World Contacts Before Columbus 371
P rior to 1400 Europeans were relatively marginal players in a centuries-old

trading system that linked Africa, Asia, and Europe. Elite classes everywhere
prized Chinese porcelains and silks, while wealthy members of the Celestial King-
dom, as China called itself, wanted ivory and black slaves from East Africa, and
exotic goods and peacocks from India. African people wanted textiles from India
and cowrie shells from the Maldive Islands. Europeans craved spices and silks, but
they had few desirable goods to offer their trading partners.
The European search for better access to Southeast Asian trade led to a new
overseas empire in the Indian Ocean and the accidental discovery of the Western
Hemisphere. Within a short time, South and North America had joined a world-
wide web. Europeans came to dominate trading networks and political empires of
truly global proportions. The era of “globalization” had begun.
Global contacts created new forms of cultural exchange, assimilation, conver-
sion, and resistance. Europeans sought to impose their cultural values on the
people they encountered and struggled to comprehend the peoples and societies
they found. New forms of racial prejudice emerged in this period, but so did new
openness and curiosity about different ways of life. Together with the develop-
ments of the Renaissance and the Reformation, the Age of Discovery laid the
foundations for the modern world as we know it today.
World Contacts Before Columbus

What was the Afro-Eurasian trading world before Columbus?
Columbus did not sail west on a whim. To understand his and other Europeans’
explorations, we must first understand late medieval trade networks. Historians
now recognize important ties between Europe and other parts of the world prior
to Columbus’s voyages, arguing that a type of “world economy” linked the prod-
ucts and people of Europe, Asia, and Africa in the fifteenth century. The West was
not the dominant player in 1492, and the European voyages derived from the pos-
sibilities and constraints of this system.
The center of the pre-Columbian world trade network

The Trade World of was the Indian Ocean. Its location made it a crossroads
the Indian Ocean for commercial and cultural exchange between China
(always the biggest market for Southeast Asian goods), India, the Middle East, Af-
rica, and Europe. From the seventh through the thirteenth centuries, the volume
of this trade steadily increased. After a period of decline resulting from the Black
Death, demand for Southeast Asian goods accelerated once more in the late four-
teenth century.
Merchants congregated in a series of multicultural, cosmopolitan port cities
strung around the Indian Ocean. Most of these cities had some form of autono-
mous self-government. Mutual self-interest had largely limited violence and at-
tempts to monopolize trade. As one historian stated, “before the arrival of the
Portuguese . . . in 1498 there had been no organised attempt by any political power
to control the sea-lanes and the long-distance trade of Asia. . . . The Indian Ocean
as a whole and its different seas were not dominated by any particular nations or
empires.”1
372 Chapter 15 European Exploration and Conquest, 1450–1650
The most developed area of this commercial web lay to the east on the South
China Sea. In the fifteenth century the port of Malacca (muh-LAH-kuh) became
a great commercial entrepôt (ON-truh-poh), to which goods were shipped for
temporary storage while awaiting redistribution to other places. To Malacca came
Chinese porcelains, silks, and camphor (used in the manufacture of many medi-
cations, including those to reduce fevers); pepper, cloves, nutmeg, and raw materi-
als such as sappanwood and sandalwood from the Moluccas; sugar from the
Philippines; and Indian printed cotton and woven tapestries, copper weapons, in-
cense, dyes, and opium.
The Mongol emperors opened the doors of China to the West, encouraging
European traders like Marco Polo to do business there. Marco Polo’s tales of his
travels from 1271 to 1295 and his encounter with the Great Khan fueled Western
fantasies about the exotic Orient. Unbeknownst to the West, the Mongols fell to
the new Ming Dynasty in 1368. During the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), China
entered a period of agricultural and commercial expansion, population growth,
and urbanization. Historians agree that it had the most advanced economy in the
world and played a key role in the fifteenth-century revival of Indian Ocean trade.
China also took the lead in naval expeditions, sending Admiral Zheng He’s
fleet of 317 ships far along the trade web, voyaging as far west as Egypt. Court
The Port of Banten in Western Java

Influenced by Muslim traders and emerging in the early sixteenth century as a Muslim kingdom, Banten evolved into a thriving entrepôt.
The city stood on the trade route to China and, as this Dutch engraving suggests, in the seventeenth century the Dutch East India
Company used Banten as an important collection point for spices purchased for sale in Europe. (Archives Charmet/The Bridgeman Art Library)
Chronology
conflicts and the need to defend against renewed Mongol 1443 Portuguese establish first African trading
encroachment led to the abandonment of the expeditions post at Arguim
and ship-building after the deaths of Zheng He and the em-
1450–1650 Age of Discovery
peror. Despite the Chinese decision not to pursue overseas
voyages, trade continued in the South China Sea. 1492 Columbus lands on San Salvador
Another center of trade in the Indian Ocean was India, 1511 Portuguese capture Malacca from
the crucial link between the Persian Gulf and the Southeast Muslims
Asian and East Asian trade networks. The need for stopovers 1518 Atlantic slave trade begins
along the sea voyage led to the development of trading posts
along the southern coast of the subcontinent, and these trad- 1519–1522 Magellan’s expedition circumnavigates
the world
ing posts evolved into thriving commercial centers. India it-
self was an important contributor of goods to the world 1521 Last Aztec emperor surrenders to Spanish
trading system. Most of the world’s pepper was grown in In- 1532-33 Pizarro arrives in Peru and defeats Inca
dia, and Indian cotton and silk textiles were highly prized. Empire
1547 Oviedo, General History of the Indies
Africa also played an important 1570–1630 Worldwide commercial boom

Africa role in the world trade system be- 1602 Dutch East India Company established
fore Columbus. Around 1450 Af-
rica had a few large and developed empires along with
hundreds of smaller polities. Cairo, the capital of the power-
ful Mameluke (MAM-look) Egyptian empire, was a hub for Indian Ocean trade
goods. Sharing in the newfound Red Sea prosperity was the African highland state
of Ethiopia, which in 1270 saw the rise of a new dynasty claiming descent from the
biblical King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Trading hubs flourished as well
on the east coast of Africa, where Swahili-speaking city-states were peopled by
confident and urbane merchants known for their prosperity and culture.
Another important African contribution to world trade was gold. In the fif-
teenth century most of the gold that reached Europe came from Sudan in West
Africa and from the Akan (AH-kahn) peoples living near present-day Ghana (GAH-
nuh). Transported across the Sahara by Arab and African traders on camels, the
gold was sold in the ports of North Africa. Other trading routes led to the Egyptian
cities of Alexandria and Cairo, where the Venetians held commercial privileges.
Nations in the inland savannah that sat astride the north-south caravan routes
grew wealthy from this trade. In the mid-thirteenth century Sundiata Keita (soon-
JAH-tuh KEY-tah) founded the powerful kingdom of Mali. His famous successor,
Mansa Musa, reportedly discussed sending vessels to explore the Atlantic Ocean,
which suggests that not only the Europeans envisaged westward naval exploration.
By the time the Portuguese arrived, however, the Malian empire was fading, to be
replaced by the Songhay (song-GAH-ee), who themselves fell to Moroccan inva-
sion at the end of the sixteenth century. The Portuguese diversion of gold away
from the trans-Sahara routes weakened this area politically and economically.
Gold was one important object of trade; slaves were another. Slavery was prac-
ticed in Africa, as virtually everywhere else in the world, before the arrival of
Europeans. Arabic and African merchants took West African slaves to the Mediter-
ranean to be sold in European, Egyptian, or Middle Eastern markets and also
brought eastern Europeans—a major element of European slavery—to West Af-
rica as slaves. In addition, Indian and Arabic merchants traded slaves in the coastal
regions of East Africa. European contact would revolutionize the magnitude and
character of African slavery (see page 389).
Africa—or legends about Africa—played an important role in Europeans’
imagination of the outside world. They long cherished the belief in a Christian
nation in Africa ruled by a mythical king, Prester John, thought to be a descendant

of one of the three kings who visited Jesus after his birth.
The Middle East was crucial to the late medieval world

The Ottoman and trade system, serving as an intermediary for trade from
Persian Empires all points of the compass. In addition, the Middle East
was an important supplier of goods for foreign exchange, especially silk and cot-
ton. Two great rival empires, the Persian Safavids (sah-FAH-vidz) and the Turkish
Ottomans, dominated this region. Persian merchants could be found in trading
communities as far away as the Indian Ocean. Persia was also a major producer
and exporter of silk. Although both were Muslim states, the Persians’ Shi’ite faith
clashed with the Ottomans’ adherence to Sunnism. Economically, the two com-
peted for control over western trade routes to the East. Under a succession of
brilliant military leaders, however, the Ottomans were ulti-
mately able to monopolize these routes.
Under Sultan Mohammed II (r. 1451–1481), the Ot-
tomans captured Europe’s largest city, Constantinople, in
May 1453. Renamed Istanbul, the city became the capital
of the Ottoman Empire. The emperor Suleiman I (SOO-
lay-man) (1494–1566) completed the conquest of Anatolia
in 1461 and pressed northwest into the Balkans. By the
early sixteenth century the Ottomans controlled the sea
trade on the eastern Mediterranean. Steadily expanding,
they conquered Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and the rest of
North Africa. They worked westward into Europe, gather-
ing parts of the Hungarian kingdom. Their advance was
halted by Habsburg forces, and Vienna stood as the west-
ward limit of their expansion into Europe.
Turkish expansion badly frightened Europeans. Otto-
man armies seemed nearly invincible and the empire’s de-
sire for expansion limitless. In France in the sixteenth
century, twice as many books were printed about the Turk-
ish threat as about the American discoveries. The strength
of the Ottomans helps explain some of the missionary fer-
vor Christians brought to new territories. It also raised eco-
nomic concerns. With trade routes to the east in the hands
of the Ottomans, Europeans were convinced that they
needed new trade routes.
Europe was the western termi-

Genoese and nus of the world trading system.
Venetian Middlemen In the late Middle Ages, the
Italian city-states of Venice and Genoa controlled the Eu-
ropean luxury trade with the East.
In 1304, Venice etablished formal relations with the
The Taking of Constantinople by the Turks sultan of Mameluke Egypt, opening offices in Cairo, the
The Ottoman conquest of the capital of the Byzantine Empire in 1453 gateway to Asian trade. The city’s merchants specialized in
sent waves of shock and despair through Europe. Capitalizing on the expensive luxury goods like spices, silks, and carpets. They
city’s strategic and commercial importance, the Ottomans made it the did not, as later Europeans did, explore new routes to get to
center of their empire. (Bibliothèque nationale de France) the sources of supply of these goods. Instead, they obtained
The European Voyages of Discovery 375
them from middlemen in the Eastern Mediterranean or Asia Minor. A little went
a long way. Venetians purchased no more than 500 tons of spices a year around
1400, but with a profit of about 40 percent.
The Venetians exchanged Eastern luxury goods for European products they
could trade abroad, including Spanish and English wool, German metal goods,
Flemish textiles, and silk cloth made in their own manufactures with imported raw
materials. The demand for such goods in the East, however, was low. To make up
the difference, the Venetians earned currency in the shipping industry and through
trade in firearms and slaves, mostly Christians taken from the Balkans. At least half
of what they traded with the East took the form of precious metal, much of it ac-
quired in Egypt and North Africa. When the Portuguese arrived in Asia, they
found Venetian coins everywhere.
Venice’s ancient rival was Genoa. In the wake of the Crusades, Genoa domi-
nated the northern route to Asia through the Black Sea. Expansion in the thir-
teenth and fourteenth centuries took the Genoese as far as Persia and the Far East.
In 1291 they sponsored an expedition by the Vivaldi brothers into the Atlantic in
search of “parts of India.” The ships were lost, and their exact destination and mo-
tivations remain unknown. However, the voyage underlines the long history of
Genoese aspirations for Atlantic exploration. Sec tion Review
In the fifteenth century Genoa made a bold change of direction. With Venice
• The pre-Columbian trading world
claiming victory over the spice trade, the Genoese shifted focus from trade to fi- centered on the cosmpolitan port
nance and from the Black Sea to the western Mediterranean. Given its location on cities of the Indian Ocean, which con-
the northwestern coast of Italy, Genoa had always been active in the western Med- ducted brisk commerce with China
iterranean, trading with North African ports, southern France, Spain, and even and India.
England and Flanders through the Strait of Gibraltar. When new voyages took • Africa was a center of world trade in
place in the western Atlantic, Genoese merchants, navigators, and financiers pro- gold and slaves and its east coast city-
vided their skills to the Iberian monarchs, whose own subjects had much less com- states played an important role in
Indian Ocean trade.
mercial experience. The Genoese, for example, ran many of the sugar plantations
established on the Atlantic islands colonized by the Portuguese. From their settle- • The rival Ottoman and Persian em-
pires were intermediaries for trade
ment in Seville, Genoese merchants financed Spanish colonization of the New between east and west; Ottoman
World and conducted profitable trade with its colonies. expansion badly frightened Europe-
After the loss of the Black Sea—and thus the source of slaves—to the Otto- ans and closed trading opportunities
mans, the Genoese sought new supplies of slaves in the West, taking the Guanches in the Eastern Mediterranean.
(indigenous peoples from the Canary Islands), Muslim prisoners and Jewish refu- • In the late Middle Ages, Venice and
gees from Spain, and by the early 1500s both black and Berber Africans. With the Genoa controlled European luxury
growth of Spanish colonies in the New World, Genoese and Venetian merchants trade with the east, losing prominence
with the rise of the Ottomans.
became important players in the Atlantic slave trade.
Italian experience in colonial administration, slaving, and international trade • Italian mariners and merchants drew
on their long trading experience to
and finance served as crucial models for the Iberian states as they pushed Euro- assist and finance Spanish and Portu-
pean expansion to new heights. Mariners, merchants, and financiers from Venice guese voyages, colonization, and
and Genoa—most notably Christopher Columbus—played a crucial role in slave-trading in the New World.
bringing the fruits of this experience to the Iberian peninsula.
The European Voyages of Discovery

How and why did Europeans undertake ambitious voyages of expansion
that would usher in a new era of global contact?
As we have seen, Europe was by no means isolated before the voyages of explora-
tion and the “discovery” of the New World. But because they did not produce
many products desired by Eastern elites, Europeans were relatively modest players
in the Afro-Eurasian trading world. Yet the demand for Eastern goods grew as the
population recovered from the Black Death, and Europeans sought an expanded
role. New European players entered the scene, eager to undo Italian and Ottoman
dominance of trade with the East. A century after the plague, Iberian explorers
began the overseas voyages that helped create the modern world, with staggering
consequences for their own continent and the rest of the planet.
European expansion had multiple causes. By the

Causes of middle of the fifteenth century, the European market
European Expansion was eager for luxury goods from the East and for spices
in particular. These spices not only added flavor to the monotonous European
diet, but they also served as perfumes, medicines, and dyes. Apart from a desire for
trade goods, religious fervor was another important catalyst for expansion. The
passion and energy ignited by the Iberian reconquista encouraged the Portuguese
and Spanish to continue the Christian crusade. Since organized Muslim polities
such as the Ottoman Empire were too strong to defeat, Iberians turned their atten-
tion to non-Christian peoples elsewhere.
Individual explorers combined these motivations in unique ways. Christopher
Columbus was a devout Christian who was increasingly haunted by messianic
obsessions in the last years of his life. As Bartholomew Diaz put it, his own motives
were “to serve God and His Majesty, to give light to those who were in darkness
and to grow rich as all men desire to do.” When Vasco da Gama reached the port
of Calicut, India, in 1498 and a native asked what the Portuguese wanted, he re-
plied, “Christians and spices.”2 The bluntest of the Spanish conquistadors, Her-
nando Cortés, announced as he prepared to conquer Mexico, “I have come to win
gold, not to plow the fields like a peasant.”3
Eagerness for exploration could be heightened by a lack of opportunity at
home. After the reconquista, young men of the Spanish upper classes found their
economic and political opportunities greatly limited. The ambitious turned to the
Americas to seek their fortunes.4 A desire for glory and the urge to explore moti-
vated many as well. Whatever the reasons, the voyages were made possible by the
growth of government power. Individuals did not possess the massive sums needed
to explore mysterious oceans and control remote continents. The Spanish monar-
chy was stronger than before and in a position to support foreign ventures. In
Portugal explorers looked to Prince Henry the Navigator (1394–1460) for financial
support and encouragement. Like voyagers, monarchs shared a mix of motiva-
tions, from desire to please God to desire to win glory and profit from trade.
Ordinary sailors were ill paid, and life at sea meant danger, overcrowding, un-
bearable stench, and hunger. For months at a time, 100 to 120 people lived and
worked in a space of between 150 and 180 square meters. Horses, cows, pigs, chick-
ens, rats, and lice accompanied them on the voyages. As one scholar concluded,
“traveling on a ship must have been one of the most uncomfortable and oppressive
experiences in the world.”5
Why did men choose to join these miserable crews? They did so to escape
poverty at home, to continue a family trade, to win a few crumbs of the great riches
of empire, or to find a better life as illegal immigrants in the colonies. Moreover,
many orphans and poor boys were placed on board as young pages and had little
say in the decision. Women also paid a price for the voyages of exploration.
Left alone for months or years at a time, and frequently widowed, sailors’ wives
struggled to feed their families. The widow of a sailor lost on Magellan’s 1519 voy-
age had to wait until 1547 to collect her husband’s salary from the Crown.6
The people who stayed at home had a powerful impact on the process. Court
coteries and factions influenced a monarch’s decisions and could lavishly reward
individuals or cut them out of the spoils of empire. Then there was the public: the
small number of people who could read were a rapt audience for tales of fantastic
places and unknown peoples. Scholars have frequently described the European
discoveries as a manifestation of Renaissance curiosity about the physical universe—
the desire to know more about the geography and peoples of the world. Fernández
de Oviedo’s (oh-VYE-do) General History of the Indies (1547), a detailed eyewit- General History of the Indies A
ness account of plants, animals, and peoples, was widely read. Indeed, the elite’s fifty-volume first-hand description of
the natural plants, animals, and peoples
desire for the exotic goods brought by overseas trade helped stimulate the whole of Spanish America. Its author,
process of expansion. Fernández de Oviedo, was a former
colonial administrator who was named
Historian of the Indies by the King of
Spain in 1532.
Technological developments in shipbuilding, weap-
Technological Stimuli onry, and navigation provided another impetus for Eu- caravel A small, maneuverable, three-
to Exploration ropean expansion. Since ancient times, most seagoing mast sailing ship developed by the
Portuguese in the fifteenth century. The
vessels had been narrow, open boats called galleys, propelled largely by slaves or caravel gave the Portuguese a distinct
convicts manning the oars. Though well suited to the placid waters of the Mediter- advantage in exploration and trade.
ranean, galleys could not withstand the rough winds and uncharted shoals of the
Atlantic. The need for sturdier craft, as well as population losses caused by the Ptolemy’s Geography A second
century c.e. work that synthesized the
Black Death, forced the development of a new style of ship that would not require classical knowledge of geography and
much manpower to sail. treated the concepts of longitude and
In the course of the fifteenth century, the Portuguese developed the caravel, a latitude. The work was reintroduced to
Europeans in 1410 by Arab scholars and
small, light, three-masted sailing ship. Though somewhat slower than the galley,
provided a template for later
the caravel held more cargo. Its triangular lateen sails and sternpost rudder also geographical scholarship.
made the caravel a much more maneuverable vessel. When fitted with cannon, it
could dominate larger vessels.
Great strides in cartography and navigational aids were also made during this Nocturnal
period. Around 1410 Arab scholars reintroduced Europeans to Ptolemy’s Geogra- An instrument for determining the hour
phy. Written in the second century c.e. by a Hellenized Egyptian, the work syn- of night at sea by finding the progress
thesized the geographical knowledge of the classical world. It also treated the of certain stars around the polestar
idea of latitude and longitude that, when plotted using an astrolabe, (center aperture). (National Maritime
Museum, London)
allowed mariners to map their location. The magnetic com-
pass also enabled sailors to determine their direction
and position at sea. Although it showed the world as
round, Ptolemy’s work also contained crucial er-
rors. Unaware of the Americas, he showed the
world as much smaller than it is, so that Asia
appeared not very distant from Europe to the
west. Based on this work, cartographers fash-
ioned new maps that combined classical
knowledge with the latest information from
mariners. First the Genoese and Venetians,
and then the Portuguese and Spanish, took
the lead in these advances.7
Much of the new technology that Euro-
peans used on their voyages was borrowed
from the East. For example, gunpowder, the
compass, and the sternpost rudder were all Chi-
nese inventions. The lateen sail, which allowed Eu-
ropean ships to tack against the wind, was a product of
the Indian Ocean trade world and was brought to the
Mediterranean on Arab ships. Navigational aids, such as the astrolabe, were also
acquired from others, and advances in cartography drew on the rich tradition of
Judeo-Arabic mathematical and astronomical learning in Iberia.
At the end of the fourteenth century Portugal was a

The Portuguese small and poor nation on the margins of European life
Overseas Empire whose principal activities were fishing and subsistence
farming. It would have been hard for a European to predict Portugal’s phenome-
nal success overseas in the next two centuries. Yet Portugal had a long history of
seafaring and navigation. Blocked from access to western Europe by Spain, the
Portuguese turned to the Atlantic and North Africa, whose waters they knew better
than other Europeans. Nature favored the Portuguese: winds blowing along their
coast offered passage to Africa, its Atlantic islands, and, ultimately, Brazil.
In the early phases of Portuguese exploration, Prince Henry, a younger son
of the king, played a leading role. A nineteenth-century scholar dubbed Henry
“the Navigator” because of his support for the study of geography and navigation
and for the annual expeditions he sponsored down the western coast of Africa.
Although he never personally participated in voyages of exploration, Henry’s
involvement ensured that Portugal did not abandon the effort despite early
disappointments.
The objectives of Portuguese policy included aristocratic desires for martial
glory, the historic Iberian crusade to Christianize Muslims, and the quest to find
gold, slaves, an overseas route to the spice markets of India, and the mythical king
Prester John. Portugal’s conquest of Ceuta, an Arab city in northern Morocco, in
1415 marked the beginning of European exploration and control of overseas terri-
tory. In the 1420s, under Henry’s direction, the Portuguese began to settle the At-
lantic islands of Madeira (ca. 1420) and the Azores (1427). In 1443 the Portuguese
founded their first African commercial settlement at Arguim in present-day Mau-
ritania (mawr-ee-TAY-nee-uh). By the time of Henry’s death in 1460, his support
for exploration was vindicated by thriving sugar plantations on the Atlantic islands
and new access to gold.
Under King John II (r. 1481–1495) the Portuguese established trading posts
and forts on the gold-rich Guinea coast and penetrated into the African continent
all the way to Timbuktu (see Map 15.1). Portuguese ships transported gold to Lis-
bon, and by 1500 Portugal controlled the flow of African gold to Europe. The
golden century of Portuguese prosperity had begun.
Still the Portuguese pushed farther south down the west coast of Africa. In
1487 Bartholomew Diaz rounded the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip, but
storms and a threatened mutiny forced him to turn back. On a later expedition in
Mapping the Past

MAP 15.1 Overseas Exploration and Conquest, Fifteenth and
Sixteenth Centuries
The voyages of discovery marked a dramatic new phase in the centuries-old migrations of
European peoples. This map depicts the voyages of Ferdinand Magellan, Christopher Columbus,
and Vasco da Gama. [1] What was the contemporary significance of each of these voyages?
[2] Was the importance of the voyages primarily economic, political, or cultural? [3] Which
voyage had the most impact, and why?
ARCTIC OCEAN
Greenland
Arctic Circle
60°N
Newfoundland
1497
N O R T H Québec 1497 Amsterdam
1608 Antwerp
AMERICA 1535–1536 EUROPE
Lisbon ASIA
Constantinople
St. 1493 Azores Seville JAPAN
1542
Augustine San Ceuta PERSIA CHINA
30°N NEW 1565 Salvador 1492 1415
Hormuz Kyushu
SPAIN 1492 Guangzhou (Canton)
Cuba Canary Is. SAHARA 1507
Tropic of Zacatecas 1492 A R A B IA 1513
Cancer Guanajuato Veracruz Muscat INDIA Macao 1517
Puerto Rico Cape CAPE PAC I F IC
Mexico City 1519 VERDE Timbuktu Aden Bombay
Verde Is. Goa 1510 PHILIPPINES
1519 Jamaica Hispaniola 1492 1444 1513 Arabian
Cartagena
1456 Bay of OC EA N
HONDURAS AFRICA Sea Calicut
GU
PAC I F IC SP Trinidad Niani 1498 Bengal
Panama A 1498 ETHIOPIA 152
IN
M NIS A 8 1
1519
149
E
OC EAN AI H
N GO LD Malacca 1509
Mo
0° Equator 14 COAST Borneo
1511
Quito 97 Sumatra
luccas
1534 15 Mombasa New
SOUTH 22 1498 INDIAN Guinea
PE
AMERICA Java
RU
Lima AT L A N T I C OCEAN
1535 Mozambique 2
IL
Potosí OCEAN Madagascar 152

AZ
1500
BR
Tropic of Capricorn
152 Rio de Janeiro AUSTR ALIA
0 Buenos 1516
30°S Aires
Santiago 1535 N
0 1,500 3,000 Km.
Cape of Good Hope
0 1,500 3,000 Mi.
Strait of Magellan
120°W 90°W 60°W 30°W 0° 30°E 60°E 90°E 120°E 150°E 180°
60°S Cape Horn
Antarctic Circle
Spanish holdings Magellan and crew Da Gama Cartier
Portuguese holdings Columbus Cabot Other
1497 Vasco da Gama commanded a fleet of four ships in search of a sea route to
the Indian Ocean trade. Da Gama’s ships rounded the Cape and sailed up the east
coast of Africa. With the help of an Indian guide, da Gama sailed across the Ara-
bian Sea to the port of Calicut in India. Overcoming local hostility, he returned to
Lisbon loaded with spices and samples of Indian cloth. He had failed to forge any
trading alliances with local powers, and Portuguese arrogance ensured the future
hostility of Muslim merchants who dominated the trading system. Nonetheless,
he had proved the possibility of lucrative trade with the East via the Cape route.
King Manuel (r. 1495–1521) promptly dispatched thirteen ships under the
command of Pedro Alvares Cabral, assisted by Diaz, to set up trading posts in In-
dia. Half the fleet was lost on the return voyage, but the six spice-laden vessels that
dropped anchor in Lisbon harbor in July 1501 more than paid for the entire expe-
dition. Thereafter, a Portuguese convoy set out for passage around the Cape every
March. Lisbon became the entrance port for Asian goods into Europe—but this
was not accomplished without a fight.
As we have seen, port city-states had controlled the rich spice trade of the In-
dian Ocean, and they did not surrender it willingly. Portuguese cannons blasted
open the ports of Malacca, Calicut, Ormuz, and Goa, the vital centers of Muslim
domination of South Asian trade. This bombardment laid the foundation for Por-
tuguese imperialism in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—a strange way to
bring Christianity to “those who were in darkness.” As one scholar wrote about the
opening of China to the West, “while Buddha came to China on white elephants,
Christ was borne on cannon balls.”8
In March 1493, between the voyages of Diaz and da Gama, Spanish ships
under a triumphant Genoese mariner named Christopher Columbus (1451–
1506), in the service of the Spanish crown, entered Lisbon harbor. Spain also had
begun the quest for an empire.
Christopher Columbus is a controversial figure in

The Problem of history—glorified by some as the brave discoverer of
Christopher Columbus America, vilified by others as a cruel exploiter of Na-
tive Americans. It is important to put him into the context of his own time. First,
what kind of man was Columbus, and what forces or influences shaped him?
Second, in sailing westward from Europe, what were his goals? Third, did he
achieve his goals, and what did he make of his discoveries?
In his dream of a westward passage to the Indies, Columbus embodied a long-
standing Genoese ambition to circumvent Venetian domination of eastward trade,
which was now being claimed by the Portuguese. Columbus was also very knowl-
edgeable about the sea. He had worked as a mapmaker, and he was familiar
with such fifteenth-century Portuguese navigational developments as portolans—
written descriptions of the courses along which ships sailed, showing bays, coves,
capes, and ports, and the distances between these places—and the use of the com-
pass as a nautical instrument. As he implied in his Journal, he had acquired not
only theoretical but also practical experience: “I have spent twenty-three years at
sea and have not left it for any length of time worth mentioning, and I have seen
everything from east to west [meaning he had been to England] and I have been
to Guinea [north and west Africa].”9 Although some of Columbus’s geographical
information, such as his measurement of the distance from Portugal to Japan as
2,760 miles when it is actually 12,000, proved inaccurate, his successful thirty-
three-day voyage to the Caribbean owed a great deal to his seamanship.
Columbus was also a deeply religious man. He had wit-

nessed the Spanish reconquest of Granada and shared fully
in the religious and nationalistic fervor surrounding that
event. Like the Spanish rulers and most Europeans of his
age, Columbus understood Christianity as a missionary re-
ligion that should be carried to places where it did not exist.
He viewed himself as a divine agent: “God made me the
messenger of the new heaven and the new earth of which
he spoke in the Apocalypse of St. John . . . and he showed
me the post where to find it.”10
What was the object of this first voyage? Columbus
wanted to find a direct ocean trading route to Asia. Rejected
by the Portuguese in 1483 and by Ferdinand and Isabella of
Spain in 1486, the project finally won the backing of the
Spanish monarchy in 1492. Inspired by the stories of Marco
Polo, Columbus dreamed of reaching the court of the
Mongol emperor, the Great Khan (not realizing that the
Ming Dynasty had overthrown the Mongols in 1368).
Based on Ptolemy’s Geography and other texts, he expected
to pass the islands of Japan and then land on the east coast
of China.
How did Columbus interpret what he had found, and
in his mind did he achieve what he had set out to do? He
landed in the Bahamas, which he christened San Salvador,
on October 12. Columbus believed he had found some
small islands off the east coast of Cipangu (Japan). On en-
countering natives of the islands, he gave them some beads The Portuguese Fleet Embarked for the Indies
and “many other trifles of small value,” pronouncing them
This image shows a Portuguese trading fleet in the late fifteenth
delighted with these gifts and eager to trade. In a letter he century, bound for the riches of the Indies. Between 1500 and 1635,
wrote to Ferdinand and Isabella on his return to Spain, Co- over nine hundred ships sailed from Portugal to ports on the Indian
lumbus described the natives as handsome, peaceful, and Ocean, in annual fleets composed of five to ten ships. (British Museum/
primitive people whose body painting reminded him of the HarperCollins Publishers/The Art Archive)
Canary Islands natives. He concluded that they would
make good slaves and could quickly be converted to Chris-
tianity. (See the feature “Listening to the Past: Columbus Describes His First Voy-
age” on pages 398–399.)
Columbus received reassuring reports—via hand gestures and mime—of the
presence of gold and of a great king in the vicinity. From San Salvador, Columbus
sailed southwest, believing that this course would take him to Japan or the coast of
China. He landed on Cuba on October 28. Deciding that he must be on the
mainland near the coastal city of Quinsay (Hangzhou) (hahng-jo), he sent a small
embassy inland with letters from Ferdinand and Isabella and instructions to locate
the grand city. The expedition included an Arabic-speaking member to serve as
interpreter with the khan.
The landing party, however, found only small villages. Confronted with this
disappointment, Columbus apparently gave up on his aim to meet the Great
Khan. Instead, he focused on trying to find gold or other valuables among the
peoples he had discovered. In January, confident that gold would later be found,
he headed back to Spain. News of his voyage spread rapidly across Europe.11
Over the next decades, the Spanish confirmed Columbus’s change of course
by adopting the model of conquest and colonization they had already introduced
in the Canary Islands rather than one of exchange with equals (as envisaged for the
Mongol khan). On his second voyage, Columbus forcibly subjugated the island of
Hispaniola, enslaved its indigenous peoples, and laid the basis for a system of land
grants tied to their labor service. Columbus himself, however, had little interest in
or capacity for governing. Revolt soon broke out against him and his brother on
Hispaniola. A royal expedition sent to investigate returned the brothers to Spain in
chains. Columbus was quickly cleared of wrongdoing, but he did not recover his
authority over the territories. Instead, they came under royal control.
Columbus was very much a man of his times. To the end of his life in 1506, he
believed that he had found small islands off the coast of Asia. He never realized the
scope of his achievement: to have found a vast continent unknown to Europeans,
except for a fleeting Viking presence centuries earlier. He could not know that the
scale of his discoveries would revolutionize world power, raising issues of trade,
settlement, government bureaucracy, and the rights of native and African peoples.
The Florentine navigator Amerigo Vespucci (ve-SPOO-

Later Explorers chee) (1454–1512) realized what Columbus had not.
Writing about his discoveries on the coast of modern-
day Venezuela, Vespucci stated: “Those new regions which we found and explored
with the fleet . . . we may rightly call a New World.” This letter, titled Mundus
Novus (The New World), was the first document to describe America as a conti-
nent separate from Asia. In recognition of Amerigo’s bold claim, the continent was
named for him. (When later cartographers realized that Columbus had made the
discovery first, it was too late to change the maps.)
To settle competing claims to the Atlantic discoveries, Spain and Portugal
Treaty of Tordesillas The 1494 turned to Pope Alexander VI. The Treaty of Tordesillas (tor-duh-SEE-yuhs) (1494)
agreement giving Spain everything to the gave Spain everything to the west of an imaginary line drawn down the Atlantic
west of an imaginary line drawn down
the Atlantic and giving Portugal every-
and Portugal everything to the east. This arbitrary division worked in Portugal’s
thing to the east. favor when in 1500 an expedition led by Pedro Alvares Cabral landed on the coast
of Brazil, which Cabral claimed as Portuguese territory. The country’s name de-
rives from the brazilwood trees found there, an important source of red dye.
The search for profits determined the direction of Spanish exploration and
expansion into South America. When it became apparent that the Portuguese
were reaping enormous riches in Asian trade while the Caribbean yield of gold
was insubstantial, new routes to the East and new sources of gold and silver were
sought. In 1519 the Spanish ruler Charles V commissioned the Portuguese mari-
ner Ferdinand Magellan (1480–1521) to find a direct route to the spices of the
Moluccas off the southeast coast of Asia. Magellan sailed southwest across the At-
lantic to Brazil, and after a long search along the coast he located the treacherous
straits that now bear his name (see Map 15.1). The new ocean he sailed into after
a rough passage through the straits seemed so peaceful that Magellan dubbed it
the Pacific. He was soon to realize his mistake. His fleet sailed north up the west
coast of South America and then headed west into the immense expanse of the
Pacific toward the Malay Archipelago. (Some of these islands were conquered in
the 1560s and named the “Philippines” for Philip II of Spain.)
Terrible storms, disease, starvation, and violence haunted the expedition. Ma-
gellan had set out with a fleet of five ships and around 270 men. Sailors on two of
the ships attempted mutiny on the South American coast; one ship was lost, and
another ship deserted and returned to Spain before even traversing the straits. The
trip across the Pacific took ninety-eight days, and the men survived on rats and
sawdust. Magellan himself was killed in a skirmish in the Philippines. The expedi-
World Map of Diogo Ribeiro, 1529

This map integrates the wealth of new information provided by European explorers in the decades after Columbus’s 1492 voyage. Working
on commission for the Spanish king Charles V, the mapmaker has incorporated new details on Africa, South America, India, the Malay
Archipelago, and China. Note the inaccuracy in his placement of the Moluccas or Spice Islands, which are much too far east. This “mistake”
was intended to serve Spain’s interests in trade negotiations with the Portuguese. (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana)
tion had enough survivors to man only two ships, and one of them was captured
by the Portuguese. One ship with eighteen men returned to Spain from the east by
way of the Indian Ocean, the Cape of Good Hope, and the Atlantic in 1522. The
voyage had taken almost exactly three years.
Despite the losses, this voyage revolutionized Europeans’ understanding of the
world by demonstrating the vastness of the Pacific. The earth was clearly much
larger than Columbus had believed. The voyage actually made a small profit in
spices, but Magellan had proved the westward passage to the Indies to be too long
and dangerous for commercial purposes. Spain abandoned the attempt to oust
Portugal from the Eastern spice trade and concentrated on exploiting her New
World territories.
The English and French also set sail across the Atlantic during the early days
of exploration. In 1497 John Cabot, a Genoese merchant living in London, aimed
for Brazil but discovered Newfoundland. The next year he returned and explored
the New England coast, perhaps going as far south as Delaware. Since these expe-
ditions found no spices or gold, Henry VII lost interest in exploration. Between
1534 and 1541 Frenchman Jacques Cartier made several voyages and explored the
St. Lawrence region of Canada. The first permanent French settlement, at Que-
bec, was founded in 1608.
In 1519, the year Magellan departed on his worldwide

New World Conquest expedition, a brash and determined Spanish conquis- conquistador Spanish for “conqueror,”
tador (kon-KEY-stuh-dor) (“conqueror”) named Her- the term refers to Spanish soldier-
explorers, such as Hernando Cortés
nando Cortés (1485–1547) crossed from Hispaniola in the West Indies to mainland and Francisco Pizarro, who sought
Mexico in search of gold. Accompanied by six hundred men, seventeen horses, to conquer the New World for the
and ten cannon, Cortés was to launch the conquest of Aztec Mexico. Spanish crown.
Cortés landed at Vera Cruz in February 1519. From there he led a march to
Tenochtitlán (teh-noch-tit-LAN) (now Mexico City), capital of the sophisticated
Aztec Empire A Native American Aztec Empire ruled by Montezuma II (r. 1502–1520). Larger than any European
civilization that possessed advanced city of the time, the capital was the heart of a civilization with advanced mathe-
mathematical, astronomical, and
engineering technology. Its capital,
matics, astronomy, and engineering, with a complex social system, and with oral
Tenochtitlán (now the site of Mexico poetry and historical traditions.
City), was larger than any contemporary The Spaniards arrived in the capital when the Aztecs were preoccupied with
European city. Conquered by Cortés harvesting their crops. According to a later Spanish account, the timing was ideal.
in 1520.
A series of natural phenomena, signs, and portents seemed to augur disaster for the
Aztecs. A comet was seen in daytime, and two temples were suddenly destroyed,
one by lightning unaccompanied by thunder. These and other apparently inex-
plicable events had an unnerving and demoralizing effect on Montezuma.
Even more important was the empire’s internal weakness. The Aztec state re-
ligion, the sacred cult of Huitzilopochtli (wheat-zeel-oh-POSHT-lee), necessi-
tated constant warfare against neighboring peoples to secure captives for religious
sacrifice and laborers for agricultural and infrastructural work. When Cortés
landed, recently defeated tribes were not yet fully integrated into the empire. In-
creases in tribute provoked revolt, which led to reconquest, retribution, and de-
mands for higher tribute, which in turn sparked greater resentment and fresh
revolt. When the Spaniards appeared, the Totonac people greeted them as libera-
tors, and other subject peoples joined them against the Aztecs.12
Montezuma himself refrained from attacking the Spaniards as they advanced
toward his capital and welcomed Cortés and his men into Tenochtitlán. Histori-
ans have often condemned the Aztec ruler for vacillation and weakness. But
he relied on the advice of his state council, itself divided, and on the dubious
loyalty of tributary communities. When Cortés—with incredible boldness—took
Montezuma hostage, the emperor’s influence over his people crumbled.
Doña Marina Translating for

Hernando Cortés During His
Meeting with Montezuma
In April of 1519 Doña Marina (or La
Malinche as she is known in Mexico)
was among twenty women given to the
Spanish as slaves. Fluent in Nahuatl
(NAH-what-el) and Yucatec
(YOO-kuh-tek) Mayan (spoken
by a Spanish priest accompanying
Cortés), she acted as an interpreter and
diplomatic guide for the Spanish. She
had a close personal relationship with
Cortés and bore his son Don Martín
Cortés in 1522. Doña Marina has been
seen as a traitor to her people, as a
victim of Spanish conquest, and as the
founder of the Mexican people. She
highlights the complex interaction
between native peoples and the Spanish
and the particular role women often
played as cultural mediators between
the two sides. (The Granger Collection,
New York)
Europe and the World After Columbus 385
Later, in retaliation for a revolt by the entire population of Tenochtitlán that Inca Empire The vast and sophisticated
killed many Spaniards, Montezuma was executed. Afterwards, the Spaniards es- Peruvian empire, centered at the capital
city of Cusco, that was at its peak from
caped from the city and defeated the Aztec army at Otumba near Lake Texcoco. 1438 until 1532.
On August 13, 1520, the last Aztec emperor surrendered to the Spanish.
More amazing than the defeat of the Aztecs was the fall of the remote Inca
Empire perched at 9,800 to 13,000 feet above sea level. (The word Inca refers Sec tion Review
both to the people who lived in the valleys of the Andes Mountains in present-day • The desire for trade goods, religious
Peru and to their ruler.) The borders of this vast and sophisticated empire were zeal for new converts, a chance for
well fortified, but the Inca neither expected foreign invaders nor knew of the fate power and glory, and simple curiosity
of the Aztec empire to the north. The imperial government, based in the capital motivated European exploration,
made possible by the financial support
city of Cuzco (KOOS-koh), commanded loyalty from the people, but at the time of of strong monarchs and sailors willing
the Spanish invasion it had been embroiled in a civil war over succession. The to endure the danger of sea travel to
Inca Huascar (WAHS-kahr) had been fighting his half-brother Atahualpa (ah-tah- escape poverty.
WAHL-pa) for five years over the crown. • Technological advances in shipbuild-
Francisco Pizarro (ca. 1475–1541), a conquistador of modest Spanish origins, ing, navigation, and weaponry bor-
landed on the northern coast of Peru on May 13, 1532, the very day Atahualpa won rowed from the East made exploration
the decisive battle. The Spaniard soon learned about the war and its outcome. As more feasible.
Pizarro advanced across the steep Andes toward Cuzco, Atahualpa was proceeding • Portuguese seafaring skills, with finan-
to the capital for his coronation. Like Montezuma in Mexico, Atahualpa was kept cial backing by the royal family, led to
exploration and conquest in Africa
fully informed of the Spaniards’ movements and accepted Pizarro’s invitation to and the Atlantic islands, and the
meet in the provincial town of Cajamarca. Intending to extend a peaceful wel- establishment of trading posts in
come to the newcomers, Atahualpa and his followers were unarmed. The Span- India.
iards captured him and collected an enormous ransom in gold. Instead of freeing • The Spanish monarchy financed the
the new emperor, however, they executed him in 1533 on trumped-up charges. seasoned mariner Columbus, who set
Decades of violence ensued, marked by Incan resistance and internal struggles out to find a direct ocean trading
among Spanish forces for the spoils of empire. By the 1570s the Spanish crown route to Asia, although he landed in
the Bahamas and Cuba, leading to
had succeeded in imposing control. With Spanish conquest, a new chapter opened European conquest and colonization
in European relations with the New World. in the New World.
• Cabral of Portugal and Magellan of
Spain also sought a trade route to
Asia, but proved that the westward
passage to India was too long and
Europe and the World After Columbus dangerous.
What effect did overseas expansion have on the conquered societies, on • Cortés, in search of gold, sailed to
enslaved Africans, and on world trade? Mexico, where he discovered and
conquered the rich Aztec Empire,
while the Incas fell to Pizarro.
Europeans had maintained commercial relations with Asia and sub-Saharan Af-
rica since Roman times. In the Carolingian era the slave trade had linked northern
Europe and the Islamic Middle East. The High Middle Ages had witnessed a great
expansion of trade with Africa and Asia. But with the American discoveries, for the
first time commercial and other relations became worldwide, involving all the
continents except Australia. European involvement in the Americas led to the ac-
celeration of global contacts. In time, these contacts had a profound influence on
European society and culture.
In the sixteenth century perhaps two hundred thou-

Spanish Settlement sand Spaniards immigrated to the New World. Mostly
and Indigenous ex-soldiers and adventurers unable to find employment
Population Decline in Spain, they came for profits. After assisting in the
conquest of the Aztecs and the subjugation of the Incas, these men carved out vast
estates in temperate grazing areas and imported Spanish sheep, cattle, and horses
for the kinds of ranching with which they were familiar. In coastal tropical areas
unsuited for grazing the Spanish erected huge plantations to supply sugar for the
European market. Around 1550 silver was discovered in present-day Bolivia and
Mexico. How were the cattle ranches, sugar plantations, and silver mines to be
worked? The conquistadors first turned to the Amerindians.
encomienda system The Spanish The Spanish quickly established the encomienda system (in-co-mee-EN-dah),
system whereby the Crown granted the in which the Crown granted the conquerors the right to employ groups of Amer-
conquerors the right to employ groups
of Amerindians in a town or area as
indians as agricultural or mining laborers or as tribute payers. Theoretically, the Span-
agricultural or mining laborers or as ish were forbidden to enslave the natives; in actuality, the encomiendas were a
tribute payers; it was a disguised form legalized form of slavery. Laboring in the blistering heat of tropical cane fields or in
of slavery. the dark, dank, and dangerous mines, the Amerindians died in staggering numbers.
Students of the history of medicine have suggested another crucial explanation
for indigenous population losses: disease. Having little or no resistance to diseases
brought from the Old World, the inhabitants of the highlands of Mexico and Peru,
especially, fell victim to smallpox, typhus, influenza, and other diseases. According
to one expert, smallpox caused “in all likelihood the most severe single loss of ab-
original population that ever occurred.”13 (The old belief that syphilis was a New
World disease imported to Europe by Columbus’s sailors has been discredited by
the discovery of pre-Columbian skeletons in Europe bearing signs of the disease.)
Although disease was a leading cause of death, there were many others, includ-
ing malnutrition and starvation as people were forced to neglect their own fields.
Many indigenous peoples also died through outright violence.14 According to the
Franciscan missionary Bartolomé de Las Casas (1474–1566), the Spanish mali-
ciously murdered thousands:
To these quiet Lambs . . . came the Spaniards like most c(r)uel Tygres, Wolves
and Lions, enrag’d with a sharp and tedious hunger; for these forty years past,
minding nothing else but the slaughter of these unfortunate wretches, whom with
divers kinds of torments neither seen nor heard of before, they have so cruelly and
inhumanely butchered, that of three millions of people which Hispaniola itself did
contain, there are left remaining alive scarce three hundred persons.15
Las Casas’s remarks concentrate on the Caribbean islands, but the death rate else-
where was also overwhelming. The Franciscan, Dominican, and Jesuit missionar-
ies who accompanied the conquistadors and settlers played an important role in
converting the Amerindians to Christianity, teaching them European methods of
agriculture, and inculcating loyalty to the Spanish crown. In terms of numbers of
people baptized, missionaries enjoyed phenomenal success, though the depth of
the Amerindians’ understanding of Christianity remains debatable. Missionaries,
especially Las Casas, asserted that the Amerindians had human rights, and through
Las Casas’s persistent pressure the emperor Charles V abolished the worst abuses
of the encomienda system in 1531.
For colonial administrators the main problem posed by the astronomically
high death rate was the loss of a subjugated labor force. As early as 1511 King
Ferdinand of Spain observed that the Amerindians seemed to be “very frail” and
that “one black could do the work of four Indians.”16 Thus was born an absurd
myth and the new tragedy of the Atlantic slave trade.
Throughout the Middle Ages slavery was deeply en-

Sugar and Slavery trenched in the Mediterranean. The bubonic plague,
famines, and other epidemics created a severe shortage
of agricultural and domestic workers throughout Europe, encouraging Italian
A New World Sugar Refinery, Brazil

Sugar, a luxury in great demand in Europe, was the most important and most profitable plantation crop in the New World. This image
shows the processing and refinement of sugar on a Brazilian plantation. Sugar cane was grown, harvested, and processed by African
slaves who labored under brutal and ruthless conditions to generate enormous profits for plantation owners. (The Bridgeman Art Library/
Getty Images)
merchants to buy slaves from the Black Sea region and the Balkans. Renaissance
merchants continued the slave trade despite papal threats of excommunication.
The Genoese set up colonial stations in the Crimea and along the Black Sea, and
according to an international authority on slavery, these outposts were “virtual
laboratories” for the development of slave plantation agriculture in the New
World.17 This form of slavery had nothing to do with race; almost all slaves were
white. How, then, did black African slavery enter the European picture and take
root in South and then North America?
In 1453 the Ottoman capture of Constantinople halted the flow of white
slaves. Mediterranean Europe, cut off from its traditional source of slaves, then
turned to sub-Saharan Africa, which had a long history of slave trading. (See the
feature “Individuals in Society: Juan de Pareja.”)
Native to the South Pacific, sugar was taken in ancient times to India, where
farmers learned to preserve cane juice as granules that could be stored and shipped.
From there, sugar cane growing traveled to China and the Mediterranean, where
islands like Crete, Sicily, and Cyprus had the necessary warm and wet climate.
When Genoese and other Italians colonized the Canary Islands and the Portu-
guese settled on the Madeira Islands, sugar plantations came to the Atlantic. In
this stage of European expansion, “the history of slavery became inextricably tied
up with the history of sugar.”18 Originally sugar was an expensive luxury that only
the very affluent could afford, but population increases and monetary expansion
in the fifteenth century led to an increasing demand for it.
Resourceful Italians provided the capital, cane, and technology for sugar cul-
tivation on plantations in southern Portugal, Madeira, and the Canary Islands.
Juan de Pareja (pa-REH-ha)
A marginal person is one who lives outside the main-
stream of the dominant society, who is not fully as-
similated into or accepted by that society. Apart from
crime and thereby lost his freedom? We do not know.
Velázquez, the greatest Spanish painter of the seven-
teenth century, had a large studio with many assistants.
revealing little-known aspects of past cultures, marginal- Pareja was set to grinding powders to make colors and to
ized people teach us much about the preparing canvases. He must have demonstrated ability
values and ideals of the dominant so- because, when Velázquez went to Rome in 1648, he
ciety. Such a person was the Spanish chose Pareja to accompany him.
religious and portrait painter Juan de In 1650, as practice for a portrait of Pope Innocent X,
Pareja. Velázquez painted Pareja. That same year, Velázquez
Pareja was born in Antequera, an signed the document that gave Pareja his freedom, to
agricultural region and the old center become effective in 1654. Pareja lived out the rest of his
of Muslim culture near Seville in life as an independent painter.
southern Spain. Of his parents we What does the public career of this seventeenth-
know nothing. Because a rare surviv- century marginal person tell us about the man and his
ing document calls him a “mulatto,” world? Pareja’s career suggests that a person of talent
one of his parents must have been and ability could rise in Spanish society despite the so-
white and the other must have had cial and religious barriers that existed at the time. Jona-
some African blood. In 1630 Pareja than Brown, the leading authority on Velázquez,
applied to the mayor of Seville for describes Pareja’s appearance in Velázquez’s portrait as
permission to travel to Madrid to visit “self-confident.” A more enthusiastic student writes,
Velázquez, Juan de
his brother and “to perfect his art.” “The man was technically a slave. . . . However, we
Pareja (1650). (The
Metropolitan Museum of Art,
The document lists his occupation as can see from Velázquez’s painting that the two were un-
Fletcher Fund, Rogers Fund, “a painter in Seville.” Since it men- deniably equals. That steady look of self-controlled
and Bequest of Miss Adelaide tions no other name, it is reasonable power can even make us wonder which of the two had a
Milton de Groot (1876–1967), to assume that Pareja arrived in Ma- higher opinion of himself.”
by exchange, supplemented
drid a free man. Sometime between
by gifts from friends of the
Museum, 1971. [1971.86].
1630 and 1648, however, he came Questions for Analysis
Photograph © 1986 The into the possession of the artist Diego
1. Since slavery was an established institution in
Metropolitan Museum of Art) Velázquez (1599–1660); Pareja be-
Spain, speculate on Velázquez’s possible reasons for
came a slave.
giving Pareja his freedom.
During the long wars of the recon-
quista, Muslims and Christians cap- 2. What issues of cultural diversity might Pareja have
tured each other in battle and used the defeated as slaves. faced in seventeenth-century Spain?
The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had seen a steady
Sources: Jonathan Brown, Velázquez: Painter and Courtier
flow of sub-Saharan Africans into the Iberian Peninsula. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1986); Grove Dic-
Thus early modern Spain was a slaveholding society. tionary of Art (New York: Macmillan, 2000); Sister Wendy
How did Velázquez acquire Pareja? By purchase? As Beckett, Sister Wendy’s American Collection (New York: Harper
a gift? Had Pareja fallen into debt or committed some Collins Publishers, 2000), p. 15.
388
Meanwhile, in the period 1490 to 1530, Portuguese traders brought between three
hundred and two thousand black slaves to Lisbon each year (see Map 15.2), where
they performed most of the manual labor and constituted 10 percent of the city’s
population. From there slaves were transported to the sugar plantations of Ma-
deira, the Azores, and the Cape Verde Islands. Sugar and these small Atlantic is-
land colonies gave New World slavery its distinctive shape. Columbus himself, who
spent a decade in Madeira, brought sugar plants on his voyages to “the Indies.”
In Africa, where slavery was entrenched (as it was in the Islamic world, south-
ern Europe, and China), African kings and dealers sold black slaves to European
merchants who participated in the transatlantic trade. The Portuguese brought the
first slaves to Brazil; by 1600 four thousand were being imported annually. After its
founding in 1621, the Dutch West India Company, with the full support of the
government of the United Provinces, transported thousands of Africans to Brazil
and the Caribbean, mostly to work on sugar plantations. In the late seventeenth
century, with the chartering of the Royal African Company, the English got in-
volved. In total, scholars estimate that European traders from all these nations
brought over eleven million African slaves to the West Indies and North America,
with the peak of the trade occuring in the eighteenth century.
European sailors found the Atlantic passage cramped and uncomfortable, but
conditions for African slaves were lethal. Before 1700, when slavers decided it was
better business to improve conditions, some 20 percent of slaves died on the voy-
age.19 The most common cause of death was from dysentery induced by poor-
quality food and water, intense crowding, and lack of sanitation. Men were often
kept in irons during the passage, while women and girls were fair game for sailors.
To increase profits, slave traders packed several hundred captives on each ship.
One slaver explained that he removed his boots before entering the slave hold
because he had to crawl over their packed bodies.20
By 1790 there were 757,181 blacks in a total U.S. population of 3,929,625. In
Brazil during the same decade, blacks numbered about 2 million in a total popula-
tion of 3.25 million. African slaves ultimately worked in an infinite variety of oc-
cupations: as miners, soldiers, sailors, servants, and artisans and in the production
of cotton, rum, indigo, tobacco, wheat and corn. Sugar remained a predominant
slave-produced crop, leading to boycotts by European abolitionists in the late eigh-
teenth century.
The Age of Discovery led to the migration of peoples,

The Columbian which in turn led to an exchange of fauna and flora—
Exchange of animals, plants, and disease, a complex process known
as the Columbian exchange. Spanish and Portuguese immigrants to the Americas Columbian exchange The exchange of
wanted the diet with which they were familiar, so they searched for climatic zones animals, plants, and diseases between the
Old and the New Worlds.
favorable to those crops. Everywhere they settled they brought and raised wheat—
in the highlands of Mexico, the Rio de la Plata, New Granada (in northern South
America), and Chile. By 1535 Mexico was exporting wheat. Grapes did well in
parts of Peru and Chile. It took the Spanish longer to discover areas where suitable
soil and adequate rainfall would nourish olive trees, but by the 1560s the coastal
valleys of Peru and Chile were dotted with olive groves. Columbus had brought
sugar plants on his second voyage; Spaniards also introduced rice and bananas
from the Canary Islands, and the Portuguese carried these items to Brazil. Not all
plants arrived intentionally. In clumps of mud on shoes and in the folds of textiles
came the seeds of immigrant grasses.
ARCTIC OCEAN
Arctic Circle
60°N
BRITAIN Fish Wheat
Ma Pottery Timber
nuf Amsterdam
NORTH ac tured Fur
goods London NETHERLANDS Tar
AMERICA EUROPE Pitch
SPAIN
PORTUGAL Tools Venice Slaves ASIA
Tools
Cloth Cloth
Lisbon Madrid Med JAPAN
Silk Seville iterr Constantinople Silk
an ean Silver
AT L A N T I C Se a CH I NA
New Porcelain Nagasaki
Charleston Alexandria P ER SIA
Orleans OCEAN Rugs and Silk
30°N NEW es Ningbo
Sl
olass Cairo Killims

ave
,M
SPAIN r, Rum
Sla
ve HAITI Suga INDIA Calcutta Guangzhou

s
Tropic of Mexico s Silk,

Cancer CUBA Red ARABIA Macao Silver
City
Sugar
GUJARAT
Silver PUERTO RICO Slaves Sea Arabian
Veracruz Slaves
CAPE Sea Goa Manila
Acapulco JAMAICA CURAÇAO (Neth.) Aden s
VERDE
lave Slav
PHILIPPINES PAC I F IC
Sil
Cartagena
AFRICA , S es
old
k
SPANISH GOLD G
Panama MAIN COAST r y, loth O C EAN
NEW GUIANA
Sla
ves Ivo r, C el
ls
e sh Ceylon
GRANADA pp
Pe ri e
MO
0° Equator w MALDIVES Malacca
o BORNEO
LUC
C SUMATRA
Mombasa NEW
C
PAC I F I C SOUTH es GUINEA
Slav
AS
Luanda INDIAN OCEAN
PERU AMERICA JAVA
O C E A N Bahia Slaves ANGOLA
Lima Mozambique
Homeward Sofala MADAGASCAR

BRAZIL
Trade
Tropic of Capricorn MAURITIUS
Rio de Janeiro (Neth.)
Sp ices
Sp
ic e
30°S Cape
s
Buenos Town
Aires ves
N S la
Cape of
Good Hope 0 1,500 3,000 Km.
Strait of Magellan 0 1,500 3,000 Mi.
120°W 90°W 60°W 30°W 0° 30°E 60°E 90°E 120°E 150°E 180°
Cape Horn
60°S
Antarctic Circle
Arab trade routes Chinese trade routes Spanish trade routes British control Spanish control
British trade routes Portuguese trade routes Dutch trade routes Portuguese control Dutch control
MAP 15.2 Seaborne Trading Empires in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
By the mid-seventeenth century, trade linked all parts of the world, except for Australia. Notice that trade in slaves was not confined to the Atlantic but involved almost all parts of the world.
Apart from wild turkeys and game, Native Americans had no animals for food;
apart from alpacas and llamas, they had no animals for travel or to use as beasts of
burden. On his second voyage in 1493 Columbus introduced horses, cattle, sheep,
dogs, pigs, chickens, and goats. The multiplication of these animals proved spec-
tacular. The horse enabled the Spanish conquerors and the Amerindians to travel
faster and farther and to transport heavy loads.
The Spanish and Portuguese returned to Europe with maize (corn), white
potatoes, and many varieties of beans, squash, pumpkins, avocados, and tomatoes.
Because maize grows in climates too dry for rice and too wet for wheat, gives a
high yield per unit of land, and has a short growing season, it proved an especially
important crop for Europeans. So too did the nutritious white potato, which slowly
spread from west to east—to Ireland, England, and France in the seventeenth
century; and to Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Russia in the eighteenth. Ironi-
cally, the white potato reached New England from old England in 1718.
Columbus, Cortés, and Pizarro had claimed the lands

Colonial they had “discovered” for the Spanish crown. How
Administration were these lands governed? In the sixteenth century
the Crown divided its New World territories into four viceroyalties or administra- viceroyalties The name for the four
tive divisions: New Spain, which consisted of Mexico, Central America, and present- administrative units of Spanish
possessions in the Americas: New Spain,
day California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, with the capital at Mexico City; Peru, New Granada, and La Plata.
Peru, originally all the lands in continental South America, later reduced to the
territory of modern Peru, Chile, Bolivia, and Ecuador, with the viceregal seat at
Lima; New Granada, including present-day Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, and,
after 1739, Ecuador, with Bogotá as its administrative center; and La Plata, consist-
ing of Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, with Buenos Aires as the capital.
Within each territory, the viceroy, or imperial governor, exercised broad mili-
tary and civil authority as the direct representative of the sovereign in Madrid. The
viceroy presided over the audiencia (ow-dee-ENS-ee-ah), a board of twelve to audiencia Presided over by the viceroy,
fifteen judges that served as his advisory council and the highest judicial body. The the twelve to fifteen judges who served as
an advisory council and as the highest
reform-minded Spanish king Charles III (r. 1759–1788) introduced the system of judicial body.
intendants, pioneered by the Bourbon kings of France, to the New World territo-
ries. These royal officials possessed broad military, administrative, and financial
authority within their intendancies and were responsible not to the viceroy but to
the monarchy in Madrid.
The Portuguese governed their colony of Brazil in a similar manner. After the
union of the crowns of Portugal and Spain in 1580, Spanish administrative forms
were introduced. Local officials called corregidores (kuh-REG-i-dawr-eez) held
judicial and military powers. Mercantilist policies placed severe restrictions on
Brazilian industries that might compete with those of Portugal. In the seventeenth
century the use of black slave labor made possible the cultivation of coffee and
cotton, and in the eighteenth century Brazil produced around one-tenth of the
world’s sugar. The unique feature of colonial Brazil’s culture and society was its
thoroughgoing intermixture of Indians, whites, and blacks.
The sixteenth century has often been called Spain’s

Silver and the golden century, but silver mined in the Americas was
Economic Effects of the true source of Spain’s incredible wealth. In 1545, at
Spain’s Discoveries an altitude of fifteen thousand feet, the Spanish discov-
ered an incredible source of silver at Potosí (poh-toh-SEE) (in present-day Bolivia)
in territory conquered from the Inca Empire. The frigid place where nothing grew
had been unsettled. A half-century later, 160,000 people lived there, making it
about the size of the city of London. In the second half of the sixteenth century
Potosí yielded perhaps 60 percent of all the silver mined in the world. From Potosí
and the mines at Zacatecas (sah-kah-TE-kahs) and Guanajuato (gwah-nah-
HWAH-taw) in Mexico, huge quantities of precious metals poured forth, destined
for the port of Seville in Spain.
The mining of gold and silver became the most important industry in the
quinto One-fifth of all precious metals colonies. The Crown claimed the quinto, one-fifth of all precious metals mined
mined in the Americas that the Crown in South America. Gold and silver yielded the Spanish monarchy 25 percent of its
claimed as its own.
total income.
In many ways, it was not Spain but China that controlled the world trade
in silver. The Chinese demanded silver for its products and for the payment of
imperial taxes. China was thus the main buyer of world silver, serving as a “sink”
for half the world’s production. The silver market drove world trade, with the
Americas and Japan being mainstays on the supply side and China dominating the
demand side.
With the Europeans’ discovery of the Americas and

The Birth of the their exploration of the Pacific, the entire world was
Global Economy linked for the first time in history by seaborne trade.
That trade brought into being three successive commercial empires: the Portu-
guese, the Spanish, and the Dutch.
The Portuguese were the first worldwide traders, and Portuguese was the
language of the Asian maritime trade. In the sixteenth century they
controlled the sea route to India (see Map 15.2). From their forti-
fied bases at Goa on the Arabian Sea and at Malacca on the
Malay Peninsula, ships carried goods to the Portuguese
settlement at Macao in the South China Sea. From Ma-
cao Portuguese ships loaded with Chinese silks and
porcelains sailed to the Japanese port of Nagasaki
and to the Philippine port of Manila, where Chi-
nese goods were exchanged for Spanish (that is,
Latin American) silver. Throughout Asia the Por-
tuguese traded in slaves—black Africans, Chi-
nese, and Japanese. The Portuguese exported to
India horses from Mesopotamia and copper from
Arabia; from India they exported hawks and pea-
cocks for the Chinese and Japanese markets. Back
to Portugal they brought Asian spices that had been
purchased with textiles produced in India and with
gold and ivory from East Africa. They also shipped
back sugar from their colony in Brazil, produced by
African slaves whom they had transported across the
Atlantic.
Spanish possessions in the New World constituted basically
Chinese Porcelain a land empire, and in the sixteenth century the Spaniards devised a
This porcelain from a seventeenth-century method of governing that empire (see page 391). But across the Pacific
Chinese ship’s cargo, recovered from the the Spaniards also built a seaborne empire centered at Manila in the Philippines,
sea, was intended for European luxury which had been “discovered” by Ferdinand Magellan in 1521 and later conquered
markets. (Christie’s Images) by the Spanish navigator Miguel Lopez de Legazpi. The city of Manila served as
Changing Attitudes and Beliefs 393
the transpacific bridge between Spanish America and the extreme Eastern trade. Sec tion Review
In Manila, Spanish traders used silver from American mines to purchase Chinese
silk for European markets. The European demand for silk was so huge that in • The Spanish set up the encomienda
system of labor, forcing the Amerindi-
1597, for example, 12 million pesos of silver, almost the total value of the transat- ans to work in plantations, causing
lantic trade, moved from Acapulco to Manila (see Map 15.2). After about 1640 the great suffering from malnutrition,
Spanish silk trade declined because it could not compete with Dutch imports. disease, and violence that killed large
In the latter half of the seventeenth century the worldwide Dutch seaborne numbers.
trade predominated. The Dutch Empire was built on spices. In 1599 a Dutch fleet • Europeans originally turned to Africa
returned to Amsterdam carrying 600,000 pounds of pepper and 250,000 pounds of for slaves as Europe had a labor short-
cloves and nutmeg. Those who had invested in the expedition received a 100 per- age and a diminishing supply of white
slaves in the Mediterranean.
cent profit. The voyage led to the establishment in 1602 of the Dutch East India
Company, founded with the stated intention of capturing the spice trade from the • The plantation model of slavery
developed for sugar production on
Portuguese. Atlantic islands was brought to the
The Dutch fleet, sailing from the Cape of Good Hope in Africa and avoiding New World, along with great numbers
the Portuguese forts in India, steered directly for the Sunda Strait in Indonesia (see of African slaves; the history of sugar
Map 15.2). The Dutch wanted direct access to and control of the Indonesian and slavery were inextricably linked.
sources of spices. In return for assisting Indonesian princes in local squabbles and • The Columbian Exchange included
disputes with the Portuguese, the Dutch won broad commercial concessions. the plants, animals, and diseases that
Through agreements, seizures, and outright war, they gained control of the west- accompanied people as they migrated
to the New World and those they took
ern access to the Indonesian archipelago. Gradually, they acquired political dom- back with them.
ination over the archipelago itself. The Dutch managed to expel the Portuguese
• The Spanish set up viceroys, or gover-
from Ceylon and other East Indian islands. By 1650 the Dutch West India Com- nors, to rule their new territories with
pany had successfully intruded on the Spanish possessions in the Americas, in the military and civic authority.
process gaining control of much of the African and American trade.
• The majority of silver mined in Bo-
livia and Mexico was traded to China
for luxury goods desired by Europeans.
Changing Attitudes and Beliefs • Europeans established trade routes
that linked the world by sea for the
How did culture and art in this period respond to social and cultural first time, giving birth to a global
transformation? economy.
The age of overseas expansion was characterized by an extraordinary degree of

intellectual and artistic ferment. This effervescence can be seen in the develop-
ment of the essay as a distinct literary genre, in other prose, in poetry, in drama, in
art, and in music. In many ways, literature, the visual arts, music, and the drama of
the period mirrored the social and cultural conditions that gave rise to them. An
important theme running through the culture of this time was the encounter with
radically new places and peoples.
Ancient Greeks and Romans were in close contact

New Ideas with Africa and they also practiced slavery, but they did
About Race not associate one with the other. Slavery, which was
endemic in the ancient world, stemmed from either capture in war or debt. Al-
though generations could be born in captivity, no particular ethnic or racial asso-
ciations were involved. How did slavery come to be so closely associated with race
in the Age of Discovery?
Settlers brought to the Americas the racial attitudes they had absorbed in Eu-
rope. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in England, for example, slavers’
accounts of their travels depicted Africans as savages because of their eating habits,
morals, clothing, and social customs; as barbarians because of their language and
methods of war; and as heathens because they were not Christian (nearly the
identical language with which the English described the Irish—see page 301). Af-
ricans were believed to possess a potent sexuality; African women were considered
sexually aggressive, with a “temper hot and lascivious.”21 Medieval Arabs had also
depicted Africans as primitive people ideally suited to enslavement.
The racial biases that the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, and English brought to
the New World also derived from Christian theological speculation. As Europeans
turned to Africa for new sources of slaves, they used ideas about Africans’ primi-
tiveness and barbarity to defend slavery and even argue that enslavement benefited
Africans by bringing the light of Christianity to heathen peoples. Thus, the institu-
tion of slavery contributed to the dissemination of more rigid notions of racial in-
feriority. From rather vague assumptions and prejudices, Europeans developed
more elaborate ideological notions of racial superiority and inferiority to safeguard
the ever-increasing profits gained from plantation slavery.
Racism was not the only possible reaction to the new

Michel de Montaigne worlds emerging in the sixteenth century. Decades of
and Cultural Curiosity religious fanaticism, bringing civil anarchy and war,
led both Catholics and Protestants to doubt that any one faith contained absolute
truth. Added to these doubts was the discovery of peoples in the New World who
had radically different ways of life. These shocks helped produce ideas of skepti-
cism and cultural relativism in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Skepti-
cism is a school of thought founded on doubt that total certainty or definitive
knowledge is ever attainable. The skeptic is cautious and critical and suspends
judgment. Cultural relativism suggests that one culture is not necessarily superior
to another, just different. Both notions found expression in the work of French-
man Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) (duh mon-TEN).
Montaigne developed a new literary genre, the essay—from the French es-
sayer, meaning “to test or try”—to express his thoughts and ideas. Montaigne’s
Essays provides insight into the mind of a remarkably civilized man. From the
ancient authors, especially the Roman Stoic Seneca, Montaigne acquired a sense
of calm, patience, tolerance, and broad-mindedness.
Montaigne’s essay “On Cannibals” reveals the impact of overseas discoveries
on one European’s consciousness. His tolerant mind rejected the notion that one
culture is superior to another:
I long had a man in my house that lived ten or twelve years in the New World,
discovered in these latter days, and in that part of it where Villegaignon landed
[Brazil]. . . .
I find that there is nothing barbarous and savage in [that] nation, . . . except-
ing, that every one gives the title of barbarism to everything that is not in use in his
own country. As, indeed, we have no other level of truth and reason, than the
example and idea of the opinions and customs of the place wherein we live.22
In his own time and throughout the seventeenth century, few would have
agreed with Montaigne. The publication of his ideas, however, anticipated a basic
shift in attitudes. Montaigne inaugurated an era of doubt. “Wonder,” he said, “is
the foundation of all philosophy, research is the means of all learning, and igno-
rance is the end.”23
Chapter Review 395
In addition to the essay as a literary genre, the period

Elizabethan and fostered remarkable creativity in other branches of
Jacobean Literature literature. England—especially in the latter part of
Elizabeth’s reign and in the first years of her successor, James I (r. 1603–1625)—
witnessed remarkable literary expression. The terms Elizabethan and Jacobean
(referring to the reign of James) are used to designate the English music, poetry,
prose, and drama of this period.
The undisputed master of this period is the dramatist William
Shakespeare, whose genius lay in the originality of his characteriza- Sec tion Review
tions, the diversity of his plots, his understanding of human psychology,
and his unexcelled gift for language. Shakespeare was a Renaissance • A flowering of artistic expression in poetry, prose,
man in his deep appreciation of classical culture, individualism, and drama, art, and music accompanied the age of
overseas expansion.
humanism. Such plays as Julius Caesar, Pericles, and Antony and
Cleopatra deal with classical subjects and figures. Several of his • Europeans developed prejudicial racial attitudes
from Christian theology and beliefs about the
comedies have Italian Renaissance settings. The nine history plays, alleged primitiveness and barbarity of Africans that
including Richard II, Richard III, and Henry IV, express English they used to justify slavery.
national consciousness. Shakespeare’s later tragedies, including Ham- • The Frenchman Michel de Montaigne discussed
let, Othello, and Macbeth, explore an enormous range of human prob- skepticism, the philosophy based on doubt that
lems and are open to an almost infinite variety of interpretations. absolute certainty or definitive knowledge is ever
Another great masterpiece of the Jacobean period was the Autho- attainable, and cultural relativism, which suggests
rized Bible. So called because it was produced under the royal spon- that one culture is not necessarily superior to
another.
sorship of James I (it had no official ecclesiastical endorsement), the
Authorized Bible represented the Anglican and Puritan desire to en- • The dramatic works of William Shakespeare during
the reign of Elizabeth crowned a period of remark-
courage laypeople to read the Scriptures. It quickly achieved great able creativity in English music, poetry, prose, and
popularity and displaced all earlier versions. British settlers carried this drama, that later saw the creation of another
Bible to the North American colonies, where it became known as the masterpiece—the King James Bible.
King James Bible.
Chapter Review
What was the Afro-Eurasian trading world before Columbus? (page 371) Key Terms
Prior to Columbus’s voyages, well-developed trade routes linked the peoples and General History of the Indies
products of Africa, Asia, and Europe. The Indian Ocean was the center of the Afro- (p. 377)
Eurasian trade world, ringed by cosmopolitan commercial cities such as Mombasa, caravel (p. 377)
Malacca, and Macao. Venetian and Genoese merchants brought sophisticated luxury
Ptolemy’s Geography (p. 377)
goods, like silks and spices, into western Europe from the East. Overall, though, Euro-
peans played a minor role in the Afro-Eurasian trading world, since they did not pro- Treaty of Tordesillas (p. 382)
duce many products desired by Eastern elites. conquistador (p. 383)
Aztec Empire (p. 384)
How and why did Europeans undertake ambitious voyages of expansion that Inca Empire (p. 385)
would usher in a new era of global contact? (page 375) encomienda system (p. 386)
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Europeans gained access to large parts of Columbian exchange (p. 389)
the globe for the first time. European peoples had the intellectual curiosity, driving viceroyalties (p. 391)
ambition, religious zeal, and material incentive to challenge their marginal role in the audiencia (p. 391)
pre-existing trade world. The revived monarchies of the sixteenth century now pos- quinto (p. 392)
sessed sufficient resources to back ambitious seafarers like Christopher Columbus and
Vasco da Gama. Exploration and exploitation contributed to a more sophisticated
standard of living, in the form of spices and Asian luxury goods.
What effect did overseas expansion have on the conquered societies, on

enslaved Africans, and on world trade? (page 385)
Other consequences of European expansion had global proportions. Indian Ocean
trade, long dominated by Muslim merchants operating from autonomous city-ports,
increasingly fell under the control of Portuguese merchants sponsored by their Crown.
Later these would shift to the Dutch East India Company. In the New World, Europe-
ans discovered territories wholly unknown to them and forcibly established new colo-
nies. The resulting Columbian exchange contributed to the decimation of native
populations by disease and fostered the exchange of a myriad of plant, animal, and viral
species. The slave trade took on new proportions of scale and intensity, as many mil-
lions of Africans were transported to labor in horrific conditions in the mines and
plantations of the New World.
How did culture and art in this period respond to social and cultural transfor-
mation? (page 393)
Cultural attitudes were challenged as well. While most Europeans did not question
the superiority of Western traditions and beliefs, new currents of religious skepticism
and new ideas about race were harbingers of developments to come. The essays of
Montaigne, the plays of Shakespeare, and the King James Bible remain classic achieve-
ments of the Western cultural heritage. They both reflected dominant cultural values
and projected new ideas into the future.
Notes
1. K. N. Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean: An Economic History from the
Rise of Islam to 1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 14.
2. Quoted in C. M. Cipolla, Guns, Sails, and Empires: Technological Innovation and the Early
Phases of European Expansion, 1400–1700 (New York: Minerva Press, 1965), p. 132.
3. Quoted in F. H. Littell, The Macmillan Atlas: History of Christianity (New York: Macmillan,
1976), p. 75.
4. See C. R. Phillips, Ciudad Real, 1500–1750: Growth, Crisis, and Readjustment in the Span-
ish Economy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979), pp. 103–104, 115.
5. Pablo E. Pérez-Mallaína, Spain’s Men of the Sea: Daily Life on the Indies Fleet in the Six-
teenth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), p. 133.
6. Ibid., p. 19.
7. G. V. Scammell, The World Encompassed: The First European Maritime Empires, c. 800-
1650 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), p. 207.
8. Quoted in Cipolla, Guns, Sails, and Empires, pp. 115–116.
9. Quoted in F. Maddison, “Tradition and Innovation: Columbus’ First Voyage and Portuguese
Navigation in the Fifteenth Century,” in Circa 1492: Art in the Age of Exploration, ed. J. A.
Levenson (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1991), p. 69.
10. Quoted in R. L. Kagan, “The Spain of Ferdinand and Isabella,” in Circa 1492: Art in the Age
of Exploration, ed. J. A. Levenson (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1991), p. 60.
11. Peter Hulme, Colonial Encounters: Europe and the Native Caribbean, 1492–1797 (London
and New York: Methuan, 1986). 22–31.
12. G. W. Conrad and A. A. Demarest, Religion and Empire: The Dynamics of Aztec and Inca
Expansionism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 67–69.
13. Quoted in Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of
1492 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1972), p. 39.
14. Ibid., pp. 35–59.
15. Quoted in C. Gibson, ed., The Black Legend: Anti-Spanish Attitudes in the Old World and
the New (New York: Knopf, 1971), pp. 74–75.
16. Quoted in L. B. Rout, Jr., The African Experience in Spanish America (New York: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1976), p. 23.
17. C. Verlinden, The Beginnings of Modern Colonization, trans. Y. Freccero (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cor-
nell University Press, 1970), pp. 5–6, 80–97.
Chapter Review 397
18. This section leans heavily on D. B. Davis, Slavery and Human Progress (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1984), pp. 54–62; the quotation is on p. 58.
19. Herbert S. Klein, “Profits and the Causes of Mortality,” in David Northrup, ed., The Atlantic
Slave Trade (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath and Co., 1994), p. 116.
20. Malcolm Cowley and Daniel P. Mannix, “The Middle Passage,” in David Northrup, ed.,
The Atlantic Slave Trade (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath and Co., 1994), p. 101.
21. Quoted in D .P. Mannix, with M. Cowley, Black Cargoes: A History of the Atlantic Slave
Trade (New York: Viking Press, 1968), p. 19.
22. C. Cotton, trans., The Essays of Michel de Montaigne (New York: A. L. Burt, 1893), pp. 207,
210.
23. Ibid., p. 523.

Columbus Describes His First Voyage
O n his return voyage to Spain in January 1493, Christo-

pher Columbus composed a letter intended for wide
circulation and had copies of it sent ahead to Isabella and
Ferdinand and others when the ship docked at Lisbon. Be-
cause the letter sums up Columbus’s understanding of his
achievements, it is considered the most important document of
his first voyage. Remember that his knowledge of Asia rested
heavily on Marco Polo’s Travels, published around 1298.
Since I know that you will be pleased at the great

success with which the Lord has crowned my voy-
age, I write to inform you how in thirty-three days I
crossed from the Canary Islands to the Indies, with
the fleet which our most illustrious sovereigns gave
me. I found very many islands with large popula-
tions and took possession of them all for their High-
nesses; this I did by proclamation and unfurled the Christopher Columbus, by Ridolpho Ghirlandio. Friend of
royal standard. No opposition was offered. Raphael and teacher of Michelangelo, Ghirlandio (1483–
I named the first island that I found “San Salva- 1561) enjoyed distinction as a portrait painter, and so we
can assume that this is a good likeness of the older
dor,” in honour of our Lord and Saviour who has Columbus. (Scala/Art Resource, NY)
granted me this miracle. . . . When I reached
Cuba, I followed its north coast westwards, and
found it so extensive that I thought this must be the
mainland, the province of Cathay.* . . . From there contain gold.‡ The trees, fruits and plants are very
I saw another island eighteen leagues eastwards different from those of Cuba. In Hispaniola there
which I then named “Hispaniola.”† are many spices and large mines of gold and other
Hispaniola is a wonder. The mountains and metals. . . .§
hills, the plains and meadow lands are both fertile I hoped to win them to the love and service of
and beautiful. They are most suitable for planting their Highnesses and of the whole Spanish nation
crops and for raising cattle of all kinds, and there and to persuade them to collect and give us of the
are good sites for building towns and villages. The things which they possessed in abundance and
harbours are incredibly fine and there are many which we needed. They have no religion and are
great rivers with broad channels and the majority not idolaters; but all believe that power and good-
ness dwell in the sky and they are firmly convinced
that I have come from the sky with these ships and
* Cathay is the old name for China. In the log-book and
people. In this belief they gave me a good reception
later in this letter Columbus accepts the native story that
Cuba is an island that they can circumnavigate in some- everywhere, once they had overcome their fear;
thing more than twenty-one days, yet he insists here and and this is not because they are stupid—far from it,
later, during the second voyage, that it is in fact part of the they are men of great intelligence, for they navigate
Asiatic mainland.
† Hispaniola is the second largest island of the West In-
dies; Haiti occupies the western third of the island, the ‡ This did not prove to be true.
Dominican Republic the rest. § These statements are also inaccurate.
398
all those seas, and give a marvellously good account This is a brief account of the facts. Written in
of everything—but because they have never before the caravel off the Canary Islands.||
seen men clothed or ships like these. . . . 15 February 1493
In conclusion, to speak only of the results of this
very hasty voyage, their Highnesses can see that At your orders
I will give them as much gold as they require, if THE ADMIRAL
they will render me some very slight assistance; also
I will give them all the spices and cotton they
want. . . . I will also bring them as much aloes as 1. How did Columbus explain the success of his
voyage?
they ask and as many slaves, who will be taken from
the idolaters. I believe also that I have found rhu- 2. What was Columbus’s view of the Native
barb and cinnamon and there will be countless Americans he met?
other things in addition. . . . 3. Evaluate his statements that the Caribbean
So all Christendom will be delighted that our islands possessed gold, cotton, and spices.
Redeemer has given victory to our most illustrious 4. Why did Columbus cling to the idea that he
King and Queen and their renowned kingdoms, in had reached Asia?
this great matter. They should hold great celebra-
Source: From The Four Voyages of Christopher Colum-
tions and render solemn thanks to the Holy Trinity bus, edited and translated by J. M. Cohen (Penguin Clas-
with many solemn prayers, for the great triumph sics, 1969). Copyright © J. M. Cohen, 1969. Reproduced
which they will have, by the conversion of so many by permission of Penguin Books, Ltd.
peoples to our holy faith and for the temporal ben-
efits which will follow, for not only Spain, but all
Christendom will receive encouragement and
profit. || Actually, Columbus was off Santa Maria in the Azores.
399
CHAPTER 16
Absolutism and Constitutionalism
in Western
Europe
ca. 1589–1715
Chapter Preview
Seventeenth-Century Crisis and Rebuilding
What were the common crises and
achievements of seventeenth-century
states?
Absolutism in France and Spain

To what extent did French and Spanish
monarchs succeed in creating absolute
monarchies?
The Culture of Absolutism

What cultural forms flourished under
absolutist governments?
Constitutionalism
What is constitutionalism, and how did
this form of government emerge in
England and the Dutch Republic?
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY: Glückel of Hameln

Hyacinthe Rigaud, Louis XIV, King of France and Navarre (1701).
LISTENING TO THE PAST: The Court at Versailles
Louis XIV is surrounded by the symbols of his power: the sword of
justice, the scepter of power, and the crown. The vigor and strength
of the king’s stocking-covered legs contrast with the age and wisdom
of his lined face. (Scala/Art Resource, NY)
401
402 Chapter 16 Absolutism and Constitutionalism in Western Europe, ca. 1589–1715
T he seventeenth century was a period of crisis and transformation. Agricul-

tural and manufacturing slumps meant that many people struggled to feed
themselves and their families. After a long period of growth in the sixteenth cen-
tury, population rates stagnated or even fell. Religious and dynastic conflicts led to
almost constant war, visiting violence and destruction on ordinary people.
The demands of war reshaped European states. Armies grew larger than they
had been since the time of the Roman Empire. To pay for these armies, govern-
ments greatly increased taxes. They also created new bureaucracies to collect the
taxes and to foster economic activity that might increase state revenue. Despite
numerous obstacles, European states succeeded in gathering more power during
this period. What one historian described as the long European “struggle for sta-
bility” that originated with the Reformation in the early sixteenth century was
largely resolved by 1680.1
Important differences existed, however, in terms of which authority within the
state possessed sovereignty—the Crown or privileged groups. Between roughly
1589 and 1715 two basic patterns of government emerged in Europe: absolute
monarchy and the constitutional state. Almost all subsequent European govern-
ments have been modeled on one of these patterns.
Seventeenth-Century Crisis and Rebuilding

What were the common crises and achievements of seventeenth-century
states?
Historians often refer to the seventeenth century as an “age of crisis.” After the
economic and demographic growth of the sixteenth century, Europe faltered into
stagnation and retrenchment. This was partially due to climate changes beyond
anyone’s control, but it also resulted from the bitterness of religious divides, the
increased pressures exerted by governments, and the violence and dislocation of
war. Overburdened peasants and city dwellers took action to defend themselves,
sometimes profiting from elite conflicts to obtain redress of their grievances. In the
long run, however, governments proved increasingly able to impose their will on
the populace. This period witnessed a spectacular growth in army size as well as
new forms of taxation, government bureaucracies, and increased state sovereignty.
In the seventeenth century the vast majority of western

Economic and Europeans lived in villages centered on a church and
Demographic Crisis a manor. A small number of peasants in each village
owned enough land to feed themselves and the livestock necessary to work their
land. These independent farmers were leaders of the peasant village. They em-
ployed the landless poor, rented out livestock and tools, and served as agents for
the noble lord. Below them were small landowners and tenant farmers who did
not have enough land to be self-sufficient. These families sold their best produce
on the market to earn cash for taxes, rent, and food. At the bottom were the rural
proletariat who worked as dependent laborers and servants.
Rich or poor, bread was the primary element of the diet. Peasants paid stiff fees
to the local miller for grinding grain into flour and sometimes to the lord for the
right to bake bread in his oven. Bread was most often accompanied with a soup
made of roots, herbs, beans, and perhaps a small piece of salt pork. One of the big-
Chronology
gest annual festivals in the rural village was the killing of the 1589–1610 Henry IV in France
family pig. The whole family gathered to help, sharing a rare
abundance of meat with neighbors and carefully salting the 1598 Edict of Nantes
extra and putting down the lard. 1602 Dutch East India Company founded
Rural society lived on the edge of subsistence. Because of 1605–1715 Food riots common across Europe
the crude technology and low crop yield, peasants were con-
1618–1648 Thirty Years’ War
stantly threatened by scarcity and famine. In the seventeenth
century a period of colder and wetter climate, dubbed by 1635 Birth of French Academy
historians as a “little ice age,” meant a shorter farming season. 1640–1680 Golden age of Dutch art (Vermeer, Van
A bad harvest created dearth; a series of bad harvests could Steen, Rembrandt)
lead to famine. Recurrent famines significantly reduced the 1642–1649 English civil war ends with execution of
population of early modern Europe. Most people did not die Charles I
of outright starvation, but rather of diseases brought on by
1643–1715 Louis XIV in France
malnutrition and exhaustion. Facilitated by the weakened
population, outbreaks of bubonic plague continued in Eu- 1648–1653 The Fronde
rope until the 1720s. 1653–1658 Military rule in England under Oliver
Industry also suffered. While the evidence does not Cromwell
permit broad generalizations, it appears that the output of 1659 Treaty of the Pyrenees marks end of
woolen textiles, one of the most important European manu- Spanish imperial dominance
factures, declined sharply in the first half of the seventeenth
1660 Restoration of English monarchy under
century. Food prices were high, wages stagnated, and unem-
Charles II
ployment soared. This economic crisis was not universal: it
struck various regions at different times and to different de- 1665–1683 Jean-Baptiste Colbert applies
grees. In the middle decades of the century, Spain, France, mercantilism to France
Germany, and England all experienced great economic 1685 Edict of Nantes revoked
difficulties; but these years were the golden age of the 1688–1689 Glorious Revolution in England
Netherlands.
1701–1713 War of the Spanish Succession
The urban poor and peasants were the hardest hit. When
the price of bread rose beyond their capacity to pay, they fre- 1713 Peace of Utrecht
quently took action. In towns they invaded the bakers’ shop
to seize bread and resell it at a “just price.” In rural areas they
attacked convoys taking grain away to the cities and also re-
distributed it. Women often led these actions, since their role as mothers gave
them some impunity in authorities’ eyes. Historians have labeled this vision of a
world in which community needs predominate over competition and profit a
moral economy. moral economy A historian’s term for
an economic perspective in which the
needs of a community take precedence
over competition and profit.
In this context of economic and demographic depres-
Seventeenth-Century sion, monarchs began to make new demands on their
State-Building: people. Traditionally, historians have distinguished
Common Obstacles sharply between the “absolutist” governments of France,
and Achievements Spain, Central Europe, and Russia and the constitu-
tional monarchies of England and the Dutch Republic. Whereas absolutist mon-
archs gathered all power under their personal control, constitutional monarchs
were obliged to respect laws passed by representative institutions. More recently,
historians have emphasized commonalities among these powers. Despite their
political differences, absolutist and constitutional monarchs shared common proj-
ects of protecting and expanding their frontiers, raising new taxes, and consolidat-
ing state control.
Rulers who wished to increase their authority encountered formidable ob-
stacles. Some obstacles were purely material. Without paved roads, telephones, or
An English Food Riot

Nothing infuriated ordinary women and men more than the idea that merchants and landowners were withholding
grain from the market in order to push high prices even higher. In this cartoon an angry crowd hands out rough justice
to a rich farmer accused of hoarding. (Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum)
other modern technology, it took weeks to convey orders from the central govern-
ment to the provinces. Rulers also suffered from a lack of information about their
realms, due to the limited size of their bureaucracies. Without accurate knowl-
edge of the number of inhabitants and the wealth they possessed, it was impossible
to police and tax the population effectively. Cultural and linguistic differences
presented their own obstacles. In some kingdoms the people spoke a language dif-
ferent from the Crown’s, diminishing their willingness to obey its commands.
Local power structures presented another serious obstacle to a monarch’s at-
tempts to centralize power. Across Europe, nobles retained great legal, military,
political, and financial powers, in addition to their traditional social prestige.
Moreover, the church, legislative corps, town councils, guilds, and other bodies
had acquired autonomy during the course of the Middle Ages. In some countries
whole provinces held separate privileges granted when they became part of the
kingdom.
While some monarchs succeeded in breaking the power of these institutions
and others were forced to concede political power to elected representatives, the
situation was nuanced. Absolutist monarchs did not crush the power of nobles and
other groups but rather had to compromise with them. Louis XIV, the model of
absolutist power, succeeded because he co-opted and convinced nobles. And in
England and the Netherlands constitutional government did not mean democ-
racy, the rule of the people.
Both absolutist and constitutional monarchs were able to overcome obstacles
and achieve new levels of central control. They exercised greater power in four
Absolutism in France and Spain 405
areas in particular: greater taxation, growth in armed forces, larger and more effi-
cient bureaucracies, and the increased ability to compel obedience from their
subjects. Over time, centralized power added up to something close to sovereignty. sovereignty The supreme authority in
A state may be termed sovereign when it possesses a monopoly over the instru- a political community; a modern state is
said to be sovereign when it controls the
ments of justice and the use of force within clearly defined boundaries. In a sover- instruments of justice (the courts) and
eign state, no system of courts, such as ecclesiastical tribunals, competes with state the use of force (military and police
courts in the dispensation of justice; and private armies, such as those of feudal powers) within geographical boundaries
lords, present no threat to central authority because the state’s army is stronger. recognized by other states.
State law touches all persons in the country. While seventeenth-century states did
not acquire total sovereignty, they made important strides toward that goal.
In the seventeenth century bread riots turned into

Popular Political popular revolts in England, France, Spain, Portugal, popular revolts Uprisings that were
Action and Italy.2 In 1640 Philip IV of Spain faced revolt on extremely common in the seventeenth
century across Europe, due to the
three fronts simultaneously: Catalonia, the economic center of his realm; Portu- increasing pressures of taxation and
gal; and the northern provinces of the Netherlands. In 1647 the city of Palermo, in warfare.
Spanish-occupied Sicily, exploded in protest over food shortages caused by a series
of bad harvests. The city government responded by subsidizing the price of bread,
but Madrid ordered an end to subsidies. Local women led a bread riot, shouting,
Sec tion Review
“Long live the king and down with the taxes and the bad government!” Apart from • Rural society was dependent on crops,
affordable food, rebels demanded the suppression of extraordinary taxes, participa- especially grain, so when a period of
tion in municipal government, and the end to noble tax exemptions. Lacking colder weather came, crop yields fell,
bringing famine, malnutrition, and
unity and strong leadership, the revolt was squelched.3 The Spanish were equally disease.
successful in the Netherlands, at first; by the early 1570s, however, a new wave of
• Economic crisis hit the urban poor
revolt broke out, resulting in the independent Dutch Republic (see page 424). and peasants hardest and often led to
In France, uprisings became “a distinctive feature of life”4 in the cities, where “moral economy” tactics: when bread
resentment at taxes fostered violence. Major insurrections occurred at Dijon in prices were too high, the peasants
1630 and 1668, at Bordeaux (bor-DOH) in 1635 and 1675, at Montpellier in 1645, seized the grain or bread to resell or
at Lyons from 1667 through 1668 and again in 1692, and at Amiens in 1685, 1695, redistribute at “just” prices.
1704, and 1711. All were characterized by deep popular anger, a vocabulary of • Absolutist monarchs had full personal
violence, and what a recent historian calls “the culture of retribution”—that is, the control, while constitutional mon-
archs followed laws representative
punishment of royal “outsiders,” officials who attempted to announce or collect institutions passed.
taxes.5 Royal officials were sometimes seized, beaten, and hacked to death. The
• In the seventeenth century, both
limitations of royal authority gave some leverage to rebels. Royal edicts were some- absolutist and constitutional monarchs
times suspended, prisoners released, and discussions initiated. By the end of the confronted—and partially overcame—
seventeenth century, this leverage had largely disappeared. Municipal govern- limitations on their sovereignty, pro-
ments were better integrated into the national structure, and local authorities had duced by poor infrastructure, weak
prompt military support from the central government. People who publicly op- bureaucracies, cultural differences,
and local power structures.
posed royal policies and taxes received swift and severe punishment.6
• Popular revolts arose as peasants
protested food shortages and tax
increases, but the rise of central
authority by the end of the period
Absolutism in France and Spain allowed governments to repress
them severely.
To what extent did French and Spanish monarchs succeed in creating
absolute monarchies?
In the Middle Ages monarchs were said to rule “by the grace of God.” Law was
given by God; kings discovered or “found” the law and acknowledged that they
must respect and obey it. In the seventeenth century absolutist state, kings ampli-
fied these claims, asserting that, because they were chosen by God, they were
responsible to God alone. They claimed exclusive power to make and enforce
laws, denying any other institution or group the authority to check their power.
Philosophers and theologians supported the kings’ position with arguments for
the necessity of absolute power for the public good. In Leviathan (li-VYE-uh-
thuhn) (1651), the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes argued that any limits
on or divisions of government power would lead only to paralysis or civil war. At
the court of Louis XIV the French theologian Bossuet (baw-SWAY) proclaimed
that without “absolute authority the king could neither do good nor repress evil.”
Louis XIV’s absolutism had long roots. In 1589 his

The Foundations of grandfather Henry IV (r. 1589–1610), the founder of
Absolutism: Henry IV, the Bourbon dynasty, acquired a devastated country.
Sully, and Richelieu As we saw in Chapter 14, civil wars between Protes-
tants and Catholics wracked France in the last decades of the sixteenth century.
Catastrophically poor harvests meant that peasants across France lived on the
verge of starvation. Commercial activity had fallen to one-third its 1580 level.
Nobles, officials, merchants, and peasants wanted peace, order, and stability.
“Henri le Grand” (Henry the Great), as the king was called, promised “a chicken
in every pot” and inaugurated a remarkable recovery. He was beloved because of
the belief that he cared about the people; his was the only royal statue the Paris
crowd did not tear down two hundred years later in the French Revolution.
Aside from a short war in 1601, Henry kept France at peace. He had converted
to Catholicism but also issued the Edict of Nantes (see page 362), allowing Protes-
tants the right to worship in 150 traditionally Protestant towns throughout France.
Along with his able chief minister, the Protestant Maximilien de Béthune (mak-
suh-MIL-yuhn duh bay-TOON), duke of Sully, Henry IV laid the foundations for
the growth of state power. He sharply lowered direct taxes on the overburdened
peasants and focused instead on increasing income from indirect taxes on salt,
sales, and transit. He also instituted an annual fee on royal officials to guarantee
heredity in their offices. (Although effective at the time, the long-term effect of this
tax was to reduce royal control over officeholders.)
Alongside fiscal reform, Henry sponsored new industries and trade and im-
proved the infrastructure of the country, building new roads, bridges, and canals to
repair the ravages of years of civil war. In only twelve years he significantly raised
royal revenues and restored public order.7 Yet despite his efforts at peace, Henry
was murdered in 1610 by François Ravaillac, a Catholic zealot, setting off a na-
tional crisis.
After the death of Henry IV his wife, the queen-regent Marie de’ Medici (MED-
ih-chee), headed the government for the child-king Louis XIII (r. 1610–1643).
In 1624 Marie de’ Medici secured the appointment of Armand Jean du Plessis—
Cardinal Richelieu (ree-shuh-LYOO) (1585–1642)—to the council of ministers.
Richelieu’s maneuvers would allow the monarchy to maintain power within Eu-
rope and within its own borders despite the turmoil of the Thirty Years’ War (see
pages 435–436).
Richelieu’s goal was to subordinate competing groups and institutions to the
French monarchy. The nobility constituted the foremost threat. Nobles sat in
royal councils, ran the army, controlled large provinces of France, and were im-
mune from direct taxation. Richelieu sought to curb their power. In 1624 he suc-
ceeded in reshuffling the royal council, eliminating nobles who were potential
power brokers and dominating the council as its president. In 1628 he became the
first minister of the French crown.
Cardinal Richelieu’s political genius is best reflected in the administrative sys-

tem he established to strengthen royal control. He extended the use of intendants, intendants Royal commissioners.
commissioners for each of France’s thirty-two districts who were appointed directly Appointed by and answering directly
to the monarch, they were key elements
by the monarch, to whom they were solely responsible. Intendants could not be in Richelieu’s plan to centralize the
natives of the districts where they held authority; thus they had no vested interest French state.
in their localities. They recruited men for the army, supervised the collection of
taxes, presided over the administration of local law, checked up on the local nobil-
ity, and regulated economic activities—commerce, trade, the guilds, marketplaces—
in their districts. They were to use their power for three related purposes: to inform
the central government about their districts, to enforce royal orders, and to under-
mine the influence of the regional nobility. As the intendants’ power increased
under Richelieu, so did the power of the centralized French state.
Under Richelieu the French monarchy also reasserted the principle of one
people united by one faith. In 1627 Louis XIII decided to end Protestant military
and political independence because, he said, it constituted “a state within a state.”
According to Louis, Huguenots were politically disobedient because they did not
allow Catholics to worship in their cities.8 Attention focused on La Rochelle,
fourth largest of the French Atlantic ports and a major commercial center with
strong ties to the northern Protestant states of Holland and England. Louis person-
ally supervised the siege of La Rochelle. After the city fell in October 1628, its
municipal government was suppressed and its walled fortifications were destroyed.
Although Protestants retained the right of public worship, the king reinstated the
Catholic liturgy, and Cardinal Richelieu himself celebrated the first Mass. The
fall of La Rochelle weakened the influence of aristocratic Huguenots and was one
step in the removal of Protestantism as a strong force in French life. Richelieu did
not aim to wipe out Protestantism in the rest of Europe, however. His main foreign
policy goal was to destroy the Catholic Habsburgs’ grip on territories that sur-
rounded France. Consequently, Richelieu supported the Habsburgs’ enemies,
including Protestants. In 1631 he signed a treaty with the Lutheran king Gustavus
Adolphus promising French support against the Habsburgs in what has been
called the Swedish phase of the Thirty Years’ War (see page 436). French influ-
ence became an important factor in the political future of the German Empire.
Richelieu acquired for France extensive rights in Alsace in the east and Arras in
the north.
In building the French state, Richelieu knew that his approach sometimes
seemed to contradict traditional Christian teaching. As a priest and bishop, how
did he justify his policies? He developed his own raison d’état (reason of state):
“Where the interests of the state are concerned, God absolves actions which, if
privately committed, would be a crime.”9 Richelieu’s successor as chief minister
for the next boy-king, Louis XIV, was Cardinal Jules Mazarin (1602–1661). Along
with the regent, Queen Mother Anne of Austria, Mazarin continued Richelieu’s
centralizing policies. His struggle to increase royal revenues to meet the costs of
war with Spain led to the uprisings of 1648–1653 known as the Fronde. A frondeur Fronde A series of violent uprisings
was originally a street urchin who threw mud at the passing carriages of the rich, during the minority of Louis XIV
triggered by oppressive taxation and
but the word came to be applied to the many individuals and groups who opposed growing royal authority; the last attempt
the policies of the government. The most influential of these groups were the robe of the French nobility to resist the king
nobility—court judges—and the sword nobility—the aristocracy—both of whom by arms.
resented growing centralized control. During the first of several riots, the queen
mother fled Paris with Louis XIV. As the rebellion continued, civil order broke
down completely. In 1651 Anne’s regency ended with the declaration of Louis as
king in his own right. Much of the rebellion died away, and its leaders came to
terms with the government.
The conflicts of the Fronde had significant results for the future. The twin evils
of noble factionalism and popular riots left the French wishing for peace and for a
strong monarch to re-impose order. This was the legacy that Louis XIV inherited
when he assumed personal rule in 1661. Humiliated by his flight from Paris, he
was determined to avoid any recurrence of rebellion.
The reign of Louis XIV (r. 1643–1715) was the lon-

Louis XIV gest in European history, and the French monarchy
and Absolutism reached the peak of absolutist development. In the
magnificence of his court and the brilliance of the culture that he presided over,
the “Sun King” dominated his age.
divine right of kings The belief that Religion, Anne, and Mazarin all taught Louis the doctrine of the divine right
God had established kings as his rulers of kings: God had established kings as his rulers on earth, and they were answer-
on earth and that they were answerable
ultimately to God alone.
able ultimately to God alone. Though kings were divinely anointed and shared in
the sacred nature of divinity, they could not simply do as they pleased. They had
to obey God’s laws and rule for the good of the people.
Louis worked very hard at the business of governing. He ruled his realm
through several councils of state, and insisted on taking a personal role in many of
the councils’ decisions. He selected councilors from the recently ennobled or the
upper middle class because he wanted “people to know by the rank of the men
who served him that he had no intention of sharing power with them.”10 Despite
increasing financial problems, Louis never called a meeting of the Estates Gen-
eral. The nobility therefore had no means of united expression or action. Nor did
Louis have a first minister; he kept himself free from worry about the inordinate
power of a Richelieu. Louis also used spying and terror—a secret police force, a
system of informers, and the practice of opening private letters—to eliminate po-
tential threats.
Religion was also a tool of national unity under Louis. In 1685 he revoked the
Edict of Nantes, by which his grandfather Henry IV had granted liberty of con-
science to French Huguenots. The new law ordered the destruction of Huguenot
churches, the closing of schools, the Catholic baptism of Huguenots, and the exile
of Huguenot pastors who refused to renounce their faith. The result was the depar-
ture of some of his most loyal and industrially skilled subjects.
Richelieu had already deprived French Calvinists of political rights and many
had converted to Catholicism. Why, then, did Louis XIV undertake such an ap-
parently unnecessary, cruel, and self-destructive measure? First, Louis considered
religion primarily a political question. Although he was personally tolerant, he
hated division within the realm and insisted that religious unity was essential to his
royal dignity and to the security of the state. Second, aristocrats had long peti-
tioned Louis to crack down on Protestants. His decision to do so won him enor-
mous praise.
Louis’s personal hold on power, his exclusion of great nobles from his coun-
cils, and his ruthless pursuit of religious unity persuaded many earlier historians
absolute monarchy A form of that his reign witnessed the creation of an absolute monarchy. Louis supposedly
government in which sovereignty is crushed the political pretensions of the nobility, leaving them with social grandeur
vested in a single person, the king or
queen; absolute monarchs in the
and court posing but no real power. A later generation of historians has revised that
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries view, showing the multiple constraints on Louis’s power and his need to cooperate
based their authority on the theory of with the nobles. Louis may have declared his absolute power, but in practice he
the divine right of kings. governed through collaboration with nobles, who maintained tremendous pres-
tige and authority in their ancestral lands. Scholars also underline the traditional
nature of Louis’s motivations. Like his predecessors, Louis XIV sought to enhance
Rubens: The Death of Henri IV and The Proclamation of the Regency (1622–1625)
In 1622 the regent Marie de’ Medici commissioned Peter Paul Rubens to paint a cycle of paintings depicting her life. This one
portrays two distinct moments: the assassination of Henry IV (shown on the left ascending to Heaven), and Marie’s subsequent
proclamation as regent. The other twenty-three canvasses in the cycle similarly glorify Marie, a tricky undertaking given her unhappy
marriage to Henry IV and her tumultuous relationship with her son Louis XIII, who removed her from the regency in 1617. As in this
image, Rubens frequently resorted to allegory and classical imagery to elevate the events of Marie’s life. (Réunion des Musées Nationaux/
Art Resource, NY)
the glory of his dynasty and his country, mostly through war. The creation of a new
state apparatus was a means to that goal, not an end in itself.
France’s ability to build armies and fight wars de-

Financial pended on a strong economy. The king named Jean-
and Economic Baptiste Colbert (1619–1683), the son of a wealthy
Management Under merchant-financier of Reims, as controller general of
Louis XIV: Colbert finances. Colbert came to manage the entire royal ad-
ministration and proved himself a financial genius. His central principle was that
the wealth and the economy of France should serve the state. He did not invent
the system called “mercantilism,” but he rigorously applied it to France.
Mercantilism is a collection of governmental policies for the regulation of mercantilism A system of economic
economic activities, especially commercial activities, by and for the state. In regulations aimed at increasing the
power of the state.
seventeenth- and eighteenth-century economic theory, a nation’s international
power was thought to be based on its wealth, specifically its gold supply. Because
resources were limited, mercantilist theory held, state intervention was needed to
secure the largest part of a limited resource. To accumulate gold, a country always
had to sell more goods abroad than it bought. Colbert thus insisted that France
should be self-sufficient, able to produce within its borders everything French sub-
jects needed. Consequently, the outflow of gold would be halted; debtor states
would pay in bullion; unemployment and poverty would greatly diminish; and
with the wealth of the nation increased, its power and prestige would be enhanced.
Colbert supported old industries and created new ones so that France would
be self-sufficient. He focused especially on textiles, the most important sector of
the economy, reinforcing the system of state inspection and regulation and form-
ing guilds. Colbert encouraged foreign craftsmen to immigrate to France by giving
them special privileges, and he worked to bring more female workers into the la-
bor force. To encourage the people to buy French goods, he abolished many do-
mestic tariffs and raised tariffs on foreign products. One of Colbert’s most ambitious
projects was the creation of a merchant marine to transport French goods. In 1661
France possessed 18 unseaworthy vessels; by 1681 it had 276 working ships manned
by trained sailors. In 1664 Colbert founded the Company of the East Indies with
(unfulfilled) hopes of competing with the Dutch for Asian trade.
Colbert also hoped to make Canada—rich in untapped minerals and some of
the best agricultural land in the world—part of a vast French empire. He sent four
thousand peasants from western France to the province of Quebec. (In 1608, one
year after the English arrived at Jamestown, Virginia, Sully had established the city
of Quebec, which became the capital of French Canada.) Subsequently, the Jes-
uit Jacques Marquette and the merchant Louis Joliet sailed down the Mississippi
River and claimed possession of the land on both sides as far south as present-day
Arkansas. In 1684 the French explorer Robert La Salle continued down the Mis-
sissippi to its mouth and claimed vast territories and the rich delta for Louis XIV.
The area was called, naturally, “Louisiana.”
During Colbert’s tenure as controller general, Louis was able to pursue his
goals without massive tax increases and without creating a stream of new offices.
Colbert managed to raise revenues significantly by cracking down on inefficiences
and corruption in the tax collection system. The constant pressure of warfare after
Colbert’s death, however, undid many of his economic achievements.
Louis XIV wrote that “the character of a conqueror is

Louis XIV’s Wars regarded as the noblest and highest of titles.” In pursuit
of the title of conqueror, he kept France at war for
thirty-three of the fifty-four years of his personal rule. In 1666 Louis appointed
François le Tellier (later, marquis de Louvois) as secretary of state for war. Under
the king’s watchful eye, Louvois created a professional army that was modern in
the sense that the French state, rather than private nobles, employed the soldiers.
Louvois utilized several methods in recruiting troops: dragooning, in which press
gangs seized men off the streets; conscription; and, after 1688, lottery. With these
techniques, the French army grew from roughly 125,000 men in the Thirty Years’
War (1618–1648) to 250,000 during the Dutch War (1672–1678) and 340,000
during the War of the League of Augsburg (1688–1697).11 Uniforms and weapons
were standardized and rational systems of training and promotion devised. Many
historians believe that the new loyalty, professionalism, and size of the French
army is the best case for the success of absolutism under Louis XIV. Whatever his
compromises elsewhere, the French monarch had firm control of his armed
forces. As in so many other matters, Louis’s model was followed across Europe.
Louis’s supreme goal was to expand France to what he considered its “natural”
borders and to secure those lands from any threat of invasion. His armies managed
to expand French borders to include important commercial centers in the Span-
ish Netherlands and Flanders, as well as all of Franche-Comté between 1667 and
1678. In 1681 Louis seized the city of Strasbourg, and three years later he sent
armies into the province of Lorraine. At that moment the king seemed invincible.
In fact, Louis had reached the limit of his expansion. The wars of the 1680s and
1690s brought no additional territories.
Louis understood his wars largely as defensive undertakings, but his neighbors
naturally viewed French expansion with great alarm. Louis’s wars inspired the
formation of Europe-wide coalitions against him. As a result, he was obliged to sup-
port a huge army in several different theaters of war. This task placed unbearable
strains on French resources, especially given the inequitable system of taxation.
Colbert’s successors as minister of finance resorted to the devaluation of the
currency and the old device of selling offices and tax exemptions. They also cre-
ated new direct taxes in 1695 and 1710, which nobles and clergymen had to pay
for the first time. In exchange for this money, the king reaffirmed the traditional
social hierarchies by granting honors, pensions, and titles to the nobility. Com-
moners had to pay the new taxes as well as the old ones.
A series of bad harvests between 1688 and 1694 added social to fiscal catastro-
phe. The price of wheat skyrocketed. The result was widespread starvation, and in
many provinces the death rate rose to several times the normal figure. Parish reg-
isters reveal that France buried at least one-tenth of its population in those years,
perhaps 2 million in 1693 and 1694 alone. Rising grain prices, new taxes for war,
a slump in manufacturing, and the constant nuisance of pillaging troops all meant
great suffering for the French people. France wanted peace at any price and won
a respite for five years, which was shattered by the War of the Spanish Succession
(1701–1713).
In 1700 the childless Spanish king Charles II (r. 1665–1700) died, opening a
struggle for control of Spain and its colonies. His will bequeathed the Spanish
crown and its empire to Philip of Anjou, Louis XIV’s grandson (Louis’s wife, Maria-
Theresa, had been Charles’s sister). This testament violated a prior treaty by which
the European powers had agreed to divide the Spanish possessions between the
king of France and the Holy Roman emperor, both brothers-in-law of Charles II.
Claiming that he was following both Spanish and French national interests, Louis
broke with the treaty and accepted the will.
In 1701 the English, Dutch, Austrians, and Prussians formed the Grand Alli-
ance against Louis XIV. The allied powers united to prevent France from becom-
ing too strong in Europe and to check France’s expanding commercial power in
North America, Asia, and Africa. The war dragged on until 1713. The Peace of Peace of Utrecht A series of treaties,
Utrecht, which ended the war, applied the principle of partition. Louis’s grandson from 1713 to 1715, that ended the War
of the Spanish Succession, ended French
Philip remained the first Bourbon king of Spain on the understanding that the expansion in Europe, and marked the
French and Spanish crowns would never be united. France surrendered New- rise of the British Empire.
foundland, Nova Scotia, and the Hudson Bay territory to England, which also
acquired Gibraltar, Minorca, and control of the African slave trade from Spain.
The Dutch gained little because Austria received the former Spanish Netherlands
(see Map 16.1).
The Peace of Utrecht had important international consequences. It repre-
sented the balance-of-power principle in operation, setting limits on the extent to
which any one power—in this case, France—could expand. The treaty completed
the decline of Spain as a great power. It vastly expanded the British Empire, and it
gave European powers experience in international cooperation. The Peace of
Utrecht also marked the end of French expansion. Thirty-five years of war had
brought rights to all of Alsace and the gain of important cities in the north such as
Lille, as well as Strasbourg. But at what price? In 1714 an exhausted France hov-
ered on the brink of bankruptcy. It is no wonder that when Louis XIV died on
September 1, 1715, many subjects felt as much relief as they did sorrow.
10˚W 0˚ 10˚E 20˚E 30˚E 60˚N 40˚E
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Mapping the Past

MAP 16.1 Europe in 1715
The series of treaties commonly called the Peace of Utrecht (April 1713–November 1715) ended
the War of the Spanish Succession and redrew the map of Europe. A French Bourbon king
succeeded to the Spanish throne. France surrendered to Austria the Spanish Netherlands (later
Belgium), then in French hands, and France recognized the Hohenzollern (HOH-uhn-zol-
urn) rulers of Prussia. Spain ceded Gibraltar to Great Britain, for which it has been a strategic
naval station ever since. Spain also granted to Britain the asiento, the contract for supplying
African slaves to America. [1] Identify the areas on the map that changed hands as a result of
the Peace of Utrecht. How did these changes affect the balance of power in Europe? [2] How
and why did so many European countries possess scattered or discontiguous territories? What
does this suggest about European politics in this period? [3] Does this map suggest potential
for future conflict?
As French power was growing, Spanish power was di-

The Decline of minishing. By the early seventeenth century the seeds
Absolutist Spain in of disaster were sprouting. Between 1610 and 1650
the Seventeenth Spanish trade with the colonies fell 60 percent, due to
Century competition from local industries in the colonies and
from Dutch and English traders. At the same time, the native Indians and African
slaves who toiled in the South American silver mines suffered frightful epidemics
of disease. Ultimately, the lodes started to run dry, and the quantity of metal pro-
duced steadily declined after 1620.
In Madrid, however, royal expenditures constantly exceeded income. To meet
mountainous state debt and declining revenues, the Crown repeatedly devalued
the coinage and declared bankruptcy. In 1596, 1607, 1627, 1647, and 1680, Span-
ish kings found no solution to the problem of an empty treasury other than to
cancel the national debt. Given the frequency of cancellation, national credit
plummeted.
Seventeenth-century Spain was the victim of its past. It could not forget the
grandeur of the sixteenth century and respond to changing circumstances. Al-
though Spain lacked the finances to fight expensive wars, the imperial tradition
demanded the revival of war with the Dutch at the expiration of a twelve-year
truce in 1622 and a long war with France over Mantua (1628–1659). Spain thus
became embroiled in the Thirty Years’ War. These conflicts, on top of an empty
treasury, brought disaster.
In 1640 Spain faced serious revolts in Catalonia and Portugal. The Portuguese
succeeded in regaining independence from Habsburg rule under their new king,
John IV (r. 1640–1656). In 1643 the French inflicted a crushing defeat on a Span-
ish army at Rocroi in what is now Belgium. By the Treaty of the Pyrenees of 1659,
which ended the French-Spanish conflict, Spain was compelled to surrender ex-
tensive territories to France. This treaty marked the decline of Spain as a great
military power.
Spain’s decline can also be traced to a failure to invest in productive enter-
prises. In contrast to the other countries of western Europe, Spain had only a tiny
middle class. Public opinion, taking its cue from the aristocracy, condemned
moneymaking as vulgar and undignified. Thousands entered economically un-
productive professions: there were said to be nine thousand monasteries in the
province of Castile alone. Some three hundred thousand people who had once
been Muslims were expelled by Philip III in 1609, significantly reducing the pool
Peeter Snayers: Spanish Troops (detail)

The long wars that Spain fought over Dutch independence, in support of Habsburg interests in Germany, and
against France left the country militarily exhausted and financially drained by the mid-1600s. Here, Spanish
troops—thin, emaciated, and probably unpaid—straggle away from battle. (Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid.
Photo: José Baztan y Alberto Otero)
of skilled workers and merchants. Those working in the textile industry were forced
out of business when the flood of gold and silver produced severe inflation, push-
ing their production costs to the point where they could not compete in colonial
and international markets. Other businessmen found so many obstacles in the way
of profitable enterprise that they simply gave up.12 Spanish aristocrats, attempting
to maintain an extravagant lifestyle they could no longer afford, increased the
rents on their estates. High rents and heavy taxes in turn drove the peasants from
the land. Agricultural production suffered, and peasants departed for the large cit-
ies, where they swelled the ranks of unemployed beggars.
Spanish leaders seemed to lack the will to reform. If one can discern personal-
ity from pictures, the portraits of Philip III (r. 1598–1622), Philip IV (r. 1622–
1665), and Charles II (r. 1665–1700) hanging in the Prado, the Spanish national
museum in Madrid, reflect the increasing weakness of the dynasty. Pessimism and
fatalism permeated national life. In the reign of Philip IV, a royal council was ap-
pointed to plan the construction of a canal linking the Tagus and Manzanares
Rivers in Spain. After interminable debate, the committee decided that “if God
had intended the rivers to be navigable, He would have made them so.” Spain ig-
Don Quixote A novel authored by
Miguel de Cervantes that is perhaps the nored new scientific methods because they came from heretical nations, Holland
greatest work of Spanish literature. It is and England.
a survey of the entire fabric of Spanish In the brilliant novel Don Quixote (dohn kee-HOH-tee), Spanish writer
society that can be read on several levels:
Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) produced one of the great masterpieces of
as a burlesque of chivalric romances and
as an exploration of conflicting views world literature. The main character, Don Quixote, lives in a world of dreams,
(idealistic vs. realistic) of life and of traveling about the countryside seeking military glory. From the title of the book,
the world. the English language has borrowed the word quixotic. Meaning “idealistic but
The Culture of Absolutism 415
impractical,” the term characterizes seventeenth-century Spain. As a leading Sec tion Review
scholar has written, “The Spaniard convinced himself that reality was what he felt,
believed, imagined. He filled the world with heroic reverberations. Don Quixote • Henry IV of France restored order and
prosperity but his premature death left
was born and grew.”13 queen-regent Marie de’ Medici and
Cardinal Richelieu to rule for the boy
Louis XIII; Richelieu led France into
the Thirty Years’ War and continued
Henry IV’s work of increasing the
The Culture of Absolutism power of the centralized state.
What cultural forms flourished under absolutist governments? • After the death of Louis XIII, Cardinal
Mazarin and the regent, Queen
Mother Anne of Austria, ruled for the
Under absolutist monarchs, culture became an instrument of state power. The boy-king Louis XIV; the Fronde
baroque style in art and music flourished in Spain, Italy, and Central Europe. uprisings during this time protested
Baroque masters like Rubens painted portraits celebrating the glory of European growing royal power and war-related
monarchs. Architecture became an important tool for the French monarch Louis tax increases.
XIV, who made the magnificent palace of Versailles (vehr-SIGH) the center of his • The “Sun King” Louis XIV created an
kingdom, inspiring imitators across Europe (see Chapter 17). Even language re- “absolute monarchy,” ruling accord-
ing to the doctrine of the “divine right
flected the growing power of the French crown. Within France Richelieu estab-
of kings” in which a king answered to
lished an academy to oversee French literature and language. Outside its borders God alone.
French became the common language of the European elite.
• Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV’s
brilliant finance minister, adopted
mercantilist policies intended to foster
Rome and the revitalized Catholic church of the later economic self-sufficiency so that every-
Baroque Art sixteenth century played an important role in the early thing French subjects needed would be
and Music development of the baroque. As we have seen (pages produced internally—therefore halting
the external flow of gold and increasing
539–540), the papacy and the Jesuits encouraged the growth of an intensely emo- the wealth of the nation.
tional, exuberant art aimed at kindling the faith of ordinary churchgoers. In addi-
• Louis XIV built a large, loyal, profes-
tion to this underlying religious emotionalism, the baroque drew its sense of sional army that expanded French
drama, motion, and ceaseless striving from the art and architecture of the Catholic borders but required expensive main-
Reformation. Yet baroque art was more than just “Catholic art” in the seventeenth tenance, taxing French resources.
century and the first half of the eighteenth. True, neither Protestant England nor • The Peace of Utrecht ended the War
the Netherlands ever came fully under the spell of the baroque, but neither did of the Spanish Succession and redrew
Catholic France. And Protestants accounted for some of the finest examples of the map of Europe, marking the end
of French expansion, an increase in
baroque style, especially in music. The baroque style spread partly because its ten-
the British Empire, and the decline
sion and bombast spoke to an agitated age that was experiencing great violence of Spain.
and controversy in politics and religion.
• Spain’s power declined due to a loss of
In painting, the baroque reached maturity early with the painter Peter Paul trade with the colonies, diminished
Rubens (1577–1640). Rubens studied the masters of the High Renaissance such as production of South American silver,
Michelangelo but developed his own style, which was characterized by animated bankruptcy from fighting wars, a failure
figures, melodramatic contrasts, and monumental size. Rubens excelled in glorify- to invest in productive enterprises, the
deportation of formerly Muslim work-
ing monarchs such as Queen Mother Marie de’ Medici of France (see the paint-
ers, and high rents and heavy taxes
ing on page 409). He was also a devout Catholic; nearly half of his pictures treat that drove peasants from the land.
Christian subjects. Yet one of Rubens’s trademarks was fleshy, sensual nudes who
populate his canvases as Roman goddesses, water nymphs, and remarkably volup-
tuous saints and angels.
In music, the baroque style reached its culmination almost a century later in
the dynamic, soaring lines of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), an organist and baroque style An intensely emotional
choirmaster of several Lutheran churches across Germany. Bach’s organ music and exuberant style of art, practiced by
combined the baroque spirit of invention, tension, and emotion in both secular artists such as Rubens and associated
with the late-sixteenth-century Catholic
concertos and sublime religious cantatas. Unlike Rubens, Bach was not fully ap- Reformation; in music, it reached
preciated in his lifetime, but since the early nineteenth century his reputation has maturity almost a century later with the
grown steadily. compositions of Bach.
Juan de Pareja: The Calling of Saint Matthew

Using rich but subdued colors, Pareja depicts the biblical text (Mark 2:13–17), with Jesus in traditional first-century dress and
the other figures, arranged around a table covered with an oriental carpet, in seventeenth-century apparel. Matthew, at
Jesus’s right hand, seems surprised by the “call.” Pareja, following a long tradition, includes himself (standing, far left).
(Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid/The Bridgeman Art Library)
In 1682 Louis formally established his court at Ver-

Court Culture sailles, which became the center of the kingdom: a
model of rational order and the perfect symbol of the
king’s power. The art and architecture of Versailles were tools of Louis’s policy,
used to overawe his subjects and foreign visitors. The Russian tsar Peter the Great
imitated Versailles in the construction of his palace, Peterhof, as did the Prussian
emperor Frederick the Great in his palace at Potsdam outside Berlin and the
Habsburgs at Schonbrunn outside Vienna. (See the feature “Images in Society:
Absolutist Palace Building” on pages 440–441.)
The palace was the summit of political, social, and cultural life. The king re-
quired all great nobles to spend at least part of the year in attendance on him at
Versailles. Between three thousand and ten thousand people occupied the palace
each day. Given the demand for space, even high nobles had to make do with
cramped and uncomfortable living quarters. The palace gardens, and the palace
itself on some occasions, were open to the public, allowing even local peasants a
glimpse of their sovereign. More than a royal residence or administrative center,
Versailles was a mirror of French greatness to the world.
Much has been made of the “domestication” of the nobility at Versailles.
Nobles had to follow a tortuous system of court etiquette, and they vied for the
honor of serving the monarch, with the highest in rank claiming the privilege to
hand the king his shirt when he dressed. These rituals were far from meaningless or
trivial. The king controlled immense resources and privileges; access to him meant
favored treatment for pensions, military and religious posts, honorary titles, and a
The Culture of Absolutism 417
host of other benefits. Courtiers sought these rewards for themselves and for their
family members and followers. As in ancient Rome, a patronage system—in which
higher-ranked individuals protected lower-ranked ones in return for loyalty and
services—dominated political life. Patronage flowed from the court to the provinces;
it was the mechanism through which Louis gained cooperation from social elites.
Although they were denied public offices and posts, women played a central
role in the patronage system. At court, the king’s wife, mistresses, and other female
relatives used their high rank to establish their own patronage relations. They
recommended individuals for honors, advocated policy decisions, and brokered
alliances between noble factions. Noblewomen played a similar role, bringing
their family connections to marriage to form powerful social networks. Onlookers
sometimes resented the influence of powerful women at court. The Duke of
Saint-Simon said of Madame de Maintenon, Louis XIV’s mistress and secret
second wife:
The power of Madame de Maintenon was, as may be imagined, immense. She

had everybody in her hands, from the highest and most favored ministers to the
meanest subject of the realm. Many people have been ruined by her, without
having been able to discover the author of the ruin, search as they might.
To this day, culture is a central element of French na-

French Classicism tional pride and identity. French emphasis on culture
dates back to Cardinal Richelieu, whose efforts at state
centralization embraced cultural activities. In 1635 he gave official recognition to
a group of scholars interested in grammar and rhetoric. Thus was born the French
Academy, which prepared a dictionary to standardize the French language; the
dictionary was completed in 1694 and has been updated in many successive edi-
tions. The Academy survives today as a prestigious society and retains authority
over correct usage in the French language.
Scholars characterize the art and literature of the age of Louis XIV as French French classicism A style of French
classicism. By this they mean that the artists and writers of the late seventeenth art, architecture, and literature
(ca. 1600–1750), based on admiration
century imitated the subject matter and style of classical antiquity, that their work and imitation of Greek and Roman
resembled that of Renaissance Italy, and that French art possessed the classical models but with greater exuberance
qualities of discipline, balance, and restraint. This was a movement away from the and complexity.
perceived excesses of baroque style.
Louis XIV was an enthusiastic patron of the arts. Music and theater frequently
served as backdrops for court ceremonials. Louis favored Jean-Baptiste Lully
(1632–1687), whose orchestral works combined lively animation with the re-
strained austerity typical of French classicism. Louis also supported François Cou-
perin (1668–1733), whose harpsichord and organ works possessed the regal
grandeur the king loved, and Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1634–1704), whose sol-
emn religious music entertained him at meals.
Louis XIV loved the stage, and in the plays of Molière (mohl-YAIR) (1622–
1673) and Racine (ra-SEEN) (1639–1699) his court witnessed the finest achieve-
ments in the history of the French theater. As playwright, stage manager, director,
and actor, Molière (born Jean-Baptiste Poquelin) produced comedies that exposed
the hypocrisies and follies of polite society through brilliant caricature. Tartuffe
(tahr-TOOF) satirized the religious hypocrite; his plays Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme
(The Bourgeois Gentleman) and Les Précieuses ridicules (The Pretentious Young
Ladies) mocked the social pretensions of the bourgeoisie, stopping short of criticiz-
ing the high nobility.
Sec tion Review Molière’s contemporary Jean Racine based his tragic dramas on Greek and
Roman legends. His persistent theme was the conflict of good and evil. Several
• The baroque style, practiced by artists plays—Andromaque (ahn-dro-MAK), Bérénice (bear-ay-NEES), Iphigénie (if-ee-
such as Rubens, was intensely emo-
jay-NEE), and Phèdre (FAY-druh)—bear the names of women and deal with the
tional and exuberant; it was particularly
associated with the late sixteenth cen- power of female passion. For simplicity of language, symmetrical structure, and calm
tury Catholic Reformation, but ap- restraint, the plays of Racine represent the finest examples of French classicism.
peared in both religious and secular Louis XIV’s reign inaugurated the use of French as the language of polite soci-
themes and in Protestant artists. ety, international diplomacy, and, gradually, scholarship and learning. The royal
• Baroque composers such as Bach com- courts of Sweden, Russia, Poland, and Germany all spoke French. France inspired
bined invention, tension, and emotion a cosmopolitan European culture in the late seventeenth century, which looked
in their music, much of which was
organ music played in church.
to Versailles as its center.
• The palace at Versailles was the show-
piece and center of the French king-
dom, crowded with nobles vying for the
king’s favor and patronage Constitutionalism
• French classicism, a movement reviving
classical antiquity in art and literature, What is constitutionalism, and how did this form of government emerge
was popular during the reign of Louis in England and the Dutch Republic?
XIV; theater also gained popularity with
playwrights such as the comic Molière
While France and later Prussia, Russia, and Austria (see Chapter 17) developed
and the tragedian Racine.
the absolutist state, England and Holland evolved toward constitutionalism,
• The French language was adopted by
which is the limitation of government by law. Constitutionalism also implies a
elites across Europe for diplomacy,
scholarship, and polite conversation. balance between the authority and power of the government, on the one hand,
and the rights and liberties of the subjects, on the other.
A nation’s constitution may be written or unwritten. It may be embodied in
one basic document, occasionally revised by amendment, like the Constitution of
constitutionalism A form of govern- the United States. Or it may be only partly formalized and include parliamentary
ment in which power is limited by law statutes, judicial decisions, and a body of traditional procedures and practices, like
and balanced between the authority and
power of the government on the one
the English and Dutch constitutions. Whether written or unwritten, a constitution
hand, and the rights and liberties of the gets its binding force from the government’s acknowledgment that it must respect
subject or citizen on the other hand. that constitution—that is, that the state must govern according to the laws.
In 1588 Queen Elizabeth I of England exercised very

Absolutist Claims in great personal power; by 1689 the English monarchy
England (1603–1649) was severely circumscribed. Change in England was
anything but orderly. Seventeenth-century England executed one king and expe-
rienced a bloody civil war; experimented with military dictatorship, then restored
the son of the murdered king; and finally, after a bloodless revolution, established
constitutional monarchy. Political stability came only in the 1690s. After such a vio-
lent and tumultuous century, how did England produce a constitutional monarchy?
A rare and politically astute female monarch, Elizabeth was able to maintain
control over her realm in part by refusing to marry and submit to a husband. The
problem with this strategy was that it left the queen with no immediate heir to
continue her legacy.
In 1603 Elizabeth’s Scottish cousin James Stuart succeeded her as James I
(r. 1603–1625). King James was well educated and had thirty-five years’ experi-
ence as king of Scotland. But he was not as interested in displaying the majesty of
monarchy as Elizabeth had been. Urged to wave at the crowds who waited to greet
their new ruler, James complained that he was tired and threatened to drop his
breeches “so they can cheer at my arse.” Moreover, in contrast to Elizabeth, James
was a poor judge of character, and in a society already hostile to the Scots, James’s
Constitutionalism 419
Scottish accent was a disadvantage.14 James’s greatest problem, however, stemmed

from his belief that a monarch has a divine (or God-given) right to his authority
and is responsible only to God. James went so far as to lecture the House of Com-
mons: “There are no privileges and immunities which can stand against a divinely
appointed King.” This notion, implying total royal jurisdiction over the liberties,
persons, and properties of English men and women, formed the basis of the Stuart
concept of absolutism. Such a view ran directly counter to the long-standing Eng-
lish idea that a person’s property could not be taken away without due process of
law. James’s expression of such views before the English House of Commons was
a grave political mistake, especially given the royal debt that he had inherited from
Elizabeth. The House of Commons guarded the state’s pocketbook.
In England, unlike France, there was no social stigma attached to paying taxes.
Members of the wealthy House of Commons were willing to assess and pay taxes
to ease the royal debt provided they had some say in the formulation of state poli-
cies. James I and his son Charles I, however, considered such ambitions intolera-
ble and a threat to their divine-right prerogative. Consequently, at every Parliament
between 1603 and 1640, bitter squabbles erupted between the Crown and the ar-
ticulate and legally minded Commons. Charles I’s attempt to govern without Par-
liament (1629–1640) and to finance his government by arbitrary nonparliamentary
levies brought the country to a crisis.
Religious issues also embittered relations between the

Religious Divides king and the House of Commons. In the early seven-
teenth century increasing numbers of English people
felt dissatisfied with the Church of England established by Henry VIII and re-
formed by Elizabeth. Many Puritans believed that the Reformation had not Puritans Members of a sixteenth- and
gone far enough. They wanted to “purify” the Anglican church of Roman Catho- seventeenth-century reform movement
within the Church of England that
lic elements—elaborate vestments and ceremonials, bishops, and even the giving advocated “purifying” it of Roman
and wearing of wedding rings. Catholic elements, such as bishops,
It is difficult to establish what proportion of the English population was Puri- elaborate ceremonials, and the
tan. According to present scholarly consensus, the dominant religious groups in wedding ring.
the early seventeenth century were Calvinist; their more zealous members were
Puritans. It also seems clear that many English people were attracted by Calvin-
ism’s emphasis on hard work, sobriety, thrift, competition, and postponement of
pleasure. These values, which have frequently been called the “Protestant ethic”
or “capitalist ethic,” fit in precisely with the economic approaches and practices of
many successful business people and farmers. While it is hazardous to identify
capitalism with Protestantism—there were many successful Catholic capitalists,
for example—the “Protestant virtues” represented the prevailing values of mem-
bers of the House of Commons.
Puritans wanted to abolish bishops in the Church of England, and when
James I said, “No bishop, no king,” he meant that the bishops were among the
chief supporters of the throne. Under Charles I, people believed that the country
was being led back to Roman Catholicism. Not only did he marry a French Cath-
olic princess, but he also supported the policies of the Archbishop of Canterbury
William Laud (1573–1645), who tried to impose elaborate ritual on all churches.
In 1637 Laud attempted to impose two new elements on church organization
in Scotland: a new prayer book, modeled on the Anglican Book of Common Prayer,
and bishoprics, which the Presbyterian Scots firmly rejected. The Scots therefore
revolted. To finance an army to put down the Scots, King Charles was compelled
to summon Parliament in November 1640.
Puritan Occupations
These twelve engravings depict typical Puritan
occupations and show that the Puritans came
primarily from the artisan and lower middle
classes. The governing classes and peasants
adhered to the traditions of the Church of England.
(Visual Connection Archive)
Charles I was an intelligent man, but

contemporaries found him deceitful and
treacherous. After quarreling with Parlia-
ment over his right to collect customs du-
ties on wine and wool and over what the
Commons perceived as religious innova-
tions, Charles had dissolved Parliament in
1629. From 1629 to 1640, he ruled with-
out Parliament, financing his government
through extraordinary stopgap levies con-
sidered illegal by most English people. For
example, the king revived a medieval law
requiring coastal districts to help pay the
cost of ships for defense, but he levied the
tax, called “ship money,” on inland as well
as coastal counties. Most members of Par-
liament believed that such taxation with-
out consent amounted to despotism. Consequently, they were not willing to trust
the king with an army. Moreover, many supported the Scots’ resistance to Charles’s
religious innovations and had little wish for military action against them. Accord-
ingly, this Parliament, called the “Long Parliament” because it sat from 1640 to
1660, enacted legislation that limited the power of the monarch and made arbitrary
government impossible.
In 1641 the Commons passed the Triennial Act, which compelled the king to
summon Parliament every three years. The Commons impeached Archbishop
Laud and then went further and threatened to abolish bishops. King Charles,
fearful of a Scottish invasion—the original reason for summoning Parliament—
accepted these measures. Understanding and peace were not achieved, however,
partly because radical members of the Commons pushed increasingly revolution-
ary propositions, and partly because Charles maneuvered to rescind those he had
already approved.
The next act in the conflict was precipitated by the outbreak of rebellion in
Ireland, where English governors and landlords had long exploited the people. In
1641 the Catholic gentry of Ireland led an uprising in response to a feared invasion
by anti-Catholic forces of the British Long Parliament.
Without an army, Charles I could neither come to terms with the Scots nor
respond to the Irish rebellion. After a failed attempt to arrest parliamentary leaders
who remained unwilling to grant him an army, Charles left London for the north
of England. There, he recruited an army drawn from the nobility and its cavalry
staff, the rural gentry, and mercenaries. The parliamentary army was composed of
the militia of the city of London, country squires with business connections, and
men with a firm belief in the spiritual duty of serving.
The English civil war (1642–1649) pitted the power of the king against that of
the Parliament. After three years of fighting, Parliament’s New Model Army de- New Model Army The parliamentary
feated the king’s armies at the battles of Naseby and Langport in the summer of army, under the command of Oliver
Cromwell, that fought the army of
1645. Charles, though, refused to concede defeat and accept restrictions on royal Charles I in the English civil war.
authority and church reform. Both sides jockeyed for position, waiting for a deci-
sive event. This arrived in the form of the army under the leadership of Oliver
Cromwell, a member of the House of Commons. In 1647 Cromwell’s forces cap-
tured the king and dismissed members of the Parliament who opposed his actions.
In 1649 the remaining representatives, known as the “Rump Parliament,” put
Charles on trial for high treason, a severe blow to the theory of divine-right mon-
archy. Charles was found guilty and beheaded on January 30, 1649, an act that
sent shock waves around Europe.
With the execution of Charles, kingship was abolished.

Puritanical A commonwealth, or republican government, was pro-
Absolutism in claimed. Theoretically, legislative power rested in the
England: Cromwell surviving members of Parliament, and executive power
and the Protectorate was lodged in a council of state. In fact, the army that
had defeated the king controlled the government, and Oliver Cromwell controlled
the army. Though called the Protectorate, the rule of Cromwell (1653–1658) Protectorate The military dictatorship
constituted military dictatorship. established by Oliver Cromwell follow-
ing the execution of Charles I in 1649.
The army prepared a constitution, the Instrument of Government (1653), that
invested executive power in a lord protector (Cromwell) and a council of state.
The instrument provided for triennial parliaments and gave Parliament the sole
power to raise taxes. But after repeated disputes, Cromwell dismissed Parliament
in 1655 and the instrument was never formally endorsed. Cromwell continued the
standing army and proclaimed quasi-martial law. He divided England into twelve
military districts, each governed by a major general. Reflecting Puritan ideas of
morality, Cromwell’s state forbade sports, kept the theaters closed, and rigorously
censored the press.
On the issue of religion, Cromwell favored some degree of toleration, and the
Instrument of Government gave all Christians except Roman Catholics the right
to practice their faith. Cromwell had long associated Catholicism in Ireland with
sedition and heresy. In September of the year that his army came to power, it
crushed a rebellion at Drogheda and massacred the garrison. Another massacre
followed in October. These brutal acts left a legacy of Irish hatred for England.
After Cromwell’s departure for England, the atrocities worsened. The English
banned Catholicism in Ireland, executed priests, and confiscated land from Cath-
olics for English and Scottish settlers.
Cromwell adopted mercantilist policies similar to those of absolutist France.
He enforced a Navigation Act (1651) requiring that English goods be transported
on English ships. The Navigation Act was a great boost to the development of an
English merchant marine and brought about a short but successful war with the
commercially threatened Dutch. Cromwell also welcomed the immigration of
Jews because of their skills, and they began to return to England after four centu-
ries of absence.
The Protectorate collapsed when Cromwell died in 1658 and his ineffectual
son, Richard, succeeded him. Having lost support of the army, Richard was forced
to abdicate. Fed up with military rule, the English longed for a return to civilian
government and, with it, common law and social stability. By 1660 they were
ready to restore the monarchy.
Cartoon of 1649: “The Royall

Oake of Brittayne”
Chopping down this tree signifies the
end of royal authority, stability, Magna
Carta (see page 205), and the rule of
law. As pigs graze (representing the
unconcerned common people), being
fattened for slaughter, Oliver Cromwell,
with his feet in Hell, quotes Scripture.
This is a royalist view of the collapse of
Charles I’s government and the rule of
Cromwell. (Courtesy of the Trustees of the
British Museum)
The Restoration of 1660 brought Charles II (r. 1660–

The Restoration of 1685) to the throne at the invitation of a special session
the English Monarchy of Parliament called for that purpose. He was the
eldest son of Charles I and had been living on the European continent. Both
houses of Parliament were also restored, together with the established Anglican
church, the courts of law, and the system of local government through justices of
the peace. The Restoration failed to resolve two serious problems, however. What
was to be the attitude of the state toward Puritans, Catholics, and dissenters from
the established church? And what was to be the relationship between the king
and Parliament?
Charles II, an easygoing and sensual man, was not interested in imposing reli-
gious uniformity on the English, but members of Parliament were. They enacted
Test Act Written in 1673, this act stated the Test Act of 1673 against those who refused to receive the Eucharist of the
that those who refused to receive the Church of England, denying them the right to vote, hold public office, preach,
Eucharist of the Church of England
could not vote, hold public office,
teach, attend the universities, or even assemble for meetings. But these restrictions
preach, teach, attend the universities, or could not be enforced. When the Quaker William Penn held a meeting of his
even assemble for meetings. Friends and was arrested, the jury refused to convict him.
In politics Charles II was determined “not to set out in his travels again,” which
meant that he intended to avoid exile by working well with Parliament. Therefore
he appointed a council of five men to serve both as his major advisers and as mem-
bers of Parliament, thus acting as liaison agents between the executive and the
legislature. This body—known as the “Cabal” from the names of its five members
(Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley-Cooper, and Lauderdale)—was an an-
cestor of the later cabinet system. It gradually came to be accepted that the Cabal
was answerable in Parliament for the decisions of the king. This development gave
rise to the concept of ministerial responsibility: royal ministers must answer to
the Commons.
Harmony between the Crown and Parliament was upset in 1670, however.
When Parliament did not grant Charles an adequate income, he entered into a
secret agreement with his cousin Louis XIV. The French king would give Charles
two hundred thousand pounds annually, and in return Charles would relax the
laws against Catholics, gradually re-Catholicize England, support French policy
against the Dutch, and convert to Catholicism himself. When the details of this
treaty leaked out, a great wave of anti-Catholic fear swept England. This fear was
compounded by a crucial fact: with no legitimate heir, Charles would be suc-
ceeded by his Catholic brother, James, duke of York. A combination of hatred for
French absolutism and hostility to Catholicism produced virtual hysteria. The
Commons passed an exclusion bill denying the succession to a Roman Catholic,
but Charles quickly dissolved Parliament, and the bill never became law.
When James II (r. 1685–1688) succeeded his brother, the worst English anti-
Catholic fears, already aroused by Louis XIV’s revocation of the Edict of Nantes,
were realized. In violation of the Test Act, James appointed Roman Catholics to
positions in the army, the universities, and local government. When these actions
were challenged in the courts, the judges, whom James had appointed, decided
for the king. The king was suspending the law at will and appeared to be reviving
the absolutism of his father and grandfather. He went further. Attempting to
broaden his base of support with Protestant dissenters and nonconformists, James
issued a declaration of indulgence granting religious freedom to all.
Two events gave the signals for revolution. First, seven bishops of the Church
of England were imprisoned in the Tower of London for protesting the declaration
of indulgence but were subsequently acquitted amid great public enthusiasm.
Second, in June 1688 James’s second wife produced a male heir. The fear of a Ro-
man Catholic dynasty supported by France and ruling outside the law prompted a
group of eminent persons to offer the English throne to James’s Protestant daugh-
ter Mary and her Dutch husband, Prince William of Orange. In December 1688
James II, his queen, and their infant son fled to France and became pensioners
of Louis XIV. Early in 1689 William and Mary were crowned king and queen
of England.
The English call the events of 1688 and 1689 the “Glo-
The Triumph of rious Revolution” because it replaced one king with
England’s Parliament: another with a minimum of bloodshed. It also repre-
Constitutional sented the destruction, once and for all, of the idea of
Monarchy and divine-right monarchy. William and Mary accepted the
Cabinet Government English throne from Parliament and in so doing explic-
itly recognized the supremacy of Parliament. The revolution of 1688 established
the principle that sovereignty, the ultimate power in the state, was divided between
king and Parliament and that the king ruled with the consent of the governed.
The men who brought about the revolution quickly framed their intentions in
the Bill of Rights, the cornerstone of the modern British constitution. The princi-
ples of the Bill of Rights were formulated in direct response to Stuart absolutism.
Law was to be made in Parliament; once made, it could not be suspended by the
Crown. Parliament had to be called at least once every three years. Both elections
to and debate in Parliament were to be free in the sense that the Crown was not to
interfere in them (this aspect of the bill was widely disregarded in the eighteenth
century). The independence of the judiciary was established, and there was to be
no standing army in peacetime. And while Protestants could possess arms, the
feared Catholic minority could not. Additional legislation granted freedom of wor-
ship to Protestant dissenters and nonconformists and required that the English
monarch always be Protestant.
The Glorious Revolution and the concept of representative government found

Second Treatise of Civil Government its best defense in political philosopher John Locke’s Second Treatise of Civil
A work of political philosophy published Government (1690). Locke (1632–1704) maintained that a government that
by John Locke in 1690 that argued
government’s only purpose was to defend
oversteps its proper function—protecting the natural rights of life, liberty, and
the natural rights of life, liberty, and property—becomes a tyranny. By “natural” rights Locke meant rights basic to all men
property. A justification of the Glorious because all have the ability to reason. Under a tyrannical government, the people
Revolution of 1688 to 1689. have the natural right to rebellion. Such rebellion can be avoided if the govern-
ment carefully respects the rights of citizens and if people zealously defend their
liberty. Locke linked economic liberty and private property with political freedom.
On the basis of this link, he justified limiting the vote to property owners.
The events of 1688 and 1689 did not constitute a democratic revolution. The
revolution placed sovereignty in Parliament, and Parliament represented the up-
per classes. The great majority of English people acquired no say in their govern-
ment. The English revolution established a constitutional monarchy; it also
inaugurated an age of aristocratic government that lasted at least until 1832 and in
many ways until 1928, when women received full voting rights.
In the late sixteenth century the seven northern prov-

The Dutch inces of the Netherlands fought for and won their in-
Republic in the dependence from Spain. The independence of the
Seventeenth Century Republic of the United Provinces of the Netherlands
was recognized in 1648, in the treaty that ended the Thirty Years’ War. The seven-
teenth century witnessed an unparalleled flowering of Dutch scientific, artistic,
and literary achievement. In this period, often called the “golden age of the Neth-
erlands,” Dutch ideas and attitudes played a profound role in shaping a new and
modern worldview. At the same time, the United Provinces was another model of
the development of the modern constitutional state.
The government of the United Provinces had none of the standard categories
of seventeenth-century political organization. The Dutch were not monarchical
but rather fiercely republican. Within each province, an oligarchy of wealthy mer-
chants and financiers called “regents” handled domestic affairs in the local Estates
(assemblies). The provincial Estates held virtually all the power. A federal assem-
States General The national assembly bly, or States General, handled matters of foreign affairs, such as war. But the
of the United Provinces of the States General did not possess sovereign authority; all issues had to be referred
Netherlands; because many issues had
to be refereed back to the provinces, the
back to the local Estates for approval. In each province, the Estate appointed an
United Provinces was a confederation, executive officer, known as the stadtholder (STAT-hohl-der), who carried out cer-
or weak union of strong states. emonial functions and was responsible for military defense. Although in theory
freely chosen by the Estates and answerable to them, in practice the Princes of
stadtholder The chief executive officer
in each province of the United Orange were almost always chosen as stadtholders. Tensions persisted between
Provinces; in the seventeenth century supporters of the staunchly republican Estates and those of the aristocratic House
these positions were often held by the of Orange. Holland, which had the largest navy and the most wealth, dominated
princes of the House of Orange.
the seven provinces of the republic and the States General.
The political success of the Dutch rested on the phenomenal commercial
prosperity of the Netherlands. The moral and ethical bases of that commercial
wealth were thrift, frugality, and religious toleration. As long as business people
conducted their religion in private, the government did not interfere with them.
Although there is scattered evidence of anti-Semitism, Jews enjoyed a level of ac-
ceptance and assimilation in Dutch business and general culture unique in early
modern Europe. (See the feature “Individuals in Society: Glückel of Hameln.”)
For example, Benedict Spinoza (1632–1677), a descendant of Spanish Jews who
fled the Inquisition, passed his entire life in Amsterdam, supporting himself as a
Glückel of Hameln
I n 1690 a Jewish widow in the small German town
of Hameln* in Lower Saxony sat down to write her
autobiography. She wanted to distract her mind from
Glückel’s world was her family, the Jewish commu-
nity of Hameln, and the Jewish communities into which
her children married. Social and business activities took
the terrible grief she felt over the death of her husband her to Amsterdam, Baiersdorf, Bamberg, Berlin, Cleves,
and to provide her twelve children with a record “so you Danzig, Metz, and Vienna, so
will know from what sort of people you have sprung, her world was not narrow or
lest today or tomorrow your beloved children or grand- provincial. She took great
children came and know naught of their family.” Out of pride that Prince Frederick of
her pain and heightened consciousness, Glückel (1646– Cleves, later the king of Prus-
1724) produced an invaluable source for scholars. sia, danced at the wedding of
She was born in Hamburg two years before the end her eldest daughter. The ris-
of the Thirty Years’ War. In 1649 the merchants of Ham- ing prosperity of Chayim’s
burg expelled the Jews, who moved to nearby Altona, businesses allowed the couple
then under Danish rule. When the Swedes overran Al- to maintain up to six servants.
tona (1657–1658), the Jews returned to Hamburg Glückel was deeply reli-
“purely at the mercy of the Town Council.” Glückel’s gious, and her culture was
narrative proceeds against a background of the constant steeped in Jewish literature,
harassment to which Jews were subjected—special pa- legends, and mystical and
pers, permits, bribes—and in Hameln she wrote, “And secular works. Above all, she
so it has been to this day and, I fear, will continue in like relied on the Bible. Her lan-
fashion.” guage, heavily sprinkled with Gentleness and deep mutual
devotion seem to pervade
When Glückel was “barely twelve,” her father be- scriptural references, testifies Rembrandt’s The Jewish Bride.
trothed her to Chayim Hameln (HI-um HAH-muhln). to a rare familiarity with the (Rijksmuseum-Stichting Amsterdam)
She married at age fourteen. She describes him as “the basic book of Western civiliza-
perfect pattern of the pious Jew,” a man who stopped his tion. The Scriptures were her
work every day for study and prayer, fasted, and was scru- consolation, the source of her great strength in a hostile
pulously honest in his business dealings. Only a few world.
years older than Glückel, Chayim earned his living Students who would learn about business practices,
dealing in precious metals and in making small loans the importance of the dowry in marriage, childbirth, the
on pledges (articles held on security). This work re- ceremony of bris, birthrates, family celebrations, and
quired his constant travel to larger cities, markets, and even the meaning of life can gain a good deal from the
fairs, often in bad weather, always over dangerous roads. memoirs of this extraordinary woman who was, in the
Chayim consulted his wife about all his business deal- words of one of her descendants, the poet Heinrich
ings. As he lay dying, a friend asked if he had any last Heine, “the gift of a world to me.”
wishes. “None,” he replied. “My wife knows everything.
She shall do as she has always done.” For thirty years
Glückel had been his friend, full business partner, and Questions for Analysis
wife. They had thirteen children, twelve of whom sur-
1. Consider the ways in which Glückel of Hameln was
vived their father, eight then unmarried. As Chayim had
both an ordinary and an extraordinary woman of her
foretold, Glückel succeeded in launching the boys in
times. Would you call her a marginal or a central
careers and in providing dowries for the girls.
person in her society?
2. How was Glückel’s life affected by the broad events
* A town immortalized by the Brothers Grimm. In 1284 the and issues of the seventeenth century?
town contracted with the Pied Piper to rid it of rats and mice;
he lured them away by playing his flute. When the citizens Source: The Memoirs of Glückel of Hameln (New York:
refused to pay, he charmed away their children in revenge. Schocken Books, 1977).
425
Jan Steen: The Christening

Feast
As the mother, surrounded by midwives,
rests in bed (rear left) and the father
proudly displays the swaddled child,
thirteen other people, united by
gestures and gazes, prepare the
celebratory meal. Very prolific, Steen
was a master of warm-hearted domestic
scenes. In contrast to the order and
cleanliness of many seventeenth-century
Dutch genre paintings, Steen’s more
disorderly portrayals gave rise to the
epithet “a Jan Steen household,”
meaning an untidy house. (Wallace
Collection, London/The Bridgeman Art Library)
lens grinder while producing im-

portant philosophical treatises. In
the Dutch Republic, toleration
paid off: it attracted a great deal of
foreign capital and investment. People of all races and creeds traded in Amster-
dam, at whose docks on the Amstel River five thousand ships were berthed.
The Dutch came to dominate the shipping business by putting profits from
their original industry—herring fishing—into shipbuilding. They boasted the low-
est shipping rates and largest merchant marine in Europe. Their shipping power
allowed them to control the Baltic grain trade, buying entire crops in Poland,
eastern Prussia, and Swedish Pomerania. Because the Dutch dealt in bulk, nobody
could undersell them. Foreign merchants coming to Amsterdam could buy any-
thing from precision lenses for the microscope (recently invented by Dutchman
Anton van Leeuwenhoek) to muskets for an army of five thousand. Although Dutch
cities became famous for their exports—diamonds and linens from Haarlem, pot-
tery from Delft—Dutch wealth depended less on exports than on transport.
Dutch East India Company A joint In 1602 leaders of the Estate of Holland formed the Dutch East India Com-
stock company chartered by the States pany, a joint stock company. The investors each received a percentage of the prof-
General of the Netherlands to expand
trade and promote relations between
its proportional to the amount of money they had put in. Within half a century the
the Dutch government and its colonial Dutch East India Company had cut heavily into Portuguese trading in East Asia.
ventures. It established a colony at The Dutch seized the Cape of Good Hope, Ceylon, and Malacca and established
the Cape of Good Hope (1652), and in trading posts in each place. In the 1630s the Dutch East India Company was pay-
the 1630s it paid a return of 35 percent
on investments.
ing its investors about a 35 percent annual return on their investments. The Dutch
West India Company, founded in 1621, traded extensively with Latin America and
Africa (see Map 16.2). Ultimately both companies would move beyond trading to
imperialist exploitation.
Trade and commerce brought the Dutch the highest standard of living in
Europe, and perhaps in the world. Salaries were high for all workers except women,
but even women’s wages were high when compared with those of women in other
parts of Europe. All classes of society, including unskilled laborers, ate well. Massive
granaries held surplus supplies so that the price of bread remained low. A higher
percentage of the worker’s income could Sec tion Review

therefore be spent on fish, cheese, butter, veg-
etables, and even meat. A scholar has de- • In England, King James I’s belief that he was subject only to God led to ten-
sion with the House of Commons as he tried to govern without Parliament.
scribed the Netherlands as “an island of
plenty in a sea of want.” Consequently, the • Financial and religious disputes between King Charles I and the House
Netherlands experienced very few of the food of Commons led to civil war, and even though the king allied himself with
northern nobles, Parliament won out, tried Charles for treason, and beheaded
riots that characterized the rest of Europe.15 him in 1649.
The Dutch republic was not a federation but
• After Charles’s death, Cromwell came to power, proclaiming a common-
a confederation—that is, a weak union of wealth that was actually a military dictatorship, holding Puritanical ideals of
strong provinces. Wealthy and lacking a mon- morality, earning the ire of the Irish by outlawing Catholicism in Ireland, but
arch, the provinces were a temptation to other also boosting the English sea trade and allowing Jewish immigration.
European powers. Nonetheless, the Dutch • After Cromwell’s death, the 1660 Restoration brought Charles to the throne,
resisted the long Spanish effort at reconquest who alienated the English by favoring Catholics; Protestant fears intensified
and withstood both French and English at- when the Catholic James II succeeded his brother, ending in the Glorious
tacks in the second half of the century. They Revolution of 1688, whereby James was exiled to France while his Protestant
daughter Mary and her Dutch husband William of Orange were crowned as
were severely weakened, however, by the long the monarchs.
War of the Spanish Succession, which was a
• The government of William and Mary was a constitutional monarchy that
costly drain on Dutch labor and financial re- provided freedom of religion, but economic and political liberty came only
sources. The peace signed in 1713 to end the with property ownership, so the masses still had no political rights.
war brought the republic few gains to com- • The Dutch republic in the seventeenth century found political success and
pensate for its expenses and marked the be- prosperity by providing religious tolerance, attracting foreign capital, and
ginning of Dutch economic decline. promoting trade.
MAP 16.2 Seventeenth-Century Dutch Commerce

Dutch wealth rested on commerce, and commerce depended on the huge Dutch merchant marine, manned by perhaps forty-eight thousand sailors.
The fleet carried goods from all parts of the globe to the port of Amsterdam.
ARCTIC OCEAN Timber

Arctic Tar
Circle Pitch
SCANDINAVIA Iron
Herring North Copper
60°N
Wool Sea THE Fur
BALTIC Wheat
Amsterdam Rye
NETHERLANDS
NORTH EUROPE
FRANCE Wine ASIA
AMERICA
Azores Tea
Wool
AT L A N T I C Tulips Silk JAPAN
Tobacco Porcelain Silk
C H I NA Luxury goods
OCEAN Nagasaki
30°N
Canary Is.
Amoy PAC I F IC
Wes INDIA Chinsura Canton
Tropic of t In
Cancer d Tobacco Bombay Calcutta Macao Port Zeelandia
ies
Arabian OC EA N
Caribbean Curaçao Sea Goa Madras Manila
Sea Cape Negapatam Bay of PHILIPPINES
Verde Is. AFRICA Cochin Bengal Camphor
Cloves
Stabroek Cinnamon Ceylon Pepper
(Georgetown) GUIANA Sugar Colombo Sandalwood
Mo
Malacca Borneo Spices

0° Equator
luc
Mombasa Macassar
SOUTH New
cas
DUTCH Zanzibar Batavia Guinea

AMERICA Sugar Sunda
BRAZIL Strait Java
PACIFIC (1630–1654) INDIAN OCEAN Timor
Mozambique Tea
OCEAN Madagascar Teak
Homeward
trade Mauritius NEW HOLLAND
Tropic of Capricorn
(Unknown except for
N West Coast)
30°S Cape Town
Provisioning Station
90°W 60°W 30°W 0° 30°E 60°E 90°E 120°E 150°E
0 1,000 2,000 Km. Dutch trade routes Port under Dutch control Spices Goods shipped to the Netherlands
0 1,000 2,000 Mi. Areas under Dutch control Other major port
Chapter Review
What were the common crises and achievements of seventeenth-century
states? (page 402) Key Terms
Most parts of Europe experienced the seventeenth century as a period of severe eco- moral economy (p. 403)
nomic, social, and military crisis. Across the continent, rulers faced popular rebellions sovereignty (p. 405)
from their desperate subjects, who were pushed to the brink by poor harvests, high popular revolts (p. 405)
taxes, and decades of war. Many forces, including powerful noblemen, the church,
and regional and local loyalties, constrained the state’s authority. Despite these obsta- intendants (p. 407)
cles, most European states emerged from the seventeenth century with increased pow- Fronde (p. 407)
ers and more centralized control. Whether they ruled through monarchical fiat or divine right of kings (p. 408)
parliamentary negotiation, European governments strengthened their bureaucracies,
absolute monarchy (p. 408)
raised more taxes, and significantly expanded their armies.
According to Thomas Hobbes, the central drive in every human is “a perpetual and mercantilism (p. 409)
restless desire of Power, after Power, that ceaseth only in Death.” The seventeenth Peace of Utrecht (p. 411)
century solved the problem of sovereign power in two fundamental ways: absolutism Don Quixote (p. 414)
and constitutionalism.
baroque style (p. 415)
French classicism (p. 417)
To what extent did French and Spanish monarchs succeed in creating absolute constitutionalism (p. 418)
monarchies? (page 405) Puritans (p. 419)
Under Louis XIV France witnessed the high point of absolutist ambition in western New Model Army (p. 421)
Europe. The king saw himself as the representative of God on earth, and it has been Protectorate (p. 421)
said that “to the seventeenth century imagination God was a sort of image of Louis
XIV.”16 Under Louis’s rule, France developed a centralized bureaucracy, a professional Test Act (p. 422)
army, and a state-directed economy, all of which he personally supervised. Second Treatise of Civil Government
Despite his claims to absolute power, Louis XIV ruled, in practice, by securing the (p. 424)
collaboration of high nobles. In exchange for confirmation of their ancient privileges, States General (p. 424)
the nobles were willing to cooperate with the expansion of state power. This was a stadtholder (p. 424)
common pattern in attempts at absolutism across Europe. In Spain, where monarchs
made similar claims to absolute power, the seventeenth century witnessed economic Dutch East India Company (p. 426)
catastrophe and a decline in royal capacities.
What cultural forms flourished under absolutist governments? (page 415)

France’s dominant political role in Europe elevated its cultural influence as well.
French became the common language of the European elite, as all heads turned to
Versailles and the radiant aristocratic culture emanating from it. Within France, the
Bourbon monarchy pursued culture as one more aspect of absolutist policy, creating
cultural academies, sponsoring playwrights and musicians, and repressing Protestant-
ism with a bloody hand.
What is constitutionalism, and how did this form of government emerge in

England and the Dutch Republic? (page 418)
As Louis XIV personified absolutist ambitions, so Stuart England exemplified the
evolution of the constitutional state. The conflicts between Parliament and the first
two Stuart rulers, James I and Charles I, tested where sovereign power would reside.
The resulting civil war did not solve the problem. The Instrument of Government
provided for a balance of government authority and recognition of popular rights; as
such, the Instrument has been called the first modern constitution. Unfortunately, it
Chapter Review 429
did not survive the Protectorate. James II’s absolutist tendencies brought on the Glori-
ous Revolution of 1688 and 1689, and the people who made that revolution settled
three basic issues: sovereign power was divided between king and Parliament, with
Parliament enjoying the greater share; government was to be based on the rule of law;
and the liberties of English people were made explicit in written form in the Bill
of Rights.
Having won independence from Spain, the United Provinces of the Netherlands
provided another model of constitutional government, one dominated by wealthy ur-
ban merchants rather than the landed gentry who controlled the English system. The
federal constitution of the Netherlands invested power in the Estates General, but di-
luted their authority by giving veto power to provincial assemblies. Dominated by Hol-
land, the Netherlands provided a shining example of industriousness, prosperity, and
relative tolerance for the rest of Europe.
Notes
1. The classic study is by Theodore K. Rabb, The Struggle for Stability in Early Modern Europe
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975).
2. G. Parker and L. M. Smith, “Introduction,” and N. Steensgaard, “The Seventeenth Century
Crisis,” in The General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century, ed. G. Parker and L. M. Smith
(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985), pp. 1–53, esp. p. 12.
3. H. G. Koenigsberger, “The Revolt of Palermo in 1647,” Cambridge Historical Journal 8
(1944–1946): 129–144.
4. See W. Beik, Urban Protest in Seventeenth-Century France: The Culture of Retribution (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 1.
5. Ibid.
6. See ibid., chaps. 1, 2, 3, and 11.
7. Ibid., pp. 22–26.
8. See M. Turchetti, “The Edict of Nantes,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation,
ed. H. J. Hillerbrand, vol. 3 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 126–128.
9. Quoted in J. H. Elliott, Richelieu and Olivares (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1984), p. 135; and in W. F. Church, Richelieu and Reason of State (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
10. Quoted in J. Wolf, Louis XIV (New York: W. W. Norton, 1968), p. 146.
11. John A. Lynn, “Recalculating French Army Growth,” in The Military Revolution Debate:
Readings on the Military Transformation of Early Modern Europe, ed. Clifford J. Rogers
(Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1995), p. 125.
12. J. H. Elliott, Imperial Spain, 1469–1716 (New York: Mentor Books, 1963), pp. 306–308.
13. B. Bennassar, The Spanish Character: Attitudes and Mentalities from the Sixteenth to the
Nineteenth Century, trans. B. Keen (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), p. 125.
14. For a revisionist interpretation, see J. Wormald, “James VI and I: Two Kings or One?” History
62 (June 1983): 187–209.
15. S. Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden
Age (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987), pp. 165–170; quotation is on p. 167.
16. C. J. Friedrich and C. Blitzer, The Age of Power (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press,
1957), p. 112.

The Court at Versailles
scious that the substantial favours he had to bestow
were not nearly sufficient to produce a continual
A lthough the Duc de Saint-Simon (1675–1755) was a
soldier, courtier, and diplomat, his enduring reputation
rests on The Memoirs (1788), his eyewitness account of the
effect; he had therefore to invent imaginary ones,
and no one was so clever in devising petty distinc-
personality and court of Louis XIV. A nobleman of extremely tions and preferences which aroused jealousy and
high status, Saint-Simon resented Louis’s high-handed treat- emulation. . . .
ment of the ancient nobility and his promotion of newer Not only did he expect all persons of distinction
nobles and the bourgeoisie. The Memoirs, excerpted here, to be in continual attendance at Court, but he was
remains a monument of French literature and an indispens- quick to notice the absence of those of inferior de-
able historical source, partly for its portrait of the court at gree; at his lever (LEV-ay) [formal rising from bed
Versailles. in the morning], his coucher (KOO-shay) [prepara-
tions for going to bed], his meals, in the gardens of
Versailles (the only place where the courtiers in
Very early in the reign of Louis XIV the Court general were allowed to follow him), he used to
was removed from Paris, never to return. The cast his eyes to right and left; nothing escaped him,
troubles of the minority had given him a dislike to he saw everybody. If any one habitually living at
that city; his enforced and surreptitious flight from Court absented himself he insisted on knowing the
it still rankled in his memory; he did not consider reason; those who came there only for flying visits
himself safe there, and thought cabals would be had also to give a satisfactory explanation; any one
more easily detected if the Court was in the coun- who seldom or never appeared there was certain to
try, where the movements and temporary absences incur his displeasure. If asked to bestow a favour on
of any of its members would be more
easily noticed. . . . No doubt that he
was also influenced by the feeling that
he would be regarded with greater
awe and veneration when no longer
exposed every day to the gaze of the
multitude.
He availed himself of the frequent
festivities at Versailles, and his excur-
sions to other places, as a means of
making the courtiers assiduous in
their attendance and anxious to please
him; for he nominated beforehand
those who were to take part in them,
and could thus gratify some and in-
flict a snub on others. He was con-
Louis XIV was extremely proud of the

gardens at Versailles and personally led
ambassadors and other highly ranked
visitors on tours of the extensive palace
grounds. (Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY)
430
such persons he would reply haughtily: “I do not tion, has already produced widespread confusion;
know him”; of such as rarely presented themselves it threatens to end in nothing short of ruin and a
he would say, “He is a man I never see”; and from general overthrow.
these judgements there was no appeal.
He loved splendour, magnificence, and profu- Questions for Analysis
sion in all things, and encouraged similar tastes in 1. What was the role of etiquette and ceremony at
his Court; to spend money freely on equipages the court of Versailles? How could Louis XIV
[horse carriages] and buildings, on feasting and at use them in everyday life at court to influence
cards, was a sure way to gain his favour, perhaps to and control nobles?
obtain the honour of a word from him. Motives of 2. How important do you think Louis’s individual
policy had something to do with this; by making character and personality were to his style of
expensive habits the fashion, and, for people in a governing? What challenges might this present
certain position, a necessity, he compelled his to his successors?
courtiers to live beyond their income, and gradu- 3. Consider the role of ceremony in some mod-
ally reduced them to depend on his bounty for the ern governments, such as the U.S. government.
means of subsistence. This was a plague which, How does it compare to Louis XIV’s use of
once introduced, became a scourge to the whole ceremony as portrayed by Saint-Simon?
country, for it did not take long to spread to Paris, 4. Do you think Saint-Simon is an objective and
and thence to the armies and the provinces; so that trustworthy recorder of life at court? Why?
a man of any position is now estimated entirely ac-
Source: “The Court at Versailles” from The Memoirs of the
cording to his expenditure on his table and other Duke de Saint Simon, ed. F. Arkwright (New York: Brenta-
luxuries. This folly, sustained by pride and ostenta- no’s, n.d.), Vol. V, pp. 271–274, 276–278.
431
CHAPTER 17
Absolutism in Central
and Eastern
Europe
to 1740
Chapter Preview
Warfare and Social Change in Central and
Eastern Europe
What social and economic changes
affected central and eastern Europe
from 1400 to 1650?
The Rise of Austria and Prussia

How did the rulers of Austria and
Prussia manage to build powerful
The Development of Russia and the

Ottoman Empire
What were the distinctive features of
Russian and Ottoman absolutism in
this period?
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY: Hürrem
IMAGES IN SOCIETY: Absolutist Palace Building

Peter the Great’s magnificent new crown, created for his joint
LISTENING TO THE PAST: A Foreign Traveler in Russia coronation in 1682 with his half-brother Ivan. (State Museum of the
Kremlin, Moscow)
432
Warfare and Social Change in Central and Eastern Europe 433
T he crises of the seventeenth century—religious division, economic depres-

sion, and war—were not limited to western Europe. Central and eastern
Europe experienced even more catastrophic dislocation, with German lands
serving as the battleground of the Thirty Years’ War and borders constantly vulner-
able to attack from the east. In Prussia and Habsburg Austria absolutist states
emerged in the aftermath of this conflict.
Russia and the Ottoman Turks also developed absolutist governments. These
empires seemed foreign and exotic to western Europeans, who saw them as the
antithesis of their political, religious, and cultural values. To Western eyes, their
own monarchs respected law—either divine or constitutional—while Eastern des-
pots ruled with an iron fist. In this view, the Ottoman Muslim state was home to
fanaticism and heresy, and even Russian Orthodoxy had rituals and traditions, if
not core beliefs, that differed sharply from either Catholicism or Protestantism.
Beneath the surface, however, these Eastern governments shared many similari-
ties with Western ones.
The most successful Eastern empires lasted until 1918, far longer than monar-
chical rule endured in France, the model of absolutism under Louis XIV. Eastern
monarchs had a powerful impact on architecture and the arts, encouraging new
monumental construction to reflect their glory. Questions about the relationship
between East and West remain potent today, as evidenced by the debate surround-
ing Turkey’s bid for membership in the European Union.
Warfare and Social Change in Central

and Eastern Europe
What social and economic changes affected central and eastern Europe
from 1400 to 1650?
When absolute monarchy emerged in the seventeenth century, it built on social

and economic foundations laid between roughly 1400 and 1650. In those years
the elites of eastern Europe rolled back the gains made by the peasantry during the
High Middle Ages and reimposed a harsh serfdom on the rural masses. The nobil-
ity also reduced the importance of the towns and the middle classes. This process
differed from developments in western Europe, where peasants won greater free-
dom and the urban middle class continued its rise. The Thirty Years’ War repre-
sented the culmination of these changes. Decades of war in central Europe led to
depopulation and economic depression, which allowed lords to impose ever-
harsher controls on the peasantry.
The period from 1050 to 1300 was a time of general

The Consolidation economic expansion in eastern Europe characterized
of Serfdom by the growth of trade, towns, and population. The rul-
ers of eastern Europe attracted settlers to the frontier beyond the Elbe River with
economic and legal incentives and the offer of greater personal freedom. These
benefits were also gradually extended to the local Slavic populations, even those of
serfdom A system used by nobles and
central Russia. Thus, by 1300 serfdom had all but disappeared in eastern Europe. rulers in which peasants were bound to
After the Black Death (1348), however, as Europe’s population and economy the land they worked and to the lords
declined grievously, lords sought to solve their economic problems by more heavily they served.
434 Chapter 17 Absolutism in Central and Eastern Europe to 1740
Estonia in the 1660s

The Estonians were conquered by German military nobility in the Middle
Ages and reduced to serfdom. The German-speaking nobles ruled the
Estonian peasants with an iron hand, and Peter the Great reaffirmed their
domination when Russia annexed Estonia (see Map 17.3 on page 445).
(Mansell Collection/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)
exploiting the peasantry. This reaction generally failed in the

West, where by 1500 almost all peasants were free or had their
serf obligations greatly reduced. East of the Elbe, however,
the landlords won. They pushed for laws restricting or elimi-
nating the peasants’ right to move wherever they wished.
They also took more of their peasants’ land and imposed
heavier labor obligations. Instead of being independent farm-
ers paying freely negotiated rents, peasants became forced la-
borers on the lords’ estates. By the early 1500s, lords in many
territories could command their peasants to work without pay
as many as six days a week. The peasants had no recourse
through the courts to fight these injustices. The local lord was
also the prosecutor, judge, and jailer.
Between 1500 and 1650 the social, legal, and economic
conditions of peasants in eastern Europe continued to de-
cline, and free peasants became serfs. Polish nobles gained
complete control over their peasants in 1574, after which they
could legally inflict the death penalty whenever they wished.
In Prussia in 1653 peasants were assumed to be tied to their
lords in hereditary subjugation—bound to their lords and the land from one
generation to the next. In Russia a peasant’s right to move from an estate was per-
manently abolished in 1603. In 1649 the tsar lifted the nine-year time limit on
the recovery of runaways and eliminated all limits on lords’ authority over their
peasants.
Political factors were crucial to the re-emergence of serfdom in eastern Eu-
rope. In the late Middle Ages central and eastern Europe experienced innumer-
able wars and general political chaos, which allowed noble landlords to increase
their power. There were, for example, many disputed royal successions, so that
weak kings were forced to grant political favors to win the nobility’s support. Thus
while strong monarchs and effective central government were rising in Spain,
France, and England, kings were generally losing power in the East and could not
resist the demands of lords regarding peasants.
Moreover, most Eastern monarchs did not oppose the growth of serfdom. The
typical king was only first among noble equals. He, too, wanted to squeeze his
peasants. The Western concept of sovereignty, as embodied in a king who pro-
tected the interests of all his people, was not well developed in eastern Europe
before 1650.
Not only the peasants suffered. Also with the approval of kings, landlords sys-
tematically undermined the medieval privileges of the towns and the power of the
urban classes. Instead of selling products to local merchants, landlords sold di-
rectly to foreigners. For example, Dutch ships sailed up the rivers of Poland and
eastern Germany to the loading docks of the great estates, completely bypassing
the local towns. Moreover, “town air” no longer “made people free,” for the Eastern
towns had lost their medieval right of refuge and were now compelled to return
Chronology
runaways to their lords. The population of the towns and the ca. 1400–1650 Re-emergence of serfdom in eastern
importance of the urban middle classes declined greatly. Europe
1462–1505 Reign of Ivan III in Russia
The Holy Roman Empire was 1533–1584 Reign of Ivan the Terrible in Russia
The Thirty Years’ War a confederation of hundreds of 1618–1648 Thirty Years’ War
principalities, independent cities,
1620 Habsburgs crush Protestantism in
duchies, and other polities loosely united under an elected Bohemia
emperor. An uneasy truce had prevailed in the Holy Roman
Empire since the Peace of Augsburg (AWGZ-burg) of 1555 1620–1740 Growth of absolutism in Austria and
Prussia
(see page 350). According to the settlement, the faith of the
prince determined the religion of his subjects. Later in the 1640–1688 Reign of Frederick William in Prussia
century, however, Catholics and Lutherans grew alarmed as 1652 Nikon reforms Russian Orthodox
the faiths of various areas shifted. Calvinists and Jesuits had Church
converted some Lutheran princes; Lutherans had acquired 1670–1671 Cossack revolt led by Razin
Catholic bishoprics. Lutheran princes felt compelled to form
the Protestant Union (1608), and Catholics retaliated with ca. 1680–1750 Construction of palaces by absolutist
rulers
the Catholic League (1609). Each alliance was determined
that the other should make no religious or territorial advance. 1683–1718 Habsburgs defend Vienna; win war
Dynastic interests were also involved; the Spanish Habsburgs with Ottoman Turks
strongly supported the goals of their Austrian relatives—the 1702 Peter the Great founds St. Petersburg
unity of the empire and the preservation of Catholicism 1713–1740 Growth of Prussian military
within it.
The immediate catalyst of violence was the closure of
some Protestant churches by Ferdinand of Styria, the new
Catholic king in Bohemia (boh-HEE-mee-uh) in 1617. On
May 23, 1618, Protestants hurled two of Ferdinand’s officials from a castle window
in Prague. They fell seventy feet but survived: Catholics claimed that angels had
caught them; Protestants said that the officials had fallen on a heap of soft horse
manure. Called the “defenestration of Prague,” this event marked the beginning
of the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648).
The war is traditionally divided into four phases. The first, or Bohemian, phase
(1618–1625) was characterized by civil war in Bohemia between the Catholic
League, led by Ferdinand, and the Protestant Union, headed by Frederick, the
elector of the Palatinate of the Rhine, one of the states of the Holy Roman Empire.
The Protestant Union fought for religious liberty and independence from
Habsburg rule. In 1620 Catholic forces defeated Frederick at the Battle of the
White Mountain.
The second, or Danish, phase of the war (1625–1629)—so called because of
the leadership of the Protestant king Christian IV of Denmark (r. 1588–1648)—
witnessed additional Catholic victories. The Catholic imperial army led by Albert
of Wallenstein swept through Silesia, north to the Baltic, and east into Pomerania,
scoring smashing victories. Wallenstein, an unscrupulous opportunist who used
his vast riches to build an army loyal only to himself, seemed more interested in
carving out his own empire than in aiding the Catholic cause. He quarreled with
the Catholic League, and soon the Catholic forces were divided. Religion was
eclipsed as a basic issue of the war.
Habsburg power peaked in 1629. The emperor issued the Edict of Restitution,
whereby all Catholic properties lost to Protestantism since 1552 were restored,
and only Catholics and Lutherans were allowed to practice their faiths. When
Wallenstein began ruthless enforcement, Protestants throughout Europe feared
the collapse of the balance of power in north-central Europe.
The third, or Swedish, phase of the war (1630–1635) began with the arrival in
Germany of the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus (goo-STAV-us ah-DOLF-us)
(r. 1594–1632). The ablest administrator of his day and a devout Lutheran, he in-
tervened to support the empire’s oppressed Protestants. The French chief minister,
Cardinal Richelieu, subsidized the Swedes, hoping to weaken Habsburg power in
Europe. Gustavus Adolphus won two important battles but was fatally wounded in
combat. The Swedish victories ended the Habsburg ambition to unite the Ger-
man states under imperial authority.
The last, or French, phase of the war (1635–1648) was prompted by Riche-
lieu’s concern that the Habsburgs would regain their strength after the death of
Gustavus Adolphus. Richelieu declared war on Spain and sent military as well as
financial assistance to the Swedes and the Protestant princes fighting in Germany.
The war dragged on. The French, Dutch, and Swedes, supported by Scots, Finns,
and German mercenaries, burned, looted, and destroyed German agriculture and
commerce. Finally, in October 1648 peace was achieved.
Peace of Westphalia A series of The 1648 Peace of Westphalia (west-FEY-lee-uh) that

treaties that concluded the Thirty Years’ Consequences of the ended the Thirty Years’ War marked a turning point in
War, recognized the sovereign authority Thirty Years’ War European history. Conflicts fought over religious faith
of over three hundred German princes,
acknowledged the independence of the ended. The treaties recognized the sovereign, independent authority of more than
United Provinces, made Calvinism a three hundred German princes (see Map 17.1). Since the time of Holy Roman
permissible creed within Germany, and Emperor Frederick II (1194–1250), Germany had followed a pattern of state-
reduced the role of the Roman Catholic
Church in European politics. building different from that of France and England: the emperor shared authority
with the princes. After the Peace of Westphalia, the emperor’s power continued to be
severely limited, and the Holy Roman Empire remained a loosely knit federation.
The peace agreement acknowledged the independence of the United Prov-
inces of the Netherlands. France acquired the province of Alsace along with the
Sec tion Review
advantages of the weakened status of the empire. Sweden received a large cash
• The great decline in population and indemnity and jurisdiction over German territories along the Baltic Sea, leaving it
economy from the Black Death (1348), as a major threat to the future kingdom of Brandenburg-Prussia (BRAN-duhn-
as well as many wars and political burg PRUHSH-uh). The papacy lost the right to participate in central European
instability, led eastern European land-
lords to reimpose harsh serfdom on religious affairs and the Augsburg agreement of 1555 became permanent, adding
peasants and undermine the privileges Calvinism to Catholicism and Lutheranism as legally permissible creeds. The
of urban dwellers, a tactic that failed in north German states remained Protestant; the south German states, Catholic.
western Europe, where by 1500 most The Thirty Years’ War was probably the most destructive event for the central
peasants were free. European economy and society prior to the twentieth century. Perhaps one-third
• Conflict between Lutheran and Catho- of urban residents and two-fifths of the rural population died. Entire areas were
lic princes within the Holy Roman depopulated by warfare, by the flight of refugees, and by disease. The trade of
Empire broke the peace of Augsburg
(1555), resulting in the outbreak of the southern German cities such as Augsburg, already hard hit by the shift in transpor-
Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648). tation routes from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, was virtually destroyed. All of
• The Thirty Years’ War erupted in Europe was experiencing severe inflation due to the influx of Spanish silver, but
Prague in 1618 and continued through the destruction of land and foodstuffs made the price rise worse in central Europe
four phases: Bohemian, Danish, Swed- than anywhere else. Agricultural areas suffered catastrophically. Many small farm-
ish, and French. ers lacked the revenue to rework their holdings and had to become day laborers. In
• Consequences of the Thirty Years’ War parts of central Europe, especially in areas east of the Elbe River, loss of land con-
included an end to conflicts over reli- tributed to the consolidation of serfdom.1
gious faith, legal inclusion of Calvin- Some people prospered, however. Nobles and landlords who controlled agri-
ism, greater independence of princes in
the Holy Roman Empire, severe infla- cultural estates profited from rising food prices. They bought or seized the land of
tion, the loss of small farms, and the failed small farmers and then demanded more unpaid labor on those enlarged
destruction of a third of the population. estates. Surpluses in wheat and timber were sold to foreign merchants, who ex-
ported them to the growing cities of the West.
10˚W 0˚ 10˚E 20˚E 30˚E 40˚E
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Hamburg PO
M ER
AN IA Swedish lands by 1648
BREMEN MECKLENBURG 0 150 300 Km.
E lb Ottoman Empire and tributary states
VERDEN eR
Boundary of the Holy Roman Empire 0 150 300 Mi.
.
10˚E BRANDENBURG 15˚E 30˚N
MAP 17.1 Europe After the Thirty Years’ War

Which country emerged from the Thirty Years’ War as the strongest European power? What dynastic
house was that country’s major rival in the early modern period?
437
The Rise of Austria and Prussia

How did the rulers of Austria and Prussia manage to build powerful
The monarchs of central and eastern Europe gradually gained political power in
three key areas. First, they imposed permanent taxes without consent. Second,
they maintained permanent standing armies to police the country and fight
abroad. Third, they conducted relations with other states as they pleased. They
were able to gain these powers by allowing the nobles greater control over serfs and
by providing protection from outside invaders.
As with all general historical developments, there were important variations on
the absolutist theme in eastern Europe. Royal absolutism in Prussia was stronger
and more effective than in Austria. This would give Prussia a thin edge in the
struggle for power in east-central Europe in the eighteenth century. Prussian-style
absolutism had great long-term political significance, for it was a rising Prussia that
unified the German people in the nineteenth century and imposed on them a
militaristic stamp.
Like all of central Europe, the Habsburgs emerged

The Austrian from the Thirty Years’ War impoverished and ex-
Habsburgs hausted. Their efforts to destroy Protestantism in the
German lands and to turn the weak Holy Roman Empire into a real state had
failed. Although the Habsburgs remained the hereditary emperors, real power lay
in the hands of a bewildering variety of separate political jurisdictions, including
independent cities, small principalities, medium-sized states such as Bavaria and
Saxony, and some of the territories of Prussia and the Habsburgs.
Defeat in central Europe encouraged the Habsburgs to turn away from a quest
for imperial dominance and to focus inward and eastward in an attempt to unify
their diverse holdings. If they could not impose Catholicism in the empire, at least
they could do so in their own domains.
The Habsburg victory over Bohemia during the Thirty Years’ War was an im-
portant step in this direction. The victorious king, Ferdinand II (r. 1619–1637),
Bohemian Estates The largely had drastically reduced the power of the Bohemian Estates, which was the largely
Protestant representative body of Protestant representative assembly. He also confiscated the landholdings of many
the different estates in Bohemia.
Significantly reduced in power
Protestant nobles and gave them to a few loyal Catholic nobles and to the foreign
by Ferdinand II. aristocratic mercenaries who led his armies. After 1650 a large portion of the Bo-
hemian nobility was of recent origin and owed everything to the Habsburgs.
With the help of this new nobility, the Habsburgs established direct rule over
Bohemia. The condition of the enserfed peasantry worsened substantially: three
days per week of unpaid labor—the robot—became the norm, and a quarter of the
serfs worked for their lords every day but Sundays and religious holidays. Protes-
tantism was also stamped out. The reorganization of Bohemia was a giant step
toward creating absolutist rule. As in France in the same years, the pursuit of reli-
gious unity was an essential element of absolutism.
Ferdinand III (r. 1637–1657) continued to build state power. He centralized
the government in the hereditary German-speaking provinces, which formed the
core Habsburg holdings. For the first time, a permanent standing army was ready
to put down any internal opposition.
The Rise of Austria and Prussia 439
The Habsburg monarchy then turned east toward the

Austrian Rule plains of Hungary, which had been divided between
in Hungary the Ottomans and the Habsburgs in the early sixteenth
century (see page 356). Between 1683 and 1699 the Habsburgs pushed the Otto-
mans from most of Hungary and Transylvania. The recovery of all of the former
kingdom of Hungary was completed in 1718.
The Hungarian nobility, despite its reduced strength, effectively thwarted the
full development of Habsburg absolutism. Throughout the seventeenth century
Hungarian nobles—the most numerous in Europe—rose in revolt against at-
tempts to impose absolute rule. They never triumphed decisively, but neither were
they crushed the way the Czech nobility had been in 1620.
The Hungarians resisted because many of them remained Protestants, espe-
cially in areas formerly ruled by the Turks. In some of these regions, the Ottomans
acted as military allies to the nobles, against the Habsburgs. Finally, the Hungar-
ian nobility, and even part of the peasantry, became attached to a national ideal
long before most of the other peoples of eastern Europe. Hungarian nobles were
determined to maintain as much independence and local control as possible. In
1703, with the Habsburgs bogged down in the War of the Spanish Succession
(see page 411), the Hungarians rose in one last patriotic rebellion under Prince
Francis Rákóczy.
Rákóczy and his forces were eventually defeated, but the Habsburgs had to
accept a compromise. Charles VI (r. 1711–1740) restored many of the traditional
privileges of the aristocracy in return for Hungarian acceptance of hereditary
Habsburg rule. Thus Hungary, unlike Austria and Bohemia, was never fully inte-
grated into a centralized, absolute Habsburg state.
Despite checks on their ambitions in Hungary, the Habsburgs made signifi-
cant achievements in state-building overall by forging consensus with the church
and the nobility. A sense of common identity and loyalty to the monarchy grew
among elites in Habsburg lands, even to a certain extent in Hungary. The best
evidence for this consensus is the spectacular sums approved by the Estates for the
growth of the army. German became the language of the common culture and
zealous Catholicism also helped fuse a collective identity. Vienna became the
political and cultural center of the empire. By 1700 it was a thriving city with a
population of one hundred thousand, with its own version of Versailles, the royal
palace of Schönbrunn. (SHUN-broon) (See the feature “Images in Society: Abso-
lutist Palace Building” on pages 440–441.)
In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Hohen-

Prussia in the zollern family had ruled parts of eastern Germany as
Seventeenth Century the imperial electors of Brandenburg and the dukes of
Prussia, but they had little real power. The elector of Brandenburg had the right elector of Brandenburg One of the
to help choose the Holy Roman emperor, which bestowed prestige, but the elector electors of the Holy Roman Empire,
with the right to help choose the
had no military strength of his own. Nothing suggested that the Hohenzollern emperor, hereditarily held by the
family and its territories would come to play as important a role in European af- Hohenzollern family. Frederick William,
fairs as they did. “the Great Elector,” was able to use and
The elector of Brandenburg was a helpless spectator in the Thirty Years’ War, expand the office, ultimately resulting in
the consolidation of the Prussian state
his territories alternately ravaged by Swedish and Habsburg armies. Yet foreign under his successors.
armies also dramatically weakened the political power of the Estates, which helped
the elector Frederick William (r. 1640–1688) make significant progress toward
royal absolutism. This constitutional struggle was the most crucial in Prussian his-
tory until that of the 1860s.
Images in Society
Absolutist Palace Building
B y 1700 palace building had become a veritable ob-

session for the rulers of central and eastern Europe.
Their dramatic palaces symbolized the age of absolutist
power, just as soaring Gothic cathedrals had expressed
the idealized spirit of the High Middle Ages. With its
classically harmonious, symmetrical, and geometric de-
sign, Versailles, shown in Image 1, served as the model
for the wave of palace building that began in the last
decade of the seventeenth century.
Located ten miles southwest of Paris, Versailles be-
gan as a modest hunting lodge built by Louis XIII in
1623. His son, Louis XIV, loved the site so much that IMAGE 1 Pierre-Denis Martin: View of the Chateau de Versailles,
he spent decades enlarging and decorating the original 1722 (Châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon, Versailles/Réunion des Musées
chateau. Between 1668 and 1670, his architect Louis Nationaux/Art Resource, NY)
Le Vau (LOO-ee luh VOH) enveloped the old building

within a much larger second structure that still exists Schönbrunn palace. Erlach’s plan emphasizes the pal-
today. In 1682 the new palace became the official resi- ace’s vast size and its role as a site for military demonstra-
dence of the Sun King and his court, although con- tions. Ultimately financial constraints resulted in a more
struction continued until 1710, when the royal chapel modest building.
was completed. At any one time, several thousand Petty German princes contributed mightily to the
people lived in the bustling and crowded palace. The palace-building mania. Frederick the Great of Prussia
awesome splendor of the eighty-yard Hall of Mirrors, noted that every descendant of a princely family “imag-
replete with floor to ceiling mirrors and ceiling murals ines himself to be something like Louis XIV. He builds
illustrating the king’s triumphs, contrasted with the his Versailles, has his mistresses, and maintains his
strong odors from the courtiers who commonly relieved army.”* The elector-archbishop of Mainz, the ruling
themselves in discreet corners. Royal palaces like Ver- prince of that city, confessed apologetically that “build-
sailles were intended to overawe the people and pro- ing is a craze which costs much, but every fool likes his
claim their owners’ authority and power. own hat.”†
In 1693 Charles XI of Sweden, having reduced the In central and eastern Europe, the favorite noble ser-
power of the aristocracy, ordered the construction of his vants of royalty became extremely rich and powerful,
Royal Palace, which dominates the center of Stock-
holm to this day. Another such palace was Schönbrunn, * Quoted in R. Ergang, The Potsdam Fuhrer: Frederick Wil-
an enormous Viennese Versailles begun in 1695 by liam I, Father of Prussian Militarism (New York: Octagon
Books, 1972), p. 13.
Emperor Leopold to celebrate Austrian military victo-
† Quoted in J. Summerson, in The Eighteenth Century: Eu-
ries and Habsburg might. Image 2 shows architect Jo- rope in the Age of Enlightenment, ed. A. Cobban (New York:
seph Bernhard Fischer von Erlach’s ambitious plan for McGraw-Hill, 1969), p. 80.
440
IMAGE 2 Project for the Palace at Schönbrunn (ca. 1700) (Austrian IMAGE 4 View of the Petit Parc at Versailles from the Canal
National Library, Vienna) (Bibliothèque nationale de France)
prince’s summer residence featured two baroque gems,

the Lower Belvedere and the lovely Upper Belvedere,
completed in 1722 and shown here. The building’s inte-
rior is equally stunning, with crouching giants serving as
pillars and a magnificent great staircase.
Palace gardens were an extension of the architecture.
The rational orderliness and symmetry of a garden
showed that the ruler’s force extended even to nature,
which offered its subjugated pleasures to the delight of
sovereign and courtiers. The terraces and waterworks of
these gardens served as showcases for the latest tech-
niques in military and civil engineering. Exotic plants
IMAGE 3 Prince Eugene’s Summer Palace, Vienna (Erich Lessing/Art and elaborate designs testified to the sovereign’s global
Resource, NY) trading networks and elevated taste.
The gardens at Versailles, shown in Image 4, exem-
and they too built grandiose palaces in the capital cities. plify absolutist palace gardens. In the foreground of this
These palaces were in part an extension of the monarch, image we see a mock naval campaign being enacted on
for they surpassed the buildings of less-favored nobles the canal for the edification of courtiers. For diplomatic
and showed all the high road to fame and fortune. Take, occasions, Louis XIV himself wrote lengthy guides for
for example, the palaces of Prince Eugene of Savoy, a viewing the gardens of Versailles. Modern visitors can
French nobleman who became Austria’s most famous still follow his itineraries. The themes of the sculptures
military hero. It was Eugene who led the Austrian army, in the Versailles gardens also hailed Louis’s power, with
smashed the Turks, fought Louis XIV to a standstill, and images of Apollo, the sun god, and Neptune, the sea
generally guided the triumph of absolutism in Austria. god, making frequent appearances.
Rewarded with great wealth by his grateful king, Eu- Compare the image of Prince Eugene’s summer pal-
gene called on the leading architects of the day, J. B. ace with the plans for Schönbrunn and the palace of Ver-
Fischer von Erlach and Johann Lukas von Hildebrandt, sailles. What did concrete objects and the manipulation
to consecrate his glory in stone and fresco. Fischer built of space accomplish for these rulers that mere words
Eugene’s Winter (or Town) Palace in Vienna, and he could not? What disadvantages might stem from using
and Hildebrandt collaborated on the prince’s Summer architecture in this way? Is the use of space and monu-
Palace on the city’s outskirts, shown in Image 3. The mental construction still a political tool in today’s world?
441
When he came to power in 1640, the twenty-year-old Frederick William, later

known as the “Great Elector,” was determined to unify his three provinces and
enlarge them by diplomacy and war. These provinces were Brandenburg; Prussia,
inherited in 1618; and scattered holdings along the Rhine, inherited in 1614 (see
Map 17.2). Each was inhabited by German-speaking people, but each had its own
Estates. Although the Estates had not met regularly during the chaotic Thirty
Years’ War, taxes could not be levied without their consent. The Estates of Bran-
denburg and Prussia were dominated by the nobility and the landowning classes,
Junkers The nobility of Brandenburg known as the Junkers (YOONG-kuhrs).
and Prussia. Reluctant allies of Frederick To pay for the permanent standing army he first established in 1660, Frederick
William in his consolidation of the
Prussian state.
William forced the Estates to accept the introduction of permanent taxation with-
out consent. The Estates’ power declined rapidly thereafter, for the Great Elector
had both financial independence and superior force. The state’s total revenue tri-
pled during his reign, and the size of the army leaped by ten. In 1688 a population
of one million was supporting a peacetime standing army of thirty thousand.
Two factors were central to the Great Elector’s triumph. First, as in the forma-
tion of every absolutist state, war was a decisive factor. The ongoing struggle be-
MAP 17.2 The Growth of tween Sweden and Poland for control of the Baltic after 1648 and the wars of
Austria and Brandenburg- Louis XIV in western Europe created an atmosphere of permanent crisis. The
Prussia to 1748 nomadic Tatars (TAY-terz) of the Crimea in southern Russia swept through Prussia
Austria expanded to the southwest in the winter of 1656–1657, killing and carrying off thousands as slaves. This inva-
into Hungary and Transylvania at the sion softened up the Estates and strengthened the urgency of the Great Elector’s
expense of the Ottoman Empire. It demands for more military funding.
was unable to hold the rich German Second, the nobility proved willing to accept Frederick William’s new claims
province of Silesia, however, which was in exchange for reconfirmation of their own privileges, including authority over
conquered by Brandenburg-Prussia.
5°E 10°E 15°E a 20°E

Austrian territory at end of
KI NGDOM SWEDEN Se Thirty Years’ War (1648)
North Sea OF l tic
Ba 55°N Austrian acquisitions by end
DEN MAR K Königsberg of Turkish Wars (1699)
0 100 200 Km. SCHLESWIG EASTERN P R U SSIA Austrian acquisitions after decisive
POMERANIA victory over Ottoman Empire (1718)
0 100 200 Mi. HOLSTEIN Prussian territory at Great Elector’s
Elb accession (1640)
e R. Vis
tul Prussian acquisitions by
aR
B R AN DEN B U RG . Great Elector’s death (1688)
RAVENSBURG Warsaw
Prussian acquisitions by end of War
Berlin of the Austrian Succession (1748)
CLEVE MAGDEBURG POL AN D
Leipzig Boundary of the Holy Roman Empire
MARK Ode
SPANISH Cologne SA XONY rR
.
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The Rise of Austria and Prussia 443
the serfs. The Junkers chose not to join representatives of the

towns in a common front against the elector. Instead, they
accepted new taxes that fell primarily on towns. The elector
used naked force to break the liberties of the towns; the main
leader of urban opposition in the key city of Königsberg
(KUHN-nigz-burg), for example, was arrested and imprisoned
for life without trial.
Like Louis XIV, the Great Elector built his absolutist state
in collaboration with traditional elites, reaffirming their privi-
leges in return for loyal service and revenue. He also created
a larger centralized government bureaucracy to oversee his
realm and to collect the new taxes. Pre-existing representative
institutions were bypassed. The Diet of Brandenburg did not
meet again after 1652. In 1701 the elector’s son, Frederick I
(1701–1713), received the elevated title of king of Prussia (in-
stead of elector) as a reward for aiding the Holy Roman em-
peror in the War of the Spanish Succession.
Frederick William I, “the Soldiers’

The Consolidation of King” (r. 1713–1740), completed
Prussian Absolutism his grandfather’s work. He created
a strong centralized bureaucracy and eliminated the last
traces of parliamentary estates and local self-government. He
truly established Prussian absolutism and transformed Prussia
into a military state. King Frederick William was intensely
attached to military life. He always wore an army uniform,
and he lived the highly disciplined life of the professional sol-
dier. He began his work by five or six in the morning; at ten he
almost always went to the parade ground to drill or inspect his
troops. Years later he summed up his life’s philosophy in his
instructions to his son: “A formidable army and a war chest
large enough to make this army mobile in times of need can
create great respect for you in the world, so that you can speak
a word like the other powers.”2
The king’s power grab brought him into considerable
conflict with the Junkers. In his early years he even threat-
ened to destroy them; yet, in the end, the Prussian nobility
was not destroyed but enlisted—into the army. Responding to A Prussian Giant Grenadier
a combination of threats and opportunities, the Junkers be- Frederick William I wanted tall, handsome soldiers. He dressed
came the officer caste. A new compromise was worked out them in tight bright uniforms to distinguish them from the
whereby the proud nobility imperiously commanded the peasant population from which most soldiers came. He also
peasantry in the army as well as on the estates. ordered several portraits of his favorites from his court painter,
J. C. Merk. Grenadiers (gren-AH-deers) wore the miter cap
Through penny-pinching and hard work, Frederick Wil-
instead of an ordinary hat so that they could hurl their heavy
liam achieved results. Prussia, twelfth in Europe in popula-
grenades unimpeded by a broad brim. (The Royal Collection © 2008,
tion, had the fourth largest army by 1740. Moreover, soldier Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II)
for soldier, the Prussian army was the best in Europe, astonish-
ing foreign observers with its precision, skill, and discipline.
For the next two hundred years Prussia and then Prussianized Germany would
win many crucial military battles.
Frederick William and his ministers also built an exceptionally honest
and conscientious bureaucracy to administer the country and foster economic
Sec tion Review development. And like the miser he was known to be, the king loved his “blue
boys” so much that he hated to “spend” them. This most militaristic of kings was,
• In the aftermath of the Thirty Years’ paradoxically, almost always at peace.
War, monarchs of central and eastern
Europe gained new power through
Nevertheless, Prussians paid a heavy and lasting price for the obsessions of their
increased taxation, the creation of royal drillmaster. Civil society became rigid and highly disciplined, and Prussia
permanent standing armies, and exer- became the “Sparta of the North”; unquestioning obedience was the highest vir-
cising a free hand in foreign policy. tue. As a Prussian minister later summed up: “To keep quiet is the first civic duty.”3
• The Austrian Habsburgs gained control Thus the policies of Frederick William I combined with harsh peasant bondage
over Bohemia by reducing the power of and Junker tyranny to lay the foundations for a highly militaristic country.
the Estates and creating a new and loyal
nobility, but were less successful in
Hungary, where they were forced to
compromise with a fiercely indepen- The Development of Russia and the Ottoman Empire
dent Protestant nobility.
What were the distinctive features of Russian and Ottoman absolutism in
• In Prussia, the elector of Brandenburg,
Frederick William Hohenzollern, the this period?
“Great Elector,” set out to unify his
provinces under absolutist rule by A favorite parlor game of nineteenth-century intellectuals was debating whether
restoring privileges to the Junker nobil-
Russia was a Western (European) or non-Western (Asian) society. This question
ity and by using the threat of war to
build the best army in Europe. was particularly fascinating because it was unanswerable. To this day, Russia differs
from the West in some fundamental ways, though its history has paralleled that of
• His grandson, King Frederick William I,
transformed Prussia into a military state, the West in other aspects.
centralized government, eliminated There was no question in the mind of Europeans, however, that the Ottomans
parliament and local self-government, were outsiders. Even absolutist rulers disdained Ottoman sultans as cruel and ty-
and incorporated the nobility within his rannical despots. Despite stereotypes, the Ottomans were in many ways more tol-
army to enforce obedience.
erant than Westerners, providing protection and security to other religions while
• Palace building modeled on Versailles steadfastly maintaining their Muslim faith. The Ottoman state combined the Byz-
near Paris and Schönbrunn in Vienna
antine heritage of the territory they conquered with Persian and Arab traditions.
spread through central and eastern
Europe, as princes competed for power Flexibility and openness to other ideas and practices were sources of strength for
and aristocrats showcased the riches the empire.
won through service to the monarchy.
In the thirteenth century the Kievan principality (see

The Mongol Yoke and page 445) was conquered by the Mongols, a group of
the Rise of Moscow nomadic tribes from present-day Mongolia who had
come together under Chinggis Khan (1162–1227). At its height, the Mongol em-
pire stretched from Korea to eastern Europe, and the portion that encompassed
Russia was known as the Golden Horde. The two-hundred-year period of rule
Mongol Yoke The two-hundred-year under the Mongol khan (king), known as the Mongol Yoke, set the stage for the
rule of the Mongol khan over the former rise of absolutist Russia.
territories of Kievan Rus’; this period is
considered a prelude to the rise of
The Mongols forced the Slavic princes to submit to their rule and to give them
absolutist Russia. tribute and slaves. Although the Mongols conquered, they were quite willing to
use local princes as obedient servants and tax collectors. Thus, they did not abolish
the title of “great prince,” bestowing it instead on the prince who served them best
and paid them most handsomely. Beginning with Alexander Nevsky in 1252, the
princes of Moscow became particularly adept at serving the Mongols. They loyally
put down popular uprisings and collected the khan’s taxes. As reward, the princes
of Moscow emerged as hereditary great princes. Eventually the Muscovite princes
were able to destroy the other princes who were their rivals for power. Ivan III
(r. 1462–1505) consolidated power around Moscow and won Novgorod (NOV-
guh-rod), almost reaching the Baltic Sea (see Map 17.3).
By 1480 Ivan III felt strong enough to stop acknowledging the khan as his su-
preme ruler and cease tribute payments to the Mongols. To legitimize their new
20°E 40°E 60°E 80°E
Barents
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POL AN D Smolensk
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GR
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SA Ural R.
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(New) Saray
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PI Ankara Principality of Moscow, ca. 1300
RE Acquisitions by Ivan III’s accession (1462)
Acquisitions under Ivan III (1462–1505)
Acquisitions by death of Ivan the Terrible (1584)
0 250 500 Km.
Acquisitions by Peter the Great’s accession (1689)
0 250 500 Mi. Acquisitions under Peter the Great (1689–1725)
Major battle
Mapping the Past

MAP 17.3 The Expansion of Russia to 1725
After the disintegration of the Kievan (KEE-ef-ahn) state and the Mongol conquest, the
princes of Moscow and their descendants gradually extended their rule over an enormous
territory. [1] Compare this map with Map 17.4, which shows Ottoman expansion from 1300.
What explains the fantastic success of both the Russians and the Ottomans in expanding their
territories? Why was the sixteenth century such an important period for expansion? [2] How do
you explain the geographic direction that expansion followed in each case? [3] What happened
after the periods shown on these maps? Did the territorial development of the two states diverge
from each other or follow the same trajectory?
445
authority, the princes of Moscow drew on two sources of authority. First, they de-
clared themselves autocrats, meaning that, like the khans, they were the sole
source of power. Yet also like the khans, they needed the cooperation of the local
boyars The highest-ranking nobles in elites. The highest-ranking nobles, or boyars, enabled the tsars to rule with an ex-
Russia. tremely limited government apparatus. In addition to political authority, Moscow
also took over Mongol tribute relations and borrowed institutions such as the tax
system, postal routes, and the census.
The second source of legitimacy lay in Moscow’s claim to the political and
religious inheritance of the Byzantine Empire. After the fall of Constantinople
(kon-stan-tun-OH-puhl) to the Turks in 1453, the princes of Moscow saw them-
selves as the heirs of both the caesars and Orthodox Christianity, the one true faith.
tsar A title first taken by Ivan IV, it is a The title tsar, first taken by Ivan IV in 1547, is a contraction of caesar. All the other
contraction of the word caesar. kings of Europe were heretics; only the Russians were rightful and holy rulers. The
idea was promoted by Orthodox churchmen, who spoke of “holy Russia” as the
“Third Rome.” Ivan’s marriage to the daughter of the last Byzantine emperor fur-
ther enhanced the aura of Moscow’s imperial inheritance.
Developments in Russia took a chaotic turn with the

Tsar and People reign of Ivan IV (r. 1533–1584), the famous “Ivan the
to 1689 Terrible,” who ascended to the throne at age three. His
mother died, possibly poisoned, when he was eight, leaving Ivan to suffer insults
and neglect from the boyars at court. At age sixteen he suddenly pushed aside his
hated advisers, and in an awe-inspiring ceremony, complete with gold coins pour-
ing down on his head, Ivan majestically crowned himself, taking the august title of
tsar for the first time.
Ivan’s reign was characterized by endless wars and violent purges. He was suc-
cessful in defeating the remnants of Mongol power, adding vast new territories to
the realm and laying the foundations for the huge, multiethnic Russian empire.
He engaged in a much longer struggle against the large Polish-Lithuanian state,
without success. After the sudden death of his beloved wife Anastasia [of the Ro-
manov (ROH-muh-nawf) family], the increasingly demented Ivan jailed and ex-
ecuted any he suspected of opposing him. Many were intimates of the court from
the leading boyar families, and their families, friends, servants, and peasants were
also executed. Their large estates were broken up, with some of the land added to
service nobility A newly emerging the tsar’s domain and the rest given to the lower service nobility, a group of newly
class of nobles who held some of the made nobles who served in the tsar’s army.
tsar’s land on the explicit condition that
they serve in the tsar’s army.
Ivan also took strides toward making all commoners servants of the tsar. As the
service nobles demanded more from those peasants who survived the wars and
persecutions, growing numbers fled toward wild, recently conquered territories to
the east and south. There they joined free groups and outlaw armies known as
Cossacks Free groups and outlaw Cossacks (KOS-akz) and maintained a precarious independence. The solution to
armies living on the steppes bordering the problem of peasant flight was to tie peasants ever more firmly to the land and
Russia, whose numbers were increased
by runaway peasants during the time of
to the noble landholders, who in turn served the tsar.
Ivan the Terrible. Simultaneously, urban traders and artisans were also bound to their towns and
jobs so that the tsar could tax them more heavily. Ivan assumed that the tsar owned
Russia’s trade and industry, just as he owned all the land. The urban classes had no
security in their work or property, and even the wealthiest merchants were depen-
dent agents of the tsar. These restrictions checked the growth of the Russian middle
classes and stood in sharp contrast to developments in western Europe, where the
middle classes were gaining security in their private property.
The Development of Russia and the Ottoman Empire 447
Saint Basil’s Cathedral, Moscow

With its sloping roofs and colorful onion-shaped
domes, Saint Basil’s is a striking example of
powerful Byzantine influences on Russian culture.
According to tradition, an enchanted Ivan the
Terrible blinded the cathedral’s architects to ensure
that they would never duplicate their fantastic
achievement, which still dazzles the beholder in
today’s Red Square. (George Holton/Photo Researchers)
After the death of Ivan and his succes-

sor, Russia entered a chaotic period known
as the “Time of Troubles” (1598–1618).
While Ivan’s relatives struggled for power,
the Cossacks and peasants rebelled against
nobles and officials, demanding fairer
treatment. This social explosion from be-
low brought the nobles, big and small,
together. They crushed the Cossack rebel-
lion at the gates of Moscow and elected
Ivan’s sixteen-year-old grandnephew, Mi-
chael Romanov, the new hereditary tsar
(r. 1613–1645). Michael’s election was represented as a restoration of tsarist autoc-
racy. (See the feature “Listening to the Past: A Foreign Traveler in Russia” on pages
456–457.)
Although the new tsar successfully reconsolidated central authority, social and
religious uprisings continued through the seventeenth century. One of the largest
rebellions was led by the Cossack Stenka Razin, who attracted a great army of ur-
ban poor and peasants, killing landlords and government officials, and proclaim-
ing freedom from oppression. Eventually this rebellion was defeated.
Despite the turbulence of the period, the Romanov tsars made several impor-
tant achievements during the second half of the seventeenth century. After a long
war, Russia gained a large mass of Ukraine from weak and decentralized Poland in
1667 (see Map 17.3) and completed the conquest of Siberia by the end of the
century. Territorial expansion was accompanied by growth of the bureaucracy and
the army. Foreign experts were employed to help build and reform the Russian
army. The great profits from Siberia’s natural resources, especially furs, funded the
Romanov’s bid for great power status.
Heir to the first efforts at state-building, Peter the Great

The Reforms of (r. 1682–1725) embarked on a tremendous campaign
Peter the Great to accelerate and complete these processes. A giant for
his time, at six feet seven inches, and possessing enormous energy and willpower,
Peter was determined to build and improve the army. He was equally determined
to continue the tsarist tradition of territorial expansion. After 1689 Peter ruled inde-
pendently for thirty-six years, only one of which was peaceful.
Fascinated by weapons and foreign technology, the tsar led a group of two
hundred fifty Russian officials and young nobles on an eighteen-month tour of
western European capitals. Traveling unofficially to avoid lengthy diplomatic cer-
emonies, Peter worked with his hands at various crafts and met with foreign kings
and experts. He was particularly impressed with the growing power of the Dutch
and the English, and he considered how Russia could profit from their example.
Returning to Russia, Peter entered into a secret alliance with Denmark and
Poland to wage a sudden war of aggression against Sweden, with the goal of secur-
ing access to the Baltic Sea and opportunities for westward expansion. Peter and
his allies believed that their combined forces could win easy victories because
Sweden was in the hands of a new and inexperienced king.
Eighteen-year-old Charles XII of Sweden (1697–1718) surprised Peter. He de-
feated Denmark quickly in 1700, then turned on Russia. In a blinding snowstorm,
his well-trained professional army attacked and routed unsuspecting Russians be-
sieging the Swedish fortress of Narva (NAHR-vuh) on the Baltic coast. Peter and
the survivors fled in panic to Moscow. It was, for the Russians, a grim beginning to
the long and brutal Great Northern War, which lasted from 1700 to 1721.
Suffering defeat and faced with a military crisis, Peter responded with mea-
sures designed to increase state power, strengthen his armies, and gain victory.
He required every nobleman, great or small, to serve in the army or in the civil
administration—for life. Since a more modern army and government required
skilled technicians and experts, Peter created schools and universities to produce
them. One of his most hated reforms was requiring a five-year education away
from home for every young nobleman. Peter established an interlocking military-
Gustaf Cederstrom: The Swedish Victory at Narva (1701)

This poignant re-creation focuses on the contrast between the Swedish officers in handsome dress uniforms and the battered
Russian soldiers laying down their standards in surrender. Charles XII of Sweden scored brilliant, rapid-fire victories over
Denmark, Saxony, and Russia, but he failed to make peace with Peter while he was ahead and eventually lost Sweden’s
holdings on the Baltic coast. (The National Museum of Fine Arts, Stockholm)
civilian bureaucracy with fourteen ranks, and he decreed

that all had to start at the bottom and work toward the
top. Some people of non-noble origins rose to high
positions in this embryonic meritocracy. Draw-
ing on his experience abroad, Peter searched
out talented foreigners and placed them in
his service. These measures gradually com-
bined to make the army and government
more powerful and efficient.
Peter also greatly increased the service
requirements of commoners. In the wake
of the Narva disaster, he established a regu-
lar standing army of more than two hundred
thousand peasant-soldiers commanded by of-
ficers from the nobility. In addition, special
forces of Cossacks and foreigners numbered more
than one hundred thousand. Taxes on peasants in-
creased threefold during Peter’s reign. Serfs were arbi-
trarily assigned to work in the growing number of factories Peter the Great in 1723
and mines that supplied the military.
This compelling portrait by Grigory
Peter’s new war machine was able to crush the small army of Sweden in Musikiysky captures the strength and
Ukraine at Poltava (pol-TAH-vah) in 1709, one of the most significant battles in determination of the warrior tsar after
Russian history. Russia’s victory was conclusive in 1721, and Estonia and present- more than three decades of personal rule.
day Latvia (see Map 17.3) came under Russian rule for the first time. The cost In his hand Peter holds the scepter,
was high—warfare consumed eighty to eighty-five percent of all revenues. But symbol of royal sovereignty, and across his
Russia became the dominant power in the Baltic and very much a European breastplate is draped an ermine fur, a
Great Power. mark of honor. In the background are the
After his victory at Poltava, Peter channeled enormous resources into build- battleships of Russia’s new Baltic fleet and
ing a new Western-style capital on the Baltic to rival the great cities of Europe. the famous St. Peter and St. Paul Fortress
Originally a desolate and swampy Swedish outpost, the magnificent city of St. that Peter built in St. Petersburg. (Kremlin
Museums, Moscow/The Bridgeman Art Library)
Petersburg was designed to reflect modern urban planning, with wide, straight
avenues; buildings set in a uniform line; and large parks.
Peter the Great dictated that all in society realize his vision. Just as the govern-
ment drafted the peasants for the armies, so it drafted twenty-five thousand to forty
thousand men each summer to labor in St. Petersburg without pay. Many peasant
construction workers died from hunger, sickness, and accidents. Nobles were or-
dered to build costly stone houses and palaces in St. Petersburg and to live in them
most of the year. Merchants and artisans were also commanded to settle and build
in the new capital. These nobles and merchants were then required to pay for the
city’s infrastructure. The building of St. Petersburg was, in truth, an enormous di-
rect tax levied on the wealthy, with the peasantry forced to do the manual labor.
There were other important consequences of Peter’s reign. For Peter, modern-
ization meant Westernization, and both Westerners and Western ideas flowed into
Russia for the first time. He required nobles to shave their heavy beards and wear
Western clothing, previously banned in Russia. He required them to attend parties
where young men and women would mix together and freely choose their own
spouses. He forced a warrior elite to accept administrative service as an honorable
occupation. From these efforts a new class of Western-oriented Russians began
to emerge.
At the same time, vast numbers of Russians hated Peter’s massive changes. For
nobles, one of Peter’s most detested reforms was the imposition of unigeniture—
inheritance of land by one son alone—cutting daughters and other sons from
family property. For peasants, the reign of the reforming tsar saw a significant in-
crease in the bonds of serfdom. The gulf between the enserfed peasantry and the
educated nobility increased, even though all were caught up in the tsar’s demands.
Thus Peter built on the service obligations of old Muscovy (MUHS-kuh-vee).
His monarchical absolutism was the culmination of the long development of a
unique Russian civilization. Yet the creation of a more modern army and state in-
troduced much that was new and Western to Russia. This development paved the
way for Russia to move somewhat closer to the European mainstream in its thought
and institutions during the Enlightenment, especially under Catherine the Great.
Most Christian Europeans perceived the Ottomans as

The Growth of the the antithesis of their own values and traditions and
Ottoman Empire viewed the empire as driven by an insatiable lust for
warfare and conquest. In their view the fall of Constantinople was a catastrophe
and the taking of the Balkans a despotic imprisonment of those territories. From
the perspective of the Ottomans, the world looked very different. The siege of
Constantinople liberated a glorious city from its long decline under the Byzan-
tines. Rather than being a despoiled captive, the Balkans became a haven for refu-
gees fleeing the growing intolerance of Western Christian powers. The Ottoman
Empire provided Jews, Muslims, and even some Christians safety from the Inqui-
sition and religious war.
The Ottomans came out of Central Asia as conquering warriors, settled in
Anatolia (present-day Turkey), and, at their peak in the mid-sixteenth century, they
ruled one of the most powerful empires in the world. Their possessions stretched
from western Persia across North Africa and into the heart of central Europe (see
Map 17.4).
When the Ottomans captured Constantinople in 1453 they fulfilled a long-
held Islamic dream. Under Suleiman the Magnificent (r. 1520—1566), they made
great inroads into eastern Europe, capturing Bosnia, Croatia, Romania, Ukraine,
and part of Hungary at the battle of Mohács in 1526. For the next hundred and
fifty years, the Ottomans ruled the many different ethnic groups living in south-
eastern Europe and the eastern Mediterranean. In 1529 their European expansion
was halted with a failed siege of the Habsburg capital, Vienna. The Ottoman loss
at the battle of Lepanto (leh-PAN-toh) in 1571, against the Christian Holy League,
confirmed the limits of their ambitions in Europe.
The Ottoman Empire was originally built on a unique model of state and so-
ciety. There was an almost complete absence of private landed property. Agricul-
sultan The ruler of the Ottoman tural land was the personal hereditary property of the sultan (SUHL-tun), and
Empire; he owned all the agricultural peasants paid taxes to use the land. There was therefore no security of landholding
land of the empire and was served by an
army and bureaucracy composed of
and no hereditary nobility.
highly trained slaves. The Ottomans also employed a distinctive form of government administration.
The top ranks of the bureaucracy were staffed by the sultan’s slave corps. Because
Muslim law prohibited enslaving other Muslims, the sultan’s agents purchased
slaves along the borders of the empire. Within the realm, the sultan levied a “tax”
of one thousand to three thousand male children on the conquered Christian
populations in the Balkans every year. Young slaves were raised in Turkey as Mus-
lims and were trained to fight and to administer. The most talented rose to the top
of the bureaucracy, where they might acquire wealth and power; the less fortunate
janissary corps The core of the sultan’s formed the brave and skillful core of the sultan’s army, the janissary (JAN-uh-ser-
army, composed of conscripts from non- ee) corps. These highly organized and efficient troops gave the Ottomans a for-
Muslim parts of the empire until 1683.
midable advantage in war with western Europeans. By 1683, service in the janissary
corps had become so prestigious that the sultan ceased recruitment by force and it
became a volunteer force open to Christians and Muslims.
The Ottomans divided their subjects into religious communities, and each
millet, or “nation,” enjoyed autonomous self-government under its religious lead-
ers. (The Ottoman Empire recognized Orthodox Christians, Jews, Armenian
Christians, and Muslims as distinct millets.) The millet (MIL-it) system created a millet system A system used by the
powerful bond between the Ottoman ruling class and the different religious lead- Ottomans whereby subjects were divided
into religious communities with each
ers, who supported the sultan’s rule in return for extensive authority over their own millet (nation) enjoying autonomous
communities. Each millet collected taxes for the state, regulated group behavior, self-government under its religious
and maintained law courts, schools, synagogues, and hospitals for its people. leaders.
After 1453 Constantinople—renamed Istanbul (is-tahn-BOOL)—became the
capital of the empire. The “old palace” was for the sultan’s female family mem-
bers, who lived in isolation under the care of eunuchs. The newly constructed
Topkapi palace was where officials worked and young slaves trained for future ad-
ministrative or military careers. To prevent wives from bringing foreign influence
MAP 17.4 The Ottoman Empire at Its Height, 1566

The Ottomans, like their great rivals the Habsburgs, rose to rule a vast dynastic empire encompassing many different peoples and ethnic groups. The
army and the bureaucracy served to unite the disparate territories into a single state under an absolutist ruler.
BOHEMIA CA Dn Volg R USSIA

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Ottoman state, ca. 1300
Mecca
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20˚N Ottoman Empire under Suleiman, 1566

Tributary states of the sultan, 1566
20˚E 30˚E 40˚E 50˚E

The Sultan’s Harem at Topkapi Palace, Istanbul

Sultan Suleiman I created separate quarters at the Topkapi Palace for his
wife Hürrem and her ladies-in-waiting. His successors transferred all of their
wives, concubines, and female family members to the harem (HAIR-
uhm) at Topkapi, carefully situated out of sight of the staterooms and
courtyards where public affairs took place. The harem was the object of
intense curiosity and fascination in the West. (Vanni/Art Resource, NY)
into government—a constant concern in the West—sultans

procreated only with their concubines and not with official
wives. They also adopted a policy of allowing each concubine
to produce only one male heir. At a young age, each son went
to govern a province of the empire under his mother’s supervi-
sion. These practices were intended to stabilize power and
prevent a recurrence of the civil wars of the late fourteenth
and early fifteenth centuries.
Sultan Suleiman undid these policies when he boldly
married his concubine and had several children with her. He
established a wing in the Topkapi palace for his own female
family members and his brothers’ families. Starting with Su-
leiman, imperial wives begin to take on
more power. Marriages were arranged be-
Sec tion Review tween sultans’ daughters and high-ranking
servants, creating powerful new members
• The Mongols under Chinggis Khan added the Kievan principality in Russia to
the Mongol Empire stretching from Korea to Eastern Europe, ruling the area of the imperial household. Over time, the
as the Golden Horde for the next two hundred years through the Russian sultan’s exclusive authority waned in favor
princes, who collected taxes and maintained order. of a more bureaucratic administration.
• By 1480 the prince of Moscow, Ivan III, defied the khan (Mongol ruler) and These changes brought the Ottoman court
seized power to begin the dynasty of the tsars. closer to the European model of factional-
• The reign of Ivan IV “the Terrible” featured constant war, violent purges, peas- ism, intrigue, and informal female power.
ant and outlaw army (Cossack) uprisings, and the addition of vast new territories. (See the feature “Individuals in Society:
• Following Ivan’s death, a period of chaos known as the “Time of Troubles” Hürrem.”)
(1598–1618) ensued, ending with the coronation of Ivan’s grandnephew, Mi- The Ottoman Empire experienced the
chael, the first Romanov tsar. same economic and social crises that af-
• Despite ongoing rebellions, the seventeenth-century Romanov tsars succeeded fected the rest of Europe in this period. In
in consolidating royal authority, increasing the bureaucracy and army, and the 1580s and 1590s rebellions broke out
acquiring Siberia and parts of Ukraine. among many different groups in the vast
• Peter the Great (r. 1682–1725) transformed Russian society and the Russian empire: frustrated students, underpaid
landscape by drafting citizens for military or civil service, enabling him to create janissaries, and ambitious provincial gov-
a powerful war machine, enlarge the empire, and build the modern, Western-
ized capital city of St. Petersburg on Baltic coastal land conquered from Sweden. ernors. Revolts continued during the sev-
enteenth century as the janissaries formed
• Despite Christian stereotypes, the Ottoman empire was tolerant of religious
diversity and protected Jews and other religious refugees. alliances with court factions that resulted
in the overthrow or execution of several
• The Ottomans captured Constantinople in 1453 and renamed it Istanbul, then
conquered much of southeastern Europe until their expansion was halted with Ottoman sultans.
the failed siege of Vienna in 1529. In the late seventeenth century the Ot-
• Highly trained slaves staffed the elite of the sultan’s administration and army; tomans succeeded in marshaling their
while the millet system allowed autonomous self-government to religious mi- forces for one last attack on the Habsburgs,
nority groups; all land in the empire belonged to the sultan. and a huge Turkish army laid siege to Vi-
• Starting with Sultan Suleiman, wives began to exercise more power and the enna in 1683. Not only did they fail to hold
sultan’s exclusive authority gave way to more bureaucratic administration. the city, but their retreat became a rout. As
Russian and Venetian allies attacked on
Hürrem
I n Muslim culture harem means a sacred place
or a sanctuary, which is forbidden to profane
outsiders. The term was applied to the part of the
dering the death of the sultan’s first-born son
(with another mother) in 1553. These stories were
based on court gossip and rumor. The correspon-
household occupied by women and children and dence between Suleiman and Hürrem, unavail-
forbidden to men outside the family. The most fa- able until the nineteenth
mous member of the Ottoman sultan’s harem was century, along with Sulei-
Hürrem, wife of Suleiman the Magnificent. man’s own diaries, con-
Hürrem (1505?–1558) came to the harem as a firms her status as the
slave-concubine. Like many of the sultan’s concu- sultan’s most trusted con-
bines, Hürrem was of foreign birth. Tradition holds fidant and adviser. Dur-
that she was born Aleksandra Lisowska in what was ing his frequent absences,
then the kingdom of Poland and today is Ukraine. the pair exchanged pas-
She was captured during a Tartar raid and enslaved. sionate love letters. Hür-
Between 1517 and 1520, when she was about fif- rem included information
teen years old, she entered the imperial harem. Ve- about the political situa-
netian ambassadors’ reports insist that she was not tion and warnings about
outstandingly beautiful but was possessed of won- any potential uprisings.
derful grace, charm, and good humor. These quali- She also intervened in af-
ties gained her the Turkish nickname Hürrem, or fairs between the empire
“joyful one.” After her arrival in the harem, Hür- and her former home.
rem quickly became the imperial favorite. She wrote to Polish king
Suleiman’s love for Hürrem led him to break all Sigismund Augustus and Hürrem and her ladies in the harem.
precedents for the role of a concubine, including seems to have helped (Bibliothèque nationale de France)
the rule that concubines must cease having chil- Poland attain its privi-
dren once they gave birth to a male heir. By leged diplomatic status.
1531 Hürrem had given birth to one daughter and She brought a particularly feminine touch to diplo-
five sons. In 1533 or 1534 Suleiman entered for- matic relations, sending the Persian shah and the
mal marriage with his consort—an unprecedented Polish king personally embroidered articles.
honor for a concubine. He reportedly gave his ex- Hürrem used her enormous pension to contrib-
clusive attention to his wife and also defied conven- ute a mosque, two schools, a hospital, a fountain,
tion by allowing Hürrem to remain in the palace and two public baths to Istanbul. In Jerusalem,
throughout her life instead of accompanying her Mecca, and Istanbul, she provided soup kitchens
son to a provincial governorship as other concubines and hospices for pilgrims and the poor. She died in
had done. 1558. When her husband died in 1566, their son
Contemporaries were shocked by Hürrem’s in- Selim II (r. 1566–1574) inherited the throne.
fluence over the sultan and resentful of the appar- Drawing from reports of contemporary Western
ent role she played in politics and diplomacy. The observers, historians depicted Hürrem as a manipu-
Venetian ambassador Bassano wrote that “the Janis- lative and power-hungry social climber. They saw
saries and the entire court hate her and her chil- her career as the beginning of a “sultanate of
dren likewise, but because the Sultan loves her, no women” in which strong imperial leadership gave
one dares to speak.”* She was suspected of using way to court intrigue and dissipation. More recent
witchcraft to control the sultan and accused of or- historians have emphasized the intelligence and
courage Hürrem demonstrated in navigating the
ruthlessly competitive world of the harem.
* Cited in Galina Yermolenko, “Roxolana: The Greatest Hürrem’s journey from Ukrainian maiden to
Empresse of the East,” in The Muslim World 95, 2
harem slave girl to sultan’s wife captured enormous
(2005).
453
public attention. She is the subject of numerous Elizabeth I of England, and Catherine de’
paintings, plays, and novels as well as an opera, a Medici of France.
ballet, and a symphony by the composer Haydn. 2. What can an exceptional woman like Hürrem
Interest in and suspicion of Hürrem continues. In reveal about the broader political and social
2003 a Turkish miniseries once more depicted her world in which she lived?
as a scheming intriguer.

Source: Leslie P. Pierce, The Imperial Harem: Women
1. Compare Hürrem to other powerful early and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire (New York:
modern women such as Isabella of Castile, Oxford University Press, 1993).
454
Chapter Review 455
other fronts, the Habsburgs conquered almost all of Hungary and Transylvania by
1699 (see Map 17.4). The Habsburgs completed their victory in 1718, with the
Treaty of Passarowitz. From this point on, a weakened Ottoman empire ceased to
pose a threat to Western Europe.
Chapter Review
What social and economic changes affected central and eastern Europe from
1400 to 1650? (page 433) Key Terms
From about 1400 to 1650 social and economic developments in eastern Europe di- serfdom (p. 433)
verged from those in western Europe. In the East, after enjoying relative freedom in hereditary subjugation (p. 434)
the Middle Ages, peasants and townspeople lost freedom and fell under the economic, Peace of Westphalia (p. 436)
social, and legal authority of the nobles, who increased their power and prestige.
Bohemian Estates (p. 438)
elector of Brandenburg (p. 439)
How did the rulers of Austria and Prussia manage to build powerful absolute Junkers (p. 442)
monarchies? (page 438) Mongol Yoke (p. 444)
Within this framework of resurgent serfdom and entrenched nobility, Austrian and boyars (p. 446)
Prussian monarchs fashioned absolutist states in the seventeenth and early eighteenth tsar (p. 446)
centuries. These monarchs won absolutist control over standing armies, taxation, and
representative bodies, but they did not question underlying social and economic rela- service nobility (p. 446)
tionships. Indeed, they enhanced the privileges of the nobles, who filled enlarged Cossacks (p. 446)
armies and growing state bureaucracies. In exchange for entrenched privileges over sultan (p. 450)
their peasants, nobles thus cooperated with the growth of state power.
millet system (p. 451)
Triumphant absolutism interacted spectacularly with the arts. Central and eastern
European rulers built grandiose palaces, and even whole cities, like Saint Petersburg, janissary corps (p. 453)
to glorify their power and majesty.
What were the distinctive features of Russian and Ottoman absolutism in this
period? (page 444)
In Russia the social and economic trends were similar, but the timing of political
absolutism was different. Mongol conquest and rule were a crucial experience, and a
harsh indigenous tsarist autocracy was firmly in place by the reign of Ivan the Terrible
in the sixteenth century. More than a century later Peter the Great succeeded in mod-
ernizing Russia’s traditional absolutism by reforming the army and the bureaucracy.
Farther to the east, the Ottoman sultans developed a distinctive political and economic
system in which all land theoretically belonged to the sultan, who was served by a slave
corps of administrators and soldiers. The Ottoman Empire was relatively tolerant on
religious matters and served as a haven for Jews and other marginalized religious
groups.
Notes
1. H. Kamen, “The Economic and Social Consequences of the Thirty Years’ War,” Past and
Present 39 (April 1968): 44–61.
2. H. Rosenberg, Bureaucracy, Aristocracy, and Autocracy: The Prussian Experience, 1660–1815
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1966), p. 43.
3. Quoted in Rosenberg, Bureaucracy, Aristocracy, and Autocracy, p. 40.

A Foreign Traveler in Russia
people of every station, clergy and laity, high and
low, men and women, old and young, that when
S eventeenth-century Russia remained a remote and myste-
rious land for western and even central Europeans, who
had few direct contacts with the tsar’s dominion. Knowledge of
they are seen now and then lying about in the
streets, wallowing in the mud, no attention is paid
Russia came mainly from occasional travelers who had visited to it, as something habitual. If a cart driver comes
Muscovy and sometimes wrote accounts of what they saw. The upon such a drunken pig whom he happens to
most famous of these accounts—Travels in Muscovy—was by know, he shoves him onto his cart and drives him
the German Adam Olearius (ca. 1599–1671), who was sent to home, where he is paid his fare. No one ever re-
Moscow by the duke of Holstein on three diplomatic missions fuses an opportunity to drink and to get drunk, at
in the 1630s. Published in German in 1647 and soon trans- any time and in any place, and usually it is done
lated into several languages (but not Russian), Olearius’s with vodka. . . .
unflattering study played a major role in shaping European The Russians being naturally tough and born, as
ideas about Russia. it were, for slavery, they must be kept under a harsh
and strict yoke and must be driven to do their work
with clubs and whips, which they suffer without
The government of the Russians is what politi- impatience, because such is their station, and they
cal theorists call a “dominating and despotic mon- are accustomed to it. Young and half-grown fellows
archy,” where the sovereign, that is, the tsar or the sometimes come together on certain days and train
grand prince who has obtained the crown by right themselves in fisticuffs, to accustom themselves to
of succession, rules the entire land alone, and all the receiving blows, and, since habit is second nature,
people are his subjects, and where the nobles and this makes blows given as punishment easier to
princes no less than the common folk—townspeople bear. Each and all, they are slaves and serfs. . . .
and peasants—are his serfs and slaves, whom he Although the Russians, especially the common
rules and treats as a master treats his servants. . . . populace, living as slaves under a harsh yoke, can
If the Russians be considered in respect to their bear and endure a great deal out of love for their
character, customs, and way of life, they are justly masters, yet if the pressure is beyond measure, then
to be counted among the barbarians. . . . The vice it can be said of them: “Patience, often wounded,
of drunkenness is so common in this nation, among finally turned into fury.” A dangerous indignation
The brutality of serfdom is shown in

this illustration from Olearius’s Travels
in Muscovy. (University of Illinois Library,
Champaign)
456
results, turned not so much against their sovereign Questions for Analysis
as against the lower authorities, especially if the 1. In what ways were all social groups in Russia
people have been much oppressed by them and by similar, according to Olearius?
their supporters and have not been protected by the 2. How did Olearius characterize the Russians in
higher authorities. And once they are aroused and general? What supporting evidence did he offer
enraged, it is not easy to appease them. Then, disre- for his judgment?
garding all dangers that may ensue, they resort to 3. Does Olearius’s account help explain Stenka
every kind of violence and behave like madmen. . . . Razin’s rebellion? In what ways?
They own little; most of them have no feather beds; 4. On the basis of these representative passages,
they lie on cushions, straw, mats, or their clothes; why do you think Olearius’s book was so popu-
they sleep on benches and, in winter, like the non- lar and influential in central and western
Germans [natives] in Livonia, upon the oven, Europe?
which serves them for cooking and is flat on the
top; here husband, wife, children, servants, and
Source: G. Vernadsky and R. T. Fisher, Jr., eds., A Source
maids huddle together. In some houses in the
Book for Russian History from Early Times to 1917, 3
countryside we saw chickens and pigs under the vols., vol. 1, pp. 249–251. Copyright © 1972. Reprinted
benches and the ovens. by permission of the publisher, Yale University Press.
457
CHAPTER 18
Toward a New
Worldview
1540–1789
Chapter Preview
The Scientific Revolution
What was revolutionary in the new
attitudes toward the natural world?
The Enlightenment
How did the new worldview affect the
way people thought about society and
human relations?
The Enlightenment and Absolutism

What impact did this new way of
thinking have on political developments
and monarchical absolutism?
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY: Moses Mendelssohn and

the Jewish Enlightenment
LISTENING TO THE PAST: Voltaire on Religion
Voltaire, the renowned Enlightenment thinker, leans forward on the

left to exchange ideas and witty conversation with Frederick the
Great, king of Prussia. (Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz/Art Resource, NY)
458
The Scientific Revolution 459
T he intellectual developments of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

created the modern worldview that the West continues to hold—and
debate—to this day. In the seventeenth century fundamentally new ways of under-
standing the natural world emerged. In the nineteenth century scholars hailed
these achievements as a “scientific revolution” that produced modern science as
we know it. The new science created in the seventeenth century entailed the
search for precise knowledge of the physical world based on the union of experi-
mental observations with sophisticated mathematics.
In the eighteenth century philosophers extended the use of reason from the
study of nature to the study of human society. They sought to bring the light of
reason to bear on the darkness of prejudice, outmoded traditions, and ignorance.
Self-proclaimed members of an “Enlightenment” movement, they wished to bring
the same progress to human affairs as their predecessors had brought to the under-
standing of the natural world. While the scientific revolution ushered in modern
science, the Enlightenment created concepts of human rights, equality, progress,
universalism, and tolerance that still guide Western societies today.
While many view the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment as bedrocks
of the achievement of Western civilization, others have seen a darker side. For
these critics, the mastery over nature permitted by the scientific revolution now
threatens to overwhelm the earth’s fragile equilibrium, and the belief in the uni-
versal application of “reason” can lead to arrogance and intolerance, particularly
intolerance of other people’s spiritual values. Such vivid debate about the legacy
of these intellectual and cultural developments testifies to their continuing impor-
tance in today’s world.
The Scientific Revolution

What was revolutionary in the new attitudes toward the natural world?
The emergence of modern science was a development of tremendous long-term

significance. A noted historian has said that the scientific revolution was “the real
origin both of the modern world and the modern mentality.”1 With the scientific
revolution Western society began to acquire its most distinctive traits.
Since developments in astronomy and physics were at

Scientific Thought the heart of the scientific revolution, one must begin
in 1500 with the traditional European conception of the uni-
verse. The practitioners of the scientific revolution did not consider their field
science but rather natural philosophy and their intention was philosophical: to ask natural philosophy An early modern
fundamental questions about the nature of the universe, its purpose, and how it term for the study of the nature of the
universe, its purpose, and how it
functioned. In the early 1500s natural philosophy was still based primarily on the functioned; it encompassed what we
ideas of Aristotle, the great Greek philosopher of the fourth century b.c.e. Medi- would call today “science.”
eval theologians such as Thomas Aquinas brought Aristotelian philosophy into
harmony with Christian doctrines. According to the revised Aristotelian view, a
motionless earth was fixed at the center of the universe. Around it moved ten sepa-
rate transparent crystal spheres. In the first eight spheres were embedded, in turn,
the moon, the sun, the five known planets, and the fixed stars. Then followed two
spheres added during the Middle Ages to account for slight changes in the posi-
tions of the stars over the centuries. Beyond the tenth sphere was Heaven, with the
460 Chapter 18 Toward a New Worldview, 1540–1789
throne of God and the souls of the saved. Angels kept the spheres
moving in perfect circles. Thus human beings were at the cen-
ter of the universe and were the critical link in a “great chain
of being” that stretched from the throne of God to the low-
liest insect on earth.
Aristotle’s views, suitably revised by medieval phi-
losophers, also dominated thinking about physics and
motion on earth. Aristotle had distinguished sharply
between the world of the celestial spheres and that
of the earth. The celestial spheres consisted of a
perfect, incorruptible “quintessence,” or fifth es-
sence. The earth was composed of four imperfect,
changeable elements. The “light” elements (air and
fire) naturally moved upward, while the “heavy”
elements (water and earth) naturally moved down-
ward. These natural directions of motion did not al-
ways prevail, however, for elements were often mixed
together and could be affected by an outside force such
as a human being. Aristotle and his followers also be-
lieved that a uniform force moved an object at a constant
speed and that the object would stop as soon as that force was
removed.
The Aristotelian Universe
as Imagined in the
Sixteenth Century The first great departure from the medieval system
The Copernican came from Nicolaus Copernicus (koh-PUR-ni-kuhs)
A round earth is at the center, Hypothesis
surrounded by spheres of water, air, (1473–1543). As a young man Copernicus studied
and fire. Beyond this small nucleus, the church law and astronomy in various European universities. He saw how profes-
moon, the sun, and the five planets sional astronomers still depended for their most accurate calculations on the sec-
were imbedded in their own rotating ond century b.c.e. work of Ptolemy. Copernicus felt that Ptolemy’s cumbersome
crystal spheres, with the stars sharing and occasionally inaccurate rules detracted from the majesty of a perfect Creator.
the surface of one enormous sphere. He preferred an old Greek idea being discussed in Renaissance Italy: that the sun,
Beyond, the heavens were composed rather than the earth, was at the center of the universe. Finishing his university
of unchanging ether. (Image Select/Art
studies and returning to a church position in East Prussia, Copernicus worked on
Resource, NY)
his hypothesis from 1506 to 1530. Never questioning the Aristotelian belief in
crystal spheres or the idea that circular motion was most perfect and divine, Co-
pernicus theorized that the stars and planets, including the earth, revolved around
a fixed sun. Yet fearing the ridicule of other astronomers, Copernicus did not
publish his On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres until 1543, the year of
his death.
Copernican hypothesis The idea that The Copernican hypothesis brought sharp attacks from religious leaders, es-
the sun, not the earth, was the center of pecially Protestants, who objected to the idea that the earth moved but the sun did
the universe; this had tremendous
scientific and religious implications.
not. Martin Luther noted that the theory was counter to the Bible: “as the Holy
Scripture tells us, so did Joshua bid the sun stand still and not the earth.”2 John
Calvin also condemned Copernicus. Catholic reaction was milder at first. The
Catholic Church had never held to literal interpretations of the Bible, and not
until 1616 did it officially declare the Copernican hypothesis false.
This slow reaction also reflected the slow progress of Copernicus’s theory for
many years. Other events were almost as influential in creating doubts about tradi-
tional astronomical ideas. In 1572 a new star appeared and shone very brightly for
almost two years. The new star, which was actually a distant exploding star, made
an enormous impression on people. It seemed to contradict the idea that the heav-
Chronology
enly spheres were unchanging and therefore perfect. In 1577 ca. 1540–1690 Scientific revolution
a new comet suddenly moved through the sky, cutting a
straight path across the supposedly impenetrable crystal 1543 Copernicus, On the Revolutions of the
Heavenly Spheres
spheres. It was time, as a typical scientific writer put it, for
“the radical renovation of astronomy.”3 1564–1642 Life of Galileo
1571–1630 Life of Kepler
1662 Royal Society of London founded
One astronomer who agreed was
From Brahe Tycho Brahe (TEE-koh BRAH-hee) 1687 Newton, Principia and the law of
to Galileo (1546–1601). Born into a promi- universal gravitation
nent Danish noble family, Brahe was an imposing man who 1690 Locke, Essay Concerning Human
had lost a piece of his nose in a duel and replaced it with a Understanding
special bridge of gold and silver alloy. He established himself ca. 1690–1780 Enlightenment
as Europe’s leading astronomer with his detailed observa-
1694–1778 Life of Voltaire
tions of the new star of 1572. For twenty years he meticu-
lously observed the stars and planets with the naked eye in 1700–1789 Growth of book publishing
the most sophisticated observatory of his day. His limited un- 1720–1780 Rococo style in art and decoration
derstanding of mathematics prevented him, however, from ca. 1740–1780 Salons led by elite women
making much sense out of his mass of data. Part Ptolemaic,
part Copernican, he believed that all the planets except the 1740–1786 Reign of Frederick the Great of Prussia
earth revolved around the sun and that the entire group of sun ca. 1750–1790 Enlightened absolutists
and planets revolved in turn around the earth-moon system. 1751–1765 Diderot and d’Alembert, Encyclopedia
It was left to Brahe’s assistant, Johannes Kepler (YO-han-
1762 Rousseau, The Social Contract
nis KEP-ler) (1571–1630), to rework Brahe’s mountain of
observations. A brilliant mathematician, Kepler would even- 1762–1796 Reign of Catherine the Great of Russia
tually move beyond his early belief that the universe was built 1780–1790 Reign of Joseph II of Austria
on mystical mathematical relationships and a musical har-
mony of the heavenly bodies.
Kepler formulated three famous laws of planetary mo-
tion. First, building on Copernican theory, he demonstrated in 1609 that the or-
bits of the planets around the sun are elliptical rather than circular. Second, he
demonstrated that the planets do not move at a uniform speed in their orbits.
Third, in 1619 he showed that the time a planet takes to make its complete orbit
is precisely related to its distance from the sun. Kepler’s contribution was monu-
mental. Whereas Copernicus had speculated, Kepler proved mathematically the
precise relations of a sun-centered (solar) system. His work demolished the old
system of Aristotle and Ptolemy, and in his third law he came close to formulating
the idea of universal gravitation.
While Kepler was unraveling planetary motion, a young Florentine named
Galileo Galilei (gal-uh-LAY-oh gal-uh-LAY-ee) (1564–1642) was challenging all
the old ideas about motion. Like Kepler and so many early scientists, Galileo was
a poor nobleman first marked for a religious career. Instead, his fascination with
mathematics led to a professorship in which he examined motion and mechanics
in a new way. Indeed, his great achievement was the elaboration and consolida- experimental method The approach,
tion of the experimental method. That is, rather than speculate about what might first developed by Galileo, that the
proper way to explore the workings of the
or should happen, Galileo conducted controlled experiments to find out what universe was through repeatable
actually did happen. experiments rather than speculation.
In some of these experiments Galileo measured the movement of a rolling ball
across a surface that he constructed, repeating the action again and again to verify law of inertia A law formulated by
Galileo that stated that rest was not the
his results. In his famous acceleration experiment, he showed that a uniform natural state of an object. Rather, an
force—in this case, gravity—produced a uniform acceleration. Through another object continues in motion forever
experiment, he formulated the law of inertia (in-UR-shuh). Rest was not the unless stopped by some external force.
Galileo’s Paintings of the Moon

When Galileo published the results of his
telescopic observations of the moon, he
added these paintings to illustrate the
marvels he had seen. Galileo made two
telescopes, which are shown here. The
larger one magnifies fourteen times, the
smaller one twenty times. (Biblioteca
Nazionale Centrale, Florence/Art Resource, NY;
Museum of Science, Florence/Art Resource, NY)
natural state of objects. Rather, an object continues in motion forever unless

stopped by some external force. Aristotelian physics was in shambles.
In the tradition of Brahe, Galileo also applied the experimental method to as-
tronomy. On hearing details about the invention of the telescope in Holland,
Galileo made one for himself and trained it on the heavens. He wrote in 1610 in
Siderus Nuncius:
By the aid of a telescope anyone may behold [the Milky Way] in a manner
which so distinctly appeals to the senses that all the disputes which have tormented
philosophers through so many ages are exploded by the irrefutable evidence of our
eyes, and we are freed from wordy disputes upon the subject. For the galaxy is noth-
ing else but a mass of innumerable stars planted together in clusters.4
Reading these famous lines, one feels a crucial corner in Western civilization
being turned. No longer should one rely on established authority. A new method
of learning and investigating was being developed, one that proved capable of
great extension. A historian investigating documents of the past, for example, is not
so different from a Galileo studying stars and rolling balls.
Galileo was employed in Florence by the Medici grand dukes of Tuscany, and
his work eventually aroused the ire of some theologians. The issue was presented
in 1624 to Pope Urban VIII, who permitted Galileo to write about different pos-
sible systems of the world as long as he did not presume to judge which one actu-
ally existed. After the publication in Italian of his widely read Dialogue on the Two
Chief Systems of the World in 1632, which openly lampooned the traditional views
of Aristotle and Ptolemy and defended those of Copernicus, Galileo was tried for
heresy by the papal Inquisition. Imprisoned and threatened with torture, the aging
Galileo recanted, “renouncing and cursing” his Copernican errors.
The accomplishments of Kepler, Galileo, and other

Newton’s Synthesis scientists had taken effect by about 1640. The old as-
tronomy and physics were in ruins, and several funda-
mental breakthroughs had been made. But the new findings failed to explain what
forces controlled the movement of the planets and objects on Earth. That chal-
lenge was taken up by the English scientist Isaac Newton (1642–1727).
Newton was born into the lower English gentry and he attended Cambridge
University. A genius who spectacularly united the experimental and theoretical-
mathematical sides of modern science, Newton was far from being the perfect ra-
tionalist eulogized by later centuries. Like many other practitioners of the new
science, Newton was both intensely religious and fascinated by alchemy.
He arrived at some of his most basic ideas about physics in 1666 at age twenty-
four but was unable to prove them mathematically. In 1684, after years of studying
optics, Newton returned to physics for eighteen extraordinarily intensive months.
The result was his towering accomplishment, a single explanatory system that
could integrate the astronomy of Copernicus, as corrected by Kepler’s laws, with
the physics of Galileo and his predecessors. Newton did this by means of a set of
mathematical laws that explain motion and mechanics. These laws of dynamics
are complex, and it took scientists and engineers two hundred years to work out all
their implications. Nevertheless, the key feature of the Newtonian synthesis was
the law of universal gravitation. According to this law, every body in the universe law of universal gravitation Newton’s
attracts every other body in the universe in a precise mathematical relationship, law that every body in the universe
attracts every other body in the universe
whereby the force of attraction is proportional to the quantity of matter of the ob- in a precise mathematical relationship,
jects and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. The whereby the force of attraction is
whole universe—from Kepler’s elliptical orbits to Galileo’s rolling balls—was unified proportional to the quantity of matter of
in one majestic system. Newton’s synthesis prevailed until the twentieth century. the objects and inversely proportional to
the square of the distance between them.
The scientific revolution drew on long-term develop-

Causes of the ments in European culture. The first was the develop-
Scientific Revolution ment of the medieval university. By the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries leading universities had evolved to include professorships of
mathematics, astronomy, and physics (natural philosophy) within their faculties of
philosophy. Although the prestige of the new fields was low, critical thinking was
now applied to scientific problems by a permanent community of scholars. And an
outlet existed for the talents of a Galileo or a Newton: all the great pathfinders ei-
ther studied or taught at universities.
Second, the Renaissance also stimulated scientific progress. The recovery of
ancient texts showed that classical mathematicians had their differences; Europe-
ans were thus forced to try to resolve these ancient controversies by means of their
own efforts. Renaissance patrons played a role in funding scientific investigations
as well as artistic projects, as the Medicis of Florence did for Galileo.
The navigational problems of long sea voyages in the age of overseas expansion
were a third factor in the scientific revolution. As early as 1484 the king of Portugal
appointed a commission of mathematicians to perfect tables to help seamen find
their latitude. Navigational problems were also critical in the development of
many new scientific instruments, such as the telescope, barometer, thermometer,
pendulum clock, microscope, and air pump. Better instruments, which permitted
more accurate observations, often led to important new knowledge. Galileo with
his telescope was by no means unique.
The fourth factor in the scientific revolution was the development of better
ways of obtaining knowledge about the world. Two important thinkers, Francis
Bacon (1561–1626) and René Descartes (dey-KAHRT) (1596–1650) were influen-

tial in describing and advocating for improved scientific methods, based on ex-
perimentation and mathematical reasoning.
The English politician and writer Francis Bacon was the greatest early propa-
gandist for the new scientific method. Bacon argued that the researcher who wants
to learn more about leaves or rocks should not speculate about the subject but
should rather collect a multitude of specimens and then compare and analyze
them. General principles will then emerge. Bacon’s contribution was to formalize
the empirical method, which had already been used by Brahe and Galileo, into
empiricism A theory of inductive the general theory of inductive reasoning known as empiricism.
reasoning that calls for acquiring The French philosopher René Descartes was a true genius who made his first
evidence through observation and
experimentation rather than reason
great discovery in mathematics. As a twenty-three-year-old soldier serving in the
and speculation. Thirty Years’ War, he experienced a life-changing intellectual vision on a single
night in 1619. Descartes saw that there was a perfect correspondence between
geometry and algebra and that geometrical, spatial figures could be expressed as
algebraic equations and vice versa. A major step forward in the history of mathe-
matics, Descartes’s discovery of analytic geometry provided scientists with an im-
portant new tool.
Descartes’s greatest achievement was to develop his initial vision into a whole
philosophy of knowledge and science. He decided it was necessary to doubt every-
thing that could reasonably be doubted and then, as in geometry, to use deductive
reasoning from self-evident principles to ascertain scientific laws. Descartes’s rea-
soning ultimately reduced all substances to “matter” and “mind”—that is, to the
physical and the spiritual. His view of the world as consisting of two fundamental
Cartesian dualism Descartes’s view entities is known as Cartesian (kahr-TEE-zhuhn) dualism. Descartes was a pro-
that all of reality could ultimately be foundly original and extremely influential thinker.
reduced to mind and matter.
Bacon’s inductive experimentalism and Descartes’s deductive, mathematical
reasoning are combined in the modern scientific method, which began to crystal-
lize in the late seventeenth century. Neither man’s extreme approach was suffi-
cient by itself. Bacon’s inability to appreciate the importance of mathematics and
his obsession with practical results clearly showed the limitations of antitheoretical
empiricism. Likewise, some of Descartes’s positions—he believed, for example, that
it was possible to deduce the whole science of medicine from first principles—
demonstrated the inadequacy of rigid, dogmatic rationalism. Thus the modern sci-
entific method has joined precise observations and experimentalism with the search
for general laws that may be expressed in rigorously logical, mathematical language.
The rise of modern science had many consequences,

Science and Society some of which are still unfolding. First, it went hand in
hand with the rise of a new and expanding social
scientific community The group—the international scientific community. Members of this community
international social group that expanded were linked together by common interests and shared values as well as by journals
with the rise of modern science; its
members were linked together by
and the learned scientific societies founded in many countries in the later seven-
common interests and shared values as teenth and the eighteenth centuries. Their personal success depended on making
well as by journals and the learned new discoveries, and science became competitive. Second, as governments inter-
scientific societies founded in many vened to support and sometimes direct research, the new scientific community
countries in the later seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. became closely tied to the state and its agendas. National academies of science
were created under state sponsorship in London in 1662, Paris in 1666, Berlin in
1700, and later across Europe. At the same time, scientists developed a critical at-
titude toward established authority that would inspire thinkers to question tradi-
tions in other domains as well.
Metamorphoses of the Caterpillar and Moth

Maria Sibylla Merian (1647–1717), the stepdaughter of a Dutch painter,
became a celebrated scientific illustrator in her own right. Her finely
observed pictures of insects in the South American colony of Surinam
introduced many new species, shown in their various stages of
development. For Merian, science was intimately tied with art: she not only
painted but also bred caterpillars and performed experiments on them. Her
two-year stay in Surinam, accompanied by a teenaged daughter, was a
daring feat for a seventeenth-century woman. (Bildarchiv Preussischer
Kulturbesitz/Art Resource, NY)
Some things did not change in the scientific revolution.

Scholars have recently analyzed representations of femininity
and masculinity in the scientific revolution and have noted
that nature was often depicted as a female, whose veil of se-
crecy needed to be stripped away and penetrated by male ex-
perts. (At the same time, the Americas were similarly depicted
as a female terrain whose potentially fertile lands needed to
be controlled and impregnated by male colonists.) New “ra-
tional” methods for approaching nature did not question
traditional inequalities between the sexes—and may have
worsened them in some ways. Women were largely shut out
of the academies and then refused membership into scientific
communities because they lacked academic credentials. (This
continued for a long time. Marie Curie, the first person to win two
Nobel prizes, was rejected by the French Academy of Science in
1911 because she was a woman.5) Sec tion Review
There were, however, a number of noteworthy exceptions. In • Natural philosophy was based on Aristotle’s ideas: the
Italy, universities and academies did offer posts to women, attracting earth was the center of the universe, heaven was
some foreigners spurned by their own countries. Women were al- perfect, and the earth’s four elements (air, fire, water,
lowed to work as makers of wax anatomical models and as botanical earth) were imperfect and changeable.
and zoological illustrators. Women were also very much involved in • The Copernican hypothesis stated that the sun, not
informal scientific communities, attending salons, participating in the earth, was fixed and the planets and stars revolved
around it—an idea the church rejected.
scientific experiments, and writing learned treatises. Some female
intellectuals were recognized as full-fledged members of the philo- • Tycho Brahe, an astronomer, took detailed observa-
tions of the planets from which his assistant, Jo-
sophical dialogue. In England, Margaret Cavendish, Anne Conway, hannes Kepler, a mathematician, was able to
and Mary Astell all contributed to debates about Descartes’s mind- determine and prove planetary motion, while Gali-
body dualism, among other issues. Descartes himself conducted an leo Galilei developed the experimental method,
intellectual correspondence with the princess Elizabeth of Bohe- using controlled experiments to verify results.
mia, of whom he stated: “I attach more weight to her judgement • Newton used a set of mathematical laws that explain
than to those messieurs the Doctors, who take for a rule of truth the motion and mechanics to synthesize his law of uni-
opinions of Aristotle rather than the evidence of reason.”6 versal gravitation, which unified the universe into
one magnificent system.
The scientific revolution had few consequences for economic
life and the living standards of the masses until the late eighteenth • The scientific revolution was a product of the medi-
eval university, Renaissance funding, the need for
century. True, improvements in the techniques of navigation facili- navigational instruments, and the scientific method
tated overseas trade and helped enrich states and merchant compa- of experimentation and mathematical reasoning.
nies. But science had relatively few practical economic applications. • The scientific revolution was an intellectual revolu-
Thus the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century was first tion, fostering international scientific communities
and foremost an intellectual revolution. For more than a hundred and critical thinking in many fields beyond science.
years its greatest impact was on how people thought and believed.
The Enlightenment
How did the new worldview affect the way people thought about society
and human relations?
The scientific revolution was the single most important factor in the creation of
Enlightenment The intellectual the new worldview of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. This worldview,
and cultural movement of the late which has played a large role in shaping the modern mind, grew out of a rich mix
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
that introduced a new worldview that
of diverse and often conflicting ideas. Despite the diversity, three central concepts
has played a large role in shaping the stand at the core of Enlightenment thinking. The most important and original
modern mind. The three central idea was that the methods of natural science could and should be used to examine
concepts of the Enlightenment were and understand all aspects of life. This was what intellectuals meant by reason, a
the use of reason, the scientific method,
and progress. favorite word of Enlightenment thinkers. Nothing was to be accepted on faith.
Everything was to be submitted to rationalism, a secular, critical way of thinking.
rationalism A secular, critical way of A second important Enlightenment concept was that the scientific method was
thinking in which nothing was to be
accepted on faith, and everything was
capable of discovering the laws of human society as well as those of nature. Thus
to be submitted to reason. was social science born. Its birth led to the third key idea, that of progress. Armed
with the proper method of discovering the laws of human existence, Enlighten-
ment thinkers believed, it was at least possible for human beings to create better
societies and better people. Their belief was strengthened by some modest im-
provements in economic and social life during the eighteenth century.
Loosely united by certain key ideas, the European En-

The Emergence of lightenment was a broad intellectual and cultural
the Enlightenment movement that gained strength gradually and did not
reach its maturity until about 1750. Yet it was the generation that came of age be-
tween the publication of Newton’s Principia (prin-SIP-ee-uh, prin-KIP-ee-uh) in
1687 and the death of Louis XIV in 1715 that tied the crucial knot between the
scientific revolution and a new outlook on life. Talented writers of that generation
popularized hard-to-understand scientific achievements for the educated elite.
A new generation came to believe that the human mind is capable of making
great progress. Medieval and Reformation thinkers had been concerned primarily
with sin and salvation. The humanists of the Renaissance had emphasized worldly
matters, but their inspiration was the wisdom of the past. Enlightenment thinkers
came to believe that, at least in science and mathematics, their era had gone far
beyond antiquity. Progress, at least intellectual progress, was very possible.
The excitement of the scientific revolution also generated doubt and uncer-
tainty, contributing to a widespread crisis in late seventeenth-century European
thought. In the wake of the devastation wrought by the Thirty Years’ War, some
people asked whether ideological conformity in religious matters was really neces-
sary. Others skeptically asked if religious truth could ever be known with absolute
certainty and concluded that it could not. This was a new development because
many seventeenth-century scientists, Catholic and Protestant, believed that their
work exalted God and helped explain his creation to fellow believers.
The most famous of these skeptics was Pierre Bayle (1647–1706), a French
Huguenot who despised Louis XIV and found refuge in the Netherlands. Bayle
critically examined the religious beliefs and persecutions of the past in his Histori-
skepticism The belief that nothing can
ever be known beyond all doubt and that cal and Critical Dictionary (1697). Demonstrating that human beliefs had been
humanity’s best hope was open-minded extremely varied and very often mistaken, he concluded that nothing can ever be
toleration. known beyond all doubt, a view known as skepticism. A very influential text, his
The Enlightenment 467
Popularizing Science
The frontispiece illustration of Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds
by Bernard de Fontenelle (1657–1757) invites a nonscientific audience to
share the pleasures of astronomy with an elegant lady and an entertaining
teacher. The drawing shows the planets revolving around the sun.
(By permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library)
Dictionary was reprinted frequently in the Netherlands and

in England and was found in more private libraries of
eighteenth-century France than any other book.
The rapidly growing travel literature on non-European
lands and cultures was another cause of uncertainty. In the
wake of the great discoveries, Europeans were learning that
the peoples of China, India, Africa, and the Americas all had
their own very different beliefs and customs. Europeans
shaved their faces and let their hair grow. Turks shaved their
heads and let their beards grow. In Europe a man bowed be-
fore a woman to show respect. In Siam a man turned his back
on a woman when he met her because it was disrespectful to
look directly at her. Countless similar examples discussed in
the travel accounts helped change the perspective of edu-
cated Europeans. They began to look at truth and morality in
relative, rather than absolute, terms. If anything was possible,
who could say what was right or wrong?
An additional cause and manifestation of European intel-
lectual turmoil was John Locke’s epochal Essay Concerning
Human Understanding (1690). Locke’s essay brilliantly set
forth a new theory about how human beings learn and form
their ideas, rejecting Descartes’s view that all people are born with certain basic
ideas and ways of thinking. Locke insisted that all ideas are derived from experi-
ence. The human mind at birth is like a blank tablet, or tabula rasa (TAB-yuh-luh tabula rasa A blank tablet,
RAH-suh), on which the environment writes the individual’s understanding and incorporated into Locke’s belief that all
ideas are derived from experience, and
beliefs. Human development is therefore determined by education and social in-
that the human mind at birth is like a
stitutions, for good or for evil. Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding blank tablet on which the environment
passed through many editions and translations. Along with Newton’s Principia, it writes the individual’s understanding
was one of the dominant intellectual inspirations of the Enlightenment. and beliefs.
By the time Louis XIV died in 1715, many of the ideas

The Philosophes that would soon coalesce into the new worldview had
and the Public been assembled. Yet Christian Europe was still strongly
attached to its traditional beliefs, as witnessed by the powerful revival of religious
orthodoxy in the first half of the eighteenth century (see pages 526–530). By the
outbreak of the American Revolution in 1775, however, a large portion of western
Europe’s educated elite had embraced many of the new ideas. This acceptance
was the work of the philosophes (FIL-uh-sawfz), a group of influential intellectu- philosophes Intellectuals in France
als who proudly proclaimed that they, at long last, were bringing the light of knowl- who proclaimed that they were bringing
the light of knowledge to their fellow
edge to their ignorant fellow creatures. creatures in the Age of Enlightenment.
Philosophe is the French word for “philosopher,” and it was in France that the
Enlightenment reached its highest development. There were at least three reasons
for this. First, French was the international language of the educated classes in the
eighteenth century, and France was still the wealthiest and most populous country
in Europe. Second, although French intellectuals were not free to openly criticize
either church or state, they were not as strongly restrained as intellectuals in
eastern and east-central Europe. Philosophes like the baron de Montesquieu
(MON-tuh-skyoo) (1689–1755) used satire and double meanings to spread their
message to the public. Third, the French philosophes made it their goal to reach
a larger audience of elites, many of whom were joined together in the eighteenth-
century concept of the “republic of letters”—an imaginary, transnational realm of
the well-educated.
The influence of writers like Montesquieu on the enlightened public can be
seen in the results of his political writing. Disturbed by the growth in royal absolut-
ism under Louis XIV and inspired by the example of the physical sciences, Mon-
tesquieu set out to apply the critical method to the problem of government. The
Spirit of Laws (1748) was a complex comparative study of republics, monarchies,
and despotisms—a great pioneering inquiry in the emerging social sciences.
Showing that forms of government were shaped by history, geography, and
customs, Montesquieu focused on the conditions that would promote liberty and
separation of powers The idea, prevent tyranny. He argued for a separation of powers, with political power di-
developed by the philosophe vided and shared by a variety of classes and legal estates holding unequal rights
Montesquieu, that despotism could be
avoided when political power was
and privileges. Admiring greatly the English balance of power among the king, the
divided and shared by a variety of classes houses of Parliament, and the independent courts, Montesquieu believed that in
and legal estates holding unequal rights France the thirteen high courts—the parlements—were frontline defenders of lib-
and privileges. erty against royal despotism. Apprehensive about the uneducated poor, Montes-
quieu was clearly no democrat, but his theory of separation of powers had a great
impact on the constitutions of the young United States in 1789 and of France
in 1791.
The most famous and in many ways most representative philosophe was Fran-
çois Marie Arouet, who was known by the pen name Voltaire (vohl-TAIR) (1694–
1778). In his long career, this son of a comfortable middle-class family wrote more
than seventy witty volumes, hobnobbed with kings and queens, and died a mil-
lionaire because of shrewd business speculations. His early career, however, was
turbulent, and he was arrested on two occasions for insulting noblemen. Voltaire
moved to England for three years in order to avoid a longer prison term in France,
and there he came to share Montesquieu’s enthusiasm for English institutions.
Returning to France and soon threatened again with prison in Paris, Voltaire
had the great fortune of meeting Gabrielle-Emilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, mar-
quise du Châtelet (SHA-tuh-lay) (1706–1749), an intellectually gifted woman
from the high aristocracy with a passion for science. Inviting Voltaire to live in her
country house at Cirey in Lorraine and becoming his long-time companion (un-
der the eyes of her tolerant husband), Madame du Châtelet studied physics and
mathematics and published scientific articles and translations.
Excluded from the Royal Academy of Sciences because of her gender, Ma-
dame du Châtelet depended on private tutors for instruction and became un-
certain of her ability to make important scientific discoveries. She therefore
concentrated on spreading the ideas of others, and her translation—with an ac-
companying commentary—of Newton’s Principia into French for the first (and
only) time was her greatest work. But she, who had patiently explained Newton’s
complex mathematical proofs to Europe’s foremost philosophe, had no doubt that
women’s limited scientific contributions in the past were due to limited and un-
equal education. She once wrote that if she were a ruler “I would reform an abuse
which cuts off, so to speak, half the human race. I would make women participate
in all the rights of humankind, and above all in those of the intellect.”7
While living at Cirey, Voltaire wrote various works prais-

ing England and popularizing English scientific progress.
Newton, he wrote, was history’s greatest man, for he had used
his genius for the benefit of humanity. “It is,” wrote Voltaire,
“the man who sways our minds by the prevalence of reason
and the native force of truth, not they who reduce mankind to
a state of slavery by force and downright violence . . . that
claims our reverence and admiration.”8 In the true style of the
Enlightenment, Voltaire mixed the glorification of science and
reason with an appeal for better individuals and institutions.
Yet like almost all of the philosophes, Voltaire was a re-
former, not a revolutionary, in social and political matters. He
pessimistically concluded that the best one could hope for in
the way of government was a good monarch, since human
beings “are very rarely worthy to govern themselves.” Nor did
he believe in social and economic equality in human affairs.
The idea of making servants equal to their masters was “ab-
surd and impossible.” The only realizable equality, Voltaire
thought, was that “by which the citizen only depends on the
laws which protect the freedom of the feeble against the am-
bitions of the strong.”9
Voltaire’s philosophical and religious positions were
much more radical. In the tradition of Bayle, his voluminous Madame du Châtelet
writings challenged, often indirectly, the Catholic Church The marquise du Châtelet was fascinated by the new world
and Christian theology at almost every point. Voltaire clearly system of Isaac Newton. She helped spread Newton’s ideas in
believed in God, but his was a distant, deistic God, the great France by translating his Principia and by influencing Voltaire,
Clockmaker who built an orderly universe and then stepped her companion for fifteen years until her death. (Giraudon/Art
aside and let it run. Above all, Voltaire and most of the philo- Resource, NY)
sophes hated all forms of religious intolerance, which they
believed often led to fanaticism and savage, inhuman action.
Simple piety and human kindness—as embodied in Christ’s great command-
ments to “love God and your neighbor as yourself ”—were religion enough, as
may be seen in Voltaire’s famous essay on religion. (See the feature “Listening to
the Past: Voltaire on Religion” on pages 482–483.)
The ultimate strength of the French philosophes lay in their number, dedica-
tion, and organization. The philosophes felt keenly that they were engaged in
a common undertaking that transcended individuals. Their greatest and most
representative intellectual achievement was, quite fittingly, a group effort—the
seventeen-volume Encyclopedia: The Rational Dictionary of the Sciences, the Arts,
and the Crafts, edited by Denis Diderot (duh-nee DEE-duh-roe) (1713–1784) and
Jean le Rond d’Alembert (al-em-BAHR) (1717–1783). From different circles and
with different interests, the two men set out to find coauthors who would examine
the rapidly expanding whole of human knowledge. Even more fundamentally,
they set out to teach people how to think critically and objectively about all
matters. As Diderot said, he wanted the Encyclopedia to “change the general way
of thinking.”10
Not every article was daring or original, but the overall effect was little short of
revolutionary. Science and the industrial arts were exalted, religion and immortal-
ity questioned. Intolerance, legal injustice, and out-of-date social institutions were
openly criticized. The encyclopedists were convinced that greater knowledge
would result in greater human happiness, for knowledge was useful and made pos-
sible economic, social, and political progress. The Encyclopedia was widely read,
especially in less-expensive reprint editions published in Switzerland, and it was

extremely influential in France and throughout western Europe as well. It summed
up the new worldview of the Enlightenment.
Enlightenment ideas did not float on air. A series of

Urban Culture and new institutions and practices emerged in the late sev-
the Public Sphere enteenth and eighteenth centuries to facilitate their
spread. First, the European production and consumption of books grew signifi-
cantly in the eighteenth century. Moreover, the types of books people read changed
dramatically. The proportion of religious and devotional books published in Paris
declined after 1750; history and law held constant; the arts and sciences surged.
Reading more books on many more subjects, the educated public in France
and throughout Europe increasingly approached reading in a new way. The result
reading revolution The transition in was what some scholars have called a “reading revolution.” The old style of read-
Europe from a society where literacy ing in Europe had been centered on a core of sacred texts that inspired reverence
consisted of patriarchal and communal
reading of religious texts to a society
and taught earthly duty and obedience to God. Reading had been patriarchal and
where literacy was commonplace and communal, with the father of the family slowly reading the text aloud and the audi-
reading material was broad and diverse. ence savoring each word. Now reading involved a broader field of books that
constantly changed. Reading became individual and silent, and texts could be
Selling Books, Promoting Ideas

This appealing bookshop with its intriguing ads for the latest works offers to put customers “Under the Protection of Minerva,” the Roman
goddess of wisdom. Large packets of books sit ready for shipment to foreign countries. Book consumption surged in the eighteenth century.
(Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon/Art Resource, NY)
questioned. Subtle but profound, the reading revolution ushered in new ways of
relating to the written word.
Conversation, discussion, and debate also played a critical role in the Enlight-
enment. Paris set the example, and other French and European cities followed. In
Paris a number of talented, wealthy women presided over regular social gatherings
in their elegant private drawing rooms, or salons. There they encouraged the ex- salons Regular social gatherings held by
change of witty, uncensored observations on literature, science, and philosophy. talented and rich Parisian women in
their homes, where philosophes and
Talented hostesses, or salonnières (sal-lon-ee-AIRZ), mediated the public’s free- their followers met to discuss literature,
wheeling examination of Enlightenment thought. As one philosophe described science, and philosophy.
his Enlightenment hostess and her salon:
She could unite the different types, even the most antagonistic, sustaining the
conversation by a well-aimed phrase, animating and guiding it at will. . . . Politics,
religion, philosophy, news: nothing was excluded. Her circle met daily from five to
nine. There one found men of all ranks in the State, the Church, and the Court,
soldiers and foreigners, and the leading writers of the day.11
As this passage suggests, the salons created a cultural realm free from religious
dogma and political censorship. There a diverse but educated public could debate
issues and form its own ideas. Through their invitation lists, salon hostesses brought
together members of the intellectual, economic, and social elites. In such an atmos-
phere, the philosophes, the French nobility, and the prosperous middle classes
intermingled and influenced one another. Thinking critically about almost any
question became fashionable and flourished alongside hopes for human progress
through greater knowledge and enlightened public opinion.
Enlightenment Culture
An actor performs the first reading of a new play by Voltaire at the salon of Madame Geoffrin. Voltaire, then in exile, is
represented by a bust statue. (Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, NY)
Elite women also exercised an unprecedented feminine influence on artistic

taste. Soft pastels, ornate interiors, sentimental portraits, and starry-eyed lovers pro-
tected by hovering cupids were all hallmarks of the style they favored. This style,
rococo A popular style in Europe in the known as rococo (ruh-KOH-koh), was popular throughout Europe in the eigh-
eighteenth century, known for its soft teenth century. It has been argued that feminine influence in the drawing room
pastels, ornate interiors, sentimental
portraits, and starry-eyed lovers protected
went hand in hand with the emergence of polite society and the general attempt
by hovering cupids. to civilize a rough military nobility. Similarly, some philosophes championed
greater rights and expanded education for women, claiming that the position and
treatment of women were the best indicators of a society’s level of civilization and
decency.12 To be sure, for these male philosophes greater rights for women did not
mean equal rights, and the philosophes were not particularly disturbed by the fact
that elite women remained legally subordinate to men in economic and political
affairs. Elite women lacked many rights, but so did most men.
While membership at the salons was restricted to the well-born, the well-
connected, and the exceptionally talented, a number of institutions emerged for
the rest of society. Lending libraries served an important function for people who
could not afford to buy their own books. The coffeehouses that first appeared in
the late seventeenth century became meccas of philosophical discussion. In addi-
tion to these institutions, book clubs, Masonic lodges, and journals all played roles
public sphere An idealized intellectual in the creation of a new public sphere that celebrated open debate informed by
space that emerged in Europe during the critical reason. The public sphere was an idealized space where members of soci-
Enlightenment, where members of
society came together as individuals to
ety came together as individuals to discuss issues relevant to the society, econom-
discuss issues relevant to the society, ics, and politics of the day.
economics, and politics of the day. What of the common people? Did they participate in the Enlightenment?
Enlightenment philosophes did not direct their message to peasants or urban la-
borers. They believed that the masses had no time or talent for philosophical
speculation and that elevating them would be a long, slow, potentially dangerous
process. Deluded by superstitions and driven by violent passions, they thought, the
people were like little children in need of firm parental guidance. French philo-
sophe d’Alembert characteristically made a sharp distinction between “the truly
enlightened public” and “the blind and noisy multitude.”13
There is some evidence, however, that the people were not immune to the
words of the philosophes. At a time of rising literacy, book prices were dropping in
cities and towns, and many philosophical ideas were popularized in cheap pam-
phlets. Moreover, even illiterate people had access to written material, through
the practice of public reading. Although they were barred from salons and aca-
demies, ordinary people were not immune to the new ideas in circulation.
After about 1770 a number of thinkers and writers be-

Late Enlightenment gan to attack the Enlightenment’s faith in reason, prog-
ress, and moderation. The most famous of these was
the Swiss Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), the son of a poor watchmaker who
made his way into the world of Paris salons through his brilliant intellect. Appeal-
ing but neurotic, Rousseau came to believe that his philosophe friends and the
women of the Parisian salons were plotting against him. In the mid-1750s he broke
with them, living thereafter as a lonely outsider with his uneducated common-law
wife and going in his own highly original direction.
Like other Enlightenment thinkers, Rousseau was passionately committed to
individual freedom. Unlike them, however, he attacked rationalism and civiliza-
tion as destroying, rather than liberating, the individual. Warm, spontaneous feel-
ing had to complement and correct cold intellect. Moreover, the basic goodness
of the individual and the unspoiled child had to be protected from the cruel re-
finements of civilization. Rousseau’s ideals greatly influenced the early romantic
movement (see pages 517–518), which rebelled against the culture of the Enlight-
enment in the late eighteenth century.
Reconfirming Montesquieu’s critique of women’s influence in public affairs,
Rousseau called for a rigid division of gender roles. According to Rousseau, women
and men were radically different beings. Destined by nature to assume a passive
role in sexual relations, women should also be passive in social life. Women’s pas-
sion for fashion, attending salons, and pulling the strings of power was unnatural and
had a corrupting effect on both politics and society. Rousseau thus rejected the
sophisticated way of life of Parisian elite women. These views contributed to calls for
privileged women to abandon their stylish corsets and to breast-feed their children.
Rousseau’s contribution to political theory in The Social Contract (1762) was
equally significant. His contribution was based on two fundamental concepts: the
general will and popular sovereignty. According to Rousseau, the general will is general will Rousseau’s concept that
sacred and absolute, reflecting the common interests of all the people, who have the common interest of all the people is
sacred and absolute, and is not
displaced the monarch as the holder of sovereign power. The general will is not necessarily reflected by the will of the
necessarily the will of the majority, however. At times the general will may be the majority but by the interpretation of a
authentic, long-term needs of the people as correctly interpreted by a farseeing farseeing minority.
minority. (The concept has since been used by many dictators who have claimed
that they, rather than some momentary majority of the voters, represent the gen-
eral will.)
As the reading public developed, it joined forces with the philosophes to call
for the autonomy of the printed word. Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), a professor in
East Prussia and the greatest German philosopher of his day, posed the question of
the age when he published a pamphlet in 1784 entitled What Is Enlightenment?
Kant answered, “Sapere Aude! (SAP-eh-ray OW-day) [dare to know] Have courage
to use your own understanding!—that is the motto of enlightenment.” He argued
that if serious thinkers were granted the freedom to exercise their reason publicly
in print, enlightenment would almost surely follow. Kant was no revolutionary; he
also insisted that in their private lives, individuals must obey all laws, no matter
how unreasonable, and should be punished for “impertinent” criticism. Kant thus
tried to reconcile absolute monarchical authority with a critical public sphere.
This balancing act characterized experiments with “enlightened absolutism” in
the eighteenth century.
In recent years, historians have found in the scientific

Race and the revolution and the Enlightenment a crucial turning
Enlightenment point in European ideas about race. A primary catalyst
for new ideas about race was the urge to classify nature, unleashed by the scientific
revolution’s insistence on careful empirical observation. In The System of Nature
(1735) Swedish botanist Carl von Linné argued that nature was organized into a
God-given hierarchy. As scientists developed more elaborate taxonomies of plant
and animal species, they also began to classify humans into hierarchically ordered
“races” and to investigate the origins of race. The Comte de Buffon (komt duh
buh-FAWN) argued that humans originated with one species that then developed
into distinct races due largely to climatic conditions. According to Immanuel Kant,
there were four human races, each of which had derived from an original race of
“white brunette” people.
Using the word race to designate biologically distinct groups of humans, akin
to distinct animal species, was new. Previously, Europeans grouped other peoples
Sec tion Review into “nations” based on their historical, political, and cultural affiliations, rather
than on supposedly innate physical differences. Unsurprisingly, when European
• The Enlightenment brought together thinkers drew up a hierarchical classification of human species, their own “race”
the scientific revolution and a new
worldview that believed that the
was placed at the top. Europeans had long believed they were culturally superior
human mind is capable of progress. to “barbaric” peoples in Africa and, since 1492, the New World. Now emerging
ideas about racial difference taught them they were biologically superior as well.
• The Enlightenment reached its peak
in France with the philosophes, in- These ideas did not go unchallenged. James Beattie responded directly to
cluding Voltaire, who mixed science claims of white superiority by pointing out that Europeans had started out as sav-
and reason with an appeal for improv- age as nonwhites and that many non-European peoples in the Americas, Asia, and
ing humans and institutions, and Africa had achieved high levels of civilization.
ultimately in the group work of the
Encyclopedia, which taught critical
Scholars are only at the beginning of efforts to understand links between En-
thinking in an effort to make possible lightenment ideas about race and its notions of equality, progress, and reason.
economic, social, and political There are clear parallels, though, between the use of science to propagate racial
progress. hierarchies and its use to defend social inequalities between men and women. As
• Enlightenment ideas spread through Rousseau used women’s “natural” passivity to argue for their passive role in society,
the reading revolution and from con- so others used non-Europeans’ “natural” inferiority to defend slavery and colonial
versations and debate by the educated domination. The new powers of science and reason were thus marshaled to imbue
public in salons, which were free from
religious and political censorship.
traditional stereotypes with the force of natural law.
• Salons, book clubs, lodges, journals,
and libraries created a new “public
sphere” where intellectuals could
debate and reason, but did not include
the lower classes, who received second-
The Enlightenment and Absolutism
hand influence from these ideas. What impact did this new way of thinking have on political developments
• Some thinkers began to critique the and monarchical absolutism?
Enlightenment’s faith in reason;
Rousseau, for example, argued for a
How did the Enlightenment influence political developments? To this important
rigid division of gender roles and for
balancing cold intellect with warm, question there is no easy answer. Most Enlightenment thinkers outside of England
spontaneous feeling. and the Netherlands believed that political change could best come from above—
• Some Europeans used science to from the ruler—rather than from below, especially in central and eastern Europe.
create racial hierarchies to defend It was necessary to educate and “enlighten” the monarch, who could then make
slavery and colonial domination of good laws and promote human happiness.
“naturally inferior” races as well as to Many government officials were attracted to and interested in philosophical
enforce social inequalities between
ideas. They were among the best-educated members of society, and their daily
men and women.
involvement in complex affairs of state made them naturally interested in ideas for
improving or reforming human society. Encouraged and instructed by these offi-
cials, some absolutist rulers of the later eighteenth century tried to govern in an
“enlightened” manner. Yet the actual programs and accomplishments of these
rulers varied greatly. It is necessary to examine the evolution of monarchical abso-
lutism at close range before trying to judge the Enlightenment’s effect and the
enlightened absolutism Term coined meaning of what historians have often called the enlightened absolutism of the
by historians to describe the rule of later eighteenth century.
eighteenth-century monarchs who,
without renouncing their own absolute
Enlightenment teachings inspired European rulers in small as well as large
authority, adopted Enlightenment ideals states in the second half of the eighteenth century. Absolutist princes and mon-
of rationalism, progress, and tolerance. archs in several west German and Italian states, as well as in Scandinavia, Spain,
and Portugal, proclaimed themselves more enlightened. A few smaller states were
actually the most successful in making reforms, perhaps because their rulers were
not overwhelmed by the size and complexity of their realms. Denmark, for exam-
ple, carried out extensive and progressive land reform in the 1780s that practically
abolished serfdom and gave Danish peasants secure tenure on their farms. Yet by
far the most influential of the new-style monarchs were in Prussia, Russia, and
Austria, and they deserve primary attention.
The Enlightenment and Absolutism 475
Frederick II (r. 1740–1786), commonly known as

Frederick the Great Frederick the Great, built masterfully on the work of
of Prussia his father, Frederick William I (see page 443). Although
in his youth he embraced culture and literature rather than the crude life of the
barracks, by the time he came to the throne Frederick was determined to use the
splendid army that his father had left him.
Therefore, when Maria Theresa of Austria inherited the Habsburg dominions
upon the death of her father Charles VI, Frederick pounced. He invaded her rich,
mainly German province of Silesia (si-LEE-zhuh) in violation of the Pragmatic
Sanction that had guaranteed her succession. In 1742, as other greedy powers
were falling on her lands in the general European War of the Austrian Succession
(1740–1748), Maria Theresa was forced to cede almost all of Silesia to Prussia (see
Map 17.2 on page 442). In one stroke Prussia had doubled its population to six
million people. Now Prussia unquestionably towered above all the other German
states and stood as a European Great Power.
Though successful in 1742, Frederick had to spend much of his reign fighting
against great odds to save Prussia from total destruction. When the ongoing com-
petition between Britain and France for colonial empire brought another great
conflict in 1756 (see page 497), Maria Theresa fashioned an aggressive alliance
with the leaders of France and Russia. During the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763),
the aim of the alliance was to conquer Prussia and divide up its territory. Despite
invasions from all sides, Frederick fought on with stoic courage. In the end he was
miraculously saved: Peter III came to the Russian throne in 1762 and called off the
attack against Frederick, whom he greatly admired.
The terrible struggle of the Seven Years’ War tempered Frederick’s interest in
territorial expansion and brought him to consider how more humane policies for
his subjects might also strengthen the state. Thus Frederick went beyond a super-
ficial commitment to Enlightenment culture for himself and his circle. He toler-
antly allowed his subjects to believe as they wished in religious and philosophical
matters. He promoted the advancement of knowledge, improving his country’s
schools and permitting scholars to publish their findings. Moreover, Frederick tried
to improve the lives of his subjects more directly. As he wrote his friend Voltaire,
“I must enlighten my people, cultivate their manners and morals, and make them
as happy as human beings can be, or as happy as the means at my disposal permit.”
The legal system and the bureaucracy were Frederick’s primary tools. Prussia’s
laws were simplified, torture of prisoners was abolished, and judges decided cases
quickly and impartially. Prussian officials became famous for their hard work and
honesty. After the Seven Years’ War ended in 1763, Frederick’s government ener-
getically promoted the reconstruction of agriculture and industry in his war-torn
country. Frederick himself set a good example. He worked hard and lived mod-
estly, claiming that he was “only the first servant of the state.” Thus Frederick justi-
fied monarchy in terms of practical results and said nothing of the divine right
of kings.
Frederick’s dedication to high-minded government went only so far, however.
While he condemned serfdom in the abstract, he accepted it in practice and
did not even free the serfs on his own estates. He accepted and extended the privi-
leges of the nobility, who remained the backbone of the army and the entire Prus-
sian state.
Nor did Frederick listen to thinkers like Moses Mendelssohn (MEN-dul-suhn)
(1729–1786), who urged that Jews be given freedom and civil rights. (See the
feature “Individuals in Society: Moses Mendelssohn and the Jewish Enlighten-
ment.”) The vast majority of Jews were confined to tiny, overcrowded ghettos, were
Moses Mendelssohn and the Jewish Enlightenment
I n 1743 a small, humpbacked Jewish boy with a stam-
mer left his poor parents in Dessau (DES-ow) in cen-
tral Germany and walked eighty miles to Berlin, the
convinced that Enlightenment teachings need not be
opposed to Jewish thought and religion. Indeed, he con-
cluded that reason could complement and strengthen
capital of Frederick the Great’s Prussia. According to religion, although each would retain its integrity as a
one story, when the boy reached the Rosenthaler (ROH- separate sphere.† Developing his idea in his first great
zuhn-taw-ler) Gate, the work, “On the Immortality of the Soul” (1767), Men-
only one through which delssohn used the neutral setting of a philosophical dia-
Jews could pass, he told the logue between Socrates and his followers in ancient
inquiring watchman that Greece to argue that the human soul lived forever. In
his name was Moses and refusing to bring religion and critical thinking into con-
that he had come to Berlin flict, he was strongly influenced by contemporary Ger-
“to learn.” The watchman man philosophers who argued similarly on behalf of
laughed and waved him Christianity. He reflected the way the German Enlight-
through. “Go Moses, the enment generally supported established religion, in
sea has opened before contrast to the French Enlightenment, which attacked
you.”* Embracing the En- it. This was the most important difference in Enlighten-
lightenment and seeking ment thinking between the two countries.
a revitalization of Jewish Mendelssohn’s treatise on the human soul captivated
religious thought, Moses the educated German public, which marveled that a
Lavater (right) attempts to convert Mendelssohn did point his Jew could have written a philosophical masterpiece. In
Mendelssohn, in a painting by Moritz people in a new and un- the excitement, a Christian zealot named Lavater chal-
Oppenheim of an imaginary charted direction. lenged Mendelssohn in a pamphlet to accept Chris-
encounter. (Collection of the Judah L. In Berlin, the young tianity or to demonstrate how the Christian faith was not
Magnes Museum, Berkeley)
Mendelssohn turned to a “reasonable.” Replying politely but passionately, the
learned rabbi he had pre- Jewish philosopher affirmed that all his studies had only
viously known in Dessau, studied Jewish law, and eked strengthened him in the faith of his fathers, although he
out a living copying Hebrew manuscripts in a beautiful certainly did not seek to convert anyone not born into
hand. But he was soon fascinated by an intellectual Judaism. Rather, he urged toleration in religious mat-
world that had been closed to him in the Dessau ghetto. ters. He spoke up courageously for his fellow Jews and
There, like most Jews throughout central Europe, he decried the oppression they endured, and he continued
had spoken Yiddish—a mixture of German, Polish, and to do so for the rest of his life.
Hebrew. Now, working mainly on his own, he mastered Orthodox Jew and German philosophe, Moses Men-
German; learned Latin, Greek, French, and English; delssohn serenely combined two very different worlds.
and studied mathematics and Enlightenment philoso- He built a bridge from the ghetto to the dominant cul-
phy. Word of his exceptional abilities spread in Berlin’s ture over which many Jews would pass, including his
Jewish community (1,500 of the city’s 100,000 inhabi- novelist daughter Dorothea and his famous grandson,
tants). He began tutoring the children of a wealthy Jew- the composer Felix Mendelssohn.
ish silk merchant, and he soon became the merchant’s
clerk and later his partner. But his great passion re-
mained the life of the mind and the spirit, which he av-
idly pursued in his off hours. 1. How did Mendelssohn seek to influence Jewish
Gentle and unassuming in his personal life, Men- religious thought in his time?
delssohn was a bold thinker. Reading eagerly in Western 2. How do Mendelssohn’s ideas compare with those of
philosophy since antiquity, he was, as a pious Jew, soon the French Enlightenment?
* H. Kupferberg, The Mendelssohns: Three Generations of † D. Sorkin, Moses Mendelssohn and the Religious Enlighten-
Genius (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1972), p. 3. ment (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), pp. 8 ff.
476
The Enlightenment and Absolutism 477
excluded by law from most business and professional activities, and could be or-
dered out of the kingdom at a moment’s notice.
Catherine the Great of Russia (r. 1762–1796) was one

Catherine the Great of the most remarkable rulers of her age, and the
of Russia French philosophes adored her. Catherine was a Ger-
man princess from Anhalt-Zerbst (AHN-hahlt ZEHR-bst), a totally insignificant
principality sandwiched between Prussia and Saxony. Her father commanded a
regiment of the Prussian army, but her mother was related to the Romanovs of
Russia, and that proved to be Catherine’s chance.
At the age of fifteen she was married to the heir to the Russian throne. When
her husband Peter III came to power in 1762, his decision to withdraw Russian
troops from the coalition against Prussia alienated the army. At the end of six
months Catherine and her conspirators deposed Peter III in a palace revolution,
and the Orlov brothers murdered him. The German princess became empress
of Russia.
Catherine had drunk deeply at the Enlightenment well. Never questioning
the common assumption that absolute monarchy was the best form of govern-
ment, she set out to rule in an enlightened manner. She had three main goals.
First, she worked hard to continue Peter the Great’s effort to bring the culture of
western Europe to backward Russia. To do so, she imported Western architects,
Catherine the Great as Equestrian and Miniature of Count Grigory Grigoryevich Orlov
Catherine conspired with her lover Count Orlov to overthrow her husband Peter III and became empress of Russia. Strongly influenced by the
Enlightenment, she cultivated the French philosophes and instituted moderate reforms, only to reverse them in the aftermath of Pugachev’s
rebellion. This equestrian portrait now hangs above her throne in the palace throne room. (left: Musée des Beaux-Arts, Chartres / The Bridgeman Art Library;
right: State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg)
sculptors, musicians, and intellectuals. She bought masterpieces of Western art in

wholesale lots and patronized the philosophes. An enthusiastic letter writer, she
corresponded extensively with Voltaire and praised him as the “champion of the
human race.” When the French government banned the Encyclopedia, she of-
fered to publish it in St. Petersburg, and she sent money to Diderot when he
needed it. With these and countless similar actions, Catherine won good press in
the West for herself and for her country. Moreover, this intellectual ruler, who
wrote plays and loved good talk, set the tone for the entire Russian nobility. Peter
the Great westernized Russian armies, but it was Catherine who Westernized the
imagination of the Russian nobility.
Catherine’s second goal was domestic reform, and she began her reign with
sincere and ambitious projects. Better laws were a major concern. In 1767 she
appointed a special legislative commission to prepare a new law code. No new
unified code was ever produced, but Catherine did restrict the practice of torture
and allowed limited religious toleration. She also tried to improve education and
strengthen local government. The philosophes applauded these measures and
hoped more would follow.
Such was not the case. In 1773 a common Cossack soldier named Emelian
Pugachev (PEW-gah-chev) sparked a gigantic uprising of serfs, very much as
Stenka Razin had done a century earlier (see page 447). Proclaiming himself the
true tsar, Pugachev issued “decrees” abolishing serfdom, taxes, and army service.
Thousands joined his cause, slaughtering landlords and officials over a vast area of
southwestern Russia. Pugachev’s untrained forces eventually proved no match for
Catherine’s noble-led regular army. Betrayed by his own company, Pugachev was
captured and savagely executed.
Pugachev’s rebellion put an end to any intentions Catherine might have had
about reforming the system. The peasants were clearly dangerous, and her empire
rested on the support of the nobility. After 1775 Catherine gave the nobles abso-
lute control of their serfs. She extended serfdom into new areas, such as Ukraine.
In 1785 she formalized the nobility’s privileged position, freeing nobles forever
from taxes and state service. Under Catherine the Russian nobility attained its
most exalted position, and serfdom entered its most oppressive phase.
Catherine’s third goal was territorial expansion, and in this respect she was
extremely successful. Her armies subjugated the last descendants of the Mongols
and the Crimean Tartars, and began the conquest of the Caucasus (KAW-kuh-
suhs). Her greatest coup by far was the partition of Poland (see Map 18.1). When,
between 1768 and 1772, Catherine’s armies scored unprecedented victories
against the Turks and thereby threatened to disturb the balance of power between
Russia and Austria in eastern Europe, Frederick of Prussia obligingly came for-
ward with a deal. He proposed that Turkey be let off easily and that Prussia, Aus-
tria, and Russia each compensate itself by taking a gigantic slice of the weakly
ruled Polish territory. Catherine jumped at the chance. The first partition of Po-
land took place in 1772. Two more partitions, in 1793 and 1795, gave all three
powers more Polish territory, and the ancient republic of Poland vanished from
the map.
In Austria two talented rulers did manage to introduce

The Austrian major reforms, although traditional power politics was
Habsburgs more important than Enlightenment teachings. One
was the empress Maria Theresa (1740–1780), a remarkable but old-fashioned ab-
solutist. The other was her son, Joseph II (r. 1780–1790), a fascinating individual.
d St. Petersburg
Area of Poland in 1772
K I N G D O M
lan
Fin Austria in 1795
O F of R.
lf ga Prussia in 1795
60˚N Gu ESTONIA ol
V
S W E D E N Russia in 1795
KINGDOM Moscow
Ottoman Empire in 1795
LIVONIA
OF 1772 Year territory seized
Riga
Sea
1772
DENMARK 0 150 300 Km.
Smolensk
ic
AND 0 150 300 Mi.
1772
lt
Vilna
a
NORWAY B Königsberg ˚N
R USSIA 50
Danzig PRUSSIA 1795
1795 N
P O L A N D UKRAINE
1772
Kiev
El b 1795 Dnieper R.
eR
. Warsaw 1793
BRANDENBURG 1793 Lublin
Od
Berlin er
R.
SILESIA Sea
SAXONY 1772
Cracow 1783–1792 of Azov
Dresden GALICIA (from Ottoman Empire)
HOLY
Rh
e
in
ROMAN CRIMEA
R.
BOHEMIA MOLDAVIA
EMPIRE
BESSARABIA
Vienna
Black Sea
FRANCE
AUSTR IAN EM P I R E 40˚E
HUNGARY WALLACHIA
SWISS
R.
CONFEDERATION CROATIA ube
Dan
Venice BOSNIA SERBIA BULGARIA
N
Constantinople 40˚
MONTENEGRO OT TO M A N EMPIRE
10˚E 20˚E 30˚E
Mapping the Past

MAP 18.1 The Partition of Poland and Russia’s Expansion, 1772–1795
By 1700 Poland had become a weak and decentralized republic with an elected king. All important decisions continued to require the unanimous
agreement of all nobles elected to the Polish Diet, which meant that nothing could ever be done to strengthen the state. In 1772 war threatened
between Russia and Austria over Russian gains from the Ottoman Empire. To satisfy desires for expansion without fighting, Prussia’s Frederick the
Great proposed that parts of Poland be divided among Austria, Prussia, and Russia. In 1793 and 1795 the three powers partitioned the remainder
of the country. [1] Why was Poland vulnerable to partition in the latter half of the eighteenth century? What does it say about European politics
at the time that a country could simply cease to exist on the map? Could that happen today? [2] Of the three powers that divided the kingdom
of Poland, which benefited the most? How did the partition affect the geographical boundaries of each state, and what was the significance?
[3] Which border with the former Poland remained unchanged? Why do you think this was the case?
For an earlier generation of historians, he was the “revolutionary emperor,” a tragic

hero whose lofty reforms were undone by the landowning nobility he dared to
challenge. More recent scholarship has revised this romantic interpretation and
has stressed how Joseph II continued the state-building work of his mother.
Emerging from the long War of the Austrian Succession in 1748 with the seri-
ous loss of Silesia, Maria Theresa and her closest ministers were determined to
introduce reforms that would make the state stronger and more efficient. Three
aspects of these reforms were most important. First, Maria Theresa introduced
measures aimed at limiting the papacy’s political influence in her realm. Second,
Sec tion Review a whole series of administrative reforms strengthened the central bureau-
cracy, smoothed out some provincial differences, and revamped the tax sys-
• Frederick the Great of Prussia struggled mili- tem, taxing even the lands of nobles without special exemptions. Third, the
tarily during the Seven Years’ War but also
promoted Enlightenment policies to improve
government sought to improve the lot of the agricultural population, cau-
the lives of his subjects. tiously reducing the power of lords over their hereditary serfs and their par-
tially free peasant tenants.
• Moses Mendelssohn, an orthodox Jew and
German philosophe who believed reason and Coregent with his mother from 1765 onward and a strong supporter of
religion could strengthen each other, pro- change, Joseph II moved forward rapidly when he came to the throne in
moted religious toleration and received the 1780. Most notably, Joseph abolished serfdom in 1781, and in 1789 he de-
admiration of the educated German public. creed that all peasant labor obligations be converted into cash payments.
• Catherine the Great of Russia enjoyed En- This measure was violently rejected not only by the nobility but also by the
lightenment ideas and hosted Western intel- peasants it was intended to help, because they lacked the necessary cash.
lectuals and artists while attempting domestic
reform, but after a peasant-led revolt, instead
When a disillusioned Joseph died prematurely at forty-nine, the entire Habs-
increased the power of the nobility. burg empire was in turmoil. His brother Leopold II (r. 1790–1792) canceled
Joseph’s radical edicts in order to re-establish order. Peasants once again
• Catherine focused on territorial expansion,
defeating the Turks and accepting the division were required to do forced labor for their lords.
of Polish territory between Russia, Austria, and The eastern European absolutists of the later eighteenth century com-
Prussia. bined old-fashioned state-building with the culture and critical thinking of
• Maria Theresa enacted Enlightenment poli- the Enlightenment. In doing so, they succeeded in expanding the role of the
cies to limit papal influence, strengthen bu- state in the life of society. They perfected bureaucratic machines that were
reaucracy, and improve conditions for the to prove surprisingly adaptive and capable of enduring into the twentieth
peasants.
century. Their failure to implement policies we would recognize as humane
• Her son Joseph II went further and abolished and enlightened—such as abolishing serfdom—may reveal inherent limita-
serfdom in favor of cash payments, but both
tions in Enlightenment thinking about equality and social justice, rather
the nobles and the peasants rejected his re-
forms and his brother and successor Leopold II than in their execution of an Enlightenment program. The fact that leading
re-established serfdom. philosophes supported rather than criticized Eastern rulers’ policies suggests
some of the blinders of the era.
Chapter Review
What was revolutionary in the new attitudes toward the natural world?
(page 459)
Key Terms
Decisive breakthroughs in astronomy and physics in the seventeenth century demol- natural philosophy (p. 459)
ished the imposing medieval synthesis of Aristotelian philosophy and Christian theol-
Copernican hypothesis (p. 460)
ogy. These developments had only limited practical consequences at the time, but the
impact of new scientific knowledge on intellectual life was enormous. The emergence experimental method (p. 461)
of modern science was a distinctive characteristic of Western civilization and became law of inertia (p. 461)
a key element of Western identity. During the eighteenth century scientific thought law of universal gravitation (p. 463)
fostered new ideas about racial differences and provided justifications for belief in
Western superiority. empiricism (p. 464)
Cartesian dualism (p. 464)
scientific community (p. 464)
How did the new worldview affect the way people thought about society and Enlightenment (p. 466)
human relations? (page 466)
rationalism (p. 466)
Interpreting scientific findings and Newtonian laws in a manner that was both anti- skepticism (p. 466)
tradition and antireligion, Enlightenment philosophes extolled the superiority of ra-
tional, critical thinking. This new method, they believed, promised not just increased tabula rasa (p. 467)
knowledge but even the discovery of the fundamental laws of human society. Although
Chapter Review 481
they reached different conclusions when they turned to social and political realities, philosophes (p. 467)
they did stimulate absolute monarchs to apply reason to statecraft and the search for
useful reforms. Above all, the philosophes succeeded in shaping an emerging public separation of powers (p. 468)
opinion and spreading their radically new worldview. reading revolution (p. 470)
salons (p. 471)
rococo (p. 472)
What impact did this new way of thinking have on political developments and
monarchical absolutism? (page 474) public sphere (p. 472)
general will (p. 473)
The ideas of the Enlightenment were an inspiration for monarchs, particularly abso-
lutist rulers in central and eastern Europe who saw in them important tools for reform- enlightened absolutism (p. 474)
ing and rationalizing their governments. Their primary goal was to strengthen their
states and increase the efficiency of their bureaucracies and armies. Enlightened abso-
lutists believed that these reforms would ultimately improve the lot of ordinary people,
but this was not their chief concern. With few exceptions, they did not question the
institution of serfdom. The fact that leading philosophes supported rather than criti-
cized Eastern rulers’ policies suggests some of the limitations of the era.
Notes
1. H. Butterfield, The Origins of Modern Science (New York: Macmillan, 1951), p. viii.
2. Quoted in A. G. R. Smith, Science and Society in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972), p. 97.
3. Quoted in Butterfield, The Origins of Modern Science, p. 47.
4. Ibid., p. 120.
5. L. Schiebinger, The Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989), p. 2.
6. Jacqueline Broad, Women Philosophers of the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge
7. Schiebinger, The Mind Has No Sex? p. 64.
8. Quoted in L. M. Marsak, ed., The Enlightenment (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1972),
p. 56.
9. Quoted in G. L. Mosse et al., eds., Europe in Review (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1964),
p. 156.
10. Quoted in P. Gay, “The Unity of the Enlightenment,” History 3 (1960): 25.
11. Quoted in G. P. Gooch, Catherine the Great and Other Studies (Hamden, Conn.: Archon
Books, 1966), p. 149.
12. See E. Fox-Genovese, “Women in the Enlightenment,” in Becoming Visible: Women in
European History, 2d ed., ed. R. Bridenthal, C. Koonz, and S. Stuard (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1987), esp. pp. 252–259, 263–265.
13. Jean Le Rond d’Alembert, Eloges lus dans les séances publiques de l’Académie française
(Paris, 1779), p. ix, quoted in Mona Ozouf, “ ‘Public Opinion’ at the End of the Old Re-
gime,” The Journal of Modern History 60, Supplement: Rethinking French Politics in 1788
(September 1988), p. S9.

Voltaire on Religion
V oltaire was the most renowned and probably the most

influential of the French philosophes. His biting satirical
novel Candide (1759) is still widely assigned in college
courses, and his witty yet serious Philosophical Dictionary
remains a source of pleasure and stimulation. The Dictionary
consists of a series of essays on topics ranging from Adam to
Zoroaster, from certainty to circumcision. The following pas-
sage is taken from the essay on religion. In it Voltaire describes
being deep in meditation when a genie transported him to a
desert filled with the bones of those who had been killed be-
cause of their religious practices or beliefs. The genie then led
him to the “heroes of humanity, who tried to banish violence
and plunder from the world.”
[At last] I saw a man with a gentle, simple face, An impish Voltaire, by the French sculptor
who seemed to me to be about thirty-five years old. Houdon. (Courtesy of Board of Trustees of the
From afar he looked with compassion upon those Victoria & Albert Museum)
piles of whitened bones, through which I had been

led to reach the sage’s dwelling place. I was aston-
ished to find his feet swollen and bleeding, his
hands likewise, his side pierced, and his ribs laid “Not at all; I told them simply: ‘Love God with
bare by the cut of the lash. “Good God!” I said to all your heart and your neighbor as yourself, for that
him, “is it possible for a just man, a sage, to be in is the whole of mankind’s duty.’ Judge yourself if
this state? I have just seen one who was treated in a this precept is not as old as the universe; judge
very hateful way, but there is no comparison be- yourself if I brought them a new religion.” . . .
tween his torture and yours. Wicked priests and “But did you say nothing, do nothing that could
wicked judges poisoned him; is it by priests and serve them as a pretext?”
judges that you were so cruelly assassinated?” “To the wicked everything serves as pretext.”
With great courtesy he answered, “Yes.” “Did you not say once that you were come not
“And who were these monsters?” to bring peace, but a sword?”
“They were hypocrites.” “It was a scribe’s error; I told them that I brought
“Ah! that says everything; I understand by that peace and not a sword. I never wrote anything;
one word that they would have condemned you to what I said can have been changed without evil
the cruelest punishment. Had you then proved to intention.”
them, as Socrates did, that the Moon was not a god- “You did not then contribute in any way by your
dess, and that Mercury was not a god?” teaching, either badly reported or badly interpreted,
“No, it was not a question of planets. My coun- to those frightful piles of bones which I saw on my
trymen did not even know what a planet was; they way to consult with you?”
were all arrant ignoramuses. Their superstitions “I have only looked with horror upon those who
were quite different from those of the Greeks.” have made themselves guilty of all these murders.”
“Then you wanted to teach them a new . . . [Finally] I asked him to tell me in what true
religion?” religion consisted.
482
“Have I not already told you? Love God and Questions for Analysis
your neighbor as yourself.” 1. Who is the man that Voltaire meets in this
“Is it necessary for me to take sides either for the passage? Why did the writer decide to leave this
Greek Orthodox Church or the Roman Catholic?” person unnamed?
“When I was in the world I never made any dif- 2. What is Voltaire’s message?
ference between the Jew and the Samaritan.” 3. If a person today thought and wrote like Vol-
“Well, if that is so, I take you for my only mas- taire, would that person be called a defender or
ter.” Then he made a sign with his head that filled a destroyer of Christianity? Why?
me with peace. The vision disappeared, and I was
left with a clear conscience. Source: F. M. Arouet de Voltaire, Oeuvres complètes, vol. 8,
trans. J. McKay (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1875), pp. 188–190.
483
CHAPTER 19
The Expansion of Europe in
the Eighteenth
Century
Chapter Preview
Agriculture and the Land
What were the causes and effects of the
agricultural revolution, and what
nations led the way in these
developments?
The Beginning of the Population Explosion

Why did European population rise
dramatically in the eighteenth century?
Cottage Industry and Urban Guilds

What is cottage industry, and how did it
contribute to Europe’s economic and
social transformation?
Building the Global Economy

How did colonial markets boost
Europe’s economic and social
development, and what conflicts and
adversity did world trade entail?
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY: Olaudah Equiano

The East India Dock, London (detail), by Samuel Scott, a painting
IMAGES IN SOCIETY: London: The Remaking of a
Great City infused with the spirit of maritime expansion. (© Board of Trustees of the
Victoria & Albert Museum)
LISTENING TO THE PAST: The Debate over the Guilds
484
Agriculture and the Land 485
T he world of absolutism and aristocracy, a combination of raw power and

elegant refinement, was a world apart from that of the common people. For
most people in the eighteenth century, life remained a struggle with poverty and
uncertainty, with the landlord and the tax collector. In 1700 peasants on the land
and artisans in their shops lived little better than their ancestors had in the Middle
Ages. Only in science and thought, and there only among intellectual elites and
their followers, had Western society succeeded in going beyond the great achieve-
ments of the High Middle Ages, achievements that in turn owed much to Greece
and Rome.
Everyday life was a struggle because European societies still could not produce
very much by modern standards. Ordinary men and women might work like their
beasts in the fields, but there was seldom enough good food, warm clothing, and
decent housing. Life went on; history went on. The wars of religion ravaged Ger-
many in the seventeenth century; Russia rose to become a Great Power; the state
of Poland disappeared; monarchs and nobles continually jockeyed for power and
wealth. In 1700 the idea of progress, of substantial and ongoing improvement in
the lives of great numbers of people, was still the dream of a small elite in fashion-
able salons.
Yet the economic basis of European life was beginning to change. In the
course of the eighteenth century the European economy emerged from the long
crisis of the seventeenth century, responded to challenges, and began to expand
once again. Population resumed its growth, while colonial empires developed and
colonial elites prospered. Some areas were more fortunate than others. The rising
Atlantic powers—Holland, France, and above all England—and their colonies led
the way. The expansion of agriculture, industry, trade, and population marked the
beginning of a surge comparable to that of the eleventh- and twelfth-century
springtime of European civilization. But this time, broadly based expansion was
not cut short. This time the response to new challenges led toward one of the most
influential developments in human history, the Industrial Revolution, considered
in Chapter 22.
Agriculture and the Land

What were the causes and effects of the agricultural revolution, and what
nations led the way in these developments?
At the end of the seventeenth century the economy of Europe was agrarian. With
the possible exception of Holland, at least 80 percent of the people of all western
European countries drew their livelihoods from agriculture. In eastern Europe the
percentage was considerably higher. Yet even in a rich agricultural region such
as the Po Valley in northern Italy, every bushel of wheat sown yielded on average
only five or six bushels of grain at harvest. By modern standards output was distress-
ingly low.
In most regions of Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, climatic
conditions produced poor or disastrous harvests every eight or nine years. Unbal-
anced and inadequate food in famine years made people extremely susceptible to
illnesses such as influenza and smallpox. In famine years the number of deaths
soared far above normal. A third of a village’s population might disappear in a year
or two. But new developments in agricultural technology and methods gradually
brought an end to the ravages of hunger in western Europe.
486 Chapter 19 The Expansion of Europe in the Eighteenth Century
One way for European peasants to improve their diffi-

The Agricultural cult position was to take land from those who owned it
Revolution but did no labor. Yet the social and political conditions
that sustained the ruling elites were ancient and deeply rooted, and powerful
forces stood ready to crush protest. Only with the coming of the French Revolu-
tion were European peasants, mainly in France, able to improve their position by
means of radical mass action.
Technological progress offered another possibility. If peasants (and their noble
landlords) could eliminate the need to leave part of the land fallow, or unplanted,
in order to restore fertility to the soil, they could greatly increase the land under
cultivation. So remarkable were the possibilities and the results that historians
have often spoken of the progressive elimination of the fallow, which occurred
agricultural revolution The period gradually throughout Europe from the mid-seventeenth century on, as an agricul-
in Europe from the mid-seventeenth tural revolution. This revolution, which took longer than historians used to be-
century on, during which great
agricultural progress was made and the
lieve, was a great milestone in human development.
fallow was gradually eliminated. Because grain crops exhaust the soil and make fallowing necessary, the secret
to eliminating the fallow lies in alternating grain with nitrogen-storing crops. The
most important of these soil-reviving crops are peas and beans, root crops such as
turnips and potatoes, and clovers and grasses. As the eighteenth century went on,
the number of crops that were systematically rotated grew. New patterns of orga-
nization allowed some farmers to develop increasingly sophisticated patterns of
crop rotation The system by which crop rotation to suit different kinds of soils. For example, farmers in French Flan-
farmers rotated the types of crops grown ders near Lille in the late eighteenth century used a ten-year rotation, alternating
in each field so as to replenish the soil of
its natural resources.
a number of grain, root, and hay crops in a given field on a ten-year schedule.
Continual experimentation led to more scientific farming.
Improvements in farming had multiple effects. The new crops made ideal feed
for animals, and because peasants and larger farmers had more fodder, hay, and
enclosure The movement to fence in root crops for the winter months, they could build up their herds of cattle and
fields in order to farm more effectively. sheep. More animals meant more meat and better diets. More animals also meant
more manure for fertilizer and therefore more grain for bread
and porridge.
Advocates of the new crop rotations, who included an emerg-
ing group of experimental scientists, some government officials,
and a few big landowners, believed that new methods were
scarcely possible within the traditional framework of open fields
and common rights. A farmer who wanted to experiment with
new methods would have to get all the landholders in a village to
agree to the plan. Advocates of improvement argued that inno-
vating agriculturalists needed to enclose and consolidate their
scattered holdings into compact, fenced-in fields in order to farm
more effectively. In doing so, the innovators also needed to en-
close their individual shares of the natural pasture, the common.
According to proponents of this movement, known as enclosure,
Enclosure in Streatley, Berkshire County, England

This map shows the results of enclosure in early-nineteenth-century Streatley,
a village ten miles west of Reading on the River Thames. The area marked
in yellow was the enclosed territory, appropriated mostly by a few large
landowners and the city of Reading. The legend provides a detailed list of
land ownership, including references to “old inclosures.” (Courtesy, Berkshire Record
Office, Ref # Streatley (1817), MRI 256)
Chronology
a revolution in village life and organization was the necessary ca. 1650–1790 Growth of Atlantic economy
price of technical progress.
That price seemed too high to many poor rural people ca. 1650–1850 Agricultural improvement and
revolution
who had small, inadequate holdings or very little land at all.
Traditional rights were precious to these poor peasants. They 1651–1663 British Navigation Acts
used commonly held pastureland to graze livestock, and 1652–1674 Anglo-Dutch wars; rise of British
marsh or moor lands outside the village as a source for fire- mercantilism
wood, berries, and other foraged goods that could make the ca. 1690–1790 Enlightenment
difference between survival and famine in harsh times. Thus
when the small landholders and the village poor could ef- 1700–1790 Height of Atlantic slave trade;
expansion of rural industry in Europe
fectively oppose the enclosure of the open fields and the
common lands, they did so. Moreover, in many countries 1701–1713 War of the Spanish Succession
they found allies among the larger, predominately noble 1701–1763 Mercantilist wars of empire
landowners who were also wary of enclosure because it re-
1720–1722 Last of bubonic plague in Europe
quired large investments and posed risks for them as well.
The old system of unenclosed fields and the new system 1720–1789 Growth of European population
of continuous rotation coexisted in Europe for a long time. 1740–1748 War of the Austrian Succession
Open fields could be found in much of France and Ger- 1750–1790 Rise of economic liberalism
many in the early years of the nineteenth century because
peasants there had successfully opposed efforts to introduce 1756–1763 Seven Years’ War
the new techniques in the late eighteenth century. Until the 1759 Fall of Quebec
end of the eighteenth century, the new system was exten- 1760–1815 Height of parliamentary enclosure
sively adopted only in the Low Countries and England. in England
1776 Smith, Wealth of Nations
The new methods of the agricul- 1807 British slave trade abolished
The Leadership of tural revolution originated in the
the Low Countries Low Countries. One reason for
and England early Dutch leadership in farm-
ing was that the area was one of the most densely populated in Europe. The Dutch
were forced at an early date to seek maximum yields from their land and to in-
crease the cultivated area through the steady draining of marshes and swamps.
As the urban population of Amsterdam grew with its rise as an international trad-
ing hub, Dutch peasants found a huge market for their surplus crops. Each agri-
cultural region specialized in what it did best. Thus the Low Countries became
“the Mecca of foreign agricultural experts who came . . . to see Flemish agricul-
ture with their own eyes, to write about it and to propagate its methods in their
home lands.”1
The English were the best students. In the first half of the seventeenth century
Dutch experts made a great contribution to draining the extensive marshes, or
fens, of wet and rainy England. Swampy wilderness was converted into thousands
of acres of some of the most fertile land in England.
Jethro Tull (1674–1741), part crank and part genius, was an important English
innovator. A true son of the early Enlightenment, Tull adopted a critical attitude
toward accepted ideas about farming and tried to develop better methods through
empirical research. He was especially enthusiastic about using horses, rather than
slower-moving oxen, for plowing. He also advocated sowing seed with drilling
equipment rather than scattering it by hand. Drilling distributed seed in an even
manner and at the proper depth. Selective breeding of ordinary livestock was an-
other marked improvement over the haphazard old pattern.
By the mid-eighteenth century English agriculture was in the process of a long
but radical transformation. The eventual result was that by 1870 English farmers
proletarianization The transformation were producing 300 percent more food than they had produced in 1700, although
of large numbers of small peasant the number of people working the land had increased by only 14 percent. This
farmers into landless rural wage earners.
great surge of agricultural production provided food for England’s rapidly growing
urban population. Growth in production was achieved in part by land enclosures.
Sec tion Review About half the farmland in England was enclosed through private initiatives prior
to 1700; in the eighteenth century, a series of acts of Parliament enclosed most of
• European economies were agrarian;
low crop yields in years of poor climate the remaining common land.
resulted in famine, disease, and death. The eighteenth-century enclosure movement marked the completion of two
• The agricultural revolution involved major historical developments in England—the rise of market-oriented estate ag-
the gradual elimination of the practice riculture and the emergence of a landless rural proletariat. By 1815 a tiny minority
of leaving land fallow and the develop- of wealthy English (and Scottish) landowners held most of the land and pursued
ment of crop rotation patterns that profits aggressively, leasing their holdings to middle-sized farmers, who relied on
allowed crops to restore nutrients to landless laborers for their workforce. These landless laborers usually worked from
the soil.
dawn to dusk, six days a week, all year long. Moreover, landless laborers had lost
• Enclosure meant fencing in fields to that bit of independence and self-respect that common rights had provided and
farm more effectively, but most peasants
opposed it and only the Low Countries were completely dependent on cash wages. In no other European country had
and England used it extensively. this proletarianization (proh-le-TAIR-ee-uh-nize-ay-shun)—this transformation
• Enclosure and the new methods of of large numbers of small peasant farmers into landless rural wage earners—gone
farming increased production but led to so far. And England’s village poor found the cost of change heavy and unjust.
an estate agricultural system and prole-
tarianization, changing peasant farmers
into landless laborers.
The Beginning of the Population Explosion

Why did European population rise dramatically in the
eighteenth century?
Another factor that affected the existing order of life and forced economic changes
in the eighteenth century was the beginning of the “population explosion.” Explo-
sive growth continued in Europe until the twentieth century, by which time it was
affecting non-Western areas of the globe. What were the causes of this new popula-
tion growth?
A common misperception holds that the population of Europe was always ris-
ing quickly. On the contrary, until 1700 the total population of Europe grew slowly
much of the time, and it followed an irregular cyclical pattern (see Figure 19.1).
The population dipped after 1350 as a result of the Black Death and, after recover-
ing, population growth slowed and dipped again in the seventeenth century. Fam-
ine, epidemic disease, and war ravaged Europe during
that century, as we have seen. There were, of course,
some exceptions. Areas such as Russia and colonial New
10
England, where there was a great deal of frontier to be
settled, experienced population growth.
8
Population (in millions)
4 FIGURE 19.1 The Growth of Population in England,

1000–1800
2 England is a good example of both the uneven increase of European
population before 1700 and the third great surge of growth, which
began in the eighteenth century. (Source: “Long-Term Population Trends in
1000 1100 1200 1300 1400 1500 1600 1700 1800 England and Wales, 1000–1800,” from E. A. Wrigley, Population and History. Copyright
© 1969. Reprinted by permission of the author.)
The Beginning of the Population Explosion 489
In the eighteenth century the population of Europe

began to grow markedly. This increase in numbers oc- 36
Russia
curred in all areas of Europe, western and eastern, north-
ern and southern, dynamic and stagnant. Growth was 25 France
especially dramatic after about 1750 (see Figure 19.2).
20
What caused this population growth? In some areas
19
women had more babies than before because new op-
18
portunities for employment in rural industry allowed Italy
17
them to marry at an earlier age. But the basic cause for
16
Europe as a whole was a decline in mortality—fewer
15
Population (in millions)

deaths. 14
The bubonic plague mysteriously disappeared. Fol- 13
lowing the Black Death in the fourteenth century, 12
plagues had remained part of the European experience, 11
striking again and again with savage force, particularly in 10
towns. As late as 1720 a ship from Syria and the Levant 9 England
brought the disease to Marseilles, killing up to one hun- 8
dred thousand in the city and surrounding region. By 7
1722 the epidemic had passed, and that was the last time 6
plague fell on western and central Europe. Exactly why 5
Ireland
plague disappeared is unknown. Stricter measures of 4
quarantine in Mediterranean ports and along the Aus- 3 Bohemia
trian border with Turkey helped by carefully isolating hu- 2 Sweden
Silesia
man carriers of plague. Chance and plain good luck were 1 East Prussia
probably just as important.
Advances in medical knowledge did not contribute 1700 1725 1750 1775 1800
much to reducing the death rate in the eighteenth cen-
tury. The most important advance in preventive medi- FIGURE 19.2 The Increase of Population in Europe in
cine in this period was inoculation against smallpox, and the Eighteenth Century
this great improvement was long confined mainly to Eng- France’s large population continued to support French political and
land, probably doing little to reduce deaths throughout intellectual leadership. Russia emerged as Europe’s most populous state
Europe until the latter part of the century. However, im- because natural increase was complemented by growth from territorial
provements in the water supply and sewerage, which expansion.
were frequently promoted by strong absolutist monar-
chies, resulted in somewhat better public health and helped reduce such diseases
as typhoid and typhus in some urban areas of western Europe. Improvements in
water supply and the drainage of swamps also reduced Europe’s large insect popu- Sec tion Review
lation. Flies and mosquitoes played a major role in spreading diseases, especially
those striking children and young adults. Thus early public health measures • The European population fell in the
seventeenth century from famine,
helped the decline in mortality that began with the disappearance of plague and disease, and war, but in the eighteenth
continued into the early nineteenth century. century it began to grow steadily,
Human beings also became more successful in their efforts to safeguard the primarily due to a decline in mortality.
supply of food. The eighteenth century was a time of considerable canal and road • The disappearance of epidemic dis-
building in western Europe. These advances in transportation, which were also ease and improvements in water
among the more positive aspects of strong absolutist states, lessened the impact of supply and sewerage contributed to
local crop failure and famine. Emergency supplies could be brought in, and local- improved public health.
ized starvation became less frequent. Wars became more gentlemanly and less • Swamp drainage decreased the insect
destructive than in the seventeenth century and spread fewer epidemics. New population and thus the diseases they
caused; improved methods of food
foods, particularly the potato from South America, were introduced. In short, storage and transportation as well as
population grew in the eighteenth century primarily because years of abnormal less destructive warfare meant fewer
death rates were less catastrophic. Famines, epidemics, and wars continued to oc- deaths.
cur, but their severity moderated.
Cottage Industry and Urban Guilds

What is cottage industry, and how did it contribute to Europe’s economic
and social transformation?
The growth of population increased the number of rural workers with little or no
land, and this in turn contributed to the development of industry in rural areas.
The poor in the countryside increasingly needed to supplement their agricultural
earnings with other types of work, and urban capitalists were eager to employ
cottage industry Domestic industry; them, often at lower wages than urban workers were paid. Cottage industry, which
a stage of rural industrial development consisted of manufacturing with hand tools in peasant cottages and work sheds,
with wage workers and hand tools that
preceded the emergence of large-scale
grew markedly in the eighteenth century and became a crucial feature of the Eu-
factory industry. ropean economy.
Craft guilds (gildz) continued to dominate production in towns and cities,
providing their masters with economic privileges as well as a social identity. Those
excluded from guild membership—women, day laborers, Jews, and foreigners—
worked on the margins of the urban economy. Critics attacked the guilds in the
second half of the eighteenth century as outmoded institutions that obstructed
technical progress and innovation. Until recently, most historians repeated that
view. An ongoing reassessment of guilds now emphasizes their ability to adapt to
changing economic circumstances.
Cottage industry was often organized through the

putting-out system The system of
The Putting-Out putting-out system. The two main participants in the
rural industry in the eighteenth century System putting-out system were the merchant capitalist and
in which a merchant loaned raw
materials to cottage workers who
the rural worker. The merchant loaned, or “put out,” raw materials to cottage
processed them and returned the workers who processed the raw materials in their own homes and returned the
finished products to the merchant. finished products to the merchant. There were many variations on this basic rela-
tionship. Sometimes rural workers bought their own raw materials and worked as
independent producers before they sold to the merchant. Sometimes whole fami-
lies were involved in domestic industry; at other times the tasks were closely associ-
ated with one gender. Sometimes several workers toiled together to perform a
complicated process in a workshop outside the home.
As industries grew in scale and complexity, production was often broken into
many stages. For example, a merchant would provide raw wool to one group of
workers for spinning into thread. He would then pass the thread to another group
of workers to be bleached, to another for dying, and to another for weaving into
cloth. The merchant paid outworkers by the piece and proceeded to sell the fin-
ished product to regional, national, or international markets.
The putting-out system grew because it had competitive advantages. Labor
costs were cheaper in the countryside, where underemployed peasants were will-
ing to work for less than their guild counterparts. Because they did not operate
within guild guidelines, merchants and workers were able to experiment with pro-
cedures as they saw fit. While the goods that non-guild workers produced were not
of exceptional quality, they were acceptable for everyday use. Textiles; all manner
of knives, forks, and housewares; buttons and gloves; and clocks could be pro-
duced quite satisfactorily in the countryside.
Rural manufacturing did not spread across Europe at an even rate. It devel-
oped most successfully in England, particularly for the spinning and weaving of
woolen cloth. By 1500 half of England’s textiles were being produced in the coun-
Cottage Industry and Urban Guilds 491
tryside. By 1700 English industry was generally more rural than urban and heavily
reliant on the putting-out system. Most continental countries, with the exception
of Flanders and the Netherlands, developed rural industry more slowly. The latter
part of the eighteenth century witnessed a remarkable expansion of rural industry
in certain densely populated regions of continental Europe (see Map 19.1).
Until the nineteenth century, the industry that em-

The Textile Industry ployed the most people in Europe was textiles. The
making of linen, woolen, and eventually cotton cloth
was the typical activity of cottage workers engaged in the putting-out system. A
look inside the cottage of the English weaver illustrates a way of life as well as an
economic system.
Mapping the Past

MAP 19.1 Industry and Population in Eighteenth-Century Europe
The growth of cottage manufacturing in rural areas helped country people increase their income and contributed to population growth. The
putting-out system began in England, and much of the work was in the textile industry. Cottage industry was also strong in the Low Countries—
modern-day Belgium and Holland. [1] What types of textiles were produced in Europe? How would you account for the distribution of each
type of cloth across Europe? [2] What was the relationship between population density and the growth of textile production? Was this a fixed or
variable relationship? What geographic characteristics seem to have played a role in encouraging this industry? [3] Did metal production draw
on different demographic and geographic conditions? Why do you think this was the case?
5°W 0° 5°E 10°E 15°E 20°E 25°E

Edinburgh
Linen
a Persons per square mile
North Sea Se More than 100
c
IRELAND lti 50 to 100
DENMARK Ba
55°N
Fewer than 50
Dublin 0 100 200 Km.
Wool Wool Danzig Textile production
0 100 200 Mi. Metal production
Hamburg
Elb PRUSSIA Wool Main textile produced
Birmingham Norwich eR
Wool THE .
ENGLAND NETHERLANDS POLAND
Amsterdam Warsaw
Linen Wool Berlin Vis
Bristol Od t
Wool London HOLY ROMAN er ul
aR
EMPIRE
R.
Ghent Antwerp
.
Cologne Leipzig
Linen Brussels Breslau
SILESIA Wool
Lille Wool Liège
50°N
Frankfurt Linen Wool
Cotton
Rouen Wool Prague Linen Kraków
Se
in
eR
.
R.
Linen Wool Nuremberg

ine
Silk Paris N
Linen AUSTRIA
Rh
Da n u
Strasbourg Augsburg be
. R. Vienna
Nantes
Loi re R
Wool Pest
Cotton Buda
FRANCE SWITZ.
AT L A N T I C D r av a .
R HUNGARY
OCEAN Lyons
Silk Milan
Bordeaux Sav 45°N
Ga Grenoble a R.
Turin Wool Venice
ro Po R. Silk
R.
nn
Rhône
Wool Genoa
Ad
e
Bologna
R.
OTTOMAN
ria
Toulouse Silk
Wool ic EMPIRE
t
Florence Se
Marseilles a
SPAIN Leghorn
The Weaver’s Repose

This painting by Decker Cornelis Gerritz
(1594–1637) captures the pleasure of
release from long hours of toil in
cottage industry. The loom realistically
dominates the cramped living space
and the family’s modest possessions.
(Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels.
Copyright A.C.I.)
The rural worker lived in a

small cottage with tiny windows
and little space. Indeed, the work-
er’s cottage was often a single
room that served as workshop,
kitchen, and bedroom. There
were only a few pieces of furni-
ture, of which the weaver’s loom
was by far the largest and most
important.
Handloom weaving was a
family enterprise. All members of
the family helped in the work, so
that “every person from seven to eighty (who retained their sight and who could
move their hands) could earn their bread,” as one eighteenth-century English ob-
server put it.2 Operating the loom was considered a man’s job, reserved for the
male head of the family. Women and children worked at auxiliary tasks, such as
winding threads on bobbins and mounting the threads on the frame.
There was always a serious imbalance in textile manufacture before mechani-
zation: the work of four or five spinners was needed to keep one weaver steadily
employed. Since the weaver’s family usually could not produce enough thread,
alternate sources of labor were needed. Merchants turned to the wives and daugh-
ters of agricultural workers, who took on spinning work in their spare time. Many
widows and single women also became “spinsters,” so many in fact that the word
became a synonym for an unmarried woman. (In other parts of Europe, such as
the Rhineland, spinning employed whole families and was not reserved for
women.) As the industry expanded and merchants covered ever greater distances
in search of workers, they sometimes turned to local shopkeepers to manage the
spinners in their villages.
Conditions were particularly hard for female workers. While men could earn
decent wages through long hours of arduous labor, women’s wages were always
terribly low. In the Yorkshire wool industry, a male wool comber earned a good
wage of twelve shillings or more a week, while a spinner could hope for only three-
and-a-half shillings.3 A single or widowed spinner faced a desperate struggle against
poverty. Any period of illness or unemployment could spell disaster for her and
any dependent children.
Relations between workers and employers were often marked by sharp con-
flict. There were constant disputes over the weights of materials and the quality of
finished work. Moreover, the pace of work depended on the agricultural calendar.
In spring and late summer, planting and haymaking occupied all hands in the
rural village, leading to shortages in the supply of thread. Merchants, whose liveli-
Cottage Industry and Urban Guilds 493
hood depended on their ability to meet orders on time, bitterly resented their lack
of control over rural labor. They accused workers—especially female spinners—of
laziness, intemperance, and immorality. If workers failed to produce enough
thread, they reasoned, it must be because their wages were too high and they had
little incentive to work. Merchants thus insisted on maintaining the lowest pos-
sible wages to force the “idle” poor into productive labor. They also successfully
lobbied for new police powers over workers. Imprisonment and public whipping
became common punishments for pilfering small amounts of yarn or cloth. For
poor workers, their right to hold onto the bits and pieces left over in the production
process was akin to the traditional peasant right of gleaning in common lands.
The high point of the guild system in most of Europe guild system The organization of
Urban Guilds occurred in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, artisanal production into trade-based
associations, or guilds, each of which
rather than in the High Middle Ages as previously be- received a monopoly over their trade and
lieved. Guilds grew in number in cities and towns across Europe during this pe- the right to train apprentices and hire
riod. In Louis XIV’s France, for example, finance minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert workers; the system was abolished in
revived the urban guilds and used them to encourage high-quality production and France in 1791 but persisted into the
nineteenth century in other parts of
to collect taxes. The number of guilds in the city of Paris grew from 60 in 1672 to Europe.
129 in 1691.
Guild masters occupied the summit of the world of work. Each guild received
a detailed set of privileges from the Crown, including exclusive rights to produce
and sell certain goods, access to restricted markets in raw materials, and the rights to
train apprentices, hire workers, and open shops. Any individual who violated these
monopolies could be prosecuted. Guilds also served social and religious functions,
providing a locus of sociability and group identity to the urban middle class.
To ensure that there was enough work to go around, guilds jealously restricted
their membership to local men who were good Christians, had several years of
work experience, paid stiff membership fees, and completed a masterpiece. They
also favored family connections. A master’s sons enjoyed automatic access to their
father’s guild, while outsiders were often barred from entering. In the 1720s, Pari-
sian guild masters numbered only about thirty-five thousand in a population of
five hundred thousand. Most men and women worked in non-guild trades, as do-
mestic servants, as manual laborers, and as vendors of food and other small goods.
Critics of guilds in France derided them as outmoded and exclusionary institu-
tions that obstructed technical innovation and progress. Indeed, French guilds
were abolished by the Revolution of the late eighteenth century. (See the feature
“Listening to the Past: The Debate over the Guilds” on pages 508–509.) Many
historians have repeated that charge. More recent scholarship, however, has em-
phasized the flexibility and adaptability of the guild system and its vitality through
the eighteenth century. Guild masters adopted new technologies and found cre-
ative ways to circumvent impractical rules. For many merchants and artisans, eco-
nomic regulation did not hinder commerce but instead fostered the confidence
necessary to stimulate it. In an economy where buyers’ and sellers’ access to infor-
mation was so limited, regulation helped each side trust in the other’s good faith.
During the eighteenth century some guilds grew more accessible to women.
This was particularly the case in dressmaking; given the great increase in textile
production, more hands were needed to fashion clothing for urban elites. In 1675
Colbert granted seamstresses a new all-female guild in Paris, and soon seamstresses
joined tailors’ guilds in parts of France, England, and the Netherlands. In the late
seventeenth century new vocational training programs were established for poor
girls in many European cities, mostly in needlework. There is also evidence that
The Linen Industry in Ireland

Many steps went into making textiles. Here
the women are beating away the woody
part of the flax plant so that the man can
comb out the soft part. The combed fibers
will then be spun into thread and woven
into cloth by this family enterprise. The
increased labor of women and girls in the
late seventeenth century helped produce
an “industrious revolution.” (Victoria and
Albert Museum London/Eileen Tweedy/The Art Archive)
more women were hired as skilled

workers by male guilds, often in defi-
ance of official statutes.
While many artisans welcomed the
economic liberalization that followed the
French Revolution, some continued to es-
pouse the ideals of the guilds. Because they had
always been semi-clandestine, journeymen’s associa-
tions frequently survived into the nineteenth century. They
espoused the values of hand craftsmanship and limited competition, in con-
trast to the proletarianization and loss of skills endured in mechanized production.
Nevertheless, by the middle of the nineteenth century economic deregulation was
industrious revolution The shift that
occurred as families in northwestern
championed by most European governments and elites.
Europe worked harder and longer hours
and focused on earning wages instead
of producing goods for household One scholar has used the term industrious revolution
consumption, especially among women The Industrious to describe the social and economic changes taking
and children; this reduced families’ Revolution
economic self-sufficiency but increased place in Europe in the late seventeenth and early eigh-
their ability to purchase consumer goods. teenth centuries.4 This occurred as households in northwestern Europe reduced
leisure time, stepped up the pace of work, and, most
importantly, redirected the labor of women and chil-
Sec tion Review dren away from the production of goods for house-
hold consumption and toward wage work. By working
• The increase of landless rural workers led to cottage industries where
peasants manufactured products in their homes for urban capitalists. harder and increasing the number of wageworkers,
households could purchase more goods, even in a time
• Urban merchants “put out” raw materials, which the cottage industry
workers processed and returned to the merchants, who then sold the of stagnant or falling real wages.
finished product. New sources and patterns of labor established im-
• The textile industry employed the most people in Europe and was portant foundations for the Industrial Revolution of
typically a family enterprise: the men wove while women and chil- the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. They
dren spun the wool and did other tasks; wages were low and working created households in which all members worked for
conditions hard. wages rather than in a united family business and in
• Urban guild masters were at the top of the work world, enjoying which consumption relied on market-produced rather
exclusive rights to sell and produce some goods while the guilds than homemade goods. It was not until the mid-
served a social and religious function to their members. nineteenth century, with rising industrial wages, that a
• The “industrious revolution” describes a shift whereby families in new model emerged in which the male “breadwinner”
northwestern Europe worked harder and longer hours and focused on was expected to earn enough to support the whole fam-
earning wages instead of producing goods for household consump-
tion, especially among women and children; this reduced their ily and women and children were relegated back to the
economic self-sufficiency but increased their ability to purchase domestic sphere. With 77 percent of U.S. women be-
consumer goods. tween ages twenty-five and fifty-four in the workforce
in the year 2000, today’s world is experiencing a sec-
Building the Global Economy 495
ond industrious revolution in a similar climate of stagnant wages and increased

demand for consumer goods.
Building the Global Economy

How did colonial markets boost Europe’s economic and social
development, and what conflicts and adversity did world trade entail?
In addition to agricultural improvement, a decline in mortality, and growing cot-

tage industry, the expansion of Europe in the eighteenth century was character-
ized by the growth of world trade. Spain and Portugal revitalized their empires and
began drawing more wealth from renewed development. Yet once again the coun-
tries of northwestern Europe—the Netherlands, France, and above all Great
Britain—benefited most. Great Britain, which was formed in 1707 by the union
of England and Scotland into a single kingdom, gradually became the leading
maritime power. Thus the British played the critical role in building a fairly uni-
fied Atlantic economy that provided remarkable opportunities for them and their
colonists. They also conducted ruthless competition with France and the Nether-
lands for trade and territory in Asia.
Britain’s commercial leadership in the eighteenth cen-

Mercantilism and tury had its origins in the mercantilism of the seven-
Colonial Wars teenth century (see page 409). Mercantilism aimed
particularly at creating a favorable balance of foreign trade in order to increase a
country’s stock of gold. A country’s gold holdings served as an all-important trea-
sure chest that could be opened periodically to pay for war in a violent age.
Beginning with Oliver Cromwell in 1651, the English government enacted a
series of laws designed to build English power and wealth under the mercantile
system. Known as the Navigation Acts, these laws controlled the import of goods Navigation Acts A series of English
to Britain and British colonies. The most significant of these acts required the laws that controlled the import of goods
to Britain and British colonies.
colonists to ship their products on British (or American) ships and to buy almost
all European goods from Britain. It was believed that these economic regulations
would help British merchants and workers as well as colonial plantation owners
and farmers; and the emerging British Empire would develop a shipping industry
with a large number of experienced seamen who could serve when necessary in
the Royal Navy.
The Navigation Acts were a form of economic warfare. Their initial target was
the Dutch, who were far ahead of the English in shipping and foreign trade in the
mid-seventeenth century (see page 426). In conjunction with three Anglo-Dutch
wars between 1652 and 1674, the Navigation Acts seriously damaged Dutch ship-
ping and commerce. The British seized the thriving Dutch colony of New Amster-
dam in 1664 and renamed it “New York.” By the late seventeenth century the
Netherlands was falling behind England in shipping, trade, and colonies.
Thereafter France stood clearly as England’s most serious rival in the competi-
tion for overseas empire. Rich in natural resources, with a population three or four
times that of England, and allied with Spain, continental Europe’s leading military
power was already building a powerful fleet and a worldwide system of rigidly mo-
nopolized colonial trade. Thus from 1701 to 1763 Britain and France were locked
in a series of wars to decide, in part, which nation would become the leading mari-
time power and claim the profits of Europe’s overseas expansion (see Map 19.2).
180° 150°E
Plantation zone
NORTH
AMERICA Azores
Madeira Is.
Canary Is.
N
60° Cuba
Mexico Puerto Rico Cape Verde Is.
Jamaica Hispaniola
150°W City
Trinidad
Panama N
Quito
120°E
SOUTH
PE
AMERICA
RU
Lima
30°N
IL
PACIFIC Potosí
AZ
BR
OCEAN
Rio de
Santiago Janeiro
90°E
Buenos Aires
120°W ARCTIC ATLANTIC
OCEAN OCEAN
0 2,000 Km. Strait of
)
pines
Magellan
ain
orcel
Philip
0 2,000 Mi. Cape Horn

NORTH
ces, p
AMERICA
e
Silver (to th
Silks, spi
Hudson 60°E
Bay Great Britain
LOUISIANA
ASIA
MEXICO
France
RUPERT’S LAND
R.
pi Portugal
s sip
M is si
NEW FRANCE Spain
QUEBEC
Veracruz Netherlands
Acapulco THIRTEEN COLONIES
NEWFOUNDLAND Trade from Europe
(To Gr. Br., 1713) GREAT
FLORIDA BRITAIN EUROPE Trade from Africa
NOVA SCOTIA
Tob (ACADIA)
Havana acco Fur NETHERLANDS Trade from Americas
(To Gr. Br., 1713) s
ts Trade from Asia
Colonial produc FRANCE
CUBA Silver
0°
ds
90°W goo
red
JAMAICA actu
nuf
Porto
Hispaniola Sugar Ma SPAIN
Bello SAINT-
DOMINGUE SANTO DOMINGO
(Fr.) PORTUGAL
(Sp.)
r
e
Silv
ds
Guadeloupe
goo
(Fr.) Canary Is.

Martinique (Spain)
red
NEW GRANADA (Fr.) NORTH

Manufactu
Barbados AT L A N T I C
Gold
(Gr. Br.)
OCEAN AFRICA
Lima DUTCH
GUIANA
m FRENCH
PERU
A
az GUIANA Cape Verde Is. Cape

on (Port.) Verde
R.
Sugar
Slave
30
Coast
SOUTH
°S
Gold
Coast
AMERICA
Silve
Slaves
r
BRAZIL
0°
ANGOLA
30°W SOUTH
AT L A N T I C
Buenos Aires OCEAN
30°E
60
°S
60°W
MAP 19.2 The Atlantic Economy in 1701

The growth of trade encouraged both economic development and military conflict in the Atlantic
basin. Four continents were linked together by the exchange of goods and slaves.
496
The first round was the War of the Spanish Succession (see page 411), which
started when Louis XIV of France accepted the Spanish crown willed to his grand-
son. Besides upsetting the continental balance of power, a union of France and
Spain threatened to encircle and destroy the British colonies in North America
(see Map 19.2). Defeated by a great coalition of states after twelve years of fighting,
Louis XIV was forced in the Peace of Utrecht (YOO-trekt) (1713) to cede New-
foundland, Nova Scotia, and the Hudson Bay territory to Britain. Spain was com-
pelled to give Britain control of its West African slave trade—the so-called asiento
(a-SYEN-toh)—and to let Britain send one ship of merchandise into the Spanish
colonies annually through Porto Bello on the Isthmus of Panama. France was still
a mighty competitor, however. The War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748)
over Maria Theresa’s Austrian empire (see page 475) brought France and England
back into conflict. But the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) marked the decisive
round in the Franco-British competition for colonial empire.
The fighting began in North America. The population of New France was
centered in Quebec and along the St. Lawrence River, but French soldiers and
Canadian fur traders had also built forts and trading posts along the Great Lakes,
through the Ohio country, and down the Mississippi to New Orleans. Allied with
many Native American tribes, the French built more forts in 1753 in what is now
western Pennsylvania to protect their claims. The following year a Virginia force
attacked a small group of French soldiers, and soon the war to conquer Canada
was on.
French and Canadian forces under the experienced marquis de Montcalm
fought well and scored major victories until 1758. Then, led by their new chief
minister, William Pitt, the British diverted men and money from the war in Eu-
rope and used their superior sea power to destroy the French fleet and choke off
French commerce around the world. In 1759 a combined British naval and land
force defeated Montcalm’s army in a dramatic battle that sealed the fate of France
in North America.
British victory on all colonial fronts was ratified in the Treaty of Paris (1763), Treaty of Paris The treaty that ended
ending the Seven Years’ War in Europe and the colonies. Canada and all French the Seven Years’ War in Europe and the
colonies in 1763 and ratified British
territory east of the Mississippi River passed to Britain, and France ceded Louisi- victory on all colonial fronts.
ana to Spain as compensation for Spain’s loss of Florida to Britain. France also
gave up most of its holdings in India, opening the way to British dominance on the
subcontinent. By 1763 Britain had realized its goal of monopolizing a vast trading
and colonial empire.
In the eighteenth century, stimulated by trade and empire building, London
grew into the West’s largest and richest city. (See the feature “Images in Society:
London: The Remaking of a Great City” on pages 498–499.) Above all, the rapidly
growing and increasingly wealthy agricultural populations of the mainland colo-
nies of North America provided an expanding market for English manufactured
goods. Foreign trade became the bread and butter of some industries; for example,
by 1750 half the nails made in England were going to the colonies. Thus, the
mercantilist system achieved remarkable success for England in the eighteenth
century, and by the 1770s England stood on the threshold of the epoch-making
industrial changes that are described in Chapter 22.
Despite their losses, the French still profited enormously from colonial trade.
The colonies of Saint Domingue (san do-MANG) (modern-day Haiti) and Mar-
tinique and Guadeloupe (which remain French departments today) provided im-
mense fortunes in sugar and coffee plantations and slave trading during the second
half of the eighteenth century. By 1789 the population of Saint Domingue in-
cluded five hundred thousand slaves whose labor had allowed the colony to
Images in Society
London: The Remaking of a Great City
T he imperial capital and intercontinental trade

center of London dominated Britain and as-
tonished the visitor. Equal in population to Paris
polluted the metropolis. How would you character-
ize pre-fire London?
Reconstruction proceeded quickly after the
with four hundred thousand inhabitants in 1650, Great Fire so that people could regain shelter and
the super city of the West grew to nine hundred employment. Brick construction was made manda-
thousand in 1801, while second-place Paris had six tory to prevent fire, but only a few streets were
hundred thousand. And as London grew, its citizens straightened or widened. Thus social classes re-
created a new urban landscape and style of living. mained packed together in the rebuilt city. The
Image 1 shows the “true profile” of London and rich merchant family in a first-class city residence
its built environment as viewed from the south (Image 2), built in the 1670s and still standing
before the Great Fire of 1666, which raged for in 1939, shared a tiny courtyard and constantly
four days and destroyed about 80 percent of the rubbed shoulders with poor and middling people in
old, predominately wooden central city. With the everyday life.
River Thames flowing eastward toward the sea, As London rebuilt and kept growing, big noble
one sees from left to right pre-fire St. Paul’s Cathe- landowners followed two earlier examples and
dral, London Bridge crowded with houses, ships at sought to increase their incomes by setting up resi-
the wharves, and the medieval Tower of London. dential developments on their estates west of the
Clearly visible in the distance are the open fields of city. A landowner would lay out a square with streets
the large estates surrounding London, while be- and building lots, which he or she would lease to
yond the view on the left are the royal palace and speculative builders who put up fine houses for sale
adjacent government buildings. Also missing is the or rent. Soho Square, first laid out in the 1670s and
famous London smog, the combination of fog and shown in Image 3 as it appeared in 1731, was fairly
smoke from coal-burning fireplaces that already typical. The spacious square with its gated park is
IMAGE 1 London Before the Great Fire (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
498
IMAGE 3 Soho Square, 1731 (Private Collection / The Stapleton Collection / The Bridgeman
Art Library)
IMAGE 2 Merchant Family’s Residence (built 1670–1680)

(English Heritage/NMR)
surrounded by three-story row houses set on deep,

narrow lots. Set in the country but close to the city,
a square like Soho was a kind of elegant “village”
with restrictive building codes that catered to aristo-
crats, officials, and successful professionals who were
served by artisans and shopkeepers living in alleys
and side streets. Do you see a difference between the
houses on the square and on the street behind? How
would you compare Soho Square with the hills in
the distance and with the old London of Images 1
and 2? The classy, new area, known as the West
End, contrasted sharply with the shoddy rentals and
IMAGE 4 Bloomsbury Square, 1787 (HarperCollins Publishers/ The
makeshift shacks of laborers and sailors in the mush- Art Archive)
rooming East End, which artists rarely painted. Thus
residential segregation by income level increased for mortgages, marriages, and recreation. Image 4,
substantially in eighteenth-century London. showing classy Bloomsbury Square in 1787 and the
As the suburban villages grew and gradually original country mansion of the enterprising noble
merged together, the West End increasingly at- developer, provides a glimpse into this well-born
tracted the well-to-do from all over England. Rural culture. How does Image 4 complement Image 3?
landowners and provincial notables came for the What message is the artist conveying with the milk-
social season from October to May. Operating out maid and her cows? Some historians believe that
of comfortable second homes purchased or rented London’s West End was an important social inno-
in the West End, they played the national market vation. Reconsidering these images, do you agree?
499
become the world’s leading producer of coffee and sugar. It was the most profit-
able plantation colony in the New World and the one that consumed the greatest
number of slaves.5 The wealth generated from colonial trade fostered the confi-
dence of the merchant classes in Paris, Bordeaux, and other large cities, and mer-
chants soon joined other elite groups clamoring for more political responsibility.
The third major player in the Atlantic economy, Spain, saw its colonial for-
tunes improve during the eighteenth century. Not only did it gain Louisiana from
France in 1763, but its influence expanded westward all the way to northern Cali-
fornia through the efforts of Spanish missionaries and ranchers. Its mercantilist
debt peonage A system that allowed a goals were boosted by a recovery in silver production, which had dropped signifi-
planter or rancher to keep his workers or cantly in the seventeenth century.
slaves in perpetual debt bondage by Silver mining also stimulated food production for the mining camps, and
periodically advancing food, shelter, and wealthy Spanish landowners developed a system of debt peonage (PEE-uh-nij) to
a little money; it was a form of serfdom.
keep indigenous workers on their estates. Under this system, which was similar to
Creoles People of Spanish blood born serfdom, a planter or rancher would keep workers in perpetual debt bondage by
in America. advancing them food, shelter, and a little money.
mestizo Spanish term for a person of The profits from mining and agriculture gave the Creoles (KREE-ohlz)—
mixed racial origins, especially Native people of Spanish blood born in America—the means to purchase more and more
American and European. European luxuries and manufactured goods. A class of wealthy Creole merchants
Forming the Mexican People

It was not uncommon for Creole men in Latin America to take Indian wives, with the result that roughly 30 percent of the
population was racially mixed by the end of the colonial period. This painting, by an unknown eighteenth-century artist,
shows the union of a Spanish man and a Native American woman that has produced a racially mixed mestizo (mess-TEE-
zoh) child on the left, and a group that features a mestizo woman and a Spaniard with their little daughter on the right.
Paintings such as this reflect contemporary fascination with the spectrum of racial difference produced in the colonies.
(Private Collection, Mexico)
arose to handle this flourishing trade, which often relied on smuggled goods from
Great Britain. The Creoles strove to become a genuine European aristocracy and
looked upon the agents sent by Spain as meddlesome rivals.
As Britain built its empire in North America, it secured

The Atlantic an important outlet for surplus population, so that mi-
Slave Trade gration abroad limited poverty at home. The settlers
also benefited, for they enjoyed privileged access to virtually free and unlimited
land. And unlike the great majority of European peasants, American farmers kept
most of what they produced. Indeed, on the eve of the American Revolution white
men and women in the mainland British colonies had one of the highest living
standards in the world.6 Cheap land and the tremendous demand for scarce labor
also fostered the growth of slavery in the British colonies. The Spanish and the
Portuguese had first brought African slaves to the Americas in the sixteenth cen-
tury. In the seventeenth century the Dutch aggressively followed their example
and transported thousands of Africans first to Brazil and then to the Caribbean to
work on highly profitable sugar plantations. The English established their own
Caribbean sugar plantations, and, in the eighteenth century, tobacco planters in
Virginia and Maryland embarked on plantation agriculture using slave labor.
Taken to the Americas in chains, Africans made a decisive contribution to the
development of the Atlantic economy. Above all, the labor of enslaved Africans
made possible large-scale production of valuable commodities for sale in Europe.
Indeed, an important recent study concludes that in the years from 1761 to 1800
Africans and their descendants in Brazil, Spanish America, the Caribbean, and
Britain’s mainland slave colonies accounted for more than four-fifths of all the
commodities produced in the Americas for sale in the Atlantic economy.7 It was
this flood of ever-cheaper sugar, coffee, tobacco, rice, and (in the nineteenth cen-
tury) cotton that generated hard cash in the Americas—cash that paid for manu-
factured goods and services from Britain and Europe as well as for more slaves
from Africa.
The forced migration of millions of Africans—cruel, unjust, and tragic—
remained a key element in the Atlantic system and western European economic
expansion throughout the eighteenth century. Indeed, the brutal Atlantic slave Atlantic slave trade The forced
trade intensified dramatically after 1700 and especially after 1750. According to migration of Africans across the Atlantic
for slave labor on plantations and in
one authoritative estimate, European traders purchased and shipped over six mil- other industries; although many
lion African slaves across the Atlantic between 1701 and 1800, fully 52 percent of European countries participated, its peak
the estimated total of almost 12 million Africans transported between 1450 and was among the English in the eighteenth
1900.8 In 1790, when the U.S. population was approaching 4 million, slaves ac- century and ultimately the trade involved
almost twelve million Africans.
counted for almost 20 percent of the total.
Intensification of the slave trade resulted in fundamental changes in its orga-
nization. After 1700, as Britain became the undisputed leader in the slave trade,
European governments and ship captains cut back on fighting among themselves
and concentrated on commerce. They generally adopted the shore method of
trading, which was less expensive than maintaining fortified trading posts. Thus
European ships sent boats ashore or invited African dealers to bring traders and
slaves out to their ships. This method allowed ships to move easily along the coast
from market to market and to depart more quickly for the Americas.
Some African merchants and rulers who controlled exports profited from the
greater demand for slaves, and some Africans secured foreign products that they
found appealing because of price or quality. But generally such economic returns
did not spread very far, and the negative consequences of the expanding slave trade
Slaves Harvesting Sugar Cane

In this 1828 print a long line of hard-working slaves systematically harvests the ripe cane on the island of Antigua, while on the
right more slaves load cut cane into wagons for refining at the plantation’s central crushing mill. The manager on horseback may
be ordering the overseer to quicken the work pace, always brutal and unrelenting at harvest time. Slave labor made high-intensity
capitalist production of sugar possible in the Americas. (John Carter Brown Library at Brown University)
predominated. Wars between Africans to obtain salable captives increased, and

leaders purchased more arms and bought relatively fewer textiles and consumer
goods. And while the population of Europe (and Asia) grew substantially in the
eighteenth century, that of Africa stagnated or possibly declined.
Slaves were typically captives who had been taken in battles between African
states, but as demand grew, slave dealers tried new approaches. Kidnappers seized
and enslaved men and women like Olaudah Equiano (oh-LAU-duh ay-kwee-
AHN-oh) and his sister, whose tragic separation, exile, and exploitation personified
the full horror of the Atlantic slave trade. (See the feature “Individuals in Society:
Olaudah Equiano.”) Another approach was for African rulers to change the pun-
ishment for misdemeanors from fines to enslavement in order to generate more
captives for sale.
Most Europeans did not personally witness the horrors of the slave trade be-
tween Africa and the Americas, and until 1700, and perhaps even 1750, they con-
sidered the African slave trade a legitimate business. But as details of the plight of
slaves became known, a campaign to abolish slavery developed in Britain. Between
1788 and 1792, according to some recent scholarship, the abolition campaign
grew into the first peaceful mass political movement based on the mobilization of
public opinion in British history. British women played a critical role in this mass
movement, denouncing the immorality of human bondage and stressing the cruel
and sadistic treatment of female slaves and slave families. These attacks put the
defenders of slavery on the defensive. In 1807 Parliament abolished the British
Olaudah Equiano
T he slave trade was a mass migration involving mil-
lions of human beings. It was also the sum of indi-
vidual lives spent partly or entirely in slavery. Although
Equiano developed his mathematical skills, worked hard
to please as a clerk in King’s warehouse, and became first
mate on one of King’s ships. Allowed to trade on the side
most of those lives remain hidden to us, Olaudah Equi- for his own profit, Equiano amassed capital, repaid King
ano (1745–1797) is an important exception. his original purchase price, and re-
Equiano was born in Benin (modern Nigeria) of Ibo ceived his deed of manumission at
ethnicity. His father, one of the village elders (or chief- the age of twenty-one. King urged
tains), presided over a large household that included his talented former slave to stay on
“many slaves,” prisoners captured in local wars. All as a business partner, but Equiano
people, slave and free, shared in the cultivation of family hated the limitations and dangers
lands. One day, when all the adults were in the fields, of black freedom in the colonies—
two strange men and a woman broke into the family he was almost kidnapped back into
compound, kidnapped the eleven-year-old boy and his slavery while loading a ship in
sister, tied them up, and dragged them into the woods. Georgia—and could think only
Brother and sister were separated, and Olaudah was sold of England. Settling in London,
several times to various dealers before reaching the Equiano studied, worked as a hair-
coast. As it took six months to walk there, his home must dresser, and went to sea periodically
have been far inland. as a merchant seaman. He devel-
The slave ship and the strange appearance of the oped his ardent Christian faith and
white crew terrified the boy. Much worse was the long became a leading member of Lon-
voyage from Benin to Barbados in the Caribbean, as don’s sizable black community.
Olaudah Equiano, in an
Equiano later recounted. “The stench of the [ship’s] Equiano loathed the brutal slav- engraving from his
hold . . . became absolutely pestilential . . . [and] brought ery and the vicious exploitation that autobiography. (National
on a sickness among the slaves, of which many died. . . . he saw in the West Indies and Brit- Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian
The shrieks of the women and the groans of the dying ain’s mainland colonies. A complex Institution/Art Resource, NY)
rendered the whole a scene of horror almost inconceiv- and sophisticated man, he also re-
able.” Placed on deck with the sick and dying, Equiano spected the integrity of Robert King
saw two and then three of his “enchained countrymen” and admired British navigational and industrial technolo-
escape somehow through the nettings and jump into gies. He encountered white oppressors and made white
the sea, “preferring death to such a life of misery.”* friends. He once described himself as “almost an English-
Equiano’s new owner, an officer in the Royal Navy, man.” In the 1780s he joined with white and black activ-
took him to England and saw that the lad received some ists in the antislavery campaign and wrote The Interesting
education. Engaged in bloody action in Europe for al- Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano Written by Him-
most four years as a captain’s boy in the Seven Years’ self, a well-documented autobiographical indictment of
War, Equiano hoped that his loyal service and Christian slavery. Above all, he urged Christians to live by the prin-
baptism would help secure his freedom. He also knew ciples they professed and to treat Africans equally as free
that slavery was generally illegal in England. But his human beings and children of God. With the success of
master deceived him. Docking in London, he and his his widely read book, he carried his message to large audi-
accomplices forced a protesting and heartbroken Equi- ences across Britain and Ireland and inspired the growing
ano onto a ship bound for the Caribbean. movement to abolish slavery.
There he was sold to Robert King, a Quaker mer-
chant from Philadelphia who dealt in sugar and rum.
* Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of 1. What aspects of Olaudah Equiano’s life as a slave
Olaudah Equiano Written by Himself, ed. with an introduc- were typical? What aspects were atypical?
tion by Robert J. Allison (Boston: Bedford Books, 1995),
pp. 56–57. Recent scholarship has re-examined Equiano’s life 2. Describe Equiano’s culture and personality. What
and thrown some details of his identity into question. aspects are most striking? Why?
503
slave trade, although slavery continued in British colonies and the Americas
for years.
As the Atlantic economy took shape, Europeans con-

Trade and Empire tinued to vie for dominance in the Asian trade. The
in Asia Dutch, who had dominated as a supplier of Asian
goods to Europeans in the seventeenth century, failed to diversify to meet chang-
ing consumption patterns. Spices continued to comprise much of its shipping,
despite their declining importance in the European diet. Fierce competition from
its main rival, the English East India Company (est. 1600), also severely undercut
Dutch trade.
Britain initially struggled for a foothold in Asia. With the Dutch monopolizing
the Indian Ocean, the British focused on India, where they were minor players
throughout the seventeenth century. The English East India Company relied on
trade concessions from the powerful Mughal emperor, who granted only piece-
meal access to the subcontinent. Finally, in 1716 the Mughals conceded empire-
The British in India (ca. 1785)

This Indian miniature shows (center) the wife of a British officer attended by many Indian servants. A British
merchant (left) awaits her attention. The picture reflects the luxurious lifestyle of the British elite in India; many
returned home with colossal fortunes. (Scala/Art Resource, NY)
wide trading privileges. To further their economic interests, British company

agents increasingly intervened in local affairs and made alliances or waged war
against Indian princes. However, they faced competition from France, which also
had company agents and troops stationed on the subcontinent. Forces from the
two sides clashed in the 1740s.
With the Treaty of Paris that ended the Seven Years’ War in 1763 (page 497),
France lost its possessions in India. British ascendancy in India subsequently ac-
celerated. In 1764 English East India Company forces defeated the Mughal em-
peror, leaving him on the throne as a ruler in title only. Robert Clive a company
agent who had led its forces in battle, became the first British governor general of
Bengal, in northeast India, with direct authority over the province. By the early
1800s the British had overcome vigorous Indian resistance to gain economic and
political dominance of much of the subcontinent, and India was lauded as the
“jewel” in the British Empire in the nineteenth century.
Although mercantilist policies strengthened European

Adam Smith and colonial empires in the eighteenth century, a strong
Economic Liberalism reaction against mercantilism ultimately set in. Creole
merchants chafed at regulations imposed from Madrid, while English merchants
complained loudly about the trade monopoly enjoyed by the British East India
Company. These independent merchants led the call for “free trade,” borrowing
from the ideas of Scottish Enlightenment philosopher Adam Smith (1723–1790), economic liberalism Based on the
whose Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776) estab- writings of Adam Smith, a belief in free
trade and competition. Smith argued
lished the basis for modern economics. that the invisible hand of free
Smith described eighteenth-century mercantilism as a combination of stifling competition would benefit all
government regulations and unfair privileges for state-approved monopolies and individuals, rich and poor.
government favorites. Far preferable was free competition,
which would best protect consumers from price gouging and
Sec tion Review
give all citizens a fair and equal right to do what they did best.
Fearful of political oppression, Smith argued that government • Britain imposed a form of economic warfare with the
should limit itself to “only three duties”: it should provide a de- Navigation Acts, which required the transportation of
fense against foreign invasion, maintain civil order with courts British products on British ships.
and police protection, and sponsor certain indispensable public • England went through a series of wars with the Dutch and
works and institutions that could never adequately profit private then the French in the struggle for maritime supremacy
and although Britain gained a trading monopoly and
investors. He believed that the pursuit of self-interest in a com- colonial empire, France and Spain continued to profit
petitive market would be sufficient to improve the living condi- from their own colonial trade.
tions of citizens. • The Atlantic slave trade grew enormously as colonial
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Smith was often plantations used slaves to produce commodities for sale in
seen as an advocate of unbridled capitalism, but his ideas were Europe and although public outcry at its horrors led the
considerably more complex. In his own mind, Smith spoke for British to end their involvement in the trade in 1807,
truth, not for special interests. Unlike many disgruntled merchant slavery itself continued in the Americas and the British
colonies.
capitalists, he applauded the modest rise in real wages of British
workers in the eighteenth century and went on to say that “No • The Great Fire of 1666 destroyed much of London; re-
construction kept the social classes mixed in the old city
society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far but new suburbs created segregation by income level.
greater part of the members are poor and miserable.” He also
• The British East India Company vied with the French and
deplored the deadening effects of the division of labor and called the Dutch for trading dominance in Asia and emerged as
for government intervention to raise workers’ living standards. dominant rulers within the Indian subcontinent.
Smith’s provocative work had a great international impact, • Adam Smith’s writings gained international fame, promot-
going through eight editions in English and being translated ing free trade in a competitive market, an arrangement he
into several languages within twenty years. It quickly emerged as thought would protect consumers and benefit all citizens.
the classic argument for economic liberalism.
Chapter Review
What were the causes and effects of the agricultural revolution, and what na-
tions led the way in these developments? (page 485) Key Terms
While the European educated elite was developing a new view of the world in the agricultural revolution (p. 486)
eighteenth century, Europe as a whole was experiencing a gradual but far-reaching crop rotation (p. 486)
expansion. As agriculture began showing signs of modest improvement across the con- enclosure (p. 486)
tinent, first the Low Countries and then England launched changes that gradually
revolutionized it. New crops and intensified crop rotation created new food sources for proletarianization (p. 488)
both people and livestock. Enclosure of common land allowed landowners to reap the cottage industry (p. 490)
fruits of agricultural innovation at the cost of excluding poor peasants from their tradi- putting-out system (p. 490)
tional access to the land. The gap between wealthy landowner and landless poor
guild system (p. 493)
stretched wider in this period.
industrious revolution (p. 494)
Navigation Acts (p. 495)
Why did European population rise dramatically in the eighteenth century? Treaty of Paris (p. 497)
(page 488)
debt peonage (p. 500)
For reasons historians do not yet understand, the recurring curse of bubonic plague Creoles (p. 500)
disappeared. Less vulnerable to food shortages and free from the plague, the popula-
mestizo (p. 500)
tions of all European countries grew significantly. During the eighteenth century the
European population recovered from the stagnation and losses of the previous century Atlantic slave trade (p. 501)
to reach unprecedented new levels. economic liberalism (p. 505)
What is cottage industry, and how did it contribute to Europe’s economic and
social transformation? (page 490)
Population increases encouraged the growth of wage labor, cottage industry, and
merchant capitalism. To escape the constraints of urban guilds, merchants transported
production to the countryside. Peasant households set up industrial production within
their cottages, allocating family members’ labor during the slack seasons of agriculture
or, in some cases, abandoning farming altogether for a new life of weaving or spinning.
The spread of cottage industry was one sign of an “industrious revolution” that helped
pave the path of the Industrial Revolution of the late eighteenth century. Women’s la-
bor was crucial to the spread of cottage industry and the renewed vitality of the urban
trades.
How did colonial markets boost Europe’s economic and social development, and
what conflicts and adversity did world trade entail? (page 495)
The products of peasant industry were exported across Europe and even across the
world. During the eighteenth century Europeans continued their overseas expansion,
fighting for empire and profit and, in particular, consolidating their hold on the Amer-
icas. A revived Spain and its Latin American colonies participated fully in this expan-
sion. As in agriculture and cottage industry, however, England and its empire proved
most successful. The English concentrated much of the growing Atlantic trade in their
hands, a development that challenged and enriched English industry and intensified
interest in new methods of production and in an emerging economic liberalism. Thus,
by the 1770s England was approaching an economic breakthrough as fully significant
as the great political upheaval destined to develop shortly in neighboring France.
Chapter Review 507
Notes
1. B. H. Slicher van Bath, The Agrarian History of Western Europe, a.d. 500–1850 (New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 1963), p. 240.
2. Quoted in I. Pinchbeck, Women Workers and the Industrial Revolution, 1750–1850 (New
York: F. S. Crofts, 1930), p. 113.
3. Richard J. Soderlund, “ ‘Intended as a Terror to the Idle and Profligate’: Embezzlement and
the Origins of Policing in the Yorkshire Worsted Industry, c. 1750–1777,” Journal of Social
History 31 (Spring 1998): 658.
4. Ibid. In addition, Jan de Vries, “The Industrious Revolution and the Industrious Revolution,”
The Journal of Economic History 54, 2 (June 1994): 249–270, discusses the second industrious
revolution of the second half of the twentieth century.
5. Laurent Dubois and John D. Garrigus, Slave Revolution in the Carribean, 1789–1904 (New
York: Palgrave, 2006), p. 8.
6. G. Taylor, “America’s Growth Before 1840,” Journal of Economic History 24 (December
1970): 427–444.
7. J. Inikori, Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England: A Study in International Trade
and Economic Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 481–482.
8. P. E. Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1983), p. 19.

The Debate over the Guilds
G uilds, also known as trade corporations, claimed that

their rules guaranteed fair wages, high-quality goods,
and community values. However, both French philosophes
and enlightened government officials increasingly disagreed.
The following excerpt, from a 1776 law abolishing French
guilds by the reform minister Jacques Turgot (tur-GOH), is an
important example of the liberal critique in action. A vocifer-
ous response from the guilds led to the law’s repeal only six
months later. New guild regulations responded to some of the
critiques, for example by allowing women to join all guilds.
In 1791 French revolutionaries definitively abolished the
guild system.
A German brush maker and guild member shows a customer

his wares. (The Fotomas Index / The Bridgeman Art Library)

permissions issues. Regrettably, we cannot make
this piece available to you in a digital format.
508
2. Do guilds—and modern-day unions—help or
hurt workers? Defend your position.

1. How did Turgot justify the abolition of French Source: S. Pollard and C. Holmes, eds., Documents
guilds? Do you think his reasons are valid? of European Economic History, Volume One: The Process
How might the guilds respond? of Industrialization, 1750–1870, 1968, pp. 53–56.
509
CHAPTER 20
The Changing Life
of the People
Chapter Preview
Marriage and the Family
What changes occurred in marriage
and the family in the course of the
eighteenth century?
Children and Education

What was life like for children, and how
did attitudes toward childhood evolve?
Food, Medicine, and New

Consumption Habits
How did new patterns of consumption
and changing medical care affect
people’s lives?
Religion and Popular Culture

What were the patterns of popular
religion and culture, and how did
they interact with the worldview
of the educated public and the
Enlightenment?
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY: Madame du Coudray,

the Nation’s Midwife
LISTENING TO THE PAST: A Day in the Life of Paris A quack doctor uses a snake and a dog to sell a miraculous cure-all
in an Italian village market, in a painting (detail) by Michele Graneri
(1736–1778). (Dagli Orti Private Collection/ The Art Archive)
510
Marriage and the Family 511
T he discussion of agriculture and industry in the previous chapter showed

the common people at work, straining to make ends meet within the larger
context of population growth, gradual economic expansion, and ferocious politi-
cal competition. The world of work was embedded in a rich complex of family or-
ganization, community practices, everyday experiences, and collective attitudes.
In recent years, historians have intensively studied all these aspects of popular
life. The challenge has been formidable because regional variations abounded
and the common people left few written records. Yet imaginative research has re-
sulted in major findings and much greater knowledge. It is now possible to follow
the common people into their homes, workshops, churches, and taverns and to
ask, “What were the everyday experiences of ordinary people?”
Marriage and the Family

What changes occurred in marriage and the family in the course of the
eighteenth century?
The basic unit of social organization is the family. Within the structure of the fam-
ily human beings love, mate, and reproduce. It is primarily the family that teaches
the child, imparting values and customs that condition an individual’s behavior for
a lifetime. The family is also an institution woven into the web of history. It evolves
and changes, assuming different forms in different times and places.
In the previous chapter, we noted the common mis-

Late Marriage and conception that populations of the past always grew
Nuclear Families quickly. Another popular error is that before the mod-
ern era people married at a young age and settled in large multigenerational
households. In recent years historians have used previously neglected parish regis-
ters of births, deaths, and marriages to uncover details of European family life be-
fore the nineteenth century. It is now clear that the extended, three-generation
family was a rarity in western and central Europe by 1700. Indeed, the extended
family may never have been common in Europe, although it is hard to know about
the early Middle Ages because very few records survive. When young European
couples married, they normally established their own households and lived apart
from their parents. If a three-generation household came into existence, it was
usually because a widowed parent moved into the home of a married child.
Moreover, most people did not marry young in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. The average person who was neither rich nor aristocratic married sur-
prisingly late, many years after reaching adulthood and beginning to work. In one
well-studied, apparently typical English village in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, both men and women married for the first time at an average age of
twenty-seven or older. A similar pattern existed in eighteenth-century France,
where women married around age twenty-five and men around age twenty-seven.
A substantial portion of men and women never married at all. The custom of late
marriage combined with a nuclear-family household distinguished European so-
ciety from other areas of the world.
Why was marriage delayed? The main reason was that couples normally did
not marry until they could support themselves economically. Peasants often
needed to wait until the father’s death to inherit land and marry. In the towns, men
512 Chapter 20 The Changing Life of the People
and women worked to accumulate enough savings to start a small business and
establish a household. In some areas couples needed the legal permission or tacit
approval of the local lord or landowner in order to marry. Austria and Germany
had legal restrictions on marriage, and well into the nineteenth century poor
couples had particular difficulty securing the approval of local officials. This pat-
tern helped society maintain some kind of balance between the number of people
and the available economic resources.
Many young people worked within their families until

Work Away they could start their own households. Boys plowed
from Home and wove; girls spun and tended the cows. Others left
home to work elsewhere. In the towns a lad would begin apprenticeship around
age fifteen and finish in his late teens or early twenties. During that time he would
not be permitted to marry. In most trades he earned little and worked hard, but if
he was lucky, he might eventually be admitted to a guild. Many poor families
could not afford apprenticeship, and their sons drifted from one tough job to an-
other: hired hand for a small farmer, wage laborer on a new road, carrier of water
in a nearby town. They were always subject to economic fluctuations, and unem-
ployment was a constant threat.
Many girls also left their families to work in adolescence. Some apprenticed to
mistresses in traditionally female occupations, becoming seamstresses, linen drap-
ers, or midwives. As the demand for skilled labor grew, even male guildsmen hired
girls and women, despite guild restrictions.
Service in another family’s household, though, was by far the most common
job for girls, and even middle-class families often sent their daughters into service.
The legions of young servant girls worked hard but had little independence. Some-
times the employer paid the girl’s wages directly to her par-
ents. Constantly under the eye of her mistress, the servant girl
had many tasks—cleaning, shopping, cooking, caring for the
baby. Court records are full of servant girls’ complaints of
physical mistreatment by their mistresses. There were many
like the fifteen-year-old English girl in the early eighteenth
century who told the judge that her mistress had not only
called her “very opprobrious names, as Bitch, Whore and
the like,” but also “beat her without provocation and beyond
measure.”1
Male apprentices told similar tales of verbal and physical
abuse at their masters’ hands. Boys were far less vulnerable,
though, to the sexual harassment and assault that threatened
female servants. In theory, domestic service offered a young
girl protection and security in a new family. But in practice
Boucher: The Pretty Cook

Increased migration to urban areas in the eighteenth century contributed
to a loosening of traditional morals and soaring illegitimacy rates. Young
women who worked as servants or shop girls could not be supervised as
closely as those who lived at home. The themes of seduction, fallen virtue,
and familial conflict were popular in eighteenth-century art, such as this
painting by François Boucher (frahn-SWA boo-SHEY) (1703–1770),
master of the rococo. (Réunion des Musées Nationaux /Art Resource, NY)
Chronology
she was often the easy prey of a lecherous master or his sons 1717 Elementary school attendance mandatory
or friends. If the girl became pregnant, she could be quickly in Prussia
fired and thrown out in disgrace to make her own way, which
1720–1780 Government-run foundling homes
often led to a life of prostitution and petty thievery. “What are
established
we?” exclaimed a bitter Parisian prostitute. “Most of us are
unfortunate women, without origins, without education, ser- 1740–1780 Reign of Maria Theresa in Austria
vants and maids for the most part.”2 1740–1786 Reign of Frederick the Great in Prussia
Prostitutes encountered increasingly harsh and repres- 1750–1790 Wesley preaches revival in England
sive laws in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, as
officials across Europe began to close licensed brothels and 1750–1850 Illegitimacy explosion
declare prostitution illegal. Despite this repression, prostitu- 1757 Madame du Coudray, Manual on the Art
tion flourished in European cities and towns in the eigh- of Childbirth
teenth century. Most prostitutes were working women who 1762 Rousseau advocates more attentive child
turned to the sex trade when confronted with unemployment care in Emile
or seasonal shortages of work. Farther up the social scale were 1763 Louis XV orders Jesuits out of France
courtesans whose wealthy protectors provided apartments,
servants, beautiful clothing, and cash allowances. As she aged, 1796 Jenner performs first smallpox vaccination
such a woman could descend once more to streetwalking.
Did late marriage in preindustrial Europe go hand in

Premarital Sex and hand with many illegitimate children? For most of
Community Controls western and central Europe until at least 1750, the an-
swer is no. English parish registers seldom listed more than one illegitimate child
out of every twenty children baptized. Some French parishes in the seventeenth
century had extraordinarily low rates of illegitimacy, with less than 1 percent of the
babies born out of wedlock. Illegitimate babies were apparently a rarity, at least as
far as the official church records are concerned. This does not mean that premari-
tal intercourse was unusual, however. A significant number of women were preg-
nant on their wedding day.
The combination of very low rates of illegitimate births with large numbers of
pregnant brides reflects the powerful community controls of the traditional vil- community controls A pattern of
lage, particularly the open-field village, with its pattern of cooperation and com- cooperation and common action that
was mobilized by perceived threats to the
mon action. No doubt many couples were already betrothed, or at least “going economic, social, and moral stability of
steady,” before they entered into intimate relationships, and pregnancy simply set the closely knit community.
the marriage date once and for all. But if a couple wavered about marriage, they
could expect to be pressured by irate parents, anxious village elders, indignant
priests, and stern landlords. The prospect of an unwed (and therefore poor) mother
was seen as a grave threat to the economic, social, and moral stability of the closely
knit community.
Community controls extended to domestic disputes and marital scandals as
well. The people in peasant communities gave such affairs loud and unfavorable
publicity either at the time of the event or during the Carnival season (see page 530).
The young men of the village would typically gang up on the person they wanted to
punish and force him or her to sit astride a donkey facing backward and holding up
the donkey’s tail. They would parade the overly brutal spouse-beating husband (or
wife), or the couple whose adultery had been discovered, all around the village,
loudly proclaiming the offender’s misdeeds with scorn and ridicule. The donkey
ride and other colorful humiliations ranging from rotten vegetables splattered on the
doorstep to obscene and insulting midnight serenades were common punishments
throughout much of Europe. They epitomized the community’s far-reaching effort
to police personal behavior and maintain community standards.
In the second half of the eighteenth century, the pat-

New Patterns of tern of few births out of wedlock began to break down.
Marriage and The number of illegitimate births soared between
Illegitimacy about 1750 and 1850 as much of Europe experienced
illegitimacy explosion The sharp an illegitimacy explosion. In Frankfurt, Germany, for example, illegitimate births
increase in out-of-wedlock births that rose steadily from about 2 percent of all births in the early 1700s to a peak of about
occurred in Europe between 1750
and 1850, caused by urbanization,
25 percent around 1850. In Bordeaux, France, 36 percent of all babies were being
unemployment, and the breakdown born out of wedlock by 1840. Small towns and villages experienced less startling
of community controls. climbs, but between 1750 and 1850 increases from a range of 1 to 3 percent ini-
tially to 10 to 20 percent were commonplace. Fewer young people were abstaining
from premarital intercourse, and, more important, fewer young men were marry-
ing the women they got pregnant. Thus a profound sexual and cultural transfor-
mation took place.
Historians are still debating the meaning of this transformation, but one trend
seems to explain the rise of illegitimate births in urban areas. The needs of a grow-
ing population sent many young villagers to towns and cities in search of employ-
ment. Most young women in urban areas found work only as servants or textile
workers. Poorly paid and with little possibility of truly independent lives, they
looked to marriage for security. But without the social controls of village life, their
courtships could lead to illegitimate children rather than marriage. Because the
lives of their partners were also insecure, many men hesitated to take on the finan-
cial burden of a wife and child. Thus the romantic aspirations of many young
people were frustrated by low wages, inequality, and changing economic and so-
cial conditions. Old patterns of marriage and family were breaking down. Only in
the late nineteenth century would more stable patterns reappear.
The pattern of late marriage also eroded in some areas in the second half of the
eighteenth century. First, the growth of cottage industry created new opportunities
for earning a living, opportunities not tied to the land. Cottage workers married at
a younger age because they did not have to wait to inherit a farm. A scrap of
David Allan: The Penny

Wedding (1795)
The spirited merrymaking of a
peasant wedding was a popular
theme of European artists. In rural
Scotland “penny weddings” like this
one were common: guests provided
cash gifts; any money left after
paying for the wedding went to the
newlyweds to help them get started.
Dancing, feasting, and drinking
characterized these community
parties, which led the Presbyterian
church to oppose them and hasten
their decline. (National Galleries
of Scotland)
Children and Education 515
ground for a garden and a cottage for the loom and spinning wheel could be quite Sec tion Review
enough for a modest living. Couples married not only at an earlier age but also for
• Most European couples married after
different reasons. Nothing could be so businesslike as peasant marriages that were reaching adulthood when they could
often dictated by the needs of the couples’ families. After 1750, however, courtship support themselves in a nuclear family
became more extensive and freer as cottage industry grew. It was easier to yield to that lived separate from the parents.
the attraction of the opposite sex and fall in love. Members of the older generation • Young men worked at home, were
were often highly critical of the lack of responsibility they saw in the union of apprenticed, or worked as hired labor
“people with only two spinning wheels and not even a bed.” But such scolding did until they could marry; women often
not stop cottage workers from marrying for love rather than for economic consid- worked as servants, and conditions for
both sexes were harsh.
erations as they blazed a path that factory workers would follow in the nineteenth
century. Ironically, therefore, both the rise of illegitimate births and the new ten- • Low illegitimate birth rates most likely
indicate the amount of pressure a
dencies toward earlier marriage reflect a weakening of parental and communities’ village had on individuals and fami-
control over young people. lies, enforcing marriage for pregnancy
and openly ridiculing domestic vio-
lence or adultery.
Children and Education • The second half of the eighteenth
century brought a steep rise in the
What was life like for children, and how did attitudes toward number of illegitimate births, a result
childhood evolve? of young women and men working in
urban areas where relationships led to
pregnancy but not marriage; on the
In the traditional framework of agrarian Europe, women married late but then other hand, the age of marriage fell as
began bearing children rapidly. If a woman married before she was thirty, and if cottage industry workers were able to
both she and her husband lived to fifty, she would most likely give birth to six or support themselves sooner.
more children. The newborn child entered a dangerous world. Newborns were
vulnerable to infectious diseases of the chest and stomach, and many babies died
of dehydration brought about by bad bouts of ordinary diarrhea. Of those who
survived infancy, many more died in childhood. Even in rich families little could
be done for an ailing child. Childbirth could also be dangerous. Women who bore
six children faced a cumulative risk of dying in childbirth of 5 to 10 percent, a
thousand times as great as the risk in Europe today.3
Schools and formal education played only a modest role in the lives of ordi-
nary children, and many boys and many more girls never learned to read. Never-
theless, basic literacy was growing among the popular classes, whose reading habits
have been intensively studied in recent years. Attempting to peer into the collec-
tive attitudes of the common people and compare them with those of the book-
hungry cultivated public, historians have produced some fascinating insights.
In the countryside, women of the lower classes gener-

Child Care ally breast-fed their infants for two years or more.
and Nursing Breast-feeding decreases the likelihood of pregnancy
for the average woman by delaying the resumption of ovulation. By nursing their
babies, women limited their fertility and spaced their children from two to three
years apart. If a newborn baby died, nursing stopped, and a new life could be cre-
ated. Nursing also saved lives: the breast-fed infant received precious immunity-
producing substances with its mother’s milk and was more likely to survive than
when it was given other food.
Women of the aristocracy and upper middle class seldom nursed their own
children. The upper-class woman felt that breast-feeding was crude and undigni-
fied. Instead, she hired a live-in wet nurse to suckle her child (which usually meant
sending the nurse’s own infant away to be nursed). Urban mothers of more modest
means also relied on wet nurses to free them for full-time work. Unable to afford
Arrival of the Wet Nurses

Wet-nursing was big business in eighteenth-century France, particularly in Paris and the north. Here, rural wet nurses bring
their charges back to the city to be reunited with their families after around two years of care. These children were lucky
survivors of a system that produced high mortality rates. (Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, NY)
live-in wet nurses, they often turned to the cheaper services of women in the coun-
wet-nursing A widespread and tryside. Rural wet-nursing was a widespread business in the eighteenth century,
flourishing business in the eighteenth conducted within the framework of the putting-out system. The traffic was in ba-
century in which women would breast-
feed other women’s babies for money.
bies rather than in yarn or cloth, and two or three years often passed before the
wet-nurse worker in the countryside finished her task. The wet nurse generally had
little contact with the family that hired her, and she was expected to privilege the
newcomer at the expense of her own nursing child.
Reliance on wet nurses contributed to high levels of infant mortality. A study
of parish registers in northern France during the late seventeenth and early eigh-
teenth centuries reveals that 35 percent of babies died before their first birthdays,
and another 20 percent before age ten.4 In England, where more mothers nursed,
only some 30 percent of children did not reach their tenth birthdays. French-
women also gave birth to more children since nursing tends to slow down the re-
turn of fertility after childbirth.
In the second half of the eighteenth century critics mounted a harsh attack
against wet-nursing. Upper-class women responded positively to the new mindset,
but poor urban women who depended on jobs where nursing was not possible
continued to rely on wet nurses. Not until the late-nineteenth-century introduction
of sterilized cows’ milk and artificial nipples did wet-nursing cease as a practice.
The young woman who could not provide for a child

Foundlings and had few choices, especially if she had no prospect of
Infanticide marriage. Abortions were illegal, dangerous, and ap-
parently rare. In desperation, some women, particularly in the countryside, hid
unwanted pregnancies, delivered in secret, and smothered their newborn infants.
If discovered, infanticide (in-fAN-tuh-side) was punishable by death. infanticide The willful destruction of a
Women in cities could leave their infants at foundling homes, which multi- newborn infant.
plied in the eighteenth century. In eighteenth-century England, for example, the
government acted on a petition calling for a foundling hospital “to prevent the
frequent murders of poor, miserable infants at birth” and “to suppress the inhu-
man custom of exposing newborn children to perish in the streets.” As the number
of homes increased, the number of foundlings being cared for surged. By the end
of the century European foundling hospitals were admitting annually about one
hundred thousand abandoned children, nearly all of them infants. While most of
the children were the offspring of unwed mothers, others were the offspring of
married couples, for whom an additional mouth to feed often meant tragedy.
Great numbers of babies entered foundling homes, but few left. Even in the
best of these homes, 50 percent of the babies normally died within a year. In the
worst, fully 90 percent did not survive.5 They succumbed to long journeys over
rough roads, intentional and unintentional neglect by their wet nurses, and cus-
tomary childhood illnesses. So great were the losses that some contemporaries
called the foundling hospitals “legalized infanticide.”
What were the typical circumstances of children’s

Attitudes Toward lives? The topic of parental attitudes toward children
Children in the early modern period remains controversial.
Some scholars have claimed that parents did not risk forming emotional attach-
ments to young children because of high mortality rates. With a reasonable expec-
tation that a child might die, some scholars believe, parents maintained an attitude
of indifference, if not downright negligence.
The French essayist, Michel de Montaigne (mon-TAIN), exemplifies this atti-
tude. He wrote: “I cannot abide that passion for caressing new-born children,
which have neither mental activities nor recognisable bodily shape by which to
make themselves loveable and I have never willingly suffered them to be fed in my
presence.”6
In contrast to this harsh picture, however, historians have drawn ample evi-
dence from diaries, letters, and family portraits that many parents did cherish their
children and suffered greatly when they died. The English poet Ben Jonson wrote
movingly of the death of his seven-year-old son Benjamin:
On My First Son
Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy.
Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
In a society characterized by violence and brutality, discipline of children was
often severe. The novelist Daniel Defoe (duh-FOH) (1659–1731), who was always
delighted when he saw young children working hard in cottage industry, coined
the axiom “Spare the rod and spoil the child.” He meant it. So did Susannah Wes-
ley (1669–1742), mother of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism. According to
her, the first task of a parent toward her children was “to conquer the will, and
bring them to an obedient temper.” She reported that her babies were “taught to
fear the rod, and to cry softly; by which means they escaped the abundance of cor-
rection they might otherwise have had, and that most odious noise of the crying of
children was rarely heard in the house.”7
The Enlightenment produced an enthusiastic new discourse about childhood
and child rearing. Starting around 1760, critics called for greater tenderness toward
children and proposed imaginative new teaching methods. They objected to the
practices of swaddling babies, using rigid whale-boned corsets to “straighten them
out,” and dressing children in miniature versions of adult clothing. Instead parents
were urged to dress their children in simpler and more comfortable clothing to
allow freedom of movement. For Enlightenment critics, the best hopes for creat-
ing a new society, untrammeled by the prejudices of the past, lay in a radical revi-
sion of child-rearing techniques according to “natural” laws.
One of the century’s most influential works on child rearing was Jean-Jacques
Rousseau’s (zhahn-zhock roo-SOE) Emile, which fervently advocated breast-feeding
and natural dress. Rousseau argued that boys’ education should include plenty of
fresh air and exercise and that they should be taught practical craft skills in addi-
tion to book learning. Reacting to what he perceived as the vanity and frivolity of
upper-class Parisian women, Rousseau insisted girls’ education focus on their fu-
ture domestic responsibilities. For Rousseau, women’s “nature” destined them
solely for a life of marriage and child rearing. The ideas of Rousseau and other
reformers were enthusiastically adopted by elite women, who did not adopt uni-
versal nursing but did at least begin to supervise their wet nurses more carefully.
For all his influence, Rousseau also reveals the occasional hypocrisy of En-
lightenment thinkers. With regard to the child-rearing techniques he believed
would create a better society, Rousseau had extremely high expectations; when it
came to the five children he fathered with his common-law wife, however, he
abandoned them all in foundling hospitals despite their mother’s protests. None
are known to have survived. For Rousseau, the idea of creating a natural man was
more important than raising real children.
The availability of formal education outside the home

Schools and Popular increased during the eighteenth century. Prussia led
Literature the way in the development of universal education, in-
spired by the Protestant idea that every believer should be able to read the Bible
and by the new idea of a population capable of effectively serving the state. As early
as 1717 Prussia made attendance at elementary schools compulsory, and more
Protestant German states, such as Saxony and Württemberg (WUR-tuhm-burg),
followed during the eighteenth century. In Scotland the focus on Bible study led
to the creation of parish schools for all children, and in England “charity schools”
were established for the poor. In Catholic France, some Christian schools were
established to teach the catechism and prayers as well as reading and writing, and
the Catholic Habsburg state went even further, promoting elementary education
enthusiastically in the eighteenth century. Thus some elementary education was
becoming a reality, and schools were of growing significance in the life of the child.
The result of these efforts was a remarkable growth in basic literacy between
1600 and 1800. Whereas in 1600 only one male in six was barely literate in France
and Scotland, and one in four in England, by 1800 almost nine out of ten Scottish
males, two out of three French males, and more than half of English males were
literate. In all three countries, the bulk of the jump occurred in the eighteenth
century. Women were also increasingly literate, although they lagged behind men.
Raoux: Young Woman Reading a Letter

Literacy rates for men and women rose substantially during the
eighteenth century. The novel also emerged as a new literary genre
in this period. With its focus on emotions, love, and family
melodrama, the novel was seen as a particularly feminine genre,
and it allowed women writers more access to publication. Writing
and reading letters were also associated with women. Some
contemporaries worried that women’s growing access to reading
and writing would excite their imagination and desires, leading to
moral dissolution. (Réunion des Musées Nationaux /Art Resource, NY)
The growth in literacy promoted a growth in read-

ing, and historians have carefully examined what the
common people read in an attempt to discern what
they were thinking. While the Bible remained the over-
whelming favorite, especially in Protestant countries,
short pamphlets known as chapbooks were the staple of
popular literature. Printed on the cheapest paper avail-
able, many chapbooks dealt with religious subjects.
They featured Bible stories, prayers, devotions, and the
lives of saints and exemplary Christians. Promising hap-
piness after death, devotional literature was also in-
tensely practical. It gave the believer moral teachings
and a confidence in God that helped in daily living.
Entertaining, often humorous stories formed a second element of popular
literature. Fairy tales, medieval romances, true crime stories, and fantastic adven-
tures were some of the delights that filled the peddler’s pack as he approached a
village. These tales presented a world of danger and magic, of supernatural pow-
ers, fairy godmothers, and evil trolls. The significance of these enter-
taining stories for the peasant reader is debated. Many scholars see
them reflecting a desire for pure escapism and a temporary flight from Sec tion Review
harsh everyday reality. Others see the tales reflecting ancient folk • Lower-class rural women generally breast-fed their
wisdom and counseling prudence in a world full of danger and injus- infants, while urban and upper-class women most
tice, where wolves dress up like grandmothers and eat Little Red Rid- often hired a wet nurse, typically a rural woman, to
ing Hoods. suckle their infants.
Finally, some popular literature was highly practical, dealing with • An unwanted pregnancy brought social and eco-
rural crafts, household repairs, useful plants, and similar matters. nomic disaster, causing some women to turn to
infanticide; in response, Europeans set up found-
Much lore was stored in almanacs, where calendars listing secular,
ling hospitals that took in large numbers of infants,
religious, and astrological events were mixed with agricultural sched- but few left, as infant death rates were high.
ules, arcane facts, and jokes. The almanac was universal, was not
• The Enlightenment brought calls for a new
controversial, and was highly appreciated even by many in the com- tenderness and freedom for children; among the
fortable classes. “Anyone who could would read an almanac.”8 In most influential was Rousseau’s plea for boys to
this way, elites still shared some elements of a common culture with get exercise and practical life skills along with
the masses. book learning and for girls to learn appropriate
domestic skills.
While the vast majority of ordinary people did not read the great
works of the Enlightenment, that does not mean they were immune • A growing number of schools contributed to in-
creased literacy, and reading rates rose with the
to its ideas. Urban working people were exposed to new ideas through
introduction of popular and devotional literature,
public conversation and cheap publications that helped translate En- novels, fairy tales, and books on practical subjects
lightenment critiques into ordinary language. Servants who had over- such as the almanac. The Bible and Bible stories
heard the discussions of their educated employers might disseminate remained favorite reading material.
new ideas on trips back to their villages.
Food, Medicine, and New Consumption Habits

How did new patterns of consumption and changing medical care affect
people’s lives?
One of the most important developments in European society in the eighteenth

century was the emergence of a fledgling consumer culture. Much of the expan-
sion took place in the upper and upper-middle classes, but a boom in cheap repro-
ductions of luxury items also permitted people of modest means to purchase more
objects. From food to ribbons and from coal stoves to umbrellas, the material
world of city dwellers grew richer and more diverse. These developments created
new expectations for comfort and hygiene in daily life. Medical practitioners
greatly increased in number, although their techniques did not differ much from
those of previous generations.
The possibility of picking and choosing among a new variety of consumer
goods and provisioners encouraged the development of new notions of individual-
ity and self-expression. A shop girl could stand out from her peers by her choice of
a striped jacket, a colored parasol, or simply a new ribbon for her hair. New atti-
tudes about privacy and intimate life also emerged. Whereas families previously
shared common living spaces, in the eighteenth century they erected new parti-
tions within their homes to create private nooks. Alongside an upturn in economic
production, this “consumer revolution,” as it has been called, dramatically changed
European life in the eighteenth century. As in other developments, England led
the way.
At the beginning of the eighteenth century, ordinary

Diets and Nutrition men and women depended on grain as fully as they
had in the past. Brown bread and gruel remained the
mainstays of people’s diets, and while they did eat vegetables, their choices were
typically limited to peas, beans, cabbage, carrots, and wild greens. Patterns of food
consumption changed markedly as the century progressed. There was a general
growth of market gardening, and a greater variety of vegetables appeared in towns
and cities. This was particularly the case in the Low Countries and England,
which pioneered new methods of farming.
The Columbian exchange of foods was also responsible for dietary changes.
Originating in the Americas—along with corn, squash, tomatoes, and many other
useful plants—the humble potato provided an excellent new food source for Eu-
ropeans. Containing a good supply of carbohydrates, calories, and vitamins A and
C, the potato offset the lack of vitamins from green vegetables in the poor person’s
diet, and it provided a much higher caloric yield than grain for a given piece of
land. After initial resistance, the potato became an important dietary supplement
in much of Europe by the end of the century. In the course of the eighteenth
century the large towns and cities of maritime Europe also began to receive semi-
tropical fruits, such as oranges and lemons, from Portugal and the West Indies, but
they remained expensive.
The most remarkable dietary change in the eighteenth century was in the
consumption of sugar and tea. No other commodities grew so quickly in consump-
tion. Previously expensive and rare luxury items, they became dietary staples for
people of all social classes. This was possible because of the steady drop in prices
created by the expansion of colonial production and slave labor. Other colonial
Food, Medicine, and New Consumption Habits 521
Royal Interest in the Potato

Frederick the Great of Prussia, shown here supervising cultivation of the potato, used his influence and position to promote
the new food on his estates and throughout Prussia. Peasants could grow potatoes with the simplest hand tools, but it was
backbreaking labor, as this painting by R. Warthmüller suggests. (Private Collection, Hamburg /akg-images)
goods also became important items of daily consumption in this period, including
coffee, tobacco, and chocolate.
Part of the motivation for consuming these products was a desire to emulate
the habits of “respectable” people. The accelerating pace of work in the eighteenth
century also seems to have created new needs for stimulants among working
people. (See the feature “Listening to the Past: A Day in the Life of Paris” on
pages 533–534.) Whereas the gentry took tea as a leisurely and genteel ritual, the
lower classes usually drank tea at work. With the widespread adoption of these
products (which turned out to be mildly to extremely addictive), working people
in Europe became increasingly dependent on faraway colonial economies. Their
understanding of daily necessities and how to procure those necessities shifted
definitively, linking them into a globalized capitalism far beyond their ability to
shape or control.
Along with foodstuffs, all manner of other goods in-

Toward a creased in variety and number in the eighteenth cen-
Consumer Society tury. This proliferation led to a growth in consumption
and new attitudes toward consumer goods so wide-ranging that some historians
have referred to an eighteenth-century “consumer revolution.” The long-term consumer revolution The growth in
result of this revolution was the birth of a new type of society, in which people had consumption and new attitudes toward
consumer goods as a result of an increase
greater access to finished goods and derived their self-identity as much from their in quantity and variety of foodstuffs and
consuming practices as from their working lives and place in the production pro- other goods in the eighteenth century.
cess. The full emergence of a consumer society did not take place until much
later, but its roots lie in the developments of the eighteenth century.
Increased demand for consumer goods was not merely an innate response to
increased supply. Eighteenth-century merchants cleverly pioneered new tech-
niques to incite demand: they initiated marketing campaigns, opened fancy bou-
tiques with large windows, and advertised the patronage of royal princes and
princesses. By diversifying their product lines and greatly accelerating the turnover
of styles, they seized the reins of fashion from the courtiers who had earlier con-
trolled it. Instead of setting new styles, duchesses and marquises now bowed to the
dictates of fashion merchants. Fashion also extended beyond court circles to touch
many more items and social groups.
Clothing was one of the chief indicators of nascent consumerism. The wiles of
entrepreneurs made fashionable clothing seem more desirable, while legions of
women entering the textile and needle trades made it ever cheaper. As a result,
eighteenth-century western Europe witnessed a dramatic rise in the consumption
of clothing, particularly in large cities. One historian has documented an enor-
mous growth in the size and value of Parisians’ wardrobes from 1700 to 1789, as
well as a new level of diversity in garments and accessories, colors, and fabrics.
Colonial economies played an important role, supplying new materials, such as
cotton and vegetable dyes, at low cost. Cheaper copies of elite styles made it pos-
sible for working people to aspire to follow fashion for the first time.9
Women were typically more interested in acquiring a fashionable wardrobe
than were their husbands, brothers, and fathers. This was true across the social
spectrum; in ribbons, shoes, gloves, and lace, French working women reaped in
the consumer revolution what they had sewn in the industrious revolution (see
pages 494–495). There were also new gender distinctions in dress. Previously, no-
blemen vied with women in the magnificence and ostentation of their dress; by
the end of the eighteenth century men had begun to don early versions of the
plain dark suit that remains standard male formalwear in the West. This was one
The Fashion Merchant’s Shop

Shopping in fancy boutiques became a favorite leisure pastime of the rich in the eighteenth century. Whereas shops had
previously been dark, cramped spaces, now they were filled with light from large plate-glass windows, staffed by finely
dressed attendants, and equipped with chairs and large mirrors for a comfortable shopping experience. Fashion merchants
(or milliners) sold hats, shawls, parasols, and an infinite variety of accessories and decorations. (Courtesy, University of Illinois Library)
Food, Medicine, and New Consumption Habits 523
more aspect of the increasingly rigid distinction drawn between appropriate male
and female behavior.
The consumer revolution extended into the home as well. In 1700 a meal
might be served in a common dish, with each person dipping his or her spoon into
the pot. By the end of the eighteenth century even humble households contained
a much greater variety of cutlery and dishes, making it possible for each person to
eat from his or her own plate. More books and prints, which also proliferated at
lower prices, decorated the walls. Improvements in glass-making provided more
transparent glass, which allowed daylight to penetrate into gloomy rooms. Cold
and smoky hearths were increasingly replaced by more efficient and cleaner coal
stoves, which also eliminated the backache of cooking over an open fire. People
began to assign specific functions to rooms, moving away from the practice of us-
ing the same room for sleeping, receiving guests, and working. Inner walls or
screens were added to create these specific areas along with greater privacy. Rooms
became warmer, better lit, more comfortable, and more personalized.
The scope of the new consumer economy should not be exaggerated. These
developments were concentrated in large cities in northwestern Europe and in
North America. Even in these centers the elite benefited the most from new modes
of life. This was not yet the society of mass consumption that emerged toward the
end of the nineteenth century with the full expansion of the Industrial Revolution.
The eighteenth century did, however, lay the foundations for one of the most dis-
tinctive features of modern Western life: societies based on the consumption of
goods and services obtained through the market in which individuals form their
identities and self-worth through the goods they consume.
With these advances in daily life, how did the care of

Medical Practitioners sickness, pain, and disease evolve? Medical science
continued to struggle in vain against these scourges.
Yet the Enlightenment’s focus on research and experimentation, along with a re-
markable rise in the number of medical practitioners, laid the foundation for sig-
nificant breakthroughs in the middle and late nineteenth century.
Care of the sick in the eighteenth century was the domain of several compet-
ing groups: faith healers, apothecaries (or pharmacists), physicians, surgeons, and
midwives. Both men and women were prominent in the healing arts, as had been
the case since the Middle Ages. But by 1700 the range of medical activities open
to women was severely restricted because women were generally denied admis-
sion to medical colleges and lacked the diplomas necessary to practice. In the
course of the eighteenth century, the position of women as midwives and healers
further eroded.
Faith healers remained active. They and their patients believed that demons
and evil spirits caused disease by lodging in the body and that the proper treatment
was to exorcise, or drive out, the offending devil. This demonic view of disease was
strongest in the countryside, where popular belief placed great faith in the healing
power of religious relics, prayer, and the laying on of hands.
In the larger towns and cities, apothecaries sold a vast number of herbs, drugs,
and patent medicines for every conceivable “temperament and distemper.” Their
prescriptions were incredibly complex—a hundred or more drugs might be in-
cluded in a single prescription—and often very expensive. Like all varieties of
medical practitioners, apothecaries advertised their wares, their high-class custom-
ers, and their miraculous cures in newspapers and commercial circulars. Medicine,
like food and fashionable clothing, thus joined the era’s new commercial culture.
Physicians, who were invariably men, were apprenticed in their teens to prac-
ticing physicians for several years of on-the-job training. This training was then
rounded out with hospital work or some university courses. Because such pro-
longed training was expensive, physicians came mainly from prosperous families,
and they usually concentrated on urban patients from similar social backgrounds.
They had little contact with urban workers and less with peasants. While physi-
cians in the eighteenth century were increasingly willing to experiment with new
methods, they continued to practice the medieval cures of blood-letting and purg-
ing of the bowels.
Surgeons, in contrast to physicians, made considerable medical and social
progress in the eighteenth century. Long considered to be ordinary male artisans
comparable to butchers and barbers, surgeons began studying anatomy seriously
and improved their art. They learned to perform amputations when faced with
severely wounded limbs, but they labored in the face of incredible difficulties.
Almost all operations were performed without painkillers, for the anesthesias of
the day were hard to control and were believed too dangerous for general use.
Many patients died from the agony and shock of such operations. Surgery was also
performed in utterly unsanitary conditions, for there was no knowledge of bacteri-
ology and the nature of infection. The simplest wound treated by a surgeon could
fester and lead to death.
Midwives continued to deliver the overwhelming majority of babies through-
out the eighteenth century. Trained initially by another woman practitioner—and
regulated by a guild in many cities—the midwife primarily assisted in labor and de-
livering babies but also handled other medical issues specific to women and in-
fants. In France one enterprising Parisian midwife secured royal financing for
her campaign to teach better birthing techniques to village midwives, which rein-
forced the position of women practitioners. (See the feature “Individuals in Soci-
ety: Madame du Coudray, the Nation’s Midwife.”) However, their profession came
under attack by surgeon-physicians, who used their monopoly over the new instru-
ment of the forceps to seek lucrative new business. While midwives generally lost
no more babies than did male doctors, the doctors persuaded growing numbers of
wealthy women of the superiority of their services.
Experimentation and the intensified search for solutions to human problems
led to some real advances in medicine after 1750. The eighteenth century’s great-
est medical triumph was the conquest of smallpox. With the progressive decline of
bubonic plague, smallpox became the most terrible of the infectious diseases, and
it is estimated that 60 million Europeans died of it in the eighteenth century. Fully
80 percent of the population was stricken at some point in life.
The first step in the conquest of this killer in Europe came in the early eigh-
teenth century. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (MON-tuh-gyoo) brought the prac-
smallpox inoculation The practice tice of smallpox inoculation to England from the Muslim lands of western Asia
of vaccinating people with cowpox so where she had lived as the wife of the British ambassador. But inoculation with the
that they would not come down with
smallpox.
pus of a smallpox victim was risky because about one person in fifty died from it.
In addition, people who had been inoculated were infectious and often spread
the disease.
While the practice of inoculation with the smallpox virus was refined over the
century, the crucial breakthrough was made by Edward Jenner (1749–1823), a
talented country doctor. His starting point was the countryside belief that dairy
maids who had contracted cowpox did not get smallpox. Cowpox produces sores
that resemble those of smallpox, but the disease is mild and is not contagious. For
eighteen years Jenner practiced a kind of Baconian science, carefully collecting
data. Finally, in 1796 he performed his first vaccination on a young boy using
Madame du Coudray, the Nation’s Midwife
I n 1751 a highly esteemed Parisian midwife left the
capital for a market town in central France. Having
accepted an invitation to instruct local women in the
Childbirth. Handsomely and effectively illustrated (see
the image below), the Manual incorporated her hands-
on teaching method and served as a text and reference
skills of childbirth, Madame Angelique Marguerite Le for students and graduates. In 1759 the government
Boursier du Coudray (kood-RAY) soon demonstrated a authorized Madame du
marvelous ability to teach students and win their re- Coudray to carry her in-
spect. The thirty-six-year-old midwife found her mission: struction “throughout the
she would become the nation’s midwife. realm” and promised finan-
For eight years Madame du Coudray taught young cial support. Her reception
women from the impoverished villages of Auvergne was not always warm, for
(oh-VAIRN). In doing so, she entered into the world of she was a self-assured and
unschooled midwives who typically were solid matrons demanding woman who
with several children who relied on traditional birthing could anger old midwives,
practices and folk superstitions. Trained in Paris through male surgeons, and skepti-
a rigorous three-year apprenticeship and imbued with cal officials. But aided by
an Enlightenment faith in the power of knowledge, du servants, a niece, and her
Coudray had little sympathy for these village midwives. husband, this inspired and
Many peasant mothers told her about their difficult de- indefatigable woman took
liveries and their many uterine “infirmities,” which they her course from town to
attributed to “the ignorance of the women to whom town until her retirement
they had recourse, or to that of some inexperienced vil- in 1784. Typically her stu-
lage [male] surgeons.”* Du Coudray agreed. Botched dents were young peasant Plate from Madame du Coudray’s
deliveries by incompetents resulted in horrible deformi- women on tiny stipends manual, illustrating “another incorrect
ties and unnecessary deaths. who came into town from method of delivery.” (Rare Books Division,
Countway [Francis A.] Library of Medicine)
Determined to raise standards, Madame du Coudray surrounding villages for
saw that her unlettered pupils learned through the two to three months of
senses, not through books. Thus she made, possibly for instruction. Classes met
the first time in history, a life-sized obstetrical model—a mornings and afternoons six days a week, with ample
“machine”—out of fabric and stuffing for use in her time to practice on the mannequin (MAN-uh-kin). Af-
classes. “I had . . . the students maneuver in front of me ter a recuperative break, Madame du Coudray and her
on a machine . . . which represented the pelvis of a entourage moved on.
woman, the womb, its opening, its ligaments, the con- Teaching thousands of fledgling midwives, Madame
duit called the vagina, the bladder, and rectum intestine. du Coudray may well have contributed to the decline in
I added an [artificial] child of natural size, whose joints infant mortality and to the increase in population occur-
were flexible enough to be able to be put in different ring in France in the eighteenth century—an increase
positions.” Now du Coudray could demonstrate the she and her royal supporters fervently desired. Certainly
problems of childbirth, and each student could practice she spread better knowledge about childbirth from the
on the model in the “lab session.” educated elite to the common people.
As her reputation grew, Madame du Coudray sought
to reach a national audience. In 1757 she published the
first of several editions of her Manual on the Art of Questions for Analysis
1. How do you account for Madame du Coudray’s
remarkable success?
* Quotes are from Nina Gelbart, The King’s Midwife: A History
and Mystery of Madame du Coudray (Berkeley: University of 2. Does Madame du Coudray’s career reflect tensions
California Press, 1998), pp. 60–61. This definitive biography is between educated elites and the common people?
excellent. If so, how?
525
Sec tion Review matter taken from a milkmaid with cowpox. After performing more successful vac-
cinations, Jenner published his findings in 1798. The new method of treatment
• Potatoes and new vegetables from the spread rapidly, and smallpox soon declined to the point of disappearance in Eu-
colonies added to the diet as did sugar
and tea; their falling prices helped them
rope and then throughout the world.
become staples for all social classes.
• Increased availability of finished goods
and new techniques for marketing them Religion and Popular Culture
helped produce a consumer revolution
in some parts of Europe, especially What were the patterns of popular religion and culture, and how did
among women, thus marking the first they interact with the worldview of the educated public and the
step toward a society in which people Enlightenment?
derive self-identity from the possessions
they consume.
Though the critical spirit of the Enlightenment made great inroads in the eigh-
• Eighteenth-century medical practition-
ers included countryside faith healers, teenth century, the majority of ordinary men and women, especially those in rural
apothecaries selling a wide range of areas, remained committed Christians. Religious faith promised salvation and
advertised treatments, physicians and eternal life, and it gave comfort and courage in the face of sorrow and death. Reli-
surgeons who worked primarily with gion also remained strong because it was usually embedded in local traditions,
the wealthy and were almost all men,
everyday social experience, and popular culture.
and midwives who assisted women in
birthing and faced new competition Yet the popular religion of the European village was everywhere enmeshed in
from male doctors. a larger world of church hierarchies and state power. These powerful outside
• Madame du Coudray was a French forces sought to regulate religious life at the local level. Their efforts created ten-
midwife who brought her training and sions that helped set the scene for a vigorous religious revival in Germany and
knowledge of childbirth to the masses England. Similar tensions arose in Catholic countries, where powerful elites criti-
by holding classes and offering hands- cized and attacked popular religious practices that their increasingly rationalistic
on training.
minds deemed foolish and superstitious.
• The biggest breakthrough in medicine
was the smallpox inoculation, which
William Jenner perfected using cowpox
to vaccinate people. As in the Middle Ages, the local parish church re-
The Institutional mained the focal point of religious devotion and com-
Church munity cohesion. Congregations gossiped and swapped
stories after services, and neighbors came together in church for baptisms, mar-
riages, funerals, and special events. Priests and parsons kept the community rec-
ords of births, deaths, and marriages, distributed charity, looked after orphans, and
provided primary education to the common people. Thus the parish church was
woven into the very fabric of community life.
While the parish church remained central to the community, it was also sub-
ject to greater control from the state. In Protestant areas, princes and monarchs
headed the official church, and they regulated their “territorial churches” strictly,
selecting personnel and imposing detailed rules. By the eighteenth century, the
radical ideas of the Reformation had resulted in another version of church bureauc-
racy. Catholic monarchs in this period also took greater control of religious mat-
ters in their kingdoms, weakening papal authority. Spain, a deeply Catholic
country with devout rulers, took firm control of ecclesiastical appointments. Papal
proclamations could not even be read in Spanish churches without prior approval
from the government. Spain also asserted state control over the Spanish Inquisition,
which pursued heresy as an independent agency under Rome’s direction and went
far toward creating a “national” Catholic Church, as France had done earlier.
A more striking indication of state power and papal weakness was the fate of
the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits. The well-educated Jesuits were extraordinary teach-
ers, missionaries, and agents of the papacy. In many Catholic countries, they exer-
cised tremendous political influence, holding high government positions and
educating the nobility in their colleges. Yet by playing politics so effectively, the
Religion and Popular Culture 527
Jesuits eventually elicited a broad coalition of enemies. Bitter controversies led

Louis XV to order the Jesuits out of France in 1763 and to confiscate their prop-
erty. France and Spain then pressured Rome to dissolve the Jesuits completely. In
1773 a reluctant pope caved in, although the order was revived after the French
Revolution.
Some Catholic rulers also believed that the clergy in monasteries and con-
vents should make a more practical contribution to social and religious life. Aus-
tria, a leader in controlling the church (see page 479) and promoting primary
education, showed how far the process could go. Maria Theresa began by sharply
restricting entry into “unproductive” orders. In his Edict on Idle Institutions, her
successor Joseph II abolished contemplative orders, henceforth permitting only
orders that were engaged in teaching, nursing, or other practical work. The state
also expropriated the dissolved monasteries and used their wealth for charitable
purposes and higher salaries for ordinary priests. These measures recalled the rad-
ical transformation of the Protestant Reformation.
By the late seventeenth century the vast reforms of the

Protestant Revival Reformation were complete and routinized in most
Protestant churches. Indeed, many official Protestant
churches had settled into a smug complacency. In the Reformation heartland, one
concerned German minister wrote that the Lutheran church “had become para-
lyzed in forms of dead doctrinal conformity” and badly needed a return to its
original inspiration.10 His voice was one of many that prepared and then guided a
powerful Protestant revival that succeeded because it answered the intense but
increasingly unsatisfied needs of common people.
The Protestant revival began in Germany. It was known as Pietism (PIE-uh- Pietism The name for the Protestant
tiz-um), and three aspects helped explain its powerful appeal. First, Pietism called revival that began in Germany; it stressed
enthusiasm, the priesthood of all
for a warm, emotional religion that everyone could experience. Enthusiasm—in
believers, and the practical power of
prayer, in worship, in preaching, in life itself—was the key concept. “Just as a Christian rebirth in everyday affairs.
drunkard becomes full of wine, so must the congregation become filled with spirit,”
declared one exuberant writer. Another said simply, “The heart must burn.”11
Second, Pietism reasserted the earlier radical stress on the priesthood of all
believers, thereby reducing the gulf between official clergy and Lutheran laity.
Bible reading and study were enthusiastically extended to all classes, and this pro-
vided a powerful spur for popular education as well as individual religious devel-
opment (see page 518). Finally, Pietists believed in the practical power of Christian
rebirth in everyday affairs. Reborn Christians were expected to lead good, moral
lives and to come from all social classes.
Pietism had a major impact on John Wesley (1703–1791), who served as the
catalyst for popular religious revival in England. As a teaching fellow at Oxford
University, Wesley organized a Holy Club for similarly minded students, who were
soon known contemptuously as Methodists because they were so methodical in Methodists The name given to a
their devotion. Yet like the young Luther, Wesley remained intensely troubled Protestant religious group started by John
Wesley, so named because of their
about his own salvation even after his ordination as an Anglican priest in 1728. methodical devotion.
Wesley’s anxieties related to grave problems of the faith in England. The gov-
ernment shamelessly used the Church of England to provide favorites with high-
paying jobs. Building of churches practically stopped while the population grew,
and in many parishes there was a shortage of pews. Churches were customarily
locked on weekdays. Services and sermons had settled into an uninspiring routine.
Moreover, Enlightenment skepticism was making inroads among the educated
classes, and deism was becoming popular. Some bishops and church leaders
Hogarth’s Satirical View of the Church

William Hogarth (1697–1764) was one of the foremost
satirical artists of his day. This image mocks a London
Methodist meeting, where the congregation swoons in
enthusiasm over the preacher’s sermon. The woman in the
foreground giving birth to rabbits refers to a hoax perpetrated
in 1726 by a servant named Mary Tofts; the credulousness of
those who believed Tofts is likened to that of the Methodist
congregation. (HIP/Art Resource, NY)
seemed to believe that doctrines such as the Virgin

Birth were little more than elegant superstitions.
Spiritual counseling from a sympathetic Pietist
minister from Germany prepared Wesley for a mys-
tical, emotional “conversion” in 1738. He described
this critical turning point in his Journal:
In the evening I went to a [Christian] society in
Aldersgate Street where one was reading Luther’s
preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a
quarter before nine, while he was describing the
change which God works in the heart through
faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I
felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salva-
tion; and an assurance was given me that he had
taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me
from the law of sin and death.12
Wesley took the good news of salvation to the people, traveling some 225,000
miles by horseback and preaching more than forty thousand sermons in fifty years.
Crowds assembled in open fields to hear him speak. Of critical importance was
Wesley’s rejection of Calvinist predestination—the doctrine of salvation granted to
only a select few. Instead, he preached that all men and women who earnestly
sought salvation might be saved. It was a message of hope and joy, of free will and
universal salvation.
Wesley’s ministry won converts, formed Methodist cells, and eventually re-
sulted in a new denomination. And as Wesley had been inspired by the Pietist re-
vival in Germany, so evangelicals in the Church of England and the old dissenting
groups now followed Wesley’s example, giving impetus to an even broader awaken-
ing among the lower classes. In Protestant countries, religion remained a vital
force in the lives of the people.
Catholicism had its own version of the Pietist revivals

Jansenism A form of Catholic revival Catholic Piety that shook Protestant Europe. Jansenism (JAN-suh-
that originated with the Flemish niz-uhm) has been described by one historian as the
theologian, Cornelius Jansen,
“illegitimate off-spring of the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-
emphasizing the heavy weight of
original sin and accepting the doctrine Reformation.”13 It originated with the Flemish theologian Cornelius Jansen
of predestination, rejected as heresy by (1585–1638), who called for a return to the austere early Christianity of Saint Au-
the official church. gustine. In contrast to the worldly Jesuits, Jansen emphasized the heavy weight of
original sin and accepted the doctrine of predestination.
Although outlawed by papal and royal edicts as Calvinist heresy, Jansenism
attracted Catholic followers eager for religious renewal, particularly in France.
Religion and Popular Culture 529
Many members of elite French society, especially judicial nobles and some parish
priests, became known for their Jansenist piety and spiritual devotion. Such stern
religious values encouraged the judiciary’s increasing opposition to the monarchy
in the second half of the eighteenth century. Among the poor, a different strain of
Jansenism took hold. Prayer meetings brought men and women together in ec-
static worship, and some participants fell into convulsions and spoke in tongues.
Jansenism was an urban phenomenon. In the countryside, many peasants in
Catholic countries held religious beliefs that were marginal to the Christian faith
altogether, often of obscure or even pagan origin. On the Feast of Saint Anthony,
for example, priests were expected to bless salt and bread for farm animals to pro-
tect them from disease. One saint’s relics could help cure a child of fear, and there
were healing springs for many ailments. The ordinary person combined strong
Christian faith with a wealth of time-honored superstitions.
Inspired initially by the fervor of the Catholic Counter- Reformation and then
to some extent by the critical rationalism of the Enlightenment, parish priests and
Catholic hierarchies sought increasingly to “purify” popular religious practice.
French priests particularly denounced the “various remnants of paganism” found
in popular bonfire ceremonies during Lent, in which young men, “yelling and
screaming like madmen,” tried to jump over the bonfires in order to help the crops
Procession of Nuns at Port-Royal des Champs

The convent of Port-Royal, located twenty miles southwest of Paris, was a center of Jansenist activity throughout
the seventeenth century. Angered by the nuns’ defiance, Louis XIV ordered them forcibly relocated in 1709. To
generate support, the artist Magdelaine Horthemels painted a series of images depicting the pious and placid
religious life at the convent. The convent was nonetheless destroyed by Louis’s forces in 1710. This image is one
of many copies of Horthemels’ work made by Jansenists in the eighteenth century. (Réunion des Musées Nationaux/
Art Resource, NY)
grow and protect themselves from illness. One priest saw rational Christians regress-
ing into pagan animals—“the triumph of Hell and the shame of Christianity.”14
In contrast with Protestant reformers, many Catholic priests and hierarchies
preferred a compromise between theological purity and the people’s piety. Thus,
the severity of the attack on popular Catholicism varied widely by country and
region. Where authorities pursued purification vigorously, as in Austria under Jo-
seph II, pious peasants saw only an incomprehensible attack on the true faith and
drew back in anger.
The combination of religious celebration and popular

Carnival The pre-Lent festival of
Leisure and recreation was most strikingly displayed at Carnival, a
reveling and excess in Catholic and Recreation time of reveling in Catholic and Mediterranean Eu-
Mediterranean Europe.
rope. Carnival preceded Lent—the forty days of fasting and penitence before
Easter—and for a few exceptional days in February or March, a wild release of
drinking, masquerading, and dancing reigned. Moreover, a combination of plays,
processions, and rowdy spectacles turned the established order upside down. Peas-
ants dressed up as nobles and men as women, and rich masters waited on their
servants at the table. This annual holiday gave people a much-appreciated chance
blood sports Spectator sports involving to release their pent-up frustrations and aggressions before life returned to the
torture and forced combat of animals,
such as bullbaiting and cockfighting.
usual pattern of hierarchy and hard work.
Despite the spread of literacy, the culture of the common people was largely
oral rather than written. In the cold, dark winter months, families gathered around
Sec tion Review the fireplace to talk, sing, tell stories, do craftwork, and keep warm. In some parts
of Europe, women would gather together in groups in someone’s cottage to chat,
• The local parish was still the center of
community life but increasingly the sew, spin, and laugh. Sometimes a few young men would be invited so that the
state exerted more control and, in daughters (and mothers) could size up potential suitors in a supervised atmos-
Catholic areas, weakened papal phere. A favorite recreation of men was drinking and talking with buddies in
authority. public places, and it was a sorry village that had no tavern.
• Protestant revival was known as Pietism Towns and cities offered a wide range of amusements. Many of these had to be
and became popular because it in- paid for because the eighteenth century saw a sharp increase in the commercial-
cluded emotion and enthusiasm, en- ization of leisure-time activities. Urban fairs featured prepared foods, acrobats,
forced the priesthood of all believers,
and promoted morality for all social freak shows, open-air performances, optical illusions, and the like. Such entertain-
classes. ments attracted a variety of social classes. So did the growing number of commer-
• John Wesley, frustrated with uninspir- cial, profit-oriented spectator sports. These ranged from traveling circuses and
ing services and routines, attracted horse races to boxing matches and bullfights. Modern sports heroes, such as brain-
followers, later called Methodists, with bashing heavyweight champions and haughty matadors, made their appearance
his message of universal salvation, hope, on the historical scene.
and joy. Blood sports, such as bullbaiting and cockfighting, remained popular with the
• In Catholic countries, especially masses. In bullbaiting, the bull, usually staked on a chain in the courtyard of an inn,
France, Jansenism gained a hold in the was attacked by ferocious dogs for the amusement of the innkeeper’s clients. Even-
cities and focused on a return to piety
and on a belief in original sin and tually the maimed and tortured animal was slaughtered by a butcher and sold as
predestination, while in the countryside meat. In cockfighting two roosters, carefully trained by their owners and armed with
a combination of Christian and pagan razor-sharp steel spurs, slashed and clawed each other in a small ring until the victor
beliefs was common. won—and the loser died. An added attraction of cockfighting was that the scream-
• For recreation people got together to ing spectators could bet on the lightning-fast combat and its uncertain outcome.
tell stories, drink in taverns, watch In trying to place the vibrant popular culture of the common people in broad
sporting events, attend an urban fair, or perspective, historians have stressed the growing criticism levied against it by the
celebrate, dance, and let loose during
Carnival—all pastimes increasingly educated elites in the second half of the eighteenth century. These elites, who had
frowned upon as sinful by educated previously shared the popular enthusiasm for religious festivals, Carnival, drinking
elites. in taverns, blood sports, and the like, now tended to see these activities as supersti-
tion, sin, disorder, and vulgarity.15 The resulting attack on popular culture, which
Chapter Review 531
had its more distant origins in the Protestant clergy’s efforts to eliminate frivolity
and superstition, was intensified as an educated public embraced the critical
worldview of the Enlightenment.
Chapter Review
What changes occurred in marriage and the family in the course of the
eighteenth century? (page 511) Key Terms
In the current generation, imaginative research has greatly increased our understand- community controls (p. 513)
ing of ordinary life and social patterns of the past. In the eighteenth century the life of illegitimacy explosion (p. 514)
the people remained primarily rural and oriented toward the local community. Tradi- wet-nursing (p. 516)
tion, routine, and well-established codes of behavior framed much of the everyday ex-
perience. Thus, just as the three-field agricultural cycle and its pattern of communal infanticide (p. 517)
rights had determined traditional patterns of grain production, so did community val- consumer revolution (p. 521)
ues in the countryside strongly encourage a late marriage age and a low rate of illegiti- smallpox inoculation (p. 524)
mate births. Yet powerful forces also worked for change. Many changes came from
Pietism (p. 527)
outside and above, from the aggressive capitalists, educated elites, and government
officials. Closely knit villages began to lose control over families and marital practices, Methodists (p. 527)
as can be seen in the earlier marriages of cottage workers and in the beginning of the Jansenism (p. 528)
explosion in illegitimate births. Carnival (p. 530)
blood sports (p. 530)
What was life like for children, and how did attitudes toward childhood evolve?
(page 515)
Infancy and childhood were highly vulnerable stages of life. In some parts of Europe
fewer than half of all children reached the age of ten. Infant mortality was high in areas
like France, in which wet-nursing was commonly practiced. Treatment of children
could be harsh in an early modern society that was characterized by much higher lev-
els of violence and brutality than Western societies today. The second half of the eigh-
teenth century witnessed a new concern with methods of child raising inspired by
Enlightenment efforts to reform human society. Schools for non-elite children spread
across Europe, leading to a growth in literacy rates.
How did new patterns of consumption and changing medical care affect
people’s lives? (page 520)
The urban populace benefited from the surge in agricultural and industrial produc-
tion. People found a greater variety of food products at the market, including new
stimulants produced in the colonies that soon became staples of elite and popular
consumption. Within homes, standards of comfort and hygiene increased, and the
emerging consumer society offered new possibilities for self-expression and individual-
ity. Medical techniques continued to follow traditional patterns, but the number of
practitioners grew, and great strides were made against smallpox.
What were the patterns of popular religion and culture, and how did they
interact with the worldview of the educated public and the Enlightenment?
(page 526)
Patterns of recreation and leisure, from churchgoing and religious festivals to sewing
and drinking in groups within an oral culture, reflected and reinforced community ties
and values. Many long-standing beliefs and practices remained strong forces and sus-
tained continuity in popular life. A wave of religious revival counteracted the secular
tendencies of the Enlightenment, ensuring that religion continued to have a strong
hold over the popular classes. The next great wave of change would be inaugurated by
revolution in politics.
Notes
1. Quoted in J. M. Beattie, “The Criminality of Women in Eighteenth-Century England,”
Journal of Social History 8 (Summer 1975): 86.
2. Quoted in R. Cobb, The Police and the People: French Popular Protest, 1789–1820 (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1970), p. 238.
3. Pier Paolo Viazzo, “Mortality, Fertility, and Family,” in Family Life in Early Modern Times,
1500–1789, ed. David I. Kertzer and Marzio Barbagli (New Haven: Yale University Press,
2001), p. 180.
4. Robert Woods, “Did Montaigne Love His Children? Demography and the Hypothesis of
Parental Indifference,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 33, 3 (2003): 426.
5. Alysa Levene, “The Estimation of Mortality at the London Foundling Hospital, 1741–99,”
Population Studies 59, 1 (2005): 87–97.
6. Cited in Woods, “Did Montaigne Love His Children?,” p. 421.
7. Ibid., pp. 13, 16.
8. E. Kennedy, A Cultural History of the French Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1989), p. 47.
9. Daniel Roche, The Culture of Clothing: Dress and Fashion in the Ancien Regime. Translated
by Jean Birrell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
10. Quoted in K. Pinson, Pietism as a Factor in the Rise of German Nationalism (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1934), p. 13.
11. Ibid., pp. 43–44.
12. Quoted in S. Andrews, Methodism and Society (London: Longmans, Green, 1970), p. 327.
13. Dale Van Kley, “The Rejuvenation and Rejection of Jansenism in History and Historiogra-
phy,” French Historical Studies 29 (Fall 2006): 649–684.
14. Quoted in T. Tackett, Priest and Parish in Eighteenth-Century France (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1977), p. 214.
15. Woloch, Eighteenth-Century Europe, pp. 220–221; see also pp. 214–220 for this section.

A Day in the Life of Paris
L ouis-Sébastien Mercier (1740–1814) was the best chron-

icler of everyday life in eighteenth-century Paris. His
masterpiece was the Tableau de Paris (1781–1788), a multi-
volume work composed of 1,049 chapters that covered subjects
ranging from convents to cafés, bankruptcy to booksellers, the
latest fashions to royal laws. He aimed to convey the infinite
diversity of people, places, and things he saw around him,
and in so doing he left future generations a precious record of
the changing dynamics of Parisian society in the second half
of the eighteenth century.
Mercier was born in 1740 to a weapons-maker father and
a mother similarly descended from the respectable artisan
classes. Neither rich nor poor, the family enjoyed a comfort-
able lifestyle without luxury. This middling position ideally
suited Mercier for observing the extremes of wealth and pov- A page from Mercier’s original manuscript.
erty around him. Although these volumes contain many won- (Bibliothèque nationale de France)
derful glimpses of daily life, they should not be taken for an
objective account. Mercier brought his own moral and political
sensibilities, influenced by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, to the task.

permissions issues. Regrettably, we cannot make
this piece available to you in a digital format.
533
1. What different social groups does Mercier
describe in Paris? On what basis does he cat-
egorize people?
2. What is Mercier’s attitude toward the poor and
the rich? Does he approve or disapprove of
Parisian society as he describes it?
Source: From Panorama of Paris: Selections from “Le

Tableau de Paris,” Louis Sebastien Mercier, based on the
translation by Helen Simpson, edited and with a new
preface and translations by Jeremy D. Popkin. Copyright
© 1999 The Pennsylvania State University. Reprinted by
permission of Penn State Press.
534
CHAPTER 21
The Revolution
in Politics
1775–1815
Chapter Preview
Background to Revolution
What social, political, and economic
factors formed the background to the
French Revolution?
Revolution in Metropole and Colony

(1789–1791)
What were the immediate events that
sparked the Revolution, and how did
they result in the formation of a
constitutional monarchy in France?
How did the ideals and events of the
early Revolution raise new aspirations
in the colonies?
World War and Republican France

(1791–1799)
How and why did the Revolution take a
radical turn at home and in the colonies?
The Napoleonic Era (1799–1815)

Why did Napoleon Bonaparte assume
control of France, and what factors led
to his downfall? How did the new
In this painting by the female artist Nanine Vallain, the figure of republic of Haiti gain independence
Liberty bears a copy of the Declaration of the Rights of Man in one from France?
hand and a pike to defend them in the other. The painting hung in
the Jacobin Club until its fall from power. (Musée de la Revolution Française, INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY: Toussaint L’Ouverture
Vizille / The Bridgeman Art Library)
LISTENING TO THE PAST: Revolution and Women’s
Rights
535
536 Chapter 21 The Revolution in Politics, 1775–1815
T he last years of the eighteenth century were a time of great upheaval. A se-
ries of revolutions and revolutionary wars challenged the old order of mon-
archs and aristocrats. The ideas of freedom and equality, ideas that continue to
shape the world, flourished and spread. The revolutionary era began in North
America in 1775. Then in 1789 France, the most influential country in Europe,
became the leading revolutionary nation. It established first a constitutional mon-
archy, then a radical republic, and finally a new empire under Napoleon. Inspired
by both the ideals of the Revolution and internal colonial conditions, the slaves of
Saint-Domingue rose up in 1791. Their rebellion led to the creation of the new
independent nation of Haiti in 1805.
The armies of France violently exported revolution beyond the nation’s bor-
ders in an effort to establish new governments throughout much of Europe. The
world of modern domestic and international politics was born.
Background to Revolution
What social, political, and economic factors formed the background to the
French Revolution?
The origins of the French Revolution have been one of the most debated topics in
estates The three legal categories, history. In order to understand the path to revolution, numerous interrelated fac-
or orders, of France’s inhabitants: the tors must be taken into account. These include deep social changes in France, a
clergy, the nobility, and everyone else. long-term political crisis that eroded monarchical legitimacy, the impact of new
political ideas derived from the Enlightenment, the emergence of
a “public sphere” in which such opinions were formed and
shared, and, perhaps most importantly, a financial crisis created
by France’s participation in expensive overseas wars.
As in the Middle Ages, France’s 25 mil-

Legal Orders and lion inhabitants were still legally di-
Social Change vided into three orders, or estates—the
clergy, the nobility, and everyone else. As the nation’s first estate,
the clergy numbered about one hundred thousand and had im-
portant privileges, including exemption from regular taxes and
the ability to tax landowners. The second estate consisted of some
four hundred thousand nobles who owned about 25 percent of
the land in France outright. The nobility also enjoyed special priv-
ileges associated with their exalted social position, including lighter
taxes, exclusive hunting and fishing rights, monopolies on bread
baking and wine pressing equipment, and the right to wear swords.
The third estate was a conglomeration of very different social
groups—prosperous merchants, lawyers, and officials along with
The Three Estates

In this political cartoon from 1789 a peasant of the third estate struggles under
the crushing burden of a happy clergyman and a plumed nobleman. The
caption—“Let’s hope this game ends soon”—sets forth a program of reform that
any peasant could understand. (Réunion des Musées Nationaux /Art Resource, NY)
Chronology
poorer peasants, urban artisans, and unskilled day laborers— 1775–1783 American Revolution
united only by their shared legal status as distinct from the
nobility and clergy. 1786–1789 Financial crisis in France
In discussing the origins of the French Revolution, histo- 1789 Feudalism abolished in France; ratification
rians long focused on growing tensions between the nobility of U.S. Constitution; storming of the
and the comfortable members of the third estate, the bour- Bastille
geoisie (boor-zwah-ZEE) or upper middle class. In this for- 1789–1799 French Revolution
mulation, the French bourgeoisie eventually rose up to lead 1790 Burke, Reflections on the Revolution
the entire third estate in a great social revolution that de- in France
stroyed feudal privileges and established a capitalist order
1791 Slave insurrection in Saint-Domingue
based on individualism and a market economy.
In recent years, a flood of new research has challenged 1792 Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights
these accepted views. Above all, revisionist historians have of Woman
questioned the existence of growing social conflict between a 1793 Execution of Louis XVI
progressive capitalistic bourgeoisie and a reactionary feudal 1793–1794 Economic controls to help poor in France;
nobility in eighteenth-century France. Instead, they see both Robespierre’s Reign of Terror
bourgeoisie and nobility as highly fragmented, riddled with
1794 Robespierre deposed and executed
internal rivalries. The sword nobility, for example, who de-
scended from the oldest noble families, was separated by dif- 1794–1799 Thermidorian reaction
ferences in wealth, education, and worldview from the newer 1799–1815 Napoleonic era
and less prestigious robe nobility, who acquired noble titles
1804 Haitian republic declares independence
through service in the royal administration and judiciary.
Differences within the bourgeoisie—between wealthy finan- 1812 Napoleon invades Russia
ciers and local lawyers, for example—were no less profound. 1814–1815 Napoleon defeated and exiled
Rather than standing as unified blocs against each other, no-
bility and bourgeoisie formed two parallel social ladders in-
creasingly linked together at the top by wealth, marriage, and
Enlightenment culture.
Revisionist historians note that the nobility and the bourgeoisie were not really
at odds in the economic sphere. Investment in land and government service were
the preferred activities of both groups, and the ideal of the merchant capitalist was
to gain enough wealth to retire from trade, purchase an estate, and live nobly as a
large landowner. Indeed, wealthy members of the third estate could even move
into the second estate by serving the government and purchasing noble positions.
At the same time, wealthy nobles often acted as aggressive capitalists, investing
especially in mining, metallurgy, and foreign trade. In addition, until the revolu-
tion actually began, key sections of the nobility were liberal and generally joined
the bourgeoisie in opposition to the government.
Revisionists have clearly shaken the belief that the bourgeoisie and the nobility
were inevitably locked in growing conflict before the Revolution. Yet they also
make clear that the Old Regime had ceased to correspond with social reality by the
1780s. Legally, society was still based on rigid orders inherited from the Middle
Ages. In reality, France had already moved far toward being a society based on
wealth and education in which an emerging elite that included both aristocratic
and bourgeois notables was frustrated by a bureaucratic monarchy that continued
to claim the right to absolute power.
Overlaying these social changes was a century-long po-

The Crisis of litical and fiscal struggle between the monarchy and its
Political Legitimacy opponents that was primarily enacted in the law courts.
When Louis XIV died, his successor Louis XV (r. 1715–1774) was only five years
old. The high courts of France—the parlements—regained the ancient right to

evaluate royal decrees publicly in writing before they were registered and given
the force of law. The parlements used this power to prevent the king from impos-
ing taxes after the War of the Austrian Succession, and then the Seven Years’ War
plunged France into a fiscal crisis. During the latter crisis, the Parlement of Paris
asserted that it was acting as the representative of the entire nation when it checked
the king’s power to levy taxes.
After years of attempting to compromise with the parlements, Louis XV roused
himself for a determined defense of his absolutist inheritance. His appointee as
chancellor, René de Maupeou (maw-POO), abolished the existing parlements,
exiled the vociferous members of the Parlement of Paris to the provinces, and be-
gan to tax the privileged groups. Public opinion as a whole sided with the old
parlements, however, and there was widespread criticism of “royal despotism.”
The king also came under attack for sexual scandals and lost the sacred aura of
God’s anointed on earth.
desacralization The stripping away Despite this progressive desacralization (dee-SAY-kruh-lie-ZAY-shun) of the
of the sacred aura of the king as God’s monarchy, its power was still great enough to ride over the opposition, and Louis XV
anointed on earth.
would probably have prevailed if he had lived to a ripe old age, but he died in
1774. The new king, Louis XVI (r. 1774–1792), was a shy twenty-year-old with
good intentions. Taking the throne, he is reported to have said, “What I should like
most is to be loved.”1 The eager-to-please monarch yielded in the face of vehement
opposition from France’s educated elite. He dismissed chancellor Maupeou and
repudiated the strong-willed minister’s work. Louis also waffled on the economy,
dismissing controller general Turgot when his attempts to liberalize the economy
drew fire. A weakened but unreformed monarchy now faced a judicial opposition
that claimed to speak for the entire French nation. Increasingly locked in stalemate,
the country was drifting toward renewed financial crisis and political upheaval.
Coinciding with the first years of Louis XVI’s reign, the

The Impact of the American Revolution had an enormous impact on
American Revolution France both in practical and ideological terms. French
expenses to support the colonists bankrupted the Crown, while the ideals of liberty
and equality provided heady inspiration for political reform.
Like the French Revolution some years later, the American Revolution had its
immediate origins in struggles over increased taxes. The high cost of the Seven
Years’ War—fought with little financial contribution from the colonies—doubled
the British national debt. When the government tried to recoup some of the losses
in increased taxes on the colonies in 1765, the colonists reacted with anger.
The key questions were political rather than economic. To what extent could
the home government assert its power while limiting the authority of colonial
legislatures and their elected representatives? Accordingly, who should represent
the colonies, and who had the right to make laws for Americans? The British
government replied that Americans were represented in Parliament, albeit indi-
rectly (like most British people themselves), and that the absolute supremacy of
Parliament throughout the empire could not be questioned. Many Americans felt
otherwise.
A series of disputes between the American colonies and the British govern-
ment ultimately led to open rebellion. The uncompromising attitude of the Brit-
ish government and its use of German mercenaries dissolved loyalties to the home
country and rivalries among the separate colonies. On July 4, 1776, an assembly of
colonists adopted the Declaration of Independence. Written by Thomas Jefferson,
Background to Revolution 539
it boldly listed the tyrannical acts committed by George III (r. 1760–1820) and
confidently proclaimed the sovereignty of the American states. It also universal-
ized the traditional rights of English people, stating that “all men are created
equal. . . . They are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. . . .
Among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
On the international scene, the French wanted revenge for the humiliating
defeats of the Seven Years’ War. They sympathized with the rebels and supplied
guns and gunpowder from the beginning. By 1777 French volunteers were arriv-
ing in Virginia, and a dashing young nobleman, the marquis de Lafayette (1757–
1834), quickly became one of Washington’s most trusted generals. In 1778 the
French government offered a formal alliance to the American ambassador in Paris,
Benjamin Franklin, and in 1779 and 1780 the Spanish and Dutch declared war
on Britain. Catherine the Great of Russia helped organize the League of Armed
Neutrality in order to protect neutral shipping rights, which Britain refused to
recognize.
Thus by 1780 Great Britain was engaged in an imperial war against most of
Europe as well as against the thirteen colonies. In these circumstances, and in the
face of severe reverses, a new British government offered peace on extremely gen-
erous terms. By the Treaty of Paris of 1783, Britain recognized the independence
of the thirteen colonies and ceded all its territory between the Allegheny Moun-
tains and the Mississippi River to the Americans. Out of the bitter rivalries of the
Old World, the Americans snatched dominion over a vast territory.
Europeans who dreamed of a new era were fascinated by the political lessons
of the American Revolution. The Americans had begun with a revolutionary de-
fense against tyrannical oppression, and they had been victorious. They had then
shown how rational beings could assemble together to exercise sovereignty and
write a new social contract. All this gave greater reality to the concepts of individ-
ual liberty and representative government and reinforced one of the primary ideas
of the Enlightenment: that a better world was possible.
No country felt the consequences of the American Revolution more directly
than France. Hundreds of French officers served in America and were inspired by
the experience, the marquis de Lafayette chief among them. French intellectuals
and publicists engaged in passionate analysis of the new federal Constitution
(1789) as well as the constitutions of the various states of the new United States.
Perhaps more importantly, the expenses of supporting the revolutionary forces
provided the last nail in the coffin for the French treasury.
The French Revolution thus had its immediate origins

Financial Crisis in the king’s financial difficulties. Thwarted by the Par-
lement of Paris in its efforts to raise revenues by reform-
ing the tax system, the government was forced to finance all of its enormous
expenditures during the American war with borrowed money. As a result, the na-
tional debt and the annual budget deficit soared.
By the 1780s, fully 50 percent of France’s annual budget went for interest
payments on the debt. Another 25 percent went to maintain the military, while
6 percent was absorbed by the king and his court at Versailles. Less than 20 percent
of the entire national budget was available for the productive functions of the state,
such as transportation and general administration. This was an impossible finan-
cial situation.
Louis XVI’s minister of finance revived old proposals to impose a general tax
on all landed property as well as to form provincial assemblies to help administer
Assembly of Notables A group of the tax, and he convinced the king to call an Assembly of Notables to gain support
important noblemen and high-ranking for the idea. The notables, who were mainly important noblemen and high-ranking
clergy called by Louis XVI to impose
a general tax, but who ended up
clergy, opposed the new tax. In exchange for their support, they demanded that
opposing it. control over all government spending be given to the provincial assemblies. When
the government refused, the notables responded that such sweeping tax changes
required the approval of the Estates General, the representative body of all three
Sec tion Review estates, which had not met since 1614.
• French society had three social orders Facing imminent bankruptcy, the king tried to reassert his authority. He dis-
or estates: the clergy, nobility, and missed the notables and established new taxes by decree. In stirring language, the
everyone else, including the bour- judges of the Parlement of Paris promptly declared the royal initiative null and
geoisie or upper middle class that was void. When the king tried to exile the judges, a tremendous wave of protest swept
increasingly frustrated with the monar-
chy’s right to absolute power.
the country. Frightened investors also refused to advance more loans to the state.
Finally, in July 1788, Louis XVI bowed to public opinion and called for a spring
• The monarchy and the high courts, the
parlements, were at odds over financial
session of the Estates General.
and political power; Louis XV’s attempt
to rein in the parlements failed as
Louis XVI restored them to power.
Revolution in Metropole and Colony (1789–1791)
• The French supported the American
Revolution with money, volunteers, and What were the immediate events that sparked the Revolution, and how
arms; the rebels in turn inspired the did they result in the formation of a constitutional monarchy in France?
French by their ability to oppose the How did the ideals and events of the early Revolution raise new
British and create their own sovereign aspirations in the colonies?
nation.
• The royal government, indebted from
the American war, attempted to raise Although inspired by the ideals of the American Revolution, the French Revolu-
taxes, but parlement thwarted it, so tion did not mirror the American example. It was more radical and more complex,
finally Louis XVI called for a session more influential and more controversial, more loved and more hated. For Europe-
of the Estates General. ans and most of the rest of the world, it was the great revolution of the eighteenth
century, the revolution that opened the modern era in politics. In turn, the slave
insurrection in Saint-Domingue—which ultimately resulted in the second indepen-
dent republic of the Americas—inspired liberation movements across the world.
Estates General A legislative body Once Louis had agreed to hold the Estates General,
in pre-revolutionary France made The Formation of the following precedent, he set elections for the three or-
up of representatives of each of the National Assembly ders. Elected officials from the noble order were pri-
three classes, or estates; it was called
into session in 1789 for the first time marily conservatives from the provinces, but fully one-third of the nobility’s
since 1614. representatives were liberals committed to major changes. The third estate elected
lawyers and government officials to represent them, with few delegates represent-
ing business or the working poor.
As at previous meetings of the Estates General, local assemblies were to pre-
pare a list of grievances for their representatives to bring to the next electoral level.
The petitions for change coming from the three estates showed a surprising degree
of consensus. There was general agreement that royal absolutism should give way
to a constitutional monarchy in which laws and taxes would require the consent of
the Estates General in regular meetings. All agreed that individual liberties would
have to be guaranteed by law and that economic regulations should be loosened.
The striking similarities in the grievance petitions of the clergy, nobility, and third
estate reflected a shared commitment to a basic reform platform among the edu-
cated elite.
Yet an increasingly bitter quarrel undermined this consensus during the in-
tense electoral campaign: how would the Estates General vote, and precisely who
would lead in the political reorganization that was generally desired? The Estates
Revolution in Metropole and Colony (1789–1791) 541
General of 1614 had sat as three separate houses. Each house held one vote, de-
spite the fact that the third estate represented the majority population of France.
Given the close ties between them, the nobility and clergy would control all deci-
sions. As soon as the estates were called, the aristocratic Parlement of Paris ruled
that the Estates General should once again sit separately. In response to protests
from some reform-minded critics, the government agreed that the third estate
should have as many delegates as the clergy and the nobility combined but then
rendered this act meaningless by upholding voting by separate order.
In May 1789 the twelve hundred delegates of the three estates paraded in
medieval pageantry through the streets of Versailles to an opening session resplen-
dent with feudal magnificence. The estates were almost immediately deadlocked.
Delegates of the third estate refused to transact any business until the king ordered
the clergy and nobility to sit with them in a single body. Finally, after a six-week
war of nerves, a few parish priests began to go over to the third estate, which on
June 17 voted to call itself the National Assembly. On June 20 the delegates of the National Assembly The first French
third estate, excluded from their hall because of “repairs,” moved to a large indoor revolutionary legislature; a constituent
assembly made up of primarily of
tennis court. There they swore the famous Oath of the Tennis Court, pledging not representatives of the third estate and a
to disband until they had written a new constitution. few nobles and clergy who joined them,
The king’s response was ambivalent. On June 23 he made a conciliatory in session from 1789 to 1791.
speech urging reforms to a joint session, and four days later he ordered the three
estates to meet together. At the same time, the vacillating and indecisive monarch
apparently followed the advice of relatives and court nobles who urged him to dis-
solve the Estates General by force. Belatedly asserting his “divine right” to rule, the
king called an army of eighteen thousand troops toward Versailles, and on July 11
he dismissed his finance minister and his other more liberal ministers.
While delegates of the third estate pressed for political

The Revolt of the rights, economic hardship gripped the common people.
Poor and the A poor grain harvest in 1788 caused the price of bread
Oppressed to soar, unleashing a classic economic depression of
the preindustrial age. With food so expensive and with so much uncertainty, the
demand for manufactured goods collapsed. Thousands of artisans and small trad-
ers were thrown out of work. By the end of 1789 almost half of the French people
would be in need of relief. One person in eight was a pauper living in extreme
want. In Paris perhaps 150,000 of the city’s 600,000 people were without work in
July 1789.
Against this background of poverty and ongoing political crisis, the people of
Paris entered decisively onto the revolutionary stage. They believed in a general,
though ill-defined, way that the economic distress had human causes. They be-
lieved that they should have steady work and enough bread at fair prices to survive.
Specifically, they feared that the dismissal of the king’s moderate finance minister
would put them at the mercy of aristocratic landowners and grain speculators.
Rumors that the king’s troops would sack the city began to fill the air. Angry crowds
formed, and passionate voices urged action. On July 13 the people began to seize
arms for the defense of the city as the king’s armies moved toward Paris, and on July
14 several hundred people marched to the Bastille (bass-TEE) to search for weap-
ons and gunpowder.
The Bastille, once a medieval fortress, was a royal prison guarded by eighty
retired soldiers and thirty Swiss mercenaries. The governor of the fortress-prison
refused to hand over the powder, panicked, and ordered his men to resist, killing
ninety-eight people attempting to enter. Cannon were brought to batter the main
gate, and fighting continued until the prison surrendered. The governor of the
prison was later hacked to death, and his head was stuck on a pike and paraded
through the streets. The next day a committee of citizens appointed the marquis
de Lafayette commander of the city’s armed forces. Paris was lost to the king, who
was forced to recall the finance minister and disperse his troops. The popular up-
rising had broken the power monopoly of the royal army and thereby saved the
National Assembly.
As the delegates resumed their inconclusive debates at Versailles, the country-
side sent them a radical and unmistakable message. Throughout France peasants
began to rise in insurrection against their lords, ransacking manor houses and
burning feudal documents that recorded their obligations. In some areas peasants
reinstated traditional village practices, undoing recent enclosures and reoccupying
old common lands. They seized forests, and taxes went unpaid. Fear of vagabonds
Great Fear In the summer of 1789, the and outlaws—called the Great Fear by contemporaries—seized the countryside
fear of vagabonds and outlaws that seized and fanned the flames of rebellion. The long-suffering peasants were doing their
the French countryside and fanned the
flames of revolution.
best to free themselves from manorial rights and exploitation. In the end, they
were successful. On the night of August 4, 1789, the delegates at Versailles agreed
to abolish all the old noble privileges—peasant serfdom where it still existed, ex-
clusive hunting rights, fees for justice, village monopolies, and a host of other
dues. Thus the French peasantry, which already owned about 30 percent of all the
land, achieved an unprecedented victory in the early days of revolutionary up-
heaval. Henceforth, French peasants would seek mainly to protect and consoli-
date their triumph. As the Great Fear subsided in the countryside, they became a
force for order and stability.
The National Assembly moved forward. On August 27,

A Limited Monarchy 1789, it issued the Declaration of the Rights of Man
and of the Citizen, which stated, “Men are born and
remain free and equal in rights.” The declaration also maintained that mankind’s
natural rights are “liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression” and that
“every man is presumed innocent until he is proven guilty.” As for law, “it is an
expression of the general will; all citizens have the right to concur personally or
through their representatives in its formation. . . . Free expression of thoughts and
opinions is one of the most precious rights of mankind: every citizen may therefore
speak, write, and publish freely.” In short, this clarion call of the liberal revolution-
ary ideal guaranteed equality before the law, representative government for a sov-
ereign people, and individual freedom. This revolutionary credo, only two pages
long, was disseminated throughout France and Europe and around the world.
Moving beyond general principles to draft a constitution proved difficult. The
questions of how much power the king should retain and whether he could per-
manently veto legislation led to another deadlock. Once again the decisive answer
came from the poor—in this instance, the poor women of Paris.
Women customarily bought the food and managed the poor family’s slender
resources. The economic crisis worsened after the fall of the Bastille, as aristocrats
fled the country and the luxury market collapsed. Foreign markets also shrunk in
the aftermath of the crisis, and unemployment grew. In addition, household man-
agers could no longer look to the church for grants of food and money.
On October 5 some seven thousand desperate women marched the twelve
miles from Paris to Versailles to demand action. This great crowd invaded the As-
sembly, “armed with scythes, sticks and pikes.” One tough old woman defiantly
shouted into the debate, “Who’s that talking down there? Make the chatterbox
Revolution in Metropole and Colony (1789–1791) 543
The Women of Paris March to Versailles

On October 5, 1789, a large group of Parisian market women marched to Versailles to protest the price of bread. For
the people of Paris, the king was the baker of last resort, responsible for feeding his people during times of scarcity.
The crowd forced the royal family to return with them and to live in Paris, rather than remain isolated from their
subjects at court. (Erich Lessing /Art Resource, NY)
shut up. That’s not the point: the point is that we want bread.”2 Hers was the genu-
ine voice of the people, essential to any understanding of the French Revolution.
The women invaded the royal apartments, slaughtered some of the royal body-
guards, and furiously searched for the queen, Marie Antoinette (ann-twah-NET),
who was widely despised for her frivolous and supposedly immoral behavior. “We
are going to cut off her head, tear out her heart, fry her liver, and that won’t be the
end of it,” they shouted, surging through the palace in a frenzy. It seems likely that
only the intervention of Lafayette and the National Guard saved the royal family.
But the only way to calm the disorder was for the king to live in Paris, as the crowd
demanded.
The National Assembly followed the king to Paris, and the next two years, until
September 1791, saw the consolidation of the liberal revolution. Under middle-
class leadership, the National Assembly abolished the French nobility as a legal
order and pushed forward with the creation of a constitutional monarchy, which constitutional monarchy A form of
Louis XVI reluctantly agreed to accept in July 1790. In the final constitution, the government in which the king retains his
position as head of state, while the
king remained the head of state, but all lawmaking power was placed in the hands authority to tax and make new laws
of the National Assembly, elected by the economic upper half of French males. resides in an elected body.
New laws broadened women’s rights to seek divorce, to inherit property, and to
obtain financial support for illegitimate children from fathers, but women were
not allowed to hold political office or even vote. The men of the National
Assembly believed that civic virtue would be restored if women focused on child
rearing and domestic duties.
The National Assembly replaced the complicated patchwork of historic prov-
inces with eighty-three departments of approximately equal size. The jumble of
weights and measures that varied from province to province was reformed, leading
to the introduction of the metric system in 1793. Monopolies, guilds, and workers’
associations were prohibited, and barriers to trade within France were abolished in
the name of economic liberty. Thus the National Assembly applied the critical spirit
of the Enlightenment in a thorough reform of France’s laws and institutions.
The Assembly also imposed a radical reorganization on the country’s religious
life. It granted religious freedom to the small minority of French Jews and Protes-
tants. Of greater impact, it then nationalized the Catholic Church’s property and
abolished monasteries as useless relics of a distant past. The government used all
former church property as collateral to guarantee a new paper currency, the as-
signats (AS-ig-nat), and then sold the property in an attempt to put the state’s fi-
nances on a solid footing. Although the church’s land was sold in large blocks,
peasants eventually purchased much when it was subdivided. These purchases
strengthened their attachment to the new revolutionary order in the countryside.
Imbued with the rationalism and skepticism of the eighteenth-century philo-
sophes, many delegates distrusted popular piety and “superstitious religion.” Thus
they established a national church, with priests chosen by voters. The National
Assembly then forced the Catholic clergy to take a loyalty oath to the new govern-
ment. The pope formally condemned this attempt to subjugate the church, and
only half the priests of France swore the oath. Many sincere Christians, especially
those in the countryside, were upset by these changes in the religious order. The
attempt to remake the Catholic Church, like the Assembly’s abolition of guilds
and workers’ associations, sharpened the conflict between the educated classes
and the common people that had been emerging in the eighteenth century.
The French Revolution radically transformed not

Revolutionary only the territorial nation of France but its overseas
Aspirations in colonies as well. On the eve of the Revolution, Saint-
Saint-Domingue Domingue—the most profitable of all Caribbean
colonies—was even more rife with social tensions than France itself. The island
was composed of a variety of social groups who resented and mistrusted one an-
other. The European population included French colonial officials, wealthy plan-
tation owners and merchants, and poor immigrants. Greatly outnumbering the
white population were the colony’s five hundred thousand slaves, along with a siz-
able population of free people of African and mixed African European descent.
free people of color Sizable This last group referred to themselves as “free coloreds” or free people of color.
population of free people of African and The political and intellectual turmoil of the 1780s, with its growing rhetoric of
mixed African-European descent living
in the French isles of the Caribbean.
liberty, equality, and fraternity, raised new challenges and possibilities for each of
these groups. For slaves, news of abolitionist movements in France, and the royal
government’s own attempts to rein in the worst abuses of slavery, led to hopes that
the mother country might grant them freedom. Free people of color found in such
rhetoric the principles on which to base a defense of their legal and political rights.
They looked to political reforms in Paris as a means of gaining political enfran-
chisement and regaining legal rights that had been rescinded by colonial adminis-
trators. The white elite looked to revolutionary ideals of representative government
for the chance to gain control of their own affairs, as had the American colonists
before them. The meeting of the Estates General and the Declaration of the
Rights of Man and of the Citizen raised these conflicting colonial aspirations to
new levels.
The National Assembly, however, frustrated the hopes of all these groups. It
ruled that each colony would draft its own constitution, with free rein over deci-
sions on slavery and the enfranchisement of free people of color. After dealing this
World War and Republican France (1791–1799) 545
blow to the aspirations of slaves and free coloreds, the committee also reaffirmed Sec tion Review
French monopolies over colonial trade, thereby angering planters as well.
Following a failed revolt in Saint-Domingue led by Vincent Ogé (oh-ZHAY), a • Members of the Estates General
largely agreed on their goals—
free man of color, the National Assembly attempted a compromise. It granted po- constitutional monarchy, a guarantee
litical rights to free people of color born to two free parents who possessed suffi- of individual liberties, and a loosening
cient property. When news of this legislation arrived in Saint-Domingue, the white of economic regulations—but dis-
elite was furious and the colonial governor refused to enact it. Violence now agreed on how to vote and who
erupted between groups of whites and free coloreds in parts of the colony. The would lead.
liberal revolution had failed to satisfy the contradictory ambitions in the colonies. • The Estates General reorganized into
the National Assembly, which the
king at first recognized but then
ordered to dissolve by threat of force.
• Revolt from below—both in Paris and
World War and Republican France (1791–1799) the countryside—overcame royal
How and why did the Revolution take a radical turn at home and in resistance and saved the National
the colonies? Assembly, resulting in the abolition of
noble privileges.
• The Declaration of the Rights of Man
When Louis XVI accepted the final version of the National Assembly’s constitu- and of the Citizen guaranteed equal-
tion in September 1791, a young and still obscure provincial lawyer and delegate ity before the law, representative
named Maximilien Robespierre (ROBES-pee-air) (1758–1794) concluded, “The government for a sovereign people
Revolution is over.” Robespierre was both right and wrong. He was right in the and individual freedom.
sense that the most constructive and lasting reforms were in place. Nothing sub- • Building on these principles of the
stantial in the way of liberty and fundamental reform would be gained in the next Declaration, the elected National
Assembly retained all lawmaking
generation. He was wrong in the sense that a much more radical stage lay ahead. power, abolished the nobility, and
New heroes and new ideologies were to emerge in revolutionary wars and interna- created a constitutional monarchy
tional conflict in which Robespierre himself would play a central role. featuring a king with limited powers
as head of state.
• Friction between the educated elites
The outbreak and progress of revolution in France pro- and the common people emerged
Foreign Reactions duced great excitement and a sharp division of opinion after the Assembly prohibited the
and the Beginning in Europe and the United States. Liberals and radicals
guilds and workers’ associations and
of War established a national church, requir-
saw a mighty triumph of liberty over despotism. In ing Catholic clergy to take an oath of
Great Britain especially, they hoped that the French example would lead to a loyalty to the new government.
fundamental reordering of Parliament, which was in the hands of the aristocracy • Tensions between the white elites and
and a few wealthy merchants. After the French Revolution began, conservative the “free coloreds” in the colonies
leaders such as Edmund Burke (1729–1797) were deeply troubled by the aroused over political rights and freedom
spirit of reform. In 1790 Burke published Reflections on the Revolution in France, introduced by the revolution erupted
into violence.
one of the great defenses of European conservatism. He defended inherited privi-
leges in general and those of the English monarchy and aristocracy. He glorified
the unrepresentative Parliament and predicted that thoroughgoing reform like
that occurring in France would lead only to chaos and tyranny. Burke’s work
sparked much debate.
One passionate rebuttal came from a young writer in London, Mary Woll-
stonecraft (WOOL-stuhn-kraft) (1759–1797). Incensed by Burke’s book, Woll-
stonecraft immediately wrote a blistering, widely read attack, A Vindication of the
Rights of Man (1790). Then she made a daring intellectual leap, developing for
the first time the logical implications of natural-law philosophy in her master-
piece, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). To fulfill the still-unrealized
potential of the French Revolution and to eliminate the sexual inequality she had
felt so keenly, she demanded that
the Rights of Women be respected . . . [and] JUSTICE for one-half of the human
race. . . . It is time to effect a revolution in female manners, time to restore to them
their lost dignity, and make them, as part of the human species, labor, by reform-
ing themselves, to reform the world.
Setting high standards for women—“I wish to persuade women to endeavor to

acquire strength, both of mind and body”3—Wollstonecraft broke with those who
had a low opinion of women’s intellectual potential. She advocated rigorous co-
education, which would make women better wives and mothers, good citizens,
and economically independent. Women could manage businesses and enter poli-
tics if only men would give them the chance. Wollstonecraft’s analysis testified to
the power of the Revolution to excite and inspire outside of France. Paralleling
ideas put forth independently in France by Olympe de Gouges (oh-LIMP duh
GOOJ) (1748–1793), a self-taught writer and woman of the people (see the feature
“Listening to the Past: Revolution and Women’s Rights” on pages 563–564), Woll-
stonecraft’s work marked the birth of the modern women’s movement for equal
rights, and it was ultimately very influential.
The kings and nobles of continental Europe, who had at first welcomed the
revolution in France as weakening a competing monarchy, realized that their
power was also threatened. In June 1791, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were
arrested and returned to Paris after trying unsuccessfully to slip out of France. The
shock of this arrest led the monarchs of Austria and Prussia to issue the Declara-
tion of Pillnitz in August 1791. This carefully worded statement declared their
willingness to intervene in France in certain circumstances and was expected to
have a sobering effect on revolutionary France without causing war.
But the crowned heads of Europe misjudged the revolutionary spirit in France.
The representative body that convened in October 1791 had completely new del-
egates and a different character. The great majority of the legislators were still
prosperous, well-educated middle-class men, but they were younger and less cau-
tious than their predecessors. Many of the deputies belonged to a political club
Jacobin club A political club in called the Jacobin (JAK-uh-bin) club, after the name of the former monastery in
Revolutionary France whose members which they held their meetings. Such clubs had proliferated in Parisian neighbor-
were radical republicans.
hoods since the beginning of the Revolution, drawing men and women to debate
the burning political questions of the day.
The new representatives to the Assembly whipped themselves into a patriotic
fury against the Declaration of Pillnitz. If the kings of Europe were attempting to
incite a war against France, then “we will incite a war of people against kings. . . .
Ten million Frenchmen, kindled by the fire of liberty, armed with the sword, with
reason, with eloquence would be able to change the face of the world and make
the tyrants tremble on their thrones.”4 In April 1792 France declared war on Fran-
cis II, the Habsburg monarch.
France’s crusade against tyranny went poorly at first. Prussian forces joined
Austria against the French, who broke and fled at their first military encounter
with this First Coalition. The road to Paris lay open, and it is possible that only
conflict between the Eastern monarchs over the division of Poland saved France
from defeat.
The Assembly declared the country in danger, and volunteers rallied to the
capital. In this supercharged wartime atmosphere, rumors of treason by the king
and queen spread in Paris. On August 10, 1792, a revolutionary crowd attacked the
royal palace at the Tuileries (TWEE-luh-reez), while the king and his family fled
for their lives to the nearby Legislative Assembly. Rather than offering refuge, the
Assembly suspended the king from all his functions, imprisoned him, and called
for a new National Convention to be elected by universal male suffrage. Monarchy
in France was on its deathbed, mortally wounded by war and popular upheaval.
The fall of the monarchy marked a rapid radicalization

The Second of the Revolution, a phase that historians often call the
Revolution second revolution. Louis’s imprisonment was followed second revolution From 1792 to 1795,
by the September Massacres. Wild stories that imprisoned counter-revolutionary the second phase of the French
Revolution during which the fall of the
aristocrats and priests were plotting with the allied invaders seized the city. As a French monarchy introduced a rapid
result, angry crowds invaded the prisons of Paris and slaughtered half the men and radicalization of politics.
women they found. In late September 1792 the new, popularly elected National
Convention proclaimed France a republic.
The republic sought to create a new popular culture, fashioning compelling
symbols that broke with the past and glorified the new order. Its new revolutionary
calendar eliminated saints’ days and renamed the days and the months after the
seasons of the year, while also adding secular holidays designed to instill a love of
nation. These secular celebrations were less successful in villages, where Catholi-
cism was stronger.
All the members of the National Convention were republicans, and at the
beginning almost all belonged to the Jacobin club of Paris. But the Jacobins them-
selves were increasingly divided into two bitterly competitive groups—the Giron- Girondists A group contesting control
dists (juh-RON-dists), named after a department in southwestern France that was of the National Convention in France,
named after a department in south-
home to several of their leaders, and the Mountain, led by Robespierre and an- western France.
other young lawyer, Georges Jacques Danton. The Mountain was so called be-
cause its members sat on the uppermost benches on the left side of the assembly the Mountain The radical faction of
the National Convention led by
hall. A majority of the indecisive Convention members, seated in the “Plain” be-
Robespierre and Danton, so called
low, floated back and forth between the rival factions. because its members sat in the
This division emerged clearly after the National Convention overwhelmingly uppermost benches of the assembly hall.
convicted Louis XVI of treason. The Girondists accepted his guilt but did not wish
to put the king to death. By a narrow majority, the Mountain carried the day, and
Louis was executed on January 21, 1793, on the newly invented guillotine. Both
the Girondists and the Mountain were determined to continue the “war against
tyranny.” The Prussians had been stopped at the Battle of Valmy on September 20,
1792, one day before the republic was proclaimed. French armies then invaded
Savoy and captured Nice, moved into the German Rhineland, and by November
1792 were occupying the entire Austrian Netherlands (modern Belgium). Every-
where they went French armies of occupation chased the princes, abolished feu-
dalism, and “liberated” the people.
But the French armies also lived off the land, requisitioning food and supplies
and plundering local treasures. The liberators looked increasingly like foreign in-
vaders. International tensions mounted. In February 1793 the National Conven-
tion, at war with Austria and Prussia, declared war on Britain, Holland, and Spain
as well. Republican France was now at war with almost all of Europe, a great war
that would last almost without interruption until 1815.
Groups within France added to the turmoil. Peasants in western France revolted
against being drafted into the army, and devout Catholics, royalists, and foreign
agents encouraged their rebellion. In Paris the National Convention was locked in
a life-and-death political struggle between the Mountain and the more moderate
Girondists. With the middle-class delegates so bitterly divided, the laboring poor
of Paris emerged as the decisive political factor. The laboring poor and the petty
traders were often known as the sans-culottes (sanz-koo-LOT), “without breeches,” sans-culottes The name for the
because their men wore trousers instead of the knee breeches of the aristocracy and laboring poor of Paris, so called because
the men wore trousers instead of the
the solid middle class. They demanded radical political action to guarantee them knee breeches of the aristocracy and
their daily bread. The Mountain joined with sans-culottes activists in the city gov- middle class; it came to refer to the
ernment to engineer a popular uprising that forced the Convention to arrest thirty- militant radicals of the city.
one Girondist deputies for treason on June 2. All power passed to the Mountain.
Contrasting Visions of the Sans-Culottes

The woman on the left, with her playful cat and calm simplicity, suggests how the French sans-culottes saw themselves as
democrats and virtuous citizens. The ferocious sans-culotte harpy on the right, a creation of wartime England’s vivid counter-
revolutionary imagination, screams for more blood, more death: “I am the Goddess of Liberty! Long live the guillotine!”
(Bibliothèque nationale de France)
The Convention also formed the Committee of Public Safety to deal with the
threats from within and outside France. The committee, which Robespierre came
to lead, was given dictatorial power to deal with the national emergency. Moder-
ates in leading provincial cities, such as Lyons and Marseilles, revolted and de-
manded a decentralized government. The peasant revolt also spread, and the
republic’s armies were driven back on all fronts. By July 1793 only the areas around
Paris and on the eastern frontier were firmly held by the central government. De-
feat seemed imminent.
A year later, in July 1794, the Austrian Netherlands

Total War and and the Rhineland were once again in the hands of
the Terror conquering French armies, and the First Coalition was
falling apart. This remarkable change of fortune was due to the revolutionary gov-
ernment’s success in harnessing, for perhaps the first time in history, the explosive
forces of a planned economy, revolutionary terror, and modern nationalism in a
total war effort.
Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety first collaborated with the
planned economy In response to fiercely patriotic sans-culottes to establish a planned economy with egalitarian
inflation and high unemployment, social overtones. Rather than let supply and demand determine prices, the govern-
Robespierre and the government set
maximum prices for products, rather
ment set maximum allowable prices for key products. Though the state was too
than relying on supply and demand. weak to enforce all its price regulations, it did fix the price of bread in Paris at
levels the poor could afford. Rationing was introduced, and bakers were permitted
The French Revolution

May 5, 1789 Estates General convene at Versailles.
June 17, 1789 Third estate declares itself the National Assembly.
June 20, 1789 Oath of the Tennis Court is sworn.
July 14, 1789 Storming of the Bastille occurs.
July–August 1789 Great Fear ravages the countryside.
August 4, 1789 National Assembly abolishes feudal privileges.
August 27, 1789 National Assembly issues Declaration of the Rights of Man.
October 5, 1789 Women march on Versailles and force royal family to return to Paris.
November 1789 National Assembly confiscates church lands.
July 1790 Civil Constitution of the Clergy establishes a national church.
Louis XVI reluctantly agrees to accept a constitutional monarchy.
June 1791 Royal family is arrested while attempting to flee France.
August 1791 Austria and Prussia issue the Declaration of Pillnitz.
Slave insurrections break out in Saint-Domingue.
April 1792 France declares war on Austria.
August 1792 Parisian mob attacks the palace and takes Louis XVI prisoner.
September 1792 September Massacres occur.
National Convention declares France a republic and abolishes monarchy.
January 1793 Louis XVI is executed.
February 1793 France declares war on Britain, Holland, and Spain.
Revolts take place in some provincial cities.
Slavery abolished in French colonies.
March 1793 Bitter struggle occurs in the National Convention between Girondists and
the Mountain.
April–June 1793 Robespierre and the Mountain organize the Committee of Public Safety and
arrest Girondist leaders.
September 1793 Price controls are instituted to aid the sans-culottes and mobilize the war effort.
British troops invade Saint-Domingue.
1793–1794 Reign of Terror darkens Paris and the provinces.
February 1794 National Convention abolishes slavery in all French territories.
Spring 1794 French armies are victorious on all fronts.
July 1794 Robespierre is executed.
Thermidorian reaction begins.
1795–1799 Directory rules.
1795 Economic controls are abolished, and suppression of the sans-culottes begins.
Toussaint L’Ouverture named brigadier general.
1797 Napoleon defeats Austrian armies in Italy and returns triumphant to Paris.
1798 Austria, Great Britain, and Russia form the Second Coalition against France.
1799 Napoleon overthrows the Directory and seizes power.
to make only the “bread of equality”—a brown bread made of a mixture of all
available flours. White bread and pastries were outlawed as luxuries. The poor of
Paris may not have eaten well, but at least they ate.
They also worked, mainly to produce arms and munitions for the war effort.
The government told craftsmen what to produce, nationalized many small work-
shops, and requisitioned raw materials and grain. The second revolution and the
ascendancy of the sans-culottes had produced an embryonic emergency socialism,
which thoroughly frightened Europe’s propertied classes and had great influence
on the subsequent development of socialist ideology.
Second, while radical economic measures supplied the poor with bread and
Reign of Terror The period from 1793 the armies with weapons, the Reign of Terror (1793–1794) used revolutionary
to 1794, during which Robespierre used terror to solidify the home front. Special revolutionary courts responsible only to
revolutionary terror to solidify the home
front of France, resulting in the death of
Robespierre’s Committee of Public Safety tried rebels and “enemies of the nation”
some 40,000 French men and women. for political crimes. Some forty thousand French men and women were executed
or died in prison. Another three hundred thousand suspects were arrested.
The third and perhaps most decisive element in the French republic’s victory
over the First Coalition was its ability to draw on the explosive power of patriotic
dedication to a national state and a national mission. An essential part of modern
nationalism Patriotic dedication to a nationalism, this commitment was something new in history. With a common
national state and mission; it was a language and a common tradition newly reinforced by the ideas of popular sover-
decisive element in the French
republic’s victory.
eignty and democracy, large numbers of French people were stirred by a common
loyalty. They developed an intense emotional commitment to the defense of the
nation and saw the war as a life-and-death struggle between good and evil.
The fervor of nationalism, combined with the all-out mobilization of resources,
made the French army unstoppable. After August 1793 all unmarried young men
were subject to the draft, resulting in the largest fighting force in the history of
European warfare. Recent research concludes that the French armed forces out-
numbered their enemies almost four to one.5 French generals used mass assaults
at bayonet point to overwhelm the enemy. “No maneuvering, nothing elaborate,”
declared the fearless General Hoche. “Just cold steel, passion and patriotism.”6 By
spring 1794 French armies were victorious on all fronts. The republic was saved.
The second stage of revolution in Saint-Domingue

Revolution in also resulted from decisive action from below. In Au-
Saint-Domingue gust 1791 groups of slaves organized a revolt that spread
across much of the northern plain. By the end of August the uprising was “10,000
strong, divided into 3 armies, of whom 700 or 800 are on horseback, and tolerably
well-armed.”7 During the next month slaves attacked and destroyed hundreds of
sugar and coffee plantations.
On April 4, 1792, as war loomed with the European states, the National As-
sembly issued a new decree enfranchising all free blacks and free people of color.
The Assembly hoped this measure would win the loyalty of free blacks and their
aid in defeating the slave rebellion.
Less than two years later, on February 4, 1794, slavery was abolished in the
entire French Caribbean, and in 1795 the former slaves won full political rights.
The National Convention was forced to make these concessions when Saint-
Domingue came under siege from Spanish and British troops hoping to capture
the profitable colony. With the former slaves and free colored forces on their side,
the French gradually regained control of the island in 1796.
The key leader in the French victory was General Toussaint L’Ouverture (too-
SAN loo-ver-CHORE) (1743–1803). (See the feature “Individuals in Society: Tous-
saint L’Ouverture.”) L’Ouverture was then named commander of the western

province of Saint-Domingue. The increasingly conservative nature of the French
government, however, threatened to undo the gains made by former slaves and
free people of color. As exiled planters gained a stronger voice in French policy-
making, L’Ouverture and other local leaders grew ever more wary of what the fu-
ture might hold.
With the French army victorious, Robespierre and the

The Thermidorian Committee of Public Safety relaxed the emergency
Reaction and the economic controls, but they extended the political
Directory (1794–1799) Reign of Terror. In March 1794, to the horror of many
sans-culottes, Robespierre wiped out many of his critics. Two weeks later, Robes-
pierre sent many of his long-standing collaborators, including the famous orator
Danton, up the steps to the guillotine. A strange assortment of radicals and moder-
ates in the Convention, knowing that they might be next, organized a conspiracy.
They howled down Robespierre when he tried to speak to the National Conven-
tion on 9 Thermidor (July 27, 1794). The next day it was Robespierre’s turn to be
shaved by the revolutionary razor.
As Robespierre’s closest supporters followed their leader to the guillotine,
France unexpectedly experienced a thorough reaction to the despotism of the
Reign of Terror. In a general way, this Thermidorian (thur-mi-DAWR-ee-uhn) Thermidorian reaction The period
reaction recalled the early days of the Revolution. The middle-class lawyers and after the execution of Robespierre in
1794; it was a reaction to the violence of
professionals who had led the liberal revolution of 1789 reasserted their authority, the Reign of Terror.
drawing support from their own class, the provincial cities, and the better-off peas-
ants. The National Convention abolished many economic controls, let prices rise
sharply, and severely restricted the local political organizations in which the sans-
culottes had their strength.
The collapse of economic controls, coupled with run-
away inflation, hit the working poor very hard. After the
Convention used the army to suppress the sans culottes’ pro-
tests, the urban poor lost their revolutionary fervor. Excluded
and disillusioned, they would have little interest in and in-
fluence on politics until 1830. The poor of the countryside
turned toward religion as a relief from earthly cares. Rural
women, especially, brought back the Catholic Church and
the open worship of God as the government began to soften
its antireligious revolutionary stance.
As for the middle-class members of the National Con-
vention, in 1795 they wrote yet another constitution that
they believed would guarantee their economic position and
political supremacy. As in previous elections, the mass of
the population voted only for electors, whose number was
cut back to men of substantial means. Electors then elected
The Execution of Robespierre

The guillotine was painted red and was completely wooden except
for the heavy iron blade. Large crowds witnessed the executions in a
majestic public square in central Paris, then known as the Place de la
Revolution and now called the Place de la Concorde (Harmony Square).
(Snark /Art Resource, NY)
Sec tion Review the members of a reorganized legislative assembly as well as key officials through-
out France. The new assembly also chose a five-man executive—the Directory.
• The revolution in France brought The Directory continued to support French military expansion abroad. War
mixed reactions elsewhere, from Ed-
mund Burke’s book defending conserva-
was no longer so much a crusade as a means to meet ever-present, ever-unsolved
tism to Mary Wollstonecraft’s passionate economic problems. Large, victorious French armies reduced unemployment at
plea to eliminate sexual inequality. home and were able to live off the territories they conquered and plundered.
• The monarchs of Austria and Prussia The unprincipled action of the Directory reinforced widespread disgust with
responded to the arrest of the royal war and starvation. This general dissatisfaction revealed itself clearly in the na-
family with the Declaration of Pillnitz, tional elections of 1797, which returned a large number of conservative and even
inciting such anger that the National monarchist deputies who favored peace at almost any price. The members of the
Assembly, led by members of the Jaco-
bin political club, declared war on the
Directory, fearing for their skins, used the army to nullify the elections and began
Habsburg monarch and then sus- to govern dictatorially. Two years later Napoleon Bonaparte (nuh-POH-lee-uhn
pended the king from all his functions. BOH-nuh-pahrt) ended the Directory in a coup d’état (koo day-TA) and substi-
• The National Convention declared tuted a strong dictatorship for a weak one. The effort to establish stable representa-
France a republic, executed the king in tive government had failed.
1793, and sought to create a new repub-
lican, secular culture.
• The National Convention faced divi-
sion between the moderate Girondists
The Napoleonic Era (1799–1815)
and the radical Mountain as French Why did Napoleon Bonaparte assume control of France, and what factors
armies battled Prussian and Austrian led to his downfall? How did the new republic of Haiti gain independence
forces, ending up at war against most
of Europe. from France?
• Robespierre and the Committee of

Public Safety established a planned For almost fifteen years, from 1799 to 1814, France was in the hands of a keen-
economy, fixed the price of bread, minded military dictator of exceptional ability. One of history’s most fascinating
provided work to aid the war effort, leaders, Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) realized the need to put an end to civil
initiated the Reign of Terror, and
strife in France in order to create unity and consolidate his rule. And he did. But
worked to promote a strong sense of
nationalism, all of which helped to save Napoleon saw himself as a man of destiny, and the glory of war and the dream
the republic, though at the cost of many of universal empire proved irresistible. For years he spiraled from victory to vic-
lives. tory, but in the end he was destroyed by a mighty coalition united in fear of his
• In the Caribbean island of Saint- restless ambition.
Domingue (today’s Haiti), slaves re-
volted and, under the pressure of war,
the French government first enfran-
In 1799 when he seized power, young General Napo-
chised free people of color, then abol- Napoleon’s Rule leon Bonaparte was a national hero. Born in Corsica
ished slavery and extended political of France
rights to former slaves. into an impoverished noble family in 1769, Napoleon
• Under the leadership of Toussaint left home and became a lieutenant in the French artillery in 1785. After a brief
L’Ouverture, a former slave, French and unsuccessful adventure fighting for Corsican independence in 1789, he re-
forces in Saint-Domingue defeated turned to France as a French patriot and a dedicated revolutionary. Rising rapidly
Spanish and British invaders. in the new army, Napoleon was placed in command of French forces in Italy and
• The Thermidorian Reaction led to the won brilliant victories there in 1796 and 1797. His next campaign, in Egypt, was a
execution of Robespierre, a new Na- failure, but Napoleon returned to France before the fiasco was generally known,
tional Convention, the end of eco-
and his reputation remained intact.
nomic controls, a new constitution, the
establishment of the Directory, and a Napoleon soon learned that some prominent members of the legislature were
coup d’état by Napoleon. plotting against the Directory. The dissatisfaction of these plotters stemmed not so
much from the fact that the Directory was a dictatorship as from the fact that it was
a weak dictatorship. Ten years of upheaval and uncertainty had convinced these
disillusioned revolutionaries that a strong military ruler was needed to restore or-
der. Thus the conspirators and Napoleon organized a takeover. On November 9,
1799, they ousted the Directors, and the following day soldiers disbanded the leg-
islature at bayonet point. Napoleon was named first consul of the republic, and a
new constitution consolidating his position was overwhelmingly approved in a
The Napoleonic Era (1799–1815) 553
The Napoleonic Era

November 1799 Napoleon overthrows the Directory.
December 1799 French voters overwhelmingly approve Napoleon’s new constitution.
1800 Napoleon founds the Bank of France.
1801 France defeats Austria and acquires Italian and German territories in the Treaty
of Lunéville.
Napoleon signs the Concordat with the pope.
1802 France signs the Treaty of Amiens with Britain.
French forces arrive in Saint-Domingue.
April 1803 Toussaint L’Ouverture dies in France.
January 1804 Jean Jacques Dessalines declares Haitian independence.
March 1804 Napoleonic Code comes into force.
December 1804 Napoleon crowns himself emperor.
May 1805 First Haitian constitution promulgated.
October 1805 Britain defeats the French and Spanish fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar.
December 1805 Napoleon defeats Austria and Russia at the Battle of Austerlitz.
1807 Napoleon redraws the map of Europe in the treaties of Tilsit.
1810 The Grand Empire is at its height.
June 1812 Napoleon invades Russia with 600,000 men.
Fall–Winter 1812 Napoleon makes a disastrous retreat from Russia.
March 1814 Russia, Prussia, Austria, and Britain sign the Treaty of Chaumont, pledging
alliance to defeat Napoleon.
April 1814 Napoleon abdicates and is exiled to Elba.
February–June 1815 Napoleon escapes from Elba and rules France until he is defeated at the Battle
of Waterloo.
plebiscite in December 1799. Republican appearances were maintained, but Na-

poleon was already the real ruler of France.
The essence of Napoleon’s domestic policy was to use his great and highly
personal powers to maintain order and end civil strife. He did so by working out
unwritten agreements with powerful groups in France whereby the groups re-
ceived favors in return for loyal service. Napoleon’s bargain with the solid middle
class was codified in the famous Civil Code of 1804, which reasserted two of the
fundamental principles of the liberal and essentially moderate revolution of 1789:
equality of all male citizens before the law and absolute security of wealth and
private property. Napoleon and the leading bankers of Paris established the pri-
vately owned Bank of France, which loyally served the interests of both the state
and the financial oligarchy. Peasants were also appeased when Napoleon defended
the gains in land and status they had claimed during the revolution.
At the same time Napoleon perfected a thoroughly centralized state. As recent
scholarship shows, Napoleon consolidated his rule by recruiting disillusioned revo-
lutionaries for the network of ministers, prefects, and centrally appointed mayors
that depended on him and came to serve him well. Only former revolutionaries
who leaned too far to the left or to the right were pushed to the sidelines.8 Nor
were members of the old nobility slighted. In 1800 and again in 1802 Napoleon
granted amnesty to one hundred thousand émigrés on the condition that they
return to France and take a loyalty oath. Members of this returning elite soon
ably occupied many high posts in the expanding centralized state. Napoleon also
created a new imperial nobility in order to reward his most talented generals
and officials.
Napoleon applied his diplomatic skills to healing the Catholic Church in
France so that it could serve as a bulwark of order and social peace. After arduous
negotiations, Napoleon and Pope Pius VII (1800–1823) signed the Concordat
(kon-KAWR-dat) of 1801. The pope gained the precious right for French Catho-
lics to practice their religion freely, but Napoleon gained political power: his gov-
ernment now nominated bishops, paid the clergy, and exerted great influence over
the church in France.
The domestic reforms of Napoleon’s early years were his greatest achievement.
Much of his legal and administrative reorganization has survived in France to this
day. More generally, Napoleon’s domestic initiatives gave the great majority of
French people a welcome sense of stability and national unity.
Order and unity had a price: Napoleon’s authoritarian rule. Women, who had
often participated in revolutionary politics, lost many of the gains they had made
in the 1790s. Under the law of the new Napoleonic Code, women were depen-
dents of either their fathers or their husbands, and they could not make contracts
or even have bank accounts in their own names. Indeed, Napoleon and his advis-
ers aimed at re-establishing a family monarchy, where the power of the husband
and father was as absolute over the wife and the children as that of Napoleon was
over his subjects.
Free speech and freedom of the press were continually violated. By 1811 only
four newspapers were left, and they were little more than organs of government
propaganda. The occasional elections were a farce. Later laws prescribed harsh
penalties for political offenses, and people were watched carefully under an effi-
cient spy system. People suspected of subversive activities were arbitrarily detained,
placed under house arrest, or consigned to insane asylums. After 1810 political
suspects were held in state prisons, as they had been during the Terror. There were
about twenty-five hundred such political prisoners in 1814.
Napoleon was above all a military man, and a great

Napoleon’s Expansion one. After coming to power in 1799 he sent peace feel-
in Europe ers to Austria and Great Britain, the two remaining
members of the Second Coalition that had been formed against France in 1798.
When these overtures were rejected, French armies led by Napoleon decisively
defeated the Austrians. In the Treaty of Lunéville (1801), Austria accepted the loss
of almost all its Italian possessions, and German territory on the west bank of the
Rhine was incorporated into France. The British agreed to the Treaty of Amiens in
1802, allowing France to remain in control of Holland, the Austrian Netherlands,
the west bank of the Rhine, and most of the Italian peninsula. The Treaty of
Amiens was clearly a diplomatic triumph for Napoleon, and peace with honor and
profit increased his popularity at home.
In 1802 Napoleon was secure but driven to expand his power. Aggressively
redrawing the map of Germany so as to weaken Austria and encourage the second-
ary states of southwestern Germany to side with France, Napoleon tried to restrict
The Napoleonic Era (1799–1815) 555
The Coronation of Napoleon, 1804 (detail)

In this grandiose painting by Jacques-Louis David, Napoleon prepares to crown his wife, Josephine, in an elaborate ceremony in Notre Dame
Cathedral. Napoleon, the ultimate upstart, also crowned himself. Pope Pius VII, seated glumly behind the emperor, is reduced to being a
spectator. (Louvre/Réunion des Musées Nationaux /Art Resource, NY)
British trade with all of Europe. He then plotted to attack Great Britain, but his
Mediterranean fleet was virtually annihilated by Lord Nelson at the Battle of Tra-
falgar on October 21, 1805. Invasion of England was henceforth impossible. Re-
newed fighting had its advantages, however, for the first consul used the wartime
atmosphere to have himself proclaimed emperor in late 1804.
Austria, Russia, and Sweden joined with Britain to form the Third Coalition
against France shortly before the Battle of Trafalgar. Actions such as Napoleon’s
assumption of the Italian crown had convinced both Alexander I of Russia and
Francis II of Austria that Napoleon was a threat to their interests and to the Euro-
pean balance of power. Yet the Austrians and the Russians were no match for
Napoleon, who scored a brilliant victory over them at the Battle of Austerlitz (AW-
ster-lits) in December 1805. Alexander I decided to pull back, and Austria ac-
cepted large territorial losses in return for peace as the Third Coalition collapsed.
Napoleon then proceeded to reorganize the German states to his liking. In
1806 he abolished many of the tiny German states as well as the ancient Holy Ro-
man Empire and established by decree the German Confederation of the Rhine,
a union of fifteen German states minus Austria, Prussia, and Saxony. Naming him-
self “protector” of the confederation, Napoleon firmly controlled western Germany.
Napoleon’s intervention in German affairs alarmed the Prussians, who mobi-
lized their armies after more than a decade of peace with France. Napoleon at-
tacked and won two more brilliant victories in October 1806 at Jena (YEY-nah)
and Auerstädt (OW-er-stat), where the Prussians were outnumbered two to one.
The war with Prussia, now joined by Russia, continued into the following spring.
After Napoleon’s larger armies won another victory, Alexander I of Russia was
ready to negotiate the peace. In the subsequent treaties of Tilsit, Prussia lost half of
its population, while Russia accepted Napoleon’s reorganization of western and
central Europe and promised to enforce Napoleon’s economic blockade against
British goods.
With Toussaint L’Ouverture acting increasingly as an

The War of Haitian independent ruler of the western province of Saint-
Independence Domingue, another general, André Rigaud, set up his
own government in the southern peninsula, which had long been more isolated
from France than the rest of the colony. Civil war broke out between the two sides
in 1799, when L’Ouverture’s forces, led by his lieutenant Jean Jacques Dessalines
(dey-sa-LEEN), invaded the south. Victory over Rigaud gave Toussaint control of
the entire colony. (See the feature “Individuals in Society: Toussaint L’Ouverture.”)
L’Ouverture’s victory was soon challenged, however, by Napoleon’s arrival in
power. Napoleon intended to reinvigorate the Caribbean plantation economy as a
basis for expanding French power. He ordered his brother-in-law General Charles-
Victor-Emmanuel Leclerc to crush the new regime.
In 1802 Leclerc landed in Saint-Domingue. Although Toussaint L’Ouverture
cooperated with the French and turned his army over to them, he was arrested and
deported to France, along with his family, where he died in 1803. Jean Jacques
Dessalines united the resistance under his command and led it to a crushing vic-
tory over the French forces. Of the fifty-eight thousand French soldiers, fifty thou-
sand were lost in combat and to disease. On January 1, 1804, Dessalines formally
declared the independence of Saint-Domingue and the creation of the new sover-
eign nation of Haiti, the name used by the pre-Columbian inhabitants of the is-
land. (France’s other Caribbean colonies were not granted independence. Slavery
was re-established and remained in force until 1848.)
Haiti, the second independent state in the Americas and the first in Latin
America, was thus born from the first successful large-scale slave revolt in history.
Fearing the spread of slave rebellion to the United States, President Thomas Jef-
ferson refused to recognize Haiti. Both the American and the French Revolutions
thus exposed their limits by acting to protect economic interests at the expense of
revolutionary ideals of freedom and equality. Yet, Haitian independence had fun-
damental repercussions for world history. As one recent historian of the Haitian
revolution commented:
The slave insurrection of Saint-Domingue led to the expansion of citizenship
beyond racial barriers despite the massive political and economic investment in the
slave system at the time. If we live in a world in which democracy is meant to
exclude no one, it is in no small part because of the actions of those slaves in
Saint-Domingue who insisted that human rights were theirs too.9
Napoleon resigned himself to the loss of Saint-

The Grand Empire Domingue, but he still maintained imperial ambitions
Grand Empire Napoleon’s name for
the European empire over which he
and Its End in Europe. Increasingly, he saw himself as the emperor
intended to rule. This Grand Empire of Europe and not just of France. The so-called Grand Empire he built had three
would consist of France, a number of
lesser dependent states ruled by his parts. The core, or first part, was an ever-expanding France, which by 1810 in-
relations, and several major allied states cluded Belgium, Holland, parts of northern Italy, and much German territory on
(Austria, Prussia, and Russia). the east bank of the Rhine. Beyond French borders Napoleon established the
Toussaint L’Ouverture
L ittle is known of the early life of the brilliant military
and political leader Toussaint L’Ouverture. He was
born in 1743 on a plantation outside Le Cap owned by
Without revenue to pay his army, the gains of the rebel-
lion could be lost. He therefore encouraged white plant-
ers to return and reclaim their property. He also adopted
the Count de Bréda (bree-DAH). According to tradi- harsh policies toward former slaves, forcing them back
tion, Toussaint was the eldest son of a captured African to their plantations and restrict-
prince from modern-day Benin. Toussaint Bréda, as he ing their ability to acquire land.
was then called, occupied a privileged position among When they resisted, he sent
slaves. Instead of performing backbreaking labor in the troops across the island to en-
fields, he served his master as a coachman and livestock force submission.
keeper. During the 1770s, after being freed, he leased In 1801 L’Ouverture con-
his own small coffee plantation, worked by slaves. A vened a colonial assembly to
devout Catholic who led a frugal and ascetic life, draft a new constitution that reaf-
L’Ouverture impressed others with his enormous physi- firmed his draconian labor poli-
cal energy, intellectual acumen, and air of mystery. cies. The constitution named
Toussaint L’Ouverture entered history in 1791 when L’Ouverture governor for life,
he joined the slave uprisings that swept Saint-Domingue. leaving Saint-Domingue as a
(At some point he took on the cryptic nom de guerre colony in name alone. When
“l’ouverture” meaning “the opening.”) Toussaint rose to news of the constitution arrived
prominence among rebel slaves allied with Spain and in France, an angry Napoleon dis-
by early 1794 controlled his own army. In 1794 he de- patched General Leclerc (luh-
fected to the French side and led his troops to a series of CLAIR) to re-establish French
victories against the Spanish. In 1795 France’s National control. In June 1802 Leclerc’s
Convention promoted L’Ouverture to brigadier general. forces arrested L’Ouverture and Equestrian portrait of Toussaint
Over the next three years L’Ouverture successively took him to France. He was L’Ouverture. (Réunion des Musées
Nationaux /Art Resource, NY)
eliminated rivals for authority on the island. First he freed jailed at Fort de Joux (for duh
himself of the French commissioners sent to govern the ZHOO) in the Jura Mountains
colony. With a firm grip on power in the northern prov- near the Swiss border, where he
ince, Toussaint defeated General André Rigaud in 1800 died of pneumonia on April 7, 1803. It was left to his
to gain control in the south. His army then marched on lieutenant, Jean Jacques Dessalines, to win indepen-
the capital of Spanish Santo Domingo on the eastern dence for the new Haitian nation.
half of the island, meeting little resistance. The entire
island of Hispaniola was now under his command.
With control of Saint-Domingue in his hands,
L’Ouverture was confronted with the challenge of build- 1. Toussaint L’Ouverture was both slave and slave
ing a postemancipation society, the first of its kind. The owner. How did each experience shape his life and
task was made even more difficult by the chaos wreaked actions?
by war, the destruction of plantations, and bitter social 2. Despite their differences, what did Toussaint
and racial tensions. For L’Ouverture the most pressing L’Ouverture and Napoleon Bonaparte have in
concern was to re-establish the plantation economy. common? Why did they share a common fate?
557
second part: a number of dependent satellite kingdoms, on the thrones of which

he placed (and replaced) the members of his large family. The third part com-
prised the independent but allied states of Austria, Prussia, and Russia. After 1806
both satellites and allies were expected to support Napoleon’s continental system
and to cease trade with Britain.
The impact of the Grand Empire on the peoples of Europe was considerable.
In the areas incorporated into France and in the satellites (see Map 21.1), feudal
dues and serfdom had been abolished. Some of the peasants and middle class
benefited from these reforms. Yet Napoleon had to put the prosperity and special
interests of France first in order to safeguard his power base. Levying heavy taxes
in money and men for his armies, he came to be regarded more as a conquering
tyrant than as an enlightened liberator. Thus French rule encouraged the growth
of reactive nationalism, for individuals in different lands developed patriotic feel-
ings for their own lands in opposition to Napoleon’s imperialism.
The first great revolt occurred in Spain. In 1808 a coalition of Catholics, mon-
archists, and patriots rebelled against Napoleon’s attempts to make Spain a French
satellite with a Bonaparte as its king. French armies occupied Madrid, but the foes
of Napoleon fled to the hills and waged uncompromising guerrilla warfare. Spain
was a clear warning: resistance to French imperialism was growing.
Yet Napoleon pushed on, determined to hold his complex and far-flung em-
pire together. In 1810, when the Grand Empire was at its height, Britain still re-
mained at war with France, helping the guerrillas in Spain and Portugal. The
continental system, organized to exclude British goods from the continent and
force that “nation of shopkeepers” to its knees, was a failure. Instead, it was France
that suffered from Britain’s counter-blockade, which created hard times for French
artisans and the middle class. Perhaps looking for a scapegoat, Napoleon turned
on Alexander I of Russia, who in 1811 openly repudiated Napoleon’s war of prohi-
bitions against British goods.
Napoleon’s invasion of Russia began in June 1812 with a force that eventually
numbered 600,000, probably the largest force yet assembled in a single army. Only
one-third of this Great Army was French, however; nationals of all the satellites
and allies were drafted into the operation. Originally planning to winter in the
Russian city of Smolensk (smoh-LENSK) if Alexander did not sue for peace, Napo-
leon reached Smolensk and recklessly pressed on toward Moscow. The great Battle
of Borodino that followed was a draw, and the Russians retreated in good order.
Alexander ordered the evacuation of Moscow, which then burned in part, and he
refused to negotiate. Finally, after five weeks in the abandoned city, Napoleon or-
dered a retreat. That retreat was one of the greatest military disasters in history. The
Russian army, the Russian winter, and starvation cut Napoleon’s army to pieces.
Mapping the Past

MAP 21.1 Napoleonic Europe in 1810
Only Great Britain remained at war with Napoleon at the height of the Grand Empire. Many
British goods were smuggled through Helgoland, a tiny but strategic British possession off the
German coast. Compare this map with Map 16.1, which shows the division of Europe in 1715.
[1] How had the balance of power shifted in Europe from 1715 to 1810? What changed, and
what remained the same? [2] Why did Napoleon succeed in achieving vast territorial gains
where Louis XIV did not? [3] In comparing Map 16.1 with this map, what was the impact of
Napoleon’s wars on Germany and the Italian peninsula? What significance do you think this had
for these regions in the nineteenth century?
60˚N French empire
St. Petersburg Dependent states
KINGDOM
Stockholm
Allied with Napoleon
OF NORWAY
AND KINGDOM At war with Napoleon
North
DENMARK OF Major battle
Moscow
Sea SWEDEN
Baltic 0 200 400 Km.
GREAT BRITAIN
Copenhagen Sea Borodino
H Tilsit 1812 0 200 400 Mi.
DIS NIA Königsberg Smolensk
S WE ER A
Friedland
Lübeck PO M
Danzig 1807
Hamburg IA
E lb USS 50˚
N
London PR Nema n R
. RUSSIAN EMPIRE
e R.
Rh i n e Bremen
Berlin
R.
Brussels WESTPHALIA GRAND DUCHY
AT L A N T I C Waterloo Auerstädt SAXONY OF WARSAW
1815 1806 Jena Kiev
Amiens 1806
OCEAN Paris CONFEDERATION
OF THE RHINE Austerlitz
N
WÜRTTEMBERG 1805
Lunéville Wagram
BADEN 1804
BAVARIA Vienna Pressburg
10˚W FRANCE Zurich
SWITZERLAND Buda Pest
Milan AUSTRIAN EMPIRE

KINGDOM
Marengo OF I
LL
1800 ITALY
YR
Genoa
IA
N
AL
Black Sea
PR
Marseilles Danube R.
TUG
OV
Lisbon Madrid
IN
POR
CE
O
Corsica Elba TO 40˚N
S
T
SPAIN Rome M
AN
Constantinople
Sardinia Naples
EMP
Trafalgar
Me KINGDOM IRE
1805 di OF NAPLES
GIBRALTAR (Gr. Br.) te
rr Palermo
an Ionian Is.
e a KINGDOM OF (Gr. Br.)
Athens
n SICILY
Malta (Gr. Br.)
Sea
0˚ 10˚E 20˚E 30˚E
Sec tion Review When the frozen remnants staggered into Poland and Prussia in December,
370,000 men had died and another 200,000 had been taken prisoner.10
• Napoleon brought about civil order by offer- Leaving his troops to their fate, Napoleon raced to Paris to raise yet an-
ing favors for loyal service, letting the poor
keep land, appointing disillusioned revolution-
other army. Austria and Prussia deserted Napoleon and joined Russia and
aries and amnestied nobles to government Great Britain in the Treaty of Chaumont in March 1814, by which the four
posts, and exercising the power to nominate powers pledged allegiance to defeat the French emperor. All across Europe
clergy to posts in exchange for granting reli- patriots called for a “war of liberation” against Napoleon’s oppression. Less
gious freedom for Catholics. than a month later, on April 4, 1814, a defeated Napoleon abdicated his
• Civil liberties and freedoms for women suf- throne. After this unconditional abdication, the victorious allies granted Na-
fered under Napoleon’s authoritarian rule. poleon the island of Elba off the coast of Italy as his own tiny state. Napoleon
• Napoleon defeated the Austrians, proclaimed was even allowed to keep his imperial title, and France was required to pay
himself emperor, defeated Prussia and Russia him a yearly income of 2 million francs.
at Austerlitz and then abolished the Holy
Roman Empire by creating the German
The allies also agreed to the restoration of the Bourbon dynasty under
Confederation of the Rhine, and gained Louis XVIII (r. 1814–1824) and promised to treat France with leniency in a
Russia’s support in a blockade against the peace settlement. The new monarch tried to consolidate support among the
British, who had thwarted him at Trafalgar. people by issuing the Constitutional Charter, which accepted many of
• Civil war in Saint-Domingue ended with France’s revolutionary changes and guaranteed civil liberties.
victory for Toussaint L’Ouverture, who al- Yet Louis XVIII—old, ugly, and crippled by gout—totally lacked the
lowed white planters to return, forced former glory and magic of Napoleon. Hearing of political unrest in France and
slaves to return to their plantations, and
named himself governor for life, but Napole-
diplomatic tensions in Vienna, Napoleon staged a daring escape from Elba
onic forces captured him and deported him in February 1815. Landing in France, he issued appeals for support and
to France. marched on Paris with a small band of followers. French officers and soldiers
• The resistance led by Dessalines crushed the who had fought so long for their emperor responded to the call. Louis XVIII
French and Saint-Domingue became the fled, and once more Napoleon took command. But Napoleon’s gamble was
sovereign nation of Haiti. a desperate long shot, for the allies were united against him. At the end of a
• Napoleon’s Grand Empire faced a Spanish frantic period known as the Hundred Days, they crushed his forces at Water-
revolt supported by the British, a failed French loo on June 18, 1815, and imprisoned him on the rocky island of St. Helena,
coalition invasion of Russia, and a Europe far off the western coast of Africa.
united against France.
Louis XVIII returned again and recommenced his reign. The allies now
• Napoleon abdicated and was exiled to the dealt more harshly with the apparently incorrigible French. As for Napo-
island of Elba, but he escaped and after the
Hundred Days the allies defeated him at
leon, he took revenge by writing his memoirs, skillfully nurturing the myth
Waterloo; the French restored the Bourbon that he had been Europe’s revolutionary liberator, a romantic hero whose
dynasty under Louis XVIII. lofty work had been undone by oppressive reactionaries. An era had ended.
Chapter Review
What social, political, and economic factors formed the background to the
French Revolution? (page 536) Key Terms
The French Revolution was forged by multiple and complex factors. Whereas an estates (p. 536)
earlier generation of historians was convinced that the origins of the Revolution lay in desacralization (p. 538)
class struggle between the entrenched nobility and the rising bourgeoisie, it is now
clear that many other factors were involved. Certainly, French society had undergone Assembly of Notables (p. 540)
significant transformations during the eighteenth century, which dissolved many eco- Estates General (p. 540)
nomic and social differences among elites without removing the legal distinction be- National Assembly (p. 541)
tween them. These changes were accompanied by political struggles between the Great Fear (p. 542)
monarchy and its officers, particularly in the high law courts. Emerging public opinion
focused on the shortcomings of monarchical rule, and a rising torrent of political the- constitutional monarchy (p. 543)
ory, cheap pamphlets, gossip, and innuendo offered scathing and even pornographic
Chapter Review 561
depictions of the king and his court. With their sacred royal aura severely tarnished, free people of color (p. 544)
Louis XV and his successor Louis XVI found themselves unable to respond to the fi-
nancial crises generated by French involvement in the Seven Years’ War and the Jacobin club (p. 546)
American Revolution. Louis XVI’s half-hearted efforts to redress the situation were second revolution (p. 547)
quickly overwhelmed by elite and popular demands for fundamental reform. Girondists (p. 547)
the Mountain (p. 547)
What were the immediate events that sparked the Revolution, and how did they sans-culottes (p. 547)
result in the formation of a constitutional monarchy in France? How did the planned economy (p. 548)
ideals and events of the early Revolution raise new aspirations in the colonies? Reign of Terror (p. 550)
(page 540) nationalism (p. 550)
Forced to call a meeting of the Estates General for the first time in almost two centu- Thermidorian reaction (p. 551)
ries, Louis XVI fell back on the traditional formula of one vote for each of the three Grand Empire (p. 556)
orders of society. Debate over the composition of the assembly called forth a bold new
paradigm: that the Third Estate in itself constituted the French nation. By 1791 the
National Assembly had eliminated Old Regime privileges and had established a con-
stitutional monarchy. Talk in France of liberty, equality, and fraternity raised new and
contradictory aspirations in the colony of Saint-Domingue. White planters lobbied for
increased colonial autonomy; free people of color sought the return of legal equality;
slaves of African birth or descent took direct action on revolutionary ideals by rising in
rebellion against their masters.
How and why did the Revolution take a radical turn at home and in the
colonies? (page 545)
With the execution of the royal couple and the declaration of terror as the order of
the day, the French Revolution took an increasingly radical turn from the end of 1792.
Popular fears of counter-revolutionary conspiracy combined with the outbreak of war
against a mighty alliance of European monarchs convinced many that the Revolution
was vulnerable and must be defended against its multiple enemies. In a spiraling cycle
of accusations and executions, the Jacobins eliminated their political opponents and
then factions within their own party. The Directory government that took power after
the fall of Robespierre restored political equilibrium at the cost of the radical platform
of social equality he had pursued.
Why did Napoleon Bonaparte assume control of France, and what factors led to
his downfall? How did the new republic of Haiti gain independence from
France? (page 552)
Wearied by the weaknesses of the Directory, a group of conspirators gave Napoleon
Bonaparte control of France. His brilliant reputation as a military leader and his cha-
risma and determination made him seem ideal to lead France to victory over its ene-
mies. As is so often the case in history, Napoleon’s relentless ambitions ultimately led
to his downfall. His story is paralleled by that of Toussaint L’Ouverture, another soldier
who emerged to the political limelight from the chaos of revolution only to endure
exile and defeat. Unlike Napoleon, L’Ouverture’s cause ultimately prevailed. After his
exile, war between the French forces and the armies he had led and inspired led to
French defeat and independence for Saint-Domingue.
As complex as its origins are the legacies of the French Revolution. These included
liberalism, assertive nationalism, radical democratic republicanism, embryonic social-
ism, self-conscious conservatism, abolitionism, decolonization, and movements for
racial and sexual equality. The Revolution also left a rich and turbulent history of elec-
toral competition, legislative assemblies, and even mass politics. Thus the French
Revolution and conflicting interpretations of its significance presented a whole range
of political options and alternative visions of the future. For this reason, it was truly the
revolution in modern European politics.
Notes
1. Quoted in G. Wright, France in Modern Times, 4th ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987),
p. 34.
2. G. Pernoud and S. Flaisser, eds., The French Revolution (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett, 1960),
p. 61.
3. Quotations from Wollstonecraft are drawn from E. W. Sunstein, A Different Face: The Life
of Mary Wollstonecraft (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), pp. 208, 211; and H. R. James,
Mary Wollstonecraft: A Sketch (London: Oxford University Press, 1932), pp. 60, 62, 69.
4. Quoted in L. Gershoy, The Era of the French Revolution, 1789–1799 (New York: Van Nos-
trand, 1957), p. 150.
5. T. Blanning, The French Revolutionary Wars, 1787–1802 (London: Arnold, 1996), pp. 116–
128.
7. Quoted in Laurent Dubois, Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), p. 97.
8. I. Woloch, Napoleon and His Collaborators: The Making of a Dictatorship (New York:
W. W. Norton, 2001), pp. 36–65.
9. Ibid., p. 3.
10. D. Sutherland, France, 1789–1815: Revolution and Counterrevolution (New York: Oxford

Revolution and Women’s Rights
T he 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man was a revolu-

tionary call for legal equality, representative government,
and individual freedom that excluded women from its manifesto.
Among those who saw the contradiction in granting sup-
posedly universal rights to only half the population was Marie
Gouze (1748–1793), known to history as Olympe de Gouges.
The daughter of a provincial butcher and peddler, she pur-
sued a literary career in Paris after the death of her husband.
De Gouges’s great work was her Declaration of the Rights of
Woman (1791). Excerpted here, it called on males to end
their oppression of women and to give women equal rights. A
radical on women’s issues, de Gouges sympathized with the
monarchy and criticized Robespierre in print. Convicted of
sedition, she was guillotined in November 1793.
Olympe de Gouges in 1784; aquatint by

. . . Man, are you capable of being just? . . . Tell
Madame Aubry (1748–1793). (Musée de la Ville
me, what gives you sovereign empire to oppress my de Paris, Musée Carnavalet, Paris, France/The Bridgeman
sex? Your strength? Your talents? Observe the Cre- Art Library)
ator in his wisdom . . . and give me, if you dare, an
example of this tyrannical empire. Go back to ani-
mals, consult the elements, study plants . . . and II. The purpose of any political association
distinguish, if you can, the sexes in the administra- is the conservation of the natural and impre-
tion of nature. Everywhere you will find them scriptible rights of woman and man; these rights
mingled; everywhere they cooperate in harmoni- are liberty, property, security, and especially resis-
ous togetherness in this immortal masterpiece. tance to oppression.
Man alone has raised his exceptional circum- III. The principle of all sovereignty rests essen-
stances to a principle. . . . [H]e wants to command tially with the nation, which is nothing but the
as a despot a sex which is in full possession of its union of woman and man. . . .
intellectual faculties; he pretends to enjoy the Rev- IV. Liberty and justice consist of restoring all
olution and to claim his rights to equality in order that belongs to others; thus, the only limits on the
to say nothing more about it. . . . Mothers, daugh- exercise of the natural rights of woman are perpet-
ters, sisters and representatives of the nation de- ual male tyranny; these limits are to be reformed by
mand to be constituted into a national assembly. the laws of nature and reason.
Believing that ignorance, omission, or scorn for the V. Laws of nature and reason proscribe all acts
rights of woman are the only causes of public mis- harmful to society. . . .
fortunes and of the corruption of governments, [the VI. The law must be the expression of the gen-
women] have resolved to set forth in a solemn dec- eral will; all female and male citizens must contrib-
laration the natural, inalienable, and sacred rights ute either personally or through their representatives
of woman. . . . to its formation; it must be the same for all: male
I. Woman is born free and lives equal to man in and female citizens, being equal in the eyes of the
her rights. Social distinctions can be based only on law, must be equally admitted to all honors, posi-
the common utility. tions, and public employment according to their
563
capacity and without other distinctions besides the constitution is null if the majority of individuals
those of their virtues and talents. . . . comprising the nation have not cooperated in draft-
IX. Once any woman is declared guilty, coming it.
plete rigor is [to be] exercised by the law. XVII. Property belongs to both sexes whether
X. No one is to be disquieted for his very basic united or separate; for each it is an inviolable and
opinions; woman has the right to mount the scaf- sacred right. . . .
fold; she must equally have the right to mount the
rostrum, provided that her demonstrations do not
disturb the legally established public order. Questions for Analysis
XI. The free communication of thoughts and 1. On what basis did de Gouges argue for gender
opinions is one of the most precious rights of equality? Did she believe in natural law?
woman, since that liberty assures the recognition of 2. What consequences did “scorn for the rights
children by their fathers. Any female citizen thus of woman” have for France, according to
may say freely, I am the mother of a child which de Gouges?
belongs to you, without being forced by a bar- 3. Did de Gouges stress political rights at the
barous prejudice to hide the truth. . . . expense of social and economic rights? If
XIII. For the support of the public force and the so, why?
expenses of administration, the contributions of Source: Olympe de Gouges, “Declaration of the Rights of
woman and man are equal; she shares all the du- Woman,” from Women in Revolutionary Paris, 1789–
ties . . . and all the painful tasks; therefore, she must 1795: Selected Documents Translated with Notes and
have the same share in the distribution of positions, Commentary. Translated with notes and commentary by
Darline Gay Levy, Harriet Branson Applewhite, and
employment, offices, honors, and jobs. . . .
Mary Durham Johnson. Copyright © 1979 Board of
XVI. No society has a constitution without the Trustees. Used with permission of the editors and the
guarantee of rights and the separation of powers; University of Illinois Press.
564
CHAPTER 22
The Revolution
in Energy
and Industry
ca. 1780–1860
Chapter Preview
The Industrial Revolution in Britain
What were the origins of the Industrial
Revolution in Britain, and how did it
develop between 1780 and 1850?
Industrialization in Continental Europe

How after 1815 did continental countries
respond to the challenge of
industrialization?
Relations Between Capital and Labor

How did the Industrial Revolution affect
social classes, the standard of living,
and patterns of work? What measures
were taken to improve the conditions of
workers?
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY: The Strutt Family
LISTENING TO THE PAST: Testimony Concerning

A colorful timetable poster lists the trains from London to Folkstone, Young Mine Workers
the English Channel’s gateway port to the European continent, and
proudly proclaims the speed of the journey. (Private Collection/The
Bridgeman Art Library)
565
566 Chapter 22 The Revolution in Energy and Industry, ca. 1780–1860
W hile the revolution in France was opening a new political era, another
revolution was beginning to transform economic and social life. This
was the Industrial Revolution, which began in Great Britain around the 1780s and
started to influence continental Europe after 1815. Although the Industrial Revo-
lution was less dramatic than the French Revolution, it brought about numerous
radical changes. Quite possibly only the development of agriculture during Neo-
lithic times had a comparable impact and significance.
The Industrial Revolution profoundly modified much of human experience.
It changed patterns of work, transformed the social class structure, and eventually
even altered the international balance of political power. The Industrial Revolu-
tion also helped ordinary people gain a higher standard of living as the widespread
poverty of the preindustrial world was gradually reduced.
Unfortunately, the improvement in the European standard of living was quite
limited until about 1850 for at least two reasons. First, even in Britain, only a few
key industries experienced a technological revolution, holding down the increase
in total production. Second, Europe’s population continued to grow rapidly, leav-
ing most individuals poorer and making the wrenching transformation all the
more difficult.
The Industrial Revolution in Britain

What were the origins of the Industrial Revolution in Britain, and how did
it develop between 1780 and 1850?
The Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain, that historic union of England,
Scotland, and Wales. It was something new in history, and it was quite unplanned.
With no models to copy and no idea of what to expect, Britain had to pioneer not
only in industrial technology but also in social relations and urban living. Between
1793 and 1815, these formidable tasks were complicated by almost constant war
with France. As the trailblazer in economic development—while France was un-
dergoing political change—Britain must command special attention.
Although many aspects of the British Industrial Revo-

Eighteenth-Century lution are still matters for scholarly debate, it is gener-
Origins ally agreed that the industrial changes that did occur
grew out of a long process of development. First, the British economy was expand-
ing both domestically and abroad. The North American colonial empire that Brit-
ain aggressively built, augmented by a strong position in Latin America and in the
African slave trade, provided a growing market for British manufactured goods.
Within Britain, goods flowed easily between markets along miles of navigable wa-
ter. Beginning in the 1770s, a canal-building boom greatly enhanced this natural
transportation advantage. Rivers and canals also provided easy movement of Eng-
land’s and Wales’s enormous deposits of iron and coal, raw materials that would be
critical to Europe’s early industrial age.
Second, improved agricultural methods played a central role in bringing about
the Industrial Revolution in Britain. The result, especially before 1760, was a pe-
riod of bountiful crops and low food prices that freed up the family budget for
other purchases.
Chronology
Third, Britain had other assets that helped give rise to ca. 1765 Hargreaves invents spinning jenny
industrial leadership. Unlike eighteenth-century France, Brit-
ain had an effective central bank and well-developed credit 1769 Watt creates modern steam engine
markets. The monarchy and the aristocratic oligarchy, which 1775–1783 American Revolution
had jointly ruled the country since 1688, provided stable and 1780s–1850 Industrial Revolution
predictable government. At the same time, the government
1780–1851 Population boom in England
let the domestic economy operate with few controls, encour-
aging personal initiative, technical change, and a free mar- 1789–1799 French Revolution
ket. Finally, Britain had long had a large class of hired 1798 Malthus, Essay on the Principle of
agricultural laborers who were relatively mobile—compared Population
to village-bound peasants in France and western Germany, 1799 Combination Acts passed
for example—and along with cottage workers they formed a
potential industrial labor force for capitalist entrepreneurs. 1810 Strike of Manchester cotton spinners
All these factors combined to initiate the Industrial Rev- 1824 Combination Acts repealed
olution, a term first coined by awed contemporaries in the 1830 Stephenson’s Rocket; first important
1830s to describe the burst of major inventions and technical railroad
changes they had witnessed in certain industries. This tech-
1830s Industrial banks in Belgium
nical revolution went hand in hand with an impressive quick-
ening in the annual rate of industrial growth in Britain. The 1833 Factory Act
decisive quickening of growth probably came in the 1780s, 1842 Mines Act
after the American War of Independence and just before the 1844 Engels, The Condition of the Working
French Revolution. Class in England
The Industrial Revolution was, however, a longer process
1851 Great Exhibition held at Crystal Palace
than the political revolutions that began around the same
time. It was not complete in Britain until 1850 at the earliest,
and it had no real impact on continental countries until
after 1815. Industrial Revolution A term first
coined by awed contemporaries in the
1830s to describe the burst of major
inventions and technical changes they
The first decisive breakthrough of the Industrial Revo- had witnessed in certain industries.
The First Factories lution was the creation of large factories for the British
cotton textile industry in the 1770s and 1780s. Techno-
logical innovations in the manufacture of cotton cloth led to a new system of pro-
duction and social relationships. Since no other industry experienced such a rapid
or complete transformation before 1830, these trailblazing developments deserve
special consideration.
Although the putting-out system of merchant capitalism (see page 490) was
expanding all across Europe in the eighteenth century, this pattern of rural indus-
try was most fully developed in Britain. There, as demand for product grew, the
system’s limitations began to outweigh its advantages for the first time. This was
especially true in the British textile industry after about 1760.
A constant shortage of thread in the textile industry prompted many a tinker-
spinning jenny A spinning machine
ing worker to come up with a better spinning wheel; James Hargreaves succeeded created by James Hargreaves in 1765 that
with his cotton-spinning jenny about 1765. At almost the same moment, Richard used six to twenty-four spindles mounted
Arkwright invented (or possibly pirated) another kind of spinning machine, the on a sliding carriage to spin a fine thread.
water frame. These breakthroughs produced an explosion in the infant cotton water frame A spinning machine
textile industry in the 1780s, and by 1790 the new machines were producing ten created by Richard Arkwright that had a
times as much cotton yarn as had been made in 1770. capacity of several hundred spindles and
Hargreaves’s spinning jenny was simple, inexpensive, and could be hand- used water power; it therefore required a
larger and more specialized mill but the
operated by a single person. Arkwright’s water frame, however, quickly acquired thread it spun was thicker; generally the
a capacity of several hundred spindles and demanded much more power— thread was then spun on a spinning
waterpower. The water frame thus required large specialized mills, factories that jenny to achieve the desired thickness.
Woman Working a Hargreaves Spinning Jenny

The loose cotton strands on the slanted bobbins passed up to the sliding carriage and then on to the
spindles in back for fine spinning. The worker, almost always a woman, regulated the sliding carriage with
one hand, and with the other she turned the crank on the wheel to supply power. By 1783 one woman
could spin by hand a hundred threads at a time on an improved model. (Mary Evans Picture Library)
employed as many as one thousand workers from the very beginning. The water
frame could spin only coarse, strong thread, which was then put out for respinning
on hand-powered cottage jennies. Around 1790 an alternative technique invented
by Samuel Crompton also began to require more power than the human arm
could supply. After that time, all cotton spinning was gradually concentrated in
factories.
The first consequences of these revolutionary developments were generally
beneficial to Westerners. Millions of poor people, who had earlier worn nothing
underneath their coarse, filthy outer garments, could afford the comfort and clean-
liness of cotton slips and underpants as well as cotton dresses and shirts.
Families using cotton in cottage industry were freed from their constant search
for thread, which could now be spun in the cottage on the jenny or obtained from
a nearby factory. The wages of weavers rose markedly until about 1792. They were
known to walk proudly through the streets with 5-pound notes stuck in their hat-
bands, and they dressed like the middle class. As a result, large numbers of agricul-
tural laborers became hand-loom weavers, while mechanics and capitalists sought
to invent a power loom to save on labor costs. This Edmund Cartwright achieved
in 1785. But the power looms of the factories worked poorly at first, and hand-
loom weavers continued to receive good wages until at least 1800.
Most people preferred to work in their cottages rather than in early factories,
so factory owners often turned to children who had been abandoned by their
The Industrial Revolution in Britain 569
parents and put in the care of local parishes. Apprenticed as young as five or six
years of age, boy and girl workers were forced by law to labor for their “masters” for
as many as fourteen years. Housed, fed, and locked up nightly in factory dormito-
ries, the young workers received little or no pay. Hours were appalling—commonly
thirteen or fourteen hours a day, six days a week. Harsh physical punishment main-
tained discipline. To be sure, poor children typically worked long hours outside
the home for brutal masters, but this was exploitation on a truly unprecedented
scale. This exploitation ultimately sparked an increase in humanitarian attitudes
toward child laborers in the early nineteenth century.
In order to grow, the cotton textile industry needed a

The Steam Engine more expandable source of power than rivers and
Breakthrough streams. The iron industry was also stagnating because
of its dependence on processed wood (charcoal), which was in ever shorter supply
as forests were depleted. The shortage of energy had become particularly severe in
Britain by the eighteenth century. As this early energy crisis grew worse, Britain
looked toward its abundant and widely scattered reserves of coal as an alternative
to its vanishing wood. Coal was first used in Britain in the late Middle Ages as a
source of heat. By 1640 most homes in London were heated with it, and it also
provided heat for making beer, glass, soap, and other products. The breakthrough
came when industrialists began to use coal to produce mechanical energy and to
power machinery.
As more coal was produced, mines were dug deeper and deeper and were
constantly filling with water. Mechanical pumps, usually powered by animals
walking in circles at the surface, had to be installed. At one mine, fully five hun-
dred horses were used in pumping. Such power was expensive and bothersome. In
an attempt to overcome these disadvantages, Thomas Savery in 1698 and Thomas
Newcomen in 1705 invented the first primitive steam engines. Both engines were steam engines A breakthrough
extremely inefficient. Both burned coal to produce steam, which was then used to invention by Thomas Savery in 1698 and
Thomas Newcomen in 1705 that burned
operate a pump. However, by the early 1770s, many of the Savery engines and coal to produce steam, which was then
hundreds of the Newcomen engines were operating successfully, though ineffi- used to operate a pump; although
ciently, in English and Scottish mines. inefficient they were used successfully in
In 1763, a gifted young Scot named James Watt (1736–1819) was called on to English and Scottish mines.
repair a Newcomen engine. Watt saw that the Newcomen engine’s waste of energy
could be reduced by adding a separate condenser. This splendid invention, pat-
ented in 1769, greatly increased the efficiency of the steam engine.
To invent something in a laboratory is one thing; to make it a practical success
is quite another. Watt needed skilled workers, precision parts, and capital, and the
relatively advanced nature of the British economy proved essential. A partnership
with a wealthy English toymaker provided risk capital and a manufacturing plant.
In the craft tradition of locksmiths, tinsmiths, and millwrights, Watt found skilled
mechanics who could install, regulate, and repair his sophisticated engines. From
ingenious manufacturers such as the cannonmaker John Wilkinson, Watt was
gradually able to purchase precision parts. In more than twenty years of constant
effort, Watt made many further improvements. By the late 1780s, the steam en-
gine had become a practical and commercial success in Britain.
The steam engine of Watt and his followers was the Industrial Revolution’s
most fundamental advance in technology. For the first time in history, humanity
had, at least for a few generations, almost unlimited power at its disposal. For the
first time, inventors and engineers could devise and implement all kinds of power
The Saltash Bridge

Railroad construction presented innumerable challenges, such as the building of bridges to span rivers and gorges. Civil engineers responded with
impressive feats, and their profession bounded ahead. This painting portrays the inauguration of I. K. Brunel’s Saltash Bridge, where the railroad
crosses the Tamar River into Cornwall in southwest England. The high spans allow large ships to pass underneath. (Elton Collection, Ironbridge Gorge
Museum Trust)
equipment to aid people in their work. For the first time, abundance was at least a
possibility for ordinary men and women.
The steam engine was quickly put to use in several industries in Britain. It
drained mines and made possible the production of ever more coal to feed steam
engines elsewhere. The steam-power plant began to replace waterpower in the
cotton-spinning mills during the 1780s, contributing greatly to that industry’s phe-
nomenal rise. Steam took the place of waterpower in flour mills, in the malt mills
used in breweries, in the flint mills supplying the china industry, and in the sugar
mills of the West Indies colonies. It was put to use in the British iron industry,
which grew from producing 17,000 tons in 1740 to 3 million tons in 1844. Once
scarce and expensive, iron became the cheap, basic, indispensable building block
of the economy.
As industry grew, so did the need to transport large

The Coming of quantities of goods over long distances. Overland ship-
the Railroads ment of freight, relying solely on horsepower, was still
quite limited and frightfully expensive; shippers used rivers and canals for heavy
freight whenever possible. It was logical, therefore, that inventors would try to use
steam power for transportation.
The Industrial Revolution in Britain 571
As early as 1800, an American ran a “steamer on wheels” through city streets.

Other experiments followed. In the 1820s, English engineers created steam cars
capable of carrying fourteen passengers at ten miles an hour—as fast as the mail
coach. But the noisy, heavy steam automobiles frightened passing horses and dam-
aged themselves as well as the roads with their vibrations. For the rest of the cen-
tury, horses continued to reign on highways and city streets.
The coal industry had long been using plank roads and rails to move coal
wagons within mines and at the surface. Rails reduced friction and allowed a horse
or a human being to pull a heavier load. Thus once a rail capable of supporting
a heavy locomotive was developed in 1816, all sorts of experiments with steam
engines on rails went forward. In 1830 George Stephenson’s Rocket sped down Rocket The name given to George
the track of the just-completed Liverpool and Manchester Railway at sixteen miles Stephenson’s effective locomotive that
was first tested in 1830 on the Liverpool
per hour. This was the world’s first important railroad, fittingly steaming in the and Manchester Railway at 16 miles
heart of industrial England. The line from Liverpool to Manchester was a finan- per hour.
cial as well as a technical success, and many private companies were organized to
build more rail lines. Within twenty years, they had completed the main trunk
lines of Great Britain. Other countries were quick to follow.
The economic consequences of the railroad were tremendous. As the barrier
of high transportation costs was lowered, markets became larger and even nation-
wide. Larger markets encouraged larger factories with more sophisticated machin-
ery in a growing number of industries. Such factories could make goods more
cheaply and gradually subjected most cottage workers and many urban artisans to
severe competitive pressures.
In all countries, the construction of railroads required a large number of labor-
ers. Many landless farm laborers and poor peasants, long accustomed to leaving
their villages for temporary employment, went to build railroads. By the time the
work was finished, urban life seemed more appealing. By the time they sent for
their wives and sweethearts to join them, they had become urban workers.
The railroad, with trains reaching speeds of fifty miles per hour by 1850, gave
the entire society a new sense of power and speed. Painters such as Joseph M. W.
Turner (1775–1851), succeeded in expressing this sense of power and awe. So did
the massive new train stations, the cathedrals of the industrial age. Leading railway
engineers such as Isambard Kingdom Brunel (IZ-uhm-bahrd broo-NEL) and
Thomas Brassey, whose tunnels pierced mountains and whose bridges spanned
valleys, became public idols—the astronauts of their day. Everyday speech ab-
sorbed the images of railroading. After you got up a “full head of steam,” you
“highballed” along. And if you didn’t “go off the track,” you might “toot your own
whistle.” The railroad fired the imagination.
In 1851 London was the site of a famous industrial fair.

Industry and This Great Exhibition was held in the newly built
Population Crystal Palace, an architectural masterpiece made en- Crystal Palace The location of the
tirely of glass and iron, both of which were now cheap and abundant. For the Great Exposition in 1851 in London, an
architectural masterpiece made entirely
millions who visited, one fact stood out: the little island of Britain was the “work- of glass and iron, both of which were
shop of the world.” It alone produced two-thirds of the world’s coal and more than now cheap and abundant.
one-half of its iron and cotton cloth. More generally, it has been carefully esti-
mated that in 1860 Britain produced a truly remarkable 20 percent of the entire
world’s output of industrial goods, whereas it had produced only about 2 percent
of the world total in 1750.1 Experiencing revolutionary industrial change, Britain
became the first industrial nation (see Map 22.1).
MAP 22.1 The Industrial

Revolution in England, Towns with over 20,000
people are shown
ca. 1850
56°N
Industry concentrated in the rapidly 50 400
Thousand
2.4
Million
growing cities of the north and the Cities with over 100,000
people are labeled
Midlands, where rich coal and iron
Exposed coalfields
deposits were in close proximity.
Industrial areas
SCOTLAND Centers of woolen cloth

production, 18th century
Principal railroads
0 50 Km.
0 50 Mi.
54°N
Cotton and woolen textiles Bradford
Machinery, Iron No rth
Leeds
Manchester Sea
Irish
Liverpool
Sea Sheffield
Iron
Hardware
Norwich
WALES
Birmingham
Iron
Machinery
52°N Pottery
Iron
Sec tion Review N London

Bristol
• The causes of the Industrial Revolution Bath Machinery
included an expanding British econ- Consumer goods 2°E
omy, improved agricultural methods,

effective banking and credit markets,
stable government, a relatively free Exeter
market, and a mobile labor force. Tin and copper
nel
mining
• The invention of the spinning jenny Chan

and then the water frame revolution- En glish
50°N
ized the cotton textile industry, increas- 6°W 4°W 2°W 0°
ing wages for weavers, but requiring
large factories where owners appren-
ticed young children who worked long
hours under harsh conditions. At the same time that Britain’s gross national product (GNP) was skyrocketing,
• The invention of—and subsequent its population was exploding as well. Although the question is still debated, many
improvements to—the steam engine economic historians now believe that rapid population growth in Great Britain
was the catalyst to the industrial revolu-
tion, replacing water power in the was not harmful because it facilitated industrial expansion. More people meant a
production of coal, flour, malt, sugar, more mobile labor force, with a wealth of young workers in need of employment
flint, and, most importantly, iron. and ready to go where the jobs were.
• The steam engine was a financial and Contemporaries were much less optimistic. In his famous and influential Es-
technical success, lowering transporta- say on the Principle of Population (1798), Thomas Malthus (1766–1834) argued
tion costs, enlarging consumer markets that population would always tend to grow faster than the food supply. In Malthus’s
and factories, lowering prices, increas- opinion, the only hope of warding off such “positive checks” to population growth
ing employment, and expanding
urbanization. as war, famine, and disease was “prudential restraint.” That is, young men and
women had to limit the growth of population by the old tried-and-true means of
• At the same time that Britain’s industry
was booming, the population was grow- marrying late in life. While Malthus and his followers were proved wrong in the
ing rapidly as well, providing more long term, until the 1820s, or even the 1840s, contemporary observers might rea-
workers for the labor force. sonably have concluded that the economy and the total population were racing
neck and neck, with the outcome very much in doubt.
Industrialization in Continental Europe 573
Industrialization in Continental Europe

How after 1815 did continental countries respond to the challenge of
industrialization?
The new technologies developed in the British Industrial Revolution were

adopted by business in continental Europe to a considerable but variable degree
and at different rates of change. Continental Europe faced a number of challenges
in attempting to develop new industries, but all European states (as well as the
United States, Canada, and Japan) managed to raise per capita industrial levels in
the nineteenth century.
In 1750 all the countries of Europe were fairly close

The Challenge of together on a per capita level of industrialization—that
Industrialization is, according to how much industrial product was pro-
duced, on average, for each person in a year. But Britain had opened up a notice-
able lead over all continental countries by 1800, and that gap progressively widened
as the British Industrial Revolution accelerated to 1830 and reached full maturity
by 1860. The British level of per capita industrialization was twice the French
level in 1830, for example, and more than three times the French level in 1860.
All other large countries (except the United States) had fallen even farther behind
Britain than France had at both dates.
Posing the greatest obstacle to European expansion was the political and social
turmoil caused by the French Revolution and its aftermath. On the continent, the
upheavals that began with the French Revolution disrupted trade, created run-
away inflation, and fostered social anxiety. War severed normal communications
between Britain and the continent, severely handicapping continental efforts to
use new British machinery and technology. Moreover, the years from 1789 to
1815 were, even for those of the privileged French economic classes, who received
special favors from Napoleon after 1800, a time of “national catastrophe”—in the
graphic words of a famous French scholar.2 Thus France and the rest of Europe
were further behind Britain in 1815 than in 1789.
This widening gap made it more difficult, if not impossible, for other countries
to follow the British pattern in energy and industry after peace was restored in
1815. Above all, in the newly mechanized industries, British goods were being
produced very economically, and these goods had come to dominate world mar-
kets completely while the continental states were absorbed in war between 1792
and 1815. In addition, British technology had become so advanced and compli-
cated that very few engineers or skilled technicians outside England understood it.
Moreover, the technology of steam power had grown much more expensive. It
involved large investments in the iron and coal industries and, after 1830, required
the existence of railroads, which were very costly. Continental business people
had great difficulty finding the large sums of money the new methods demanded,
and there was a shortage of laborers accustomed to working in factories. All these
disadvantages slowed the spread of modern industry (see Map 22.2).
After 1815, however, when continental countries began to face up to the Brit-
ish challenge, they had at least three important advantages over non-Western
countries. First, most continental countries had a rich tradition of putting-out
enterprise, merchant capitalists, and skilled urban artisans. Second, continental
capitalists were able to “borrow” knowledgeable engineers and skilled factory
0 100 200 Km.

55°N Baltic Sea
D EN M AR K Railroads completed, ca. 1850
0 100 200 Mi.
Major exposed coal deposits
North Sea Emerging industrial areas
Kiel
Scattered ironworks
Hamburg
lb
E
NETHERLANDS e R.
Bremen Vis
tu Warsaw
EN GL A N D Amsterdam Berlin
la R
.
Cotton Ode r R Posen P O L AN D
RUHR Cotton
.
Roubaix Essen
Cotton Kassel Linen
Brussels Breslau
Cologne
50°N Liège GERMAN SI L
Lille ES
Dieppe CONFEDERATION IA Lemberg
Kraków
Rh
Le Havre BELGIUM Frankfurt Prague
in
R. Linen
e
Rouen
Cotton
RE
Paris
Wool
PI
Linen Da
Se
n ub Vienna
ine
eR
EM
Nantes Orléans Munich Linz .
L
R.
Mulhouse Wool N
o ir
e R.
Buda Pest
N
FRANCE I
A
Le Creusot Zurich R HUNGARY
Bay of ST
AU
Danub
SWITZERLAND
Biscay
Lyons
45°N
e R.
Bordeaux Trieste
KINGDOM Milan
Turin Silk CROATIA
Venice
R.
Grenoble OF Po R.
Ga
R h ô ne
on PARMA
r
ne SARDINIA BOSNIA
A
EN SERBIA
Avignon OD
R.
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M
Ad
Silk Florence ia
r
tic OT TO MAN
Livorno PAPAL
Marseilles TUSCANY Se EMPIRE
SPA I N Mediterranean
STATES a
0° 5°E Sea 10°E 15°E 20°E
Mapping the Past

Map 22.2 Continental Industrialization, ca. 1850
Although continental countries were beginning to make progress by 1850, they still lagged far behind Britain. For example, continental railroad
building was still in an early stage, whereas the British rail system was essentially complete (review Map 22.1, page 572). Coal played a critical role
in nineteenth-century industrialization both as a power source for steam engines and as a raw material for making iron and steel. [1] Locate the
major exposed (that is, known) coal deposits in 1850. Which countries and areas appear rich in coal resources, and which appear poor? Is there a
difference between northern and southern Europe? [2] What is the relationship between known coal deposits and emerging industrial areas?
workers from England, even though English laws tried to prevent the export of
talent and equipment. English entrepreneurs also set up their own factories in
Europe, some producing the machinery needed for other industries. Third, conti-
nental countries were independent of foreign control and could act in their own
tariff protection A government’s way self-interest to foster industry.
of supporting and aiding their own
economy by laying high taxes on the
cheaper, imported goods of another Continental governments played an important role in
country, as when France responded to Government Support helping business people develop new industries. These
cheaper British goods flooding their and Corporate
country by imposing high tariffs on governments fashioned economic policies to serve their
British imports. Banking own interests; tariff protection was one such policy.
Industrialization in Continental Europe 575
For example, after Napoleon’s wars ended in 1815, France was suddenly flooded
with cheaper and better British goods. The French government responded by lay-
ing high tariffs on many British imports in order to protect the French economy.
The governments of German states formed a customs union or Zollverein (TSOLL-
feh-rine), allowing goods to move between the German member states without
tariffs, while erecting a single uniform tariff against other nations. Without such
protections, the German writer Friedrich List (1789–1846) argued, Britain could
“make the rest of the world, like the Hindus, its serfs in all industrial and commer-
cial relations.”
After 1815 continental governments bore the cost of building roads and canals
to improve transportation. They also bore to a significant extent the cost of build-
ing railroads. Belgium led the way in the 1830s and 1840s. In an effort to tie the
newly independent nation together, the Belgian government decided to construct
a state-owned system that helped make the country an early industrial leader. Sev-
eral of the smaller German states also built state systems.
The Prussian government provided another kind of invaluable support for the
construction of a national rail system. It guaranteed that the state treasury would
pay the interest and principal on railroad bonds if the closely regulated private
companies in Prussia were unable to do so. Thus railroad investors in Prussia ran
little risk, and capital was quickly raised.
In France the state shouldered all the expense of acquiring and laying road-
bed, including bridges and tunnels. Finished roadbed was leased to a carefully
supervised private company, which usually benefited from a state guarantee of its
A German Ironworks, 1845

This big business enterprise, the Borsig ironworks in Berlin, mastered the new British method of smelting iron ore with coke. Germany,
and especially the state of Prussia, was well endowed with both iron and coal, and the rapid exploitation of these resources after 1840
transformed a poor agricultural country into an industrial powerhouse. (akg-images)
debts. In short, governments helped pay for railroads, the all-important leading
sector in continental industrialization.
Finally, banks, like governments, also played a larger and more creative role
on the continent than in Britain. Previously, banks in Europe had generally
avoided industrial investment as being too risky because the partners in these pri-
vate banks risked losing their entire personal fortunes if an investment failed. In
the 1830s, two important Belgian banks pioneered in a new direction. They re-
ceived permission from the growth-oriented government to establish themselves as
corporations enjoying limited liability. That is, a stockholder could lose only his or
her original investment in the bank’s common stock and could not be assessed for
any additional losses. Publicizing the risk-reducing advantage of limited liability,
these Belgian banks were able to attract many shareholders, large and small. They
mobilized impressive resources for investment in big companies, became indus-
trial banks, and successfully promoted industrial development.
Similar corporate banks became important in France and Germany in the
1850s and 1860s. Usually working in collaboration with governments, they estab-
lished and developed many railroads and many companies working in heavy in-
dustry, which were increasingly organized as limited liability corporations.
The combined efforts of skilled workers, entrepreneurs, governments, and in-
Sec tion Review dustrial banks meshed successfully between 1850 and the financial crash of 1873.
• The countries of Europe faced a great This was a period of unprecedented economic growth on the continent. In Belgium,
challenge to keep up with Britain’s Germany, and France, key indicators of modern industrial development—such as
industry and were hindered by disrup- railway mileage, iron and coal production, and steam-engine capacity—increased
tions caused by war and by the lack of at average annual rates of 5 to 10 percent. As a result, rail networks were completed
skilled engineers, railroads, funding,
and laborers accustomed to factory in western and much of central Europe, and the leading continental countries
work. mastered the industrial technologies that had first been developed in Great Brit-
• Continental governments paved the ain. In the early 1870s, Britain was still Europe’s most industrial nation, but a se-
way for industry in their own countries lect handful of countries were closing the gap that had been opened up by the
by imposing tariffs on foreign goods and Industrial Revolution.
by encouraging and financing railroad- Europe’s continent-wide increases stood in stark contrast to the large and tragic
building. decreases that occurred at the same time in many non-Western countries, most
• Banks mobilized funding for invest- notably in China and India. European countries industrialized to a greater or
ments by offering limited liability, lesser extent even as most of the non-Western world de-industrialized. Thus dif-
causing a rapid rise in economic growth
across Europe, the completion of rail ferential rates of wealth- and power-creating industrial development, which height-
networks, and the adaptation of new ened disparities within Europe, also greatly magnified existing inequalities between
industrial technologies. Europe and the rest of the world. We shall return to this momentous change in
world economic relationships in Chapter 26.
Relations Between Capital and Labor

How did the Industrial Revolution affect social classes, the standard of
living, and patterns of work? What measures were taken to improve the
conditions of workers?
Industrial development brought new social relations and intensified long-standing

problems between capital and labor in both urban workshops and cottage industry.
A new group of factory owners and industrial capitalists arose. These men and
women and their families strengthened the wealth and size of the middle class,
which had previously been made up mainly of merchants and professional people.
The nineteenth century became the golden age of the middle class. Modern in-
dustry also created a much larger group, the factory workers. For the first time, large
Relations Between Capital and Labor 577
numbers of men, women, and children came together under one roof to work with
complicated machinery for a single owner or a few partners in large companies.
The growth of new occupational groups in industry stimulated new thinking
about social relations. Often combined with reflections on the French Revolution,
this thinking led to the development of a new overarching interpretation—a new
paradigm—regarding social relationships (see Chapter 23). Briefly, this paradigm
argued, with considerable success, that individuals were members of economically
determined classes, which had conflicting interests. Accordingly, the comfortable,
well-educated “public” of the eighteenth century came increasingly to see itself as
the backbone of the middle class (or the middle classes), and the “people” gradu-
ally transformed themselves into the modern working class (or working classes).
And if the new class interpretation was more of a deceptive simplification than a
fundamental truth for some critics, it appealed to many because it seemed to ex-
plain what was happening. Therefore, conflicting classes existed, in part, because
many individuals came to believe they existed and they developed an appropriate
sense of class feeling—what Marxists call class-consciousness. class-consciousness A sense of class
differentiation that existed, in part,
because many individuals came to
believe that conflicting classes existed.
Early industrialists operated in a highly competitive
The New Class of economic system, and success and large profits were by
Factory Owners no means certain. Manufacturers waged a constant
battle to cut their production costs while also investing profits back into the busi-
ness for new and better machinery. “Dragged on by the frenzy of this terrible life,”
according to one of the dismayed critics, the struggling manufacturer had “no time
for niceties. He must conquer or die, make a fortune or drown himself.”3
Most early industrialists drew upon their families and friends for labor and cap-
ital, but they came from a variety of backgrounds. Many were from well-established
merchant families, which provided a rich network of contacts and support. Others
were of modest means, especially in the early days. Artisans and skilled workers of
exceptional ability had unparalleled opportunities. Members of ethnic and reli-
gious groups who had been discriminated against in the traditional occupations
controlled by the landed aristocracy jumped at the new chances and often helped
each other. Scots, Quakers, and other Protestant dissenters were tremendously
important in Britain; Protestants and Jews dominated banking in Catholic France.
Many of the industrialists were newly rich, and, not surprisingly, they were very
proud and self-satisfied.
As factories and firms grew larger, opportunities declined, at least in well-
developed industries. It became considerably harder for a gifted but poor young
mechanic to start a small enterprise and end up as a wealthy manufacturer. Formal
education (for males) became more important as a means of success and advance-
ment, and at the advanced level it was very expensive. In Britain by 1830 and in
France and Germany by 1860, leading industrialists were more likely to have in-
herited their well-established enterprises, and they were financially much more
secure than their struggling fathers and mothers had been. They also had a greater
sense of class-consciousness, fully aware that ongoing industrial development had
widened the gap between themselves and their workers.
The wives and daughters of successful businessmen also found fewer opportu-
nities for active participation in Europe’s increasingly complex business world.
Rather than contributing as vital partners in a family-owned enterprise, as so many
middle-class women such as Elizabeth Strutt had done (see the feature “Individu-
als in Society: The Strutt Family”), these women were increasingly valued for their
ladylike gentility. By 1850 some influential women writers and most businessmen
The Strutt Family
F or centuries economic life in Europe revolved around
hundreds of thousands of small family enterprises.
These family enterprises worked farms, crafted products,
which was nothing less than an informal partnership
between husband and wife.†
In 1757, for example, when Jedediah was fighting to
and traded goods. They built and operated the firms and uphold his patent in the local court, Elizabeth left her
factories of the early indus- son of nine months and journeyed to London to seek a
trial era, with the notable badly needed loan from her former employer. She also
exceptions of the capital- canvassed her London relatives and dissenter friends for
hungry railroads and a few orders for stockings and looked for sales agents and
big banks. Indeed, until late sources of capital. Elizabeth’s letters reveal a detailed
in the nineteenth cen- knowledge of ribbed stockings and the prices and qual-
tury, close-knit family groups ity of different kinds of thread. The family biographers
continued to control most conclude that her husband “owed much of his success
successful businesses, includ- to her energy and counsel.” Elizabeth was always “active
ing those organized as in the business—a partner in herself.”‡ Despite the in-
corporations. valuable business contribution of wives like Elizabeth,
One successful and fairly the legal rights and consequences of partnership were
well-documented family en- denied to married women in Britain and Europe in the
terprise began with the mar- eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
riage of Jedediah Strutt The Strutt enterprise grew and gradually prospered,
(1726–1797) and Elizabeth but it always retained its family character. The firm built
Woollat (1729–1774) in Der- a large silk mill and then went into cotton spinning in
Jedediah Strutt (ca. 1790), by Joseph
byshire in northern England partnership with Richard Arkwright, the inventor of the
Wright of Derby. (Derby Museum & Art in 1755. The son of a farmer, water frame (see page 567). The brothers of both Jede-
Gallery/The Bridgeman Art Library) Jedediah fell in love with diah and Elizabeth worked for the firm, and their eldest
Elizabeth when he lodged daughter worked long hours in the warehouse. Bearing
with her parents. Both young three sons, Elizabeth fulfilled yet another vital task be-
people grew up in the close-knit dissenting Protestant cause the typical family firm looked to its own members
community, which did not accept the doctrines of the for managers and continued success. All three sons en-
state-sponsored Church of England, and the well- tered the business and became cotton textile magnates.
educated Elizabeth worked in a local school for dis- Elizabeth never saw these triumphs. The loyal and tal-
senters and then for a dissenter minister in London. ented wife in the family partnership died suddenly at
Aided by Elizabeth, who was “obviously a very ca- age forty-five while in London with Jedediah on a busi-
pable woman” and who supplied some of the drive her ness trip.
husband had previously lacked, Jedediah embarked on
a new career.* He invented a machine to make hand-
some, neat-fitting ribbed silk stockings, which had previ-
ously been made by hand. He secured a patent, despite 1. How and why did the Strutts succeed?
strong opposition from competitors, and went into pro- 2. What does Elizabeth’s life tell us about the role of
duction. Elizabeth helped constantly in the enterprise, British women in the early Industrial Revolution?
* R. Fitton and A. Wadsworth, The Strutts and the Arkwrights, Employment in Early Nineteenth-Century England,” in
1758–1830: A Study of the Early Factory System (Manchester, P. Hudson and W. Lee, eds., Women’s Work and the Family
England: Manchester University Press, 1958), p. 23. Economy in Historical Perspective (Manchester, England:
† See the excellent discussion by C. Hall, “Strains in the ‘Firm Manchester University Press, 1990), pp. 106–132.
of Wife, Children and Friends’? Middle-Class Women and ‡ Fitton and Wadsworth, The Strutts, pp. 110–111.
578
assumed that middle-class wives and daughters should steer clear of undignified
work in offices and factories. Rather, a middle-class lady should protect and en-
hance her femininity. She should concentrate on her proper role as wife and
mother, preferably in an elegant residential area far removed from ruthless com-
merce and the volatile working class.
The social consequences of the Industrial Revolution

The New have long been hotly debated. The condition of British
Factory Workers workers during the transformation has always gener-
ated the most controversy among historians because
Britain was the first country to industrialize and because the social consequences
seemed harshest there. Before 1850 other countries had not proceeded very far
with industrialization, and almost everyone agrees that the economic conditions of
European workers improved after 1850. Thus the experience of British workers to
about 1850 deserves special attention. (Industrial growth also promoted rapid ur-
banization, with its own awesome problems, as will be shown in Chapter 24.)
From the beginning, the Industrial Revolution in Britain had its critics. Among
the first were the romantic poets. William Blake (1757–1827) called the early
factories “satanic mills” and protested against the hard life of the London poor.
William Wordsworth (1770–1850) lamented the destruction of the rural way of
life and the pollution of the land and water. Some handicraft workers—notably
the Luddites (LUD-eytes), who attacked whole factories in northern England in Luddites Handicraft workers who
1812 and after—smashed the new machines, which they believed were putting attacked whole factories in northern
England in 1812 and after, smashing
them out of work. Doctors and reformers wrote eloquently of problems in the the new machines that they believed
factories and new towns. were putting them out of work.
Was the new poverty of industrial workers worse than the old poverty of cottage
workers and agricultural laborers? Friedrich Engels (ENG-guhlz) (1820–1895),
the future revolutionary and colleague of Karl Marx, charged that it was. After
studying conditions in northern England, this young middle-class German issued
a blistering indictment of the middle classes in The Condition of the Working Class
in England. “At the bar of world opinion,” he wrote, “I charge the English middle
classes with mass murder, wholesale robbery, and all the other crimes in the cal-
endar.” Engels’s extremely influential charge of middle-class exploitation and in-
creasing worker poverty was embellished by Marx and later socialists.
Meanwhile, other observers believed that conditions were improving for the
working people. Andrew Ure (yoo-RAY) wrote in 1835 in his study of the cotton
industry that conditions in most factories were not harsh and were even quite
good. Edwin Chadwick, a conscientious government official well acquainted with
the problems of the working population, concluded that the “whole mass of the
laboring community” was increasingly able “to buy more of the necessities and
minor luxuries of life.”4 Nevertheless, if all the contemporary assessments had
been counted up, those who thought conditions were getting worse for working
people would probably have been the majority.
In an attempt to go beyond the contradictory judgments of contemporaries,
some historians have looked at different kinds of sources. The most recent studies
also confirm the view that the early years of the Industrial Revolution were hard
ones for British workers. There was little or no increase in the purchasing power of
the average British worker from about 1780 to about 1820. The years from 1792 to
1815, a period of almost constant warfare with France, were particularly difficult.
Food prices rose faster than wages, and the living conditions of the laboring poor
declined. Only after 1820, and especially after 1840, did real wages rise substantially,
so that the average worker earned and consumed roughly 50 percent more in real
terms in 1850 than in 1770.5 In short, there was considerable economic improve-
ment for workers throughout Great Britain by 1850, but that improvement was
hard won and slow in coming.
This important conclusion must be qualified, however. The hours in the
average workweek increased, as some economic historians now believe it had
been increasing in parts of northern Europe since the seventeenth century. Thus,
to a large extent, workers earned more simply because they worked more. Indeed,
significant recent research shows that in England nonagricultural workers labored
about 250 days per year in 1760 as opposed to 300 days per year in 1830, while
the normal workday remained an exhausting eleven hours throughout the entire
period.6
Another way to consider the workers’ standard of living is to look at the goods
that they purchased. Again the evidence is somewhat contradictory. Speaking gen-
erally, workers ate somewhat more food of higher nutritional quality as the Indus-
trial Revolution progressed, except during wartime. Diets became more varied;
people ate more potatoes, dairy products, fruits, and vegetables. Clothing im-
proved, but housing for working people probably deteriorated somewhat. In short,
per capita use of specific goods supports the position that the standard of living of
the working classes rose, at least moderately, after the long wars with France.
What about working conditions? Did workers eventu-

Conditions of Work ally earn more only at the cost of working longer and
harder? Were workers exploited harshly by the new
factory owners?
The first factories were cotton mills, which began functioning along rivers and
streams in the 1770s. Cottage workers, accustomed to the putting-out system, were
reluctant to work in the new factories even when they received relatively good
wages because factory work was unappealing. In the factory, workers had to keep
up with the machine and follow its tempo. They had to show up every day and
work long, monotonous hours. Factory workers had to adjust their daily lives to the
shrill call of the factory whistle.
Cottage workers were not used to that kind of schedule. All members of the
family worked hard and long, but in spurts, setting their own pace. They could
interrupt their work when they wanted to. Women and children could break up
their long hours of spinning with other tasks. On Saturday afternoon the head of
the family delivered the week’s work to the merchant manufacturer and got paid.
Saturday night was a time of relaxation and drinking, especially for the men. Re-
covering from his hangover on Tuesday, the weaver bent to his task on Wednesday
and then worked frantically to meet his deadline on Saturday. Like some students
today, he might “pull an all-nighter” on Thursday or Friday in order to get his
work finished.
Also, early factories resembled English poorhouses, where totally destitute
people went to live at public expense. Some poorhouses were industrial prisons,
where the inmates had to work in order to receive their food and lodging. The
similarity between large brick factories and large stone poorhouses increased the
cottage workers’ aversion to factories.
By 1790 the factory system was gaining greater acceptance. Many more facto-
ries were being built, mainly in urban areas, where they could use steam power
rather than waterpower and attract a workforce more easily than in the country-
side. The need for workers was great, especially when the practice of using aban-
doned and orphaned children was outlawed by Parliament in 1802. Indeed, people
came from near and far to work in the cities, both as factory workers and as laborers,
builders, and domestic servants. Yet as they took these new jobs, working people
did not simply give in to a system of labor that had formerly repelled them. Rather,
they helped modify the system by carrying over old, familiar working traditions.
For one thing, they often came to the mills and the mines as family units. This
was how they had worked on farms and in the putting-out system. The mill or
mine owner bargained with the head of the family and paid him or her for the
work of the whole family. In the cotton mills, children worked for their mothers or
fathers, collecting scraps and “piecing” broken threads together. In the mines,
children sorted coal and worked the ventilation equipment. Their mothers hauled
coal in the tunnels below the surface, while their fathers hewed with pick and
shovel at the face of the seam.
The preservation of the family as an economic unit in the factories from the
1790s on made the new surroundings more tolerable, and parents felt that their
children were still under their control when they worked side by side. Adult work-
ers were not particularly interested in limiting the minimum working age or hours
of their children as long as family members worked together. Only when technical
changes threatened to place control and discipline in the hands of impersonal
managers and overseers did adult workers protest against inhuman conditions in
the name of their children.
Some enlightened employers and social reformers in Parliament worked to
change this practice, arguing that more humane standards were necessary. For
example, Robert Owen (1771–1858), a very successful manufacturer in Scotland,
testified in 1816 before an investigating committee on the basis of his experience.
He stated that “very strong facts” demonstrated that employing children under ten
years of age as factory workers was “injurious to the children, and not beneficial to
the proprietors.”7 Workers also provided graphic testimony at such hearings as the
reformers pressed Parliament to pass corrective laws. They scored some important
successes.
Their most significant early accomplishment was the Factory Act of 1833. It Factory Act of 1833 This act limited
limited the factory workday for children between nine and thirteen to eight hours the factory workday for children between
nine and thirteen to eight hours and that
and that of adolescents between fourteen and eighteen to twelve hours, although of adolescents between fourteen and eigh-
the act made no effort to regulate the hours of work for children at home or in teen to twelve hours.
small businesses. Children under nine were to be enrolled in the elementary
schools that factory owners were required to establish. The employment of chil-
dren declined rapidly. Thus the Factory Act broke the pattern of whole families
working together in the factory because efficiency required standardized shifts for
all workers.
Ties of blood and kinship were important in other ways in Great Britain in the
formative years between about 1790 and 1840. Many manufacturers and builders
hired subcontractors, who in turn hired the work crews. The subcontractor might
be as harsh as the greediest capitalist, but the relationship between subcontractor
and work crew was close and personal because many of his hires were friends and
relatives. This kind of personal relationship had traditionally existed in cottage
industry and in urban crafts, and it was more acceptable to many workers than
impersonal factory discipline.
Ties of kinship were particularly important for newcomers, who often traveled
great distances to find work. Many urban workers in Great Britain were from Ire-
land. Forced out of rural Ireland by population growth and deteriorating economic
conditions from 1817 on, Irish in search of jobs could not be choosy; they took
what they could get. As early as 1824, most of the workers in the Glasgow cotton
mills were Irish; in 1851 one-sixth of the population of Liverpool was Irish. Like
many other immigrant groups held together by ethnic and religious ties, the Irish
worked together, formed their own neighborhoods, and not only survived but also
thrived.
The era of the Industrial Revolution witnessed major

Changes in the changes in the gender division of labor. In preindustrial
Division of Labor Europe most people generally worked in family units.
by Gender By tradition, certain jobs were defined by gender—
women and girls for milking and spinning, men and boys for plowing and
weaving—but many tasks might go to either sex. Family employment carried over
into early factories and subcontracting, but it collapsed as child labor was restricted
and new attitudes emerged. A different sexual division of labor gradually arose to
take its place. The man emerged as the family’s primary wage earner, while the
woman found only limited job opportunities. Generally denied good jobs at good
wages in the growing urban economy, women were expected to concentrate on
unpaid housework, child care, and craftwork at home.
separate spheres A rigid gender
division of labor with the wife as mother This new pattern of separate spheres had several aspects. First, all studies agree
and homemaker and the husband as that married women from the working classes were much less likely to work full-
wage earner. time for wages outside the house after the first child arrived, although they often
Workers at a Large Cotton Mill

This 1833 engraving shows adult women operating power looms under the supervision of a male foreman, and it accurately reflects both the
decline of family employment and the emergence of a gender-based division of labor in many English factories. The jungle of belts and
shafts connecting the noisy looms to the giant steam engine on the ground floor created a constant din. (Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)
earned small amounts doing putting-out handicrafts at home and taking in board-
ers. Second, when married women did work for wages outside the house, they
usually came from the poorest families, where the husbands were poorly paid,
sick, unemployed, or missing. Third, these poor married (or widowed) women
were joined by legions of young unmarried women, who worked full-time but only
in certain jobs. Fourth, all women were generally confined to low-paying, dead-
end jobs. Virtually no occupation open to women paid a wage sufficient for a
person to live independently. Men predominated in the better-paying, more prom-
ising employments. Evolving gradually, but largely in place by 1850, the new
sexual division of labor in Britain constituted a major development in the history
of women and of the family.
If the reorganization of paid work along gender lines is widely recognized,
there is no agreement on its causes. One school of scholars sees little connection
with industrialization and finds the answer in the deeply ingrained sexist attitudes
of a “patriarchal tradition,” which predated the economic transformation. These
scholars stress the role of male-dominated craft unions in denying working women
access to good jobs and relegating them to unpaid housework. Other scholars,
stressing that the gender roles of women and men can vary enormously with time
and culture, look more to a combination of economic and biological factors in
order to explain the emergence of a sex-segregated division of labor.
Three ideas stand out in this more recent interpretation. First, relentless fac-
tory discipline conflicted with child care in a way that labor on the farm or in the
cottage had not. A woman operating earsplitting spinning machinery could mind
a child of seven or eight working beside her (until such work was outlawed), but
she could no longer pace herself through pregnancy or breast-feed her baby on the
job. One mother of four, in describing her past experience of working in the
mines, provided a real insight into why many women accepted the emerging gen-
der division of labor:
While working in the pit I was worth to my [miner] husband seven shillings a
week, out of which we had to pay 2½ shillings to a woman for looking after the
younger children. I used to take them to her house at 4 o’clock in the morning, out
of their own beds, to put them into hers. Then there was one shilling a week for
washing; besides, there was mending to pay for, and other things. The house was
not guided. The other children broke things; they did not go to school when they
were sent; they would be playing about, and get ill-used by other children, and
their clothes torn. Then when I came home in the evening, everything was to do
after the day’s labor, and I was so tired I had no heart for it; no fire lit, nothing
cooked, no water fetched, the house dirty, and nothing comfortable for my hus-
band. It is all far better now, and I wouldn’t go down again.8
Second, running a household in conditions of primitive urban poverty was an
extremely demanding job in its own right. There were no supermarkets or public
transportation. Everything had to be done on foot, with children in tow. Yet an-
other brutal job outside the house—a “second shift”—had limited appeal for the
average married woman. Thus women might well have accepted the emerging
division of labor as the best available strategy for family survival in the industrial-
izing society.9
Third, why were the women who did work for wages outside the home con-
fined to certain “women’s jobs”? No doubt the desire of males to monopolize the
best opportunities and hold women down provides part of the answer. Yet as some
feminist scholars have argued, sex-segregated employment was also a collective
response to the new industrial system, where young people mingled without pa-
rental supervision. Continuing to mix after work, they were “more likely to form
liaisons, initiate courtships, and respond to advances.”10 Such intimacy also led to
more unplanned pregnancies and fueled the illegitimacy explosion that had be-
gun in the late eighteenth century and that gathered force until at least 1850 (see
pages 514–515). Thus segregation of jobs by gender was partly an effort by older
Mines Act of 1842 This act prohibited people to help control the sexuality of working-class youths. The Mines Act of
underground work for all women as well 1842, for example, prohibited underground work for all women as well as for boys
as for boys under ten.
under ten.
Many kinds of employment changed slowly during

The Early Labor and after the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain. In
Movement in Britain 1850 more British people still worked on farms than in
any other occupation. The second-largest occupation was domestic service, with
more than one million household servants, 90 percent of whom were women.
Thus many old, familiar jobs outside industry lived on and provided alternatives
for individual workers. This helped ease the transition to industrial civilization.
Within industry itself, the pattern of artisans working with hand tools in small
shops remained unchanged in many trades, even as some others were revolutionized
by technological change. For example, as in the case of cotton and coal, the British
iron industry was completely dominated by large-scale capitalist firms by 1850. Many
Combination Acts Passed in 1799,
these acts outlawed unions and strikes. large ironworks had more than one thousand people on their payrolls. Yet the firms
They were repealed by Parliament that fashioned iron into small metal goods, such as tools, tableware, and toys, em-
in 1824. ployed on average fewer than ten wage workers, who used time-honored handicraft
skills. Only gradually after 1850 did some owners find ways to
reorganize some handicraft industries with new machines
and new patterns of work. The survival of small workshops
gave many workers an alternative to factory employment.
Working-class solidarity and class-consciousness devel-
oped in small workshops as well as in large factories. In the
northern factory districts, where thousands of “hired hands”
looked across at a tiny minority of managers and owners, anti-
capitalist sentiments were frequent by the 1820s. Comment-
ing in 1825 on a strike in the woolen center of Bradford and
the support it had gathered from other regions, one paper
claimed with pride that “it is all the workers of England
against a few masters of Bradford.”11 Modern technology had
created a few versus a many.
As in France during the French Revolution, the British
government attacked monopolies, guilds, and workers combi-
nations in the name of economic freedom, adding to the ill
will between classes. In 1799 Parliament passed the Combi-
nation Acts, which outlawed unions and strikes. In 1813 and
1814, Parliament repealed an old law regulating the wages of
artisans and the conditions of apprenticeship. As a result of
Celebrating Skilled Labor

This handsome engraving embellished the membership certificate of the
British carpenters union, one of the leading “new model unions” that
represented skilled workers effectively after 1850. The upper panel shows
carpenters building the scaffolding for a great arch; the lower panel
captures the spirit of a busy workshop. (E & E Image Library/Art Resource, NY)
Chapter Review 585
these and other measures, certain skilled artisan workers, such as bootmakers
and high-quality tailors, found aggressive capitalists ignoring traditional work rules
and flooding their trades with unorganized women workers and children to beat Grand National Consolidated Trades
Union Organized by Robert Owen in
down wages. 1834, this was one of the largest and
The liberal capitalist attack on artisan guilds and work rules was bitterly re- most visionary early national unions.
sented by many craftworkers, who subsequently played an important part in
gradually building a modern labor movement to improve working condi-
tions and to serve worker needs. The Combination Acts were widely disre- Sec tion Review
garded by workers. Printers, papermakers, carpenters, tailors, and other • Early industrialists worked hard to establish
such craftsmen continued to take collective action, and societies of skilled their factories, but the next generation inher-
factory workers also organized unions. They were not afraid to strike; there ited already prosperous businesses so they
was, for example, a general strike of adult cotton spinners in Manchester in had a new class-consciousness, prizing their
wealth and role in society.
1810. In the face of widespread union activity, Parliament repealed the
Combination Acts in 1824, and unions were tolerated, though not fully ac- • Conditions for factory workers improved
over time but were harsh, with long hours
cepted, after 1825. and low wages; although clothing and diets
The next stage in the development of the British trade-union movement improved, housing conditions did not.
was the attempt to create a single large national union. This effort was led • Critics of the harsh new conditions included
not so much by working people as by social reformers such as Robert Owen, William Blake and Friedrich Engels, while
a self-made cotton manufacturer. In 1834 Owen organized one of the largest apologists such as Andrew Ure depicted
and most visionary of the early national unions, the Grand National Con- conditions in optimistic terms.
solidated Trades Union. When this and other grandiose schemes collapsed, • Factories often employed whole families
the British labor movement moved once again after 1851 in the direction of until the Factory Act of 1833 limited the
craft unions. The most famous of these “new model unions” was the Amal- number of hours children and adolescents
could work and required children under age
gamated Society of Engineers, which represented skilled machinists. These nine to attend school.
unions won real benefits for members and became an accepted part of the
• The division of labor between men and
industrial scene. women emerged, with men the primary
British workers also engaged in direct political activity in defense of wage earners while married women were
their own interests. After the collapse of Owen’s national trade union, many confined to the home and unmarried
working people went into the Chartist movement, which sought political women to low-paying jobs.
democracy. The key Chartist demand—that all men be given the right to • Farmers, domestic service, and small artisans
vote—became the great hope of millions. Workers were also active in cam- coexisted with industry and formed the
paigns to limit the workday in factories to ten hours and to permit duty-free working class, organizing unions and taking
collective action against capitalists to im-
importation of wheat into Great Britain to secure cheap bread. Thus work- prove working conditions, wages, and demo-
ing people developed a sense of their own identity and played an active role cratic political rights, such as in the Chartist
in shaping the new industrial system. They were neither helpless victims nor movement.
passive beneficiaries.
Chapter Review
What were the origins of the Industrial Revolution in Britain, and how did it
develop between 1780 and 1850? (page 566) Key Terms
Western society’s industrial breakthrough grew out of a long process of economic and Industrial Revolution (p. 567)
social change in which the rise of capitalism, overseas expansion, and the growth of spinning jenny (p. 567)
rural industry stood out as critical preparatory developments. Eventually taking the water frame (p. 567)
lead in all of these developments, and also profiting from stable government, abundant
natural resources, and a flexible labor force, Britain experienced between the 1780s steam engines (p. 569)
and the 1850s an epoch-making transformation, one that is still aptly termed the Indus- (continued)
trial Revolution.
How after 1815 did continental countries respond to the challenge of industrial-
Rocket (p. 571)
ization? (page 573)
Crystal Palace (p. 571)
Building on technical breakthroughs, power-driven equipment, and large-scale en- tariff protection (p. 574)
terprise, the Industrial Revolution in England greatly increased output in certain radi-
cally altered industries, stimulated the large handicraft and commercial sectors, and class-consciousness (p. 577)
speeded up overall economic growth. By 1850 the level of British per capita industrial Luddites (p. 579)
production was surpassing continental levels by a growing margin, and Britain savored Factory Act of 1833 (p. 581)
a near monopoly in world markets for mass-produced goods.
separate spheres (p. 582)
Continental countries inevitably took rather different paths to the urban industrial
society. They relied more on handicraft production in both towns and villages. Only in Mines Act of 1842 (p. 584)
the 1840s did railroad construction begin to create the strong demand for iron, coal, Combination Acts (p. 584)
and railway equipment that speeded up the process of industrialization in the 1850s Grand National Consolidated Trades
and 1860s. Union (p. 585)
How did the Industrial Revolution affect social classes, the standard of living,
and patterns of work? What measures were taken to improve the conditions of
workers? (page 576)
The rise of modern industry had a profound impact on people and their lives. In the
early stages, Britain again led the way, experiencing in a striking manner the long-term
social changes accompanying the economic transformation. Factory discipline and
Britain’s stern capitalist economy weighed heavily on working people, who, however,
actively fashioned their destinies and refused to be passive victims. Improvements in
the standard of living came slowly, but they were substantial by 1850. The era of indus-
trialization fostered new attitudes toward child labor, encouraged protective factory
legislation, and called forth a new sense of class feeling and an assertive labor move-
ment. It also promoted a more rigid division of roles and responsibilities within the
family that was detrimental to women, another gradual but profound change of revo-
lutionary proportions.
Notes
1. P. Bairoch, “International Industrialization Levels from 1750 to 1980,” Journal of European
Economic History 11 (Spring 1982): 269–333.
2. M. Lévy-Leboyer, Les banques européennes et l’industrialisation dans la première moitié du
XIXe siècle (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1964), p. 29.
3. J. Michelet, The People, trans. with an introduction by J. P. McKay (Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 1973; original publication, 1846), p. 64.
4. Quoted in W. A. Hayek, ed., Capitalism and the Historians (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1954), p. 126.
5. N. Crafts, British Economic Growth During the Industrial Revolution (Oxford University
Press, 1985), p. 95.
6. H-J. Voth, Time and Work in England, 1750–1830 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000),
pp. 268–270; also pp. 118–133.
7. Quoted in E. R. Pike, “Hard Times”: Human Documents of the Industrial Revolution (New
York: Praeger, 1966), p. 109.
8. Ibid., “Hard Times,” p. 208.
9. See especially J. Brenner and M. Rama, “Rethinking Women’s Oppression,” New Left Re-
view 144 (March–April 1984): 33–71, and sources cited there.
10. J. Humphries, “. . . ‘The Most Free from Objection’ . . . : The Sexual Division of Labor and
Women’s Work in Nineteenth-Century England,” Journal of Economic History 47 (Decem-
ber 1987): 948.
11. Quoted in D. Geary, ed., Labour and Socialist Movements in Europe Before 1914 (Oxford:
Berg, 1989), p. 29.

Testimony Concerning Young Mine Workers
branches of the Sheffield trade, but upon the whole
superior; the morals of this district are materially
T he use of child labor in British industrialization quickly
attracted the attention of humanitarians and social
reformers. This interest led to investigations by parliamentary
improving; Mr. Bruce, the clergyman, has been
zealous and active in endeavoring to ameliorate
commissions, which resulted in laws limiting the hours and their moral and religious education. . . .
the ages of children working in large factories. Designed to
build a case for remedial legislation, parliamentary inquiries Patience Kershaw, hurrier, aged 17:
gave large numbers of workers a rare chance to speak directly My father has been dead about a year; my
to contemporaries and to historians. mother is living and has ten children, five lads and
The moving passages that follow are taken from testimony five lasses; the oldest is about thirty, the youngest
gathered in 1841 and 1842 by the Ashley Mines Commission. is four; three lasses go to mill; all the lads are col-
Interviewing employers and many male and female workers, liers, two getters and three hurriers [workers who
the commissioners focused on the physical condition of the move coal wagons underground]; one lives at home
youth and on the sexual behavior of workers far underground. and does nothing; mother does nought but look
The subsequent Mines Act of 1842 sought to reduce immoral after home.
behavior and sexual bullying by prohibiting underground All my sisters have been hurriers, but three went
work for all women (and for boys younger than ten). to the mill. Alice went because her legs swelled
from hurrying in cold water when she was hot. I
never went to day-school; I go to Sunday-school,
Mr. Payne, coal master: but I cannot read or write; I go to pit at five o’clock
That children are employed generally at nine in the morning and come out at five in the evening;
years old in the coal pits and sometimes at eight. In I get my breakfast of porridge and milk first; I take
fact, the smaller the vein of coal is in height, the my dinner with me, a cake, and eat it as I go; I do
younger and smaller are the children required; the not stop or rest any time for the purpose; I get noth-
work occupies from six to seven hours per day ing else until I get home, and then have potatoes
in the pits; they are not ill-used or worked beyond and meat, not every day meat. I hurry in the clothes
their strength; a good deal of depravity exists but I have now got on, trousers and ragged jacket; the
they are certainly not worse in morals than in other bald place upon my head is made by thrusting the
This illustration of a girl dragging a coal wagon was one of several that shocked public opinion and contributed to the
Mines Act of 1842. (The British Library)
587
corves [coal wagons]; my legs have never swelled, Questions for Analysis
but sisters’ did when they went to mill; I hurry the 1. To what extent is the testimony of Patience
corves a mile and more under ground and back; Kershaw in harmony with that of Payne?
they weigh 300; I hurry 11 a day; I wear a belt and 2. Describe Kershaw’s work. What do you think of
chain at the workings to get the corves out; the put- her work? Why?
ters [miners] that I work for are naked except their 3. The witnesses were responding to questions
caps; they pull off all their clothes; I see them at from middle-class commissioners. What did the
work when I go up; sometimes they beat me, if I am commissioners seem interested in? Why?
not quick enough, with their hands; they strike me
upon my back; the boys take liberties with me,
sometimes, they pull me about; I am the only girl
in the pit; there are about 20 boys and 15 men; all
Source: From Voices of the Industrial Revolution, edited
the men are naked; I would rather work in mill by J. Bowditch and C. Ramsland. Copyright © 1961. Re-
than in coal-pit. printed by permission of University of Michigan Press.
588
CHAPTER 23
Ideologies and
Upheavals
1815–1850
Chapter Preview
The Peace Settlement
How did the victorious allies fashion a
general peace settlement, and how did
Metternich uphold a conservative
European order?
Radical Ideas and Early Socialism

What were the basic tenets of
liberalism, nationalism, and socialism,
and what groups were most attracted
to these ideologies?
The Romantic Movement

What were the characteristics of the
romantic movement, and who were
some of the great romantic artists?
Reforms and Revolutions

How after 1815 did liberal, national, and
socialist forces challenge conservatism
in Greece, Great Britain, and France?
Revolutionaries in Transylvania. Ana Ipatescu, of the first group of
revolutionaries in Transylvania against Russia, 1848. (National Historical The Revolutions of 1848
Museum, Bucharest/The Art Archive) Why in 1848 did revolution triumph
briefly throughout most of Europe, and
why did it fail almost completely?
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY: Jules Michelet
LISTENING TO THE PAST: Speaking for the Czech

Nation
589
590 Chapter 23 Ideologies and Upheavals, 1815–1850
T he momentous economic and political transformation of modern times

began in the late eighteenth century with the Industrial Revolution in Eng-
land and then the French Revolution. Until about 1815, these economic and po-
litical revolutions were separate, involving different countries and activities and
proceeding at very different paces. After peace returned in 1815, the situation
changed. Economic and political changes tended to fuse, reinforcing each other
dual revolution A term that historian and bringing about what historian Eric Hobsbawm has incisively called the dual
Eric Hobsbawn used for the economic revolution. For instance, the growth of the industrial middle class encouraged the
and political changes that tended to fuse
after 1815, reinforcing each other.
drive for representative government, and the demands of the French sans-culottes
in 1793 and 1794 inspired many socialist thinkers. Gathering strength, the dual
revolution rushed on to alter completely first Europe and then the rest of the
world. Much of world history in the past two centuries can be seen as the progres-
sive unfolding of the dual revolution.
The dual revolution posed a tremendous intellectual challenge. The mean-
ings of the economic, political, and social changes that were occurring, as well as
the ways they would be shaped by human action, were anything but clear. These
changes fascinated observers and stimulated the growth of new ideas and powerful
ideologies. The most important of these ideological forces were revitalized conser-
vatism and three ideologies of change—liberalism, nationalism, and socialism. All
played critical roles in the political and social battles of the era and the great popu-
lar upheaval that eventually swept across Europe in the revolutions of 1848.

How did the victorious allies fashion a general peace settlement, and how
did Metternich uphold a conservative European order?
The eventual triumph of revolutionary economic and political forces was by no

means certain as the Napoleonic era ended. Quite the contrary. The conservative,
aristocratic monarchies of Russia, Prussia, Austria, and Great Britain—the Qua-
druple Alliance—had finally defeated France and reaffirmed their determination
to hold France in line. But many other international questions were outstanding,
Congress of Vienna A meeting of and the allies agreed to meet at the Congress of Vienna to fashion a general peace
Russia, Prussia, Austria, and Great settlement.
Britain to fashion a peace settlement
after defeating France.
Most people felt a profound longing for peace. The great challenge for politi-
cal leaders in 1814 was to construct a settlement that would last and not sow the
seeds of another war. Their efforts were largely successful and contributed to a
century unmarred by destructive, generalized war (see Map 23.1).
The allied powers were concerned first and foremost

The European with the defeated enemy, France. Agreeing to the res-
Balance of Power toration of the Bourbon dynasty (see page 560), the al-
lies were quite lenient toward France after Napoleon’s abdication. The first Peace
of Paris gave to France the boundaries it possessed in 1792, which were larger than
those of 1789, and France did not have to pay any war reparations. Thus the vic-
torious powers did not foment a spirit of injustice and revenge in the defeated
country.
When the four allies of the Quadruple Alliance (plus a representative of the
restored monarchy in France) met together at the Congress of Vienna, they also
Chronology
agreed to raise a number of formidable barriers against re- 1790s–1840s Romantic movement in literature and
newed French aggression. Above all, Prussia received consid- the arts
erably more territory on France’s eastern border so as to stand
1809–1848 Metternich serves as Austrian foreign
as the “sentinel on the Rhine” against France. In these ways,
minister
the Quadruple Alliance combined leniency toward France
with strong defensive measures. 1810 Staël, On Germany
In their moderation toward France, the allies were moti- 1815 Holy Alliance formed; revision of Corn
vated by self-interest and traditional ideas about the balance Laws in Britain
of power. To Klemens von Metternich (MET-uhr-nik) and 1819 Carlsbad Decrees issued by German
Robert Castlereagh (KAS-uhl-rey), the foreign ministers of Confederation
Austria and Great Britain, respectively, as well as their French
1830 Greece wins independence from Turks
counterpart, Charles Talleyrand, the balance of power meant
an international equilibrium that would discourage aggres- 1830–1848 Reign of Louis Philippe in France
sion by any combination of states or, worse, the domination 1832 Reform Bill in Britain
of Europe by any single state. 1839 Blanc, Organization of Work
The Great Powers—Austria, Britain, Prussia, Russia, and
France—used the balance of power to settle their own dan- 1845–1851 Great Famine in Ireland
gerous disputes at the Congress of Vienna. There was general 1847 Ten Hours Act in Britain
agreement among the victors that each of them should re- 1848 Revolutions in France, Austria, and
ceive compensation in the form of territory for their success- Prussia; Marx and Engels, The
ful struggle against the French. Great Britain had already Communist Manifesto
won colonies and strategic outposts during the long wars.
Metternich’s Austria gave up territories in Belgium and
Adjusting the Balance

The Englishman on the left uses his money to counterbalance the people that the Prussian and the fat Metternich are gaining in
Saxony and Italy. Alexander I sits happily on his prize, Poland. This cartoon captures the essence of how most people thought
about balance-of-power diplomacy at the Congress of Vienna. (Bibliothèque nationale de France)
Kingdom of Prussia
Austrian Empire
Boundary of German Confederation
FINLAND
KINGDOM OF
SWEDEN AND
NORWAY
Oslo
60˚N
St. Petersburg
SCOTLAND
Stockholm
North
UNITED KINGDOM
OF GREAT BRITAIN Sea Riga
Moscow
AND IRELAND DENMARK
Dublin
Copenhagen
IRELAND Manchester Baltic
SCHLESWIG Sea
ENGLAND HOLSTEIN
Danzig RUSSIAN EMPIRE
Amsterdam HANOVER SSI A
London F PRU Vis
M O Berlin tu l
KINGDOM OF THE G DO aR
NETHERLANDS KIN .
El b
Cologne eR Warsaw
Waterloo .
Rh in
KINGDOM OF
AT L A N T I C Se SAXONY POLAND Kiev
50˚N
eR
Luxembourg (Russia)
in
Frankfurt Dni
.
e
Paris ep e
OCEAN Prague GALICIA r R.
R.
LORRAINE BAVARIA Troppau Kraków

Loire R.
N
UKRAINE
DE
BA E BOHEMIA
C
SA
WÜRTTEMBERG
P IRE BE
AL
SS
10˚W FRANCE Munich Vienna EM AR
N AB
SWITZERLAND IA Pest IA
R Buda M
OL
LOMBARDY ST DA
U
VI
A
A
VENETIA
R.
TIA
PIEDMONT Milan HUNGARY
R hô n e
OA
Venice
PARMA
CR
MODENA
Eb
WALLACHIA Black
ro
AL
Marseilles SERBIA
R.
LUCCA Danube R.
TUG
Madrid
TUSCANY PAPAL
BOSNIA Sea
POR
STATES BULGARIA
KINGDOM OF Corsica Elba
SPAIN SARDINIA (Fr.) O
Rome T
T
NAPLES O Constantinople
Sardinia M
A 40˚N
ALBANIA N
Me KINGDOM E M
di OF THE P I R
GIBRALTAR E
N (Gr. Br.) te TWO SICILIES
GREECE
rr
an Sicily Athens
0 200 400 Km. ea
n
0 200 400 Mi. Malta
(Gr. Br.)
Sea
0˚ 10˚E 20˚E 30˚E
MAPPING THE PAST

MAP 23.1 Europe in 1815
Europe’s leaders re-established a balance of political power after the defeat of Napoleon. Prussia gained territory on the Rhine and in Saxony,
consolidating its position as a Great Power. Austria gained the Italian provinces of Lombardy and Venetia as well as Galicia and land along the
Adriatic Sea. In 1815 Europe contained many different states, but international politics was dominated by the five Great Powers (or six, if one
includes the Ottoman Empire). Trace the political boundaries of each Great Power, and compare their geographical strengths and weaknesses.
[1] In which directions might the different Great Powers seek to expand further and gain more people and territory? [2] At what points might
these states then come into conflict with one another?
southern Germany but expanded greatly elsewhere, taking the rich provinces of
Venetia and Lombardy in northern Italy as well as former Polish possessions and
new lands on the eastern coast of the Adriatic. More contentious was the push for
greater territory by Russia and Prussia. When France, Austria, and Great Britain
allied against these central European powers, Russia accepted a small Polish king-
dom, and Prussia took only part of Saxony (see Map 23.1). This compromise was
very much within the framework of balance-of-power ideology.
The Peace Settlement 593
Following Napoleon’s escape from Elba and his final defeat at Waterloo, a
second Peace of Paris was convened. Again the Quadruple Alliance was relatively
moderate toward France, and the previously agreed-upon balance of power was
left intact. The members of the Quadruple Alliance and France also agreed to
meet periodically to discuss their common interests and to consider appropriate
measures for the maintenance of peace in Europe. This agreement marked the
beginning of the European “congress system,” which lasted long into the nine-
teenth century and settled many international crises through international confer-
ences and balance-of-power diplomacy.
There was also a domestic political side to the re-

Intervention and establishment of peace. Within their own countries,
Repression the leaders of the victorious states were much less flex-
ible. In 1815 under Metternich’s leadership, Austria, Prussia, and Russia were de-
termined to uphold a conservative European order. Thus they embarked on a
crusade against the ideas and politics of the dual revolution. This crusade lasted
until 1848. The first step was the Holy Alliance, formed by Austria, Prussia, and Holy Alliance An alliance formed by
Russia in September 1815. First proposed by Russia’s Alexander I, the alliance Austria, Russia, and Prussia in September
of 1815 that became a symbol of the
soon became a symbol of the repression of liberal and revolutionary movements repression of liberal and revolutionary
all over Europe. movements all over Europe.
In 1820 revolutionaries succeeded in forcing the monarchs of Spain and the
southern Italian kingdom of the Two Sicilies to grant liberal constitutions. Met-
ternich was horrified: revolution was rising once again. Calling a conference at
Troppau in Austria under the provisions of the Quadruple Alliance, he and Alex-
ander I proclaimed the principle of active intervention to maintain all autocratic
regimes whenever they were threatened. Austrian forces then marched into Na-
ples in 1821 and restored Ferdinand I to the throne of the Two Sicilies, while
French armies likewise restored the Spanish regime.
In the following years, Metternich continued to battle against liberal political
change. Sometimes he could do little, as in the case of the new Latin American
republics that broke away from Spain. Nor could he undo the dynastic changes of
1830 and 1831 in France and Belgium. Nonetheless, until 1848 Metternich’s sys-
tem proved quite effective in central Europe, where his power was the greatest.
Metternich’s policies dominated not only Austria and the Italian peninsula but
also the entire German Confederation, which the peace settlement of Vienna had
called into being. The confederation was composed of thirty-eight independent
German states, including Prussia and Austria (see Map 23.1). These states met in
complicated assemblies dominated by Austria, with Prussia a willing junior part-
ner in the execution of repressive measures.
Through this German Confederation, Metternich had the infamous Carlsbad Carlsbad Decrees Issued in 1819, these
Decrees issued in 1819. These decrees required the thirty-eight German member decrees required the thirty-eight German
member states to root out subversive
states to root out subversive ideas in their universities and newspapers. The decrees ideas in their universities and
also established a permanent committee with spies and informers to investigate newspapers.
and punish any liberal or radical organizations.
In his efforts to hold back liberalism, Metternich was supported by the Russian
Empire and, to a lesser extent, by the Ottoman Empire. Bitter enemies and often
at war with each other, these far-flung empires also shared several basic character-
istics. Both the Russian and Ottoman empires were absolutist states with powerful
armies and long traditions of expansion and conquest. Both were multinational
empires made up of many peoples, languages, and religions, but in each case most
of the ruling elite came from the dominant ethnic group—the Orthodox Christian
Sec tion Review Russians centered in central and northern Russia, and the Muslim Ottoman Turks
of Anatolia (much of modern Turkey). After 1815, both multinational, absolutist
• The Quadruple Alliance of Russia, states worked to preserve their respective traditional, conservative orders. Only in
Prussia, Austria, and Great Britain,
joined by France, used balance-of-
the middle of the nineteenth century did each in turn experience a profound crisis
power diplomacy at the Congress of and embark on a program of fundamental reform and modernization, as we shall
Vienna to form a settlement with see in Chapter 25.
France that would bring peace
in Europe.
• They agreed to continue to meet
periodically as a “congress system” to
Radical Ideas and Early Socialism
maintain the peace and discuss com- What were the basic tenets of liberalism, nationalism, and socialism, and
mon interests. what groups were most attracted to these ideologies?
• Metternich of Austria actively re-
pressed liberal and revolutionary
movements all over Europe through In the years following the peace settlement of 1815 intellectuals and social observ-
spies, informers, censorship, and the ers sought to understand the revolutionary changes that had occurred and were
Carlsbad Decrees. still taking place. These efforts led to ideas that still motivate people throughout
• Absolutist Russia and the Ottoman the world.
Empire also strove to maintain the Almost all of these basic ideas were radical. In one way or another, they re-
conservative status quo in their jected conservatism, with its stress on tradition, a hereditary monarchy, a strong
countries.
and privileged landowning aristocracy, and an official church. Instead, they devel-
oped and refined alternative visions—alternative ideologies—and tried to con-
vince society to act on them. With time, they were very successful.
liberalism The principal ideas of this The principal ideas of liberalism—liberty and
movement were equality and liberty; Liberalism equality—were by no means defeated in 1815. First
liberals demanded representative
government and equality before the law
realized successfully in the American Revolution and
as well as individual freedoms such as then achieved in part in the French Revolution, this political and social philoso-
freedom of the press, freedom of speech, phy continued to pose a radical challenge to revived conservatism. Liberalism
freedom of assembly, and freedom from demanded representative government as opposed to autocratic monarchy, equal-
arbitrary arrest.
ity before the law as opposed to legally separate classes. The idea of liberty also
meant specific individual freedoms: freedom of the press, freedom of speech, free-
dom of assembly, and freedom from arbitrary arrest. In Europe only France with
Louis XVIII’s Constitutional Charter and Great Britain with its Parliament and
historic rights of English men and women had realized much of the liberal pro-
gram in 1815. Even in those countries, liberalism had not fully succeeded.
laissez faire A doctrine of economic Liberalism was also aligned with the doctrine of laissez faire (lay-say FAIR),
liberalism that believes in unrestricted which called for unrestricted private enterprise and no government interference
private enterprise and no government
interference in the economy.
in the economy. (This form of liberalism is often called “classical liberalism” in
the United States in order to distinguish it sharply from modern American liberal-
ism, which usually favors more government programs to meet social needs and to
regulate the economy.)
As we have seen (Chapter 19), Adam Smith posited the idea of a free economy
in opposition to mercantilism, in which the government placed major restrictions
on trade. Smith argued that freely competitive private enterprise would give all
citizens a fair and equal opportunity to do what they did best and would result in
greater income for everyone, not just the rich.
In early-nineteenth-century Britain, economic liberalism was embraced most
enthusiastically by business groups and thus became a doctrine associated with
business interests. Businessmen used the doctrine to defend their right to do as
they wished in their factories. Labor unions were outlawed because they suppos-
edly restricted free competition and the individual’s “right to work.”
Radical Ideas and Early Socialism 595
Liberal political ideals in the early nineteenth century also became more
closely associated with narrow class interests. Liberals favored representative gov-
ernment, but they generally wanted property qualifications attached to the right to
vote. In practice, this meant limiting the vote to well-to-do aristocratic landowners,
substantial businessmen, and successful members of the professions. Workers and
peasants, as well as the lower middle class of shopkeepers, clerks, and artisans, did
not own the necessary property and thus could not vote.
As liberalism became increasingly identified with the middle class after 1815,
some intellectuals and foes of conservatism felt that liberalism did not go nearly far
enough. Inspired by memories of the French Revolution and the example of the
young American republic, they called for universal voting rights, at least for males,
and for democracy. These democratic republicans were more radical than the
liberals, and they were more willing than most liberals to endorse violent upheaval
to achieve goals. All of this meant that liberals and radical, democratic republicans nationalism The idea that each people
could join forces against conservatives only up to a point. had its own genius and its own cultural
unity, which was self-evident, manifesting
itself especially in a common language,
history, and territory.
With immediate origins in the
Nationalism French Revolution and the Napo-
leonic wars, nationalism was based
on the idea that each people had its own genius and its own
cultural unity. For nationalists this cultural unity was basically
self-evident, manifesting itself especially in a common lan-
guage, history, and territory. In fact, in the early nineteenth
century such cultural unity was more a dream than a reality.
Within each ethnic grouping only an elite spoke a standard-
ized written language. Local dialects abounded, and peasants
from nearby villages often failed to understand each other. As
for historical memory, it divided the inhabitants of the differ-
ent German or Italian states as much as it unified them.
Moreover, a variety of ethnic groups shared the territory of
most states.
Despite these basic realities, sooner or later European na-
tionalists usually sought to turn the cultural unity that they
perceived into a political reality. They sought to make the ter-
ritory of each people coincide with well-defined boundaries
in an independent nation-state. This political goal was what
made nationalism so explosive in central and eastern Europe
after 1815, when there were either too few states (Austria,
Russia, and the Ottoman Empire) or too many (the Italian
peninsula and the German Confederation) and when differ-
ent peoples overlapped and intermingled.
Of fundamental importance in the rise of nationalism
was the push to use a standardized national language in order Building German Nationalism
to facilitate communication in an increasingly complex in-
As popular upheaval in France spread to central Europe in March
dustrial and urban society. As the entire population was edu- 1848, Germans from the solid middle classes came together in
cated in the national language, at least a superficial cultural Frankfurt to draft a constitution for a new united Germany. This
unity took root. Citizens might also be brought together with woodcut commemorates the solemn procession of delegates
emotionally charged symbols and ceremonies, such as inde- entering Saint Paul’s Cathedral in Frankfurt, where the delegates
pendence holidays and patriotic parades. On such fleeting would have their deliberations. Festivals, celebrations, and parades
occasions the imagined nation of spiritual equals might cele- helped create a feeling of belonging to a large unseen community,
brate its most hallowed traditions, which were often recent a nation binding millions of strangers together. (akg-images)
inventions.1 Liberals and nationalists agreed that the benefits of self-government

would be possible only if the people were united by common traditions that tran-
scended local interests and even class differences.
Early nationalists usually believed that every nation, like every citizen, had the
right to exist in freedom and to develop its character and spirit. They were confi-
dent that a symphony of nations would promote the harmony and ultimate unity
of all peoples. The great Italian patriot Guiseppe Mazzini (1805–1872) believed
that “in laboring according to the true principles of our country we are laboring for
Humanity.” Thus the liberty of the individual and the love of a free nation over-
lapped greatly in the early nineteenth century.
Yet early nationalists also stressed the differences among peoples and they de-
veloped a strong sense of “we” and “they.” To this “we-they” outlook, it was all too
easy for nationalists to add two highly volatile ingredients: a sense of national mis-
sion and a sense of national superiority. Even the French historian Jules Michelet
(zhul meesh-uh-LEY), so alive to the national aspirations of other peoples, could
not help speaking in 1846 of the “superiority of France”; the principles espoused
in the French Revolution had made France the “salvation of mankind.” (See the
feature “Individuals in Society: Jules Michelet” on page 608.)
Russian and German nationalists had a very different opinion of France. In the
narratives they constructed, the French often seemed oppressive, as the Russians
did to the Poles and as the Germans did to the Czechs. (See the feature “Listening
to the Past: Speaking for the Czech Nation” on pages 615–616.) Thus “they” often
emerged as the enemy.
socialism A backlash against the Socialism, the new radical doctrine after 1815, began in
emergence of individualism and the French Utopian France, despite the fact that France lagged far behind
fragmentation of society, and a move Socialism Great Britain in developing modern industry. Early
toward cooperation and a sense of
community; the key ideas were French socialist thinkers were acutely aware that the political revolution in France,
economic planning, greater economic the rise of laissez faire, and the emergence of modern industry in Britain were
equality, and state regulation of property. transforming society. They were disturbed because they saw these developments as
fomenting selfish individualism and splitting the community into isolated frag-
ments. There was, they believed, an urgent need for a further reorganization of
society to establish cooperation and a new sense of community.
Early French socialists believed in economic planning. Inspired by the emer-
gency measures of 1793 and 1794 in France, they argued that the government
should rationally organize the economy and not depend on destructive competition
to do the job. Early socialists also shared an intense desire to help the poor, and they
preached that the rich and the poor should be more nearly equal economically.
Finally, socialists believed that private property should be strictly regulated by the
government or that it should be abolished and replaced by state or community
ownership. Planning, greater economic equality, and state regulation of property—
these were the key ideas of early French socialism and of all socialism since.
One of the most influential early socialist thinkers was a nobleman, Count
Henri de Saint-Simon (on-REE duh san-see-MAWN) (1760–1825). Saint-Simon
optimistically proclaimed the tremendous possibilities of industrial development:
“The age of gold is before us!” The key to progress was a social organization that
required the parasites—the court, the aristocracy, lawyers, and churchmen—to
surrender power to the doers—the leading scientists, engineers, and industrialists.
The doers would guide the economy forward by undertaking vast public works
projects and establishing investment banks. Saint-Simon also stressed that every
social institution ought to have as its main goal improved conditions for the poor.
Radical Ideas and Early Socialism 597
The journalist Louis Blanc (1811–1882) urged workers to agitate for universal
voting rights and to take control of the state peacefully. Blanc believed that the
state should set up government-backed workshops and factories to guarantee full
employment. The right to work had to become as sacred as any other right.
Of great importance, the message of French utopian socialists interacted with
the experiences of French urban workers. Workers cherished the memory of the
radical phase of the French Revolution, and they became violently opposed to
laissez-faire laws that denied workers the right to organize. Developing a sense of
class in the process, workers favored collective action and government interven-
tion in economic life. Thus the aspirations of workers and utopian theorists rein-
forced each other, and a genuine socialist movement emerged in Paris in the
1830s and 1840s. To Karl Marx was left the task of establishing firm foundations
for modern socialism.
In 1848 Karl Marx (1818–1883) and Friedrich Engels

The Birth of (1820–1895) published The Communist Manifesto,
Marxian Socialism which became the bible of socialism. The son of a Jew-
ish lawyer who had converted to Christianity, the atheistic young Marx had studied
philosophy at the University of Berlin before turning to journalism and econom-
ics. By the time Marx was twenty-five, he was developing his own socialist ideas.
Early French socialists often appealed to the middle class and the state to help
the poor. Marx ridiculed such appeals as naive. He argued that the interests of the
middle class and those of the industrial working class were inevitably opposed to bourgeoisie The middle class.
each other. Indeed, according to the Manifesto, the “history of all previously exist-
ing society is the history of class struggles.” In Marx’s view, one class had always proletariat The modern working class.
exploited the other, and with the advent of modern industry,
society was split more clearly than ever before: between the
middle class—the bourgeoisie (boor-zwah-ZEE) and the mod-
ern working class—the proletariat (proh-li-TAIR-ee-uht).
Just as the bourgeoisie had triumphed over the feudal
aristocracy, Marx predicted that the proletariat would con-
quer the bourgeoisie in a violent revolution. While a tiny
minority owned the means of production and grew richer, the
ever-poorer proletariat was constantly growing in size and
in class-consciousness. In this process, the proletariat was
aided, according to Marx, by a portion of the bourgeoisie who
had gone over to the proletariat and who (like Marx and
Engels) “had raised themselves to the level of comprehend-
ing theoretically the historical moment.” The critical mo-
ment, Marx thought, was very near. “Let the ruling classes
tremble at a Communist revolution. The proletarians have
nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.
Karl Marx
Active in the revolution of 1848, Marx fled from Germany in 1849 and
settled in London. There he wrote Capital, the weighty exposition of his
socialist theories, and worked to organize the working class. Marx earned a
modest living as a journalist, supplemented by financial support from his
coauthor, Friedrich Engels. (The Granger Collection, New York)
Sec tion Review WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!” So ends The Communist
Manifesto.
• Liberalism stood for representative Marx’s debt to England was great. He was the last of the classical economists.
government, equality before the law,
individual freedoms, and unrestricted
Following David Ricardo, who had taught that labor was the source of all value,
private enterprise associated with the Marx went on to argue that profits were really wages stolen from the workers.
business middle class. Moreover, Marx incorporated Engels’s charges of terrible oppression of the new
• Nationalism was based on the concept class of factory workers in England; thus Marx’s doctrines seemed to be based on
of a cultural unity among people who hard facts.
shared a common language, history, Marx’s theory of historical evolution was built on the philosophy of the Ger-
and territory; nationalists often tried to man Georg Hegel (HEY-guhl) (1770–1831). Hegel believed that each age is char-
turn this perceived cultural unity into
political reality.
acterized by a dominant set of ideas; this produces opposing ideas and eventually
a new synthesis. Marx retained Hegel’s view of history as a dialectic process of
• Socialists believed in planning, greater
economic equality, and state regulation
change but made economic relationships between classes the driving force. Marx’s
of property with the goal of helping the next idea, that it was now the bourgeoisie’s turn to give way to the socialism of
poor and thus improving society for revolutionary workers, appeared to many the irrefutable capstone of a brilliant in-
everyone. terpretation of humanity’s long development. Thus Marx synthesized a number of
• Karl Marx’s ideology was based on the early-nineteenth-century ideas to create a powerful ideology that would have a
concept that the middle class (the major impact on world history.
bourgeoisie) exploited the working class
(the proletariat), who should band
together and revolt to change the sys-
tem into a socialist one. The Romantic Movement
What were the characteristics of the romantic movement, and who were
some of the great romantic artists?
The early nineteenth century was a time of change in literature and other arts as
well as in politics. The romantic movement was in part a revolt against the empha-
sis on rationality, order, and restraint that characterized the Enlightenment and
the controlled style of classicism.
Forerunners of the romantic movement appeared from about 1750 on. Of
these, Rousseau (see page 472)—the passionate advocate of feeling, freedom, and
natural goodness—was the most influential. Romanticism then crystallized fully
in the 1790s, primarily in England and Germany. The French Revolution kindled
the belief that radical reconstruction was also possible in cultural and artistic life
(even though many early English and German romantics became disillusioned
with events in France and turned from liberalism to conservatism in politics).
Romanticism gained strength until the 1840s.
romanticism A movement that a revolt Romanticism was characterized by a belief in emo-

against classicism and the Enlightenment, Romanticism’s Tenets tional exuberance, unrestrained imagination, and spon-
characterized by a belief in emotional
exuberance, unrestrained imagination,
taneity in both art and personal life. In Germany early
and spontaneity in both art and romantics of the 1770s and 1780s called themselves the Sturm und Drang (“Storm
personal life. and Stress”), and many romantic artists of the early nineteenth century lived lives
of tremendous emotional intensity. Suicide, duels to the death, madness, and
Sturm und Drang The name adopted
by German early Romantics of the 1770s strange illnesses were not uncommon among leading romantics. Romantic artists
and 1780s who lived lives of tremendous typically led bohemian lives, wearing their hair long and uncombed in preference
emotional intensity; it means “Storm to powdered wigs and rejecting the materialism of refined society. Great individu-
and Stress.”
alists, the romantics believed the full development of one’s unique human poten-
tial to be the supreme purpose in life.
Nowhere was the break with classicism more apparent than in romanticism’s
general conception of nature. Classicism in art was not particularly interested in
The Romantic Movement 599
nature. In the words of the eighteenth-century English author Samuel Johnson, “A

blade of grass is always a blade of grass; men and women are my subjects of in-
quiry.” The romantics, in contrast, were enchanted by nature. For some it was
awesome and tempestuous, while others saw nature as a source of spiritual inspira-
tion. As the great English landscape artist John Constable declared, “Nature is
Spirit visible.”
Most romantics saw the growth of modern industry as an ugly, brutal attack on
their beloved nature and on the human personality. They sought escape—in the
unspoiled Lake District of northern England, in exotic North Africa, in an ideal-
ized Middle Ages.
Diverse, exciting, and important, the study of history became a romantic pas-
sion. History was the key to a universe that was now perceived to be organic and
dynamic, not mechanical and static as the Enlightenment thinkers had believed.
Historical studies also promoted the growth of national aspirations, encouraging
entire peoples to seek in the past their special destinies.
Romanticism found its distinctive voice in poetry, as

Literature the Enlightenment had in prose. Its first great poets
were British: Wordsworth and Coleridge were all ac-
tive by 1800, to be followed shortly by Byron, Shelley, and Keats.
A towering leader of English romanticism, William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
was deeply influenced by Rousseau and the spirit of the early French Revolution.
Wordsworth settled in the rural Lake District of England with his sister, Dorothy,
and poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834). In 1798 Wordsworth and
Coleridge published their Lyrical Ballads, which abandoned flowery classical con-
ventions for the language of ordinary speech and endowed simple subjects with
the loftiest majesty. One of the best examples of Wordsworth’s romantic credo and
genius is “Daffodils.” After describing the joyful experience of wandering into a
field of flowers, the poet reflects on the power of that single experience in the last
stanza of the poem:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
Here indeed are simplicity and love of nature in commonplace forms that
could be appreciated by everyone. Wordsworth’s conception of poetry as the “spon-
taneous overflow of powerful feeling recollected in tranquility” is well illustrated
in this stanza.
Classicism remained strong in France under Napoleon and inhibited the
growth of romanticism there. In 1813 Germaine de Staël (duh STAHL) (1766–
1817), a Franco-Swiss writer living in exile, urged the French to throw away their
worn-out classical models. Her study On Germany (1810) extolled the spontaneity
and enthusiasm of German writers and thinkers, and it had a powerful impact on
the post-1815 generation in France. Between 1820 and 1850, the romantic im-
pulse broke through in the poetry and prose of Lamartine, de Vigny, Dumas,
Hugo, and Sand.
The powerful novels of Victor Hugo (1802–1885) exemplified the romantic
fascination with fantastic characters, exotic historical settings, and human emotions.
The hero of Hugo’s famous Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831) is the great cathe-
dral’s deformed bell-ringer, a “human gargoyle” overlooking the teeming life of
fifteenth-century Paris. Renouncing his early conservatism, Hugo equated free-
dom in literature with liberty in politics and society.
Amandine Aurore Lucie Dupin (1804–1876), generally known by her pen
name, George Sand, defied the narrow conventions of her time in an unending
search for sexual and personal freedom. After eight years of unhappy marriage she
abandoned her husband and took her two children to Paris to pursue a career as a
writer. There Sand soon achieved fame, notoriety, and wealth, eventually writing
over eighty novels on a variety of romantic and social themes.
In central and eastern Europe, literary romanticism and early nationalism of-
ten reinforced each other. Some romantic writers became fascinated with peasant
life and transcribed the folk songs, tales, and proverbs that the cosmopolitan En-
lightenment had disdained. The brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were par-
ticularly successful at rescuing German fairy tales from oblivion. In the Slavic
lands, romantics played a decisive role in converting spoken peasant languages
into modern written languages. The greatest of all Russian poets, Aleksander Push-
kin (1799–1837), rejected eighteenth-century attempts to force Russian poetry
into a classical straitjacket and used his lyric genius to mold the modern literary
language.
France’s master of the romantic style in painting was

Art and Music Eugène Delacroix (OO-gene duh-la-KWAH) (1798–
1863), probably the illegitimate son of French foreign
minister Talleyrand. Delacroix’s dramatic, colorful depictions of the violent
struggle for freedom stirred the emotions. He was also fascinated with remote and
exotic subjects, whether lion hunts in Morocco or dreams of languishing, sensu-
ous women in a sultan’s harem.
In England the most notable romantic painters were Joseph M. W. Turner
(1775–1851) and John Constable (1776–1837). Both were fascinated by nature,
but their interpretations of it contrasted sharply, aptly symbolizing the tremendous
emotional range of the romantic movement. Turner depicted nature’s power and
terror; wild storms and sinking ships were favorite subjects. Constable painted the
idyllic and soothing countryside of unspoiled rural England.
In music, the romantic movement endured well into the late nineteeth cen-
tury. Abandoning well-defined structures, the great romantic composers used a
wide range of forms to create a thousand musical landscapes and evoke a host of
powerful emotions. Romantic composers also transformed the small classical or-
chestra, tripling its size by adding wind instruments, percussion, and more brass
and strings. The crashing chords evoking the surge of the masses in Chopin’s
“Revolutionary Etude” and the bottomless despair of the funeral march in
Beethoven’s Third Symphony plumbed the depths of human feeling.
This range and intensity gave music and musicians much greater prestige than
in the past. Music no longer simply complemented a church service or helped a
nobleman digest his dinner. Music became a sublime end in itself, most perfectly
realizing the endless yearning of the soul. The unbelievable one-in-a-million
performer—the great virtuoso who could transport the listener to ecstasy and
hysteria—became a cultural hero. People swooned for Franz Liszt (frahnts list)
(1811–1886), the greatest pianist of his age, as they scream for rock stars today.
The first great romantic composer is also the most famous today. Ludwig van
Beethoven (BEY-toe-vuhn) (1770–1827) used contrasting themes and tones to
Reforms and Revolutions 601
Nature and the Meaning
of Life
Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) was
Germany’s greatest romantic painter,
and his Traveler Looking over a Sea
of Fog (1815) is a representative
masterpiece. Friedrich’s paintings
often focus on dark, silhouetted
figures silently contemplating an eerie
landscape. Friedrich came to believe
that humans were only an insignificant
part of an all-embracing higher unity.
(Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz/Art
Resource, NY)
Sec tion Review

• Romanticism’s tenets included a
belief in emotional expression and
imagination, living life to the fullest
by developing one’s potential, and
being captivated by nature and the
study of history.
• Poetry was the language of the roman-
tics, who used ordinary speech, simple
subjects, and novels with fantastic
characters, historical settings, and
heightened human emotions.
• Romantic art depicted the full range
of expression in nature, from power
and terror to the calm and serene; in
music, too, the romantic goal was to
produce dramatic conflict and inspiring resolutions. As one contemporary admirer evoke a range of emotions by using
wrote, “Beethoven’s music sets in motion the lever of fear, of awe, of horror, of suffer- contrasting themes and tones.
ing, and awakens just that infinite longing which is the essence of Romanticism.”
Reforms and Revolutions

How after 1815 did liberal, national, and socialist forces challenge
conservatism in Greece, Great Britain, and France?
While the romantic movement was developing, liberal, national, and socialist
forces battered against the conservatism of 1815. In some countries, change oc-
curred gradually and peacefully. Elsewhere, pressures built and eventually caused
an explosion in 1848. Three countries—Greece, Great Britain, and France—
experienced variations on this basic theme between 1815 and 1848.
National, liberal revolution, frustrated in Italy and

National Liberation Spain by conservative statesmen, succeeded first in
in Greece Greece after 1815. Since the fifteenth century, the
Greeks had been living under the domination of the Ottoman Turks. In spite of
centuries of foreign rule, the Greeks had survived as a people, united by their lan-
guage and the Greek Orthodox religion. Inspired by the general growth of nation-
alism and independence movements in the early nineteenth century, a rising
Greek national movement took root. Under Alexander Ypsilanti (ip-suh-LAN-tee),
a Greek patriot and a general in the Russian army, revolution broke out in 1821.
The Great Powers, particularly Metternich, were opposed to all revolution,
even revolution against the Islamic Turks. They refused to back Ypsilanti and sup-
ported the Ottoman Empire. Yet for many Europeans, the Greek cause became a
holy one. Educated Americans and Europeans were in love with the culture of
classical Greece; Russians were stirred by the piety of their Orthodox brethren.
Writers and artists, moved by the romantic impulse, responded enthusiastically to
the Greek national struggle. The famous English romantic poet Lord Byron even
joined the Greeks and died fighting “that Greece may yet be free.”
The Greeks, though often quarreling among themselves, battled on against
the Turks and hoped for the eventual support of European governments. In 1827
Great Britain, France, and Russia responded to popular demands at home and
directed Turkey to accept an armistice. When the Turks refused, the navies of
these three powers trapped the Turkish fleet at Navarino and destroyed it. Russia
then declared another of its periodic wars of expansion against the Turks. This led
to the establishment of a Russian protectorate over much of present-day Romania,
which had also been under Turkish rule. Great Britain, France, and Russia finally
declared Greece independent in 1830 and installed a German prince as king of
the new country in 1832. In the end, the Greeks had won: a small nation had
gained its independence in a heroic war of liberation against a foreign empire.
Eighteenth-century British society had been both flex-

Liberal Reform ible and remarkably stable. It was dominated by the
in Great Britain landowning aristocracy, but that class was neither
closed nor rigidly defined. Successful business and professional people could buy
land and become gentlefolk, while the common people had more than the usual
opportunities of the preindustrial world. Nonetheless, the British Parliament was
thoroughly undemocratic.
By the 1780s there was growing interest in some kind of political reform, but
the French Revolution made the British aristocracy fearful and extremely hostile
to any attempts to change the status quo. Conflicts between the ruling class and
Corn Laws British laws, revised in 1815, laborers were sparked in 1815 with revision of the Corn Laws. Britain had been
that prohibited the importation of unable to import cheap grain from eastern Europe during the war years, leading
foreign grain unless the price at home
rose to improbable levels.
to high prices and large profits for the landed aristocracy. With the war over, grain
could be imported again, allowing the price of wheat and bread to go down and
benefiting almost everyone except the aristocracy. The aristocracy, however,
rammed far-reaching changes in the Corn Laws through Parliament. The new
regulation prohibited the importation of foreign grain unless the price at home
rose to improbable levels. Seldom has a class legislated more selfishly for its own
narrow economic advantage or done more to promote a class-based view of politi-
cal action.
The change in the Corn Laws, coming as it did at a time of widespread unem-
ployment and postwar economic distress, triggered protests and demonstrations. In
1817 the Tory government, which was completely controlled by the landed aris-
tocracy, responded by temporarily suspending the traditional rights of peaceable
assembly and habeas corpus. Two years later, Parliament passed the infamous Six
Acts, which, among other things, placed controls on a heavily taxed press and
practically eliminated all mass meetings. These acts followed an enormous but
orderly protest, at Saint Peter’s Fields in Manchester, that had been savagely bro-
ken up by armed cavalry. Nicknamed the Battle of Peterloo, in scornful reference Battle of Peterloo A protest that took
to the British victory at Waterloo, this incident demonstrated the government’s place at Saint Peter’s Fields in Manchester
in reaction to the revision of the Corn
determination to repress dissenters. Laws; it was broken up by armed cavalry.
As their wealth grew, the new manufacturing and commercial groups insisted
on a place in the framework of political power and social prestige, and they called
for many kinds of liberal reform. In the 1820s, a less frightened Tory government
responded with reforms that offered better urban administration, greater economic
liberalism, civil equality for Catholics, and limited imports of foreign grain. These
actions encouraged the middle classes to press on for reform of Parliament so they
could have a larger say in government.
The Whig Party, though led like the Tories by great aristocrats, had by tradition
been more responsive to commercial and manufacturing interests. After a series of
setbacks, their Reform Bill of 1832 was propelled into law by a mighty surge of
popular support. The Reform Bill of 1832 moved politics in a democratic direc-
tion. It increased the power in Parliament of the House of Commons at the ex-
pense of the House of Lords. The new industrial areas of the country also gained
representation in the Commons, and many old “rotten boroughs”—electoral dis-
tricts that had very few voters and that the landed aristocracy had bought and
sold—were eliminated. As a result of the Reform Bill of 1832, the number of vot- Reform Bill of 1832 A major British
ers increased by about 50 percent, giving about 12 percent of adult men in Britain political reform that increased the number
of male voters by about 50 percent and
and Ireland the right to vote. Comfortable middle-class groups in the urban popu- gave political representation to new
lation, as well as some larger-scale farmers, received the vote. Thus the pressures industrial areas.
building in Great Britain were temporarily released. A major reform had been
achieved peacefully. Continued fundamental reform within the system appeared
difficult but not impossible.
The movement to grant voting rights to all men gained momentum. Hun-
dreds of thousands of people signed gigantic petitions calling on Parliament to
grant universal male suffrage, first and most seriously in 1839, again in 1842, and
yet again in 1848. Parliament rejected all three petitions. In the short run, the
working poor failed with their demands, but they learned a valuable lesson in mass
politics.
While calling for universal male suffrage, many working-class people joined
with middle-class manufacturers in the Anti–Corn Law League, founded in Man-
chester in 1839. The League argued that lower food prices and more jobs in indus-
try depended on repeal of the Corn Laws. Finally, in 1846, Parliament allowed for
free imports of grain when the failure of the Irish potato crop threatened famine.
Thereafter the liberal doctrine of free trade became almost sacred dogma in Great
Britain.
The following year, the Tories passed a bill designed to help the working
classes, but in a different way. The Ten Hours Act of 1847 limited the workday for
women and young people in factories to ten hours. Tory aristocrats continued to
champion legislation regulating factory conditions. They were competing vigor-
ously with the middle class for the support of the working class. This healthy com-
petition between a still-vigorous aristocracy and a strong middle class was a crucial
factor in Great Britain’s peaceful evolution. The working classes could make tem-
porary alliances with either competitor to better their own conditions.
The Prelude to 1848

March 1814 Russia, Prussia, Austria, and Britain form the Quadruple Alliance to defeat France.
April 1814 Napoleon abdicates.
May–June 1814 Bourbon monarchy is restored; Louis XVIII issues the Constitutional Charter providing for civil
liberties and representative government.
First Peace of Paris: allies combine leniency with a defensive posture toward France.
October 1814–June 1815 Congress of Vienna peace settlement establishes balance-of-power principle and creates the
German Confederation.
February 1815 Napoleon escapes from Elba and marches on Paris.
June 1815 Napoleon defeated at the Battle of Waterloo.
September 1815 Austria, Prussia, and Russia form the Holy Alliance to repress liberal and revolutionary
movements.
November 1815 Second Peace of Paris and renewal of Quadruple Alliance punish France and establish the
European “congress system.”
1819 In Carlsbad Decrees, Metternich imposes harsh measures throughout the German
Confederation.
1820 Revolution occurs in Spain and the kingdom of the Two Sicilies.
At the Congress of Troppau, Metternich and Alexander I of Russia proclaim the principle of
intervention to maintain autocratic regimes.
1821 Austria crushes a liberal revolution in Naples and restores the Sicilian autocracy.
Greeks revolt against the Ottoman Turks.
1823 French armies restore the Spanish regime.
1824 Reactionary Charles X succeeds Louis XVIII in France.
1830 Charles X repudiates the Constitutional Charter; insurrection and collapse of the government
follow. Louis Philippe succeeds to the throne and maintains a narrowly liberal regime until 1848.
Greece wins independence from the Ottoman Empire.
1832 Reform Bill expands British electorate and encourages the middle class.
1839 Louis Blanc publishes Organization of Work.
1840 Pierre Joseph Proudhon publishes What Is Property?
1846 Jules Michelet publishes The People.
1848 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels publish The Communist Manifesto.
The people of Ireland did not benefit from the politi-

Ireland and the cal competition in Britain. The great mass of the popu-
Great Famine lation (outside of the northern counties of Ulster,
which were partly Presbyterian) were Irish Catholics, who rented their land from
a tiny minority of Church of England Protestants. These landlords were content
to use their power to grab as much as possible.
The result was that the condition of the Irish peasantry around 1800 was abom-
inable. The typical peasant lived in a wretched cottage and could afford neither
shoes nor stockings. Hundreds of shocking accounts describe hopeless poverty. Yet
in spite of terrible conditions, population growth sped onward. The 3 million of

1725 reached 4 million in 1780 and doubled to 8 million by 1840.
The population grew so quickly for three reasons: extensive cultivation of the
potato, early marriage, and exploitation of peasants by landlords. Once peasants be-
gan to cultivate potatoes in the late sixteenth century, a larger population could be
supported. A single acre of land spaded and planted with potatoes could feed an Irish
family of six for a year, whereas two to four acres of grain and pasture were needed to
feed the same number. Needing only a big potato patch to survive, Irish men and
women married early. Because landlords leased land for short periods only, peasants
had no incentive to make permanent improvements or hold off on marriage until
they were settled. Rural poverty was inescapable and better shared with a spouse,
while dutiful children were an old person’s best hope of escaping destitution.
As population and potato dependency grew, conditions became more precari-
ous. From 1820 onward deficiencies and diseases in the potato crop became more
common. In 1845 and 1846, and again in 1848 and 1851, the potato crop failed
in Ireland.
The result was unmitigated disaster—the Great Famine. Blight attacked the Great Famine The result of four years
young plants, the leaves withered, and the tubers rotted. Widespread starvation of crop failure in Ireland, a country that
had grown dependent on potatoes as a
and mass fever epidemics followed. Yet the British government, committed to rigid dietary staple.
laissez-faire ideology, was slow to act. When it did, its relief efforts were tragically
inadequate. Moreover, the government continued to collect taxes, and landlords
demanded their rents. Tenants who could not pay were evicted and their homes
destroyed. Famine or no, Ireland remained the conquered jewel of foreign land-
owners.
The Great Famine shattered the pattern of Irish population growth. Fully
1 million emigrants fled the famine between 1845 and 1851, and at least 1.5 mil-
lion died or went unborn because of the disaster. Alone among the countries of
Daniel McDonald: The

Discovery of the Potato Blight
Although the leaves of diseased plants
usually shriveled and died, they could
also look deceptively healthy. This Irish
family has dug up its potato harvest and
just discovered to its horror that the
blight has rotted the crop. Like
thousands of Irish families, this family
now faces the starvation and the mass
epidemics of the Great Famine. (Delargy
Centre for Irish Folklore, University College, Dublin)
Europe, Ireland experienced a declining population in the nineteenth century,

from about 8 million in 1845 to 4.4 million in 1911. Ireland became a land of
continuous out-migration, late marriage, and widespread celibacy.
The Great Famine also intensified anti-British feeling and promoted Irish na-
tionalism, for the bitter memory of starvation, exile, and British inaction was
burned deeply into the popular consciousness. Patriots could call on powerful col-
lective emotions in their campaigns for land reform, home rule, and, eventually,
Irish independence.
France won a liberal constitution under Louis XVIII.

The Revolution of His Constitutional Charter of 1814 protected the eco-
1830 in France nomic and social gains made by sections of the middle
class and the peasantry in the French Revolution, permitted great intellectual and
artistic freedom, and allowed for the creation of a parliament with upper and lower
houses. Immediately after Napoleon’s abortive Hundred Days, the moderate king
refused the counsel of reactionary aristocrats such as his brother Charles, who
wished to sweep away all the revolutionary changes and return to a bygone age of
royal absolutism and aristocratic pretension. Instead, Louis appointed as his min-
isters moderate royalists, who sought and obtained the support of a majority of the
representatives elected to the lower Chamber of Deputies.
Louis XVIII’s charter was anything but democratic. Only about 100,000 of
the wealthiest males out of a total population of 30 million had the right to vote
for the deputies who, with the king and his ministers, made the laws of the nation.
Nonetheless, the “notable people” who did vote came from very different back-
grounds. There were wealthy businessmen, war profiteers, successful profession-
als, ex-revolutionaries, large landowners from the old aristocracy and the middle
class, Bourbons, and Bonapartists.
The old aristocracy, with its pre-1789 mentality, was a minority within the vot-
ing population. It was this situation that Louis’s successor, Charles X (r. 1824–
1830), could not abide. Crowned in a lavish, utterly medieval, five-hour ceremony
in the cathedral of Reims (reemz) in 1824, Charles was a true reactionary. He
wanted to re-establish the old order in France. Increasingly blocked by the opposi-
tion of the deputies, Charles’s government turned in 1830 to military adventure in
an effort to rally French nationalism and gain popular support. A long-standing
economic and diplomatic dispute with Muslim Algeria, a vassal state of the Otto-
man Empire, provided the opportunity.
In June 1830, a French force of 37,000 crossed the Mediterranean, landed to
the west of Algiers, and took the capital city in three short weeks. Victory seemed
complete, but in 1831 Muslims from the interior revolted and waged a fearsome
war until 1847, when French armies finally subdued the country. Bringing French,
Spanish, and Italian settlers to Algeria and leading to the expropriation of large
tracts of Muslim land, the conquest of Algeria marked the rebirth of French colo-
nial expansion.
Emboldened by the good news from Algeria, Charles repudiated the Constitu-
tional Charter and issued decrees stripping much of the wealthy middle class of its
voting rights. He also censored the press. The immediate reaction, encouraged by
journalists and lawyers, was an insurrection in the capital by printers, other arti-
sans, and small traders. In “three glorious days,” the government collapsed. Paris
boiled with revolutionary excitement, and Charles fled. Then the upper middle
class, which had fomented the revolt, skillfully seated Charles’s cousin, Louis
Philippe, duke of Orléans, on the vacant throne.
The Revolutions of 1848 607
Louis Philippe (r. 1830–1848) accepted the Constitutional Charter of 1814; Sec tion Review
adopted the red, white, and blue flag of the French Revolution; and admitted that
he was merely the “king of the French people.” Yet the situation in France re- • The Greeks, inspired by their growing
nationalism and independence move-
mained fundamentally unchanged. The vote was extended from 100,000 to just ments, revolted against the Islamic
170,000 citizens. The upper middle class wanted only to protect their interests and Turks and, with the support of other
the narrowly liberal institutions of 1815. Republicans, democrats, social reformers, European powers, won their
and the poor of Paris were bitterly disappointed. They had made a revolution, but independence.
it seemed for naught. The social and political divisions that so troubled Jules • Conflicts between laborers and the
Michelet in the 1840s were clear for all to see. (See the feature “Individuals in Tory aristocracy in Great Britain over
Society: Jules Michelet.”) the Corn Laws triggered protests and
savage repression at the “Battle of
Peterloo.”
• Competition between the Tory aristo-
crats and the middle class Whig party
The Revolutions of 1848 for the support of the working class
brought about improvements in
Why in 1848 did revolution triumph briefly throughout most of Europe, working conditions and greater male
and why did it fail almost completely? suffrage, and it resulted in a peaceful
redistribution of power in Parliament
away from the House of Lords and
In 1848 revolutionary political and social ideologies combined with a severe eco- toward the House of Commons
nomic crisis to produce a vast upheaval across Europe. Only reforming Great Brit- through the Reform Bill of 1832.
ain and immobile Russia escaped untouched. Governments toppled; monarchs • The failure of the potato crop, the
and ministers bowed or fled. National independence, liberal-democratic constitu- Great Famine, devastated Ireland as
tions, and social reform: the lofty aspirations of a generation seemed at hand. Yet 1.5 million people died and a million
in the end, the revolutions failed. emigrated; Britain’s callous lack of
response fed resentment toward the
British and inspired the Irish national-
ist campaign for independence.
The late 1840s in Europe were hard economically and
A Democratic tense politically. The potato famine in Ireland in 1845
• Louis XVIII’s Constitutional Charter
Republic in France of 1814 provided some economic
and 1846 had many echoes on the continent. Bad har- and social gains but his brother and
vests jacked up food prices and caused misery and unemployment in the cities. successor Charles X repealed it,
“Prerevolutionary” outbreaks occurred all across Europe: an abortive Polish revo- re-establishing the old order of France.
lution in the northern part of Austria in 1846, a civil war between radicals and • In “three glorious days” a revolt de-
conservatives in Switzerland in 1847, and an armed uprising in Naples, Italy, in posed the reactionary Charles X and
placed the moderate King Louis
January 1848. Revolution was almost universally expected, but it took revolution
Philippe on the throne; he re-enacted
in Paris—once again—to turn expectations into realities. the Constitutional Charter, which
Louis Philippe’s “bourgeois monarchy” had been characterized by stubborn pleased the upper middle class but did
inaction and complacency. There was a glaring lack of social legislation, and poli- little to help the republicans, demo-
tics was dominated by corruption and selfish special interests. With only the rich crats, social reformers, or the poor.
voting for deputies, many of the deputies were docile government bureaucrats.
The government’s stubborn refusal to consider electoral reform heightened a
sense of class injustice among middle-class shopkeepers, skilled artisans, and un-
skilled working people, and it eventually touched off a popular revolt in Paris.
Barricades went up on the night of February 22, 1848, and by February 24 Louis
Philippe had abdicated in favor of his grandson. But the common people in arms
would tolerate no more monarchy. This refusal led to the proclamation of a provi-
sional republic, headed by a ten-man executive committee and certified by cries
of approval from the revolutionary crowd.
The revolutionaries immediately set about drafting a constitution for France’s
Second Republic. Moreover, they wanted a truly popular and democratic republic
so that the common people—the peasants, the artisans, and the unskilled workers—
could participate in reforming society. In practice, building such a republic meant
giving the right to vote to every adult male, and this was quickly done. Revolutionary
Jules Michelet
F amous proponent of democratic nationalism and
generally recognized as France’s pre-eminent ro-
mantic historian, Jules Michelet (1798–1874) was born
Finishing his study of the Middle Ages and shaken
by his wife’s death, Michelet became eager to write the
history of the French Revolution as the ultimate achieve-
and educated in Paris, the only child in a loving family ment, the time the French people reached maturity and
of poor printers. Largely self-taught began the long-delayed liberation of mankind. Yet, con-
in the family print shop in his early fronted by growing social divisions and seeing “France
years, the awkward apprentice- sinking hour by hour,” he tried first to write a book that
turned-student entered the pres- would save France. Published in 1846, The People drew
tigious Charlemagne College in on personal experience, history, and contemporary de-
1813 and had to repeat his first year. bates, painting a vivid picture of French society and the
Then he sped forward, winning social dislocation that afflicted all classes. Rejecting so-
prizes, earning a professorship, and cialism as an unrealistic fantasy, Michelet pleaded in-
building a brilliant academic ca- stead for national unity: “One people! one country! one
reer. Yet Michelet remained true to France! Never, never, I beg you, must we become two
his roots in the common people, nations! Without unity, we perish!”* He also called for
and he drew from history a vision of universal secular education as a way to create a unified
a generous France that would em- and stable citizenry. Michelet’s book was widely read
brace all its children and heal their and discussed.
social divisions. Sickened by the failure of the revolution of 1848 and
The young Michelet was refusing to swear allegiance to Louis Napoleon, Miche-
strongly influenced by the still let lost his government positions and turned to full-time
Jules Michelet, in a portrait by
Joseph Court. (Photo12.com) largely ignored Italian philosopher writing. He completed his seven-volume history of the
Giovanni Battista Vico (1668– French Revolution, filled in the history of the early
1744), who viewed history as the modern period of France with another eleven volumes,
development of societies and hu- and wrote popular impressions of nature and anticleri-
man institutions, as opposed to the biographies of great cal polemics. Michelet’s later history is often criticized
men or the work of divine providence. for being overly emotional and biased against the mon-
After being appointed the historical director of the archy, the nobility, and the clergy while idealizing
National Archives after the revolution of 1830, Michelet popular forces and revolutionary upheaval. A great indi-
was able to combine teaching and writing with intense vidualist, Michelet was a gifted writer with a grand,
research in still largely unexplored documentary collec- heartfelt historical narrative of compassionate nation-
tions and he presented what he believed to be the first hood for a noble people.
genuine history of his country and its people. Many his-
torians, though not Michelet himself, believe that his Questions for Analysis
history of France in the Middle Ages—published be- 1. How would you describe Michelet’s conception of
tween 1833 and 1844 and becoming the first six volumes history, and how did it evolve over time?
in his multivolume History of France (1833–1867)—is 2. Does the study of history help solve contemporary
his most solid, useful, and lasting accomplishment. problems? Debate this question, and defend your
These volumes single out his vast knowledge of the position.
sources, his uncanny evocation of times and places, and
his empathic and balanced understanding of different
views and individuals. His treatment of the national re- * Jules Michelet, The People, trans. with an introduction by
vival under Joan of Arc in the fifteenth century is a fa- John P. McKay (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973),
mous example of his early work. p. 21.
608
compassion and sympathy for freedom were expressed in the freeing of all slaves
in French colonies, the abolition of the death penalty, and the establishment of a
ten-hour workday for Paris.
Yet there were profound differences within the revolutionary coalition in Paris.
On the one hand, there were the moderate, liberal republicans of the middle class.
They viewed universal male suffrage as the ultimate concession to be made to
popular forces, and they strongly opposed any further radical social measures. On
the other hand, there were radical republicans and hard-pressed artisans. Influ-
enced by a generation of utopian socialists, and appalled by the poverty and misery
of the urban poor, the radical republicans were committed to some kind of social-
ism. So were many artisans, who hated the unrestrained competition of cutthroat
capitalism and who advocated a combination of strong craft unions and worker-
owned businesses.
Worsening depression and rising unemployment brought these conflicting
goals to the fore in 1848. Louis Blanc, who along with a worker named Albert
represented the republican socialists in the provisional government, pressed for
recognition of a socialist right to work. Blanc asserted that permanent government-
sponsored cooperative workshops should be established for workers. Such work-
shops would be an alternative to capitalist employment and a decisive step toward
a new, noncompetitive social order.
The moderate republicans wanted no such thing. They were willing to provide
only temporary relief. The resulting compromise set up national workshops—soon
to become little more than a vast program of pick-and-shovel public works—and
established a special commission under Blanc to “study the question.” This satis-
fied no one. The national workshops were, however, better than nothing. An army
of desperate poor from the French provinces and even from foreign countries
streamed into Paris to sign up. As the economic crisis worsened, the number en-
rolled in the workshops soared from 10,000 in March to 120,000 by June, and
another 80,000 were trying unsuccessfully to join.
While the workshops in Paris grew, the French masses went to the election
polls in late April. Voting in most cases for the first time, the people of France
elected to the new Constituent Assembly about five hundred moderate republi-
cans, three hundred monarchists, and one hundred radicals who professed various
brands of socialism. One of the moderate republicans was the author of Democ-
racy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville (TOHK-vil) (1805–1859), who had predicted
the overthrow of Louis Philippe’s government.
Tocqueville observed that the socialist movement in Paris was an anathema to
France’s peasants as well as to the upper and middle classes. The French peasants
owned land, and according to Tocqueville, “private property had become with all
those who owned it a sort of bond of fraternity.”2 Returning from Normandy to take
his seat in the new Constituent Assembly, Tocqueville saw that a majority of the
members were firmly committed to the republic and strongly opposed to the so-
cialists and their artisan allies, and he shared their sentiments.
This clash of ideologies—of liberal capitalism and socialism—became a clash
of classes and arms after the elections. The new government’s executive commit-
tee dropped Blanc and thereafter included no representative of the Parisian work-
ing class. Fearing that their socialist hopes were about to be dashed, artisans and
unskilled workers invaded the Constituent Assembly on May 15 and tried to pro-
claim a new revolutionary state. But the government was ready and used the
middle-class National Guard to squelch this uprising. As the workshops continued
to fill and grow more radical, the fearful but powerful propertied classes in the As-
sembly took the offensive. On June 22, the government dissolved the national
workshops in Paris, giving the workers the choice of joining the army or going to
workshops in the provinces.
The result was a spontaneous and violent uprising. Frustrated in attempts to
create a socialist society, masses of desperate people were now losing even their
life-sustaining relief. As a voice from the crowd cried out when the famous as-
tronomer François Arago counseled patience, “Ah, Monsieur Arago, you have
never been hungry!”3 Barricades sprang up in the narrow streets of Paris, and a
terrible class war began. Working people fought with the courage of utter despera-
tion, but the government had the army and the support of peasant France. After
three terrible “June Days” and the death or injury of more than ten thousand
people, the republican army under General Louis Cavaignac triumphed.
The revolution in France thus ended in spectacular failure. The February
coalition of the middle and working classes had in four short months become
locked in mortal combat. In place of a generous democratic republic, the Con-
stituent Assembly completed a constitution featuring a strong executive. This
allowed Louis Napoleon, nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, to win a landslide
victory in the election of December 1848. The appeal of his great name as well
as the desire of the propertied classes for order at any cost had produced a semi-
authoritarian regime.
Throughout central Europe, the first news of the

The Austrian Empire upheaval in France evoked feverish excitement and
in 1848 eventually revolution. Liberals demanded written con-
stitutions, representative government, and greater civil liberties from authoritarian
regimes. When governments hesitated, popular revolts followed. Urban workers
and students served as the shock troops, but they were allied with middle-class
liberals and peasants. In the face of this united front, monarchs collapsed and
granted almost everything. The popular revolutionary coalition, having secured
great and easy victories, then broke down as it had in France. The traditional
forces—the monarchy, the aristocracy, the regular army—recovered their nerve,
reasserted their authority, and took back many, though not all, of the concessions.
Reaction was everywhere victorious.
The revolution in the Austrian Empire began in Hungary in 1848, where na-
tionalistic Hungarians demanded national autonomy, full civil liberties, and uni-
versal suffrage. When the monarchy in Vienna hesitated, Viennese students and
workers took to the streets, and peasant disorders broke out in parts of the empire.
The Habsburg emperor Ferdinand I (r. 1835–1848) capitulated and promised re-
forms and a liberal constitution. Metternich, who had foreseen the disruptive po-
tential of nationalism, fled in disguise toward London. The old absolutist order
seemed to be collapsing with unbelievable rapidity.
The coalition of revolutionaries was not stable, however. When the monarchy
abolished serfdom as part of its promised reforms, the newly free peasants then lost
interest in the political and social questions agitating the cities. Meanwhile, the
coalition of urban revolutionaries broke down along class lines over the issue of
socialist workshops and universal voting rights for men.
The revolutionary coalition was also weakened, and ultimately destroyed, by
conflicting national aspirations. In March the Hungarian revolutionary leaders
pushed through an extremely liberal, almost democratic, constitution. But the
Hungarian revolutionaries also sought to transform the mosaic of provinces and
peoples that was the kingdom of Hungary into a unified, centralized, Hungarian
nation. To the minority groups that formed half of the population—the Croats,
Serbs, and Romanians—such unification was completely unacceptable. Each felt

entitled to political autonomy and cultural independence. In a somewhat similar
way, Czech nationalists based in Bohemia and the city of Prague came into con-
flict with German nationalists. (See the feature “Listening to the Past: Speaking for
the Czech Nation” on pages 615–616.) Thus conflicting national aspirations
within the Austrian Empire enabled the monarchy to play off one ethnic group
against the other.
Finally, the conservative aristocratic forces regained their nerve under the
rallying call of the archduchess Sophia, a Bavarian princess married to the em-
peror’s brother. Deeply ashamed of the emperor’s collapse before a “mess of stu-
dents,” she insisted that Ferdinand, who had no heir, abdicate in favor of her son,
Francis Joseph.4 Powerful nobles organized around Sophia in a secret conspiracy
to reverse and crush the revolution.
Their first breakthrough came when the army bombarded Prague and savagely
crushed a working-class revolt there on June 17. Other Austrian officials and
nobles began to lead the minority nationalities of Hungary against the revolution-
ary government. At the end of October, the well-equipped, predominately peasant
troops of the regular Austrian army attacked the student and working-class radicals
in Vienna and retook the city at the cost of more than four thousand casualties.
Thus the determination of the Austrian aristocracy and the loyalty of its army were
the final ingredients in the triumph of reaction and the defeat of revolution.
When Francis Joseph (r. 1848–1916) was crowned emperor of Austria imme-
diately after his eighteenth birthday in December 1848, only Hungary had yet to
be brought under control. But another determined conservative, Nicholas I of
Russia (r. 1825–1855), obligingly lent his iron hand. On June 6, 1849, 130,000
Russian troops poured into Hungary and subdued the country after bitter fighting.
For a number of years, the Habsburgs ruled Hungary as a conquered territory.
After Austria, Prussia was the largest and most influen-

Prussia and the tial German kingdom. Prior to 1848, the goal of middle-
Frankfurt Assembly class Prussian liberals had been to transform absolutist
Prussia into a liberal constitutional monarchy, which would lead the thirty-eight
states of the German Confederation into a liberal, unified nation. The agitation
following the fall of Louis Philippe in France encouraged Prussian liberals to press
their demands. When the artisans and factory workers in Berlin exploded in March
and joined temporarily with the middle-class liberals in the struggle against the
monarchy, Frederick William IV (r. 1840–1861) promised to grant Prussia a lib-
eral constitution and to merge Prussia into a new national German state that was
to be created. But urban workers wanted much more and the Prussian aristocracy
wanted much less than the moderate constitutional liberalism the king conceded.
The workers issued a series of democratic and vaguely socialist demands that
troubled their middle-class allies, and the conservative clique gathered around the
king to urge counter-revolution.
As an elected Prussian Constituent Assembly met in Berlin to write a constitu-
tion for the Prussian state, a self-appointed committee of liberals from various
German states began organizing for the creation of a unified German state. Meet-
ing in Frankfurt in May, a National Assembly composed of lawyers, professors,
doctors, officials, and businessmen convened to write the German federal consti-
tution. However, their attention shifted from drafting a constitution to deciding
how to respond to Denmark’s claims on the provinces of Schleswig (SCHLES-wig)
and Holstein, which where inhabited primarily by Germans.
Street Fighting in Frankfurt, 1848

Workers and students could tear up the cobblestones, barricade a street, and make it into a fortress. But urban
revolutionaries were untrained and poorly armed. They were no match for professional soldiers led by tough officers
who were sent against them after frightened rulers had recovered their nerve. (The Granger Collection, New York)
Sec tion Review Thus delayed, the National Assembly did

not complete its draft of a liberal constitution
• Jules Michelet, a romantic historian and prolific writer on the history of France, until March 1849, at which time it elected
called for French unity instead of socialism and had a vision of France that
would provide universal education and heal social divisions. King Frederick William of Prussia emperor of
the new German national state (minus Aus-
• King Louis Philippe ruled with the help of the wealthy and corrupt; his failure
to provide social programs led to revolt and an end to monarchy in 1848, and tria and Schleswig-Holstein). By early 1849,
the establishment of the Second Republic. however, reaction had been successful almost
• The moderate republicans and the republican socialists disagreed about re- everywhere. Frederick William had reasserted
forms, not going far enough for the working class, who unsuccessfully revolted his royal authority, disbanded the Prussian
in the “June Days”; the reaction replaced the generous democratic republic Constituent Assembly, and granted his sub-
with Bonaparte’s nephew Louis Napoleon, who consolidated power once again jects a limited, essentially conservative consti-
in the hands of the propertied elite under a semi-authoritarian regime. tution. Reasserting that he ruled by divine
• Revolution in France inspired popular revolts in the Austrian Empire in 1848 and right, Frederick William contemptuously re-
led to reforms, but conflicting national aspirations and poor organization brought fused to accept the “crown from the gutter.”
defeat to the revolutionaries by the Austrian aristocracy and its loyal army.
Bogged down by their preoccupation with na-
• At the Frankfurt Assembly, Prussian liberals demanded a constitutional monar- tionalist issues, the reluctant revolutionaries
chy but urban workers wanted more radical reforms; Prussian king Frederick
William refused the constitutional crown they offered and with the help of in Frankfurt had waited too long and acted
Austria and Russia reasserted his conservative and autocratic royal authority, too timidly.
forcing a return to the German Confederation. When Frederick William, who really
wanted to be emperor but only on his own
Chapter Review 613
authoritarian terms, tried to get the small monarchs of Germany to elect him em-
peror, Austria balked. Supported by Russia, Austria forced Prussia to renounce all
of its schemes of unification in late 1850. The German Confederation was re-
established. Attempts to unite the Germans—first in a liberal national state and
then in a conservative Prussian empire—had failed completely.
Chapter Review
How did the victorious allies fashion a general peace settlement, and how did
Metternich uphold a conservative European order? (page 590) Key Terms
In 1814 the victorious allied powers sought to restore peace and stability in Europe. dual revolution (p. 590)
Dealing moderately with France and wisely settling their own differences, the allies Congress of Vienna (p. 590)
laid the foundations for beneficial international cooperation throughout much of the Holy Alliance (p. 593)
nineteenth century. Led by Metternich, the conservative powers also used intervention
and repression as they sought to prevent the spread of subversive ideas and radical Carlsbad Decrees (p. 593)
changes in domestic politics. liberalism (p. 594)
laissez faire (p. 594)
nationalism (p. 595)
What were the basic tenets of liberalism, nationalism, and socialism, and what
groups were most attracted to these ideologies? (page 594) socialism (p. 596)
bourgeoisie (p. 597)
European thought has seldom been more powerfully creative than after 1815, and
ideologies of liberalism, nationalism, and socialism all developed to challenge the ex- proletariat (p. 597)
isting order in this period of early industrialization and rapid population growth. The romanticism (p. 598)
basic tenets in one way or another rejected conservatism, with its stress on tradition, Sturm und Drang (p. 598)
hereditary monarchy and aristocracy, and an official church.
Corn Laws (p. 602)
Battle of Peterloo (p. 603)
What were the characteristics of the romantic movement, and who were some Reform Bill of 1832 (p. 603)
of the great romantic artists? (page 598) Great Famine (p. 605)
The romantic movement, breaking decisively with the dictates of classicism, re-
inforced the spirit of change and revolutionary anticipation. The romantic movement
was characterized by a belief in self-expression, imagination, and spontaneity, in art as
well as in personal life. Some of the artists and thinkers who embodied the romantic
movement include Rousseau, Wordsworth, George Sand, Delacroix, and Chopin.
How after 1815 did liberal, national, and socialist forces challenge conservatism
in Greece, Great Britain, and France? (page 601)
Inspired by modern nationalism, Greek patriots rebelled against their Turkish rulers
and won national independence. In Great Britain the liberal challenge to the conser-
vative order led to fundamental reforms, as more men gained the right to vote, high
tariffs on grain were abolished, and the factory workday was reduced. Elsewhere in
Europe the old order held firm, and political, economic, and social pressures kept
building.
Why in 1848 did revolution triumph briefly throughout most of Europe, and why
did it fail almost completely? (page 607)
In 1848 the increasing pressures exploded dramatically as they culminated in liberal
and nationalistic revolutions. Monarchies panicked and crumbled as revolutionaries
triumphed, first in France and then all across the continent. Yet very few revolutionary
goals were realized. The moderate, nationalistic middle classes were unable to con-
solidate their initial victories. Instead, they drew back when artisans, factory workers,
and radical socialists rose up to present their own much more revolutionary demands.
This retreat facilitated the efforts of dedicated aristocrats in central Europe to reassert
their power. And it made possible the crushing of Parisian workers by a coalition of
solid bourgeoisie and landowning peasantry in France. Thus the lofty ideals of a gen-
eration drowned in a sea of blood and disillusion. Soon tough-minded realists would
take command to confront the challenges of the day.
Notes
1. This paragraph draws on the influential views of B. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflec-
tions on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (London/New York: Verso, 1991), and
E. J. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1983).
2. A. de Tocqueville, Recollections (New York: Columbia University Press, 1949), p. 94.
3. M. Agulhon, 1848 (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1973), pp. 68–69.
4. W. L. Langer, Political and Social Upheaval, 1832–1852 (New York: Harper & Row, 1969),
p. 361.

Speaking for the Czech Nation
T he creation of national consciousness and nationalism

often began with a cultural revival that focused on a
people’s language and history. In Austria, the influential
historian Frantisek Palacky (1798–1876) created a portrait of
the Czechs as progressive and democratic before the Counter-
Reformation and the long process of Germanization under
Habsburg rule.
In the revolution of 1848, the German National Assembly
in Frankfurt asked Palacky to represent the Austrian province
of Czech Bohemia in its efforts to form a unified Germany. In
the famous letter that follows Palacky rejected this invitation.
Asserting the reality of a Czech nation and warning of both
Russian and German expansionism, he proposed a “union
of equals” in a radically transformed Austria. A version of
Palacky’s proposal was passed by Austria’s constituent assem-
bly in 1849, but the resurgent absolutist government vetoed it.
Frantisek Palacky, in a frontispiece portrait

I am a Czech of Slav descent and with all the accompanying his most important work on Czech
little I own and possess I have devoted myself wholly history. (Visual Connection Archive)
and forever to the service of my nation. That na-
tion is small, it is true, but from time immemorial
it has been an independen0t nation with its own dation is, and must be, a great and important mat-
character; its rulers have participated since old ter not only for my own nation but for the whole of
times in the federation of German princes, but the Europe, indeed for mankind and civilization itself.
nation never regarded itself nor was it regarded by [Palacky goes on to argue that a strong Austrian em-
others throughout all the centuries, as part of the pire is needed as a barrier to Russian expansion.]
German nation. The whole union of the Czech But why have we seen this state, which by na-
lands first with the Holy German Empire and then ture and history is destined to be the bulwark and
with the German Confederation was always a guardian of Europe against Asiatic elements of
purely dynastic one of which the Czech nation, the every kind—why have we seen it in a critical mo-
Czech Estates, hardly wished to know and which ment helpless and almost unadvised in the face of
they hardly noticed. . . . If anyone asks that the the advancing storm? It is because in an unhappy
Czech nation should now unite with the German blindness which has lasted for very long, Austria
nation, beyond this heretofore existing federation has not recognized the real legal and moral founda-
between princes, this is then a new demand which tion of its existence and has denied it: the funda-
has no historical legal basis. . . . The second reason mental rule that all the nationalities united under
which prevents me from participating in your de- its scepter should enjoy complete equality of rights
liberations is the fact that . . . you . . . are . . . aiming and respect. The right of nations is truly a natural
to undermine Austria forever as an independent right; no nation on earth has the right to demand
empire and to make its existence impossible—an that its neighbour should sacrifice itself for its ben-
empire whose preservation, integrity and consoli- efit, no nation obliged to deny or sacrifice itself for
615
the good of its neighbour. Nature knows neither Questions for Analysis
ruling nor subservient nations. If the union which 1. Why did Palacky refuse to participate in the
unites several different nations is to be firm and German National Assembly?
lasting, no nation must have cause to fear that by 2. What Enlightenment ideas does Palacky draw
that union it will lose any of the goods which it upon in his letter?
holds most dear; on the contrary each must have 3. Why might an absolutist government reject
the certain hope that it will find in the central au- Palacky’s argument?
thority defense and protection against possible vio-
lations of equality by neighbours; then every nation
Source: Slightly adapted from Hans Kohn, Pan-Slavism:
will do its best to strengthen that central authority
Its Ideology and History, pp. 65–69. Copyright © 1953
so that it can successfully provide the aforesaid by the University of Notre Dame Press. Reprinted with
defense. permission.
616
CHAPTER 24
Life in the Emerging Urban
Society in the
Nineteenth
Century
Chapter Preview
Taming the City
What was life like in the cities, and how
did urban life change in the nineteenth
century?
Rich and Poor and Those in Between

What did the emergence of urban
industrial society mean for rich and
poor and those in between?
The Changing Family

How did families change as they
coped with the challenges and the
opportunities of the developing urban
civilization?
Science and Thought

What major changes in science and
thought reflected and influenced the
new urban society?
John Perry, A Bill-poster’s Fantasy (1855), explores the endless INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY: Franziska Tiburtius
diversity of big-city entertainment. (Dunhill Museum & Archive, 48 Jermyn
IMAGES IN SOCIETY: Class and Gender Boundaries
Street, St. James’s, London)
in Women’s Fashion, 1850–1914
LISTENING TO THE PAST: Middle-Class Youth
and Sexuality
617
618 Chapter 24 Life in the Emerging Urban Society in the Nineteenth Century
T he era of intellectual and political upheaval that culminated in the revolu-

tions of 1848 was also an era of rapid urbanization. After 1848 Western
political development veered off in a novel and uncharted direction, but the
growth of towns and cities rushed forward with undiminished force. Thus Western
society was urban and industrial in 1900 as surely as it had been rural and agrarian
in 1800. The urbanization of society was both a result of the Industrial Revolution
and a reflection of its enormous long-term impact.
Taming the City

What was life like in the cities, and how did urban life change in the
nineteenth century?
The growth of industry posed enormous challenges for all members of Western
society, from young factory workers confronting relentless discipline to aristocratic
elites maneuvering to retain political power. As we saw in Chapter 22, the early
consequences of economic transformation were mixed and far-reaching and by no
means wholly negative. By 1850 at the latest, working conditions were improving
and real wages were rising for the mass of the population, and they continued to
do so until 1914. Thus given the poverty and uncertainty of preindustrial life,
some historians maintain that the history of industrialization in the nineteenth
century is probably better written in terms of increasing opportunities than in
terms of greater hardships.
Critics of this relatively optimistic view of industrialization claim that it ne-
glects the quality of life in urban areas. They stress that the new industrial towns
and cities were awful places where people, especially poor people, suffered from
bad housing, lack of sanitation, and a sense of hopelessness. They ask if these
drawbacks did not more than cancel out higher wages and greater opportunity. An
examination of the development of cities in the nineteenth century provides some
answers to this complex question.
Since the Middle Ages, European cities had been cen-

Industry and the ters of government, culture, and large-scale commerce.
Growth of Cities They had also been congested, dirty, and unhealthy.
People were packed together almost as tightly as possible within the city limits.
Infectious disease spread with deadly speed in overcrowded cities, and in the larger
towns, yearly deaths outnumbered births. Urban populations were able to maintain
their numbers only because newcomers were continually arriving from rural areas.
Clearly, deplorable urban conditions did not originate with the Industrial Rev-
olution. What the Industrial Revolution did was to amplify those conditions. The
steam engine freed industrialists from dependence on water power and allowed
them to build factories in any location. Cities were desirable sites because they
offered better access to shipping facilities, materials and markets, and a large pool
of workers. Therefore, as industry grew, there was also a rapid expansion of already
overcrowded and unhealthy cities.
The challenge of the urban environment was felt first and most acutely in
Great Britain. The number of people living in cities of 20,000 or more in England
and Wales jumped from 1.5 million in 1801 to 6.3 million in 1851 and reached
15.6 million in 1891. Such cities accounted for 17 percent of the total English
Chronology
population in 1801, 35 percent as early as 1851, and fully 54 ca. 1850–1870 Modernization of Paris
percent in 1891. Other countries duplicated the English pat-
tern as they industrialized (see Map 24.1). An American ob- 1850–1914 Condition of working classes improves
server was hardly exaggerating when he wrote in 1899 that 1854 Pasteur studies fermentation and
“the most remarkable social phenomenon of the present cen- develops pasteurization
tury is the concentration of population in cities.”1 1854–1870 Development of germ theory
As the population climbed, each town or city utilized
1857 Flaubert, Madame Bovary
every scrap of land to the fullest extent. Parks and open areas
were almost nonexistent. Narrow houses were built wall to 1859 Darwin, On the Origin of Species
wall in long rows. These row houses had neither front nor 1869 Mendeleev creates periodic table
back yards, and only a narrow alley in back separated one row 1880–1881 Dostoevski, The Brothers Karamazov
from the next. Or buildings were built around tiny courtyards
completely enclosed on all four sides. “Six, eight, and even 1880–1913 Birthrate steadily declines in Europe
ten occupying one room is anything but uncommon,” wrote 1890s Electric streetcars introduced in Europe
one observer in 1842.
These highly concentrated urban populations lived in
extremely unsanitary and unhealthy conditions. Open drains
and sewers flowed alongside or down the middle of unpaved streets. Toilet facili-
ties were primitive in the extreme. In parts of Manchester, as many as two hundred
people shared a single outhouse. Sewage often overflowed and seeped into cellar
dwellings. Moreover, some courtyards in poorer neighborhoods became dung-
hills, collecting excrement that was sometimes sold as fertilizer.
Who or what was responsible for these awful conditions? The crucial factors
were the tremendous pressure of more people and the total absence of public
transportation. People simply had to jam themselves together if they were to be
able to walk to shops and factories. Another factor was that governments, on the
continent as well as in Great Britain, were slow to provide sanitary facilities and
establish adequate building codes. This slow pace was probably attributable more
to uncertainty about what precisely should be done than to rigid middle-class op-
position to government action. Moreover, because of the sad legacy of rural hous-
ing conditions in preindustrial society, ordinary people generally took dirt and filth
for granted. One English miner told an investigator, “I do not think it usual for the
lasses [in the coal mines] to wash their bodies; my sisters never wash themselves.”
As for the men, “their legs and bodies are as black as your hat.”2
Although cleanliness was not next to godliness in most

Public Health and the people’s eyes, it was becoming so for some reformers.
Bacterial Revolution The most famous of these was Edwin Chadwick, a
commissioner charged with the administration of relief to paupers. Chadwick was
a follower of radical philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), whose approach
to social problems, called utilitarianism, aimed for a solution that provided the utilitarianism The idea of Jeremy
“greatest good for the greatest number.” Chadwick believed that unsanitary condi- Bentham that social policies should
promote the “greatest good for the
tions led to illness and that the sickness or death of a wage earner pushed the fam- greatest number.”
ily deeper into poverty. His goal was to ward off disease and thus poverty by
cleaning up the urban environment.
Chadwick documented the “sanitary conditions of the laboring populations”
in an 1842 report and argued that the excrement of communal outhouses could
be dependably carried off by water through sewers at less than one-twentieth the
cost of removing it by hand. The cheap iron pipes and tile drains of the industrial
age would provide running water and sewerage for all sections of town, not just the
wealthy ones. In 1848, with the cause strengthened by the cholera epidemic of
MAPPING THE PAST

1800
MAP 24.1 European Cities of 100,000 or More,
1800 and 1900
St. Petersburg
There were more large cities in Great Britain in 1900 than in all of
Copenhagen Moscow Europe in 1800. A careful comparison of these historical snapshots
Dublin
reveals key aspects of nineteenth-century urbanization. [1] In 1800,
London Hamburg
Amsterdam
what common characteristics were shared by many large European
Berlin Warsaw cities? (For example, how many big cities were capitals and/or leading
Paris
Vienna
ports?) [2] Compare the spatial distribution of cities in 1800 with the
Lyons distribution in 1900. Where and why in 1900 are many large cities
Venice
Marseilles Milan
concentrated in two clusters?
Madrid
Lisbon Barcelona Rome
Constantinople
Valencia Naples
1846, Chadwick’s report became the basis of Great Brit-

Palermo
0 250 500 Km. ain’s first public health law, which created a national
0 250 500 Mi. health board and gave cities broad authority to build
modern sanitary systems.
The public health movement won dedicated sup-
porters in the United States, France, and Germany from
the 1840s on. Governments accepted at least limited re-
1900
sponsibility for the health of all citizens, and their pro-
grams broke decisively with the age-old fatalism of urban
populations in the face of shockingly high mortality. By
the 1860s and 1870s, European cities were making real
progress toward adequate water supplies and sewerage
systems, city dwellers were beginning to reap the rewards
of better health, and death rates began to decline (see
Figure 24.1).
Still, effective control of communicable disease re-
quired an understanding of the connection between
germs and disease. This was to evolve through the work
of Louis Pasteur (pa-STUR) (1822–1895), a French
chemist who began studying fermentation in 1854 at the
request of brewers. Using his microscope to study the fer-
0 250 500 Km.
mentation process, Pasteur found that it depended on
0 250 500 Mi. the growth of living organisms and that the activity of
these organisms could be suppressed by heating the
beverage—by pasteurization. The breathtaking implica-
tion was that specific diseases were caused by specific
living organisms—germs—and that those organisms could be controlled.
By 1870 the work of Pasteur and others had demonstrated the general connec-
tion between germs and disease. Next the German country doctor Robert Koch
(kawkh) and his coworkers developed pure cultures of harmful bacteria and de-
scribed their life cycles, paving the way for researchers—mainly Germans—to
identify the organisms responsible for disease after disease. These discoveries led to
the development of a number of effective vaccines. Medical procedures became
much more effective as well when the English surgeon Joseph Lister (1827–1912)
reasoned that a chemical disinfectant applied to a wound dressing would destroy
airborne germs.
germ theory The idea that disease was The evolution of germ theory coupled with the ever more sophisticated public
spread through filth and not caused by it. health movement saved millions of lives, particularly after about 1880. Diphthe-
Taming the City 621
FIGURE 24.1 The Decline of Death Rates

in England and Wales, Germany, France, and 30
Sweden, 1840–1913 29
A rising standard of living, improvements in public health, and better 28
medical knowledge all contributed to the dramatic decline of death
27
rates in the nineteenth century. Germany
26
25
ria, typhoid, typhus, cholera, and yellow fever claimed 24
France
Deaths (per thousand)

fewer victims, and mortality rates began to decline dra- 23
matically (see Figure 24.1). By 1910 a great silent revolu- 22
tion had occurred: the death rates for people of all ages in 21 England
urban areas were generally no higher than those for Sweden and Wales
20
people in rural areas, and sometimes they were lower.
19
18
More effective urban planning 17
Urban Planning and was one of the keys to improv- 16
Public Transportation ing the quality of urban life.
15
France took the lead during the rule of Napoleon III
14
(r. 1848–1870), who sought to stand above class conflict
13
and promote the welfare of all his subjects through gov-
ernment action. He believed that rebuilding much of 1840 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1913
Paris would provide employment, improve living condi-
tions, and testify to the power and glory of his empire.
Under his appointee, the baron Georges Haussmann
(HOUSE-muhn) (1809–1884), Paris was transformed.
Haussmann and his fellow planners proceeded on many interrelated fronts.
With a bold energy that often shocked their contemporaries, they razed old build-
ings in order to cut broad, straight, tree-lined boulevards through the center of the
city as well as in new quarters on the outskirts. These boulevards, designed in part
to prevent the easy construction and defense of barricades by revolutionary crowds,
permitted traffic to flow freely and afforded impressive vistas. Their creation also
demolished some of the worst slums.
New streets stimulated the construction of better housing, especially for the
middle classes. Small neighborhood parks and open spaces were created through-
out the city, and two very large parks suitable for all kinds of holiday activities were
developed—one on the wealthy west side and one on the poor east side. The city
also improved its sewers, and a system of aqueducts more than doubled the city’s
supply of good fresh water.
The Parisian model of urban planning spread throughout Europe, particularly
after 1870. In city after city, public authorities mounted a coordinated attack on
many of the interrelated problems of the urban environment. They razed struc-
tures to build new boulevards, office buildings, town halls, theaters, opera houses,
and museums, while also placing pipes for sewage and water underground. Zon-
ing expropriation laws, which allowed a majority of the owners of land in a given
quarter of the city to impose major street or sanitation improvements on a reluc-
tant minority, were an important mechanism of the new urbanism.
The development of mass public transportation also contributed to better liv-
ing conditions. In the 1870s, horse-drawn streetcars carried riders along the grow-
ing number of major thoroughfares. Then in the 1890s, the real revolution
occurred: European countries adopted the electric streetcar.
The Urban Landscape: Madrid in 1900

This wistful painting of a Spanish square on a rainy day, by Enrique Martinez Cubells y Ruiz (1874–1917), includes a revealing
commentary on public transportation. Coachmen wait atop their expensive hackney cabs for a wealthy clientele, while modern
electric streetcars that carry the masses converge on the square from all directions. (Museo Municipal, Madrid/The Bridgeman Art Library)
Sec tion Review Electric streetcars were cheaper, faster, more dependable, and more comfort-
able than their horse-drawn counterparts. Service improved dramatically. Millions
• Industrialization meant increasing of Europeans—workers, shoppers, schoolchildren—hopped on board during the
opportunities but also greater hardships
including population density, lack of
workweek. And on weekends and holidays, streetcars carried millions on happy
public transportation, and little govern- outings to parks and countryside, racetracks and music halls. Good mass transit
ment oversight, resulting in unsanitary, helped greatly in the struggle for decent housing. While horse-drawn streetcars
overcrowded conditions. had allowed the middle classes to move to better housing, electric streetcars made
• The development of germ theory and better housing accessible to those of modest means. The still-crowded city was
the implementation of public health able to expand and become less congested.
laws improved sanitation in the cities
and mortality rates fell dramatically.
• Beginning in France, modern urban
planning included organized streets and Rich and Poor and Those in Between
parks, better housing, sewers and fresh What did the emergence of urban industrial society mean for rich and
water supplies, and horse-drawn and
then electric streetcars. poor and those in between?
General improvements in health and in the urban environment had beneficial

consequences for all kinds of people. Yet differences in living conditions among
social classes remained gigantic.
Rich and Poor and Those in Between 623
How much did the almost-completed journey to an

Social Structure urban, industrialized world change the social frame-
work of rich and poor and those in between? The first
great change was a substantial and undeniable increase in the standard of living
for the average person. The real wages of British workers, for example, which had
already risen by 1850, almost doubled between 1850 and 1906. Similar increases
occurred in continental countries as industrial development quickened after 1850.
Ordinary people took a major step forward in the centuries-old battle against pov-
erty, reinforcing efforts to improve many aspects of human existence.
There is another side to the income coin, however. Greater economic rewards
for the average person did not eliminate hardship and poverty, nor did they make
the wealth and income of the rich and the poor significantly more equal. In almost
every advanced country around 1900, the richest 5 percent of all households in
the population received 33 percent of all national income. The richest 20 percent
of households received anywhere from 50 to 60 percent of all national income.
Moreover, income taxes on the wealthy were light or nonexistent. Thus the gap
between rich and poor remained enormous at the beginning of the twentieth cen-
tury. It was probably almost as great as it had been in the age of agriculture and
aristocracy before the Industrial Revolution.
The great gap between rich and poor endured, in part, because industrial and
urban development made society more diverse and less unified. There developed
an almost unlimited range of jobs, skills, and earnings; one group or subclass
shaded off into another in a complex, confusing hierarchy. Thus the very rich and
the dreadfully poor were separated from each other by a range of subclasses, each
filled with individuals struggling to rise or at least to hold their own in the social
order. In this atmosphere of competition and hierarchy, neither the middle classes
nor the working classes acted as a unified force, counter to Marx’s predictions.
This social and occupational hierarchy developed enormous variations, but the
age-old pattern of great economic inequality remained firmly intact.
By the beginning of the twentieth century, the diversity

The Middle Classes and range within the urban middle classes were strik-
ing. At the top stood the most successful business fami-
lies from banking, industry, and large-scale commerce. As people in this upper
middle class gained in income and progressively lost all traces of radicalism after
the trauma of 1848, they were almost irresistibly drawn toward the aristocratic
lifestyle. They purchased country places or built beach houses for weekend and
summer use. They employed a staff of servants and hired private coaches and car-
riages to signal their rising social status.
The topmost reaches of the upper middle class tended to shade off into the old
aristocracy to form a new upper class of at most 5 percent of the population. Much
of the aristocracy welcomed this development. Having experienced a sharp de-
cline in its relative income in the course of industrialization, the landed aristoc-
racy was often delighted to trade titles, country homes, and snobbish elegance for
good hard cash. Some of the best bargains were made through marriages to Amer-
ican heiresses. Correspondingly, wealthy aristocrats tended increasingly to exploit
their agricultural and mineral resources as if they were business people. Below the
wealthy upper middle class were much larger, much less wealthy, and increasingly
diversified middle-class groups. Here one found the moderately successful indus-
trialists and merchants as well as professionals in law and medicine. This was the
middle middle class, solid and quite comfortable but lacking great wealth. Below
it were independent shopkeepers, small traders, and tiny manufacturers—the

lower middle class. Both of these traditional elements of the middle class expanded
modestly in size with economic development.
As industry and technology developed, new occupations entered the middle-
class sphere. Engineering, for example, emerged from the world of skilled labor as
a full-fledged profession of great importance, considerable prestige, and many
branches. Architects, chemists, accountants, and surveyors, to name only a few,
first achieved professional standing in this period. Management of large public and
private institutions also emerged as a kind of profession as governments provided
more services and as very large corporations such as railroads came into being.
Industrialization also expanded and diversified the lower middle class. The
number of independent, property-owning shopkeepers and small business people
grew, and so did the number of white-collar employees—a mixed group of travel-
ing salesmen, bookkeepers, store managers, and clerks who staffed the offices and
branch stores of large corporations. White-collar employees were propertyless and
often earned no more than the better-paid skilled or semiskilled workers did. Yet
white-collar workers were fiercely committed to the middle class and to the ideal
of moving up in society. In the Balkans, for example, clerks let their fingernails
grow very long to distinguish themselves from people who worked with their hands.
The tie, the suit, and soft, clean hands were no-less-subtle marks of class distinc-
tion than wages.
Relatively well educated but without complex technical skills, many white-
collar groups aimed at achieving professional standing and solid middle-class
status. Elementary school teachers largely succeeded in this effort. From being
miserably paid part-time workers in the early nineteenth century, teachers rode the
wave of mass education to respectable middle-class status and income. Nurses also
rose from the lower ranks of unskilled labor to precarious middle-class standing.
Dentistry was taken out of the hands of working-class barbers and placed in the
hands of highly trained (and middle-class) professionals.
In spite of their diversity, the middle classes were

Middle-Class Culture loosely united by a certain style of life and culture.
Food was the largest item in the household budget,
and a well-off family might spend 10 percent of its substantial earnings on meat
and fully 25 percent of its income on food and drink. The dinner party was this
class’s favored social occasion. A wealthy family might host eight to twelve almost
every week, whereas more modest households would settle for once a month.
The middle-class wife could cope with this endless procession of meals,
courses, and dishes because she had both servants and money at her disposal. In-
deed, the employment of at least one full-time maid was the best single sign that a
family had crossed the cultural divide separating the working classes from what
some contemporary observers called the “servant-keeping classes.” The greater a
family’s income, the greater the number of servants it employed. Food and servants
together absorbed about 50 percent of income at all levels of the middle class.
Well fed and well served, the middle classes were also well housed by 1900.
Many quite prosperous families chose to rent apartments, complete with tiny
rooms for servants under the eaves of the top floor. By 1900 the middle classes
were also quite clothes-conscious. The factory, the sewing machine, and the de-
partment store had all helped reduce the cost and expand the variety of clothing.
Middle-class women were particularly attentive to the fickle dictates of fashion.
“A Corner of the Table”

With photographic precision, the French
academic artist Paul-Émile Chabas
(1869–1937) idealizes the elegance and
intimacy of a sumptuous dinner party.
Throughout Europe, such dinners were
served in eight or nine separate courses,
beginning with appetizers and ending
with coffee and liqueurs. (Archives
Charmet /The Bridgeman Art Library)
(See the feature “Images in Society: Class and Gender Boundaries in Women’s
Fashion, 1850–1914” on pages 626–627.)
Education was another growing expense, as middle-class parents tried to pro-
vide their children with ever more crucial advanced education. The keystones of
culture and leisure were books, music, and travel. The long realistic novel, the
heroics of composers Wagner and Verdi, the diligent striving of the dutiful daugh-
ter at the piano, and the packaged tour to a foreign country were all sources of
middle-class pleasure.
Aristocracy
Finally, the middle classes were loosely united by a strict code of morality. This
code laid great stress on hard work, self-discipline, and personal achievement.
Drunkenness and gambling were denounced as vices; sexual purity and fidelity
were celebrated as virtues. Men and women who fell into crime or poverty were
generally assumed to be responsible for their own downfall. Middle classes
• Upper
• Middle
About four out of five people belonged to the working • Lower
The Working Classes classes at the turn of the century. Many members of
the working classes—that is, people whose livelihoods
depended on physical labor and who did not employ domestic servants—were still
small landowning peasants and hired farm hands. This was especially true in east-
ern Europe. In western and central Europe, however, the typical worker had left Working classes
the land. In Great Britain, fewer than 8 percent of the people worked in agricul- • Highly skilled: the “labor aristocracy”
ture, and in rapidly industrializing Germany only 25 percent were employed in • Semiskilled
• Unskilled
agriculture and forestry. Even in less industrialized France, fewer than 50 percent
of the people depended on the land in 1900.
The urban working classes were even less unified and homogeneous than the FIGURE 24.2 The Urban
middle classes. Not only were there divides based on skill level (see Figure 24.2), Social Hierarchy
Images in Society
Class and Gender Boundaries in Women’s Fashion,
1850–1914
W omen’s fashion was big business in the nine-

teenth century. Long the dominant industrial
pursuit in human history, the production of textiles took
about the life of these women (their work, leisure activi-
ties, and so on)?
The intriguing 1875 painting by Atkinson Grimshaw,
off with the Industrial Revolution. In the later nineteenth Summer (Image 2), shows a middle-class interior and
century fashionable clothing, especially for middle-class the evolution of women’s summer fashion two decades
women, became the first modern consumer industry as later. The corset still binds, but crinoline hoops have
careful buyers snapped up the constantly changing given way to the bustle, a cotton fan with steel reinforce-
ready-to-wear goods sold by large department stores. ment that pushes the dress out in back and exagger-
In the nineteenth century, before society fragmented ates gender differences. The elaborate costume of the
into many different groups expressing themselves in wealthy elite, available in cheaper ready-to-wear ver-
many dress styles, clothing patterns focused mainly on sions sold through department stores and mail-order
perceived differences in class and gender. The four catalogues throughout Europe, had become the stan-
illustrations presented here allow one to analyze the dard for middle-class women. Emulating the elite in
social information communicated through women’s
clothing. As you study these illustrations, note the prin-
cipal characteristics and then try to draw out the larger
implications. What does the impractical, restrictive
clothing in these images reveal about society’s view of
women during this period? What is the significance
of the emergence of alternative styles of well-groomed
dress?
Most changes in women’s fashion originated in Paris
in the nineteenth century. Image 1 shows the attire worn
by French aristocratic and wealthy middle-class women
in the 1850s and 1860s. Note that these expensive
dresses, flawlessly tailored by an army of skilled seam-
stresses, abound in elaborate embroidery, rich velvety
materials, and fancy accessories. The circular spread of
these floor-sweeping gowns is due to the crinoline, a slip
with metal hoops that holds the skirt out on all sides.
These women also are wearing the corset, the century’s
most characteristic women’s undergarment, which was
laced up tightly in back and pressed unmercifully from
the breasts to the hips. What does this image tell you IMAGE 1 Crinoline Dresses, Paris, 1859 (ILN/Mary Evans Picture Library)
626
IMAGE 3 Alternative
IMAGE 2 Summer Dress with Bustle, England, 1875 Fashion, England, 1893
(Roy Miles, Esq./The Bridgeman Art Library) (© Manchester City Art Galleries)
style, conventional middle-class women shopped care- coquettish femininity of these loose, flowing dresses only
fully, scouting for sales, and drew a boundary separating a repackaging of the dominant culture’s sharply defined
themselves from working-class women in their simple gender boundaries?
cotton clothes. What implications, if any, do you see this
having on class distinctions?
The young middle-class Englishwoman in an 1893
photo (Image 3) has chosen a woman’s tailored suit, the
only major English innovation in nineteenth-century
women’s fashion. This “alternative dress” combines the
tie, suit jacket, vest, and straw hat—all initially items of
male attire—with typical feminine elements, such as
the skirt and gloves. This practical, socially accepted al-
ternative dress appealed to the growing number of
women in paid employment in the 1890s. The historian
Diana Crane has argued that this departure from the
dominant style can be seen as a symbolic, nonverbal as-
sertion of independence and equality with men.* Do
you agree with this? If so, what was the significance of
the pre-1914 turn from stifling corset to the more flex-
ible brassiere and the mainstream embrace of loose-
fitting garments, such as the 1910 dress in Image 4? Did
the greater freedom of movement in clothing reflect the
emerging emancipation of Western women? Or was the
*Diana Crane, Fashion and Its Social Agendas: Class, Gender,

and Identity in Clothing (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2000), pp. 99–114. IMAGE 4 Loose-fitting Dress, France, 1910 (© Corbis)
627
but there were also great differences in lifestyles and cultural values. These dif-
ferences contributed to a keen sense of social status and hierarchy within the work-
ing classes.
Highly skilled workers, who made up about 15 percent of the working classes,
labor aristocracy The highly skilled became a real labor aristocracy. These workers earned only about two-thirds of
workers who made up about 15 percent the income of the bottom ranks of the servant-keeping classes, but that was fully
of the working classes at the turn of the
twentieth century.
twice as much as the earnings of unskilled workers. The most “aristocratic” of the
highly skilled workers were construction bosses and factory foremen, men who
had risen from the ranks and were fiercely proud of their achievement. The labor
aristocracy also included members of the traditional highly skilled handicraft
trades that had not been mechanized or placed in factories, such as cabinetmak-
ers, jewelers, and printers.
This group as a whole was under constant pressure. Over time, many skilled
artisans such as woodcarvers and watchmakers were replaced by lower-paid semi-
skilled factory workers. At the same time, new kinds of skilled workers such as
shipbuilders and railway locomotive engineers entered the labor aristocracy. Thus
the labor elite remained in a state of flux as individuals and whole crafts moved in
and out of it.
To maintain their precarious standing, the upper working class adopted strait-
laced, almost puritanical values. Like the middle classes, the labor aristocracy was
strongly committed to the family and to economic improvement. Families in the
upper working class saved money regularly, worried about their children’s educa-
tion, and valued good housing. Despite these similarities, skilled workers viewed
themselves not as aspirants to the middle class but as the pacesetters and natural
leaders of all the working classes. Well aware of the degradation not so far below
them, they practiced self-discipline and stern morality.
The upper working class in general frowned on heavy drinking and sexual per-
missiveness. An organized temperance movement was strong in the countries of
northern Europe. As one German labor aristocrat somberly warned, “The path to
the brothel leads through the tavern” and from there quite possibly to drastic decline
or total ruin for person and family.3 Men and women of the labor aristocracy were
also quick to find fault with those below them who failed to meet their standards.
Below the labor aristocracy stood semiskilled and unskilled urban workers.
The enormous complexity of this sector of the world of labor is not easily summa-
rized. Workers in the established crafts—carpenters, bricklayers, pipe fitters—stood
near the top of the semiskilled hierarchy. A large number of the semiskilled were
factory workers who earned highly variable but relatively good wages and whose
relative importance in the labor force was increasing.
Below the semiskilled workers was a larger group of unskilled workers that in-
cluded day laborers such as longshoremen, wagon-driving teamsters, teenagers,
and every kind of “helper.” Many of these people had real skills and performed
valuable services, but they were unorganized and divided, united only by the com-
mon fate of meager earnings. The same lack of unity characterized street vendors
and market people—self-employed workers who competed savagely with each
other and with the established shopkeepers of the lower middle class.
Domestic servants comprised a large and steadily growing segment of the un-
skilled group in the nineteenth century. The great majority were women; indeed,
one out of every three girls in Britain between the ages of fifteen and twenty was a
domestic servant. Throughout Europe and America, a great many female domes-
tics in the cities were recent migrants from rural areas. As in earlier times, domes-
tic service was still hard work at low pay with limited personal independence and
the danger of sexual exploitation. Nonetheless, domestic service had real attrac-
A School for Servants

Although domestic service was poorly paid, there was always plenty of competition for the available
jobs. Schools sprang up to teach young women the manners and the household skills that
employers in the “servant-keeping classes” demanded. (Corporation of London: London Metropolitan Archives)
tions for “rough country girls”: higher wages than agricultural work, more varied
marriage prospects, and access to a broader range of entertainment.
Many young domestics from the countryside made a successful transition to
working-class wife and mother, yet they often needed to supplement the family
income by working in the sweated industries. Like the putting-out and cottage sweated industries Poorly paid
industries of earlier times, these industries paid by the piece for work done off-site, handicraft production, often by married
women paid by the piece and working
in the home. While some women hand-decorated objects, most made clothing, at home.
especially after the advent of the sewing machine. An army of poor women ac-
counted for the bulk of the inexpensive “ready-made” clothes displayed on depart-
ment store racks and in tiny shops.
While the middle classes gathered over dinner in their

Working-Class homes, the working classes mingled in taverns, cafés,
Leisure and Religion and pubs. Working-class political activities, both mod-
erate and radical, were also concentrated in drinking establishments. Moreover,
social drinking in public places by married couples and sweethearts became an
Sec tion Review accepted and widespread practice for the first time. This greater participation by
women undoubtedly helped civilize the world of drink and hard liquor.
• The standard of living increased for the The two other leisure-time passions of the working classes were sports and
average person during the nineteenth
century, but poverty still existed and
music halls. A great decline in “blood sports,” such as bullbaiting and cockfight-
income disparity remained enormous; ing, had occurred throughout Europe by the late nineteenth century. Their place
taxes on the rich were low and the was filled by modern spectator sports, of which racing and soccer were the most
working classes were not unified. popular. Men and women also frequented music halls and vaudeville theaters, the
• The middle classes had an upper working-class counterparts of middle-class opera and classical theater. Drunkenness,
middle class of business owners, a sexual intercourse and pregnancy before marriage, marital difficulties, and problems
diverse middle middle class, and a with mothers-in-law were favorite themes of broad jokes and bittersweet songs.
lower middle class of white-collar
workers and shopkeepers.
The working poor continued to find solace and meaning in religion. Yet histori-
ans also recognize that by the last two or three decades of the nineteenth century, a
• The middle classes had some common
cultural interests, including socializing
considerable decline in both church attendance and church donations was occur-
at dinner parties, employing servants, ring in most European countries. And it seems clear that this decline was greater for
wearing fashionable clothing, educat- the urban working classes than for their rural counterparts or for the middle classes.
ing their children, and abiding by a Why did working-class church attendance decline? Part of the reason was that
strict moral code. the vibrant, materialistic urban environment undermined popular religious im-
• The working class had an upper work- pulses, which were poorly served in the cities. Equally important, however, was
ing class, or labor aristocracy, skilled the fact that throughout the nineteenth century both Catholic and Protestant
workers with high moral standards who
viewed themselves as leaders of the
churches were normally seen as conservative institutions defending social order
working classes; below them were the and custom. Therefore, as the European working classes became more politically
semi-skilled and unskilled workers, both conscious, they tended to see the established (or quasi-established) “territorial
highly diverse groups that were not church” as defending what they wished to change and as allied with their political
organized. opponents. Especially the men of the urban working classes developed vaguely
• Social and political gatherings of the antichurch attitudes, even though they remained neutral or positive toward reli-
working classes took place in taverns gion. They tended to regard regular church attendance as “not our kind of
and pubs and for the first time included
women; sports and music were other
thing”—not part of urban working-class culture. The pattern was different in those
favored pastimes, while church atten- places where the church or synagogue had never been linked to the state and
dance declined. served as a focus for ethnic cohesion. Irish Catholic churches in Protestant Britain
and Jewish synagogues in Russia were outstanding examples.
The Changing Family

How did families change as they coped with the challenges and the
opportunities of the developing urban civilization?
Urban life wrought many fundamental changes in the family. Although much is
still unknown, it seems clear that in the second half of the nineteenth century the
family had stabilized considerably after the disruption of the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries. The home became more important for both men and
women. The role of women and attitudes toward children underwent substantial
change, and adolescence emerged as a distinct stage of life. These are but a few of
the transformations that affected all social classes in varying degrees.
By 1850 the ideal of romantic love had triumphed

Premarital Sex among the working classes. Couples were ever more
and Marriage likely to come from different, even distant, towns and
to be more nearly the same age, further indicating that romantic sentiment was
replacing tradition and financial considerations.
For the middle classes, however, economic considerations continued to play a
major role in marriage arrangements. In France dowries and elaborate legal mar-
The Changing Family 631
riage contracts were common practice among the middle classes in the later nine-
teenth century, and marriage was for many families one of life’s most crucial
financial transactions. As in the past, this preoccupation with money led many men
to marry late, after they had been established economically, and to choose women
considerably younger than themselves. A young woman of the middle class found
her romantic life carefully supervised by her well-meaning mother, who schemed
for a proper marriage and guarded her daughter’s virginity like the family’s credit.
After marriage, middle-class morality sternly demanded fidelity. Middle-class boys
were watched, too, but not as vigilantly. By the time they reached late adolescence,
they had usually attained considerable sexual experience with maids or prosti-
tutes. (See the feature “Listening to the Past: Middle-Class Youth and Sexuality”
on pages 643–644.)
In Paris alone, 155,000 women were registered as prostitutes between 1871
and 1903, and 750,000 others were suspected of prostitution in the same years.
Men of all classes visited prostitutes, but the middle and upper classes supplied
much of the motivating cash. Thus, though many middle-class men abided by
the publicly professed code of stern puritanical morality, others indulged their
appetites for prostitutes and sexual promiscuity. For many poor young women,
prostitution, like domestic service, was a stage of life and not a permanent em-
ployment. They went on to marry (or live with) men of their own class and estab-
lish homes and families.
A woman’s virginity before marriage was not as important to the working
classes, and in urban Europe around 1900, as many as one woman in three was
going to the altar an expectant mother. Unmarried young people in western, north-
ern, and central Europe were probably engaging in just as much sexual activity as
their parents and grandparents who had created the illegitimacy explosion of 1750
to 1850 (see page 514). However, the rising rate of illegitimacy was reversed in the
second half of the nineteenth century: more babies were born to married mothers.
What accounts for this reversal? Pregnancy led increasingly to marriage and the
establishment of a two-parent household. Skipping out was less acceptable, and
marriage was less of an economic challenge. Thus the urban working-class couple
became more stable, and that stability strengthened the family as an institution.
Within working-class homes, ties to relatives after

Kinship Ties marriage—kinship ties—were in general much stronger
than many social observers have recognized. Most newly-
weds tried to live near their parents, though not in the same house. Indeed, for many
married couples in later-nineteenth-century cities, ties to mothers and fathers,
uncles and aunts, were more important than ties to unrelated acquaintances.
Although governments were generally providing more welfare services by
1900, many people turned to their families for help in coping with sickness, unem-
ployment, old age, and death. Relatives were also valuable at less tragic moments.
If a couple was very poor, an aged relation often moved in to cook and mind the
children so that the wife could earn badly needed income outside the home. Sun-
day dinners were often shared, as were outgrown clothing and useful information.
Often the members of a large family group all lived in the same neighborhood.
Industrialization and the growth of modern cities

Gender Roles and brought great changes to the lives of European women.
Family Life These changes were particularly consequential for
married women, and in the nineteenth century most women did marry.
The rigid gender roles that had developed with industrialization were firmly
entrenched after 1850. Men and women occupied separate spheres: the wife as
mother and homemaker, the husband as wage earner. Well-paying jobs were off-
limits to women, and married women were subordinated to their husbands by law.
With all women facing discrimination in education and employment and with
middle-class women suffering especially from a lack of legal rights, there is little
wonder that some women rebelled and began the long-continuing fight for equal-
ity of the sexes and the rights of women. Their struggle proceeded on two main
fronts. First, following in the steps of women such as Mary Wollstonecraft (see
page 545), organizations founded by middle-class feminists campaigned for equal
legal rights for women as well as access to higher education and professional
employment. These middle-class feminists argued that unmarried women and
middle-class widows with inadequate incomes simply had to have more opportu-
nities to support themselves. Middle-class feminists also recognized that paid (as
opposed to unpaid) work could relieve the monotony that some women found in
their sheltered middle-class existence and put greater meaning into their lives.
In the later nineteenth century, these organizations scored some significant
victories, such as the 1882 law giving English married women full property rights.
More women found professional and white-collar employment, especially after
about 1880. But progress was slow and hard won. For example, in Germany before
1900, women were not admitted as fully registered students at a single university,
and it was virtually impossible for a woman to receive certification and practice as
a lawyer or doctor. (See the feature “Individuals in Society: Franziska Tiburtius.”)
In the years before 1914, middle-class feminists increasingly focused their atten-
tion on political action and fought for the right to vote for women.
Women inspired by utopian and especially Marxian socialism blazed a second
path. Often scorning the programs of middle-class feminists, socialist women lead-
ers argued that the liberation of working-class women would come only with the
liberation of the entire working class through revolution. In the meantime, they
championed the cause of working women and won some practical improvements,
especially in Germany, where the socialist movement was most effectively orga-
nized. In a general way, these different approaches to women’s issues reflected the
diversity of classes in urban society.
While the ideology and practice of rigidly separate spheres made women pow-
erless outside the home, within it their power grew stronger. Among the English
working classes, it was the wife who generally determined how the family’s money
was spent. In many families, the husband gave all his earnings to his wife to man-
age, whatever the law might read. She returned to him only a small allowance for
carfare, beer, tobacco, and union dues. All the major domestic decisions, from the
children’s schooling and religious instruction to the selection of new furniture or
a new apartment, were hers. Despite this power, however, a good deal of her effort
was directed toward pampering her husband as he expected. In countless humble
households, she saw that he had meat while she ate bread, that he relaxed by the
fire while she did the dishes.
The woman’s guidance of the household went hand in hand with the increased
emotional importance of home and family. The home she ran was idealized as a
warm shelter in a hard and impersonal urban world. For a child of the English
slums in the early 1900s,
home, however poor, was the focus of all love and interests, a sure fortress against a
hostile world. Songs about its beauties were ever on people’s lips. “Home, sweet
home,” first heard in the 1870s, had become “almost a second national anthem.”
Franziska Tiburtius
W hy did a small number of women in the late
nineteenth century brave great odds and embark
on professional careers? And how did a few of those
families of cottage workers around Zurich and loved
her work.
Graduating at age thirty-three in 1876, Tiburtius
manage to reach their objectives? The career and went to stay with her brother, a doctor in Berlin.
personal reflections of Franziska Tiburtius (tie-bur- Though well qualified to prac-
TEE-us), a pioneer in German medicine, suggest that tice, she ran into pervasive dis-
talent, determination, and economic necessity were crimination. She was not even
critical ingredients.* permitted to take the state medi-
Like many women of her time who would study and cal exams and could practice
pursue professional careers, Franziska Tiburtius (1843– only as an unregulated (and un-
1927) was born into a property-owning family of modest professional) “natural healer.”
means. The youngest of nine children on a small estate But after persistent fighting with
in northeastern Germany, the sensitive child wilted with the bureaucrats, she was able to
a harsh governess but flowered with a caring teacher display her diploma and prac-
and became an excellent student. tice as “Franziska Tiburtius,
Graduating at sixteen and needing to support herself, M.D. University of Zurich.” She
Tiburtius had few opportunities. A young woman from and Lehmus were in business.
a “proper” background could work as a governess or a Soon the two women real-
teacher without losing her respectability and spoiling ized their dream and opened a
her matrimonial prospects, but that was about it. She clinic, subsidized by a wealthy
Franziska Tiburtius, pioneering
tried both avenues. Working for six years as a governess industrialist, for female factory
woman physician in Berlin.
in a noble family and no doubt learning that poverty was workers. The clinic filled a great (Ullstein Bilderdienst /The Granger
often one’s fate in this genteel profession, she then need and was soon treating Collection, New York)
turned to teaching. Called home from her studies in many patients. A room with beds
Britain in 1871 to care for her brother, who had con- for extremely sick women was
tracted typhus as a field doctor in the Franco-Prussian later expanded into a second
War, she found her calling. She decided to become a clinic.
medical doctor. Tiburtius and Lehmus became famous. For fifteen
Supported by her family, Tiburtius’s decision was years, they were the only women doctors in all Berlin.
truly audacious. In all of Europe, only the University of An inspiration for a new generation of women, they
Zurich in republican Switzerland accepted female stu- added the wealthy to their thriving practice. But Tibur-
dents. Moreover, if it became known that she had stud- tius’s clinics always concentrated on the poor, providing
ied medicine and failed, she would never get a job as a them with subsidized and up-to-date treatment. Tal-
teacher. No parent would entrust a daughter to an ented, determined, and working with her partner, Ti-
“emancipated” radical who had carved up dead bodies! burtius experienced the joys of personal achievement
Although the male students at the university some- and useful service, joys that women and men share in
times harassed the women with crude pranks, Tiburtius equal measure.
thrived. The revolution of the microscope and the dis-
covery of microorganisms was rocking Zurich, and she
was fascinated by her studies. She became close friends Questions for Analysis
with a fellow female medical student from Germany, 1. How does Franziska Tiburtius’s life reflect both the
Emilie Lehmus, with whom she would form a lifelong challenges and the changing roles of middle-class
partnership in medicine. She did her internship with women in the later nineteenth century?
2. In what ways was Tiburtius’s career related to im-
*This portrait draws on Conradine Lück, Frauen: Neun Lebens- provements in health in urban society and to the
schicksale (Reutlingen: Ensslin & Laiblin, n.d.), pp. 153–185. expansion of the professions?
633
Few walls in lower-working-class houses lacked “mottoes”—colored strips of paper,

about nine inches wide and eighteen inches in length, attesting to domestic joys:
EAST, WEST, HOME’S BEST; BLESS OUR HOME; GOD IS MASTER OF
THIS HOUSE; HOME IS THE NEST WHERE ALL IS BEST.4
By 1900 home and family were what life was all about for millions of people of all
classes.
Married couples also developed stronger emotional ties to each other. Affec-
tion and eroticism became more central to the couple after marriage. Gustave
Droz (drose), whose bestseller Mr., Mrs., and Baby went through 121 editions
between 1866 and 1884, saw love within marriage as the key to human happiness.
Many French marriage manuals of the late 1800s stressed that women had legiti-
mate sexual needs, such as the “right to orgasm.” Perhaps the French were a bit
more enlightened in these matters than other nationalities. But the rise of public
socializing by couples in cafés and music halls as well as franker affection within
the family suggests a more erotic, pleasurable intimate life for women throughout
Western society. This, too, helped make the woman’s role as mother and home-
maker acceptable and even satisfying.
Within the family, attitudes toward children and child

Child Rearing rearing also shifted. As more babies survived, parents
allowed themselves to form emotional attachments ear-
lier in their children’s lives. Mothers increasingly breast-fed their infants, for ex-
ample, rather than paying wet nurses to do so. Breast feeding involved sacrifice—a
A Working-Class Home, 1875

Emotional ties within ordinary families grew stronger in the nineteenth century. Parents gave their children more love and better care.
(ILN/Mary Evans Picture Library)
The Changing Family 635
temporary loss of freedom, if nothing else. Yet in an age when there was no good
alternative to mother’s milk, it saved lives. This surge of parental feeling also gave
rise to a wave of specialized books on child rearing and infant hygiene, such as
Droz’s phenomenally successful book. Droz urged fathers to get into the act and
pitied those “who do not know how to roll around on the carpet, play at being a
horse and a great wolf, and undress their baby.”5
The loving care lavished on infants was matched by greater concern for older
children and adolescents. They, too, were wrapped in the strong emotional ties of
a more intimate and protective family. For one thing, European couples began to
limit their number of children in order to care adequately for those they had. It was
evident by the end of the nineteenth century that the birthrate was declining across
Europe, as Figure 24.3 shows, and it continued to do so until after World War II.
The Englishwoman who married in the 1860s, for example, had an average of
about six children; her daughter marrying in the 1890s had only four; and her
granddaughter marrying in the 1920s had only two or possibly three.
The most important reason for this revolutionary reduction in family size, in
which the comfortable and well-educated classes took the lead, was parents’ desire
to improve their economic and social position and that of their children. Children
were no longer contributors to the family income; indeed, parents saved to provide
their children with such advantages as music lessons and summer vacations and
long, expensive university educations and suitable dowries. A young German
skilled worker with only one child spoke for many in his class when he said, “We
want to get ahead, and our daughter should have things better than my wife and
sisters did.”6 Thus the growing tendency of couples in the late nineteenth century
to use a variety of contraceptive methods—rhythm method, withdrawal method,
and mechanical devices—certainly reflected increased concern for children.
Indeed, many parents, especially in the middle classes, probably became too
concerned about their children, unwittingly subjecting
them to an emotional pressure cooker of almost unbear-
able intensity. The result was that many children and es-
pecially adolescents came to feel trapped and in need of 40
greater independence.
The rigid division of gender roles within the family 38
Germany
contributed to feelings of tension and anxiety. It was 36
widely believed that mother and child loved each other
easily but that relations between father and child were 34
necessarily difficult and often tragic. The father was a
32
Births (per thousand)
stranger; his world of business was far removed from the England
maternal world of spontaneous affection. Moreover, the 30 and Wales
father was demanding, often expecting the child to suc- Sweden
ceed where he himself had failed and making his love 28
conditional on achievement. Little wonder that the imag- 26
inative literature of the late nineteenth century came to
deal with the emotional and destructive elements of 24 France
22
FIGURE 24.3 The Decline of Birthrates in 20

England and Wales, Germany, France, and
Sweden, 1840–1913 18
Women had fewer babies for a variety of reasons, including the fact
that their children were increasingly less likely to die before reaching 1840 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1913
adulthood. Compare with Figure 24.1.
Sec tion Review father-son relationships. In the Russian Feodor Dostoevski’s (dos-tuh-YEF-skee)
great novel The Brothers Karamazov (1880–1881), for example, four sons work
• Members of the working classes now knowingly or unknowingly to destroy their father. Later at the murder trial, one of
often married for love but in the middle
classes marriage was still an economic
the brothers claims to speak for all mankind and screams out, “Who doesn’t wish
arrangement, with young women care- his father dead?”
fully supervised while young men Sigmund Freud (froid) (1856–1939), the Viennese founder of psychoanalysis,
frequented prostitutes. formulated the most striking analysis of the explosive dynamics of the family, par-
• Kinship ties remained important for ticularly the middle-class family in the late nineteenth century. A physician by
members of a working-class family, training, Freud began his career treating mentally ill patients. He noted that the
who often lived near each other and hysteria of his patients appeared to originate in bitter early-childhood experiences
provided needed help and care.
wherein the child had been obliged to repress strong feelings. When these painful
• Rigid gender roles led to the develop- experiences were recalled and reproduced under hypnosis or through the patient’s
ment of organizations that pursued
women’s rights.
free association of ideas, the patient could be brought to understand his or her
unhappiness and eventually deal with it.
• Within the home a woman typically
The working classes probably had more avenues of escape from such tensions
had more power, managing the house-
hold’s income and making domestic than did the middle classes. Unlike their middle-class counterparts, who remained
decisions, but her primary responsibility economically dependent on their families until a long education was finished or a
was still to care for her husband proper marriage secured, working-class boys and girls went to work when they
and family. reached adolescence. Earning wages on their own, they could bargain with their
• Love and emotional bonding to chil- parents for greater independence within the household by the time they were six-
dren occurred earlier, as infant survival teen or seventeen. If they were unsuccessful, they could and did leave home to live
rates grew, and couples, for economic
reasons, generally had fewer children.
cheaply as paying lodgers in other working-class homes. Thus the young person
from the working classes broke away from the family more easily when emotional
• Freud blamed tension and anxiety in
young adulthood on early childhood
ties became oppressive. In the twentieth century, middle-class youths would follow
experiences, while popular literature this lead.
questioned parent-child relationships;
for working-class youths, escape was
possible as they could find work and
leave home, but for middle-class youths
there was no easy escape. Science and Thought
What major changes in science and thought reflected and influenced the
new urban society?
Major changes in Western science and thought accompanied the emergence of

urban society. Two aspects of these complex intellectual developments stand out
as especially significant. First, scientific knowledge expanded rapidly, influencing
the Western worldview even more profoundly than before and spurring the cre-
ation of new products and whole industries. Second, between about the 1840s and
the 1890s, European literature underwent a shift from soaring romanticism to
tough-minded realism.
The pace of scientific discoveries accelerated from the

The Triumph 1830s onward, stimulated by breakthroughs in indus-
of Science trial technology. While ordinary citizens continued to
lack detailed scientific knowledge, they became convinced of the importance of
science to human advancement.
thermodynamics A branch of physics The new branch of physics known as thermodynamics was one example of a
built on Newton’s laws of mechanics that theoretical field with roots in industry and obvious practical applications. Building
investigated the relationship between
heat and mechanical energy.
on Isaac Newton’s laws of mechanics and on studies of steam engines, thermody-
namics investigated the relationship between heat and mechanical energy. By
midcentury, physicists had formulated the fundamental laws of thermodynamics,
Science and Thought 637
which were then applied to mechanical engineering, chemical processes, and

many other fields. The law of conservation of energy held that different forms of
energy—such as heat, electricity, and magnetism—could be converted but nei-
ther created nor destroyed. Nineteenth-century thermodynamics demonstrated
that the physical world was governed by firm, unchanging laws, leaving little room
for either divine intervention or human will.
Chemistry and electricity were two other fields characterized by extremely rapid
scientific progress. And in both fields, “science was put in the service of industry,”
as the influential economist Alfred Marshall (1842–1924) argued at the time.
Chemists devised ways of measuring the atomic weight of different elements,
and in 1869 the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev (men-duh-LEY-uhf) (1834–
1907) codified the rules of chemistry in the periodic law and the periodic table.
Chemistry was subdivided into many specialized branches, such as organic organic chemistry The study of the
chemistry—the study of the compounds of carbon. Applying theoretical insights compounds of carbon.
gleaned from this new field, researchers in large German chemical companies
discovered ways of transforming the dirty, useless coal tar that accumulated in coke
ovens into beautiful, expensive synthetic dyes for the world of fashion. The basic
discoveries of Michael Faraday (FAR-uh-dee) (1791–1867) in electromagnetism
in the 1830s and 1840s resulted in the first dynamo (generator) and opened the
way for the subsequent development of the telegraph, electric motor, electric light,
and electric streetcar.
The successful application of scientific research in the fast-growing electrical
and organic chemical industries promoted solid economic growth between 1880 and
1913 and provided a model for other industries. Systematic “R & D”—research and
development—was born in the late nineteenth century.
The methods of science acquired unrivaled prestige after 1850. For many, the
union of careful experiment and abstract theory was the only reliable route to truth
and objective reality. The “unscientific” intuitions of poets and the revelations of
saints seemed hopelessly inferior.
From the 1830s onward, many thinkers tried to apply

Social Science the objective methods of science to the study of society.
and Evolution In some ways, these efforts simply perpetuated the
critical thinking of the philosophes. Yet there were important differences. The
new “social scientists” had access to the massive sets of numerical data that govern-
ments had begun to collect on everything from children to crime, from popula-
tion to prostitution. In response, social scientists developed new statistical methods
to analyze these facts “scientifically” and supposedly to test their theories. And the
systems of the leading nineteenth-century social scientists were more unified, all-
encompassing, and dogmatic than those of the philosophes. Marx was a prime
example (see pages 597–598).
Another extremely influential system builder was French philosopher Auguste
Comte (komt) (1798–1857), author of the six-volume System of Positive Philoso-
phy (1830–1842). Comte postulated that all intellectual activity progresses through
predictable stages:
The great fundamental law . . . is this:—that each of our leading conceptions—
each branch of our knowledge—passes successively through three different theoreti-
cal conditions: the Theological, or fictitious; the Metaphysical, or abstract; and the
Scientific, or positive. . . . The first is the necessary point of departure of human
understanding, and the third is the fixed and definitive state. The second is merely
a transition.7
Satirizing Darwin’s Ideas

The heated controversies over Darwin’s theory of evolution also spawned innumerable jokes and cartoons. This cartoon depicts a bearded
Charles Darwin and the atheistic materialist Emile Littré performing as monkeys in a circus. (Musée de la Ville de Paris, Musée Carnavalet /Archives
Charmet / The Bridgeman Art Library)
By way of example, Comte noted that the prevailing explanation of cosmic

patterns had shifted, as knowledge of astronomy developed, from the will of God
(the theological) to the will of an orderly nature (the metaphysical) to the rule of
unchanging laws (the scientific). Later, this same intellectual progression took
place in increasingly complex fields—physics, chemistry, and, finally, the study of
society. Comte believed that by applying the scientific method, also called the
positivist method Auguste Comte’s positivist method, his new discipline of sociology would soon discover the eternal
discipline of sociology, which postulated laws of human relations.
that each branch of our knowledge
passes successively through three
Comte’s stages of knowledge exemplify the nineteenth-century fascination
different theoretical conditions; with the idea of evolution and dynamic development. Thinkers in many fields,
the theological, or fictitious; the such as the romantic historians and “scientific” Marxists, shared and applied this
metaphysical, or abstract; and the basic concept. In geology, Charles Lyell (LAHY-uhl) (1797–1875) effectively dis-
scientific, or positive.
credited the long-standing view that the earth’s surface had been formed by short-
evolution The idea, applied by thinkers lived cataclysms, such as biblical floods and earthquakes. Instead, Lyell posited
in many fields, that stresses gradual that the earth’s surface changed and continues to change over an immensely long
change and continuous adjustment.
time. The evolutionary view of biological development, first proposed by the
Science and Thought 639
Greek Anaximander in the sixth century b.c.e., re-emerged in a more modern

form in the work of Jean Baptiste Lamarck (luh-MAHRK) (1744–1829). Lamarck
asserted that all forms of life had arisen through a long process of continuous ad-
justment to the environment.
Lamarck’s work was flawed—he believed that the characteristics parents ac-
quired in the course of their lives could be inherited by their children—and was
not accepted, but it helped prepare the way for Charles Darwin (1809–1882), the
most influential of all nineteenth-century evolutionary thinkers. Convinced by
fossil evidence that he had collected and also persuaded by his friend Lyell that the
earth and life on it were immensely ancient, Darwin came to doubt the general
belief in a special divine creation of each species of animal. Instead, he concluded,
all life had gradually evolved from a common ancestral origin in an unending
“struggle for survival.”
Darwin’s great originality lay in suggesting precisely how biological evolution
might have occurred. His theory is summarized in the title of his work On the
Origin of Species by the Means of Natural Selection (1859). Decisively influenced
by Thomas Malthus’s (MAL-thuhs) gloomy theory that populations naturally grow
faster than their food supplies (see page 572), Darwin argued that chance differ-
ences among the members of a given species help some survive while others die.
Thus the variations that prove useful in the struggle for survival are selected natu-
rally and gradually spread to the entire species through reproduction.
Darwin was hailed throughout Europe as the great scientist par excellence, the
“Newton of biology,” who had revealed once again the powers of objective sci-
ence. Darwin’s findings also reinforced the teachings of secularists such as Comte
and Marx, who scornfully dismissed religious belief in favor of agnostic or atheistic
materialism. In the great cities especially, religion was on the defensive. Finally,
many writers applied the theory of biological evolution to human affairs. Herbert
Spencer (1820–1903) saw the idea of the “survival of the fittest” at work in eco-
nomic progress: the poor were the ill-fated weak; the prosperous were the chosen
strong. Understandably, Spencer and other Social Darwinists were especially Social Darwinists A group of thinkers
popular with the upper middle class. popular with the upper middle class
who saw the human race as driven
forward to ever-greater specialization
and progress by the unending economic
In literature, the key themes of realism and naturalism struggle that would determine the
Realism in Literature emerged in the 1840s and continued to dominate survival of the fittest.
Western culture and style until the 1890s. The major realism A literary movement that
realist writers focused their extraordinary powers of observation on contemporary stressed the depiction of life exactly
everyday life. Emphatically rejecting the romantic search for the exotic and the sub- as it was.
lime, they energetically pursued the typical and the commonplace. Beginning with
a dissection of the middle classes, from which most of them sprang, many realists
eventually focused on the urban working classes, which had been neglected in
imaginative literature before this time. The realists put a microscope to many un-
explored and taboo subjects—sex, strikes, violence, alcoholism—and were charged
by middle-class critics with sensationalism and undermining public morality.
Unlike the romantics, who had gloried in individual freedom and an unlim-
ited universe, realists were strict determinists. Human beings, like atoms, were
components of the physical world, and all human actions were caused by unalter-
able natural laws. Heredity and environment determined human behavior; good
and evil were merely social conventions.
The realist movement began in France and was home to three of its greatest
practitioners—Balzac, Flaubert, and Zola. Honoré de Balzac (BAWL-zak) (1799–
1850) spent thirty years writing a vastly ambitious panorama of postrevolutionary
Manet: Emile Zola

The young novelist’s sensitivity and strength of character
permeate this famous portrait by the great French painter
Edouard Manet. Focusing on nuances and subtle variations,
Manet was at first denounced by the critics, and after Zola lost
a newspaper job defending Manet they became close friends.
Manet was strongly influenced by Japanese prints, seen in the
background. (Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY)
French life. Known collectively as The Human

Comedy, this series of nearly one hundred books
vividly portrays more than two thousand characters
from virtually all sectors of French society. Balzac
pictures urban society as grasping, amoral, and bru-
tal, characterized by a Darwinian struggle for wealth
and power.
Madame Bovary (1857), the masterpiece of
Gustave Flaubert (floh-BAIR) (1821–1880), is far
narrower in scope than Balzac’s work but unparal-
leled in its depth and accuracy of psychological in-
sight. The story of a frustrated middle-class housewife
who has an adulterous love affair and is betrayed by
her lover, Madame Bovary portrays the provincial
middle class as petty, smug, and hypocritical.
Emile Zola (1840–1902) was most famous for
his seamy, animalistic view of working-class life.
Like many later realists, Zola sympathized with
socialism—a sympathy evident in his overpowering
novel Germinal (1885).
Realism quickly spread beyond France. In England, Mary Ann
Sec tion Review Evans (1819–1880), who wrote under the pen name George Eliot,
brilliantly achieved a deeply felt, less sensational kind of realism.
• Scientific breakthroughs began to occur rapidly and Her great novel Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life (1871–
their application to industry in the fields of physics, 1872) examines masterfully the ways in which people are shaped
electrical engineering, and organic chemistry encour-
aged research and development to supplant the unscien- by their social medium as well as their own inner strivings, con-
tific ideas of poets, philosophers, and religion. flicts, and moral choices. Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) was more in
• Social scientists studied society using scientific methods the Zola tradition. His novels, such as Tess of the D’Urbervilles
such as August Comte’s positivist method. (1891) and The Return of the Native (1878), depict men and
• Charles Darwin built on Lyell’s and Lamarck’s ideas of women crushed by society, their own impulses, and bad luck.
evolution to propose that life on earth was immensely The greatest Russian realist, Count Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910),
ancient and evolved in a slow process without the need combined realism in description and character development with
for miraculous divine intervention. an atypical moralizing, which came to dominate his later work.
• Herbert Spencer and other Social Darwinists applied Tolstoy’s greatest work is War and Peace (1864–1869), a monumen-
evolution to human relations, arguing that “survival tal novel set against the historical background of Napoleon’s inva-
of the fittest” meant that society should accept the sion of Russia in 1812. Tolstoy went to great pains to develop his
wealthy as the “most fit” and need not help the unsuc-
cessful poor. fatalistic theory of history, which regards free will as an illusion and
the achievements of even the greatest leaders as only the channel-
• Realism in literature branched away from the romantics
and pursued middle and urban working class subjects, ing of historical necessity. Yet Tolstoy’s central message is one that
believing that heredity and environment were respon- most of the people discussed in this chapter would have readily ac-
sible for human behavior. cepted: human love, trust, and everyday family ties are life’s endur-
ing values.
Chapter Review 641
Chapter Review
What was life like in the cities, and how did urban life change in the nineteenth
century? (page 618) Key Terms
The revolution in industry had a decisive influence on the urban environment. The utilitarianism (p. 619)
populations of towns and cities grew rapidly because it was economically advantageous germ theory (p. 620)
to locate factories and offices in urban areas. This rapid growth worsened long-standing labor aristocracy (p. 628)
overcrowding and unhealthy living conditions and posed a frightening challenge for
society. Eventually government leaders, city planners, reformers, scientists, and ordi- sweated industries (p. 629)
nary citizens responded. They took effective action in public health and provided thermodynamics (p. 636)
themselves with other badly needed urban services. Gradually they tamed the fero- organic chemistry (p. 637)
cious savagery of the traditional city.
positivist method (p. 638)
evolution (p. 638)
What did the emergence of urban industrial society mean for rich and poor and Social Darwinists (p. 639)
those in between? (page 622) realism (p. 639)
As the quality of urban life improved, the class structure became more complex and
diversified than before. Urban society featured many distinct social groups, which existed
in a state of constant flux and competition. The gap between rich and poor remained
enormous and really quite traditional in mature urban society, although there were
countless gradations between the extremes. Large numbers of poor women in particular
continued to labor as workers in sweated industries, as domestic servants, and as prosti-
tutes in order to satisfy the demands of their masters in the servant-keeping classes.
How did families change as they coped with the challenges and the opportuni-
ties of the developing urban civilization? (page 630)
Major changes in family life accompanied the more complex and diversified class
system. Especially among the working classes, family life became more stable, more
loving, and less mercenary. These improvements had a price, however. Gender roles
for men and women became sharply defined and rigidly separate. Women especially
tended to be locked into a subordinate and stereotypical role. Nonetheless, on balance,
the quality of family life improved for all family members. Better, more stable family
relations reinforced the benefits for the masses of higher real wages, increased social
security, political participation, and education. Urban society in the late nineteenth
century represented a long step forward for humanity, but it remained very unequal.
What major changes in science and thought reflected and influenced the new
urban society? (page 636)
Inequality was a favorite theme of realist novelists such as Balzac and Zola. More
generally, literary realism reflected Western society’s growing faith in science, material
progress, and evolutionary thinking. The emergence of urban, industrial civilization
accelerated the secularization of the Western worldview.
Notes
1. A. Weber, The Growth of Cities in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1899), p. 1.
2. Quoted in E. Chadwick, Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of
Great Britain, ed. M. W. Flinn (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 1965; original
publication, 1842), pp. 315–316.
3. Quoted in R. P. Neuman, “The Sexual Question and Social Democracy in Imperial Ger-
many,” Journal of Social History 7 (Winter 1974): 276.
4. Quoted in R. Roberts, The Classic Slum: Salford Life in the First Quarter of the Century (Man-
chester, England: University of Manchester Press, 1971), p. 35.
5. Quoted in T. Zeldin, France, 1848–1945, vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), p. 328.
6. Quoted in Neuman, “The Sexual Question,” p. 281.
7. A. Comte, The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte, trans. H. Martineau, vol. 1 (London:
J. Chapman, 1853), pp. 1–2.

Middle-Class Youth and Sexuality
G rowing up in Vienna in a prosperous Jewish family,

Stephan Zweig (zwahyg) (1881–1942) became an
influential voice calling for humanitarian values and interna-
tional culture in early twentieth-century Europe. The follow-
ing passage from his autobiography, The World of Yesterday
(1943), offers a glimpse into late nineteenth-century attitudes
toward the sexuality of young adults and Zweig’s assessment
of the social consequences of these attitudes.
During the eight years of our higher schooling

[beyond grade school], something had occurred
which was of great importance to each one of us:
we ten-year-olds had grown into virile young men
of sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen, and Nature be-
An elegant ball for upper-class youth, with debutantes, junior
gan to assert its rights. . . . It did not take us long to
officers, and vigilant chaperons watching in the background (State
discover that those authorities in whom we had pre- Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia/The Bridgeman Art Library)
viously confided—school, family, and public mor-
als—manifested an astonishing insincerity in this
matter of sex. But what is more, they also demanded very few particularly rich young men could afford
secrecy and reserve from us in this connection. . . . the luxury of keeping a mistress, that is, taking an
This “social morality,” which on the one hand apartment and paying her expenses. And only a
privately presupposed the existence of sexuality and very few fortunate young men achieved the literary
its natural course, but on the other would not rec- ideal of love of the times—the only one which it
ognize it openly at any price, was doubly deceitful. was permitted to describe in novels—an affair with
While it winked one eye at a young man and even a married woman. The others helped themselves
encouraged him with the other “to sow his wild for the most part with shopgirls and waitresses, and
oats,” as the kindly language of the home put it, in this offered little inner satisfaction. . . . But, gener-
the case of a woman it studiously shut both eyes ally speaking, prostitution was still the foundation
and acted as if it were blind. That a man could ex- of the erotic life outside of marriage; in a certain
perience desires, and was permitted to experience sense it constituted a dark underground vault over
them, was silently admitted by custom. But to ad- which rose the gorgeous structure of middle-class
mit frankly that a woman could be subject to simi- society with its faultless, radiant façade.
lar desires, or that creation for its eternal purposes We should not permit ourselves to be misled by
also required a female polarity, would have trans- sentimental novels or stories of that epoch. It was a
gressed the conception of the “sanctity of woman- bad time for youth. The young girls were hermeti-
hood.” In the pre-Freudian era, therefore, the cally locked up under the control of the family,
axiom was agreed upon that a female person could hindered in their free bodily as well as intellectual
have no physical desires as long as they had not development. The young men were forced to se-
been awakened by man, and that, obviously, was crecy and reticence by a morality which funda-
officially permitted only in marriage. . . . mentally no one believed or obeyed. Unhampered,
What [sexual] possibilities actually existed for a honest relationships—in other words, all that could
young man of the middle-class world? . . . Only a have made youth happy and joyous according to
643
the laws of Nature—were permitted only to the and the young women of the comfortable
very few. middle class? If so, what was that unity?
3. Zweig ends this passage with a value judgment:
Questions for Analysis “It was a bad time for youth.” Do you agree or
1. According to Zweig, how did the sex lives of disagree? Why?
young middle-class women and young middle-
class men differ? What accounted for these Source: “Middle-Class Youth and Sexuality,” from The
World of Yesterday by Stephan Zweig, translated by
differences?
Helmut Ripperger, copyright © 1943 by the Viking Press,
2. Was there nonetheless a basic underlying unity Inc. Used by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of
in the way society treated both the young men Penguin Group (USA) Inc., and Williams Verlag AG.
644
CHAPTER 25
The Age of
Nationalism
1850–1914
Chapter Preview
Napoleon III in France
How in France did Napoleon III seek to
reconcile popular and conservative
forces in an authoritarian nation-state?
Nation Building in Italy and Germany

How did the process of unification in
Italy and Germany create conservative
nation-states?
Nation Building in the United States

In what ways did the United States
experience the full drama of nation
building?
The Modernization of Russia and the

Ottoman Empire
What steps did Russia and the Ottoman
Turks take toward modernization, and
how successful were they?
France’s Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie greet Britain’s Queen

Victoria and Prince Albert in a dazzling ceremony in Paris in 1855. The Responsive National State (1871–1914)
(The Royal Collection, © 2008 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II)
Why after 1871 did ordinary citizens feel
a growing loyalty to their governments?
Marxism and the Socialist Movement

Why did the socialist movement grow,
and how revolutionary was it?
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY: Theodor Herzl
LISTENING TO THE PAST: The Making of a Socialist
645
646 Chapter 25 The Age of Nationalism, 1850–1914
T he revolutions of 1848 closed one era and opened another. Urban industrial
society began to take a strong hold on the continent and in the young United
States, as it already had in Great Britain. Internationally, the repressive peace and
diplomatic stability of Metternich’s time were replaced by a period of war and rapid
change. In thought and culture, exuberant romanticism gave way to hardheaded
realism. In the Atlantic economy, the hard years of the 1840s were followed by
good times and prosperity throughout most of the 1850s and 1860s. Perhaps most
important of all, Western society progressively developed, for better or worse, a
new and effective organizing principle capable of coping with the many-sided
challenge of the dual revolution and the emerging urban civilization. That prin-
ciple was nationalism—dedication to an identification with the nation-state.
The triumph of nationalism is an enormously significant historical develop-
ment that was by no means completely predictable. After all, nationalism had
been a powerful force since at least 1789, but it had repeatedly failed to realize its
goals, most spectacularly so in 1848. Yet by 1914 nationalism had become in one
way or another an almost universal faith in Europe and in the United States, a
faith that had evolved to appeal not only to predominately middle-class liberals but
also to the broad masses of society. To understand this fateful evolution is the task
of this chapter.
Napoleon III in France

How in France did Napoleon III seek to reconcile popular and conservative
forces in an authoritarian nation-state?
The ideas of nationhood and popular sovereignty posed a fearful revolutionary

threat to conservatives like Metternich. Yet from the vantage point of the twenty-
first century, it is clear that nationalism wears many masks: it may be narrowly
liberal or democratic and radical, as it was for Mazzini and Michelet, but it can
also flourish in dictatorial states, which may be conservative, fascist, or commu-
nist. Napoleon I’s France had already combined national feeling with authoritar-
ian rule. Significantly, it was Napoleon’s nephew, Louis Napoleon, who revived
and extended this merger. In doing so, he provided a model for political leaders
elsewhere.
Although Louis Napoleon Bonaparte had played no

The Second Republic part in French politics before 1848, he was elected
and Louis Napoleon president by a resounding majority. There were several
reasons for his success. First, he had the great name of his uncle, whom romantics
had transformed through legend from a dictator into a hero. Second, middle-class
and peasant property owners wanted a tough ruler to curb the socialist agitation of
workers. Third, in late 1848 Louis Napoleon had a positive “program” for France,
which had been elaborated in widely circulated pamphlets before the election. He
argued that the state and its leader had a sacred duty to provide jobs and stimulate
the economy. Large numbers of French peasants and workers believed his claim
that he would champion the interests of all classes.
Elected to a four-year term, President Louis Napoleon had to share power
with a conservative National Assembly. But in 1851, after the Assembly failed to
Chronology
change the constitution so he could run for a second term, Louis 1852–1871 Reign of Napoleon III in France
Napoleon seized power in a coup d’état. Restoring universal
male suffrage, Louis Napoleon called on the French people, as 1859–1870 Unification of Italy
his uncle had done, to legalize his actions. They did: 92 percent 1860–1900 Industrialization of Russia
voted to make him president for ten years. A year later, by the 1861 Freeing of Russian serfs
greatest electoral margin yet, the authoritarian Louis Napoleon
1861–1865 U.S. Civil War
was made emperor of the French nation.
1866 Austro-Prussian War
1870–1871 Franco-Prussian War
Louis Napoleon—now proclaimed
Napoleon III’s 1870–1878 Kulturkampf, Bismarck’s attack on
Emperor Napoleon III—experienced Catholic Church
Second Empire both success and failure between
1852 and 1870. His greatest success was with the economy, par- 1880s Educational reforms affect Catholic
schools in France
ticularly in the 1850s. His government encouraged the new in-
vestment banks and massive railroad construction that were at 1883 First social security laws to help
the heart of the Industrial Revolution on the continent. The gov- workers in Germany
ernment also fostered general economic expansion through an 1905 Bloody Sunday in Russia
ambitious program of public works, which included the rebuild- 1908 Young Turks in Power
ing of Paris to improve the urban environment (see page 621).
Profits soared while unemployment declined.
Louis Napoleon aimed to garner the support of workers as
well as business owners. In the 1850s he regulated pawnshops,
supported credit unions, and provided better housing for the working classes. In
the 1860s, he granted workers the right to form unions and the right to strike—
important economic rights denied by earlier governments.
At first, political power remained in the hands of the emperor. At the same
time, Napoleon III restricted but did not abolish the Assembly. Members were
elected by universal male suffrage every six years, and Louis Napoleon and his
government took the parliamentary elections very seriously. By persuading voters
that the election of government candidates was the key to roads, tax rebates, and a
thousand other benefits, Napoleon III’s supporters won big victories in 1857 and
1863. Yet in the 1860s, Napoleon III encountered opposition when he attempted
to reorganize Europe on the principle of nationality and gain influence and terri-
tory for France and himself in the process. Problems in Italy and the rising power
of Prussia led to increasing criticism at home. With increasing effectiveness, the
middle-class liberals who had always wanted a less authoritarian re-
gime continued to denounce his rule. Sec tion Review
Napoleon was always sensitive to the public mood. Public opin-
ion, he once said, always wins the last victory. Thus in the 1860s, he • Louis Napoleon Bonaparte had several things in his
favor: his name, the middle and peasant classes
progressively liberalized his empire. He gave the Assembly greater wanted a tough ruler, and he had a positive program
powers and the opposition candidates greater freedom, which they for the economy.
used to good advantage. In 1869 the opposition, consisting of re- • After his election he shared power with the National
publicans, monarchists, and liberals, polled almost 45 percent of Assembly but when they would not allow him to run
the vote. again, he seized power, successfully faced re-election
The next year, a sick and weary Louis Napoleon again granted and then took the title of emperor Napoleon III,
France a new constitution, which combined a basically parliamen- ending the Second Republic.
tary regime with a hereditary emperor as chief of state. In a final great • Napoleon III liberalized the Second Empire, improv-
plebiscite on the eve of the disastrous war with Prussia, 7.5 million ing the French economy through his public works
program, and allowing universal male suffrage, but by
Frenchmen voted in favor of the new constitution, and only 1.5 mil- the late 1860s, facing an imminent war with Prussia,
lion opposed it. Napoleon III’s attempt to reconcile a strong na- his power waned in favor of the Assembly and a new
tional state with universal male suffrage was still evolving and was constitution.
doing so in a democratic direction.
Nation Building in Italy and Germany

How did the process of unification in Italy and Germany create conserva-
tive nation-states?
Louis Napoleon’s triumph in 1848 and his authoritarian rule in the 1850s pro-
vided the old ruling classes of Europe with a new model in politics. To what extent
might the expanding urban middle classes and even portions of the growing work-
ing classes rally to a strong and essentially conservative national state? This was
one of the great political questions in the 1850s and 1860s. In central Europe, a
resounding answer came with the national unification of Italy and Germany.
Italy, which had been a collection of competing city-

Cavour and Garibaldi states during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, was
in Italy reorganized at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. The
rich northern provinces of Lombardy and Venetia were taken by Metternich’s Aus-
tria. Sardinia and Piedmont were under the rule of an Italian monarch, and Tus-
cany, with its famous capital Florence, shared north-central Italy with several
smaller states. Central Italy and Rome were ruled by the papacy; Naples and Sicily
were ruled, as they had been for almost a hundred years, by a branch of the Bour-
bons. Metternich was not wrong in dismissing Italy as “a geographical expression.”
Between 1815 and 1848, the goal of an Italian nation captured the imagina-
tions of many Italians. For many, the kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont was ideally
suited to achieve the goal of national unification. Its constitution provided for a
fair degree of civil liberties and real parliamentary government, with deputies
elected by a limited franchise based on income. Its leaders had the diplomatic and
military skills needed to unify the peninsula.
Sardinia was ruled by King Victor Emmanuel, who had appointed Count Ca-
millo Benso di Cavour (kah-VOOR) to prime minister in 1850. A brilliant states-
man, Cavour came from a noble family, but he had also made a substantial fortune
in business before entering politics. Cavour’s national goals were limited and real-
istic. Until 1859 he sought unity only for the states of northern and perhaps central
Italy in a greatly expanded kingdom of Sardinia.
In the 1850s, Cavour worked to consolidate Sardinia as a liberal constitutional
state capable of leading northern Italy. His program of highways and railroads, of
civil liberties and opposition to clerical privilege, increased support for Sardinia
throughout northern Italy. Yet Cavour realized that Victor Emmanuel could not
drive Austria out of Lombardy and Venetia and unify northern Italy without the
help of a powerful ally. Accordingly, he worked for a secret diplomatic alliance
with Napoleon III against Austria.
Finally, in July 1858 Cavour succeeded and goaded Austria into attacking Sar-
dinia in 1859. Napoleon III came to Sardinia’s defense. Then, after the victory of
the combined Franco-Sardinian forces, Napoleon III did a sudden about-face. De-
ciding it was not in his interest to have too strong a state on his southern border and
criticized by French Catholics for supporting the pope’s declared enemy, Napo-
leon III abandoned Cavour and made a compromise peace with the Austrians.
Yet Cavour’s plans were salvaged by the skillful maneuvers of his allies in the
moderate nationalist movement. While the war against Austria had raged in the
north, nationalists in central Italy had fanned popular revolts and driven out their
easily toppled princes. With the nationalists holding firm, Cavour gained Napo-
leon III’s support by ceding Savoy and Nice to France. The people of central Italy
Nation Building in Italy and Germany 649
then voted overwhelmingly to join a greatly enlarged kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont.

Cavour had achieved his original goal of a northern Italian state (see Map 25.1).
Meanwhile, in southern Italy, nationalists united under the superpatriot Giu-
seppe Garibaldi (juh-SEP-ee gar-uh-BAWL-dee) (1807–1882). The son of a poor
sailor, Garibaldi personified the romantic, revolutionary nationalism and republi-
canism of Mazzini and 1848. Partly to use him and partly to get rid of him, Cavour
secretly supported Garibaldi’s bold plan to “liberate” the kingdom of the Two Sic-
ilies. Landing on the shores of Sicily in May 1860, Garibaldi’s guerrilla band of a
thousand Red Shirts captured the imagination of the Sicilian peasantry. With Red Shirts The guerrilla army of
their support, the guerrilla leader took Palermo. Then he and his men crossed to Giuseppe Garibaldi, who invaded Sicily
in 1860 in an attempt to liberate it and
the mainland, marched triumphantly toward Naples, and prepared to attack Rome won the hearts of the Sicilian peasantry.
and the pope. But the wily Cavour quickly sent his forces to intercept Garibaldi.
Cavour realized that an attack on Rome would bring about war with France,
and he also feared Garibaldi’s radicalism and popular appeal. Thus he immediately
organized a plebiscite in the conquered territories. Despite the urging of some
radical supporters, the patriotic Garibaldi did not oppose Cavour, and the people
5˚E 10˚E 15˚E
SWITZERLAND AUSTRIAN EMPIRE
LOMBARDY VENETIA
SAVOY (from Austria) (from Austria 1866)
(to France 1860) Trieste
Magenta Milan Villafranca
Turin Solferino Venice
Po R. 45˚N
PIEDMONT PARMA
A
ROMAGNA
EN
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OD
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OTTOMAN EMPIRE
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M A
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Corsica (1870)
a
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(France)
Rome
S A R D I
Bari
Naples
Taranto
Sardinia
Ty r r h e n i a n 40˚N
N I A
S e a
KINGDOM OF
THE TWO SICILIES
Kingdom of Sardinia before 1859 Palermo

To Kingdom of Sardinia, 1859
Strait of
To Kingdom of Sardinia, 1860 Sicily Messina
To Kingdom of Italy, 1866, 1870
0 50 100 Km.
Major battle
Boundary of Kingdom of Italy after unification 0 50 100 Mi.
MAP 25.1 The Unification of Italy, 1859–1870

The leadership of Sardinia-Piedmont, nationalist fervor, and Garibaldi’s attack on the kingdom of Two
Sicilies were decisive factors in the unification of Italy.
of the south voted to join Sardinia. When Garibaldi and Victor Emmanuel rode
through Naples to cheering crowds, they symbolically sealed the union of north
and south, of monarch and nation-state.
Cavour had succeeded. He had controlled Garibaldi and had turned popular
nationalism in a conservative direction. The new kingdom of Italy, which ex-
panded to include Venice in 1866 and Rome in 1870, was a parliamentary mon-
archy under Victor Emmanuel, neither radical nor democratic. Despite political
unity, only a small minority of Italian males had the right to vote. The propertied
classes and the common people were divided. A great and growing social and cul-
tural gap separated the progressive, industrializing north from the stagnant, agrar-
ian south. The new Italy was united on paper, but profound divisions remained.
In the aftermath of 1848, the German states were

Bismarck and the locked in a political stalemate. After Austria and
Austro-Prussian Russia blocked Frederick William’s attempt to unify
War (1866) Germany “from above,” tension grew between Austria
and Prussia.
At the same time, powerful economic forces were contributing to the Austro-
Prussian rivalry. By the end of 1853, Austria was the only German state that had
Zollverein A German customs union not joined the German customs union, or Zollverein. Middle-class and business
founded in 1834 to stimulate trade and groups in the Zollverein were enriching themselves and finding solid economic
increase the revenues of member states.
reasons to bolster their idealistic support of national unification. Prussia’s leading
role within the Zollverein gave it a valuable advantage in its struggle against Aus-
tria’s supremacy in German political affairs.
Prussia’s king William I (r. 1861–1888), who had replaced the unstable Fred-
erick William IV, was convinced of the need for a larger army, which meant a
bigger defense budget and higher taxes. His plans were opposed by parliament,
however, which was in the hands of the liberal middle class. The wealthy middle
class wanted society to be less, not more, militaristic. Above all, middle-class rep-
resentatives wanted to establish once and for all that the parliament, not the king,
had the ultimate political power and that the army was responsible to Prussia’s
elected representatives. King William then called on Count Otto von Bismarck to
head a new ministry and defy the parliament. This was a momentous choice.
The most important figure in German history between Luther and Hitler,
Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898) was a master of politics and a devoted servant of
his Prussian sovereign. “One must always have two irons in the fire,” he once said.
He kept his options open, pursuing one policy and then another as he moved with
skill and cunning toward his goal.
When the aristocratic Bismarck took office as chief minister in 1862, he made
a strong but unfavorable impression. Declaring that the government would rule
without parliamentary consent, Bismarck lashed out at the middle-class opposition:
“The great questions of the day will not be decided by speeches and resolutions—
that was the blunder of 1848 and 1849—but by blood and iron.” Bismarck had the
Prussian bureaucracy go right on collecting taxes, even though the parliament
refused to approve the budget. Bismarck reorganized the army. And for four years,
from 1862 to 1866, the voters of Prussia continued to express their opposition by
sending large liberal majorities to the parliament.
Opposition at home spurred the search for success abroad. An opportunity
presented itself in 1864, when the Danish king tried again, as in 1848, to bring the
provinces into a more centralized Danish state against the will of the German
Confederation. Prussia joined Austria in a short and successful war against Den-
Nation Building in Italy and Germany 651
mark. However, Bismarck was convinced that Austria should be expelled from
German affairs so that Prussia could be in control. He knew that a war with Austria
would have to be a localized one that would not provoke a mighty alliance against
Prussia. By skillfully neutralizing Russia and France, he was in a position to en-
gage in a war of his own making.
The Austro-Prussian War of 1866 lasted only seven weeks. Utilizing railroads
to mass troops and the new breechloading needle gun to achieve maximum fire-
power, the reorganized Prussian army overran northern Germany and defeated
Austria decisively at the Battle of Sadowa (SAD-daw-vah) in Bohemia. Anticipat-
ing Prussia’s future needs, Bismarck offered Austria realistic, even generous, peace
terms. Austria paid no reparations and lost no territory to Prussia, although Venetia
was ceded to Italy. But the German Confederation was dissolved, and Austria
agreed to withdraw from German affairs. The states north of the Main River were
grouped in the new North German Confederation, led by an expanded Prussia.
The mainly Catholic states of the south remained independent while forming al-
liances with Prussia. Bismarck’s fundamental goal of Prussian expansion was being
realized (see Map 25.2).
In the aftermath of victory, Bismarck fashioned a federal

The Taming of constitution for the new North German Confedera-
the Parliament tion. Each state retained its own local government, but
the king of Prussia became president of the confederation, and the chancellor—
Bismarck—was responsible only to the president. King and chancellor controlled
the army and foreign affairs. There was also a legislature with members of the
lower house elected by universal male suffrage. With this radical innovation, Bis-
marck opened the door to popular participation and the possibility of going over
the head of the middle class directly to the people, much as Napoleon III had done
in France. All the while, however, ultimate power rested in the hands of Prussia
and its king and army.
Marshaling all his diplomatic skill, Bismarck reached out to parliament and
asked them to pass a special indemnity bill to approve after the fact all the govern-
ment’s spending between 1862 and 1866. Most of the liberals jumped at the
chance to cooperate. With German unity in sight, the German middle class ac-
cepted the conservative, authoritarian government that Bismarck represented. In
the years before 1914, the values of the aristocratic Prussian army officer increas-
ingly replaced those of the middle-class liberal in public esteem and set the social
standard.1
The final act in the drama of German unification fol-

The Franco-Prussian lowed quickly. Bismarck realized that a patriotic war
War (1870–1871) with France would drive the south German states into
his arms. The French obligingly played their part. The apparent issue—whether a
distant relative of Prussia’s William I (and France’s Napoleon III) might become
king of Spain—was only a diplomatic pretext. By 1870 the French leaders of the
Second Empire, goaded by Bismarck and alarmed by their powerful new neighbor
on the Rhine, had decided on a war to teach Prussia a lesson.
As soon as war against France began in 1870, Bismarck had the wholehearted
support of the south German states. With other governments standing still—
Bismarck’s generosity to Austria in 1866 was paying big dividends—German forces
under Prussian leadership decisively defeated the main French army at Sedan on
10˚E 15˚E 20˚E 25˚E
SWEDEN
DENMARK
B a lt ic S e a 55˚N
N
Nor th Königsberg
SCHLESWIG
S ea Danzig EAST PRUSSIA
Kiel
HOLSTEIN
5˚E Lübeck POMERANIA WEST PRUSSIA
Hamburg MECKLENBURG
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OLDENBURG El b Vi R U SS I A N E M P I R E
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Amsterdam Hanover
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Antwerp R. Od
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SAXONY SILESIA
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PROVINCE
Sadowa 50˚N
. 1866
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Frankfurt
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os M ai
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1870 V Olmütz
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SWITZERLAND A U
Prussia before 1866
Conquered by Prussia in
Austro-Prussian War, 1866
Austrian territories excluded from
North German Confederation, 1867
ITALY Joined with Prussia to form
North German Confederation, 1867
45˚N
South German states joining with
Major battle Prussia to form German Empire, 1871
German Confederation boundary, 1815–1866 Won by Prussia in
Bismarck’s German Empire, 1871 Franco-Prussian War, 1871
Mapping the Past

Map 25.2 The Unification of Germany, 1866–1871
This map shows how Prussia expanded and a new German empire was created through two wars, the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 and the
Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871. It deserves careful study because it highlights how central Europe was remade and the power of Prussia-
Germany was greatly increased. [1] What were the results of the Austro-Prussian War? Specifically, how did Prussia treat its neighbors in the
north, such as Hanover and Saxony? [2] What losses did Austria experience in 1866? [3] What were the results of the Franco-Prussian War for
France and for the predominately Catholic states of southern Germany, such as Bavaria and Württemberg?
September 1, 1870. Louis Napoleon himself was captured and humiliated. Three
days later, French patriots in Paris proclaimed yet another French republic and
vowed to continue fighting. But after five months, in January 1871, a starving Paris
surrendered, and France went on to accept Bismarck’s harsh peace terms. By this
time, the south German states had agreed to join a new German empire.
Nation Building in the United States 653
Proclaiming the German

Empire, January 1871
This commemorative painting by Anton
von Werner testifies to the nationalistic
intoxication in Germany after the victory
over France. William I of Prussia stands
on a platform surrounded by princes
and generals in the famous Hall of
Mirrors in the palace of Versailles, while
officers from all the units around a
besieged Paris cheer and salute him
with uplifted swords as emperor of a
unified Germany. Bismarck, like a heroic
white knight, stands between king and
army. (akg-images)
Sec tion Review

The victorious William I was proclaimed emperor of Germany in the Hall of • The prime minister of Sardinia and
Mirrors in the palace of Versailles. Europe had a nineteenth-century German “sun Piedmont, Cavour, sought Italian
unity and worked to consolidate the
king.” As in the 1866 constitution, the king of Prussia and his ministers had ulti- north; he used Napoleon III’s support
mate power in the new German Empire, and the lower house of the legislature to gain central Italy from the papacy
was elected by universal male suffrage. and Garibaldi’s Red Shirts uprising in
The Franco-Prussian War released an enormous surge of patriotic feeling in the south to establish a parliamentary
Germany while poisoning relations with France. Prussia had become, with fortifi- monarchy for Italy under King Victor
Emmanuel.
cation by the other German states, the most powerful state in Europe in less than
a decade. Most Germans were enormously proud, blissfully imagining themselves • Prussian King William I appointed
Otto von Bismarck to head a new
the fittest and best of the European species. Semi-authoritarian nationalism and a government ministry to defy parlia-
“new conservatism,” which was based on an alliance of the propertied classes and ment and achieve his goals of reorgan-
sought the active support of the working classes, had triumphed in Germany. izing the army, defeating Austria,
dissolving the German Confedera-
tion, and forming the new North
German Confederation led by Prussia.
Nation Building in the United States • Bismarck set up a royal system of
In what ways did the United States experience the full drama of government that controlled the army
and foreign affairs, although he pla-
nation building?
cated the lower classes by instituting
universal male suffrage to elect the
Closely linked to European developments in the nineteenth century, the United legislature’s lower house, and he won
States experienced the full drama of bloody nation building. The “United” States the approval of parliament by pursu-
ing German unification.
was divided by slavery from its birth, as economic development in the young re-
public carried free and slaveholding states in very different directions. Northerners • Bismarck arranged the Franco-
Prussian war to win the support of
extended family farms westward and began building English-model factories in the south German states; the French
the Northeast. By 1850 an industrializing, urbanizing North was also building a defeat allowed him to form the new
system of canals and railroads and attracting most of the European immigrants. In German Empire.
the South, cotton plantations dominated the economy, producing 5 million bales
a year and satisfying an apparently insatiable demand from textile mills in Europe
and New England.
The rise of the cotton empire revitalized slave-based agriculture, spurred ex-
ports, and played a key role in igniting rapid U.S. economic growth. The large
profits flowing from cotton also led influential Southerners to defend slavery. Even
though three-quarters of all Southern white families were small farmers and owned
no slaves in 1850, Southern whites developed a strong cultural identity and came
to see themselves as a closely knit “we” distinct from the Northern “they.” North-
ern whites viewed their free-labor system as being morally superior. Thus regional
antagonisms intensified.
These antagonisms came to a climax after 1848 when a defeated Mexico
Homestead Act A result of the ceded to the United States a vast area stretching from west Texas to the Pacific
American Civil War that gave western Ocean. Debate over the extension of slavery in this new territory caused attitudes
land to settlers, reinforcing the concept
to harden on both sides. In Abraham Lincoln’s famous words, the United States
of free labor in a market economy.
was a “house divided.”
Lincoln’s election as president in 1860 gave Southern “fire-eaters” the chance
Sec tion Review they had been waiting for. Eventually eleven states left the Union, determined to
win their own independence, and formed the Confederate States of America.
• Differences between the urbanized
North and the agricultural slave-owning When Southern troops fired on a Union fort in South Carolina’s Charleston har-
plantations in the South led to the bor, war began.
American Civil War. The long Civil War (1861–1865) was the bloodiest conflict in American his-
• The factories and free market society of tory, but in the end the South was decisively defeated and the Union preserved.
the North were victorious over South- While Northern causalities were high, many people there prospered during the
ern rebels in the Civil War, fostering a war years and certain dominant characteristics of American life and national cul-
new American nationalism. ture took shape. Powerful business corporations emerged, steadfastly supported by
• The Homestead Act providing western the Republican party during and after the war. The Homestead Act of 1862,
land to settlers and the abolishment of which gave western land to settlers, and the Thirteenth Amendment of 1865,
slavery reinforced the concept of “mani-
fest destiny,” that the Union was des- which ended slavery, reinforced the concept of free labor taking its chances in a
tined to occupy the continent and market economy. Finally, the triumph of the Union seemed to confirm that the
become a great nation. nation’s “manifest destiny” was indeed to straddle a continent as a great world
power. Thus a new American nationalism grew out of civil war.
The Modernization of Russia and the

Ottoman Empire
What steps did Russia and the Ottoman Turks take toward modernization,
and how successful were they?
The Russian and the Ottoman empires also experienced profound political crises in
the mid-nineteenth century. These crises were unlike those occurring in Italy and
Germany, for neither Russia nor the Ottoman Empire aspired to build a single pow-
erful state out of a jumble of principalities. Both empires were already vast multi-
national states, built on long traditions of military conquest and absolutist rule by
elites from the dominant ethnic groups—the Russians and the Ottoman Turks. In
the early nineteenth century these governing elites in both states were strongly op-
posed to representative government and national self-determination, and they con-
modernization The changes that
enable a country to compete effectively tinued to concentrate on absolutist rule and competition with other great powers.
with the leading countries at a For both states relentless power politics led to serious trouble. It became clear to
given time. the leaders of both empires that they had to embrace the process of modernization,
The Modernization of Russia and the Ottoman Empire 655
defined narrowly and usefully as the changes that enable a country to compete
effectively with the leading countries at a given time. This limited conception of
modernization fits Russia after the Crimean War particularly well, and it helps
explain developments in the Ottoman Empire.
In the 1850s, almost 90 percent of the Russian popula-

The “Great Reforms” tion lived on the land and industry was little developed.
Agricultural techniques were backward, and serfdom
was still the basic social institution. Bound to the lord on a hereditary basis, the
peasant serf was little more than a slave.
Serfdom had become the great moral and political issue for the government by
the 1840s. Then the Crimean War of 1853 to 1856, arising out of a dispute with
France over who should protect certain Christian shrines in the Ottoman Empire,
brought crisis. Because the fighting was concentrated in the Crimean peninsula
on the Black Sea, Russia’s transportation network of rivers and wagons failed to
supply the distant Russian armies adequately. France and Great Britain, aided by
Sardinia and the Ottoman Empire, inflicted a humiliating defeat on Russia.
This military defeat demonstrated that Russia had fallen behind the rapidly
industrializing nations of western Europe. At the very least, Russia needed rail-
roads, better armaments, and reorganization of the army if it was to maintain its
international position. Moreover, the disastrous war had caused hardship and
raised the specter of massive peasant rebellion. Reform of serfdom was imperative.
Military disaster thus forced Alexander II (r. 1855–1881) and his ministers along
the path of rapid social change and general modernization.
The first and greatest of the reforms was the freeing of the serfs in 1861. Hu-
man bondage was abolished forever, and the emancipated peasants received, on
average, about half of the land. Yet they had to pay fairly high prices for their land,
and because the land was owned collectively, each peasant village was jointly re-
sponsible for the payments of all the families in the village. Collective ownership
and responsibility made it very difficult for individual peasants to improve agricul-
tural methods or leave their villages. Thus the effects of the reform were limited.
Most of the later reforms were also halfway measures. In 1864 Alexander II
established a new institution of local government, the zemstvo (ZEMST-voh). Rus- zemstvo A new institution of local
sian liberals hoped that this reform would lead to an elected national parliament, government in reformed Russia, whose
members were elected by a three-class
but they were soon disappointed. The local zemstvo remained subordinate to the system of towns, peasant villages, and
traditional bureaucracy and the local nobility. More successful was reform of the noble landowners.
legal system, which established independent courts and equality before the law.
Education and policies toward Russian Jews were also liberalized somewhat, and
censorship was relaxed but not removed.
Until the twentieth century, Russia’s greatest strides toward modernization
were economic rather than political. Industry and transport, both so vital to the
military, were transformed when the government subsidized private railway com-
panies. The railroads enabled agricultural Russia to export grain and thus earn
money for further industrialization. Industrial suburbs grew up around Moscow
and St. Petersburg, and a class of modern factory workers began to take shape.
Industrial development strengthened Russia’s military forces and gave rise to
territorial expansion to the south and east. Imperial expansion greatly excited
many ardent Russian nationalists and superpatriots, who became some of the gov-
ernment’s most enthusiastic supporters. Industrial development also contributed
mightily to the spread of Marxian thought and the transformation of the Russian
revolutionary movement after 1890.
In 1881 Alexander II was assassinated by a small group of terrorists. The era of

reform came to an abrupt end, for the new tsar (zahr), Alexander III (r. 1881–
1894), was a determined reactionary. Nevertheless, economic modernization sped
forward under Sergei Witte (sur-GEY VIT-uh), the tough, competent minister of
finance from 1892 to 1903. Inspired by the writings of Friedrich List (see pages
575–576), Witte believed that the harsh reality of industrial backwardness was
threatening Russia’s power and greatness.
Therefore, under Witte’s leadership the government built state-owned rail-
roads rapidly, doubling the network to thirty-five thousand miles by the end of the
century. Witte established high protective tariffs to build Russian industry, and he
put the country on the gold standard of the “civilized world” in order to strengthen
Russian finances.
Witte’s greatest innovation was to use the West to catch up with the West. His
efforts to entice Westerners to locate their factories in Russia were especially suc-
cessful in southern Russia. There, in eastern Ukraine, foreign capitalists and their
engineers built an enormous and very modern steel and coal industry.2 In 1900
peasants still constituted the great majority of the population, but Russia was catch-
ing up with the industrialized West.
Catching up partly meant vigorous territorial expan-

The Revolution sion, for this was the age of Western imperialism. By
of 1905 1903 Russia had established a sphere of influence in
Chinese Manchuria and was eyeing northern Korea. When the diplomatic pro-
tests of equally imperialistic Japan were ignored, the Japanese launched a surprise
attack in February 1904. After Japan scored repeated victories, Russia was forced
in September 1905 to accept a humiliating defeat.
As is often the case, military disaster abroad brought political upheaval at
home. The business and professional classes had long wanted a liberal, representa-
tive government. Urban factory workers had all the grievances of early industrial-
ization and were organized in a radical and still illegal labor movement. Peasants
had gained little from the era of reforms and were suffering from poverty and over-
population. At the same time, nationalist sentiment was emerging among the
empire’s minorities, and subject nationalities such as the Poles and Ukrainians
were calling for self-rule. With the army pinned down in Manchuria, all these
revolution of 1905 A popular upheaval
that overturned absolute tsarist rule and currents of discontent converged in the revolution of 1905.
made Russia into a conservative On a Sunday in January 1905, a massive crowd of workers and their families
constitutional monarchy. converged peacefully on the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg to present a petition
Bloody Sunday A massacre of peaceful to Tsar Nicholas II (1894–1917). Suddenly troops opened fire, killing and wound-
protesters at the Winter Palace in ing hundreds. The Bloody Sunday massacre turned ordinary workers against the
St. Petersberg in 1905 that turned tsar and produced a wave of general indignation.
ordinary workers against the tsar and Outlawed political parties came out into the open, and by the summer of 1905
produced a wave of general indignation.
strikes, peasant uprisings, revolts among minority nationalities, and troop mutinies
October Manifesto The result of a were sweeping the country. The revolutionary surge culminated in October 1905
great general strike in October 1905, it in a great paralyzing general strike, which forced the government to capitulate.
granted full civil rights and promised a
popularly elected Duma (parliament)
The tsar issued the October Manifesto, which granted full civil rights and prom-
with real legislative power. ised a popularly elected Duma (DOO-muh) (parliament) with real legislative
power. The manifesto split the opposition. Frightened middle-class leaders helped
Duma The Russian parliament that the government repress the uprising and survive as a constitutional monarchy.
opened in 1906, elected indirectly by
universal male suffrage but controlled On the eve of the opening of the first Duma in May 1906, the government is-
after 1907 by the tsar and the conserva- sued the new constitution, the Fundamental Laws. The tsar retained great powers.
tive classes. The Duma, elected indirectly by universal male suffrage, and a largely appointive
The Modernization of Russia and the Ottoman Empire 657
upper house, could debate and pass laws, but the tsar had an absolute veto. As in
Bismarck’s Germany, the emperor appointed his ministers, who did not need to
command a majority in the Duma.
The disappointed, predominately middle-class liberals, the largest group in the
newly elected Duma, saw the Fundamental Laws as a step backwards. Efforts to
cooperate with the tsar’s ministers soon broke down. After months of deadlock, the
tsar dismissed the Duma and rewrote the electoral law so as to increase greatly the
weight of the propertied classes. When elections were held, the tsar could count
on a loyal majority in the Duma. His chief minister then pushed through impor-
tant agrarian reforms designed to break down collective village ownership of land
and encourage the more enterprising peasants—his “wager on the strong.” In
1914, Russia was partially modernized, a conservative constitutional monarchy
with a peasant-based but industrializing economy.
The Ottoman Empire had reached its high point of

Decline and Reform development under Suleiman the Magnificent in the
in the Ottoman sixteenth century. By the eighteenth century it fell rap-
Empire idly behind western Europe in science, industrial skill,
and military technology. Also during the eighteenth century, Russia’s powerful
westernized army was able to occupy Ottoman provinces on the Danube River.
Pasha Halim Receiving Archduke Maximilian of Austria

As this painting suggests, Ottoman leaders became well versed in European languages and culture. They also mastered the game of
power politics, playing one European state off against another and securing the Ottoman Empire’s survival. The black servants on the right
may be slaves from the Sudan. (Miramare Palace Trieste/Dagli Orti/The Art Archive)
Caught up in the Napoleonic wars and losing more territory to Russia, the Ot-
tomans were forced in 1816 to grant Serbia local autonomy. In 1830, the Greeks
won their national independence, while French armies began their long and
bloody conquest of Algeria (see page 606). The Ottoman Empire was losing terri-
tory and power.
Another threat to the empire came from within, with the rise of Muhammad
Ali, the Ottoman governor in Egypt. In 1831, and again in 1839, his French-
trained forces occupied the Ottoman provinces of Syria and then Iraq and ap-
peared ready to depose Sultan Mahmud II (r. 1808–1839). The Ottoman sultan
survived, but only because the European powers forced Muhammad Ali to with-
draw. The European powers, minus France, preferred a weak and dependent Ot-
toman state to a strong and revitalized Muslim entity under a dynamic leader such
as Muhammad Ali.
Realizing their precarious position, liberal Ottoman statesmen launched in
1839 an era of radical reforms, which lasted with fits and starts until 1876 and
Tanzimat A set of reforms that were culminated in a constitution and a short-lived parliament. Known as the Tanzimat
designed to remake the Ottoman Empire (TAHNZ-ee-MAT) (literally, regulations or orders), these reforms were designed to
on a western European model.
remake the empire on a western European model. New decrees called for the
equality of Muslims, Christians, and Jews before the law and a modernized admin-
Young Turks Fervent patriots who istration and military. New commercial laws allowed free importation of foreign
seized power in the revolution of 1908 goods and permitted foreign merchants to operate freely throughout the empire.
in the Ottoman Empire. Of great importance for later developments, growing numbers among the elite
and the upwardly mobile embraced Western education and accepted
Sec tion Review secular values to some extent.
Intended to bring revolutionary modernization, the Tanzimat per-
• The Russians began to catch up with the West by mitted partial recovery but fell short of its goals for several reasons. First,
modernizing, abolishing serfdom, building rail- the liberal reforms failed to halt the growth of nationalism among Chris-
roads, and attracting industry from the West,
which built huge coal and steel factories. tian subjects in the Balkans (see Chapter 27), which resulted in crises
and defeats that undermined all reform efforts. Second, the Ottoman
• The rise in industrialization contributed to the
spread of Marxist thought, leading to the Russian initiatives did not curtail the appetite of Western imperialism, which
revolutionary movement. secured a stranglehold on the Ottoman economy. Finally, equality be-
• The Revolution of 1905 arose from defeat abroad fore the law for all citizens and religious communities actually increased
by the Japanese and upheaval at home; when the religious disputes, which were in turn exacerbated by the relentless in-
army fired on a peaceful demonstration, revolts terference of the European powers. This development embittered rela-
and strikes began and the tsar issued the October tions between the religious communities, distracted the government
Manifesto, granting civil rights and an elected from its reform mission, and split Muslims into secularists and religious
Duma (parliament).
conservatives. These Islamic conservatives became the most dependable
• The Duma and the new constitution were a disap- support of Sultan Abdülhamid (ahb-dool-hah-MEED) (r. 1876–1909),
pointment to the middle-class liberals because the
tsar rewrote laws to secure his power and that of who abandoned the model of European liberalism in his long and re-
the propertied classes, ending collective village pressive reign.
ownership of land and preserving the conservative The combination of declining international power and conservative
constitutional monarchy with a peasant-based but tyranny eventually led to a powerful resurgence of the modernizing im-
industrialized economy. pulse among idealistic Turkish exiles in Europe and young army officers
• The Ottoman Empire embarked on a partially in Istanbul. These fervent patriots, the so-called Young Turks, seized
successful series of reforms, the Tanzimat, in an power in the revolution of 1908, and they forced the sultan to imple-
attempt to gain territory and power, but increasing
disputes over religion and Western imperialism ment reforms. Failing to stop the rising tide of anti-Ottoman nationalism
allowed the Young Turks to seize power in the in the Balkans, the Young Turks helped to prepare the way for the birth
revolution of 1908. of modern secular Turkey after the defeat and collapse of the Ottoman
Empire in World War I (see page 705).
The Responsive National State (1871–1914) 659
The Responsive National State (1871–1914)

Why after 1871 did ordinary citizens feel a growing loyalty to
their governments?
For central and western Europe, the unification of Italy and Germany by “blood
and iron” marked the end of a dramatic period of nation building. After 1871 the
heartland of Europe was organized into strong national states. Only on the borders
of Europe—in Ireland and Russia, in Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire—
did subject peoples still strive for political unity and independence.
Despite some major differences between countries,

General Trends European domestic politics after 1871 had in common
the emergence of mass politics and growing mass loy-
alty toward the national state.
For good reason, ordinary people felt increasing loyalty to their governments.
By 1914 most men had gained the right to vote and felt that they counted; they
could influence the government to some extent. They were becoming “part of the
system.” Women also made some gains in their suffrage movement. By 1913
“Votes for Women!”

The long-simmering campaign for women’s suffrage in England came to a rapid boil after 1903, as
militants took to the streets, disrupted political meetings, and tried to storm Parliament. Manhandled
by the police and often jailed, some activists responded by damaging public property and going on
hunger strikes in prison. This 1908 illustration shows demonstrators giving a hero’s welcome to Mary
Leigh, the first suffragette imprisoned for property damage after she threw rocks through the
windows of the prime minister’s house. (The Art Archive)
women could vote in twelve of the western United States. In 1914 Norway gave
the vote to most women. Elsewhere, the efforts of more militant feminists pre-
pared the way for the triumph of the women’s suffrage movement immediately
after World War I.
As the right to vote spread, politicians and parties in national parliaments rep-
resented the people more responsively. Governments also passed laws to alleviate
general problems, thereby acquiring greater legitimacy and appearing more wor-
thy of support.
There was a manipulative aspect to building support for strong nation-states
after 1871. Conservative and moderate leaders found that workers who voted so-
cialist would rally around the flag in a diplomatic crisis or cheer when distant ter-
ritory was seized in Africa or Asia (see Chapter 26). Therefore, after 1871 governing
elites frequently used militaristic policies to help manage domestic conflicts, but
at the expense of increasing international tensions. Some leaders fanned anti-
Semitism in order to unite Christians around their party.
Politics in Germany after 1871 developed within the

The German Empire new framework of a federal union of Prussia and
twenty-four smaller states. This federal government
was run by a chancellor—until 1890, Bismarck—and a popularly elected lower
Reichstag The popularly elected lower house, called the Reichstag (RIKES-tog). Although Bismarck refused to be bound
house of government of the new German by a parliamentary majority, he tried nonetheless to maintain one. This situation
Empire after 1871.
gave the political parties opportunities. For most of his chancellorship Bismarck
relied mainly on the National Liberals, who supported legislation useful for fur-
ther economic and legal unification of the country.
Bismarck’s moves against the Catholic Church, however, gradually lost the
Kulturkampf A struggle for civilization, National Liberals their parliamentary majority. Known as the Kulturkampf (kool-
Bismarck’s attack on the Catholic church TOOR-kahmpf), or “struggle for civilization,” Bismarck’s anti-Catholic legislation
resulting from Pius IX’s declaration of
was a response to Pope Pius IX’s declaration of papal infallibility in 1870, which
papal infallibility in 1870.
seemed to make the pope and not the government the ultimate source of authority
for Catholics. Catholics throughout the country turned to the Catholic Center
party, which blocked passage of national laws hostile to the church. Bismarck was
forced to abandon his attack and instead court the support of the Catholic Center
party, whose supporters included many small farmers in western and southern
Germany. By enacting high tariffs on cheap grain from the outside the country, he
won over both the Catholic Center and the Protestant Junkers, who had large
landholdings in the east. With the tariffs, then, Bismark won Catholic and conser-
vative support.
Bismarck had been looking for a way to increase taxes, and the solution he
chose was higher tariffs. Many other governments acted similarly. The 1880s and
1890s saw a widespread return to protectionism. France, in particular, established
very high tariffs to protect agriculture and industry, peasants and manufacturers,
from foreign competition. Thus the German government and other governments
responded effectively to a major economic problem and won greater loyalty. The
general rise of protectionism in this period was also an outstanding example of the
dangers of self-centered nationalism: new tariffs led to international name-calling
and nasty trade wars.
Like other European leaders, Bismarck feared the revolutionary language of
socialism. In 1878, after two attempts on the life of William I by radicals (though
not socialists), Bismarck used a carefully orchestrated national outcry to ram through
the Reichstag a law that outlawed the Social Democratic party and restricted so-
cialist meetings. However, German socialists displayed a discipline and organiza-

tion worthy of the Prussian army itself. Bismarck decided to try another tack.
Bismarck’s new approach was to create social programs that would win him
the support of working-class people. In 1883 and 1884 the government established
national sickness and accident insurance; in 1889 it established old-age pensions
and retirement benefits. This national social security system, paid for through
compulsory contributions by wage earners and employers as well as grants from
the state, was the first of its kind anywhere. Bismarck’s social security system did
not wean workers from voting socialist, but it did give them a small stake in the
system and protect them from some of the uncertainties of the complex urban
industrial world. This enormously significant development was a product of po-
litical competition and government efforts to win popular support.
Increasingly, the great issues in German domestic politics were socialism and
the Marxian Social Democratic party. In 1890 the new emperor, the young, ideal-
istic, and unstable William II (r. 1888–1918), opposed Bismarck’s attempt to re-
new the law outlawing the Social Democratic party. Eager to rule in his own right
and to earn the support of the workers, William II forced Bismarck to resign.
Yet William II was no more successful than Bismarck in getting workers to
renounce socialism. Indeed, Social Democrats won more and more seats in
the Reichstag, until it became the largest single party in the Reichstag in 1912.
This victory shocked aristocrats and their wealthy conservative middle-class al-
lies, heightening the fears of an impending socialist upheaval. Yet the “revolu-
tionary” socialists were actually becoming less radical in Germany. In the years
before World War I, the German Social Democratic party broadened its base by
adopting a more patriotic tone, allowing for greater military spending and impe-
rialist expansion. German socialists concentrated instead on gradual social and
political reform.
France’s progress toward a unified national state suf-

Republican France fered in the immediate aftermath of the Franco-
Prussian War (see pages 651–653). Parisians, who had
bravely defended their city against Prussian forces, exploded in patriotic frustration
when the National Assembly of France agreed to surrender Alsace (al-SAS) and
Lorraine to Prussia. They proclaimed the Paris Commune in March 1871, with
the goal of governing Paris without interference from the conservative French
countryside. The National Assembly, led by the aging politician Adolphe Thiers
(tyer), would hear none of it. The Assembly ordered the French army into Paris
and brutally crushed the Commune. Twenty thousand people died in the fighting.
As in June 1848, it was Paris against the provinces, French against French.
Out of this tragedy, France slowly formed a new national unity, achieving con-
siderable stability before 1914. How is one to account for this? Luck played a part.
Although the monarchists had gained the majority in the National Assembly, they
could not find an acceptable king. Meanwhile, the middle class and people from
the provinces were persuaded by Thiers’s actions that the Third Republic might
be moderate and socially conservative. France therefore retained the republic,
though reluctantly. As President Thiers cautiously said, this was “the government
which divides us least.”
Another stabilizing factor was the skill and determination of the moderate re-
publican leaders in the early years. The most famous of these was Léon Gambetta
(gam-BET-uh), the son of an Italian grocer, a warm, easygoing, unsuccessful law-
yer who had turned professional politician. By 1879 the great majority of members
of both the upper and the lower houses of the National Assembly were republi-
cans, and the Third Republic had firm foundations after almost a decade.
The moderate republicans sought to endure politically by appealing to the
next generation. They worked to expand the state system of public schools, so that
conservative Catholic schoolteachers were no longer the primary shapers of young
minds. New laws made elementary education for girls and boys both free and
compulsory. Public education served to reinforce nationalism and the value of
republican government.
Although the educational reforms of the 1880s disturbed French Catholics,
many of them rallied to the republic in the 1890s. The limited acceptance of the
modern world by the more liberal Pope Leo XIII (1878–1903) eased tensions. The
Dreyfus affair A divisive case in which Dreyfus affair, however, would lead to the separation of church and state in
Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish captain in the France.
French army was falsely accused and
convicted of treason. The Catholic
Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish captain in the French army, was falsely accused and
Church sided with the anti-Semites convicted of treason. In 1898 and 1899, the case split France apart. On one side
against Dreyfus; after Dreyfus was was the army, which had manufactured evidence against Dreyfus, joined by anti-
declared innocent, the French Semites and most of the Catholic establishment. On the other side stood the civil
government severed all ties between
the state and church. libertarians and most of the more radical republicans.
This battle, which eventually led to Dreyfus’s being declared innocent, revived
republican feeling against the church. Between 1901 and 1905, the French gov-
ernment severed all ties to the Catholic Church. The salaries of priests and bish-
ops were no longer paid by the government, and all churches were given to local
committees of lay Catholics. Catholic schools were put on their own financially
and soon lost a third of their students. In France only the growing socialist move-
ment, with its very different and thoroughly secular ideology, stood in opposition
to patriotic, republican nationalism.
Britain in the late nineteenth century has often been

Great Britain seen as a shining example of peaceful and successful
and Ireland political evolution, where an effective two-party parlia-
ment skillfully guided the country from classical liberalism to full-fledged democ-
racy with hardly a misstep. This view of Great Britain is not so much wrong as it is
incomplete. The House of Commons did gradually widen the right to vote, so that
by 1884 almost every adult male could participate in elections. The House of
Lords, however, remained a bastion of aristocratic conservatism, ruling against la-
bor unions and vetoing several measures passed by the Commons in the first dec-
ade of the twentieth century. The turning point came when the Lords vetoed the
People’s Budget A bill proposed after so-called People’s Budget, which was designed to increase spending on social
the Liberal party came to power in welfare services. The king threatened to create enough new peers to pass the bill,
England in 1906, it was designed to
increase spending on social welfare
and aristocratic conservatism was forced to yield to popular democracy once and
issues, but was vetoed in the House for all.
of Lords. Between 1906 and 1914, extensive social welfare measures, slow to come to
Great Britain, were passed in a spectacular rush. During those years, the Liberal
party, inspired by the fiery Welshman David Lloyd George (1863–1945), substan-
tially raised taxes on the rich as part of the People’s Budget. This income helped
the government pay for national health insurance, unemployment benefits, old-
age pensions, and a host of other social measures. The state was integrating the
urban masses socially as well as politically.
This record of accomplishment was only part of the story, however. On the eve
of World War I, the unanswered question of Ireland brought Great Britain to the
brink of civil war. The terrible Irish famine had fueled an Irish revolutionary move-
“No Home Rule”

Posters like this one helped to foment pro-British, anti-Catholic
sentiment in the northern Irish counties of Ulster before the First World
War. The rifle raised defiantly and the accompanying rhyme are a
thinly veiled threat of armed rebellion and civil war. (Photograph
reproduced courtesy of the Trustees of National Museums Northern Ireland)
ment. Thereafter, the English slowly granted concessions,

such as the abolition of the privileges of the Anglican
Church and rights for Irish peasants. Yet the question of
self-rule for Ireland was divisive. Bills giving Ireland self-
government failed to pass in 1886 and 1893. In 1913, how-
ever, Irish nationalists in the British Parliament were able
to obtain a new home-rule bill for Ireland.
Within Ireland, the home-rule bill unleashed hostili-
ties between north and south. The Protestants of Ulster in
Northern Ireland refused to submerge themselves into
Catholic Ireland and vowed to resist home rule in north-
ern counties. By December 1913 they had raised 100,000
armed volunteers, and they were supported by much of
English public opinion. Thus in 1914 the Liberals in the
House of Lords introduced a compromise home-rule bill
that did not apply to the northern counties. This bill,
which openly betrayed promises made to Irish national-
ists, was rejected, and in September the original home-
rule bill was passed but simultaneously suspended for the
duration of the hostilities. The momentous Irish question
was then overtaken by an earth-shattering world war in
August 1914.
Irish developments illustrated once again the power of
national movements in the nineteenth century. Moreover,
they were proof that governments could not elicit greater loyalty unless they could
capture and control that elemental current of national feeling. Though Great
Britain had much going for it—power, Parliament, prosperity—none of these
availed in the face of the conflicting nationalisms created by Catholics and Protes-
tants in Northern Ireland. Similarly, progressive Sweden was powerless to stop the
growth of the Norwegian national movement, which culminated in Norway’s
breaking away from Sweden and becoming a fully independent nation in 1905. In
this light, one can also see how hopeless was the case of the Ottoman Empire in
Europe in the later nineteenth century. It was only a matter of time before the
Serbs, Bulgarians, and Romanians would break away, and they did.
The dilemma of conflicting nationalisms also tore at

The Austro- the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the early twentieth
Hungarian Empire century. In the wake of defeat in the Austro-Prussian
War of 1866, a weakened Austria was forced to strike a compromise with its sub-
jects in Hungary who had wanted independence. Through the so-called dual
monarchy, the empire was divided, and the nationalistic Magyars gained virtual
independence for Hungary. The two states were joined only by a shared monarch
and common ministries for finance, defense, and foreign affairs.
The dual monarchy did not diffuse nationalist tensions, however. In Austria,
many Germans saw their traditional dominance threatened by Czechs, Poles, and
other Slavs. A particularly emotional issue in the Austrian parliament was the lan-
guage used in government and elementary education at the local level. From
1900 to 1914 the parliament was so divided that ministries generally could not
obtain a majority and ruled instead by decree. Even attempts to find common
ground on economic issues were unsuccessful. In Hungary the Magyar nobility
restricted voting to the wealthiest one-fourth of adult males, making the parlia-
ment the creature of the elite. Laws promoting the use of the Magyar (Hungarian)
language in schools and government were rammed through and bitterly resented,
especially by the Croatians and Romanians. While Hungarian extremists cam-
paigned loudly for total separation from Austria, Croatian and Romanian radicals
agitated for independence from Hungary. Unlike most major countries, which
harnessed nationalism to strengthen the state after 1871, the Austro-Hungarian
Empire was progressively weakened and destroyed by it.
Revolutionary changes in politics brought equally rev-

Jewish Emancipation olutionary changes in Jewish life in western and cen-
and Modern tral Europe. The decisive turning point came in 1848,
Anti-Semitism when Jews formed part of the revolutionary vanguard
in Vienna and Berlin and the Frankfurt Assembly endorsed full rights for German
Jews. In 1871 the constitution of the new German Empire consolidated the pro-
cess of Jewish emancipation in central Europe. It abolished all restrictions on
Jewish marriage, choice of occupation, place of residence, and property owner-
ship. Exclusion from government employment and discrimination in social rela-
tions remained. However, according to one leading historian, by 1871 “it was
widely accepted in Central Europe that the gradual disappearance of anti-Jewish
prejudice was inevitable.”3
The process of emancipation presented Jews with challenges and opportuni-
ties. Traditional Jewish occupations, such as court financial agent, village money-
lender, and peddler, were undermined by free-market reforms, but careers in
business, the professions, and the arts were opening to Jewish talent. By 1871 a
majority of Jewish people in western and central Europe had improved their eco-
nomic situation and entered the middle classes. Most Jewish people also identified
strongly with their respective nation-states and with good reason saw themselves as
patriotic citizens.
Vicious anti-Semitism reappeared after the stock market crash of 1873, begin-
ning in central Europe. While Europe had a long history of anti-Semitism, this
time it had modern elements. Resentment was aimed against Jewish achievement
and Jewish “financial control,” while fanatics claimed that the Jewish race (rather
than the Jewish religion) posed a biological threat to the German people. Anti-
Semitic beliefs were particularly popular among conservatives, extremist national-
ists, and people who felt threatened by Jewish competition, such as small
shopkeepers, officeworkers, and professionals.
Anti-Semites also created modern political parties to attack and degrade Jews.
In Austrian Vienna in the early 1890s, Karl Lueger (LEW-ay-ger) and his “Chris-
tian socialists” won striking electoral victories, spurring Theodor Herzl to turn
Zionism A movement toward Jewish from German nationalism and advocate political Zionism and the creation of a
political nationhood, started by Jewish state. (See the feature “Individuals in Society: Theodor Herzl.”) Lueger,
Theodor Herzl.
the popular mayor of Vienna from 1897 to 1910, combined fierce anti-Semitic
rhetoric with municipal ownership of basic services, and he appealed especially to
Theodor Herzl
I n September 1897, only days after his vision and
energy had called into being the First Zionist
Congress in Basel, Switzerland, Theodor Herzl
perceived were the results of age-old persecution
and would disappear through education and as-
similation. Herzl also took a growing pride in
(1860–1904) assessed the results in his diary: “If I Jewish steadfastness in the face
were to sum up the Congress in a word—which I of victimization and suffering.
shall take care not to publish—it would be this: At He savored memories of his
Basel I founded the Jewish state. If I said this out early Jewish education and
loud today I would be greeted by universal laugh- going with his father to the
ter. In five years perhaps, and certainly in fifty years, synagogue.
everyone will perceive it.”* Herzl’s buoyant opti- The emergence of modern
mism, which so often carried him forward, was pro- anti-Semitism shocked Herzl,
phetic. Leading the Zionist movement until his as it did many acculturated
death at age forty-four in 1904, Herzl guided the Jewish Germans. Moving to
first historic steps toward modern Jewish political Paris in 1891 as the correspon-
nationhood and the creation of Israel in 1948. dent for Vienna’s leading lib-
Theodor Herzl was born in Budapest, Hungary, eral newspaper, Herzl studied
into an upper-middle-class, German-speaking Jew- politics and pondered recent
ish family. When Herzl was eighteen, his family historical developments. He Theodor Herzl (Library of Congress)
moved to Vienna, where he studied law. As a uni- then came to a bold conclu-
versity student, he soaked up the liberal beliefs of sion, published in 1896 as The
most well-to-do Viennese Jews, who also champi- Jewish State: An Attempt at a
oned the assimilation of German culture. Wres- Modern Solution to the Jewish Question. According
tling with his nonreligious Jewishness and his to Herzl, Jewish assimilation had failed, and at-
strong pro-German feeling, Herzl embraced Ger- tempts to combat anti-Semitism would never suc-
man nationalism and joined a German dueling ceed. Only by building an independent Jewish
fraternity. There he discovered that full acceptance state could the Jewish people achieve dignity and
required openly anti-Semitic attitudes and a repu- renewal. As recent scholarship shows, Herzl devel-
diation of all things Jewish. This Herzl could not oped his political nationalism, or Zionism, before
tolerate, and he resigned. After receiving his law the anti-Jewish agitation accompanying the Drey-
degree, he embarked on a literary career. In 1889 fus affair, which only strengthened his faith in his
Herzl married into a wealthy Viennese Jewish fam- analysis.
ily, but he and his socialite wife were mismatched Generally rebuffed by skeptical Jewish elites in
and never happy together. western and central Europe, Herzl turned for
Herzl achieved considerable success as both a support to youthful idealists and the poor Jewish
journalist and a playwright. His witty comedies fo- masses. He became an inspiring man of action, ral-
cused on the bourgeoisie, including Jewish mil- lying the delegates to the annual Zionist congresses,
lionaires trying to live like aristocrats. Accepting directing the growth of the worldwide Zionist orga-
many German stereotypes, Herzl sometimes de- nization, and working himself to death. Herzl also
picted eastern Jews as uneducated and grasping. understood that national consciousness required
But as a dedicated, highly educated liberal, he powerful emotions and symbols, such as a Jewish
mainly believed that the Jewish shortcomings he flag. Flags build nations, he said, because people
“live and die for a flag.”
*Quotes are from Theodor Herzl, The Diaries of Theodor
Putting the Zionist vision before non-Jews and
Herzl, trans. and ed. with an introduction by Marvin world public opinion, Herzl believed in interna-
Lowenthal (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1962), pp. 224, tional diplomacy and political agreements. He trav-
22, xxi. eled constantly to negotiate with European rulers
665
and top officials, seeking their support in securing Questions for Analysis
territory for a Jewish state, usually in the Ottoman 1. Describe Theodor Herzl’s background and
Empire. Aptly described by an admiring contem- early beliefs. Do you see a link between Herzl’s
porary as “the first Jewish statesman since the early German nationalism and his later
destruction of Jerusalem,” Herzl proved most suc- Zionism?
cessful in Britain. He paved the way for the 1917
2. How did Herzl work as a leader to turn his
Balfour Declaration, which solemnly pledged Brit-
Zionist vision into a reality?
ish support for a “Jewish homeland” in Palestine.
666
Marxism and the Socialist Movement 667
the German-speaking lower middle class—and an unsuccessful young artist named Sec tion Review
Adolf Hitler.
Before 1914 anti-Semitism was most oppressive in eastern Europe, where Jews • Ordinary people were becoming more
nationalistic as they had more repre-
also suffered from terrible poverty. In the Russian empire, where there was no Jew- sentation in governments; women,
ish emancipation and 4 million of Europe’s 7 million Jewish people lived in 1880, too, were slowly winning the right to
officials used anti-Semitism to channel popular discontent away from the govern- vote, and governing elites took advan-
ment and onto the Jewish minority. Russian Jews were denounced as foreign ex- tage of nationalistic sentiments using
ploiters who corrupted national traditions, and in 1881 through 1882 a wave of militaristic policies to manage domes-
tic social conflicts.
violent pogroms commenced in southern Russia. The police and the army stood
aside for days while peasants looted and destroyed Jewish property. Official harass- • Chancellor Bismarck won popular
support by imposing high tariffs on
ment continued in the following decades, and large numbers of Russian Jews foreign grain and in an effort to take
emigrated to western Europe and the United States. About 2.75 million Jews left support away from the socialists,
eastern Europe between 1881 and 1914. enacted the first social security system,
but Emperor William II forced Bis-
marck to resign while the German
Social Democratic party broadened its
Marxism and the Socialist Movement base by focusing on gradual social and
political reform.
Why did the socialist movement grow, and how revolutionary was it?
• France’s mostly republican National
Assembly led by Adolphe Thiers
Nationalism served, for better or worse, as a new unifying principle. But what struggled to unite France and brought
about socialism? Socialist parties, which were generally Marxian parties dedicated stabilization by expanding the state
to an international proletarian revolution, grew rapidly in these years. Did this system of public schools and separat-
ing completely from the Catholic
mean that national states had failed to gain the support of workers? Certainly,
church after the Dreyfus Affair.
many prosperous and conservative citizens were greatly troubled by the socialist
• Britain’s House of Commons yielded
movement. And numerous historians have portrayed the years before 1914 as a
to public pressure and enacted exten-
time of increasing conflict between revolutionary socialism, on the one hand, and sive social welfare measures benefit-
a nationalist alliance of the conservative aristocracy and the prosperous middle ing the urban masses socially and
class, on the other. politically, but Irish calls for home
rule continued to be a problem along
with Catholic-Protestant conflict in
Northern Ireland.
The growth of socialist parties after 1871 was phenom-
The Socialist enal. (See the feature “Listening to the Past: The • Conflicting nationalisms created
International Making of a Socialist” on pages 671–672.) Neither
friction as Hungarians wanted total
separation from Austria while Croa-
Bismarck’s antisocialist laws nor his extensive social security system checked the tians and Romanians agitated for
growth of the German Social Democratic party, which espoused the Marxian ide- independence from Hungary.
ology. By 1912 it had millions of followers—mostly working-class people—and • German Jews won full political rights
was the largest party in the Reichstag. Socialist parties also grew in other countries, in 1848 and again in 1871, although
though nowhere else with such success. In 1883 Russian exiles in Switzerland they were still excluded from govern-
ment employment and suffered from
founded the Russian Social Democratic party, and various socialist parties were
the growth of anti-Semitism in Aus-
unified in 1905 in the French Section of the Workers International. Belgium and tria, eastern Europe, and Russia.
Austria-Hungary also had strong socialist parties.
As the name of the French party suggests, Marxian socialist parties were eventu-
ally linked together in an international organization. Marx believed that “the work-
ing men have no country,” and he had urged proletarians of all nations to unite. Marx
himself played an important role in founding the First International of social-
ists—the International Working Men’s Association. Then Marx enthusiastically
embraced the passionate, vaguely radical patriotism of the Paris Commune and its
terrible conflict with the French National Assembly as a giant step toward socialist
revolution. This impetuous action frightened many of his early supporters, espe-
cially the more moderate British labor leaders. The First International collapsed.
Yet international proletarian solidarity remained an important objective for
Marxists. In 1889, as the individual parties in different countries grew stronger,
“Greetings from the May Day Festival”

Workers participated enthusiastically in the annual one-day strike on May 1 to honor internationalist socialist solidarity, as this
postcard from a happy woman visitor to her cousin suggests. Speeches, picnics, and parades were the order of the day, and workers
celebrated their respectability and independent culture. Picture postcards developed with railroads and mass travel. (akg-images)
socialist leaders came together to form the Second International, which lasted
until 1914. The International was only a federation of national socialist parties, but
it had a great psychological impact. Every three years, delegates from the different
parties met to interpret Marxian doctrines and plan coordinated action. May 1
(May Day) was declared an annual international one-day strike, a day of marches
and demonstrations. A permanent executive for the International was established.
Many feared and many others rejoiced in the growing power of socialism and the
Second International.
Was socialism really radical in these years? On the

Unions and whole, it was not. Indeed, as socialist parties grew, they
Revisionism looked more and more toward gradual change and
steady improvement for the working class and less and less toward revolution. The
mainstream of European socialism increasingly combined radical rhetoric with
sober action.
Workers themselves were progressively less inclined to follow radical programs.
There were several reasons for this. As workers gained the right to vote and to par-
ticipate politically in the nation-state, they focused their attention more on elec-
tions than on revolutions. And as workers won real, tangible benefits, this furthered
the process. Workers were also not immune to patriotic education and indoctrina-
tion during military service, and many responded positively to drum-beating parades
and aggressive foreign policy as they loyally voted for socialists. Nor were workers
a unified social group.
Chapter Review 669
Perhaps most important of all, workers’ standard of living rose gradually but
substantially after 1850. Workers experienced gradual wage increases in most con-
tinental countries after 1850, though much less strikingly in late-developing Rus-
sia. The quality of life in urban areas improved dramatically as well. Therefore,
workers tended more and more to become militantly moderate: they demanded
gains, but they were less likely to take to the barricades in pursuit of them.
The growth of labor unions reinforced this trend toward moderation. In Ger-
many, for example, unions had been denied rights and were viewed with suspicion
as socialist fronts during their early years. But as German industrialization stormed
ahead, almost all legal harassment of unions was eliminated, and union member-
ship skyrocketed. Increasingly, unions in Germany focused on bread-and-butter
issues—wages, hours, working conditions—rather than on the dissemination of
pure socialist doctrine. Genuine collective bargaining, long opposed by socialist
revisionism An effort by various
intellectuals as a “sellout,” was officially recognized as desirable by the German socialists to update Marxian doctrines
Trade Union Congress in 1899. When employers proved unwilling to bargain, a to reflect the realities of the time.
series of strikes forced them to change their minds. Germany was the most indus-
trialized, socialized, and unionized continental country by 1914.
The German trade unions and their leaders were in fact, if not in name, thor- Sec tion Review
oughgoing revisionists. Revisionism was an effort by various socialists to update • The Socialist International was an
Marxian doctrines to reflect the realities of the time. Thus the socialist Edward organized group of socialist parties
Bernstein (BURN-stine) (1850–1932) argued in 1899 in his Evolutionary Social- from many countries; after the First
ism that socialists should combine with other progressive forces to win gradual International collapsed, a Second
formed in 1889, meeting every three
evolutionary gains for workers through legislation, unions, and further economic years until 1914 to discuss Marxian
development. These views were denounced as heresy by the German Social Dem- doctrines and make plans, declaring
ocratic party and later by the entire Second International. Yet the revisionist, grad- each May 1 as an international one-
ualist approach continued to gain the tacit acceptance of many German socialists, day strike with marches and demon-
particularly in the trade unions. strations.
Socialist parties before 1914 had clear-cut national characteristics. Russians • For the working class, socialism be-
and socialists in the Austro-Hungarian Empire tended to be the most radical. The came more a means for gradual
change than for revolution as they
German party talked revolution but practiced reformism, greatly influenced by its reaped the benefits of voting, union
enormous trade-union movement. The French party talked revolution and tried to bargaining, and an increased standard
practice it, unrestrained by a trade-union movement that was both very weak and of living.
very radical. In England the socialist but non-Marxian Labour party, reflecting the • Edward Bernstein’s revisionism was
well-established union movement, was formally committed to gradual reform. In an attempt to make socialism less
Spain and Italy, Marxian socialism was very weak. There anarchism, seeking to smash revolutionary and more gradual by
the state rather than the bourgeoisie, dominated radical thought and action. combining it with legislation, unions,
and economic development, but the
In short, socialist policies and doctrines varied from country to country. Social- German Social Democratic party
ism itself was to a large extent “nationalized” behind the imposing façade of inter- and the Second International
national unity. This helps explain why when war came in 1914, almost all socialist denounced it.
leaders supported their governments.
Chapter Review
How in France did Napoleon III seek to reconcile popular and conservative forces
in an authoritarian nation-state? (page 646) Key Terms
After 1850, Western society became nationalistic as well as urban and industrial. Red Shirts (p. 649)
Conservative monarchical governments, recovering from the revolutionary trauma of Zollverein (p. 650)
1848, learned to remodel early so as to build stronger states with greater popular sup- (continued)
port. Napoleon III in France led the way, combining authoritarian rule with economic
prosperity and positive measures for the poor.
How did the process of unification in Italy and Germany create conservative Homestead Act (p. 654)
nation-states? (page 648)
modernization (p. 654)
In Italy, Cavour joined traditional diplomacy with national revolt in the north and zemstvo (p. 655)
Garibaldi’s revolutionary patriotism in the south, expanding the liberal monarchy of
Sardinia-Piedmont into a conservative nation-state. Bismarck also combined tradi- revolution of 1905 (p. 656)
tional statecraft with national feeling to expand the power of Prussia and its king in a Bloody Sunday (p. 656)
new German empire. October Manifesto (p. 656)
Duma (p. 656)
In what ways did the United States experience the full drama of nation build- Tanzimat (p. 658)
ing? (page 653) Young Turks (p. 658)
In the mid-century years, the United States also experienced a crisis of nation build- Reichstag (p. 660)
ing. The United States overcame sectionalism in a war that prevented an independent Kulturkampf (p. 660)
South and seemed to confirm America’s destiny as a great world power. Dreyfus affair (p. 662)
People’s Budget (p. 662)
What steps did Russia and the Ottoman Turks take toward modernization, and Zionism (p. 664)
how successful were they? (page 654) revisionism (p. 669)
In autocratic Russia, defeat in the Crimean War led to the emancipation of the serfs,
economic modernization with railroad building and industrialization, and limited po-
litical reform. The Ottoman Empire also sought to modernize to protect the state, but
it was considerably less successful.
Why after 1871 did ordinary citizens feel a growing loyalty to their governments?
(page 659)
Nation-states gradually enlisted widespread popular support, providing men and
women with a greater sense of belonging, and giving them specific political, social,
and economic improvements.
Why did the socialist movement grow, and how revolutionary was it? (page 667)
Even the growing socialist movement became increasingly national in orientation,
gathering strength as a champion of working-class interests in domestic politics. Yet
even though nationalism served to unite peoples, it also drove them apart—obvious
not only in the United States before the Civil War and in Austria-Hungary and Ireland,
but also throughout Europe. There the universal national faith, which usually reduced
social tensions within states, promoted a bitter, almost Darwinian, competition be-
tween states and thus threatened the progress and unity it had helped to build, as we
shall see in Chapters 26 and 27.
Notes
1. H. Schulze, States, Nations and Nationalism: From the Middle Ages to the Present (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1994), pp. 222–223, 246–247.
2. J. McKay, Pioneers for Profit: Foreign Entrepreneurship and Russian Industrialization, 1885–
1913 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), pp. 112–157.
3. R. Seltzer, Jewish People, Jewish Thought: The Jewish Experience in History (New York: Mac-
millan, 1980), p. 533.

The Making of a Socialist
N ationalism and socialism appeared to be competing

ideologies, but both fostered political awareness. A
working person who became interested in politics and devel-
oped nationalist beliefs might well convert to socialism at a
later date.
This was the case for Adelheid Popp (1869–1939), the
editor of a major socialist newspaper for German working-
women. Born into a desperately poor working-class family in
Vienna, she was forced by her parents to quit school at age ten
to begin full-time work. She struggled with low-paying piece-
work for years before she landed a solid factory job, as she
recounts in the following selection from her widely read auto-
biography. She told her life story so that all working women
might share her truth: “Socialism could change and
strengthen others, as it did me.”
[At age fifteen] I was recommended to a great

factory which stood in the best repute. . . . In none 1890 engraving of a meeting of workers in Berlin (Bildarchiv
Preussischer Kulturbesitz/Art Resource, NY)
of the neighbouring factories were the wages so
high; we were envied everywhere. . . . And even
here, in this paradise, all were badly nourished. Later on my mother and I lived with one of my
Those who stayed at the factory for the dinner brothers who had married. Friends came to him,
hour would buy themselves for a few pennies a among them some intelligent workmen. One of
sausage or the leavings of a cheese shop. . . . In these workmen was particularly intelligent, and . . .
spite of all the diligence and economy, every one could talk on many subjects. He was the first Social
was poor, and trembled at the thought of losing Democrat I knew. He brought me many books,
her work. . . . and explained to me the difference between Anar-
I did not only read novels and tales; I had chism and Socialism. I heard from him, also for the
begun . . . to read the classics and other good books. first time, what a republic was, and in spite of my
I also began to take an interest in public events. . . . former enthusiasm for royal dynasties, I also de-
I was not democratically inclined. I was full of en- clared myself in favour of a republican form of gov-
thusiasm then for emperors, and kings and highly ernment. I saw everything so near and so clearly,
placed personages played no small part in my that I actually counted the weeks which must still
fancies. . . . I bought myself a strict Catholic paper, elapse before the revolution of state and society
that criticised very adversely the workers’ move- would take place.
ment, which was attracting notice. Its aim was to From this workman I received the first Social
educate in a patriotic and religious direction. . . . I Democratic party organ. . . . I first learned from it
took the warmest interest in the events that oc- to understand and judge of my own lot. I learned to
curred in the royal families, and I took the death of see that all I had suffered was the result not of a di-
the Crown Prince of Austria so much to heart that I vine ordinance, but of an unjust organization of
wept a whole day. . . . society. . . .
671
In the factory I became another woman. . . . I Questions for Analysis
told my [female] comrades all that I had read of the 1. How did Popp describe and interpret work in
workers’ movement. Formerly I had often told sto- the factory?
ries when they had begged me for them. But in- 2. To what extent did her socialist interpretation
stead of narrating . . . the fate of some queen, I now of factory life fit the facts she described?
held forth on oppression and exploitation. I told of 3. What were Popp’s political interests before she
accumulated wealth in the hands of a few, and in- became a socialist?
troduced as a contrast the shoemakers who had no
4. Was this account likely to lead other working-
shoes and the tailors who had no clothes. On breaks women to socialism? Why or why not?
I read aloud the articles in the Social Democratic
paper and explained what Socialism was as far as I
understood it. . . . [While I was reading] it often
Source: Slightly adapted from A. Popp, The Autobiogra-
happened that one of the clerks passing by shook
phy of a Working Woman, trans. E. C. Harvey (Chicago:
his head and said to another clerk: “The girl speaks F. G. Browne, 1913), pp. 29, 34–35, 39, 66–69, 71, 74,
like a man.” 82–90.
672
CHAPTER 26
The West and
the World
1815–1914
Chapter Preview
Industrialization and the World Economy
What were some of the global
consequences of European
industrialization between 1815 and 1914?
The Great Migration

How was massive migration an integral
part of Western expansion?
Western Imperialism (1880–1914)

How and why after 1875 did European
nations rush to build political empires
in Africa and Asia?
Responding to Western Imperialism

What was the general pattern of
non-Western responses to Western
expansion, and how did India, Japan,
and China meet the imperialist
challenge?
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY: Cecil Rhodes
LISTENING TO THE PAST: A British Woman in India

Africans in Madagascar transport a French diplomat in 1894, shortly
before France annexed the island. (Snark/Art Resource, NY)
673
674 Chapter 26 The West and the World, 1815–1914
W hile industrialization and nationalism were transforming urban life

and Western society, Western society itself was reshaping the world. At
the peak of its power, the West entered the third and most dynamic phase of expan-
sion that had begun with the Crusades and continued with the great discoveries
and the rise of seaborne colonial empires. An ever-growing stream of products,
people, and ideas flowed out of Europe in the nineteenth century. Hardly any
corner of the globe was left untouched. The most spectacular manifestations of
Western expansion came in the late nineteenth century when the leading Euro-
pean nations established or enlarged their far-flung political empires. The politi-
cal annexation of territory in the 1880s—the “new imperialism,” as it is often
called by historians—was the capstone of a profound underlying economic and
technological process.
Industrialization and the World Economy

What were some of the global consequences of European
industrialization between 1815 and 1914?
The Industrial Revolution created, first in Great Britain and then in continental
Europe and North America, a tremendously dynamic economic system. In the
course of the nineteenth century, Europeans extended that system across the face
of the earth through both peaceful and militaristic means. In general, they fash-
ioned the global economic system so that the largest share of gains flowed to the
West and its propertied classes.
The Industrial Revolution marked a momentous turn-

The Rise of Global ing point in human history. It allowed those regions of
Third World A term widely used by Inequality the world that industrialized to increase their wealth
international organizations and by
scholars to group the nonindustrialized and power enormously in comparison to those that did not. As a result, a gap be-
nations Africa, Asia, and Latin America tween the industrializing regions (mainly Europe and North America) and the
into a single unit. nonindustrializing or Third World regions (mainly Africa, Asia, and Latin Amer-
ica) opened up and grew steadily throughout the nine-
teenth century. Moreover, this pattern of uneven global
development became institutionalized, or built into the
3000 structure of the world economy. Thus we evolved a “lop-
Great Britain
sided world,” a world of rich lands and poor.
Average income per person
Developed countries
2325 The enormous income disparities between devel-
(in 1960 U.S. dollars)
Third World
oped and Third World countries (see Figure 26.1) are
poignant indicators of equal disparities in food and cloth-
1550 ing, health and education, life expectancy and general
material well-being. The reason for these disparities has
775
100 FIGURE 26.1 The Growth of Average Income per

1750 1860 1913 1950 1970 Person in the Third World, Developed Countries,
and Great Britain, 1750–1970
Note: The Third World includes Africa, Asia, Latin America,
and Oceania. Developed countries include all European Growth is given in 1960 U.S. dollars and prices. (Source: P. Bairoch and
countries, Canada, the United States, and Japan. M. Lévy-Leboyer, eds., Disparities in Economic Development Since the Industrial
Revolution. Copyright © 1981. Reproduced with permission of Palgrave Macmillan.)
Chronology
generated a great deal of debate. One school of interpreta- 1842 China cedes Hong Kong to Britain
tion stresses that the West used science, technology, capitalist
organization, and even its critical worldview to create its 1853 Perry “opens” Japan for trade
wealth and greater physical well-being. Another school ar- 1863–1879 Reign of Ismail in Egypt
gues that the West used its political and economic power to 1867 Meiji Restoration in Japan
steal much of its riches, continuing in the nineteenth (and
1869 Completion of Suez Canal
twentieth) century the rapacious colonialism born of the era
of expansion. These issues are complex, and there are few 1885 Berlin Conference gives Leopold II
simple answers. It is helpful to consider them in the context dominion over Congo Free State;
of the dynamics of world trade in the nineteenth century. founding of Indian National Congress
1898 United States takes over Philippines
1899 Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden”
Trade between nations has always
1902 Conrad, Heart of Darkness;
The World Market stimulated economic develop-
Hobson, Imperialism
ment. In the nineteenth century,
an enormous increase in international commerce was di- 1900–1903 Boxer Rebellion in China
rected by Europe.Great Britain took the lead in cultivating
export markets for its booming industrial output. British man-
ufacturers looked first to Europe and then around the world.
Take the case of cotton textiles. By 1820 Britain was exporting 50 percent of its
production. Europe bought 50 percent of these cotton textile exports, while India
bought only 6 percent. Then as European nations and the United States erected
protective tariff barriers and promoted domestic industry, British cotton textile man-
ufacturers aggressively sought and found other foreign markets in non-Western ar-
eas. By 1850 India was buying 25 percent and Europe only 16 percent of a much
larger total. As a British colony, India could not raise tariffs to protect its ancient
cotton textile industry, and thousands of Indian weavers lost their livelihoods.
International trade also grew as transportation systems improved. Wherever
railroads were built, they drastically reduced transportation costs, opened new eco-
nomic opportunities, and called forth new skills and attitudes. Much of the rail-
road construction undertaken in Latin America, Asia, and Africa connected
seaports with inland cities and regions, as opposed to linking and developing cities
and regions within a given country. Thus these railroads supported Western eco-
nomic interests, facilitating the inflow and sale of Western manufactured goods
and the export of local raw materials.
The power of steam revolutionized transportation by sea as well as by land.
Steam power began to supplant sails on the oceans of the world in the late 1860s.
Passenger and freight rates tumbled as ship design became more sophisticated,
and the intercontinental shipment of low-priced raw materials became feasible.
The opening of the Suez and Panama Canals shortened transport time consider-
ably, and port facilities were also modernized to make loading and unloading
cheaper, faster, and more dependable.
New communications systems directed the flow of goods across global net-
works. Transoceanic telegraph cables inaugurated rapid communications among
the financial centers of the world. While a British tramp freighter steamed from
Calcutta to New York, a broker in London was arranging by telegram for it to carry
an American cargo to Australia. The same communications network conveyed
world commodity prices instantaneously.
The revolution in transportation and communications encouraged European
entrepreneurs to open up vast new territories around the world and develop agri-
cultural products and raw materials there for sale in Europe. Improved transporta-
tion also enabled European ventures in Asia, Africa, and Latin America to ship not
only the traditional tropical products—spices, tea, sugar, coffee—but also new raw
materials for industry, such as jute, rubber, cotton, and coconut oil.
As their economies grew, Europeans began to make massive foreign invest-
ments beginning about 1840. By the outbreak of World War I in 1914, wealthy
Europeans had invested more than $40 billion abroad. Great Britain, France, and
Germany were the principal investing countries. Most of the capital exported did
not go to European colonies or protectorates in Asia and Africa. Europeans found
the most profitable opportunities for investment in construction of the railroads,
ports, and utilities that were necessary for white settlers to develop the lands in
such places as Australia and the Americas. Much of this investment was peaceful
and mutually beneficial for lenders and borrowers. The victims were Native Amer-
ican Indians and Australian aborigines, who were decimated by the diseases,
liquor, and weapons of an aggressively expanding Western society.
While Europeans looked primarily to North America,

The Opening of China Australia, and much of Latin America to absorb huge
and Japan quantities of goods, investments, and migrants, they
also hoped to penetrate the markets of Asia. In China and Japan they demon-
strated their willingness to use force to remove trade barriers.
Traditional Chinese civilization was self-sufficient. For centuries China had
sent more goods and inventions to Europe than it had received, and this was still
the case in the early nineteenth century. Trade with Europe was carefully regu-
lated by the Chinese imperial government—the Qing (ching), or Manchu (man-
CHOO), Dynasty—which required all foreign merchants to live in the southern
city of Canton and to buy from and sell to only the local merchant monopoly.
Goods considered harmful to Chinese interests, such as opium, were forbidden.
For years the little community of foreign merchants in Canton accepted the
Chinese system. By the 1820s, however, British merchants began flexing their
muscles. They had found in opium a product the Chinese desired, and they
wanted to stop smuggling and sell it openly. They pressured the British govern-
ment to help them establish an independent British colony in China with “safe
and unrestricted liberty” in trade. British merchants in Canton also enlisted the
support of British manufacturers with visions of vast Chinese markets.
opium trade Opium was grown legally At the same time, the Qing government decided that the opium trade had to
in British-occupied India and smuggled be stamped out. It was ruining the people and hurting the economy, as silver for
into China by means of fast ships and
bribed officials; it became a destructive
opium was flowing to British merchants. The government began to prosecute Chi-
and ensnaring vice of the Chinese. nese drug dealers vigorously and in 1839 it ordered the foreign merchants to obey
China’s laws. The British merchants refused and were expelled, whereupon war
soon broke out.
The British were able to call troops from India and used their superior sea
power to occupy several coastal cities. China submitted to the Treaty of Nanking
in 1842 and was forced to cede the island of Hong Kong to Britain forever, pay
an indemnity of $100 million, and open up four large cities to foreign trade with
low tariffs.
Thereafter the opium trade flourished, and Hong Kong developed rapidly as
an Anglo-Chinese enclave. The British, joined by the French, attacked China
again between 1856 and 1860, culminating in the occupation of Beijing. Another
round of harsh treaties gave European merchants and missionaries greater privi-
leges and protection and forced the Chinese to accept trade and investment on
unfavorable terms for several more cities. Thus did Europeans use military aggres-
sion to open China to foreign trade and foreign ideas.
Industrialization and the World Economy 677
Britain and China at War, 1841

Britain capitalized on its overwhelming naval superiority, and this British aquatint celebrates a
dramatic moment in a crucial battle near Guangzhou. Having received a direct hit from a steam-
powered British ironclad, a Chinese sailing ship explodes into a wall of flame. The Chinese lost
eleven ships and five hundred men in the two-hour engagement; the British suffered only minor
damage. (National Maritime Museum, London)
China’s neighbor Japan had decided by 1640 to seal off the country from all
European influences in order to preserve traditional Japanese culture and society.
When American and British whaling ships began to appear off Japanese coasts
almost two hundred years later, the policy of exclusion was still in effect. An order
of 1825 commanded Japanese officials to “drive away foreign vessels without sec-
ond thought.”1
Japan’s refusal to share its ports complicated the provisioning of whaling ships
and trading vessels in the eastern Pacific. It also thwarted the hope of trade and
profit. Americans came to see it as their duty to force the Japanese to behave as a
“civilized” nation.
After several unsuccessful American attempts to establish commercial rela-
tions with Japan, Commodore Matthew Perry steamed into Edo (ED-doe) (now
Tokyo) Bay in 1853 and demanded diplomatic negotiations with the emperor. Ja-
pan entered a grave crisis. Some Japanese warriors urged resistance, but senior
officials realized how defenseless their cities were against naval bombardment.
Shocked and humiliated, they reluctantly signed a treaty with the United States
that opened two ports and permitted trade. Over the next five years, more treaties
spelled out the rights and privileges of the Western nations and their merchants in
Japan. Japan was “opened.”
Unlike China and Japan, nineteenth-century Egypt

Western Penetration was attracted to European models of modernization
of Egypt and open to European business ventures. But it too
was forced to make concessions to European powers, eventually falling under Brit-
ish rule.
Egypt emerged as an autonomous country in the nineteenth century under
the leadership of the extraordinary Albanian-born Turkish general, Muhammad
Ali (1769–1849). First appointed governor of Egypt by the Turkish sultan, Mu-
hammad Ali set out to build his own state on the strength of a large, powerful army
organized along European lines. He drafted for the first time the peasants of Egypt,
and he hired French and Italian army officers to train these raw recruits and their
Turkish officers. The government was also reformed, new lands were cultivated,
and communications were improved. By the time of his death in 1849, Muham-
mad Ali had established a strong and virtually independent Egyptian state, to be
ruled by his family on a hereditary basis within the Turkish empire.
Muhammad Ali’s policies of modernization attracted large numbers of Euro-
peans to the banks of the Nile. The port city of Alexandria had more than fifty
thousand Europeans by 1864. Europeans served not only as army officers but also
as engineers, doctors, government officials, and police officers. Others turned to
trade, finance, and shipping.
Muhammad Ali’s grandson Ismail (is-mah-EEL) (r. 1863–1879) continued to
khedive A prince in Egypt. Westernize Egypt during his rule as the country’s khedive (kuh-DEEV), or prince.
The large irrigation networks he promoted caused cotton production and exports
to Europe to boom, and with his support the Suez Canal was completed by a
French company in 1869. Cairo acquired modern boulevards and Western hotels.
As French-educated Ismail proudly declared, “My country is no
Sec tion Review longer in Africa, we now form part of Europe.”2
Yet Ismail’s projects were enormously expensive, and by 1876
• An expanding gap between industrialized countries Egypt owed foreign bondholders a colossal debt that it could not pay.
and “Third World” non-industrializing countries The governments of France and Great Britain intervened to protect
developed with enormous economic disparities
between them. the European bondholders, forcing Ismail to appoint French and Brit-
ish commissioners to oversee Egyptian finances.
• Improvements in communication, such as the tele-
graph and transportation, including railroads and Foreign financial control evoked a violent nationalistic reaction
steamships, facilitated the establishment of a among Egyptian religious leaders, young intellectuals, and army offi-
Western-driven global trade network, often at the cers. The British pushed Ismail out and brought in his weak son, Tew-
expense of indigenous peoples. fig (r. 1879–1892), sparking anti-European riots in Alexandria. The
• China had strict regulations for trade and when British fleet then bombarded the city, which led to a country-wide re-
British merchants desired more favorable conditions volt. But a British expeditionary force put down the rebellion and oc-
for their opium trade, the Chinese government cupied all of Egypt.
resisted, so Britain invaded, claiming Hong Kong
and several other cities, forcing the Chinese to lift The British said their occupation was temporary, but British armies
restrictions on foreign trade. remained in Egypt until 1956. They maintained the façade of the
• Japan was closed to foreign trade until the Americans khedive’s government as an autonomous province of the Ottoman
demanded diplomatic relations under threat of force Empire, but the khedive was a mere puppet. British rule did result in
and the Japanese reluctantly agreed to open some of tax reforms and somewhat better conditions for peasants, while for-
their ports. eign bondholders received their interest and Egyptian nationalists
• Muhammad Ali and Ismail modernized Egypt and nursed their injured pride.
opened the door to foreign investors and immigrants British rule in Egypt provided a new model for European expan-
but the expense of his projects, including the Suez sion in Africa and Asia. Such expansion was based on military force,
Canal, put Egypt in debt and foreign commissioners
took over financial control; when the Egyptians political domination, and a self-justifying ideology of beneficial re-
revolted the British used force to occupy Egypt form. This model was to predominate until 1914. Thus did Europe’s
until 1956. Industrial Revolution lead to tremendous political as well as economic
expansion throughout the world after 1880.
The Great Migration 679
The Great Migration

How was massive migration an integral part of Western expansion?
A poignant human drama was interwoven with economic expansion: millions of

people pulled up stakes and left their ancestral lands in the course of history’s
greatest migration. To millions of ordinary people, for whom the opening of China
and the interest on the Egyptian debt had not the slightest significance, this great
movement was the central experience in the saga of Western expansion. It was, in
part, because of this great migration that the West’s impact on the world in the great migration A great movement of
nineteenth century was so powerful and many-sided. people that was the central experience in
the saga of Western expansion; one
reason why the West’s impact on the
world in the nineteenth century was so
Population growth was a driving force behind Euro- powerful and many-sided.
European Migrants pean migration. The trend of falling death rates contin-
ued until the early twentieth century, mainly because
of the rising standard of living but also because of improvements in medicine. Mil-
lions of country folk, seeing little available land and few opportunities, went abroad
as well as to nearby cities in search of work and economic opportunity.
The United States absorbed the largest number of European migrants, but less
than half of all migrants went there (see Figure 26.2). Moreover, migrants ac-
counted for a larger proportion of the total population in Argentina, Brazil, and
Canada than in the United States. The common American assumption that Euro-
pean migration meant migration to the United States is quite inaccurate.
Determined to maintain or improve their status, migrants were a great asset to
the countries that received them. The vast majority came in the prime of life and
were ready to work hard in the new land, at least for a time. Many Europeans
moved but remained within Europe, settling temporarily or permanently in an-
other European country. Jews from eastern Europe and peasants from Ireland
migrated to Great Britain; Russians and Poles sought work in Germany; and Latin
peoples from Spain, Portugal, and Italy entered France. Many Europeans were
ORIGINS DESTINATIONS
Finland, Denmark,
France, Belgium, Other 4% United
Switzerland, etc. 4% Brazil 7% States 45%
Netherlands 1%
Portugal 5% Norway 1% Australia/
Sweden 2% New Zealand 7%
Russia 4%*
Poland 5%
Canada 8%
Austria 7% Great Britain
and Ireland 34%
Argentina 10%
Spain 9%
Germany 11% Italy 19% Asiatic Russia 20%
* Not including migrants to Asiatic Russia.
FIGURE 26.2 Origins and Destinations of European Emigrants, 1851–1960

Source: From Impact of Western Man, by W. Woodruff. Copyright © 1982. Reprinted by permission of University Press
of America.
truly migrants as opposed to immigrants—that is, they returned home after some
time abroad. One in two migrants to Argentina and probably one in three to the
United States eventually returned to their native land. Once again, the possibility
of buying land in the old country was of central importance.
Ties of family and friendship played a crucial role in the movement of peoples.
Many people from a given province or village settled together in rural enclaves or
tightly knit urban neighborhoods thousands of miles away. Very often a strong
individual—a businessman, a religious leader—would blaze the way and others
would follow, forming a “migration chain.”
Many landless young European men and women were spurred to leave by a
spirit of revolt and independence. In Sweden and in Norway, in Jewish Russia and
in Italy, these young people felt frustrated by the small privileged classes, which
often controlled both church and government and resisted demands for change
and greater opportunity. Many a young Norwegian seconded the passionate cry of
Norway’s national poet, Martinius Bjørnson (BYURN-suhn): “Forth will I! Forth! I
will be crushed and consumed if I stay.”3 Thus for many, migration was a radical
way to “get out from under.” Migration slowed down when the people won basic
political and social reforms, such as the right to vote and social security.
Not all migration was from Europe. A substantial num-

Asian Migrants ber of Chinese, Japanese, Indians, and Filipinos—to
great white walls Laws designed by name only four key groups—responded to rural hard-
Americans and Australians to keep ship with temporary or permanent migration. At least 3 million Asians (as opposed
Asians out. to more than 60 million Europeans) moved abroad before 1920. Most went as
indentured laborers to work under incred-
ibly difficult conditions on the plantations
or in the gold mines of Latin America,
southern Asia, Africa, California, Hawaii,
and Australia. White estate owners very often
used Asians to replace or supplement blacks
after the suppression of the slave trade.
Such migration from Asia would un-
doubtedly have grown to much greater pro-
portions if planters and mine owners in
search of cheap labor had been able to hire
as many Asian workers as they wished. But
they could not. By the 1880s, Americans
and Australians were building great white
walls—discriminatory laws designed to keep
Asians out.
Vaccinating Migrants Bound for

Hawaii, 1904
First Chinese, then Japanese, and finally Koreans
and Filipinos went in large numbers across the
Pacific to labor in Hawaii on American-owned sugar
plantations in the late nineteenth century. The
native Hawaiians had been decimated by disease,
preparing the way for the annexation of Hawaii by
the United States in 1898. (Corbis)
Western Imperialism (1880–1914) 681
A crucial factor in the migrations before 1914 was, therefore, the general pol- Sec tion Review
icy of “whites only” in the open lands of possible permanent settlement. This, too,
was part of Western dominance in the increasingly lopsided world. Largely suc- • Population growth and the search for
better economic and social opportuni-
cessful in monopolizing the best overseas opportunities, Europeans and people of ties drove European migration, which
European ancestry reaped the main benefits from the great migration. By 1913 slowed when these conditions im-
people in Australia, Canada, and the United States all had higher average incomes proved in the home country.
than people in Great Britain, still Europe’s wealthiest nation. • Migrants were an asset to the receiv-
ing countries as they worked hard and
often arrived with family and friends
forming a “migration chain,” all
Western Imperialism (1880–1914) settling in the same neighborhoods or
How and why after 1875 did European nations rush to build political in specific areas.
empires in Africa and Asia? • Asian migrants went to work most
often as indentured laborers in awful
conditions after the suppression of the
The expansion of Western society reached its apex between about 1880 and 1914. slave trade, but laws allowing only
In those years, the leading European nations not only continued to send massive whites to settle permanently limited
streams of migrants, money, and manufactured goods around the world, but also their numbers.
rushed to create or enlarge vast political empires abroad. This political empire
building contrasted sharply with the economic penetration of non-Western territo-
ries between 1816 and 1880, which had left a China or a Japan “opened” but po-
litically independent. By contrast, the empires of the late nineteenth century
recalled the old European colonial empires of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries and led contemporaries to speak of the new imperialism. new imperialism The drive to create
Characterized by a frantic rush to plant the flag over as many people and as vast political empires abroad, recalling
the old European colonial empires of the
much territory as possible, the new imperialism had momentous consequences. It seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
resulted in new tensions among competing European states, and it led to wars and and contrasting with the economic
rumors of war with non-European powers. The new imperialism was aimed pri- penetration of non-Western territories
marily at Africa and Asia and subjugated millions under European rule. between 1816 and 1880.
The most spectacular manifestation of the new impe-

The Scramble rialism was the scramble for Africa. As late as 1880,
for Africa European nations controlled only 10 percent of the
African continent (see inset, Map 26.1). Between 1880 and 1900, the situation
changed drastically. Britain, France, Germany, and Italy raced one another for
African possessions (see Map 26.1). By 1900 nearly the whole continent had been
carved up and placed under European rule: only Ethiopia in northeast Africa,
which repulsed Italian invaders, and Liberia on the West African coast, which had
been settled by freed slaves from the United States, remained independent. In the
years before 1914, the European powers tightened their control and established
colonial governments to rule their gigantic empires.
The situation in South Africa had a different final outcome. The British had
taken possession of the Dutch settlements at Cape Town during the wars with
Napoleon I. The descendents of Dutch settlers, known as Boers (bores) or Afrikan- Afrikaners Descendants of the Dutch
ers (af-rih-KAHN-uhrs), moved north and settled the regions later known as the in the Cape Colony.
Orange Free State and the Transvaal (trans-VAHL), proclaiming their political in-
dependence. Then in the early 1890s, Cecil Rhodes led the British farther north,
establishing protectorates over Bechuanaland (bech-oo-AH-nuh-land) (now
Botswana) and Rhodesia (roh-DEE-zhuh) (now Zimbabwe and Zambia).
Trying unsuccessfully to undermine the stubborn Afrikaners in the Transvaal,
where English-speaking capitalists like Rhodes were developing fabulously rich
gold mines, the British conquered their white rivals in the bloody South African
20°W 0° 20°E 40°E 40°N 60°E
SPANISH
MOROCCO
Mediterr
an
Tangier
Madeira Is.
Algiers
ea
(Portugal) Casablanca n
TUNISIA Sea N
MOROCCO Tripoli Cyrene
IFNI
Canary Is. Cairo
(Spain)
ALGER IA
RIO DE ORO L I B YA
EGYPT
Re
Nile R.
cer
Tropic of Can
d
Aswan
Se
ARABIA 20°N
S A H A R A
a
FRENCH WEST AFRICA
Se
e
n
ERITREA
ga
Omdurman
Nig
GAMBIA Khartoum
lR
er
FRENCH
Blu
.
Adowa SOMALILAND
R.
L. Chad ANGLO-EGYPTIAN
eN
PORTUGUESE
SUDAN
ile
GUINEA NORTH ER N BRITISH
ND
R.
ICA
TO G O L A N D
N IGER IA Fashoda SOMALILAND
ILA
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AF R
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IAL
LIBERIA COAST COAST
SO
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S. NIGERIA
N
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TO
IA
Uele R.
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L
UA
TA
(Spain) Congo I
SPANISH GUINEA
EQ R. BRITISH
UGANDA EAST AFRICA 0° Equator
CH
A T L A N T I C São Tomé L. Victoria

EN
(Portugal)
FR
O C E A N B ELGIAN CONGO Mombasa

CABINDA L. Tanganyika
GERMAN Zanzibar (Gr. Br.)
EAST AFRICA
ALGERIA I N D I A N
EGYPT
O C E A N
ANGOL A L. Nyasa
.R
Nile
S A H A R A 20°N NORTHERN
SENEGAL RHODESIA zi R. NYASALAND
e b
AR
Ni
m
ge
Za
SC
r
R.
SOUTHERN
GA
GERMAN RHODESIA MOZAMBIQUE 20°S
DA
SOUTHWEST
MA
Congo R AFRICA BECHUANALAND
. 0° Tropic of Capricorn
TRANSVAAL
SWAZILAND
ORANGE
FREE STATE Isandhlwana
BASUTOLAND
UNION OF
L
A
SOUTH AFRICA AT British Portuguese
20°S N
Cape Town French Belgian
COLONIAL PRESENCE 0 800 Km.
0 400 800 Km. German Spanish
IN AFRICA, 1878 CAPE
COLONY Italian Independent African
0 800 Mi.
20°W 0° 20°E 40°E 0 400 800 Mi. states
Mapping the Past

MAP 26.1 The Partition of Africa
The European powers carved up Africa after 1880 and built vast political empires. European states also seized territory in Asia in
the nineteenth century, although some Asian states and peoples managed to maintain their political independence, as may be
seen on Map 26.2, page 686. The late nineteenth century was the peak of European imperialism. Compare the patterns of
European imperialism in Africa and Asia, using this map and Map 26.2. [1] What European countries were leading imperialist
states in both Africa and Asia, and what lands did they hold? [2] What countries in Africa and Asia maintained their political
independence? [3] From an imperialist perspective, what in 1914 did the United States and Japan, two very different countries,
have in common in Africa and Asia?
War (1899–1902). In 1910 their territories were united in a new Union of

South Africa, established—unlike any other territory in Africa—as a largely “self-
governing” colony. This enabled the defeated Afrikaners to use their numerical
superiority over the British settlers to gradually take political power, as even the
most educated nonwhites lost the right to vote outside the Cape Colony. (See the Berlin conference A meeting of
feature “Individuals in Society: Cecil Rhodes.”) European leaders held in 1884 and 1885
In the complexity of the European seizure of Africa, certain events and indi- in order to lay down some basic rules for
imperialist competition in sub-Saharan
viduals stand out. Of enormous importance was the British occupation of Egypt in
Africa; they established the principle that
1882, which established the new model of formal political control. There was also European claims to African territory had
the role of Leopold II of Belgium (r. 1865–1909), an energetic, strong-willed mon- to rest on effective occupation in order to
arch with a lust for empire. “Steam and electricity have annihilated distance, and be recognized by other states.
all the non-appropriated lands on the surface of the globe can
become the field of our operations and of our success,”4 he
had exclaimed in 1861. Leopold ignited a gold rush mentality
after sending the part-time explorer Henry M. Stanley to plant
his flag in the Congo. The French rushed to stake their claim
in the region, and the race for territory was on.
The leaders of Europe met at the Berlin conference in
1884 and 1885 to agree on some basic rules for this new and
dangerous game of imperialist competition in sub-Saharan
Africa. The conference established the principle that Euro-
pean claims to African territory had to rest on “effective oc-
cupation” in order to be recognized by other states. The
conference recognized Leopold’s personal rule over a neutral
Congo free state and agreed to work to stop slavery and the
slave trade in Africa.
Bismarck, who saw little value in colonies, had a change
of stance when Germans clamored for a stake in Africa. In
1884 and 1885, Germany established protectorates over a
number of small African kingdoms and tribes in Togo, Cam-
eroons, southwest Africa, and, later, East Africa. In acquiring
colonies, Bismarck worked with France’s Jules Ferry against
the British. With Bismarck’s tacit approval, the French pressed
southward from Algeria, eastward from their old forts on the
Senegal coast, and northward from their protectorate on the
Congo River.
Meanwhile, the British began enlarging their West Afri-
can enclaves and impatiently pushing northward from the
Cape Colony and westward from Zanzibar. Their attempt to
move southward from Egypt was blocked by Muslim forces in
the Sudan in 1885. A decade later, another British force, un-
der General Horatio H. Kitchener (KICH-uh-ner), moved
cautiously and more successfully up the Nile River, building
European Imperialism at its Worst

This 1908 English cartoon, “Leopold, King of the Congo, in his native
dress,” focuses on the barbaric practice of cutting off the hands and feet of
Africans who refused to gather as much rubber as Leopold’s company
demanded. In 1908 an international human rights campaign forced the
Belgian king to cede his personal fief to the Belgian state. (The Granger
Collection, New York)
Cecil Rhodes
C ecil Rhodes (1853–1902) epitomized the dyna-
mism and the ruthlessness of the new imperialism.
He built a corporate monopoly, claimed vast tracts in
But Rhodes, like many high achievers obsessed with
power and personal aggrandizement, went too far. He
backed, and then in 1896 failed to call back, a failed inva-
Africa, and established the famous Rhodes scholarships sion of the Transvaal, which was designed to topple the
to develop colonial Dutch-speaking republic. Repudiated by top British lead-
(and American) leaders who had encouraged his plan, Rhodes had to resign as
ers who would love prime minister. In declining health, he continued to agi-
and strengthen the tate against the Afrikaner republics. He died at age forty-
British Empire. But nine as the South African War (1899–1902) ended.
to Africans, he left a In accounting for Rhodes’s remarkable but flawed
bitter legacy. achievements, both sympathetic and critical biographers
Rhodes came stress his imposing size, enormous energy, and powerful
from a large middle- personality. His ideas were commonplace, but he be-
class family and at lieved in them passionately, and he could persuade and
seventeen went to inspire others to follow his lead. Rhodes the idealist was
southern Africa to nonetheless a born negotiator, a crafty dealmaker who
Cecil Rhodes, after crushing the last African seek his fortune. He believed that everyone could be had for a price. Accord-
revolt in Rhodesia in 1896. (Brown Brothers) soon turned to dia- ing to his best biographer, Rhodes’s homosexuality—
monds, newly discov- discreet, partially repressed, and undeniable—was also
ered at Kimberley, “a major component of his magnetism and his success.”†
picked good partners, and was wealthy by 1876. But Never comfortable with women, he loved male com-
Rhodes, often called a dreamer, wanted more. He en- panionship. He drew together a “band of brothers,” both
tered Oxford University, while returning periodically to gay and straight, to share in the pursuit of power.
Africa, and his musings crystallized in a belief in prog- Rhodes cared nothing for the rights of blacks. Ever a
ress through racial competition and territorial expan- combination of visionary and opportunist, he looked
sion. “I contend,” he wrote, “that we [English] are the forward to an eventual reconciliation of Afrikaners and
finest race in the world and the more of the world we British in a united white front. Therefore, as prime min-
inhabit the better it is for the human race.”* ister of the Cape Colony, he broke with the colony’s
Rhodes’s belief in British expansion never wavered. liberal tradition and supported Afrikaner demands to
In 1880 he formed the De Beers Mining Company, and reduce drastically the number of black voters and limit
by 1888 his firm monopolized southern Africa’s dia- black freedoms. This helped lay the foundation for the
mond production and earned fabulous profits. Rhodes Union of South Africa’s brutal policy of racial segrega-
also entered the Cape Colony’s legislature and became tion known as apartheid after 1948.
the all-powerful prime minister from 1890 to 1896. His
main objective was to dominate the Afrikaner republics
and to impose British rule on as much land as possible
beyond their northern borders. Working through a state- 1. How did Rhodes relate to Afrikaners and to black
approved private company financed in part by De Beers, Africans? How do you account for the differences
Rhodes’s agents forced and cajoled African kings to ac- and the similarities?
cept British “protection,” then put down rebellions with 2. In what ways does Rhodes’s career throw additional
Maxim machine guns. Britain thus obtained a great light on the debate over the causes of the new
swath of empire on the cheap. imperialism?
*Robert Rotberg, The Founder: Cecil Rhodes and the Pursuit of

Power (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 150. †Ibid., p. 408.
684
a railroad to supply arms and reinforcements as it went. Finally, in 1898 these Brit-
ish troops met their foe at Omdurman (om-door-MAHN) (see Map 26.1), where
Muslim tribesmen armed with spears charged time and time again, only to be cut
down by the recently invented machine gun. In the end, eleven thousand brave
Muslim tribesmen lay dead, while only twenty-eight Britons had been killed.
Continuing up the Nile after the Battle of Omdurman, Kitchener’s armies
found that a small French force had beaten them to the village of Fashoda (fuh-
SHOH-duh). The result was a serious diplomatic crisis and even the threat of war.
Eventually, wracked by the Dreyfus affair (see page 662) and unwilling to fight,
France backed down and withdrew its forces, allowing the British to take over.
The British conquest of Sudan exemplifies the general process of empire build-
ing in Africa. The fate of the Muslim force at Omdurman was eventually inflicted on
all native peoples who resisted European rule: they were blown away by vastly supe-
rior armaments. But however much the European powers squabbled for territory
and privilege around the world, they always had the sense to stop short of actually
fighting each other. Imperial ambitions were not worth a great European war.
Although the sudden division of Africa was more spec-

Imperialism in Asia tacular, Europeans also extended their political con-
trol in Asia. In 1815 the Dutch ruled little more than
the island of Java in the East Indies. Thereafter they gradually brought almost all
of the three-thousand-mile archipelago under their political authority, although
they had to grant some territory to Britain and Germany. In the critical decade of
the 1880s, the French under the leadership of Jules Ferry took Indochina. The
Russians expanded to the south in the Caucasus and to the east in Central Asia
and China’s outlying provinces. India, Japan, and China also experienced a pro-
found imperialist impact (see Map 26.2).
The United States’s great conquest was the Philippines, taken from Spain in
1898 after the Spanish-American War. When it quickly became clear that the
United States had no intention of granting independence, Philippine patriots rose
in revolt and were suppressed only after long, bitter fighting. Some Americans
protested the taking of the Philippines, but to no avail. Thus another great Western
power joined the imperialist ranks in Asia.
Many factors contributed to the late-nineteenth-century

Causes of the rush for territory and empire, among them economics,
New Imperialism nationalism, ideology, military technology, and the am-
bitions of individuals. While these reasons do not constitute a defense of impe-
rialism, they are helpful in understanding what drove it.
Economic motives were a factor in the new imperialism, especially in the Brit-
ish Empire. By the late 1870s, Great Britain was losing its early lead in industrial-
ization and facing increasingly tough competition from France, Germany, and the
United States. When continental powers began to grab territory in the 1880s, the
British followed suit immediately. They feared that France and Germany would
seal off their empires with high tariffs and restrictions and that potential markets
would be lost forever. In actuality, however, the overall economic gains of the new
imperialism proved quite limited before 1914. The new colonies were simply too
poor to buy much, and they offered few immediately profitable investments.
Colonies also seemed important for political and diplomatic reasons. For in-
stance, the British occupation of Egypt was motivated in part by the desire to
40°E 60°E 80°E 100°E 110°E 120°E
Helsinki
St. Petersburg 60°N
R U S S I A N E M P I R E SIBERIA
Riga
Moscow Sea of
n Railway Omsk
eria Lake O k h o t sk
ns-Sib
Tra Baikal
Samara Amur AMUR DISTRICT
Warsaw Irkutsk Chita (1858)
Sakhalin
Brest-
R.
Orenburg
R.
Litovsk Kiev
ga
ni
D
ep
Vol
er Khabarovsk
R. M AN C H U RI A (1858) Karafuto
OUTER MONGOLIA (1905)
(Russian Influence, 1912)
Kazalinsk
Aral Lake
O LIA
Danube R. Sea Balkash NG Harbin
MO Shenyang
Ca
ck Sea R
Bla SINKIANG NE (Mukden)
spi
Batum Tashkent Vladivostok
(1878) Bukhara (1864) IN L
Constantinople
an
(1860)
Krasnovodsk HO Sea of
RE
Andizhan (1871) Beijing KOREA
Angora Kars Baku JE 40°N
R.
Ashkhabad (1905, 1910)
(1878) Japan
Sea
Samarkand
PI
Lüshun (Port Arthur)
He
OTTOMA (1881)
Tianjin
N (1868) (Japan 1905)
ng
EM Merv
EM
a
P Tehran (1884) N Hu Weihai (Gr. Br. 1898)
IR TA Jiaozhou
RUSSIAN SPHERE Kushka IS KASHMIR (Ger. 1898)
Medite Beirut N
E
rranean (1907) A (1846)
E
S
GH
Damascus Baghdad PUNJAB E
.
Sea H C H I N A Nanjing
In dus R
IM N
AF
TIBET . Shanghai P A
PE RS I A AL iR
N AY ng
z (Gr. Br. 1842) JA
KUWAIT
BRITISH Delhi NE
A M BHUTAN Ya Wuhan
TS.
Pe
(1899) PA East
SPHERE BALUCHISTAN L Chongqing
rs
an (1883) China Ryuku Is. (Jap.)

i
Ni l
(1907)
Gu g Fuzhou
lf G a n es R . Sea
eR
Re
ARABIA Kunming
Xiamen
.
Karachi Formosa (1895)

d
Medina
Macao Guangzhou (Gr. Br. 1842) Tropic of Cancer
OMAN Calcutta (Port. 1557) Hong Kong (Gr. Br. 1842)
Sea
(1891) Diu
Arabian (Port.) BURM A Hanoi Zhanjiang (France 1898)
(1852, 1885) Haiphong 20°N
Sea Bombay INDIA B ay Hainan
0 500 1,000 Km. Yanaon of Rangoon
SIAM Philippine Is.
PACIFIC
(Fr.) FRENCH
HADRAMAUT (1888) Bengal INDOCHINA Manila (U.S. 1898)
0 500 1,000 Mi. WEST ADEN Madras Bangkok (1859, 1907) OCEAN
(1903) South
Goa Pondicherry (Fr.) China
Andaman Is. Saigon
(Port.) Karikal (Fr.) (Gr. Br.) Sea
A F R I C A BRITISH NORTH
Ceylon BORNEO
MALAY STATES (1888)
(1874, 1909)
SARAWAK
(1888)
Singapore
Territories held by Russian Empire (Gr. Br. 1819)
Equator 0°
Western powers Borneo
Great Britain
Japan and its territories I N D I A N O C E A N Celebes
Sumatra
Independent Asian states DU
France TCH New Guinea
Batavia EAST
Ottoman Empire INDIES
Netherlands
Java (Portugal 1859)
United States Major railroads (1619) (Neth.)
Timor
MAP 26.2 Asia in 1914

India remained under British rule, while China precariously preserved its political independence. The Dutch empire in modern-day Indonesia was old,
but French control of Indochina was a product of the new imperialism.
safeguard the Suez Canal. Far-flung possessions guaranteed ever-growing navies

the safe havens and the dependable coaling stations they needed in times of crisis
or war.
Imperialism also served European rulers who were dealing with social tensions
and political conflicts at home. The tabloid press whipped up feelings of patri-
otism over foreign triumphs, while leaders stressed that colonies benefited workers
as well as capitalists by providing cheap raw materials for industry. In short, conser-
vative leaders used imperialism to justify the status quo and their hold on power.
European leaders were themselves pressured to acquire colonies by special-
interest groups. Shipping companies wanted lucrative subsidies. White settlers
demanded more land and greater protection. Missionaries and humanitarians
wanted to spread religion and stop the slave trade. Military men and colonial of-
ficials, whose role has often been overlooked, foresaw rapid advancement and
high-paid positions in growing empires. The actions of such groups pushed the
course of empire forward.
Many Westerners were convinced that colonies were essential to achieving
greatness. “There has never been a great power without great colonies,” wrote one
French publicist in 1877. “Every virile people has established colonial power,”
echoed the famous nationalist historian of Germany, Heinrich von Treitschke
(HAHYN-rikh fuhn TRAHYCH-kuh). “All great nations in the fullness of their
strength have desired to set their mark upon barbarian lands and those who fail to
participate in this great rivalry will play a pitiable role in time to come.”5
As Treitschke’s statement suggests, Social Darwinism and racist doctrines also
fostered imperialist expansion. As one prominent English economist argued, the
“strongest nation has always been conquering the weaker . . . and the strongest
tend to be best.” In the words of another, “The path of progress is strewn with the
wreck . . . of inferior races.” Thus imperialism was justified as the inevitable tri-
umph of the superior European race.
Convinced of their moral and intellectual superiority, Europeans also came to
believe that they should “civilize” nonwhite peoples. According to this view, non-
whites would eventually receive the benefits of modern economies, cities, ad-
vanced medicine, and higher standards of living. In time, they might be ready for
self-government and Western democracy. Thus the French spoke of their sacred
“civilizing mission.” In 1899 Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936), who wrote masterfully
of Anglo-Indian life and was perhaps the most influential British writer of the
1890s, exhorted Europeans (and Americans in the United States) to unselfish ser-
vice in distant lands:
Take up the White Man’s Burden—
Send forth the best ye breed—
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need,
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild—
Your new-caught, sullen peoples
Half-devil and half-child.6
Many Americans also accepted the ideology of the white man’s burden. It was white man’s burden The idea that
an important factor in the decision to rule, rather than liberate, the Philippines Europeans could and should civilize
more primitive, nonwhite peoples and
after the Spanish-American War. Like their European counterparts, these Ameri- that nonwhites would eventually receive
cans sincerely believed that their civilization had reached unprecedented heights the benefits of modern economics,
and that they had unique benefits to bestow on all “less advanced” peoples. An- cities, advanced medicine, and higher
other argument was that imperial government protected natives from tribal war- standards of living.
fare as well as cruder forms of exploitation by white settlers and business people.
Peace and stability under European control also facilitated the spread of Chris-
tianity. In Africa, Catholic and Protestant missionaries competed with Islam south
of the Sahara, seeking converts and building schools to spread the Gospel. Many
Africans’ first real contact with whites was in mission schools. Some peoples, such
as the Ibo in Nigeria, became highly Christianized.
Such occasional successes in black Africa contrasted with the general failure
of missionary efforts in India, China, and the Islamic world. There Christians of-
ten preached in vain to peoples with ancient, complex religious beliefs. Yet the
number of Christian believers around the world did increase substantially in the
nineteenth century, and missionary groups kept trying. Unfortunately, “many mis-
sionaries had drunk at the well of European racism,” and this probably prevented
them from doing better.7
Not all Westerners were convinced of the value of im-

Critics of Imperialism perialism. The radical English economist J. A. Hobson
(1858–1940), in his Imperialism, contended that the
rush to acquire colonies was due to the need of the rich to find outlets for their
surplus capital. Yet, Hobson argued, imperial possessions did not pay off economi-
cally for the country as a whole. Moreover, Hobson argued that the quest for em-
pire diverted popular attention away from domestic reform and the need to reduce
the great gap between rich and poor. Most people, however, did not believe Hobson’s
economic argument and believed instead that imperialism profited the homeland.
Hobson and many other critics struck home, however, with their moral con-
demnation of whites imperiously ruling nonwhites. They rebelled against crude
Social Darwinian thought: “Blessed are the strong, for they shall
Sec tion Review prey on the weak.”8 Kipling and his kind were lampooned as racist
bullies whose rule rested on brutality, racial contempt, and the
• The struggle between Dutch settlers (Afrikaners) and the Maxim machine gun. In the novel Heart of Darkness, Joseph Con-
British for control of South Africa led to a bloody South rad (1857–1924) castigated the “pure selfishness” of Europeans in
African war, resulting in a self-governing colony with the
more numerous Afrikaners gaining political dominance, “civilizing” Africa and dramatized how both whites and nonwhites
disenfranchising nonwhites. are destroyed in the process. Henry Labouchère, a member of
• European leaders met at the Berlin conference (1884– Parliament and prominent spokesman for this position, mocked
1885) to set rules for the imperialistic competition for Kipling’s famous poem:
African territory, agreeing on “effective occupation” as
the basis for European control of Africa. Pile on the Brown Man’s burden!
• Asia also fell to imperialist Westerners, the Dutch And if ye rouse his hate,
occupying Indonesia, the French taking Indochina, Meet his old-fashioned reasons
the Russians expanding into the Caucasus, Central With Maxims up to date,
Asia, and China, and the United States taking over With shells and Dum-Dum bullets
the Philippines. A hundred times plain
• Causes of the new imperialism were: economic, as The Brown Man’s loss must never
imperialistic countries feared they would lose markets; Imply the White Man’s gain.9
political, as leaders promoted nationalism to cover social
and political tensions at home; and ideological, with Critics charged Europeans with applying a degrading double
social Darwinism and racist doctrines fueling the “supe- standard and failing to live up to their own noble ideals. At home
rior” European need to “civilize” nonwhite peoples and Europeans had won or were winning representative government,
for Christian missionaries to convert them.
individual liberties, and a certain equality of opportunity. In their
• Dissenters toward European imperialism, such as empires, Europeans imposed military dictatorships on Africans
J. A. Hobson, denounced its diverting attention away
from domestic reform and condemned its false morality, and Asians; forced them to work involuntarily, almost like slaves;
charging that civil liberties won at home were not prac- and discriminated against them shamelessly. Europeans who de-
ticed in colonies. nounced the imperialist tide provided colonial peoples with a
Western ideology of liberation.
Responding to Western Imperialism 689
Responding to Western Imperialism

What was the general pattern of non-Western responses to Western
expansion, and how did India, Japan, and China meet the imperialist
challenge?
To peoples in Africa and Asia, Western expansion represented a profoundly disrup-

tive assault. Everywhere it threatened traditional ruling classes, traditional econo-
mies, and traditional ways of life. Christian missionaries and European secular
ideologies challenged established beliefs and values. Non-Western peoples experi-
enced a crisis of identity, one made all the more painful by the power and arro-
gance of the white intruders.
Generally, the initial response of African and Asian rul-

The Pattern ers to aggressive Western expansion was to try to drive
of Response the unwelcome foreigners away. When that proved im-
possible, conquered peoples responded in a variety of ways. At one end of the
spectrum were “traditionalists,” who concentrated on preserving their cultural tra-
ditions at all costs. “Westernizers” or “modernizers” stood at the other, and many
shades of opinion rested in between. Both before and after European domination,
the struggle among these groups was often intense. With time, however, the mod-
ernizers usually prevailed.
When the power of both the traditionalists and the modernizers was thoroughly
shattered by superior force, the great majority of Asians and Africans accepted im-
perial rule. Political participation in non-Western lands was historically limited to
small elites, and the masses were used to doing what their rulers told them. Never-
theless, support for European rule was shallow and weak. Thus the conforming
masses followed with greater or lesser enthusiasm a few determined personalities
who came to oppose the Europeans. Such leaders always arose, both when Euro-
peans ruled directly and when they manipulated native governments.
Those individuals who would lead the fight against imperialism found in the
Western world the ideologies and justification for their protest. They discovered
liberalism, with its credo of civil liberty and political self-determination. Above all,
they found themselves attracted to modern nationalism, which asserted that every
people had the right to control its own destiny. After 1917 anti-imperialist revolt
would find another weapon in Lenin’s version of Marxian socialism. Thus the
anti-imperialist search for dignity drew strength from Western thought and cul-
ture, as is apparent in the development of three major Asian countries—India, Ja-
pan, and China.
India was the jewel of the British Empire, and no colo-

Empire in India nial area experienced a more profound British impact.
Unlike Japan and China, which maintained a real or Great Rebellion The 1857 and 1858
precarious independence, and unlike African territories, which were annexed by insurrection by Muslim and Hindu
Europeans only at the end of the nineteenth century, India was ruled more or less mercenaries in the British army that
absolutely by Britain for a very long time. spread throughout northern and central
India before finally being crushed,
Arriving in India on the heels of the Portuguese in the seventeenth century, the primarily by loyal native troops from
British East India Company had conquered the last independent native state southern India. Britain thereafter ruled
by 1848. In the Great Rebellion of 1857 and 1858, people throughout northern India directly.
and central India tried to drive the British out, but the rebellion was crushed, pri-
marily by native troops from southern India. Thereafter the British Parliament in
London ruled India directly, with white administrators in India carrying out their
orders. Many British shared the sentiments of Lord Kitchener in justifying British
hegemony:
It is this consciousness of the inherent superiority of the European which has won
for us India. However well educated and clever a native may be, and however
brave he may prove himself, I believe that no rank we can bestow on him would
cause him to be considered an equal of the British officer.10
British women played an important part in the imperial enterprise, especially
after the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 made it much easier for civil servants
and businessmen to bring their wives and children with them to India. These Brit-
ish families tended to live in their own separate communities, where they occu-
Imperial Complexities in India

Britain permitted many native princes to continue their rule, if they accepted British domination. This photo shows a road-building
project designed to facilitate famine relief in a southern native state. Officials of the local Muslim prince and their British “advisers”
watch over workers drawn from the Hindu majority. (Nizam’s Good Works Project—Famine Relief: Road Building, Aurangabad 1895–1902, from
Judith Mara Gutman, Through Indian Eyes. Courtesy, Private Collection)
pied large houses with well-shaded porches, handsome lawns, and a multitude of
servants. It was the wife’s responsibility to direct their households and servants with
the same self-confident authoritarianism that characterized British political rule
in India. (See the feature “Listening to the Past: A British Woman in India” on
pages 696–697.)
With British men and women sharing a sense of mission as well as strong feel-
ings of racial and cultural superiority, the British established a modern system of
progressive secondary education in which all instruction was in English. Thus
through education and government service, the British offered some Indians op-
portunities for both economic and social advancement. High-caste Hindus, par-
ticularly quick to respond, emerged as skillful intermediaries between the British
rulers and the Indian people, and soon they formed a new elite profoundly influ-
enced by Western thought and culture.
This new bureaucratic elite played a crucial role in modern economic devel-
opment, which was a second result of British rule. Irrigation projects for agricul-
ture, the world’s third-largest railroad network for good communications, and large
tea and jute plantations geared to the world economy were all developed. Unfor-
tunately, the lot of the Indian masses improved little, for the increase in produc-
tion was eaten up by population increase.
Finally, with a well-educated, English-speaking Indian bureaucracy and mod-
ern communications, the British created a unified, powerful state. They placed
under the same general system of law and administration the vanquished king-
doms of the entire subcontinent—groups that had fought each other for centuries
and had been repeatedly conquered by Muslim and Mongol invaders.
In spite of these achievements, the decisive reaction to European rule was the
rise of nationalism among the Indian elite. No matter how anglicized and neces-
sary a member of the educated classes became, he or she could never become the
white ruler’s equal. The top jobs, the best clubs, the modern hotels, and even
certain railroad compartments were sealed off to brown-skinned Indians. The
peasant masses might accept such inequality as the latest version of age-old oppres-
sion, but the well-educated, English-speaking elite eventually could not. For the
elite, racial discrimination meant bitter injustice. It flagrantly contradicted those
cherished Western concepts of human rights and equality. Moreover, it was based
on dictatorship, no matter how benign.
By 1885, when educated Indians came together to found the predominately
Hindu Indian National Congress, demands were increasing for the equality and
self-government that Britain had already granted white-settler colonies, such as
Canada and Australia. By 1907, emboldened in part by Japan’s success (see the
next section), the radicals in the Indian National Congress were calling for com-
plete independence. Even the moderates were demanding home rule for India
through an elected parliament. Although there were sharp divisions between Hin-
dus and Muslims, Indians were finding an answer to the foreign challenge. The
common heritage of British rule and Western ideals, along with the reform and
revitalization of the Hindu religion, had created a genuine movement for national
independence.
When Commodore Matthew Perry arrived in Japan in

The Example of Japan 1853 with his crude but effective gunboat diplomacy,
Japan was a complex feudal society. At the top stood a
figurehead emperor, but real power was in the hands of a hereditary military gov- shogun The hereditary governor in
ernor, the shogun (SHOH-guhn). With the help of a warrior nobility known as feudal Japan.
samurai Japanese warrior nobility samurai (SAH-muh-rye), the shogun governed an unindustrialized country of
who were often poor, restless, and peasants and city dwellers.
intensely proud.
When foreign diplomats and merchants began to settle in Yokohama (yoh-
kuh-HAH-muh), radical samurai reacted with a wave of antiforeign terrorism and
antigovernment assassinations between 1858 and 1863. The imperialist response
was swift. An allied fleet of American, British, Dutch, and French warships demol-
ished key forts, further weakening the power and prestige of the shogun’s govern-
ment. Then in 1867, a coalition led by patriotic samurai seized control of the
government and restored the political power of the emperor. This was the Meiji
(MAY-jee) Restoration, a great turning point in Japanese development.
The immediate, all-important goal of the new government was to meet the
foreign threat. The battle cry of the Meiji reformers was “Enrich the state and
strengthen the armed forces.” Yet how were these tasks to be done? In a remark-
able about-face, the leaders of Meiji Japan dropped their antiforeign attacks and
initiated a series of measures to reform Japan along modern lines. In the broadest
sense, the Meiji leaders tried to harness the power inherent in Europe’s dual revo-
lution in order to protect their country and catch up with the West.
In 1871 the new leaders abolished the old feudal structure and declared social
equality. They decreed freedom of movement in a country where traveling abroad
had been a most serious crime. They created a free, competitive, government-
stimulated economy. Japan began to build railroads and
modern factories. Thus the new generation adopted
many principles of a free, liberal society, and, as in Eu-
rope, such freedom resulted in a tremendously creative
release of human energy.
Yet the overriding concern of Japan’s political leader-
ship was always a powerful state, and to achieve this,
more than liberalism was borrowed from the West. A
powerful modern navy was created, and the army was
completely reorganized along European lines, so that an
army of draftees and a professional officer corps replaced
the aristocratic samurai warriors. Japan also adapted
skillfully the West’s science and modern technology, par-
ticularly in industry, medicine, and education. Many
Japanese were encouraged to study abroad, and the gov-
ernment paid large salaries to attract foreign experts.
These experts were always carefully controlled, however,
and replaced by trained Japanese as soon as possible.
By 1890, the new state was firmly established. Follow-
ing the model of the German Empire, Japan established
an authoritarian constitution and rejected democracy.
The power of the emperor and his ministers was vast;
that of the legislature, limited.
Japan successfully copied the imperialism of West-
ern society. Expansion not only proved that Japan was
The Rapid Modernization of the Japanese Army

This woodcut from about 1870 shows Japanese soldiers outfitted in
Western uniforms and marching in Western formation. Japanese
reformers, impressed by Prussian discipline and success on the
battlefield, looked to Germany for their military models. (Ryogoku
Tsuneo Tamba Collection/Laurie Platt Winfrey)
strong; it also cemented the nation together in a great mission. Having “opened”
Korea with the gunboat diplomacy of imperialism in 1876, Japan decisively de-
feated China in a war over Korea in 1894 and 1895 and took Formosa (modern-
day Taiwan). In the next years, Japan competed aggressively with the leading
European powers for influence and territory in China, particularly Manchuria
(man-CHOOR-ee-uh). There Japanese and Russian imperialism met and collided.
In 1904 Japan attacked Russia without warning, and after a bloody war, Japan
emerged with a valuable foothold in China. By 1910, with the annexation of Ko-
rea, Japan had become a major imperialist power.
In 1860 the two-hundred-year-old Qing Dynasty in

Toward Revolution China appeared on the verge of collapse. Efforts to re-
in China pel foreigners had failed, and rebellion and chaos hundred days of reform A series of
wracked the country. Yet the government made a surprising comeback that lasted Western-style reforms launched in 1898
by the Chinese government in an
more than thirty years. Loyal scholar-statesmen and generals quelled disturbances
attempt to meet the foreign challenge.
such as the great Tai Ping (tie-PING) rebellion, while the empress dowager Tzu
Hsi (TSOO SHEE) revitalized the bureaucracy with some help from European ad-
visers. Foreign aggression also lessened during this period, for the Europeans had Sec tion Review
obtained their primary goal of commercial and diplomatic relations.
• Natives initially met Western expan-
The Qing Dynasty moved again toward collapse in the wake of the Sino- sion militarily to get rid of the white
Japanese War of 1894 to 1895, which had revealed China’s helplessness in the face invaders, but when that failed, a
of aggression. European powers seized the opportunity to grab concessions and variety of responses ensued, from
protectorates in China. At the high point of this rush in 1898, it appeared that the struggles to maintain “traditionalist”
European powers might actually divide China among themselves, as they had re- culture to “modernists” who assimi-
lated Western culture within
cently divided Africa. Probably only the jealousy each nation felt toward its impe- their own.
rialist competitors saved China from partition, although the U.S. Open Door
• Support for European rule was
policy, which opposed formal annexation of Chinese territory, may have helped generally weak, allowing native anti-
tip the balance. In any event, the tempo of foreign encroachment greatly acceler- imperialist leaders to use Western
ated after 1894. ideas of nationalism to inspire the
So, too, did the intensity and radicalism of the Chinese reaction. Like the lead- masses to revolt.
ers of the Meiji Restoration, some modernizers saw salvation in Western institu- • In British-ruled India, native Indians,
tions. In 1898 the government launched a desperate hundred days of reform in no matter how educated, were only
an attempt to meet the foreign challenge. More radical reformers, such as the second class, leading to the formation
of the Indian National Congress that
revolutionary Sun Yat-sen (soon yot-SEN) (1866–1925), who came from the peas- began to call for complete indepen-
antry and was educated in Hawaii by Christian missionaries, sought to overthrow dence or at least home rule through
the dynasty altogether and establish a republic. an elected parliament.
On the other side, some traditionalists turned back toward ancient practices, • Japan met the imperialist threat with
political conservatism, and fanatical hatred of the “foreign devils.” “Protect the counterforce, restoring the emperor
country, destroy the foreigner” was their simple motto. In the agony of defeat and and completely reorganizing their
unwanted reforms, secret societies such as the Boxers rebelled. In northeastern nation along the Western lines of a
competitive, free, liberal society; they
China, more than two hundred foreign missionaries and several thousand Chi- revamped the army and navy while
nese Christians were killed. Once again the imperialist response was swift and retaining an authoritarian constitution
harsh. Peking was occupied and plundered by foreign armies. A heavy indemnity and competing with the West for
was imposed. territory and influence in China.
The years after the Boxer Rebellion (1900–1903) were ever more troubled. • The Qing Dynasty struggled to main-
Anarchy and foreign influence spread as the power and prestige of the Qing Dy- tain control of China in a climate of
nasty declined still further. Antiforeign, antigovernment revolutionary groups agi- rebellion, chaos, and threats on all
sides from foreign imperialists, but
tated and plotted. Finally in 1912, a spontaneous uprising toppled the Qing after the failed Boxer rebellion, an-
Dynasty. After thousands of years of emperors and empires, a loose coalition of other uprising in 1912 finally ended
revolutionaries proclaimed a Western-style republic and called for an elected the empire, calling for a republic and
parliament. The transformation of China under the impact of expanding Western an elected Western-style parliament.
society entered a new phase, and the end was not in sight.
Chapter Review
What were some of the global consequences of European industrialization
between 1815 and 1914? (page 674) Key Terms
In the nineteenth century, the industrializing West entered the third and most dy- Third World (p. 674)
namic phase of its centuries-old expansion into non-Western lands. In so doing, West- opium trade (p. 676)
ern nations promoted a prodigious growth of world trade, forced reluctant countries khedive (p. 678)
such as China and Japan into the globalizing economy, and profitably subordinated
many lands to their own economic interests. great migration (p. 679)
great white walls (p. 680)
new imperialism (p. 681)
How was massive migration an integral part of Western expansion? (page 679)
Afrikaners (p. 681)
In response to population pressures at home and economic opportunities abroad, Berlin conference (p. 683)
Western nations also sent forth millions of emigrants to the sparsely populated areas of
white man’s burden (p. 687)
European settlement in North and South America, Australia, and Asiatic Russia. Mi-
gration from Asia was much more limited, mainly because European settlers raised Great Rebellion (p. 689)
high barriers against Asian immigrants. shogun (p. 691)
samurai (p. 692)
hundred days of reform (p. 693)
How and why after 1875 did European nations rush to build political empires in
Africa and Asia? (page 681)
After 1875, Western countries grabbed vast political empires in Africa and rushed to
establish political influence in Asia. The reasons for this culminating surge were many,
but the economic thrust of robust industrial capitalism, an ever-growing lead in tech-
nology, and the competitive pressures of European nationalism were particularly im-
portant.
What was the general pattern of non-Western responses to Western expansion,

and how did India, Japan, and China meet the imperialist challenge? (page 689)
Western expansion had far-reaching consequences. The world became in many ways
a single unit, as European expansion diffused the ideas and techniques of a highly de-
veloped civilization. Yet the West relied on force to conquer and rule, and it treated
non-Western peoples as racial inferiors. Thus non-Western elites, often armed with
Western doctrines, responded gradually but effectively to the Western challenge. In
India, a well-educated English-speaking elite rejected racial discrimination, and in
1885 it launched the Indian National Congress, which was calling for complete inde-
pendence by 1907. In Japan, the Meiji reformers reorganized the society, promoted
modernization, and embraced imperialism. In China, less successful at reform, a pop-
ular uprising deposed the emperor in 1912 and established a republic. By 1914 non-
Western elites in all three countries were engaged in a national, anti-imperialist struggle
for dignity, genuine independence, and modernization.
Notes
1. Quoted in J. W. Hall, Japan, from Prehistory to Modern Times (New York: Delacorte Press,
1970), p. 250.
2. Quoted in Earl of Cromer, Modern Egypt (London, 1911), p. 48.
3. Quoted in T. Blegen, Norwegian Migration to America, vol. 2 (Northfield, Minn.:
Norwegian-American Historical Association, 1940), p. 468.
4. Quoted in W. L. Langer, European Alliances and Alignments, 1871–1890 (New York: Vintage
Books, 1931), p. 290.
Chapter Review 695
5. Quoted in G. H. Nadel and P. Curtis, eds., Imperialism and Colonialism (New York: Mac-
millan, 1964), p. 94.
6. Rudyard Kipling, The Five Nations (London, 1903).
7. E. H. Berman, “African Responses to Christian Mission Education,” African Studies Review
17 (1974): 530.
8. Quoted in W. L. Langer, The Diplomacy of Imperialism, 2d ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1951), p. 88.
9. “The Brown Man’s Burden,” by Henry Labouchère, 1899. Quoted in Ellis, The Social His-
tory of the Machine Gun (New York: Pantheon Books, 1975), pp. 99–100.
10. Quoted in K. M. Panikkar, Asia and Western Dominance: A Survey of the Vasco da Gama
Epoch of Asian History (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1959), p. 116.

A British Woman in India
G uides for housekeeping became popular in Europe in

the nineteenth century as middle-class women funneled
great energy into their homes. A British woman in India
probably consulted The Complete Indian Housekeeper and
Cook by Flora Annie Steel and Grace Gardiner, a bestseller
published in 1888 and frequently updated.
The following passage focuses on how the British mistress
should manage her Indian servants, and along with practical
suggestions it lays bare some basic attitudes and assumptions
of Europeans in colonial settings.
Easy, however, as the actual housekeeping is in

India, the personal attention of the mistress is quite
as much needed here as at home. The Indian ser-
vant, it is true, learns more readily, and is guiltless
of the sniffiness with which Mary Jane [the servant An English lady attended by her Indian servants.
(Stapleton Collection, UK/The Bridgeman Art Library)
in England] receives suggestions, but a few days of
absence or neglect on the part of the mistress, re-
sults in the servants falling into their old habits with
the inherited conservatism of dirt. This is, of course, be treated as a child; that is to say, kindly, but with
disheartening, but it has to be faced as a necessary the greatest firmness. The laws of the household
condition of life, until a few generations of training should be those of the Medes and Persians, and first
shall have started the Indian servant on a new in- faults should never go unpunished. By overlooking
heritance of habit. It must never be forgotten that at a first offence, we lose the only opportunity we have
present those mistresses who aim at anything be- of preventing it becoming a habit.
yond keeping a good table are in the minority, and But it will be asked, How are we to punish our
that pioneering is always arduous work. servants when we have no hold either on their
The first duty of a mistress is, of course, to minds or bodies? . . .
be able to give intelligible orders to her servants; In their own experience the authors have found
therefore it is necessary she should learn to speak a system of rewards and punishments perfectly easy
Hindustani. . . . of attainment. One of them has for years adopted
The next duty is obviously to insist on her orders the plan of engaging her servants at so much a
being carried out. And here we come to the burn- month—the lowest rate at which such servant is
ing question: “How is this to be done?” Certainly, obtainable—and so much extra as buksheesh (buk-
there is at present very little to which we can appeal SHEESH) [a bonus], conditional on good service.
in the average Indian servant, but then, until it is For instance, a khitmutgâr (KID-muht-gahr) [male
implanted by training, there is very little sense of table servant] is engaged permanently on Rs. 9 a
duty in a child; yet in some well-regulated nurseries month, but the additional rupee which makes the
obedience is a foregone conclusion. The secret lies wage up to that usually demanded by good servants
in making rules, and keeping to them. The Indian is a fluctuating assessment! . . . That plan has never
servant is a child in everything save age, and should been objected to, and . . . the household quite en-
696
ters into the spirit of the idea, infinitely preferring it Questions for Analysis
to volcanic eruptions of fault-finding. . . . 1. What challenges does the British housekeeper
We do not wish to advocate an unholy haughti- face in India? How, according to Steel and
ness; but an Indian household can no more be gov- Gardiner, should she meet them?
erned peacefully, without dignity and prestige, than 2. In what ways do the authors’ comments and
an Indian Empire. For instance, if the mistress housekeeping policies reflect the attitudes of
wishes to teach the cook a new dish, let her give the European imperialism?
order for everything, down to charcoal, to be ready
Source: F. A. Steel and G. Gardiner, The Complete In-
at a given time, and the cook in attendance; and let
dian Housekeeper and Cook (London: William Heine-
her do nothing herself that the servants can do, if mann, 1902), chap. 1. Reprinted in L. DiCaprio and
only for this reason, that the only way of teaching M. Wiesner, eds., Lives and Voices: Sources in Euro-
is to see things done, not to let others see you pean Women’s History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001),
do them. pp. 323–328.
697
CHAPTER 27
The Great Break:
War and
Revolution
1914–1919
Chapter Preview
The First World War
What caused the Great War, and why
did it have such revolutionary
consequences?
The Home Front

What was the impact of total war on
civilian populations?
The Russian Revolution

Why did World War I bring socialist
revolution in Russia?

How did the Allies fashion a peace
settlement, and why was it
unsuccessful?
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY: Vera Brittain
LISTENING TO THE PAST: Arab Political Aspirations

in 1919
French soldiers in the trenches man a machine gun, the weapon that
killed so many, in this chilling work by Christopher Nevinson. (© Tate,
London/Art Resource, NY)
698
The First World War 699
I n the summer of 1914, the nations of Europe went willingly to war. They
believed they had no other choice. Moreover, both peoples and governments
confidently expected a short war leading to a decisive victory. Such a war, they
believed, would “clear the air,” and European society would be able to go on
as before.
These expectations were almost totally mistaken. The First World War was
long, indecisive, and tremendously destructive. To the shell-shocked generation of
survivors, it was known simply as the Great War: the war of unprecedented scope
and intensity. From today’s perspective, it is clear that the First World War marked
a great break in the course of modern Western history. World War I was a revolu-
tionary conflict of gigantic proportions.
The First World War

What caused the Great War, and why did it have such revolutionary
consequences?
The First World War was extremely long and destructive because it involved all
the Great Powers and because it quickly degenerated into a senseless military
stalemate. Like evenly matched boxers in a championship bout, the two sides tried
to wear each other down. But there was no referee to call a draw, only the blind
hammering of a life-or-death struggle.
In ten short years, from 1862 to 1871, Prussia-Germany

The Bismarckian had risen to become the most powerful nation in Eu-
System of Alliances rope, opening a new era in international relations. Yet,
as Bismarck never tired of repeating after his victory over France in 1871, Ger-
many was a “satisfied” power. Within Europe, Germany had no territorial ambi-
tions and wanted only peace.
But how was peace to be preserved? Bismarck’s first concern was to keep
an embittered France from gaining military allies. His second concern was the
threat to peace posed from the east, from Austria-Hungary and from Russia. Those
two enormous multinational empires had many conflicting interests, particularly
in southeastern Europe where the strength of the Ottoman Empire was ebbing
fast. There was a real threat that Germany might be dragged into a great war be-
tween the two rival empires. Bismarck’s solution was a system of alliances to re-
strain both Russia and Austria-Hungary, to prevent conflict between them, and to
isolate France.
A first step was the creation in 1873 of the conservative Three Emperors’ Three Emperors’ League A conserva-
League, which linked the monarchs of Prussia-Germany, Austria-Hungary, and tive alliance that linked the monarchs of
Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Russia
Russia in an alliance against radical movements. In 1877 and 1878, when Russia’s against radical movements.
victories in a war with the Ottoman Empire threatened the balance of Austrian
and Russian interests in the Balkans and the balance of British and Russian inter-
ests in the entire Middle East, Bismarck played the role of sincere peacemaker.
But his balancing efforts at the Congress of Berlin in 1878 infuriated Russian na-
tionalists, and this led Bismarck to conclude a defensive military alliance with
Austria against Russia in 1879. This alliance lasted until 1918 and the end of
World War I. Motivated by tensions with France, Italy joined Germany and Aus-
tria in 1882, thereby forming what became known as the Triple Alliance.
700 Chapter 27 The Great Break: War and Revolution, 1914–1919
Bismarck also maintained good relations with Britain, while encouraging

France in Africa but keeping France isolated in Europe. While he was not able to
maintain an alliance with Russia, he was able to substitute an agreement by which
both states promised neutrality if the other was attacked. In sum, Bismarck’s ac-
complishments in foreign policy after 1871 were great. For almost a generation, he
maintained German leadership in international affairs, and he worked success-
fully for peace by managing conflicts and by restraining Austria-Hungary and Rus-
sia with defensive alliances.
In 1890 the young, impetuous Emperor William II dis-

The Rival Blocs missed Bismarck, in part because of the chancellor’s
friendly policy toward Russia since the 1870s. William
then adamantly refused to renew the neutrality agreement with Russia, prompting
France to seize the chance to gain a powerful new ally. The alliance of France and
Russia was to remain in effect as long as the Triple Alliance of Austria, Germany,
and Italy existed. As a result, continental Europe was dangerously divided into two
rival blocs.
Great Britain’s foreign policy became increasingly crucial. Long content with
“splendid isolation” and no permanent alliances, Britain after 1891 was the only
uncommitted Great Power. Could Britain afford to remain isolated, or would it feel
compelled to take sides? Many Germans and some Britons felt that a “natural alli-
ance” of shared ancestry united the Germanic and Anglo-Saxon peoples. However,
the generally good relations that had prevailed between Prussia and Great Britain
ever since the mid-eighteenth century gave way to commercial and naval rivalries.
Above all, Germany’s decision in 1900 to expand greatly its battle fleet posed a
challenge to Britain’s long-standing naval supremacy. This decision coincided
with the hard-fought South African War (1899–1902) between the British and the
tiny Dutch republics of southern Africa, a war of British imperialism that was
widely denounced in the European press. Thus British leaders prudently set about
shoring up their exposed position with alliances and agreements.
Britain improved its often-strained relations with the United States and in
1902 concluded a formal alliance with Japan. Britain then responded favorably to
the advances of France’s skillful foreign minister, Théophile Delcassé (tey-aw-
FEEL del-ka-SEY), who wanted better relations with Britain and was willing to ac-
cept British rule in Egypt in return for British support of French plans to dominate
Morocco. The resulting Anglo-French Entente of 1904 settled all outstanding co-
lonial disputes between Britain and France.
Germany’s leaders foolishly decided to test the strength of the entente by insist-
ing in 1905 on an international conference on the whole Moroccan question. But
Germany’s crude bullying forced France and Britain closer together, and the con-
ference left Germany empty-handed and isolated (except for Austria-Hungary).
The result of the Moroccan crisis was something of a diplomatic revolution.
Britain, France, Russia, and even the United States began to see Germany as a
potential threat, a would-be intimidator that might seek to dominate all Europe. At
the same time, German leaders began to see sinister plots to “encircle” Germany
and block its development as a world power.
Germany’s decision to add a large, enormously expensive fleet of big-gun
battleships to its already expanding navy also heightened tensions after 1907. Again
the British saw it as a challenge to their power, and they resented having to invest
in a competing fleet. Unscrupulous journalists and special-interest groups in both
countries also fanned hostilities with talk of economic warfare between the trade
Chronology
giants. In 1909 the mass-circulation London Daily Mail hys- 1912 First Balkan War
terically informed its readers that “Germany is deliberately
preparing to destroy the British Empire.”1 By then Britain 1914 Assassination of Archduke
Francis Ferdinand
was psychologically, if not officially, in the Franco-Russian
camp. 1914–1918 World War I
1915 Italy and Bulgaria enter World
War I
In the early years of the twentieth 1916 German males between
The Outbreak of War century, nationalism was destroy- seventeen and sixty required to
ing the Ottoman Empire in Eu- work only for war effort;
rope and threatening to break up the Austro-Hungarian Rasputin murdered
Empire. War in the Balkans seemed inevitable. Growth of antiwar movement
1916–1918
In 1875 widespread nationalist rebellion resulted in the throughout Europe
partial division of Ottoman Turkish possessions in Europe.
1917 Russian Revolution
Serbia and Romania won independence, and a part of Bul-
garia won local autonomy, but Austria-Hungary obtained the 1918–1920 Great Civil War in Russia
right to “occupy and administer” Bosnia and Herzegovina 1919 Treaty of Versailles
(her-tsuh-goh-VEE-nuh), and the Ottoman Empire retained
important Balkan holdings (see Map 27.1).
By 1903, however, nationalism in southeastern Europe
was on the rise once again. Serbia led the way, hoping to expand its territories at
the expense of Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. The Serbs looked to
German Warships Under Full Steam

As these impressive ships engaged in battle exercises in 1907 suggest, Germany did succeed in building a large modern navy. But
Britain was equally determined to maintain its naval superiority, and the spiraling arms race helped poison relations between the
two countries. (Bibliothèque des Arts Décoratifs/Archives Charmet/The Bridgeman Art Library)
0 100 200 Km. 0 100 200 Km.

Ottoman Empire before 1878 Ottoman Empire
50°N 0 100 200 Mi. 50°N 0 100 200 Mi.
Ottoman Empire after 1878 Predominantly Serbs and Croats
30°E 30°E
Occupied by Austria-Hungary Predominantly Romanians
Dn
ies
R USSIA Dn
ies
R USSIA
Independent or autonomous ter ter
Vienna 20°E
R.
R.
B GERMANS AUSTRIA-HUNGARY
Pr
20°E
ut
Budapest
ES
AUSTRIA-HUNGARY
R.
SAR Prut R.
HUNGARIANS
AB
TRANSYLVANIA
IA
HUNGARIANS
Sava Sava
R. R.
ROMAN IA BOSNIA ROMAN IA
DOBRUJA
BOSNIA (Independent)
(To Romania) HE Belgrade Bucharest
HERZEGOVINA SER B IA RZ
EG Sarajevo
(Independent) Danube R. OV
IN Danube R.
B U LGAR IA A
Ad (Autonomous) Ad SER B IA
r Black r Black
B U LGAR IA
Se iatic EAST ROUMELIA Sea Se iatic Sofia Sea
a (To Bulgaria, 1885)
a
MONTENEGRO MONTENEGRO MACEDONIANS
ALBANIA ROUMELIA Constantinople
O
MACEDONIA
TT ALBANIA
O
M
AN 40°N 40°N
EM OT TOMAN
Aeg
Aeg
PIR GR EECE
E EM P I R E
GR EECE
ea
ea
(Indep. 1830)
n
n
Se
Se
a
a
N Dodecanese
(It.)
N
Crete Crete
Mediterranean Sea Mediterranean Sea
MAP 27.1 The Balkans After the Congress MAP 27.2 The Balkans in 1914
of Berlin, 1878 Ethnic boundaries did not follow political boundaries, and Serbian
The Ottoman Empire suffered large territorial losses but remained a national aspirations threatened Austria-Hungary.
power in the Balkans.
Slavic Russia for support of their national aspirations. To block Serbian expansion
and to take advantage of Russia’s weakness after the revolution of 1905, Austria in
1908 formally annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, with their large Serbian, Croa-
tian, and Muslim populations. The kingdom of Serbia erupted in rage but could
do nothing without Russian support.
Then, in 1912, in the First Balkan War, Serbia joined Greece and Bulgaria to
attack the Ottoman Empire and then quarreled with Bulgaria over the spoils of
victory—a dispute that led in 1913 to the Second Balkan War. Austria intervened
in 1913 and forced Serbia to give up Albania. After centuries, nationalism had fi-
nally destroyed the Ottoman Empire in Europe (see Map 27.2). This sudden but
long-awaited event elated the Balkan nationalists and dismayed the leaders of
multinational Austria-Hungary. The former hoped and the latter feared that Aus-
tria might be broken apart next.
Within this tense context, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian
and Hungarian thrones, and his wife, Sophie, were assassinated by Serbian revolu-
tionaries living in Bosnia on June 28, 1914, during a state visit to the Bosnian
capital of Sarajevo (sar-uh-YEY-voh). After some hesitation, the leaders of Austria-
Hungary concluded that Serbia was implicated and had to be severely punished
once and for all. On July 23 Austria-Hungary presented Serbia

with an unconditional ultimatum. The Serbian government
had forty-eight hours in which to agree to demands that would
amount to ceding control of the Serbian state. When Serbia
replied moderately but evasively, Austria began to mobilize
and then declared war on Serbia on July 28. Thus a desperate
multinational Austria-Hungary deliberately chose war in a
last-ditch attempt to stem the rising tide of hostile nationalism
within its borders. The Third Balkan War had begun.
Of prime importance in Austria-Hungary’s fateful deci-
sion was Germany’s unconditional support. Germany’s lead-
ers realized that a resurgent Russia (and therefore France)
would probably enter the war in support of Serbia, but they
hoped that Great Britain would remain neutral.
In fact, the diplomatic situation was already out of con-
trol. Military plans and timetables began to dictate policy.
Russia, a vast country, would require much longer to mobilize
its armies than Germany and Austria-Hungary. All the com-
plicated mobilization plans of the Russian general staff had
assumed a war with both Austria and Germany: Russia could
not mobilize against Austria-Hungary alone. Therefore, on
July 29 Tsar Nicholas II ordered full mobilization and in ef-
fect declared general war.
The German general staff had also assumed a two-front
war, and following its plans meant striking France as well as
Russia. France was to be knocked out first with a lightning
attack through neutral Belgium before turning on Russia. So
on August 3 German armies attacked Belgium, whose neu- “Never Forget!”
trality had been solemnly guaranteed in 1839 by all the great This 1915 French poster with its passionate headline dramatizes
states including Prussia. In the face of this act of aggression, Germany’s brutal invasion of Belgium in 1914. Neutral Belgium is
Great Britain joined the Triple Entente (on-TONT) with personified as a traumatized mother, assaulted and ravished by
France and Russia and declared war on Germany the follow- savage outlaws. The “rape of Belgium” featured prominently—and
ing day. The First World War had begun. effectively—in anti-German propaganda. (Mary Evans Picture Library)
When the Germans invaded Belgium in August 1914, Triple Entente The alliance of Great
Stalemate and everyone believed that their side would secure a swift Britain, France, and Russia in the First
Slaughter victory: “The boys will be home by Christmas.” But
World War.
German forces had been slowed by Belgian and British troops near the Franco-
Belgian border, and by the end of August they were still making their way to Paris.
On September 6 the French attacked a gap in the German line at the Battle of
the Marne. For three days, France threw everything into the attack. At one point,
the French government desperately requisitioned all the taxis of Paris to rush re-
serves to the troops at the front. Finally, the Germans fell back. Paris and France
had been saved (see Map 27.3 on page 706).
Soon, with the armies stalled, both sides began to dig trenches to protect them-
selves from machine-gun fire. By November 1914, an unbroken line of trenches
extended from the Belgian ports through northern France, past the fortress of Ver-
dun, and on to the Swiss frontier. Stalemate and slaughter followed. The defend-
ers on both sides dug in behind rows of trenches, mines, and barbed wire. For days
and even weeks, ceaseless shelling by heavy artillery supposedly “softened up” the
enemy in a given area (and also signaled the coming attack). Then young draftees
The Tragic Absurdity of Trench Warfare

Soldiers charge across a scarred battlefield and overrun an enemy trench. The dead defender on the right will fire
no more. But this is only another futile charge that will yield much blood and little land. A whole generation is
being decimated by the slaughter. (By courtesy of the Trustees of the Imperial War Museum)
and their junior officers went “over the top” of the trenches in frontal attacks on
the enemy’s line.
trench warfare A type of fighting The cost in lives of this trench warfare was staggering, the gains in territory
behind rows of trenches, mines, and minuscule. The massive French and British offensives during 1915 never gained
barbed wire; the cost in lives was
staggering and the gains in territory
more than 3 miles of blood-soaked earth from the enemy. In the Battle of the
minimal. Somme in the summer of 1916, the British and French gained an insignificant
125 square miles at the cost of 600,000 dead or wounded, while the Germans lost
500,000 men. In that same year the unsuccessful German campaign against Ver-
dun cost 700,000 lives on both sides. British poet Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967)
wrote of the Somme offensive, “I am staring at a sunlit picture of Hell.”
The year 1917 was equally terrible. The hero of Erich Remarque’s (ri-MAHRK)
great novel All Quiet on the Western Front (1929) describes one attack:
We see men living with their skulls blown open; we see soldiers run with their two
feet cut off. . . . Still the little piece of convulsed earth in which we lie is held. We
have yielded no more than a few hundred yards of it as a prize to the enemy. But
on every yard there lies a dead man.
Such was war on the western front.
Trench warfare shattered an entire generation of young men. Millions who

could have provided political creativity and leadership after the war were forever
missing. Moreover, those who lived through the slaughter were maimed, shell-
shocked, embittered, and profoundly disillusioned. The young soldiers went to
war believing in the world of their leaders and elders—the pre-1914 world of or-
der, progress, and patriotism. Then, in Remarque’s words, the “first bombardment
showed us our mistake, and under it the world as they had taught it to us broke
in pieces.”
On the eastern front, soldiers were spared trench war-

The Widening War fare but the costs were equally high. The “Russian
steamroller” immediately moved into eastern Ger-
many but was badly damaged at the Battles of Tannenberg and the Masurian
(mah-ZOOR-ee-an) Lakes in August and September 1914. Thereafter, Russia
never threatened Germany again. On the Austrian front, armies seesawed back
and forth, suffering enormous losses. Austro-Hungarian armies were repulsed
twice by Serbia in bitter fighting. The Russians advanced on Austria’s northwest-
ern border in 1914, but Austro-Hungarian and German armies forced the Russians
to retreat deep into their own territory in the eastern campaign of 1915. A stagger-
ing 2.5 million Russians were killed, wounded, or taken prisoner that year.
The war widened as previously neutral countries joined the fighting (see
Map 27.3). Italy, once allied with Austria and Germany, joined the Triple Entente
of Great Britain, France, and Russia in return for promises of Austrian territory. In
October 1914 the Ottoman Empire joined with Austria and Germany, by then
known as the Central Powers. The following September Bulgaria decided to fol-
low the Ottoman Empire’s lead in order to settle old scores with Serbia. The Bal-
kans, with the exception of Greece, came to be occupied by the Central Powers.
The entry of the Ottoman Turks carried the war into the Middle East. Heavy fight-
ing between the Ottomans and the Russians saw battle lines seesawing back and
forth and enveloping the Armenians, who lived on both sides of the border and
had experienced brutal repression by the Turks in 1909. When in 1915 some Ar-
menians welcomed Russian armies as liberators, the Ottoman government ordered
a genocidal mass deportation of its Armenian citizens from their homeland. A mil-
lion Armenians died from murder, starvation, and disease during World War I. In
1915 British forces tried to take the Dardanelles (dahr-den-ELZ) and Constanti-
nople from the Ottomans but were badly defeated.
The British were more successful at inciting the Arabs to revolt against the Ot-
toman Turks. They bargained with the foremost Arab leader, Hussein ibn-Ali
(hoo-SEYN IB-uhn ah-LEE) (1856–1931), who managed in 1915 to win vague Brit-
ish commitments for an independent Arab kingdom. Thus in 1916 Hussein re-
volted against the Turks, proclaiming himself king of the Arabs. He joined forces
with the British under T. E. Lawrence, who in 1917 led Arab tribesmen and In-
dian soldiers in a highly successful guerrilla war against the Turks on the Arabian
peninsula.
Similar victories were eventually scored in the Ottoman province of Iraq. Brit-
ain occupied the southern Iraqi city of Basra in 1914 and captured Baghdad (BAG-
dad) in 1917. In September 1918 British armies and their Arab allies rolled into
Syria. This offensive culminated in the triumphal entry of Hussein’s son Faisal
(FIE-suhl) into Damascus. Throughout Syria and Iraq there was wild Arab rejoic-
ing. Many patriots expected a large, unified Arab nation-state to rise from the dust
of the Ottoman collapse.
10°W 0° 10°E 20°E 30°E
60°N
FINLAND
Petrograd
NORWAY Helsinki (St. Petersburg)
SWEDEN ESTONIA
oc kade line
British bl Moscow
LATVIA
CO
U RL Riga
AN D
Jutland
1916 Baltic
North DENMARK Sea LITHUANIA Treaty of Brest-Litovsk,
Wilno (Vilnius) March 1918
Sea
Farthest Russian Masurian Lakes
IRELAND 1914 Do
advance, 1914 N
E. PRUSSIA BELARUS n
R. 50°
Kiel R U S S I A
GREAT Elb Tannenberg
e R. Vis
BRITAIN tu
la R. 1914 Brest-
NETHERLANDS
G ER MANY Warsaw Litovsk
London Berlin KINGDOM OF Kiev
POLAND
(Russia) Armistice line, Dniepe
AT L A N T I C Louvain
Rhi
r R.
BELGIUM December 1917
n
GALICIA
OCEAN
eR
Dni
este R.
.
LUXEMBOURG AY r
M
191 UKRAINE
Se
ne 5
i
R.
0 25 50 Km. Paris ALSACE- AUST R IA-H U NG ARY
NETHERLANDS r R. LORRAINE
Ruh Vienna
Rh
0 25 50 Mi. Loire R. Budapest

Antwerp G. 1917
ine
Ostend
Dover FLANDERS Cologne Western AU TRANSYLVANIA
R.
SWITZERLAND M Caporetto
Ghent front 19 AR. 1917
l
ne
Brussels Bordeaux
R.
18 ROMANIA Black Sea

Calais
de
han
Bucharest
BELGIUM FRANCE
el
h Liège Po R. Italian
Sc
Rhône R.
Coblenz Ga
R. R.
sh C
ro front Danube
u se nn
Me
Sarajevo
e
R.
SERBIA
Engli
Arras
R.
le
A
So ri BULGARIA
ARDENNES 40°N
d
el
mm at MONTENEGRO
os
Eb
e M ic Dardanelles Constantinople
R.
ro
LUXEMBOURG Elba ITALY OT

18
R.
Amiens St. Quentin GERMANY S PA I N Se –19 TO

Corsica a 17 MA
Somme R. Sedan Rome 19 N
1915 Gallipoli
Sa
FRANCE e n ar EM P
Ais ARGONNE R. ALBANIA 16 1915 I R E
Compiègne FOREST 19
Belleau Wood Reims LORRAINE
Sardinia Balkan GREECE
Sei
ne R. Marne I M ar n e Verdun St. Mihiel
Balearic Is. front
R.
Paris Châlons-
Nancy Strasbourg
Marne II Chateau-Thierry sur-Marne
Triple Entente and its Allies
AL
S AC
Germany, 1914 German offensive, Sicily

Summer 1918 Central Powers Cyprus
E
German offensive, 1915 Neutral nations Tunis

Crete N
Armistice line, Epinal Med
Malta
Greatest extent of territory November 1918 Mulhouse Greatest extent of territory gained iter
rane
gained by Germany, Sept. 1914 by Germany-Austria TUNISIA
0 200 400 Km.
an Sea
Major battle (France)
Front at beginning of 1915 Basel Battle line

0 200 400 Mi.
lllll
l
l
lll
l
MAP 27.3 The First World War in Europe
Trench warfare on the western front was concentrated in Belgium and northern France, while the war in the east
encompassed an enormous territory.
The Armenian Atrocities

When in 1915 some Armenians welcomed Russian armies as liberators after years of persecution, the Ottoman
government ordered a genocidal mass deportation of its Armenian citizens from their homeland in the empire’s
eastern provinces. This photo, taken in Kharpert in 1915 by a German businessman from his hotel window, shows
Turkish guards marching Armenian men off to a prison, where they will be tortured to death. A million Armenians
died from murder, starvation, and disease during World War I. (Courtesy of the Armenian Library and Museum of America
[ALMA], Watertown, MA)
As world war engulfed and revolutionized the Middle East, it also spread to
some parts of East Asia and Africa. Instead of revolting as the Germans hoped, the
colonial subjects of the British and French generally supported their foreign mas-
ters, providing crucial supplies and fighting in Europe and the Ottoman Empire.
They also helped local British and French commanders seize Germany’s colonies
around the globe.
The Japanese, allied in Asia with the British since 1902, similarly used the war
to grab German outposts in the Pacific Ocean and on the Chinese mainland, in-
furiating Chinese patriots and heightening long-standing tensions between China
and Japan. More than a million Africans and Asians served in the various armies
of the warring powers; more than double that number served as porters to carry
equipment. The French, facing a shortage of young men, made especially heavy
use of colonial troops.
In April 1917 the United States declared war on Germany, another crucial
development in the expanding conflict. American intervention grew out of the
war at sea, sympathy for the Triple Entente, and the increasing desperation of total
war. At the beginning of the war, Britain and France had established a total naval
blockade to strangle the Central Powers. No neutral ship was permitted to sail to
Lusitania The British passenger liner Germany with any cargo. In early 1915 Germany retaliated with a counter-
sunk by a German submarine that blockade using the murderously effective submarine, a new weapon that violated
claimed 1,000 lives.
traditional niceties of fair warning under international law. In May 1915 a Ger-
man submarine sank the British passenger liner Lusitania, claiming more than
Sec tion Review 1,000 lives, among them 139 Americans. President Woodrow Wilson protested
vigorously. Germany was forced to relax its submarine warfare for almost two years;
• German chancellor Bismarck main- the alternative was almost certain war with the United States.
tained peace in Europe by managing a
balance-of-power system with the other Early in 1917, the German military command—confident that improved sub-
European powers, forming first the marines could starve Britain into submission before the United States could come
Three Emperors’ League with Austria- to its rescue—resumed unrestricted submarine warfare. Like the invasion of Bel-
Hungary and Russia, and then the gium, this was a reckless gamble. “German submarine warfare against commerce,”
Triple Alliance with Italy and Austria. President Wilson had told a sympathetic Congress and people, “is a warfare against
• German emperor William II dismissed mankind.” Thus the last uncommitted great nation, as fresh and enthusiastic as
Bismarck, refused to renew neutrality Europe had been in 1914, entered the world war in April 1917, almost three years
with Russia, and, after arguing with
France and Britain over Morocco, after it began. Eventually the United States was to tip the balance in favor of the
isolated himself and Austria-Hungary Triple Entente and its allies.
while Britain, formerly neutral, found
itself siding with France and Russia.
• Nationalist problems in eastern Europe
caused the decline of the Ottoman
Empire and Serbian revolutionaries The Home Front
assassinated the heir to the Austrian What was the impact of total war on civilian populations?
throne, causing Austria to declare war
on Serbia; confusion over military
mobilization plans led Russia to declare Before looking at the last year of the Great War, let us turn our attention to the
general war, Germany overran Belgium people on the home front. They were tremendously involved in the titanic
to attack France, and Great Britain struggle. War’s impact on them was no less massive than on the men crouched in
joined France and Russia to form the
Triple Entente. the trenches.
• The German offensive to take Paris
ended as a stalemate with the Germans
facing the French and British in hor- In August 1914, most people greeted the outbreak of
rific trench warfare that led to huge
Mobilizing for hostilities enthusiastically. In every country, the masses
losses on both sides for little ground Total War believed that their nation was in the right and defend-
gained, resulting in disillusioned, ing itself from aggression. With the exception of a few extreme left-wingers, even
maimed, and bitter soldiers.
socialists supported the war. Everywhere the support of the masses and working
• The war widened to include Italy with class contributed to national unity and an energetic war effort.
the Triple Entente and the Ottomans
with the Central Powers, which opened By mid-October generals and politicians had begun to realize that more than
fighting in the Middle East; the colo- patriotism would be needed to win the war, whose end was not in sight. In each
nies generally supported their masters, country, a government of national unity began to plan and control economic and
Japan allied with the British, and finally social life in order to wage total war. Free-market capitalism was abandoned, at
the United States joined the Triple least “for the duration.” Instead, government planning boards established priorities
Entente in response to German subma-
rine warfare. and decided what was to be produced and consumed.
Rationing, price and wage controls, and even restrictions on workers’ freedom
of movement were imposed by government. Only through such regimentation could
a country make the greatest possible military effort. Thus, though there were national
total war In each country during the variations, the great nations all moved toward planned economies commanded by
First World War, a government of the established political leadership. However awful the war was, the ability of gov-
national unity that began to plan and
control economic and social life in
ernments to manage and control highly complicated economies strengthened the
order to make the greatest possible cause of socialism. With the First World War, state socialism became for the first
military effort. time a realistic economic blueprint rather than a utopian program.
The social impact of total war was no less profound than the economic impact,
though again there were important national variations. The millions of men at the
front and the insatiable needs of the military created a tremendous demand for
The Home Front 709
Waging Total War

A British war plant strains to meet the insatiable demand for trench-smashing heavy artillery shells.
Quite typically, many of these defense workers are women. (By courtesy of the Trustees of the Imperial
War Museum, neg. #Q30011)
workers. Jobs were available for everyone. This situation—seldom, if ever, seen
before 1914—brought about momentous changes.
One such change was greater power and prestige for labor unions. Having
proved their loyalty in August 1914, labor unions cooperated with war governments
on work rules, wages, and production schedules in return for real participation in
important decisions. This entry of labor leaders and unions into policymaking
councils paralleled the entry of socialist leaders into the war governments.
The role of women changed dramatically. In every country, large numbers of
women left home and domestic service to work in industry, transportation, and
offices. Moreover, women became highly visible—not only as munitions workers
but as bank tellers, mail carriers, even police officers. Women also served as nurses
and doctors at the front. (See the feature “Individuals in Society: Vera Brittain.”)
In general, the war greatly expanded the range of women’s activities and changed
attitudes toward women. As a direct result of women’s many-sided war effort, Brit-
ain, Germany, and Austria granted women the right to vote immediately after the
war. Women also showed a growing spirit of independence during the war, as they
started to bob their hair, shorten their skirts, and smoke in public.
War promoted greater social equality, blurring class distinctions and lessening
the gap between rich and poor. This blurring was most apparent in Great Britain,
where wartime hardship was never extreme. In fact, the bottom third of the popu-
lation generally lived better than they ever had, for the poorest gained most from
the severe shortage of labor. In continental countries, greater equality was reflected
in full employment, rationing according to physical needs, and a sharing of hard-
ships. There, too, society became more uniform and more egalitarian, in spite of
some war profiteering.
Vera Brittain
A lthough the Great War upended millions of lives, it
struck Europe’s young people with the greatest
force. For Vera Brittain (1893–1970), as for so many in
northern France, repeatedly torn between the vision of
noble sacrifice and the reality of human tragedy. She
lost her sexual inhibitions caring for mangled male bod-
her generation, the war became life’s defining experi- ies, and she longed to consummate her love with Ro-
ence, which she captured forever in land. Awaiting his return on leave on Christmas Day in
her famous autobiography, Testa- 1915, she was greeted instead with a telegram: Roland
ment of Youth (1933). had been killed two days before.
Brittain grew up in a wealthy Roland’s death was the first of the devastating blows
business family in northern England, that eventually overwhelmed Brittain’s idealistic patri-
bristling at small-town conventions otism. In 1917, first Geoffrey and then Victor died from
and discrimination against women. gruesome wounds. In early 1918, as the last great Ger-
Very close to her brother Edward, man offensive covered the floors of her war-zone hospi-
two years her junior, Brittain read tal with maimed and dying German prisoners, the
voraciously and dreamed of being a bone-weary Vera felt a common humanity and saw only
successful writer. Finishing boarding more victims. A few weeks later brother Edward—her
school and beating down her father’s last hope—died in action. When the war ended, she
objections, she prepared for Oxford’s was, she said, a “complete automaton,” with “my deep-
rigorous entry exams and won a est emotions paralyzed if not dead.”
Vera Brittain, marked scholarship to its women’s college. Returning to Oxford and finishing her studies, Brit-
forever by her wartime Brittain also fell in love with Roland tain gradually recovered. She formed a deep, restorative
experiences. (Vera Brittain Leighton (LEYT-un), an equally bril- friendship with another talented woman writer, Winifred
Archive, William Ready Division of liant student from a literary family Holtby, published novels and articles, and became a
Archives and Research Collections,
and her brother’s best friend. All three, leader in the feminist campaign for gender equality. She
McMaster University Library)
along with two more close friends, also married and had children. But her wartime memo-
Victor Richardson and Geoffrey Thur- ries were always there. Finally, Brittain succeeded in
low, confidently prepared to enter Oxford in late 1914. coming to grips with them in Testament of Youth, her
When war suddenly approached in July 1914, Brit- powerful antiwar autobiography. The unflinching narra-
tain shared with millions of Europeans a thrilling surge tive spoke to the experiences of an entire generation and
of patriotic support for her government, a pro-war en- became a runaway bestseller. Above all, perhaps, Brittain
thusiasm she later played down in her published writ- captured the ambivalent, contradictory character of the
ings. She wrote in her diary that her “great fear” was that war, when millions of young people found excitement,
England would declare its neutrality and commit the courage, and common purpose but succeeded only in
“grossest treachery” toward France.* She seconded Ro- destroying their lives with their superhuman efforts and
land’s decision to enlist, agreeing with her sweetheart’s futile sacrifices. Becoming ever more committed to paci-
glamorous view of war as “very ennobling and very fism, Brittain opposed England’s entry into World War II.
beautiful.” Later, exchanging anxious letters in 1915
with Roland in France, Vera began to see the conflict in Questions for Analysis
personal, human terms. She wondered if any victory or 1. What were Brittain’s initial feelings toward the war?
defeat could be worth Roland’s life. How did they change as the conflict continued?
Struggling to quell her doubts, Brittain redoubled Why did they change?
her commitment to England’s cause and volunteered as 2. Why did Brittain volunteer as a nurse, as many
an army nurse. For the next three years she served with women did? Judging from her account, how might
distinction in military hospitals in London, Malta, and wartime nursing have influenced women of her
generation?
*Quoted in the excellent study by P. Berry and M. Bostridge,
Vera Brittain: A Life (London: Virago Press, 2001), p. 59; ad- 3. In portraying the ambivalent, contradictory charac-
ditional quotes are from pp. 80 and 136. This work is highly ter of World War I for Europe’s youth, was Brittain
recommended. describing the character of all modern warfare?
710
The Russian Revolution 711
During the first two years of war, most soldiers and ci-
Growing Political vilians supported their governments. Belief in a just
Tensions cause, patriotic nationalism, the planned economy,
and a sharing of burdens united peoples behind their various national leaders.
Each government employed rigorous censorship to control public opinion,
and each used both crude and subtle propaganda to maintain popular support.
German propaganda hysterically pictured black soldiers from France’s African
empire raping German women, while German atrocities in Belgium and else-
where were ceaselessly recounted and exaggerated by the French and British. Pa-
triotic posters and slogans, slanted news, and biased editorials inflamed national
hatreds and helped sustain superhuman efforts. However, by the spring of 1916,
people were beginning to crack under the strain of total war. Strikes and protest
marches over inadequate food began to flare up on every home front.
Soldiers’ morale also began to decline. Italian troops mutinied. Numerous
French units refused to fight after the disastrous French offensive of May 1917.
Only tough military justice for leaders and a tacit agreement with the troops that Sec tion Review
there would be no more grand offensives enabled the new general in chief, Henri
Philippe Pétain (pey-TAN), to restore order. A rising tide of war-weariness and de- • Almost all governments fostered
featism also swept France’s civilian population before Georges Clemenceau national unity by implementing “total
war” using temporary socialist meas-
(zhorzh cluh-mon-SO) emerged as a ruthless and effective wartime leader in No- ures, rationing, and price and wage
vember 1917. Clemenceau (1841–1929) established a virtual dictatorship, pounc- controls.
ing on strikers and jailing without trial journalists and politicians who dared to • Wartime conditions improved worker
suggest a compromise peace with Germany. conditions, strengthened women’s
The strains were worse for the Central Powers. In October 1916, the chief roles in the labor market, and pro-
minister of Austria was assassinated by a young socialist crying, “Down with Abso- moted greater social equality, strength-
lutism! We want peace!”2 The following month, when feeble old Emperor Francis ening the cause of socialism.
Joseph died, a symbol of unity disappeared. In spite of absolute censorship, politi- • Popular support for the war remained
cal dissatisfaction and conflicts among nationalities grew. In April 1917, Austria’s strong during the first years through
propaganda, media censorship, and
chief minister summed up the situation in the gloomiest possible terms. The patriotism, but as the war dragged
country and army were exhausted. Another winter of war would bring revolution on, inadequate food inflamed
and disintegration. Both Czech and Yugoslav leaders demanded autonomous public sentiment, and strikes and
democratic states for their peoples. The British blockade kept tightening; people protests began.
were starving. • The war fronts on all sides began to
The strain of total war was also evident in Germany. In the winter of 1916 to decline as well, with soldiers ex-
1917, Germany’s military position appeared increasingly desperate. The social hausted and morale low; people were
starving and social conflict became
conflict of prewar Germany re-emerged, and revolutionary agitation and strikes by evident in Italy, France, Germany,
war-weary workers occurred in early 1917. Thus militaristic Germany, like its ally Austria-Hungary, and in Russia, which
Austria-Hungary (and its enemy France), was beginning to crack in 1917. Yet it collapsed first.
was Russia that collapsed first and saved the Central Powers—for a time.
The Russian Revolution

Why did World War I bring socialist revolution in Russia?
The Russian Revolution of 1917 was one of modern history’s most momentous
events. Directly related to the growing tensions of World War I, it had a signifi-
cance far beyond the wartime agonies of a single European nation. The Russian
Revolution opened a new era. For some, it was Marx’s socialist vision come true;
for others, it was the triumph of dictatorship. To all, it presented a radically new
prototype of state and society.
Like its allies and its enemies, Russia embraced war

The Fall of with patriotic enthusiasm in 1914. Crowds rallied
Imperial Russia around Tsar Nicholas II (r. 1894–1917) as he took an
oath never to make peace as long as the enemy stood on Russian soil. Conserva-
tives anticipated expansion in the Balkans, while liberals and most socialists be-
lieved alliance with Britain and France would bring democratic reforms. For a
moment, Russia was united.
The Russian war machine was underprepared, however, and mobilized less
effectively for total war than the other warring nations. Its supplies of shells and
ammunition were quickly depleted, and substantial numbers of soldiers were ex-
pected to find the rifles they needed on the battlefield among the dead. There
were 2 million Russian casualties in 1915 alone.
The great problem was leadership. A kindly, slightly stupid man, Nicholas
failed to form a close partnership with his citizens in order to fight the war more
effectively. He came to rely instead on the old bureaucratic apparatus, distrusting
the moderate Duma (the parliament), rejecting popular involvement, and resist-
ing calls to share power.
As a result, the Duma, the educated middle classes, and the masses became
increasingly critical of the tsar’s leadership. In September 1915 parties ranging
from conservative to moderate socialist formed the Progressive bloc, which called
for a completely new government responsible to the Duma instead of the tsar. In
answer, Nicholas temporarily adjourned the Duma and announced that he was
traveling to the front in order to lead and rally Russia’s armies.
His departure was a fatal turning point. With the tsar in the field with the troops,
control of the government fell to the empress, Tsarina Alexandra. Nicholas’s wife
was a strong-willed woman with a hatred of parliaments. Having constantly urged
her husband to rule absolutely, Alexandra tried to do so herself in his absence. She
seated and unseated the top ministers. Her most trusted adviser was “our Friend
Grigori,” an uneducated Siberian preacher who was appropriately nicknamed
“Rasputin” (ra-SPYOO-tin)—the “Degenerate.” Rasputin’s extraordinary influence
rested on his seeming ability to stop the bleeding of Alexis, Alexandra’s fifth child
and heir to the throne, who suffered from the rare blood disease hemophilia.
In a desperate attempt to right the situation and end unfounded rumors that
Rasputin was the empress’s lover, three members of the high aristocracy murdered
Rasputin in December 1916. The empress went into semipermanent shock. Food
shortages in the cities worsened; morale declined. On March 8, women calling for
bread in Petrograd (formerly St. Petersburg) started riots, which spontaneously
spread to the factories and then elsewhere throughout the city. From the front, the
tsar ordered troops to restore order, but discipline broke down, and the soldiers
joined the revolutionary crowd. The Duma responded by declaring a provisional
government on March 12, 1917. Three days later, Nicholas abdicated.
The March revolution was the result of an unplanned

The Provisional uprising of hungry, angry people in the capital, but it
Government was joyfully accepted throughout the country. Patriots
rejoiced at the prospect of a more determined and effective war effort, while work-
ers happily anticipated better wages and more food. All classes and political parties
called for liberty and democracy. They were not disappointed. After generations of
arbitrary authoritarianism, the provisional government quickly established equal-
ity before the law; freedom of religion, speech, and assembly; the right of unions
to organize and strike; and the rest of the classic liberal program.
The reorganized government formed in May 1917 made the patriotic socialist
Alexander Kerensky (kuh-REN-skee) its prime minister in July. For Kerensky and
other moderate socialists, the continuation of war was still the all-important na-
tional duty. Human suffering and war-weariness grew, sapping the limited strength
of the provisional government.
From its first day, the provisional government had to share power with a for-
midable rival—the Petrograd Soviet (or council) of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. Petrograd Soviet A huge, fluctuating
Modeled on the revolutionary soviets of 1905, the Petrograd Soviet was a huge, mass meeting of 2,000 to 3,000 workers,
soldiers, and socialist intellectuals,
fluctuating mass meeting of two thousand to three thousand workers, soldiers, and modeled on the revolutionary soviets
socialist intellectuals. Seeing itself as a true grassroots revolutionary democracy, of 1905.
this counter- or half-government suspiciously watched the provisional government
and issued its own radical orders, further weakening the provisional government.
Its Army Order No. 1 stripped officers of their authority and placed power in the Army Order No. 1 A radical order of
hands of elected committees of common soldiers. Designed primarily to protect the Petrograd Soviet that stripped officers
of their authority and placed power in
the revolution from some counter-revolutionary Bonaparte on horseback, the or- the hands of elected committees of
der instead led to a total collapse of army discipline. common soldiers.
Meanwhile, masses of peasant soldiers began “voting with their feet,” to use
Lenin’s graphic phrase. That is, they began returning to their villages to help their
families get a share of the land, which peasants were simply seizing as they settled
old scores in a great agrarian upheaval. All across the country, liberty was turning
into anarchy in the summer of 1917. It was an unparalleled opportunity for the
most radical and most talented of Russia’s many socialist leaders, Vladimir Ilyich
Lenin (VLAD-uh-meer IL-yich LEN-in) (1870–1924).
From his youth, Lenin’s whole life had been dedicated

Lenin and the to the cause of revolution. Born into the middle class,
Bolshevik Revolution Lenin became an implacable enemy of imperial Rus-
sia when his older brother was executed for plotting to kill the tsar in 1887. Exiled
to Siberia for three years for his own revolutionary activity, Lenin continued the
intense study of Marxian doctrines that he had begun as a law student. After his
release, he joined fellow socialists in western Europe and developed his own revo-
lutionary interpretations of the body of Marxian thought.
Three interrelated ideas were central for Lenin. First, he stressed that capital-
ism could be destroyed only by violent revolution and denounced all revisionist
theories of a peaceful evolution to socialism. Lenin’s second, more original, idea
was that a socialist revolution was possible even in non-industrial countries like
Russia if an underclass was exploited. Lenin also believed that at a given moment
revolution was determined more by human leadership than by vast historical laws.
Thus was born his third basic idea: the necessity of a highly disciplined workers’
party, strictly controlled by a dedicated elite of intellectuals and full-time revolu-
tionaries like Lenin himself. An opposing camp of Russian Marxists wanted a
more democratic party with mass membership. Lenin’s camp was called the Bol- Bolsheviks Meaning “majority group,”
sheviks (BOHL-shuh-viks), or “majority group.” While his majority did not hold, the name for Lenin’s camp of the Rus-
sian party of Marxian socialism.
he kept the fine-sounding name and developed the party he wanted: tough, disci-
plined, revolutionary.
Unlike most other socialists, Lenin did not rally round the national flag in
1914. Observing events from neutral Switzerland, he saw the war as a product of
imperialistic rivalries and as a marvelous opportunity for class war and socialist
upheaval. Hoping that Lenin would undermine the Russian war effort, the Ger-
man government provided him with safe passage across Germany and back into
Russia after the March revolution.
Arriving triumphantly in Petrograd on April 3, Lenin attacked at once. He had

no intentions to cooperate with the “bourgeois” provisional government, instead
declaring a radical program: “All power to the soviets”; “All land to the peasants”;
“Stop the war now.” But an attempt by the Bolsheviks to seize power in July col-
lapsed, and Lenin fled and went into hiding. He was charged with being a Ger-
man agent, and indeed he and the Bolsheviks were getting money from Germany.3
But no matter. Intrigue between Kerensky and his commander in chief, General
Lavr Kornilov, resulted in Kornilov’s leading a feeble attack against the provisional
government in September. In the face of this rightist “counter-revolutionary”
threat, the Bolsheviks were rearmed and redeemed. Kornilov’s forces disintegrated,
but Kerensky lost all credit with the army, the only force that might have saved him
and democratic government in Russia.
By October the Bolsheviks had gained a fragile major-

Trotsky and the ity in the Petrograd Soviet by appealing very effectively
Seizure of Power to its workers and soldiers. It was now Lenin’s sup-
porter Leon Trotsky (TROT-skee) (1879–1940), a spellbinding revolutionary orator
and independent radical Marxist, who brilliantly executed the Bolshevik seizure
of power.
Trotsky convinced the Petrograd Soviet that it was at risk and needed to make
him the leader of a special military-revolutionary committee. Then, on the night
of November 6, militants from Trotsky’s committee joined with trusty Bolshevik
soldiers to seize government buildings and pounce on members of the provisional
government. Then they went on to the congress of soviets. There a Bolshevik ma-
jority declared that all power had passed to the soviets and named Lenin head of
the new government.
The Bolsheviks came to power for three key reasons. First, by late 1917 democ-
racy had given way to anarchy: power was there for those who would take it. Sec-
ond, in Lenin and Trotsky the Bolsheviks had an utterly determined and truly
superior leadership, which both the tsarist government and the provisional govern-
ment lacked. Third, in 1917 the Bolsheviks succeeded in appealing to many sol-
diers and urban workers, people who were exhausted by war and eager for socialism.
With time, many workers would become bitterly disappointed, but for the mo-
ment they had good reason to believe that they had won what they wanted.
History is full of short-lived coups and unsuccessful

Dictatorship and revolutions. The truly monumental accomplishment
Civil War of Lenin, Trotsky, and the rest of the Bolsheviks was not
taking power but keeping it. In the next four years, the Bolsheviks went on to con-
quer the chaos they had helped create, and they began to build their kind of dicta-
torial socialist society. The conspirators became conquerors. How was this done?
Lenin had the genius to profit from developments over which he and the Bol-
sheviks had no control. Thus Lenin’s first law, which supposedly gave land to the
peasants, actually merely approved what peasants were already doing. Urban work-
ers’ great demand in November was direct control of individual factories by local
workers’ committees. This, too, Lenin ratified with a decree in November.
Lenin also acknowledged that Russia had lost the war with Germany and that
the only realistic goal was peace. He was able to convince the majority of the Cen-
tral Committee to accept Germany’s demand that the Soviet government give up
all its western territories. Poles, Finns, Lithuanians, and

other non-Russians inhabited these areas—lands that
had been conquered by the tsars over three centuries.
With the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (brest lih-TOFSK) in
March 1918, Lenin had escaped the certain disaster
of continued war and could pursue his goal of abso-
lute political power for the Bolsheviks—now renamed
Communists—within Russia.
In November 1917, the Bolsheviks had promised
that a freely elected Constituent Assembly would draw
up a new constitution. But free elections produced a
stunning setback for the Bolsheviks, and Bolshevik sol-
diers acting under Lenin’s orders permanently dis-
banded the Assembly after its first day. Thus even before
the peace with Germany, Lenin was forming a one-party
government.
The destruction of the democratically elected Con-
stituent Assembly helped feed the flames of civil war.
The officers of the old army took the lead in organizing
the so-called White opposition to the Bolsheviks in
southern Russia, Ukraine, Siberia, and west of Petrograd.
The Whites came from many social groups and were
united only by their hatred of the Bolsheviks—the Reds.
By the summer of 1918, fully eighteen self-
proclaimed regional governments—several of which
represented minority nationalities—were competing Lenin Rallies Worker and Soldier Delegates
with Lenin’s Bolsheviks in Moscow. By the end of the At a midnight meeting of the Petrograd Soviet, the Bolsheviks rise up
year, White armies were on the attack. In October 1919, and seize power on November 6, 1917. This painting from the 1940s
it appeared they might triumph, as they closed in on idealizes Lenin, but his great talents as a revolutionary leader are
Lenin’s government from three sides. Yet they did not. undeniable. In this re-creation Stalin, who actually played only a small
By the spring of 1920, the White armies had been al- role in the uprising, is standing behind Lenin, already his trusty right-
hand man. (Sovfoto)
most completely defeated, and the Bolshevik Red Army
had retaken Belorussia and Ukraine. The following
year, the Communists also reconquered the independent nationalist governments Constituent Assembly A freely elected
of the Caucasus. The civil war was over; Lenin had won. assembly promised by the Bolsheviks, but
permanently disbanded within one day
Lenin and the Bolsheviks won for several reasons. Strategically, they controlled under Lenin’s orders after the Bolsheviks
the center, while the Whites were always on the fringes and disunited. Moreover, won less than one-fourth of the elected
the poorly defined political program of the Whites was vaguely conservative, and delegates.
it did not unite all the foes of the Bolsheviks under a progressive, democratic ban-
ner. Most important, the divided Whites were no match for Trotsky’s Red Army.
Manned through a draft and severely disciplined by former tsarist officers, the Red
Army was a superior fighting force. Through war communism, resources were war communism The application
marshaled from civilians to keep the army supplied. Civil opposition to the Bol- of the total war concept to a civil
conflict, the Bolsheviks seized grain
sheviks was silenced by the Cheka (CHE-kah), a new incarnation of the tsarist se- from peasants, introduced rationing,
cret police. nationalized all banks and industry, and
Together, the Russian Revolution and the Bolshevik triumph were one of the required everyone to work.
reasons the First World War was such a great turning point in modern history. A
Cheka The re-established tsarist
radically new government, based on socialism and one-party dictatorship, came to secret police, which hunted down
power in a great European state, maintained power, and eagerly encouraged and executed thousands of real or
worldwide revolution. Although halfhearted constitutional monarchy in Russia suspected foes, sowing fear and
silencing opposition.
was undoubtedly headed for some kind of political crisis before 1914, it is hard to
Sec tion Review imagine the triumph of the most radical proponents of change and reform except
in a situation of total collapse. That was precisely what happened to Russia in the
• Nicholas II proved an inept leader at First World War.
the front while his wife Alexandria
attempted to rule with her adviser
Rasputin until the public, angry over
food shortages and heavy war losses, The Peace Settlement
revolted; the Duma set up a provisional
government, forcing Nicholas to How did the Allies fashion a peace settlement, and why was it
abdicate. unsuccessful?
• The provisional government made the
continuation of war a top priority but In the spring of 1918, the combined forces of the United States, Great Britain, and
shared power with the Petrograd Soviet,
who issued their own orders placing
France decisively defeated Germany. The guns of world war finally fell silent.
power in elected committees of soldiers; Then as civil war spread in Russia and as chaos engulfed much of eastern Europe,
this resulted in chaos, with many sol- the victorious Western Allies came together in Paris to establish a lasting peace.
diers leaving to return to their families, Expectations were high; optimism was almost unlimited. Nevertheless, the
seizing what land they could as liberty hopes of peoples and politicians were soon disappointed, for the peace settlement
turned to anarchy.
of 1919 turned out to be a failure. Rather than creating conditions for peace, it
• Lenin’s Bolshevik program called for sowed the seeds of another war. Surely this was the ultimate tragedy of the Great
violent overthrow of capitalism by the
exploited underclass controlled by an
War, a war that directly and indirectly cost $332 billion and left 10 million dead
educated vanguard elite, the Bolshevik and another 20 million wounded.
party, who unsuccessfully attempted to
seize power in July 1917.
• Lenin’s supporter Trotsky organized a Victory over revolutionary Russia boosted sagging Ger-
special military-revolutionary commit- The End of the War man morale, and in the spring of 1918 the Germans
tee, which joined with the Bolshevik launched their last major attack against France under
soldiers, seizing power and naming
Lenin as head of a new government by
the command of General Erich Ludendorff (LOOD-n-dawrf). For a time, German
gaining the support of the masses who armies pushed forward, coming within thirty-five miles of Paris. But Ludendorff’s
believed the time for Communism exhausted, overextended forces never broke through. They were decisively stopped
had come. in July at the second Battle of the Marne, where 140,000 fresh American soldiers saw
• Lenin and the Bolsheviks maintained action. Adding 2 million men in arms to the war effort by August, the late but mas-
their control by ending the war with sive American intervention decisively tipped the scales in favor of Allied victory.
Germany, disbanding the elected By September British, French, and American armies were advancing steadily
Constituent Assembly, and forming a
one-party government with a strong,
on all fronts, and a panicky General Ludendorff realized that Germany had lost
well-organized Red Army that was the war. Yet he insolently insisted that moderate politicians shoulder the shame of
able to defeat the disorganized anti- defeat, and on October 4 the emperor formed a new, more liberal German gov-
Communist White army. ernment to sue for peace.
As negotiations over an armistice dragged on, an angry and frustrated German
people finally rose up. On November 3, sailors in Kiel (keel) mutinied, and
throughout northern Germany soldiers and workers began to establish revolution-
ary councils on the Russian soviet model. The same day, Austria-Hungary surren-
dered to the Allies and began breaking apart. Revolution broke out in Germany,
and masses of workers demonstrated for peace in Berlin. With army discipline col-
lapsing, the emperor abdicated and fled to Holland. Moderate socialist leaders in
Berlin proclaimed a German republic on November 9 and simultaneously agreed
to tough Allied terms of surrender. The armistice went into effect on November 11,
1918. The war was over.
Military defeat brought political revolution to Ger-

Revolution in many and Austria-Hungary, as it had to Russia. In
Germany Austria-Hungary the revolution was primarily national-
istic and republican in character. Having started the war to preserve an antination-
alistic dynastic state, the Habsburg empire had perished in the attempt. In its
place, independent Austrian, Hungarian, and Czechoslovakian republics were

proclaimed, while a greatly expanded Serbian monarchy united the South Slavs
and took the name Yugoslavia.
In Germany, the empire was replaced by the Weimar Republic, which was
composed largely of Social Democrats and the Catholic party. The German Revo-
lution of November 1918 resembled the Russian Revolution of March 1917. In
both cases, a genuine popular uprising welled up from below, toppled an authori-
tarian monarchy, and brought the establishment of a liberal provisional republic.
In both countries, liberals and moderate socialists took control of the central gov-
ernment, while workers’ and soldiers’ councils formed a counter-government. In
Germany, however, the moderate socialists and their liberal allies won, and the
Lenin-like radical revolutionaries in the councils lost.
The peace conference opened in Paris in January 1919

The Treaty with seventy delegates representing twenty-seven victo-
of Versailles rious nations. There were great expectations. A young
British diplomat later wrote that the victors “were journeying to Paris . . . to found
a new order in Europe. We were preparing not Peace only, but Eternal Peace.”4
This general optimism and idealism had been greatly strengthened by President
Wilson’s January 1918 peace proposal, the Fourteen Points, which stressed na-
tional self-determination and the rights of small countries.
The real powers at the conference were the United States, Great Britain, and
France. Germany was not allowed to participate; Russia was locked in civil war;
and Italy’s role was limited. Almost immediately the three great Allies began to
quarrel. President Wilson passionately believed that only a permanent interna-
tional organization could protect member states from aggression and avert future
wars, and he insisted that the creation of a League of Nations come first on the League of Nations A permanent
agenda. Wilson had his way, although Lloyd George of Great Britain and espe- international organization established
during the peace conference in Paris
cially Clemenceau of France were unenthusiastic. They were primarily concerned in January 1919, designed to protect
with punishing Germany. member states from aggression and
Playing on British nationalism, David Lloyd George had already won a avert future wars.
smashing electoral victory as prime minister in December on the popular plat-
form of making Germany pay for the war. As Kipling summed up the general
British feeling at the end of the war, the Germans were “a people with the heart
of beasts.”5
France’s Georges Clemenceau, “the Tiger” who had broken wartime defeat-
ism and led his country to victory, wholeheartedly agreed. Like most French
people, Clemenceau wanted old-fashioned revenge as well as lasting security for
France. This, he believed, required the creation of a buffer state between France
and Germany, the permanent demilitarization of Germany, and vast German
reparations. Clemenceau’s demands seemed vindictive to Wilson and Lloyd
George, violating morality and the principle of national self-determination. By
April the countries attending the conference were deadlocked on the German
question, and Wilson packed his bags to go home.
In the end, Clemenceau agreed to a compromise. He gave up the French de-
mand for a Rhineland buffer state in return for Wilson and Lloyd George’s prom-
ise that their countries would come to France’s aid in the event of a German
attack. Thus Clemenceau appeared to win his goal of French security, as Wilson
had won his of a permanent international organization. The Allies moved quickly
to finish the settlement, believing that any adjustments would later be possible
within the dual framework of a strong Western alliance and the League of Nations
(see Map 27.4).
10°W 0° 10°E 20°E 30°E
FINLAND
0 200 400 Km.
NORWAY Petrograd
0 200 400 Mi.
(St. Petersburg)
Helsinki
Oslo SWEDEN
Tallinn
Stockholm ESTONIA
Sea
LATVIA Moscow
North Riga
tic
Sea DENMARK LITHUANIA
al
Copenhagen B
IRELAND Vilnius RUSSIAN
Danzig EAST
GREAT POLISH PRUSSIA EMPIRE
Elb CORRIDOR
BRITAIN eR
NETHERLANDS . Vis POLAND
tula
London R.
Amsterdam G E R M A NY Berlin Warsaw
Kiev 50°N
AT L A N T I C Brussels Cologne Dniep
er R .
Rhi
BELGIUM Weimar
Prague
ne
ei Frankfurt
S
OCEAN ne GALICIA Dn
R.
R. iest
Paris LUXEMBOURG CZ EC er R.
N Versailles LORRAINE H O S LO V
Strasbourg AKIA B
ES
SA
Loire R. ALSACE Vienna
RA
Budapest
Bern
AUST R I A
B IA
S. H U NGARY ROMANIA
F R AN C E SWITZ. TYROL
Geneva
Locarno Trieste
Ga Milan Zagreb
Po R. Black
.
ro
Rhône R
n Venice CROATIA Belgrade Bucharest

Genoa
ne
Rapallo .
Danube R
Y UGO S L AVI A Sea
R.
Sarajevo B U LG A R I A
SERBIA Istanbul
ITA LY Sofia
SPAI N Elba (Constantinople)
Corsica MONTENEGRO
(To Yugoslavia 1921)
Rome 40°N
Boundaries of German, Russian, and Naples
ALBANIA
Austro-Hungarian Empires in 1914
Sardinia
TURKEY
Areas lost by Austro-Hungarian Empire GREECE Izmir
Areas lost by Russian Empire (Smyrna)
Medi
Areas lost by German Empire ter Athens
ran
Areas lost by Bulgaria ea Sicily
Demilitarized Zones n
Se
Boundaries of 1926 a Crete
Mapping the Past

MAP 27.4 Shattered Empires and Territorial Changes After World War I
The Great War brought tremendous changes in eastern Europe. New nations and new
boundaries were established, generally on the principle of national self-determination. A
dangerous power vacuum was created by the new, usually small states established between
Germany and Soviet Russia. [1] Identify the boundaries of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and
Russia in 1914, and note carefully the changes caused by the war. [2] What territory did
Germany lose, and why did France, Poland, and even Denmark receive it? Why was Austria
sometimes called a head without a body in the 1920s? [3] What new independent states
(excluding disputed Bessarabia) were formed from the old Russian Empire, and what nationalities
lived in these states?
718
The Treaty of Versailles between the Allies and Germany was the key to the Treaty of Versailles The treaty by
settlement, and the terms were not unreasonable as a first step toward re-establishing which Germany’s army was limited to
100,000 men and Germany was declared
international order. Had Germany won, it seems certain that France and Belgium responsible for the war and had therefore
would have been treated with greater severity, as Russia had been at Brest-Litovsk. to pay reparations equal to all civilian
Germany’s colonies were given to France, Britain, and Japan as League of Nations damages caused by the war.
mandates. Germany’s territorial losses within Europe were minor, thanks to Wil-
son. Alsace-Lorraine (AL-sas-law-REYN) was returned to France. Parts of Germany
inhabited primarily by Poles were ceded to the new Polish state, in keeping with
the principle of national self-determination. Germany had to limit its army to
100,000 men and agree to build no military fortifications in the Rhineland.
More harshly, the Allies declared that Germany (with Austria) was responsible
for the war and had therefore to pay reparations equal to all civilian damages
caused by the war. This unfortunate and much-criticized clause expressed ines-
capable popular demands for German blood, but the actual figure was not set, and
there was the clear possibility that reparations might be set at a reasonable level in
the future when tempers had cooled.
When presented with the treaty, the German government protested vigorously.
But there was no alternative, especially considering that Germany was still starving
because the Allies had not yet lifted their naval blockade. On June 28, 1919, Ger-
man representatives of the ruling moderate Social Democrats and the Catholic
party signed the treaty in the Sun King’s Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, where Bis-
marck’s empire had been joyously proclaimed almost fifty years before.
Separate peace treaties were concluded with the other defeated European
powers—Austria, Hungary, and Bulgaria. For the most part, these treaties merely
ratified the existing situation in east-central Europe following the breakup of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire. Like Austria, Hungary was a particularly big loser, as its
“captive” nationalities (and some interspersed Hungarians) were ceded to Roma-
nia, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Yugoslavia.
Although Allied leaders at Versailles focused mainly

The Peace Settlement on European questions, they also imposed a political
in the Middle East settlement on what had been the Ottoman Empire.
This settlement brought radical changes to the Middle East, and it became very
controversial. Basically, the Ottoman Empire was broken up, Britain and France
expanded their power and influence in the Middle East, and Arab nationalists felt
cheated and betrayed.
The British government had encouraged the wartime Arab revolt against the
Ottoman Turks (see page 705) and had even made vague promises of an indepen-
dent Arab kingdom. However, when the fighting stopped, the British and the
French chose instead to honor secret wartime agreements to divide and rule the
Ottoman lands. Arab nationalists were also angered by the Balfour Declaration of Balfour Declaration A 1917 British
November 1917, named after the British foreign secretary. It announced that Brit- statement that declared British support of
a “National Home for the Jewish People”
ain favored a “National Home for the Jewish People” in Palestine, but without in Palestine.
prejudicing the civil and religious rights of the non-Jewish communities already
living in Palestine. The “National Home for the Jewish People” implied to the
Arabs—and to the Zionist Jews as well—the establishment of some kind of Jewish
state that would be incompatible with rule by the majority Arab population.
The Arab leader Hussein ibn-Ali sent his son Faisal (1885–1933) to the Ver-
sailles Peace Conference with the goal of securing Arab independence. Although
President Wilson wanted to give the Arab case serious consideration, the British
and the French were determined to rule Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, and Palestine as
Prince Faisal at the Versailles

Peace Conference, 1919
Standing in front, Faisal is supported by
his allies and black slave. Nur-as-Said, an
officer in the Ottoman army who joined
the Arab revolt, is second from the left,
and the British officer T. E. Lawrence—
popularly known as Lawrence of
Arabia—is fourth from the left in back.
Faisal failed to win political indepen-
dence for the Arabs, as the British
backed away from the vague promises
they had made during the war. (Courtesy
of the Trustees of the Imperial War Museum,
neg. #Q55581)
League of Nations mandates, and they confirmed only the independence of

Hussein’s kingdom of Hejaz along the western coast of contemporary Saudi Ara-
bia. In response Arab nationalists met in Damascus to call for political indepen-
dence. (See the feature “Listening to the Past: Arab Political Aspirations in 1919”
on pages 724–725.) Brushing aside Arab opposition, the British mandate in Palestine
formally incorporated the Balfour Declaration and its commitment to a Jewish
national home. When Faisal returned to Syria, his followers repudiated the agree-
ment he had reluctantly accepted. In March 1920 they met as the Syrian National
Congress and proclaimed Syria independent, with Faisal as king. A similar con-
gress declared Iraq an independent kingdom.
Western reaction to events in Syria and Iraq was swift and decisive. A French
army stationed in Lebanon attacked Syria, taking Damascus in July 1920. Faisal
fled, and the French took over. Meanwhile, the British put down an uprising in
Iraq with bloody fighting and established effective control there. Western impe-
rialism, in the form of League of Nations mandates, appeared to have replaced
Ottoman rule in the Arab Middle East. The Allies laid claim to the Turkish heart-
land as well. Great Britain and France occupied parts of modern-day Turkey, and
Italy and Greece also claimed shares. There was a sizable Greek minority in west-
ern Turkey, and Greek nationalists wanted to build a modern Greek empire mod-
eled on long-dead Christian Byzantium. In 1919 Greek armies carried by British
ships landed on the Turkish coast at Smyrna (SMUR-nuh) and advanced unop-
posed into the interior. Turkey seemed finished.
But Turkey revived under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal (MOOS-tah-fah
kuh-MAHL) (1881–1938), later known as Atatürk (AT-uh-turk) (“father of the
Turks”). Kemal was a military man who had directed the successful defense of the
Dardanelles against British attack. Watching the Allies’ aggression and the sultan’s
cowardice after the armistice, in early 1919 he moved to central Turkey and gradu-
ally unified the Turkish resistance. After a year of defeat in battle, they won a great
victory in central Turkey, and the Greeks and their British allies sued for peace.
The Treaty of Lausanne (loh-ZAN) (1923) recognized the territorial integrity of a
truly independent Turkey. Turkey lost only its former Arab provinces.
Mustafa Kemal, a nationalist without religious faith, believed that Turkey
should modernize and secularize along Western lines. He established a republic,
had himself elected president, and created a one-party system—partly inspired by
the Bolshevik example—in order to transform his country. Profoundly influenced
by the example of western Europe, Mustafa Kemal set out to limit the place of
religion and religious leaders in daily affairs. He decreed a revolutionary separa-
tion of church and state, promulgated law codes inspired by European models,
and established a secular public school system. Women received rights that they
never had before. By the time of his death in 1938, Mustafa Kemal had imple-
mented successfully much of his revolutionary program. He had moved Turkey
much closer to Europe, foretelling current efforts by Turkey to join the European
Union as a full-fledged member.
The rapidly concluded Versailles Treaty of early 1919

American Rejection was not perfect, but within the context of war-shattered
of the Versailles Europe it was an acceptable beginning. The
Treaty principle of national self-determination, which Sec tion Review
had played such a large role in starting the war, served as an organizing
framework. Germany had been punished but not dismembered. A new • The entry of the United States into the war
finally gave the Allies the edge and although
world organization complemented a traditional defensive alliance of sat- Germany tried to hold on, the exhausted and
isfied powers. The serious remaining problems could be worked out in angry Germans revolted and the emperor abdi-
the future. Moreover, Allied leaders had seen speed as essential for an- cated and fled; moderate socialists declared a
other reason: they detested Lenin and feared that his Bolshevik Revolu- German republic and agreed to an armistice.
tion might spread. They realized that their best answer to Lenin’s • Post-war Austria-Hungary became independent
unending calls for worldwide upheaval was peace and tranquillity for Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and the
war-weary peoples. monarchy of Yugoslavia; in Germany, an inter-
nal revolution led to a provisional republic led
There were, however, two great, interrelated obstacles to such peace: by the moderate Social Democrats.
Germany and the United States. Plagued by communist uprisings, reac-
• The United States, Britain, and France were at
tionary plots, and popular disillusionment with losing the war, Germany’s odds over how to create a lasting peace; U.S.
moderate socialists and their liberal and Catholic supporters faced an president Wilson got a permanent League of
enormous challenge. Like French republicans after 1871, they needed Nations—an international organization to
time (and luck) if they were to establish firmly a peaceful and democratic protect its members from aggression—while
republic. Progress in this direction required understanding but firm treat- Britain and France pressed for German demili-
tarization and reparations.
ment of Germany by the victorious Western Allies, particularly by the
United States. • The Arabs in the Ottoman Empire were an-
gered when the Allies denied their indepen-
However, the United States Senate and, to a lesser extent, the Ameri- dence, forcibly occupying Syria and Iraq and
can people, rejected Wilson’s handiwork. Republican senators led by attempting to control Turkey, but Atatürk was
Henry Cabot Lodge refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles without able to establish a republic and modernize
changes in the articles creating the League of Nations. Lodge and others Turkey.
believed that this requirement gave away Congress’s constitutional right • The United States Senate did not ratify the
to declare war. Moreover, the Senate refused to ratify Wilson’s treaties treaty of Versailles because Republican senators
forming a defensive alliance with France and Great Britain. Wilson, in feared it gave away congress’s right to declare
war and they did not want to form a defensive
failing health, refused to compromise. alliance with Britain and France; Britain, too,
The Wilson-Lodge fiasco and the newfound gospel of isolationism refused to enter the alliance, leaving France
represented a tragic and cowardly renunciation of America’s responsibil- alone and hopes for lasting peace unstable.
ity. Using America’s action as an excuse, Great Britain, too, refused to
ratify its defensive alliance with France. Bitterly betrayed by its allies, France stood
alone. Very shortly France was to take actions against Germany that would feed
the fires of German resentment and seriously undermine democratic forces in the
new republic. The great hopes of early 1919 had turned to ashes by the end of the
year. The Western alliance had collapsed, and a grandiose plan for permanent
peace had given way to a fragile truce. For this and for what came later, the United
States must share a large part of the guilt.
Chapter Review
What caused the Great War, and why did it have such revolutionary conse-
quences? (page 699) Key Terms
World War I had truly revolutionary consequences because, first and foremost, it was Three Emperors’ League (p. 699)
a war of committed peoples. In France, Britain, and Germany in particular, govern- Triple Entente (p. 703)
ments drew on genuine popular support. This support reflected in part the diplomatic trench warfare (p. 704)
origins of the war, which citizens saw as growing out of an unwanted crisis in the Bal-
kans and an inflexible alliance system of opposing blocs. More importantly, popular Lusitania (p. 708)
support reflected the way western European society had been unified under the na- total war (p. 708)
tionalist banner in the later nineteenth century, despite the fears that the growing so- Petrograd Soviet (p. 713)
cialist movement aroused in conservatives. Army Order No. 1 (p. 713)
Bolsheviks (p. 713)
What was the impact of total war on civilian populations? (page 708) Constituent Assembly (p. 715)
The relentlessness of total war helps explain why so many died, why so many were war communism (p. 715)
crippled physically and psychologically, and why Western civilization would in so Cheka (p. 715)
many ways never be the same again. More concretely, the war swept away monarchs League of Nations (p. 717)
and multinational empires. National self-determination apparently triumphed across
Treaty of Versailles (p. 719)
Europe, not only in Austria-Hungary but also in many of Russia’s western border-
lands. Except in Ireland and parts of Soviet Russia and the Arab Middle East, the Balfour Declaration (p. 719)
revolutionary dream of national unity, born of the French Revolution, had finally
come true.
Why did World War I bring socialist revolution in Russia? (page 711)
Two other revolutions were products of the war. In Russia the Bolsheviks established
a radical regime, smashed existing capitalist institutions, and stayed in power with a
new kind of authoritarian rule. Whether the new Russian regime was truly Marxian or
socialist was questionable, but it indisputably posed a powerful, ongoing revolutionary
challenge to Europe and its colonial empires.
More subtle but quite universal in its impact was an administrative revolution. This
revolution, born of the need to mobilize entire societies and economies for total war,
greatly increased the power of government. Freewheeling market capitalism and a
well-integrated world economy were among the many casualties of the administrative
revolution, and greater social equality was everywhere one of its results. Thus even in
European countries where a communist takeover never came close to occurring, soci-
ety still experienced a great revolution.
Chapter Review 723
How did the Allies fashion a peace settlement, and why was it unsuccessful?
(page 716)
Finally, the “war to end war” did not bring peace—only a fragile truce. In the West,
the Allies failed to maintain their wartime solidarity. Germany remained unrepentant
and would soon have more grievances to nurse. Moreover, the victory of national self-
determination in eastern Europe created small, weak states and thus a power vacuum
between a still-powerful Germany and a potentially mighty communist Russia. A vast
area lay open to military aggression from two sides.
Notes
1. Quoted in J. Remak, The Origins of World War I (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston,
1967), p. 84.
2. Quoted in R. O. Paxton, Europe in the Twentieth Century (New York: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1975), p. 109.
3. A. B. Ulam, The Bolsheviks (New York: Collier Books, 1968), p. 349.
4. H. Nicolson, Peacemaking 1919 (New York: Grosset & Dunlap Universal Library, 1965),
pp. 8, 31–32.

Arab Political Aspirations in 1919
1. We ask absolutely complete political indepen-
dence for Syria within these boundaries. [De-
G reat Britain and France had agreed to divide up the
Arab lands, and the British also had made conflicting
promises to Arab and Jewish nationalists. However, President
scribes the area including the present-day states
of Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan.]
Wilson insisted at Versailles that the right of self-determina- 2. We ask that the Government of this Syrian
tion should be applied to the conquered Ottoman territories, country should be a democratic civil constitu-
and he sent an American commission of inquiry to Syria, even tional Monarchy on broad decentralization
principles, safeguarding the rights of minorities,
though the British and French refused to participate. The
and that the King be the Emir Faisal, who
commission canvassed political views throughout greater
carried on a glorious struggle in the cause of
Syria, and its long report with many documents reflected our liberation and merited our full confidence
public opinion in the region in 1919. and entire reliance. . . .
To present their view to the Americans, Arab nationalists
6. We do not acknowledge any right claimed by
from present-day Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan came the French Government in any part whatever
together in Damascus as the General Syrian Congress, and of our Syrian country and refuse that she
they passed the following resolution on July 2, 1919. should assist us or have a hand in our country
under any circumstances and in any place.
7. We oppose the pretensions of the Zionists to
We the undersigned members of the General
create a Jewish commonwealth in the southern
Syrian Congress, meeting in Damascus on Wednes-
part of Syria, known as Palestine, and oppose
day, July 2nd, 1919, . . . provided with credentials Zionist migration to any part of our country; for
and authorizations by the inhabitants of our vari- we do not acknowledge their title but consider
ous districts, Moslems, Christians, and Jews, have them a grave peril to our people from the
agreed upon the following statement of the desires national, economical, and political points of
of the people of the country who have elected us to view. Our Jewish compatriots shall enjoy our
present them to the American Section of the Inter- common rights and assume the common
national Commission; the fifth article was passed responsibilities.
by a very large majority; all the other articles were 8. We ask that there should be no separation of
accepted unanimously. the southern part of Syria, known as Palestine,
Palestinian Arabs protest against large-scale Jewish migration into Palestine.

(Roger-Viollet/Getty Images)
724
nor of the littoral western zone, which includes participated in all civil, political, and representative
Lebanon, from the Syrian country. We privileges, but for their violation of our national
desire that the unity of the country should be rights, and so will grant us our desires in full in or-
guaranteed against partition under whatever der that our political rights may not be less after
circumstances. the war than they were before, since we have shed
9. We ask complete independence for emanci- so much blood in the cause of our liberty and
pated Mesopotamia [today’s Iraq] and that independence.
there should be no economical barriers be- We request to be allowed to send a delegation to
tween the two countries. . . .
represent us at the Peace Conference to defend our
The noble principles enunciated by President rights and secure the realization of our aspirations.
Wilson strengthen our confidence that our desires
emanating from the depths of our hearts, shall be
the decisive factor in determining our future; and Questions for Analysis
that President Wilson and the free American 1. What kind of state did the delegates want?
people will be our supporters for the realization of 2. Did the delegates view their “Jewish compatri-
our hopes, thereby proving their sincerity and ots” and the Zionists in different ways? Why?
noble sympathy with the aspiration of the 3. How did the delegates appeal to American
weaker nations in general and our Arab people in sympathies?
particular.
Source: “Resolution of the General Syrian Congress at
We also have the fullest confidence that the
Damascus, 2 July 1919,” from the King-Crane Commis-
Peace Conference will realize that we would not sion Report, in Foreign Relations of the United States:
have risen against the Turks, with whom we had Paris Peace Conference, 1919, 12: 780–781.
725
CHAPTER 28
The Age
of Anxiety
ca. 1900–1940
Chapter Preview
Modernism and the Crisis
of Western Thought
In what ways did new and disturbing
ideas in philosophy, physics, psychology,
and the arts reflect the general crisis in
Western thought?
Movies and Radio

In what ways did movies and radio
become mainstays of popular culture?
The Search for Peace and Political Stability

How did the democratic leaders of the
1920s deal with deep-seated instability
and try to establish real peace and
prosperity?
The Great Depression (1929–1939)

What caused the Great Depression, and
how did the Western democracies
respond to this challenge?
This detail of George Grosz’s Draussen und Drinnen (Outside and
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY: Gustav Stresemann Inside) captures the uncertainty and anxiety of the 1920s. (akg-images/
Art@Estate of George Grosz/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY)
IMAGES IN SOCIETY: Pablo Picasso and Modern Art
LISTENING TO THE PAST: Life on the Dole in

Great Britain
726
Modernism and the Crisis of Western Thought 727
W ith the end of the terrible trauma of total war, most people hoped that
once again life would make sense in the familiar prewar terms of peace,
prosperity, and progress. These hopes were in vain. The Great Break—the First
World War and the Russian Revolution—had mangled too many things beyond
repair. Life would no longer fit neatly into the old molds.
Instead, great numbers of men and women felt themselves increasingly adrift
in a strange, uncertain, and uncontrollable world. They saw themselves living in
an age of anxiety, an age of continual crisis (this age lasted until at least the early
1950s). In almost every area of human experience, people went searching for ways
to put meaning back into life.
Modernism and the Crisis of Western Thought

In what ways did new and disturbing ideas in philosophy, physics,
psychology, and the arts reflect the general crisis in Western thought?
Before 1914 most people still believed in the Enlightenment ideals of progress,
reason, and the rights of the individual. Yet a small band of serious thinkers and
creative writers had been attacking these well-worn optimistic ideas since the
1880s. These critics rejected the general faith in progress and the power of the ra-
tional human mind. An expanding chorus of thinkers echoed and enlarged their
views after the experience of history’s most destructive war—a war that suggested
to many that human beings were a pack of violent, irrational animals quite capable
of tearing the individual and his or her rights to shreds. Disorientation and pessi-
mism were particularly acute in the 1930s, when the rapid rise of harsh dictator-
ships and the Great Depression transformed old certainties into bitter illusions, as
we shall see in Chapter 29.
In the midst of economic, political, and social disruptions, the French poet
and critic Paul Valéry (va-ley-REE) (1871–1945) saw the “cruelly injured mind,”
besieged by doubts and suffering from anxieties. This was the general intellectual
crisis of the twentieth century, which touched almost every field of thought. The
implications of new ideas and discoveries in philosophy, physics, psychology, and
the arts played a central role in this crisis, disturbing “thinking people” everywhere.
The work of the nineteenth-century German philoso-

Modern Philosophy pher Friedrich Nietzsche (NEE-chee) (1844–1900) laid
the foundation for the twentieth-century rejection of
Enlightenment ideals. His first great work in 1872 argued that ever since classical
Athens, the West had overemphasized rationality and stifled the passion and ani-
mal instinct that drive human activity and true creativity. Nietzsche went on to
question all values. He claimed that Christianity embodied a “slave morality” that
glorified weakness, envy, and mediocrity. In Nietzsche’s most famous line, a wise
fool proclaims that “God is dead,” dead because he has been murdered by lacka-
daisical modern Christians who no longer really believe in him. Nietzsche viewed
the pillars of conventional morality—reason, democracy, progress, respectability—
as outworn social and psychological constructs whose influence was suffocating
self-realization and excellence.
Nietzsche painted a dark world, foreshadowing perhaps his loss of sanity in
1889. The West was in decline; false values had triumphed. The only hope for the
728 Chapter 28 The Age of Anxiety, ca. 1900–1940
individual was to accept the meaninglessness of human existence and then make
that very meaninglessness a source of self-defined personal integrity and hence
liberation. Little read during his active years, Nietzsche attracted growing atten-
tion in the early twentieth century, especially from German radicals who found
inspiration in Nietzsche’s ferocious assault on the conventions of pre-1914 impe-
rial Germany. Subsequent generations have each discovered new Nietzsches, and
his influence remains enormous to this day.
This growing dissatisfaction with established ideas before 1914 was apparent in
other important thinkers. In the 1890s, French philosophy professor Henri Berg-
son (1859–1941) convinced many young people through his writing that immedi-
ate experience and intuition were as important as rational and scientific thinking
for understanding reality. Indeed, according to Bergson, a religious experience or
a mystical poem could be more meaningful than a scientific law or a mathemati-
cal equation.
The First World War accelerated the revolt against established certainties in
philosophy, but that revolt went in two very different directions. In English-speaking
countries, the main development was the acceptance of logical empiricism (or
logical positivism) in university circles. In continental countries, the primary de-
velopment in philosophy was existentialism.
logical empiricism A revolt against Logical empiricism was truly revolutionary. This outlook began primarily with
established certainties in philosophy the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (VIT-guhn-shtine) (1889–1951),
that rejected most of the concerns of
traditional philosophy, from the exis-
who later immigrated to England, where he trained numerous disciples. Wittgen-
tence of God to the meaning of stein argued that the traditional concerns of philosophy—God, freedom, morality,
happiness, as nonsense and hot air. and so on—are quite literally senseless, a great waste of time, for statements about
them can be neither tested by scientific experiments nor demonstrated by the logic
of mathematics. Statements about such matters reflect only the personal prefer-
ences of a given individual. As Wittgenstein put it in the famous last sentence of
his work, “Of what one cannot speak, of that one must keep silent.” People could
no longer look to philosophy for answers to the great questions of life.
existentialism A highly diverse and Another direction in philosophy, existentialism, argued that philosophy was
even contradictory system of thought that necessary to understand the truth of the human condition. Most existential think-
was loosely united in a courageous
search for moral values in a world of
ers in the twentieth century did not believe a supreme being had established hu-
terror and uncertainty. manity’s fundamental nature and given life meaning. In the words of the famous
French existentialist, Jean-Paul Sartre (zhahn-pawl sahrt) (1905–1980), “exis-
tence precedes essence.” The existentialist thinker sees the world without a caring
God or an underlying order. In the face of a world without God, only the actions
of individuals can give life meaning. Individuals must become “engaged” and
choose their own actions courageously and consistently and in full awareness of
their inescapable responsibility for their own behavior. In the end, existentialists
argued, human beings can overcome life’s absurdity.
Not all twentieth-century philosophers rejected the possibility of God, how-
ever. Sometimes described as Christian existentialists because they shared the
loneliness and despair of atheistic existentialists, they stressed the human being’s
sinful nature, the need for faith, and the mystery of God’s forgiveness. The revival
of fundamental Christian belief after World War I was fed by the rediscovery of the
work of nineteenth-century Danish religious philosopher Søren Kierkegaard
(KEER-ki-gahrd) (1813–1855), whose ideas became extremely influential. Having
rejected formalistic religion, Kierkegaard had eventually resolved his personal an-
guish over his imperfect nature by making a total religious commitment to a re-
mote and majestic God.
Similar ideas were brilliantly developed by Swiss Protestant theologian Karl
Barth (1886–1968), whose many influential writings after 1920 sought to re-create
Chronology
the religious intensity of the Reformation. Barth urged people 1919 Treaty of Versailles; Freudian
to accept God’s word and the supernatural revelation of Jesus psychology gains popular attention;
Christ with awe, trust, and obedience. Lowly mortals should Keynes, Economic Consequences of the
not expect to “reason out” God and his ways. Among Catho- Peace; Rutherford splits the atom
lics, the leading existential thinker was Gabriel Marcel 1920s Existentialism gains prominence
(mahr-SEL) (1887–1973), who found in the Catholic Church
an answer to what he called the postwar “broken world.” Ca- 1920s–1930s Dadaism and surrealism (artistic
movements)
tholicism and religious belief provided the hope, humanity,
honesty, and piety for which he hungered. 1922 Eliot, The Waste Land; Joyce, Ulysses;
After 1914 religion became much more relevant and Woolf, Jacob’s Room; Wittgenstein
meaningful to intellectuals than it had been before the war. In writes on logical empiricism
addition to Barth and Marcel, many other illustrious individu- 1923 French and Belgian armies occupy
als turned to religion between about 1920 and 1950. Poets the Ruhr
T. S. Eliot and W. H. Auden, novelists Evelyn Waugh (waw) 1924 Dawes Plan
and Aldous Huxley, historian Arnold Toynbee (TOIN-bee),
1925 Berg’s opera Wozzeck first performed;
Oxford professor C. S. Lewis, psychoanalyst Karl Stern, phys-
Kafka, The Trial
icist Max Planck (plahngk), and philosopher Cyril Joad were
all either converted to religion or attracted to it for the first 1926 Germany joins League of Nations
time. Religion, often of a despairing, existential variety, was 1927 Heisenberg’s principle of uncertainty
one meaningful answer to terror and anxiety. In the words of 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact
a famous Roman Catholic convert, English novelist Graham
Greene, “One began to believe in heaven because one be- 1929 Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
lieved in hell.”1 1929–1939 Great Depression
1930 Van der Rohe becomes director
of Bauhaus
Ever since the scientific revolu- Franklin Roosevelt elected
1932
The New Physics tion of the seventeenth century, U.S. president
progressive minds believed that
science, unlike religion and philosophical speculation, was 1934 Riefenstahl’s documentary film
The Triumph of the Will
based on hard facts and controlled experiments. Science
seemed to have achieved an unerring and almost complete 1935 Creation of WPA as part of New Deal
picture of reality. Unchanging natural laws seemed to deter- 1936 Formation of Popular Front in France
mine physical processes and permit useful solutions to more
and more problems. All this was comforting, especially to
people who were no longer committed to traditional religious
beliefs. And all this was challenged by the new physics.
The work of Polish-born physicist Marie Curie (KYOOR-ee) (1867–1934) and
German physicist Max Planck (1858–1947) called into question the old view
of atoms as the stable, basic building blocks of nature, with a different kind of
unbreakable atom for each of the ninety-two chemical elements. In 1905 the
German-Jewish genius Albert Einstein (AHYN-stine) (1879–1955) went further
than Curie and Planck in undermining Newtonian physics. His famous theory of
special relativity postulated that time and space are relative to the viewpoint of the
observer and that only the speed of light is constant for all frames of reference in
the universe. The closed framework of Newtonian physics was quite limited com-
pared to that of Einsteinian physics, which unified an apparently infinite universe
with the incredibly small, fast-moving subatomic world. Moreover, Einstein’s the-
ory stated clearly that matter and energy are interchangeable and that even a par-
ticle of matter contains enormous levels of potential energy.
The 1920s opened the “heroic age of physics,” in the apt words of one of its
leading pioneers, Ernest Rutherford (1871–1937). Breakthrough followed break-
through. In 1919 Rutherford showed that the atom could be split. By 1944 seven
Unlocking the Power of the Atom

Many of the fanciful visions of science fiction
came true in the twentieth century, although not
exactly as first imagined. This 1927 cartoon
satirizes a professor who has split the atom and
unwittingly destroyed his building and
neighborhood in the process. In the Second
World War the professors harnessed the atom in
bombs and decimated faraway cities and foreign
civilians. (Mary Evans Picture Library)
subatomic particles had been identi-

fied, of which the most important was
the neutron (NOO-tron). The neutron’s
capacity to pass through other atoms al-
lowed for even more intense experimen-
tal bombardment of matter, leading to
chain reactions of unbelievable force.
This was the road to the atomic bomb.
Although few nonscientists under-
stood this revolution in physics, the im-
plications of the new theories and
discoveries, as presented by newspapers
and popular writers, were disturbing to
millions of men and women in the 1920s
and 1930s. The new universe was strange
and troubling. It lacked any absolute ob-
jective reality. Everything was “relative,”
that is, dependent on the observer’s frame
of reference. Moreover, the universe was
uncertain and undetermined, without
stable building blocks. In 1927 German
physicist Werner Heisenberg (VER-nuhr
HI-zuhn-burg) (1901–1976) formulated
neutron The most important of the the “principle of uncertainty,” which postulates that because it is impossible to
subatomic particles because its capacity know the position and speed of an individual electron, it is therefore impossible to
to pass through other atoms allowed for
intense experimental bombardment of
predict its behavior. Instead of Newton’s dependable, rational laws, there seemed
matter, leading to chain reactions of to be only tendencies and probabilities in an extraordinarily complex and uncer-
unbelievable force. tain universe.
While physics presented an unpredictable universe,

Freudian Psychology the findings and speculations of leading psychologist
Sigmund Freud (see page 636) suggested that human
behavior was basically irrational.
According to Freud, the key to understanding the mind is the primitive, irrational
id, ego, and superego Freudian terms unconscious, which he called the id. The unconscious is driven by sexual, aggres-
to describe human behavior, which sive, and pleasure-seeking desires and is locked in a constant battle with the other
Freud saw as basically irrational.
parts of the mind: the rationalizing conscious, the ego, which mediates what a
person can do; and ingrained moral values (the superego), which specify what a
person should do. Human behavior is a product of a fragile compromise between
instinctual drives and the controls of rational thinking and moral values. Since the
instinctual drives are extremely powerful, the ever-present danger for individuals
and whole societies is that unacknowledged drives will overwhelm the control
mechanisms in a violent, distorted way. Yet Freud also agreed with Nietzsche that
the mechanisms of rational thinking and traditional moral values can be too strong.
They can repress sexual desires too effectively, crippling individuals and entire
peoples with guilt and neurotic fears.
Freudian psychology and clinical psychiatry had become an international
movement by 1910, but only after 1918 did they receive popular attention, espe-
cially in the Protestant countries of northern Europe and in the United States.
Many opponents and even some enthusiasts interpreted Freud as saying that the
first requirement for mental health is an uninhibited sex life. Thus after the First
World War, the popular interpretation of Freud reflected and encouraged growing
sexual experimentation, particularly among middle-class women. For more seri-
ous students, the psychology of Freud and his followers drastically undermined the
old, easy optimism about the rational and progressive nature of the human mind.
Freud’s ideas about the complexity and irrationality of

stream-of-consciousness technique
The Modern Novel the human mind found expression in the stream-of-
A literary technique, used by Virginia
consciousness technique of modern novelists. In Ja- Woolf, James Joyce, and others, that
cob’s Room (1922), Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) created a novel made up of a used interior monologue to explore
series of internal monologues, in which a character’s ideas and emotions from the human psyche.
different periods of time bubble up as randomly as from a
patient on a psychoanalyst’s couch. William Faulkner (1897–
1962), perhaps America’s greatest twentieth-century novelist,
used the same technique in The Sound and the Fury (1929),
much of whose intense drama is confusedly seen through the
eyes of an idiot. The most famous stream-of-consciousness
novel—and surely the most disturbing novel of its generation—
is Ulysses (1922), in which Irish novelist James Joyce (1882–
1941) weaves an extended ironic parallel between his ordinary
hero’s aimless wanderings through the streets and pubs of
Dublin and the heroic adventures of Homer’s Ulysses on his
way home from Troy. Abandoning conventional grammar
and blending foreign words, puns, bits of knowledge, and
scraps of memory together in bewildering confusion, the lan-
guage of Ulysses mirrors the riddle of everyday life.
As creative writers turned their attention from society to
the individual and from realism to psychological relativity,
they rejected the idea of progress. Some even described “anti-
utopias,” nightmare visions of things to come. Franz Kafka’s
(1883–1924) novels and stories, such as The Trial (1925) and
1984
This intriguing cover for an early edition of Orwell’s brilliant novel hints at
the tragic love affair between Winston and Julia. Considered a crime in
Orwell’s totalitarian dictatorship of the future, the love affair leads to the
couple’s arrest, torture, and betrayal. No one can escape the scrutiny of Big
Brother and the Thought Police. (Signet Books/New American Library, 1949, cover
illustration, James Avati. Private Collection)
The Castle (1926), portray helpless individuals crushed by inexplicably hostile

forces. The German-Jewish Kafka died young, at forty-one, and so did not see the
world of his nightmares materialize in the Nazi state.
Englishman George Orwell (1903–1950), however, had seen both that reality
and its Stalinist counterpart by 1949, when he wrote perhaps the ultimate in anti-
utopian literature: 1984. Orwell set the action in the future, in 1984. Big Brother—
the dictator—and his totalitarian state use a new kind of language, sophisticated
technology, and psychological terror to strip a weak individual of his last shred of
human dignity. The supremely self-confident chief of the Thought Police tells the
tortured, broken, and framed Winston Smith, “If you want a picture of the future,
imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.”2 A phenomenal bestseller,
1984 spoke to millions of people in the closing years of the age of anxiety.
Like the scientists and writers who were partaking of

Modernism in Art the same culture, visual artists rejected old forms and
and Design old values. Modernism in art and music meant con-
stant experimentation and a search for new kinds of expression. And though many
people find the numerous and varied modern visions of the arts strange, disturb-
ing, and even ugly, the first half of the twentieth century, so dismal in many re-
spects, will probably stand as one of Western civilization’s great artistic eras.
Modernism in the arts was loosely unified by a revolution in architecture. This
revolution intended nothing less than a transformation of the physical framework
functionalism The principle that of urban society according to a new principle: functionalism. Buildings, like in-
buildings, like industrial products, dustrial products, should be useful and “functional”—that is, they should serve, as
should serve as well as possible the
purpose for which they were made.
well as possible, the purpose for which they were made. Moreover, they had to
throw away useless ornamentation and find beauty and aesthetic pleasure in the
clean lines of practical constructions and efficient machinery. Franco-Swiss gen-
ius Le Corbusier (luh cor-booz-YEH) (1887–1965) insisted that “a house is a
machine for living in.”3 Featuring low lines, open interiors, and mass-produced
building materials, the work of American architect Frank Lloyd Wright (1869–
1959) embodied the modernist aesthetic.
In post-war Germany, Walter Gropius (GROH-pee-uhs) (1883–1969) estab-
Bauhaus A German interdisciplinary lished a new kind of interdisciplinary art school, called the Bauhaus (BOU-hous).
school of fine and applied arts that The Bauhaus brought together many leading modern architects, designers, and
brought together many leading modern
architects, designers, and theatrical
theatrical innovators to work as a team, combining the study of fine art, such as
innovators. painting and sculpture, with the study of applied art in the crafts of printing, weav-
ing, and furniture making. Throughout the 1920s, the Bauhaus, with its stress on
functionalism and good design for everyday life, attracted enthusiastic students
from all over the world. It had a great and continuing impact.
In painting, the early twentieth century saw a move away from representing
reality to an interest in the arrangement of color, line, and form as an end in itself.
(See the feature “Images in Society: Pablo Picasso and Modern Art” on pages 734–
735.) Another concern was to express a complicated psychological view of reality
as well as an overwhelming emotional intensity. “The observer,” said Russian-born
Wassily Kandinsky (VAS-uh-lee kan-DIN-skee) (1866–1944), “must learn to look
at [my] pictures . . . as form and color combinations . . . as a representation of
mood and not as a representation of objects.”4 On the eve of the First World War,
extreme expressionism and abstract painting were developing rapidly not only in
Paris but also in Russia and Germany. Modern art had become international.
In the 1920s and 1930s, the artistic movements of the prewar years were ex-
tended and consolidated. The most notable new developments were dadaism
Walter Gropius: The Fagus Shoe Factory, 1911

The factory’s sleek exterior is inspired by the revolutionary principles of functionalism. The striking
glass façade creates a feeling of lightness and eliminates the traditional separation between interior
and exterior. The glass façade also provides workers with healthy, natural light—a practical,
“functional” concern. (Vanni/Art Resource, NY)
(DAH-dah-izm) and surrealism. Dadaism attacked all accepted standards of art Dadaism An artistic movement of
and behavior, delighting in outrageous conduct. Its name is deliberately nonsensi- the 1920s and 1930s that attacked all
accepted standards of art and behavior
cal. A famous example of dadaism is a reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona and delighted in outrageous conduct.
Lisa in which the famous woman with the mysterious smile sports a mustache and
is ridiculed with an obscene inscription. After 1924 many dadaists were attracted
to surrealism, which became very influential in art in the late 1920s and 1930s.
Surrealists painted a fantastic world of wild dreams and complex symbols, where
watches melted and giant metronomes beat time in precisely drawn but impos-
sible alien landscapes. Refusing to depict ordinary visual reality, surrealist painters
made powerful statements about the age of anxiety.
Developments in modern music were strikingly paral-

Modern Music lel to those in painting. Composers, too, were attracted
by the emotional intensity of expressionism. The ballet
The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky (struh-VIN-skee) (1882–1971) practically
caused a riot when it was first performed in Paris, in 1913, by Sergei Diaghilev’s
(dee-AH-guh-lef) famous Russian dance company. The combination of pulsat-
ing, dissonant rhythms from the orchestra pit and an earthy representation of love-
making by the dancers on the stage seemed a shocking, almost pornographic
enactment of a primitive fertility rite.
Images in Society
Pablo Picasso and Modern Art
P ablo Picasso (pi-KAH-soh) (1881–1973) was

probably the most significant artist of the early
twentieth century. For more than seventy years, he
with continuous, three-dimensional contours. The
figures appear broken into large, flat planes with
heads that are twisted, fractured dislocations. Do
personified the individuality, freedom, and revolu- you see the magical violence of a pictorial break-
tionary creativity of the modern artist. through or a grotesque, ugly departure?
Born at Málaga in southern Spain, Picasso Picasso extended his revolutionary experiments,
quickly demonstrated a precocious talent. At nine- and after 1910 he was joined by others. A critic
teen he headed for Paris, Europe’s art capital. Suf- called the new school cubism because these artists
fering from poverty and falling into depression, he used many geometric forms in intersecting planes.
painted the weak and the poor in somber blue and Objects, viewed from many shifting viewpoints, of-
purple tones. These pessimistic paintings of Picas- ten emerged as purely abstract designs.
so’s “Blue Period” (1901–1904) are masterpieces in Three Musicians (Image 2), painted in 1921,
the tradition of Spanish realism. represents mature cubism. Many people believe
Yet the young Picasso soon sought a new visual that it marks the culmination of Picasso’s cubist
reality. In 1907 his arduous struggle to create a style. What similarities and differences do you see
new style resulted in Les Demoiselles d’Avignon between this picture and Image 1? Notice the lim-
(dem-wuh-ZEL duh-a-vee-NYAWN) (Image 1), a ited number of viewpoints, with the white clown,
painting originating in memories of a
brothel scene in Barcelona. This work
was considered a revolutionary upheaval
in art. Since the Renaissance, artists had
been expected to follow established rules,
seeing objects in an orderly perspective
from a single viewpoint and creating
“beauty” and unified human forms. Do
the faces of the central figures in this
work conform to these rules? Regard the
figures on either side, who were painted
later. Notice how the light fails to com-
bine with the shadow to create bodies
IMAGE 1 Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907).

(Digital image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by
Scala/Art Resource, NY/© 2004 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists
Rights Society [ARS], New York)
734
the harlequin, the monk, their instruments, and
the table in front cut up into rectangular shapes
and reassembled in recognizable form on a shallow
series of planes. What is the effect of the bright pri-
mary colors and the harmonious, decorative order?
Picasso had been making the sets for Sergei Diaghi-
lev’s famous Russian dance company in Paris, and
these three jagged figures from traditional Italian
comedy seem to convey the atmosphere of the the-
ater and the dissonant, syncopated rhythm of mod-
IMAGE 2 Three Musicians (1921). (Digital image © The Museum of Modern Art/
ern music. Picasso always drew back from pure
Licensed by Scala/Art Resource, NY/© 2004 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society
abstraction because he began with real objects and [ARS], New York)
used models.
Picasso’s passionate involvement in his times
infuses his immense painting Guernica (Image 3), plex work, a shrieking woman falls from a burning
often considered his greatest work. Painted for the house on the far right. On the left, a woman holds
Spanish pavilion at the Paris International Exhibi- a dead child, while toward the center are fragments
tion in 1937, this mural, with its mournful white, of a warrior and a screaming horse pierced by a
black, and blue colors, was inspired by the Spanish spear. Do cubist techniques heighten the effect?
civil war and the deadly terror bombing of Guer- Picasso also draws on the surrealist aspect of the
nica by fascist planes in a single night. In this com- modernist revolution in this painting.
IMAGE 3 Guernica (1937). (Bridgeman-Giraudon/Art Resource, NY/© 2004 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society [ARS], New York)
735
Sec tion Review After the experience of the First World War, when irrationality and violence
seemed to pervade the human experience, expressionism in opera and ballet flour-
• After the terrible trauma of the First ished. One of the most famous and powerful examples was the opera Wozzeck, by
World War, philosophers turned to
ideas of logical empiricism, which
Alban Berg (1885–1935), first performed in Berlin in 1925. Blending a half-sung,
argued that concerns with God, free- half-spoken kind of dialogue with harsh, atonal music, Wozzeck is a gruesome tale
dom, or morality were a waste of time of a soldier driven by Kafka-like inner terrors to murder his mistress.
because you cannot test or prove them; Some composers turned their backs on long-established musical conventions.
existentialists argued that only one’s As abstract painters arranged lines and color but did not draw identifiable objects,
actions have meaning; Christianity and
Catholicism also attempted to give life
so modern composers arranged sounds without creating recognizable harmonies.
meaning through a renewed faith and Led by Viennese composer Arnold Schönberg (SHON-burg) (1874–1951), they
awe of God. abandoned traditional harmony and tonality. The musical notes in a given piece
• Progress in physics altered the world were no longer united and organized by a key; instead they were independent and
of science radically; Einstein theorized unrelated. Schönberg’s twelve-tone music of the 1920s arranged all twelve notes of
that scientific laws were not permanent, the scale in an abstract, mathematical pattern, or “tone row.” This pattern, which
that time and space are relative to an sounded like no pattern at all to the ordinary listener, could be detected only by a
observer and matter and energy are
interchangeable, insights that led to
highly trained eye studying the musical score.
the invention of the atom bomb.
• Freudian psychology believed that
human behavior is determined by the Movies and Radio
pleasure-seeking unconscious “id”
struggling with the rationalizing In what ways did movies and radio become mainstays of popular culture?
conscious “ego” and the moralizing
“superego,” ideas that led to a popular
Until after World War II at the earliest, these revolutionary changes in art and
interpretation that encouraged growing
sexual experimentation. music appealed mainly to a minority of “highbrows” and not to the general public.
That public was primarily and enthusiastically wrapped up in movies and radio.
• A new form of writing was the stream-
of-consciousness technique, used by Moving pictures were first shown as a popular novelty in naughty peepshows—
Virginia Woolf and James Joyce in “What the Butler Saw”—and penny arcades in the 1890s, especially in Paris. But
novels made up of a series of mono- on the eve of the First World War, filmmakers were capable of producing full-
logues telling the story from one char- length feature films such as the Italian Quo Vadis (kwo VAH-dis) and the Ameri-
acter’s point of view; other literature
can Birth of a Nation. During the First World War, the United States became the
such as George Orwell’s 1984 foretold
a bleak and frightening future. dominant force in the rapidly expanding silent-film industry. Charlie Chaplin
(1889–1978), an Englishman working in Hollywood, was unquestionably the king
• Functionalism, such as the Bauhaus
movement, decreed that art and archi- of the “silver screen” in the 1920s. In his enormously popular role as the lonely
tecture should be useful, while in Little Tramp, complete with baggy trousers, battered derby, and an awkward,
painting, Dadaism and surrealism shuffling walk, Chaplin symbolized the “gay spirit of laughter in a cruel, crazy
depicted abstract thoughts. world.”5 Chaplin also demonstrated that in the hands of a genius, the new me-
• Modern music followed the artistic dium could combine mass entertainment and artistic accomplishment.
trend and became dominated by emo- The early 1920s were also the great age of German films. Protected and devel-
tional intensity, as ballets, operas, and
oped during the war, the large German studios excelled in bizarre expressionist
music combined wild sounds and
irrationality instead of traditional har- dramas, beginning with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari in 1919. Unfortunately, their
mony and tonality. period of creativity was short-lived. By 1926 American money was drawing the
leading German talents to Hollywood and consolidating America’s international
domination.
Whether foreign or domestic, motion pictures became the main entertain-
ment of the masses until after the Second World War. In Great Britain one in
every four adults went to the movies twice a week in the late 1930s, and two in five
went at least once a week. The greatest appeal of motion pictures was that they
offered ordinary people a temporary escape from the hard realities of everyday life.
The appeal of escapist entertainment was especially strong during the Great De-
pression. Millions flocked to musical comedies featuring glittering stars such as
Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire and to the fanciful cartoons of Mickey Mouse and
his friends.
The Search for Peace and Political Stability 737
The Great Dictator

In 1940 the renowned actor and director Charlie Chaplin abandoned the Little
Tramp role to satirize the “great dictator,” Adolf Hitler. Chaplin had strong
political views and made a number of films with political themes as the
escapist fare of the Great Depression gave way to the reality of the Second
World War. (The Museum of Modern Art/Film Stills Archive)
Radio became technically possible at the turn of the century,

but only in 1920 were the first major public broadcasts of special
events made in Great Britain and the United States. Lord North-
cliffe, who had pioneered in journalism with the inexpensive,
mass-circulation Daily Mail, sponsored a broadcast of “only one
artist . . . the world’s very best, the soprano Nellie Melba.”6 Sing-
ing from London, Melba was heard simultaneously all over Eu-
rope on June 16, 1920. This historic event captured the public’s
imagination. The meteoric career of radio was launched.
Every major country quickly established national broadcast-
ing networks. In the United States such networks were privately
owned and financed by advertising. In Great Britain Parliament
set up an independent, public corporation, the British Broad-
casting Corporation (BBC), supported by licensing fees. Else-
where in Europe the typical pattern was direct control by the
government.
Radio was also well suited for political propaganda. Dictators
such as Mussolini and Hitler controlled the airwaves and could
reach enormous national audiences with their frequent, dra-
matic speeches. In democratic countries, politicians such as
President Franklin Roosevelt and Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin effectively used
informal “fireside chats” to bolster their support. Sec tion Review
Motion pictures also became powerful tools of indoctrination. Lenin himself • The revolution in the arts moved the
encouraged the development of Soviet film making, and the communist view of masses in the new fields of movies
Russian history was presented in a series of epic films, the most famous of which and radio.
were directed by Sergei Eisenstein (1898–1948). • The king of the silent film era was
In Germany Hitler turned to a young and immensely talented woman film Charlie Chaplin, who combined
maker, Leni Riefenstahl (REE-fuhn-shtahl) (1902–2003), for a masterpiece of humor and ingenuity to entertain,
providing a way to escape the hard-
documentary propaganda, The Triumph of the Will, based on the Nazi party rally ships of everyday life.
at Nuremberg in 1934. Riefenstahl combined stunning aerial photography, joyful
• Radio also took off as an inexpensive
crowds welcoming Hitler, and mass processions of young Nazi fanatics. Her film means of mass entertainment and,
was a brilliant and all-too-powerful documentary of Germany’s “Nazi rebirth.” with movies, became a tool for politi-
The new media of mass culture were potentially dangerous instruments of political propaganda.
cal manipulation.
The Search for Peace and Political Stability

How did the democratic leaders of the 1920s deal with deep-seated
instability and try to establish real peace and prosperity?
As established patterns of thought and culture were challenged and mangled

by the ferocious impact of World War I, so also was the political fabric stretched
and torn by the consequences of the great conflict. The Versailles settlement had
established a shaky truce, not a solid peace. Thus national leaders faced a gigantic
task as they struggled with uncertainty and sought to create a stable international
order within the general context of intellectual crisis and revolutionary artistic ex-
perimentation.
The pursuit of real and lasting peace proved difficult for many reasons. Ger-
many hated the Treaty of Versailles. France was fearful and isolated. Britain was
undependable, and the United States had turned its back on European problems.
Eastern Europe was in ferment, and no one could predict the future of communist
Russia. Moreover, the international economic situation was poor and greatly com-
plicated by war debts and disrupted patterns of trade. Yet for a time, from 1925 to
late 1929, it appeared that peace and stability were within reach. When the subse-
quent collapse of the 1930s mocked these hopes and brought the rise of brutal
dictators, the disillusionment of liberals in the democracies was intensified.
Germany was the key to lasting peace. Yet to Germans,

Germany and the the Treaty of Versailles represented a harsh, dictated
Western Powers peace, to be revised or repudiated as soon as possible.
The treaty had neither broken nor reduced Germany, which was potentially still
the strongest country in Europe. It was too harsh for a peace of reconciliation, too
soft for a peace of conquest.
Moreover, with ominous implications for the future, France and Great Britain
did not agree about how to treat Germany. French politicians believed that mas-
sive reparations from Germany were a vital economic necessity, as they had to
shoulder the major burden of reconstruction while also repaying war debts to the
United States. Many French leaders saw strict implementation of all provisions of
the Treaty of Versailles as France’s best chance at curbing Germany’s power and
ensuring France’s security.
The British, however, wanted Germany to regain its economic strength so that
it would again become a major market for British goods. Indeed, many English
people agreed with the analysis of the young English economist John Maynard
Keynes (cainz) (1883–1946), who argued that if Germany was impoverished by
war reparations and other economic measures, all of Europe would suffer. The
British were also suspicious of the fact that France had the largest army in Europe
and was making alliances with the newly formed states of eastern Europe. In 1921
France signed a mutual defense pact with Poland and associated itself closely with
the so-called Little Entente, an alliance that joined Czechoslovakia, Romania,
and Yugoslavia against defeated and bitter Hungary.
While French and British leaders drifted in different directions, the Allied
reparations commission completed its work. In April 1921, it announced that Ger-
many had to pay the enormous sum of 132 billion gold marks ($33 billion) in an-
nual installments of 2.5 billion gold marks. Facing possible occupation of more of
its territory (Versailles already authorized France to occupy the Rhineland), the
young German republic—generally known as the Weimar Republic—made its
first payment in 1921. Then in 1922, wracked by rapid inflation and political as-
sassinations and motivated by hostility and arrogance as well, the Weimar Repub-
lic announced its inability to pay more. It proposed a moratorium on reparations
for three years, with the clear implication that thereafter reparations would be ei-
ther drastically reduced or eliminated entirely.
Led by their tough-minded prime minister, Raymond Poincaré (pwan-ka-REY)
(1860–1934), the French decided they had to either call Germany’s bluff or see the
entire peace settlement dissolve. So, despite strong British protests, in early January
1923, armies of France and its ally Belgium moved out of the Rhineland and be-
gan to occupy the Ruhr (roor) district, the heartland of industrial Germany, creat-
ing the most serious international crisis of the 1920s. If forcible collection proved
impossible, France would use occupation to paralyze Germany and force it to ac-
cept the Treaty of Versailles. Strengthened by a wave of patriotism, the German
government ordered the people of the Ruhr to stop working and start passively
resisting the French occupation. The coal mines and steel mills of the Ruhr grew
silent, leaving 10 percent of Germany’s total population in need of relief. The
French answer to passive resistance was to seal off the Ruhr and the entire Rhine-
land from the rest of Germany, letting in only enough food to prevent starvation.
By the summer of 1923, France and Germany were engaged in a great test of
wills. French armies could not collect reparations from striking workers at gun-
point. But French occupation was indeed paralyzing Germany and its economy
and had turned rapid German inflation into runaway inflation. Faced with the
need to support the striking Ruhr workers and their employers, the German gov-
ernment began to print money to pay its bills. Prices soared. People went to the
store with a big bag of paper money; they returned home with a handful of grocer-
ies. German money rapidly lost all value.
Runaway inflation brought about a social revolution. The accumulated sav-
ings of many retired and middle-class people were wiped out. Catastrophic infla-
tion cruelly mocked the old middle-class virtues of thrift, caution, and self-reliance.
Many Germans felt betrayed. They hated and blamed the Western governments,
their own government, big business, the Jews, the workers, and the communists for
their misfortune. They were psychologically prepared to follow radical leaders in
a crisis.
In August 1923, a new leader in Germany was able to diffuse the situation.
Gustav Stresemann (GOOS-tahf SHTREY-zuh-mahn) (1878–1929) called off pas-
sive resistance in the Ruhr and agreed in principle to pay reparations but asked for
a re-examination of Germany’s ability to pay. (See the feature “Individuals in Soci-
ety: Gustav Stresemann.”) Poincaré accepted, recognizing that continued con-
frontation was a destructive, no-win situation. The British, and even the Americans,
were willing to help. The first step was a reasonable agreement on the reparations
question.
The reparations commission appointed an international

Hope in Foreign committee of financial experts headed by American
Affairs (1924–1929) banker Charles G. Dawes to re-examine reparations
from a broad perspective. The resulting Dawes Plan (1924) was accepted by Dawes Plan The product of the
France, Germany, and Britain. Germany’s yearly reparations were reduced and reparations commission headed by
Charles G. Dawes that was accepted
depended on the level of German economic prosperity. Germany would also re- by Germany, France, and Britain, and
ceive large loans from the United States to promote German recovery. In short, reduced Germany’s yearly reparations,
Germany would get private loans from the United States and pay reparations to made payment dependant on German
France and Britain, thus enabling those countries to repay the large sums they economic prosperity, and granted
Germany large loans from the United
owed the United States. States to promote recovery.
This circular flow of international payments was complicated and risky, but for
a while it worked. The German republic experienced a spectacular economic re-
covery. With prosperity and large, continual inflows of American capital, Ger-
many easily paid about $1.3 billion in reparations in 1927 and 1928, enabling
France and Britain to pay the United States. In this way the Americans belatedly
played a part in the general economic settlement that, though far from ideal, fa-
cilitated the worldwide recovery of the late 1920s.
Gustav Stresemann
T he German foreign minister Gustav Stresemann
(1878–1929) is a controversial historical figure.
Hailed by many as a hero of peace, he was denounced
Voted out as chancellor in November 1923, Strese-
mann remained as foreign minister in every government
until his death in 1929. Proclaiming a policy of peace
as a traitor by radical German nationalists and then and agreeing to pay reparations, he achieved his greatest
by Hitler’s Nazis. After World triumph in the Locarno agreements of 1925 (see page
War II, revisionist historians 741). But the interlocking guarantees of existing French
stressed Stresemann’s persistent and German borders (and the related agreements to re-
nationalism and cast doubt solve peacefully all disputes with Poland and Czecho-
on his peaceful intentions. Wei- slovakia) did not lead the French to make any further
mar Germany’s most renowned concessions that might have disarmed Stresemann’s ex-
leader is a fascinating example tremist foes. Working himself to death, he made little
of the restless quest for convinc- additional progress in achieving international reconcili-
ing historical interpretation. ation and sovereign equality for Germany.
Stresemann’s origins were Stresemann was no fuzzy pacifist. Historians debunk-
modest. His parents were Ber- ing his “legend” are right in seeing an enduring love of
lin innkeepers and retailers of nation in his defense of German interests. But Strese-
bottled beer, and only Gustav mann, like his French counterpart Aristide Briand, was
of their five children was able a statesman of goodwill who wanted peace through mu-
to attend high school. Attracted tually advantageous compromise. A realist trained by
Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann first to literature and history, business and politics in the art of the possible, Strese-
of Germany (right) leaves a Stresemann later turned to mann also reasoned that Germany had to be a satisfied
meeting with Aristide Briand, his
French counterpart. (Corbis) economics, earned a doctoral and equal partner if peace was to be secure. His unwill-
degree, and quickly reached the ingness to guarantee Germany’s eastern borders (see
top as a manager and director Map 27.4 on page 718), which is often criticized, re-
of German trade associations. A highly intelligent extro- flects his conviction that keeping some Germans under
vert with a knack for negotiation, Stresemann entered Polish and Czechoslovak rule created a ticking time
the Reichstag in 1907 as a business-oriented liberal and bomb in Europe. Stresemann was no less convinced
nationalist. When World War I erupted, he believed, that war on Poland would almost certainly re-create the
like most Germans, that Germany had acted defensively Allied coalition that had crushed Germany in 1918.*
and was not at fault. He emerged as a strident nationalist His insistence on the necessity of peace in the east as
and urged German annexation of conquered foreign well as the west was prophetic. Hitler’s 1939 invasion of
territories. Germany’s collapse in defeat and revolution Poland resulted in an even mightier coalition that al-
devastated Stresemann. He seemed a prime candidate most annihilated Germany in 1945.
for the hateful extremism of the far right.
Yet although Stresemann opposed the Treaty of Ver- Questions for Analysis
sailles as an unjust and unrealistic imposition, he turned 1. What did Gustav Stresemann do to promote recon-
back toward the center. He accepted the new Weimar ciliation in Europe? How did his policy toward
Republic and played a growing role in the Reichstag as France differ from that toward Poland and
the leader of his own small probusiness party. His hour Czechoslovakia?
came in the Ruhr crisis, when French and Belgian 2. What is your interpretation of Stresemann? Does
troops occupied the district. Named chancellor in Au- he arouse your sympathy or your suspicion and
gust 1923, he called off passive resistance and began hostility? Why?
talks with the French. His government also quelled
communist uprisings; put down rebellions in Bavaria,
including Hitler’s attempted coup; and ended runaway
inflation with a new currency. Stresemann fought to * Robert Grathwol, “Stresemann: Reflections on His Foreign
preserve German unity, and he succeeded. Policy,” Journal of Modern History 45 (March 1973): 52–70.
740
This economic settlement was matched by a political settlement. In 1925 the

leaders of Europe signed a number of agreements at Locarno, Switzerland. Ger-
many and France solemnly pledged to accept their common border, and both
Britain and Italy agreed to fight either France or Germany if one invaded the
other. Stresemann also agreed to settle boundary disputes with Poland and Czecho-
slovakia by peaceful means, and France promised those countries military aid if
Germany attacked them. For years, a “spirit of Locarno” gave Europeans a sense
of growing security and stability in international affairs.
Other developments also strengthened hopes. In 1926 Germany joined the
League of Nations, where Stresemann continued his “peace offensive.” In 1928
fifteen countries signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact, initiated by French prime minis-
ter Aristide Briand and U.S. secretary of state Frank B. Kellogg. This multinational
pact “condemned and renounced war as an instrument of national policy.” The
signing states agreed to settle international disputes peacefully. Often seen as ide-
alistic nonsense because it made no provisions for action in case war actually oc-
curred, the pact was still a positive step. It fostered the cautious optimism of the
late 1920s and also encouraged the hope that the United States would accept its
responsibilities as a great world power and contribute to European stability.
Domestic politics also offered reason to hope. During

Hope in Democratic the occupation of the Ruhr and the great inflation, re-
Government publican government in Germany had appeared on
the verge of collapse. In 1923 communists momentarily entered provincial gov-
ernments, and in November an obscure nobody named Adolf Hitler leaped onto
a table in a beer hall in Munich and proclaimed a “national socialist revolution.”
But Hitler’s plot to seize control of the government was poorly organized and easily
crushed, and Hitler was sentenced to prison, where he outlined his theories and
program in his book Mein Kampf (mine kompf) (My Struggle). Throughout the Mein Kampf A book written by Adolf
1920s, Hitler’s National Socialist Party attracted support only from a few fanatical Hitler, in which he outlines his theories
and program for a national socialist
anti-Semites, ultranationalists, and disgruntled ex-servicemen. In 1928 his party revolution.
had an insignificant twelve seats in the Reichstag. Indeed, after 1923 democracy
seemed to take root in Weimar Germany. A new currency was established, the
economy boomed, and elections were held regularly.
There were, however, sharp political divisions in the country, with nationalists
and monarchists on the right and newly formed Communist Party members on
the left. The working classes were divided politically, but a majority supported the
moderate socialist Social Democrats.
The situation in France had numerous similarities to that in Germany. Com-
munists and Socialists battled for the support of the workers. After 1924 the demo-
cratically elected government rested mainly in the hands of coalitions of moderates,
and business interests were well represented. France’s great accomplishment was
rapid rebuilding of its war-torn northern region. The expense of this undertaking
led, however, to a large deficit and substantial inflation, which reached a crisis
point in early 1926. The government restored confidence in the economy by slash-
ing spending and raising taxes, and good times prevailed until 1930. France also
became a locus of cultural energy, attracting artists and writers from all over the
world. As writer Gertrude Stein (stine) (1874–1946), a leader of the large colony
of American expatriates living in Paris, later recalled, “Paris was where the twenti-
eth century was.”7
Britain, too, faced challenges after 1920. The wartime trend toward greater
social equality continued, however, helping maintain social harmony. Many of
American Jazz in Paris

This woodcut from a 1928 French book on cafés and nightclubs suggests
how black musicians took Europe by storm, although the blacks are
represented stereotypically. One French critic concluded that American
blacks had attained a “pre-eminent” place in music since the war, “for they
have impressed the entire world with their vibrating or melancholy
rhythms.” (akg-images)
Britain’s best markets had been lost during the war, and com-
panies laid off massive numbers of workers in response. Yet
the state provided unemployment benefits of equal size to all
those without jobs and supplemented those payments with
subsidized housing, medical aid, and increased old-age pen-
sions. These and other measures kept living standards from
seriously declining, defused class tensions, and pointed the
way toward the welfare state Britain established after World
War II. Relative social harmony was accompanied by the
rise of the Labour party as a determined champion of the
working classes and of greater social equality. Committed to
the kind of moderate, “revisionist” socialism that had emerged
before World War I (see pages 668–669), the Labour Party
Sec tion Review replaced the Liberal Party as the main opposition to the
• Conflicts remained over how to treat Germany after the Treaty Conservatives. The new prominence of the Labour Party
of Versailles; Germans thought it was too harsh, the French reflected the decline of old liberal ideals of competitive capi-
wanted to enforce it fully to curb Germany’s power, while the talism, limited government control, and individual responsi-
British wanted Germany to regain its strength and become an bility. In 1924 and 1929, the Labour Party under Ramsay
important market for British goods. MacDonald (1866–1937) governed the country with the sup-
• The Allied reparations commission left Germany with an port of the smaller Liberal Party. Yet Labour moved toward
enormous sum that it could not repay and led to a stalemate, socialism gradually and democratically, so that the middle
with France occupying Germany in the Ruhr district until
Gustav Stresemann was able to call in the British and the classes were not overly frightened as the working classes won
Americans for help in reassessing the debt. new benefits.
• The Dawes Plan allowed Germany to get private loans The Conservatives under Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947)
from the United States to pay reparations to France and Brit- showed the same compromising spirit on social issues. The
ain, who then repaid their own war debt to the United States; last line of Baldwin’s greatest speech in March 1925 sum-
politically all agreed to settle international disputes peacefully. marized his international and domestic programs: “Give us
• In Germany, democracy seemed to be taking root, but division peace in our time, O Lord.” In spite of such conflicts as the
remained with nationalists and monarchists on the right and 1926 strike by hard-pressed coal miners, which ended in an
communists and socialists on the left; in France the commu- unsuccessful general strike, social unrest in Britain was lim-
nists and the socialists battled for support of the workers while
culture thrived. ited in the 1920s and in the 1930s as well. In 1922 Britain
granted southern, Catholic Ireland full autonomy after a bit-
• In Great Britain, the moderate “revisionist” socialism of the
Labour party led the country gradually toward socialism while ter guerrilla war, thereby removing another source of prewar
Catholic Ireland finally gained full autonomy in 1922 after a friction. Thus developments in both international relations
bitter guerrilla war. and the domestic politics of the leading democracies gave
cause for optimism in the late 1920s.
The Great Depression (1929–1939) 743
The Great Depression (1929–1939)

What caused the Great Depression, and how did the Western
democracies respond to this challenge?
Like the Great War, the Great Depression must be spelled with capital letters. Great Depression A world wide
Economic depression was nothing new. Depressions occurred throughout the economic depression from 1929 through
1933, unique in its severity and duration
nineteenth century with predictable regularity, as they recur in the form of reces- and with slow and uneven recovery.
sions and slumps to this day. What was new about this depression was its severity
and duration. It struck the entire world with ever-greater intensity from 1929 to
1933, and recovery was uneven and slow. Only with the Second World War did
the depression disappear in much of the world.
The social and political consequences of prolonged economic collapse were
enormous. Mass unemployment and failing farms made insecurity a reality for
millions of ordinary people, who looked in desperation for leaders who would “do
something.”
There is no agreement among historians and econo-

The Economic Crisis mists about why the Great Depression was so deep and
lasted so long. Thus it is best to trace the course of the
great collapse before trying to identify what caused it.
The Great Depression was triggered by developments in the United States that
culminated in the stock market crash of 1929. The American economy had pros-
pered in the late 1920s, but there was a serious imbalance between “real” invest-
ment and stock market speculation. Thus net investment—in factories, farms,
equipment, and the like—actually fell from $3.5 billion in 1925 to $3.2 billion in
1929. In the same years, as money flooded into stocks, the value of shares traded
on the exchanges soared from $27 billion to $87 billion. Although it was not clear
to people at the time, a crash was inevitable.
The American stock market boom was built on borrowed money. Many
wealthy investors, speculators, and people of modest means had bought stocks by
paying only a small fraction of the total purchase price and borrowing the remain-
der from their stockbrokers. Such buying “on margin” was extremely dangerous.
When prices started falling, the hard-pressed margin buyers either had to put up
more money, which was often impossible, or sell their shares to pay off their bro-
kers. Thus thousands of people started selling all at once. The result was a finan-
cial panic. Countless investors and speculators were wiped out in a matter of days
or weeks.
The financial panic in the United States triggered a worldwide financial crisis.
Throughout the 1920s, American bankers and investors had lent large amounts of
capital to many countries. Many of these loans were short-term, and once panic
broke, New York bankers began recalling them. Gold reserves thus began to flow
out of European countries, particularly Germany and Austria, toward the United
States. It became very hard for European business people to borrow money, and
the panicky public began to withdraw its savings from the banks. These banking
problems eventually led to the crash of the largest bank in Austria in 1931 and then
to general financial chaos. The recall of private loans by American bankers also
accelerated the collapse in world prices, as business people around the world
dumped industrial goods and agricultural commodities in a frantic attempt to get
cash to pay what they owed.
The financial crisis led to a general crisis of production: between 1929 and
1933, world output of goods fell by an estimated 38 percent. As this happened,
each country turned inward and tried to go it alone. More than twenty nations,
including Britain and the United States, went off the gold standard in order to
price their goods more attractively in foreign markets, with no real advantage
gained. Similarly, country after country followed the example of the United States
when in 1930 it raised protective tariffs to their highest levels ever and tried to seal
off shrinking national markets for American producers only. Within this context of
fragmented and destructive economic nationalism, recovery finally began in 1933.
Although opinions differ, two factors probably best explain the relentless slide
to the bottom from 1929 to early 1933. First, no country came forward to coordi-
nate a response to the international economic situation. Second, almost every
country suffered from poor national economic policy. Governments generally cut
their budgets and reduced spending when they should have run large deficits in an
attempt to stimulate their economies. After World War II, such a “counter-cyclical
policy,” advocated by John Maynard Keynes, became a well-established weapon
against downturn and depression. But in the 1930s, Keynes’s prescription was gen-
erally dismissed.
The financial crisis led to cuts in production, and in

Mass Unemployment turn workers all across Europe and the United States
lost their jobs and had little money to buy goods (see
Map 28.1). Along with economic effects, mass unemployment posed a great social
problem. Poverty increased dramatically, although in most countries unemployed
workers generally received some kind of meager unemployment benefits or public
aid that prevented starvation. (See the feature “Listening to the Past: Life on the
Dole in Great Britain” on pages 750–751.) Homes and ways of life were disrupted
in millions of personal tragedies. Young people postponed marriages, and birth-
rates fell sharply. There was an increase in suicide and mental illness. Poverty or
the threat of poverty became a grinding reality. Only strong government action
could deal with mass unemployment, a social powder keg preparing to explode.
Of all the major industrial countries, only Germany

The New Deal in was harder hit by the Great Depression, or reacted
the United States more radically to it, than the United States (see Chap-
ter 29). Depression was so traumatic in the United States because the “Roaring
Twenties” had been a period of great optimism. The Great Depression and the
response to it marked a major turning point in American history.
Mapping the Past

MAP 28.1 The Great Depression in the United States,
Britain, and Europe
These maps show that unemployment was high almost everywhere, but that national and
regional differences were also substantial. With this in mind: [1] In the United States, what in
1934 were the main channels of migration for workers? [2] In Britain, locate the areas with the
highest levels of unemployment, which were generally dependent on traditional basic industries
such as steel, coal, and textiles. What large area has the lowest unemployment? Why? [3] Which
European countries in 1932 had the highest rate of unemployment, usually considered a good
indicator of the level of economic hardship?
120°W 110°W 100°W 90°W 80°W 70°W
0 200 400 Km.
WASHINGTON
0 200 400 Mi.
NORTH MINN. MAINE

MONTANA
DAKOTA
CANADA
VT.
OREGON
IDAHO N.H. MASS.
SOUTH WIS. MICH.
DAKOTA NEW YORK
WYOMING R.I.
°N
CONN. 40
IOWA PENN.
NEBRASKA N.J. N
NEVADA
UTAH OHIO
IND. DEL.
ILL.
COLORADO W.VA. MD.
KANSAS
KY. VA.
CALIFORNIA MISSOURI NORTH UNITED STATES

DUST BOWL TENN. CAROLINA
Percentage of total
ARIZONA OKLAHOMA ARK.
S.C. population receiving
NEW MEXICO unemployment
MISS. relief, 1934
ALABAMA GEORGIA
25–41
TEXAS 15–24
30°N
LA. 8–14
FL. Locations of major
strikes, 1932–1937
MEXICO Main migration
Source:
movements
Statistical Abstract of the United States 1935 of workers
0˚ 10˚E 20˚E
5°W BRITAIN FINLAND 60˚N
Percentage of NORWAY
insured workers SWEDEN ESTONIA
N
unemployed, 1932
More than 35 LATVIA
25–35
LITH.
15–24 SOVIET
Less than 15 IRELAND GER. UNION
0 50 100 Km. BRITAIN

NETH.
POLAND
0 50 100 Mi.
GERMANY 50˚N
0° BEL.
55°N
N LUX. CZECH.
AUS. HUNG.
FRANCE
SWITZ. ROMANIA
YUGOSLAVIA
BULG.
ITALY
SPAIN
ALB.
EUROPE
40˚N
Percentage of workers 0 200 400 Km.
unemployed, 1932
0 200 400 Mi.
Source: 25–32
Historical Atlas of Britain, 1981
50°N 15–24 Source:
No comparable European Historical Statistics,
1790–1970 Monthly Labor Review,
data available U.S. Dept. of Labor, 1934, vol. 39
President Herbert Hoover (1895–1972) and his administration initially reacted

to the stock market crash and economic decline with hope for recovery and lim-
ited action. But when the full force of the financial crisis struck Europe in the
summer of 1931 and boomeranged back to the United States, people’s worst fears
became reality. Banks failed; unemployment soared. Between 1929 and 1932, in-
dustrial production fell by about 50 percent.
745
In these tragic circumstances, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) won a

New Deal Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s landslide presidential victory in 1932 with grand but vague promises of a “New
plan to reform capitalism through Deal for the forgotten man.”
forceful government intervention in
the economy.
Roosevelt’s basic goal was to reform capitalism in order to preserve it. Roo-
sevelt rejected socialism and government ownership of industry in 1933. To right
the situation, he chose forceful government intervention in the economy. In this
choice, Roosevelt was flexible, pragmatic, and willing to experiment. He and his
“brain trust” of advisers adopted policies echoing the American experience in
World War I, when the American economy had been thoroughly planned and
regulated.
Innovative programs promoted agricultural recovery, a top priority. The Agri-
cultural Adjustment Act of 1933 also aimed at raising prices and farm income by
limiting production. These planning measures worked for a while, and farmers
repaid Roosevelt in 1936 with overwhelming support.
Roosevelt and his advisers then attacked the key problem of mass unemploy-
ment directly. The federal government accepted the responsibility of employing
directly as many people as financially possible. New agencies were created to un-
dertake a vast range of projects. The most famous of these was the Works Progress
WPA The Works Progress Administration, or WPA, set up in 1935. One-fifth of the entire labor force worked
Administration, set up in 1935. The for the WPA at some point in the 1930s, constructing public buildings, bridges,
most famous of Roosevelt’s New Deal
programs, it employed one-fifth of the
and highways. The WPA was enormously popular, and the hope of a government
entire labor force at some point in the job helped check the threat of social revolution in the United States.
1930s, constructing public buildings, Government relief programs like the WPA marked a profound shift from the
bridges, and highways. traditional stress on family support and community responsibility. Other social
measures aimed in the same direction. In 1935 the government established a na-
tional Social Security system, with old-age pensions and unemployment benefits,
to protect many workers against some of life’s uncertainties. The National Labor
Relations Act of 1935 gave union organizers the green light by declaring collective
bargaining to be the policy of the United States. Union membership more than
doubled, from 4 million in 1935 to 9 million in 1940. In general, between 1935
and 1938 government rulings and social reforms chipped away at the privileges of
the wealthy and tried to help ordinary people.
Yet despite undeniable accomplishments in social reform, the New Deal was
only partly successful as a response to the Great Depression. A recession hit the
United States in 1937 and 1938, and unemployment was still a staggering 10 mil-
lion when war broke out in Europe in September 1939. The New Deal never did
pull the United States out of the depression.
Of all the Western democracies, the Scandinavian

The Scandinavian countries under Social Democratic leadership re-
Response to the sponded most successfully to the challenge of the
Social Democrats A flexible and
Depression Great Depression. In the 1920s, the Social Democrats
nonrevolutionary socialist government developed a unique kind of socialism. Flexible and nonrevolutionary, Scandina-
in Scandinavia that grew out of a strong
tradition of cooperative community
vian socialism grew out of a strong tradition of cooperative action in peasant com-
action. In the 1920s, it passed important munities. Labor leaders and capitalists had also been inclined to work together.
social reform legislation for both When the economic crisis struck in 1929, socialist governments in Scandina-
peasants and workers, gained practical via built on this pattern of cooperative social action. Sweden in particular pio-
administrative experience, and
developed a unique kind of socialism. neered in the use of large-scale deficits to finance public works and thereby
maintain production and employment. Scandinavian governments also increased
social welfare benefits, from old-age pensions and unemployment insurance to
subsidized housing and maternity allowances. All this spending required a large
The Great Depression (1929–1939) 747
Oslo Breakfast
Scandinavian socialism championed cooperation and practical welfare measures, playing down
strident rhetoric and theories of class conflict. The Oslo Breakfast exemplified the Scandinavian
approach. It provided every schoolchild in the Norwegian capital with a good breakfast free of
charge. (Courtesy, Directorate for Health and Social Affairs, Oslo)
bureaucracy and high taxes, first on the rich and then on practically everyone. Yet
both private and cooperative enterprise thrived, as did democracy. Some observers
saw Scandinavia’s welfare socialism as an appealing “middle way” between sick
capitalism and cruel communism or fascism.
In Britain, MacDonald’s Labour government and

Recovery and Reform then, after 1931, the Conservative-dominated coalition
in Britain and France government followed orthodox economic theory. The
budget was balanced, but unemployed workers received barely enough welfare to
live. Yet the economy recovered considerably after 1932 and even improved some-
what on the 1920s economy, quite the opposite of the situation in the United
States and France.
This good but by no means brilliant performance reflected the gradual reori-
entation of the British economy toward the domestic market. New industries, such
as automobiles and electrical appliances, grew in response to British home de-
mand. Moreover, low interest rates encouraged a housing boom. These develop-
ments encouraged Britain to look inward and avoid unpleasant foreign questions.
Because France was relatively less industrialized and more isolated from the
world economy, the Great Depression came late. But once the depression hit
France, it was long-lived. Economic stagnation both reflected and heightened an
ongoing political crisis. There was no stability in government. As before 1914, the
French parliament was made up of many political parties, which could never co-
operate for very long. The difference this time was that the vital center of moderate
republicanism was sapped from both sides. New Fascist-type organizations agi-
tated against parliamentary democracy and looked to Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s
Germany for inspiration (see Chapter 29). At the same time, the Communist party
and many workers opposed to the existing system were looking to Stalin’s Russia
for guidance.
Popular Front A New Deal–inspired Frightened by the growing strength of the fascists at home and abroad, the
party in France led by Leon Blum that Communists, the Socialists, and the Radicals formed an alliance—the Popular
encouraged the union movement and
launched a far-reaching program of
Front—for the national elections of May 1936. Their clear victory reflected the
social reform, complete with paid trend toward polarization. The number of Communists in the parliament jumped
vacations and a forty-hour workweek. dramatically, while the Socialists, led by Léon Blum, became the strongest party
in France. The really quite moderate Radicals slipped badly,
and the conservatives lost ground to the semifascists.
Sec tion Review
In the next few months, Blum’s Popular Front government
• The economic crisis that began with the crash of the American made the first and only real attempt to deal with France’s
stock market in 1929 spread across the world as American social and economic problems. Inspired by Roosevelt’s New
bankers recalled their loans, collapsing the world market and Deal, the Popular Front encouraged the union movement
decreasing the output of goods; countries attempted to recover
by raising tariffs and going off the gold standard. and launched a far-reaching program of social reform, com-
plete with paid vacations and a forty-hour workweek. Popular
• Cuts in production caused mass unemployment and a wide-
spread social crisis as the poor received little government aid. with workers and the lower middle class, these measures
were quickly sabotaged by rapid inflation and cries of revolu-
• In the United States, Franklin Roosevelt reformed capitalism
through the forceful government intervention of the New tion from fascists and frightened conservatives. Wealthy
Deal, enacting programs to boost agriculture and employment people sneaked their money out of the country, labor unrest
rates, setting up a Social Security system, and allowing collec- grew, and France entered a severe financial crisis. Blum was
tive bargaining. forced to announce a “breathing spell” in social reform.
• The Social Democrats in Scandinavia responded most success- The fires of political dissension were also fanned by civil
fully to the depression by using large-scale deficits to fund war in Spain. Communists demanded that France support
public works and increasing social welfare benefits, taxing the the Spanish republicans, while many French conservatives
wealthy first and then almost everyone.
would gladly have joined Hitler and Mussolini in aiding the
• Britain weathered the depression and recovered as new auto- attack of Spanish fascists. Extremism grew, and France itself
mobile and electrical appliance industries grew along with a
housing boom; France, on the other hand, was caught in a was within sight of civil war. Blum was forced to resign in
political crossfire between political parties and the strength of June 1937, and the Popular Front quickly collapsed. An anx-
the Popular Front, unable to pull the country out of crisis. ious and divided France drifted aimlessly once again, pre-
occupied by Hitler and German rearmament.
Chapter Review
In what ways did new and disturbing ideas in philosophy, physics, psychology,
and the arts reflect the general crisis in Western thought? (page 727) Key Terms
After the First World War, Western intellectual life underwent a general crisis marked logical empiricism (p. 728)
by pessimism, uncertainty, and fascination with irrational forces. Philosophers, build- existentialism (p. 728)
ing on the prewar writings of Nietzsche, rejected the traditional philosophical ques- neutron (p. 730)
tions, focusing instead on the rules of language or an existential morality. Einstein’s
theories reordered the universe and overturned Newtonian physics; Freudian psychol- id, ego, and superego (p. 730)
ogy privileged the power of the irrational in human thought. Ceaseless experimenta- stream-of-consciousness technique
tion and rejection of old forms characterized literature, painting, and music. In short, (p. 731)
almost every field of Western thought and art experienced revolutionary change. functionalism (p. 732)
Bauhaus (p. 732)
In what ways did movies and radio become mainstays of popular culture? Dadaism (p. 733)
(page 736) Dawes Plan (p. 739)
Motion pictures and radio provided entertainment and relaxation for the masses. Mein Kampf (p. 741)
They were enormously popular, offering escape from the hard realities of everyday life. Great Depression (p. 743)
Dictatorial governments used the new media for political propaganda.
Chapter Review 749
How did the democratic leaders of the 1920s deal with deep-seated instability
New Deal (p. 746)
and try to establish real peace and prosperity? (page 737)
WPA (p. 746)
The Treaty of Versailles left defeated Germany and the victorious Allies bitterly di- Social Democrats (p. 746)
vided. The question of Germany reparations soon led to political stalemate, French
occupation of Germany’s Ruhr district, runaway German inflation, and the prospect of Popular Front (p. 748)
a general European collapse. In 1923, courageous new leaders turned to compromise.
Led by Stresemann in Germany and Briand in France and backed by Great Britain
and the United States, the new leaders worked out a complicated financial and politi-
cal settlement that led to economic recovery and fragile political stability. Germany
boomed, France rebuilt its war-ravaged areas, and Britain’s Labour Party expanded
social services.
What caused the Great Depression, and how did the Western democracies
respond to this challenge? (page 743)
The Great Depression grew out of the fragile international financial system and the
speculative boom in the U.S. stock market in the 1920s. The stock market crash in 1929
shattered international banking and triggered a disastrous downward spiral in prices
and production, bringing massive unemployment to millions of workers. Turning in-
ward to cope with the economic crisis and the related social problems, the Western
democracies responded with relief measures, extended unemployment benefits, labor
reforms, and social concern. These measures eased distress and prevented revolutions
in the leading nations, but with significant exception of the Scandinavian countries the
Western democracies failed to restore prosperity, eliminate high unemployment, and
prevent widespread disillusionment. The old liberal ideals of individual rights and re-
sponsibilities, elected government, and economic freedom declined and appeared
outmoded to many citizens. And in many countries of central and eastern Europe,
these ideas were abandoned completely, as we shall see in the next chapter.
Notes
1. G. Greene, Another Mexico (New York: Viking Press, 1939), p. 3.
2. G. Orwell, 1984 (New York: New American Library, 1950), p. 220.
3. C. E. Jeanneret-Gris (Le Corbusier), Towards a New Architecture (London: J. Rodker, 1931),
p. 15.
4. Quoted in A. H. Barr, Jr., What Is Modern Painting?, 9th ed. (New York: Museum of Modern
Art, 1966), p. 25.
5. R. Graves and A. Hodge, The Long Week End: A Social History of Great Britain, 1918–1939
(New York: Macmillan, 1941), p. 131.
6. Quoted in A. Briggs, The Birth of Broadcasting, vol. 1 (London: Oxford University Press,
1961), p. 47.
7. Quoted in R. J. Sontag, A Broken World, 1919–1939 (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), p. 129.

Life on the Dole in Great Britain
P eriodic surges in unemployment were an old story in

capitalist economies, but the long-term joblessness of
millions in the Great Depression was something new and
unexpected. In Britain especially, where the depression fol-
lowed a weak postwar recovery, large numbers suffered invol-
untary idleness for years at a time. Whole families lived “on
the dole,” the weekly welfare benefits paid by the government.
One of the most insightful accounts of unemployed work-
ers was written by the British journalist and novelist George
Orwell (1903–1950), who studied the conditions in northern
England and wrote The Road to Wigan Pier (1937).
When people live on the dole for years at a time

they grow used to it, and drawing the dole, though
it remains unpleasant, ceases to be shameful. Thus
the old, independent, workhouse-fearing tradition
is undermined. . . . Poster used in the election campaign of
So you have whole populations settling down, 1931, when unemployment rose to a new
record high. (Conservative Research Department/
as it were, to a lifetime of the P.A.C. . . . Take, for
The Bridgeman Art Library)
instance, the fact that the working class think noth-
ing of getting married on the dole. . . . Life is still
fairly normal, more normal than one really has the
right to expect. Families are impoverished, but the though it had been tailored in Savile Row. The girl
family-system has not broken up. The people are in can look like a fashion plate at an even lower
effect living a reduced version of their former lives. price. . . . You can stand on the street corner, in-
Instead of raging against their destiny they have dulging in a private daydream of yourself as Clark
made things tolerable by lowering their standards. Gable or Greta Garbo, which compensates you for
But they don’t necessarily lower their standards a great deal. . . .
by cutting out luxuries and concentrating on ne- Trade since the war has had to adjust itself to
cessities; more often it is the other way about—the meet the demands of underpaid, underfed people,
more natural way, if you come to think of it. Hence with the result that a luxury is nowadays almost al-
the fact that in a decade of unparalleled depres- ways cheaper than a necessity. One pair of plain
sion, the consumption of all cheap luxuries has in- solid shoes costs as much as two ultra-smart
creased. The two things that have probably made pairs. . . . And above all there is gambling, the
the greatest difference of all are the movies and the cheapest of all luxuries. Even people on the verge
mass-production of cheap smart clothes since the of starvation can buy a few days’ hope (“Something
war. The youth who leaves school at fourteen and to live for,” as they call it) by having a penny on a
gets a blind-alley job is out of work at twenty, prob- sweepstake. . . . Twenty million people are under-
ably for life; but for two pounds ten on the hire- fed but literally everyone in England has access to
purchase system he can buy himself a suit which, a radio. What we have lost in food we have gained
for a little while and at a little distance, looks as in electricity. Whole sections of the working class
750
who have been plundered of all they really need lead to futile massacres and a régime of savage
are being compensated, in part, by cheap luxuries repression.
which mitigate the surface of life.
Do you consider all this desirable? No, I don’t. Questions for Analysis
But it may be that the psychological adjustment 1. What were the consequences of long-term
which the working class are visibly making is the unemployment for English workers? Were
best they could make in the circumstances. They some of the consequences surprising?
have neither turned revolutionary nor lost their 2. Judging from Orwell’s description, did radical
self-respect; merely they have kept their tempers revolution seem likely in England in the Great
and settled down to make the best of things on a Depression? Why?
fish-and-chip standard. The alternative would be
Source: Excerpts from Chapter V in The Road to Wigan Pier
God knows what continued agonies of despair; or
by George Orwell, copyright © 1958 and renewed 1986 by
it might be attempted insurrections which, in a the Estate of Sonia B. Orwell. Reprinted by permission
strongly governed country like England, could only of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
751
CHAPTER 29
Dictatorships and the Second
World War
1919–1945
Chapter Preview
Stalin’s Soviet Union
How did Stalin and the Communist
Party build a modern totalitarian state
in the Soviet Union?
Mussolini and Fascism in Italy

How did Mussolini’s dictatorship come
to power and govern in Italy?
Hitler and Nazism in Germany

How did Hitler gain power, what
policies did totalitarian Nazi Germany
pursue, and why did they lead to World
War II?
The Second World War

How did Germany and Japan create
enormous empires that were defeated
by the Allies—Britain, the Soviet Union,
and the United States?
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY: Primo Levi
LISTENING TO THE PAST: Stalin Justifies the

Five-Year Plan Hugo Jager’s photograph of a crowd of enthusiastic Hitler
supporters. (Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)
752
Stalin’s Soviet Union 753
T he period following the First World War also saw the rise of political dicta-
torships. On the eve of the Second World War, liberal democratic govern-
ments were surviving only in Great Britain, France, the Low Countries, the
Scandinavian nations, and Switzerland. Elsewhere in Europe, various kinds of
“strongmen” ruled. Dictatorship seemed the wave of the future. Thus the intel-
lectual and economic crisis discussed in Chapter 28 and the rise of dictatorship to
be considered in this chapter were interrelated elements in the general crisis of
European civilization.
The key development in the era of dictatorship was the rise of a particularly
ruthless and dynamic tyranny. This new kind of tyranny reached its full realization
in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Stalin and Hitler mobilized
their peoples for enormous undertakings and ruled with unprecedented severity.
Both made an unprecedented “total claim” on the belief and behavior of their
respective citizens, as a noted scholar has recently concluded.1 While Stalin’s ag-
gression was directed within his state, Hitler wanted greater territory as well as the
eradication of entire peoples whom he despised. His moves against Germany’s
neighbors sparked another great war that divided the world into two opposing
forces and introduced new methods of mass destruction. Historians continue to
ponder what led an entire society to rally behind a leader whose name has become
synonymous with human evil. The question remains vital as state-sponsored atroc-
ities and acts of genocide continue to plague our world.
Stalin’s Soviet Union

How did Stalin and the Communist Party build a modern totalitarian
state in the Soviet Union?
Lenin’s harshest critics claim that he established the basic outlines of a modern
totalitarian dictatorship after the Bolshevik Revolution and during the Russian
civil war. If this is so, then Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) certainly finished the job. A
master of political infighting, Stalin cautiously consolidated his power and elimi-
nated his enemies in the mid-1920s. Then in 1928, as undisputed leader of the
ruling Communist Party, he launched the first five-year plan—the “revolution five-year plan A plan launched
from above,” as he so aptly termed it. by Stalin in 1928 and termed the
“revolution from above,” the ultimate
The five-year plans marked the beginning of a renewed attempt to mobilize goal of which was to generate new
and transform Soviet society along socialist lines. They were achieved through attitudes, new loyalties, and a new
propaganda, enormous sacrifice by the people, and the concentration of all power socialist humanity.
in party hands. Thus the Soviet Union in the 1930s became a dynamic, modern
totalitarian state.
By spring 1921, Lenin and the Bolsheviks had won the

From Lenin to Stalin civil war, but they ruled a shattered and devastated
land. Many farms were in ruins, and food supplies
were exhausted. In southern Russia, drought combined with the ravages of war to
produce the worst famine in generations. Industrial production also broke down
completely. The Bolsheviks had destroyed the economy as well as their foes. New Economic Policy (NEP) Lenin’s
1921 policy to re-establish limited
Lenin’s solution was to change course. In March 1921, he announced the economic freedom in an attempt to
New Economic Policy (NEP), which re-established limited economic freedom in rebuild agriculture and industry in the
an attempt to rebuild agriculture and industry. Peasant producers were permitted face of economic disintegration.
754 Chapter 29 Dictatorships and the Second World War, 1919–1945
to sell their surpluses in free markets, and private traders and small handicraft
manufacturers were allowed to reappear. Heavy industry, railroads, and banks,
however, remained wholly nationalized.
The NEP represented a deal with the only force capable of overturning the
government—the peasant majority. Economically, it brought rapid recovery. In
1926 industrial output surpassed the level of 1913, and Soviet peasants were pro-
ducing almost as much grain as before the war.
As the economy recovered and the government partially relaxed its censorship
and repression, an intense struggle for power began in the inner circles of the
Communist Party, for Lenin had left no chosen successor when he died in 1924.
The principal contenders were the stolid Stalin and the flamboyant Trotsky.
Joseph Stalin, born Joseph Dzhugashvili (joo-guhsh-VEE-lee), was a good or-
ganizer but a poor speaker and writer, with no experience outside of Russia. Leon
Trotsky, an inspiring leader who had planned the 1917 takeover (see page 714)
and then created the victorious Red Army, appeared to have all the advantages. Yet
it was Stalin who succeeded Lenin. Stalin won because he was more effective at
gaining the all-important support of the party, the only genuine source of power in
the one-party state. Rising to general secretary of the party’s Central Committee
just before Lenin’s first stroke in 1922, Stalin used his office to win friends and
allies with jobs and promises.
The practical Stalin also won because he appeared better able to relate Marx-
ian teaching to Soviet realities in the 1920s. Stalin developed a theory of “social-
ism in one country” that was more appealing to the majority of communists than
Trotsky’s doctrine of “permanent revolution.” Stalin argued that the Russian-
dominated Soviet Union had the ability to build socialism on its own. Trotsky main-
tained that socialism in the Soviet Union could succeed only if revolution occurred
quickly throughout Europe. To many Russian communists, Trotsky’s views seemed
to sell their country short and to promise risky conflicts with capitalist countries.
With cunning skill, Stalin gradually achieved supreme power between 1922
and 1927. His final triumph came at the party congress of December 1927, which
condemned all “deviation from the general party line” formulated by Stalin. The
dictator and his followers were then ready to launch the revolution from above—
the real revolution for millions of ordinary citizens.
The party congress of 1927, which ratified Stalin’s con-

The Five-Year Plans solidation of power, marked the end of the NEP. In its
place Stalin rolled out the first in a series of five-year
plans designed to catch up with the industrialized west and bring the country
closer to having a true socialist economy. Building on planning models developed
by Soviet economists in the 1920s, the first five-year plan had staggering economic
objectives. In just five years, total industrial output was to increase by 250 percent.
Heavy industry, the preferred sector, was to grow even faster. Agricultural production
was slated to increase by 150 percent, and one-fifth of the peasants in the Soviet
collectivization The forcible Union were scheduled to give up their private plots and join socialist collective farms.
consolidation of individual peasant farms
into large, state-controlled enterprises.
By 1930 economic and social change was sweeping the country. (See the feature
“Listening to the Past: Stalin Justifies the Five-Year Plan” on pages 779–780.)
kulaks The better-off peasants who A major aspect of the second revolution was collectivization—the forcible
were stripped of land and livestock under consolidation of individual peasant farms into large, state-controlled enterprises.
Stalin and were generally not permitted
to join the collective farms; many of Beginning in 1929, peasants all over the Soviet Union were ordered to give up their
them starved or were deported to forced- land and animals and become members of collective farms, although they contin-
labor camps for “re-education.” ued to live in their own homes. As for the kulaks (COO-lox), the better-off peas-
Chronology
ants, Stalin instructed party workers to “liquidate them as 1921 New Economic Policy (NEP) in U.S.S.R.
a class.” Stripped of land and livestock, the kulaks were
generally not even permitted to join the collective farms. 1922 Mussolini seizes power in Italy
Many starved or were deported to forced-labor camps for 1924–1929 Buildup of Nazi Party in Germany
“re-education.” 1927 Stalin comes to power in U.S.S.R.
Since almost all peasants were in fact poor, the term ku-
1928 Stalin’s first five-year plan
lak soon meant any peasant who opposed the new system.
Whole villages were often attacked. One conscience-stricken 1929 Lateran Agreement; start of
colonel in the secret police confessed to a foreign journalist, collectivization in Soviet Union
1931 Japan invades Manchuria
I am an old Bolshevik. I worked in the underground against
the Tsar and then I fought in the Civil War. Did I do all that 1929–1939 Great Depression
in order that I should now surround villages with machine 1932–1933 Famine in Ukraine
guns and order my men to fire indiscriminately into crowds of
peasants? Oh, no, no!2 1933 Hitler appointed chancellor in Germany;
Nazis begin to control intellectual life and
Forced collectivization of the peasants led to economic blacklist authors
and human disaster. Peasants, who had wanted to own their 1935 Mussolini invades Ethiopia; Hitler
own land for centuries, slaughtered their animals and burned announces German rearmament
their crops in protest. Between 1929 and 1933, the number 1936 Start of great purges under Stalin;
of horses, cattle, sheep, and goats in the Soviet Union fell by German armies move into Rhineland; civil
at least half. Nor were the state-controlled collective farms war begins in Spain
more productive. The output of grain barely increased be- 1938 Germany annexes Austria and
tween 1928 and 1938. Collectivized agriculture was unable Sudetenland
to make any substantial financial contribution to Soviet in-
1939 Germany occupies Czech lands; Germany
dustrial development in the first five-year plan.
invades Poland; Britain and France
The human dimension of the tragedy was absolutely stag- declare war on Germany
gering. As one leading historian writes in outrage, “The num-
ber dying in Stalin’s war against the peasants was higher than 1941 SS stops Jewish emigration from Europe;
the total deaths of all the countries in World War I.” Yet, he Germany invades Soviet Union; bombing
of Pearl Harbor; U.S. enters war
notes, in Stalin’s war only one side was armed and the other
side bore almost all the casualties, many of whom were 1941–1945 Six million Jews killed in death camps
women, children, and the old. 3
1944 Allied invasion at Normandy
The Communists won the battle to collectivize farms,
1945 Germany surrenders; atomic bombs
but their victory did not bring them the agricultural gains dropped on Japan; end of war
they had expected. Peasants fought back with indirect daily
opposition until the government agreed to limit a family’s
labor on the state-run farms and gave them the right to culti-
vate tiny family plots. In 1938 these family plots grew 22 per-
cent of all Soviet agricultural produce on only 4 percent of all cultivated land.
The industrial side of the five-year plans was more successful—indeed, quite
spectacular. Soviet industry produced about four times as much in 1937 as it had
in 1928. No other major country had ever achieved such rapid industrial growth.
Heavy industry led the way; consumer industry grew quite slowly. A new heavy
industrial complex was built almost from scratch in western Siberia. Industrial
growth also went hand in hand with urban development, and more than 25 mil-
lion people migrated to cities during the 1930s.
The great industrialization drive, concentrated between 1928 and 1937, was
an awe-inspiring achievement purchased at enormous sacrifice. The money for
investment in dozens of new factories was collected from the people by means of
heavy, hidden sales taxes. The workers for the new factories were assigned by the
government, which could force people to move to any job anywhere in the coun-
try. When factory managers needed more hands, they called on their counterparts on
Life in a Forced-Labor Camp

This rare photo from about 1933 shows the reality of deported peasants and other political prisoners building the
Stalin–White Sea Canal in far northern Russia, with their bare hands and under the most dehumanizing conditions.
In books and plays Stalin’s followers praised the project as a model for the regeneration of “reactionaries” and
“kulak exploiters” through the joys of socialist work. (David King Collection)
the collective farms, who sent them millions of “unneeded” peasants over the years.
Individuals, meanwhile, could not move without the permission of the police.
The aim of Stalin’s five-year plans was to create a new

Life and Culture in society as well as a stronger economy and army. Once
Soviet Society everything was owned by the state, the Stalinists be-
lieved, a utopian brotherhood of individuals with socialist values would inevitably
emerge. The society that the Stalinists created, whose broad outlines existed into
the mid-1980s, was far from utopian. It had both good and bad aspects.
Because consumption was reduced to pay for investment, there was no im-
provement in the average standard of living. Indeed, wages could buy significantly
less than they had before the revolution. The masses of people lived primarily on
black bread and wore old, shabby clothing. There were constant shortages in the
stores, although very heavily taxed vodka was always readily available. A shortage
of housing was a particularly serious problem. Millions were moving into the cit-
ies, but the government built few new apartments. A relatively lucky family re-
ceived one room for all its members and shared both a kitchen and a toilet with
others on the floor.
Life was hard but by no means hopeless. Idealism and ideology had real appeal
for many communists, who saw themselves heroically building the world’s first
socialist society while capitalism crumbled in a worldwide depression and degen-
Stalin’s Soviet Union 757
erated into fascism in the West. This optimistic belief in the

future of the Soviet Union also attracted many disillusioned
Westerners to communism in the 1930s.
On a more practical level, Soviet workers did receive
some important social benefits, such as old-age pensions, free
medical services, free education, and day-care centers for
children. Unemployment was almost unknown. Finally, there
was the possibility of personal advancement.
The keys to improving one’s position were specialized
skills and technical education. Rapid industrialization re-
quired massive numbers of trained experts, such as skilled
workers, engineers, and plant managers. Thus the Stalinist
state broke with the egalitarian policies of the 1920s and
dangled high salaries and many special privileges before its
growing technical and managerial elite. This elite joined with
the political and artistic elites in a new upper class of the rich
and powerful. The Stalinist state gave women access to higher
education and the ranks of the better-paid specialists in indus-
try and science. Medicine practically became a woman’s pro-
fession. By 1950, 75 percent of all doctors in the Soviet Union
were women. Women were expected to toil in factories and in
heavy construction as the equals of men as well. The massive
mobilization of women was a striking characteristic of the So-
viet state.
Popular culture became a vehicle of the state, as news-
papers, films, and radio broadcasts endlessly recounted social-
ist achievements and capitalist plots. Whereas the 1920s had “Let’s All Get to Work, Comrades!”
seen considerable experimentation in modern art and the- Art in the Stalinist era generally followed the official doctrine
ater, intellectuals were ordered by Stalin to become “engi- of socialist realism, representing objects in a literal style and
celebrating Soviet achievements. Characteristically, this poster
neers of human minds.” It became increasingly important for
glorifies the working class, women’s equality (in hard labor at
the successful writer and artist to glorify Russian nationalism. least), mammoth factories, and the Communist Party (represented
Russian history was rewritten so that early tsars such as Ivan by the hammer and sickle by the woman’s foot). Assailed by
the Terrible and Peter the Great became worthy forerunners propaganda, Soviet citizens often found refuge in personal
of the greatest Russian leader of all—Stalin. relations and deep friendships. (From Art of the October Revolution,
Stalin seldom appeared in public, but his presence was Mikhail Guerman [Leningrad: Aurora Publishers.] Permission, Professor Guerman,
everywhere—in portraits, statues, books, and quotations from Department of Education, St. Petersburg State University)
his “sacred” writings. Although the government persecuted
religion and turned churches into “museums of atheism,”
the state had both an earthly religion and a high priest: Marxism-Leninism and
Joseph Stalin.
In the mid-1930s, the great effort to engineer a socialist

Stalinist Terror and state culminated in ruthless police terror and a massive
the Great Purges purging of the Communist Party. The party and gov-
ernment elite publicly supported Stalin’s initiatives, but in private there was
grumbling. At a small gathering in November 1932, even Stalin’s wife complained
bitterly about the misery of the people and the horrible famine in Ukraine. Stalin
showered her with insults, and she died that same night, apparently by her own
hand. In late 1934, Stalin’s number-two man, Sergei Kirov (KEER-awf), was mys-
teriously murdered. Although Stalin himself probably ordered Kirov’s murder, he
used the incident to launch a reign of terror.
Sec tion Review In August 1936, sixteen prominent Old Bolsheviks confessed to all manner of
plots against Stalin in spectacular public trials in Moscow. Then in 1937 the secret
• After Lenin’s death, Stalin and Trotsky police arrested a mass of lesser party officials and newer members, also torturing
vied for control of the Soviet Union,
but Stalin won out due to his connec-
them and extracting more confessions for more show trials. In addition to the party
tions within the Communist Party; he faithful, union officials, managers, intellectuals, army officers, and countless ordi-
then set out to launch his revolution nary citizens were struck down. In all, at least 8 million people were probably ar-
from above. rested, and millions of these were executed or never returned from prisons and
• The five-year plans set up by Stalin forced-labor camps.
began with collectivization of agricul- Stalin and the remaining party leadership recruited 1.5 million new members
ture, forcing peasants to give up owner- to take the place of those purged. Thus more than half of all Communist Party
ship of land and animals by force, with
disastrous results and enormous casual-
members in 1941 had joined since the purges. Often the upwardly mobile sons
ties in purges of any who dissented; (and daughters) of workers, they had usually studied in the new technical schools,
growth of heavy industry and urban and they soon proved capable of managing the government and large-scale pro-
development were more successful. duction. A product of the great purges, this new generation of Stalin-formed com-
• Although the average Soviet citizen munists would serve the leader effectively until his death in 1953, and they would
lived in crowded conditions and food govern the Soviet Union until the early 1980s.
shortages were common, many had Stalin’s mass purges remain baffling, for almost all historians believe that those
high, idealistic hopes for communism
and received educational, medical, and
purged posed no threat and confessed to crimes they had not committed. Cer-
pension benefits and enjoyed career tainly the highly publicized purges sent a warning to the people: no one was se-
advancement within a gender-equal cure, and everyone had to serve the party and its leader with redoubled devotion.
workplace, while the state-controlled Some Western scholars have also argued that the terror reflected a fully developed
media espoused the wonders of social- totalitarian state, which must always be fighting real or imaginary enemies.
ism, vilified capitalism, and glorified
Russian nationalism.
The long-standing Western interpretation that puts the blame for the great
purges on Stalin, which became very popular in Russia after the fall of commu-
• In an effort to reorganize a socialist
state, Stalin ordered purges of the
nism, has nevertheless been challenged. Some historians argue that Stalin’s fears
Communist Party by the secret police were exaggerated but real. Moreover, these fears and suspicions were shared by
with public show trials and confessions, many in the party and in the general population. Bombarded with ideology and
sending millions to labor camps, pris- political slogans, the population responded energetically to Stalin’s directives. In-
ons, or execution, replacing them with vestigations and trials snowballed into a mass hysteria, a new witch-hunt that claimed
new party members who would serve
the party and Stalin faithfully.
millions of victims.4 In short, in this view of the 1930s, a deluded Stalin found
large numbers of willing collaborators for crime as well as for achievement.
Mussolini and Fascism in Italy

How did Mussolini’s dictatorship come to power and govern in Italy?
Mussolini, like Stalin, began as a revolutionary socialist, but in his rise to power he
found it necessary to turn against the working class and seek the support of conser-
vatives. Mussolini’s fascist party was the first to establish a dictatorship in western
Europe. Yet few scholars today would argue that Mussolini succeeded in establish-
ing a totalitarian state that completely reshaped and dominated the economic,
social, intellectual, and cultural aspects of people’s lives. Membership in the Fas-
cist Party was more a sign of an Italian’s respectability than a commitment to radi-
cal change, and the fascist experiment was relatively short-lived.
In the early twentieth century, Italy was a liberal state

The Seizure of Power with civil rights and a constitutional monarchy. On the
eve of the First World War, the parliamentary regime
finally granted universal male suffrage, and Italy appeared to be moving toward
democracy. But there were serious tensions. Many Italians were more attached to
Mussolini and Fascism in Italy 759
their villages and local interests than to the national state. Relations between
church and state were often strained. Class differences were also extreme, and a
powerful revolutionary socialist movement had developed.
The war worsened the political situation. Having fought on the side of the
Allies almost exclusively for purposes of territorial expansion, the parliamentary
government bitterly disappointed Italian nationalists with Italy’s modest gains at
Versailles. Workers and peasants also felt cheated: to win their support during the war,
the government had promised social and land reform, which it did not deliver.
The Russian Revolution inspired and energized Italy’s revolutionary socialist
movement. The Socialist Party quickly lined up with the Bolsheviks, and radical
workers and peasants began occupying factories and seizing land in 1920. These
actions scared and mobilized the property-owning classes. Moreover, after the
war the pope lifted his ban on participation by Catholics in Italian politics, and
a strong Catholic Party quickly emerged. Thus by 1921 revolutionary social-
ists, antiliberal conservatives, and frightened property owners were all opposed—
though for different reasons—to the liberal parliamentary government.
Into these crosscurrents of unrest and fear stepped the blustering, bullying
Benito Mussolini (buh-NEE-toh moos-uh-LEE-nee) (1883–1945). Son of a village
schoolteacher and a poor blacksmith, Mussolini began his political career as a
Socialist Party leader and radical newspaper editor before World War I. In 1914,
powerfully influenced by antidemocratic cults of violent action, the young Mus-
solini urged that Italy join the Allies, a stand for which he was expelled from the
Italian Socialist Party. Later Mussolini fought at the front and was wounded in
Hitler and Mussolini in Italy, May 1938

At first Mussolini distrusted Hitler, but Mussolini’s conquest of Ethiopia in 1936 and Hitler’s occupation of the Rhineland
brought the two dictators together in a close alliance. State visits by Mussolini to Berlin in 1937 and by Hitler to Rome
in 1938 included gigantic military reviews, which were filmed to impress the whole world. Uniformed Italian fascists
accompany this motorcade. (Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)
1917. Returning home, he began organizing bitter war veterans like himself into a
fascists The members of a movement band of fascists—from the Italian word for “a union of forces.”
characterized by extreme, often At first Mussolini’s program was too similar to that of the well-organized Social-
expansionist nationalism, an
antisocialism aimed at destroying
ist Party, and it failed to rally people behind him. When Mussolini saw that his
working-class movements, alliances with verbal assaults on rival Socialists won him growing support from conservatives and
powerful capitalists and landowners, the frightened middle classes, he shifted gears in 1920. He and his growing private
a dynamic and violent leader, and army of Black Shirts began to use brute force against the socialists. Typically, a
glorification of war and the military.
band of fascist toughs would roar off in trucks at night and swoop down on a few
Black Shirts A private army under isolated organizers, beating them up and force-feeding them almost deadly doses
Mussolini that destroyed socialist of castor oil. Few people were killed, but socialist newspapers, union halls, and
newspapers, union halls, and Socialist
Party headquarters, eventually pushing
local Socialist Party headquarters were destroyed. Mussolini convinced his follow-
Socialists out of the city governments of ers that they were not just opposing the “Reds” but also making a real revolution
Northern Italy. of their own.
His next step was to position himself publicly as the champion of order and
property against the socialists and the ineffectual liberal parliamentary govern-
ment. Striking a conservative note in his speeches and gaining the sympathetic
neutrality of army leaders, Mussolini demanded the resignation of the existing
government and his own appointment by the king. In October 1922, to force mat-
ters, a large group of fascists marched on Rome. The threat worked. Victor Em-
manuel III (r. 1900–1946), who had no love for the old liberal politicians, asked
Mussolini to form a new cabinet. He was immediately granted dictatorial authority
for one year by the king and the parliament.
Once in power, Mussolini and his ministers changed

The Regime in Action the election laws so that the party that won the most
votes was given two-thirds of the representatives in the
parliament. This change allowed the Fascist Party and its allies to win an over-
whelming majority in 1924. Shortly thereafter, five of Mussolini’s thugs kidnapped
and murdered Giacomo Matteotti (JAH-kaw-moh mat-te-AWT-tee), the leader of
the Socialists in the parliament. In the face of this outrage, the opposition de-
manded that Mussolini’s armed squads be dissolved and all violence be banned.
Although Mussolini may or may not have ordered Matteotti’s murder, he stood
at the crossroads of a severe political crisis. After some hesitation, he charged for-
ward. Declaring his desire to “make the nation Fascist,” he imposed a series of re-
pressive measures. Freedom of the press was abolished, elections were fixed, and
the government ruled by decree. Mussolini arrested his political opponents, dis-
banded all independent labor unions, and put dedicated Fascists in control of Ita-
ly’s schools. Moreover, he created a fascist youth movement, fascist labor unions,
and many other fascist organizations. Mussolini trumpeted his goal in a famous
slogan of 1926: “Everything in the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against
the state.” By the end of that year, Italy was a one-party dictatorship under Musso-
lini’s unquestioned leadership.
Mussolini, however, never destroyed the old power structure, as the Commu-
Lateran Agreement A 1929 agreement nists did in the Soviet Union, or succeeded in dominating it, as the Nazis did in
that recognized the Vatican as a tiny Germany. Interested primarily in personal power, Mussolini was content to com-
independent state, with Mussolini promise with the old conservative classes that controlled the army, the economy,
agreeing to give the church heavy
and the state. He controlled and propagandized labor but left big business to regu-
financial support. In turn, the pope
expressed his satisfaction and urged late itself, profitably and securely. There was no land reform.
Italians to support Mussolini’s Mussolini also drew increasing support from the Catholic Church. In the Lat-
government. eran (LAT-er-uhn) Agreement of 1929, he recognized the Vatican as a tiny inde-
Hitler and Nazism in Germany 761
pendent state, and he agreed to give the church heavy financial support. The pope Sec tion Review
expressed his satisfaction and urged Italians to support Mussolini’s government.
Mussolini’s conservative values are evident in his treatment of women. Rather • Disappointment with Italy’s modest
gains at Versailles and increasing
than encouraging women to participate in the building of a new society, he abol- socialist agitation in Italy created
ished divorce and told women to stay at home and produce children. In 1938 conditions that allowed Mussolini to
women were limited by law to a maximum of 10 percent of the better-paying jobs gain power using his private army, the
in industry and government. Black Shirts, to terrorize the socialists
Mussolini’s fascist Italy was repressive and undemocratic, and he insisted on and to force his way into government.
the spectacle of mass obedience in rallies and salutes. Yet in spite of his posing, his • Mussolini had the election laws
fascist Italy was never really totalitarian. Indeed, he allowed Victor Emmanuel III changed so that the Fascist Party
controlled the parliament, and he had
to remain king, and it was Victor Emmanuel who dismissed him as leader after his the leader of the Socialist Party mur-
own party refused further support of his war policy in 1943. dered, causing outrage and demands
that he dissolve his armed squads.
• Mussolini responded by arresting his
opponents, implementing fascist
organizations, and winning the sup-
Hitler and Nazism in Germany port of the Catholic church while
How did Hitler gain power, what policies did totalitarian Nazi Germany leaving the old power structure alone
pursue, and why did they lead to World War II? and letting big business regulate itself.
• Fascists abolished divorce and told
women to stay at home and have
The most frightening dictatorship developed in Germany. There the Nazi move- children, legally limiting women to a
ment, which was a form of fascism, smashed or took over most independent orga- maximum of 10 percent of the better-
nizations, mobilized the economy, and violently persecuted the Jewish population. paying jobs.
Thus Nazism asserted an unlimited claim over German society and proclaimed
the ultimate power of its endlessly aggressive leader—Adolf Hitler. Truly totalitar-
ian in its aspirations, the dynamism of Hitler and the Nazi elite was ultimately di-
rected to war, territorial expansion, and racial aggression.
Nazism grew out of many complex developments, of Nazism A movement born of extreme
Hitler’s Road which the most influential were extreme nationalism nationalism and racism and dominated
to Power and racism. These two ideas captured the mind of the
by Adolf Hitler for as long as it lasted.
young Hitler, and it was he who dominated Nazism for as long as it lasted.
The child of a customs official, Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) spent his youth in
small towns in Austria. He dropped out of high school at age fourteen following
the death of his father and eventually left home for Vienna, where he became
deeply impressed by the mayor, Karl Lueger (1844–1910). From Lueger and oth-
ers, Hitler absorbed virulent anti-Semitism, racism, and hatred of Slavs. He devel-
oped an unshakable belief in the crudest, most exaggerated distortions of the
Darwinian theory of survival, the superiority of Germanic races, and the inevitabil-
ity of racial conflict. Anti-Semitism and racism became Hitler’s most passionate
convictions, his explanation for everything. The Jews, he claimed, directed an in-
ternational conspiracy of finance capitalism and Marxian socialism against Ger-
man culture, German unity, and the German race. Hitler’s belief was totally
irrational, but he never doubted it.
Hitler served as a dispatch carrier in the First World War, finding that the
struggle and disciple of war gave life meaning. Crushed by Germany’s defeat, he
joined a tiny extremist group in Munich called the German Workers’ Party, and by
1921 he had gained absolute control of this small but growing party. He was al-
ready a master of mass propaganda and political showmanship. His most effective
tool was the mass rally, where he often worked his audience into a frenzy with
wild, demagogic attacks on the Versailles treaty, the Jews, Marxists, the war profi-
teers, and Germany’s Weimar Republic.
Membership in Hitler’s party multiplied tenfold after early 1922. In late 1923,
the Weimar Republic seemed on the verge of collapse, and Hitler, inspired by
Mussolini’s recent easy victory, decided on an armed uprising in Munich. Despite
the failure of the poorly organized plot and Hitler’s arrest, Nazism had been born.
Hitler concluded from his unsuccessful revolt that he had to undermine,
rather than overthrow, the government and come to power legally through elec-
toral competition. He forced his more violent supporters to accept his new strat-
egy. He also used his brief prison term to dictate his autobiography, Mein Kampf.
There he expounded on his basic themes: “race,” with a stress on anti-Semitism;
“living space,” with a sweeping vision of war and conquered territory; and the
Führer A leader-dictator with unlimited, leader-dictator, or Führer (FYUR-rer), with unlimited, arbitrary power.
arbitrary power, this name was bestowed In the years of prosperity and relative stability between 1924 and 1929, Hitler
upon Adolf Hitler.
concentrated on building his National Socialist German Workers’ Party, or Nazi
Party. While his party boasted 100,000 loyal followers by 1928, it received only 2.6
percent of the vote in the general elections. The Great Depression, shattering
economic prosperity from 1929 on, presented Hitler with a new opportunity to
gain votes. Chancellor (chief minister) Heinrich Brüning (BREW-ning) and Presi-
dent von Hindenburg inadvertently intensified the economic collapse with their
economic measures, convincing many that the country’s republican leaders were
stupid. Never very interested in economics before, Hitler began promising Ger-
man voters economic as well as political and international salvation.
Above all, Hitler rejected free-market capitalism and advocated government
programs to bring recovery. Seized by panic as bankruptcies increased, unemploy-
ment soared, and the Communists made dramatic election
gains, great numbers of middle- and lower-middle-class people
“voted their pocketbooks”5 and deserted the conservative and
moderate parties for the Nazis. By 1932 the Nazis had became
the largest party in the Reichstag.
The appeal to pocketbook interests was particularly effec-
tive in the early 1930s because Hitler appeared more main-
stream, playing down his anti-Jewish hatred and racist
nationalism. A master of propaganda, he had written in Mein
Kampf that the masses were driven by fanaticism and not by
knowledge. To arouse such hysterical fanaticism, he believed
that all propaganda had to be limited to a few simple, end-
lessly repeated slogans. But now when he harangued vast au-
diences with wild oratory and simple slogans, he featured
“national rebirth” and the “crimes” of the Versailles treaty.
And many uncertain individuals, surrounded by thousands of
enthralled listeners, found a sense of belonging as well as hope
for better times.
Reaching a National Audience

This poster ad promotes the VE-301 receiver, “the world’s cheapest radio,”
and claims that “All Germany listens to the Führer on the people’s receiver.”
Constantly broadcasting official views and attitudes, the state-controlled
media also put the Nazis’ favorite entertainment—gigantic mass meetings
that climaxed with Hitler’s violent theatrical speeches—on an invisible stage
for millions. (Bundesarchiv Koblenz Plak 003-022-025)
Hitler and the Nazis also appealed strongly to German youth. Indeed, in some
ways the Nazi movement was a mass movement of young Germans. Hitler himself
was only forty in 1929, and he and most of his top aides were much younger than
other leading German politicians. “National Socialism is the organized will of the
youth,” proclaimed the official Nazi slogan. National recovery, exciting and rapid
change, and personal advancement were the appeals of Nazism to millions of Ger-
man youths.
Disunity on the left was another factor in Hitler’s rise to power. The Commu-
nists refused to cooperate with the Social Democrats, even though the two parties
together outnumbered the Nazis in the Reichstag, even after the elections of 1932.
The Communists saw themselves as eventual victors, believing that a communist
revolution would follow in the aftermath of Hitler’s eventual destruction.
Finally, Hitler excelled in the dirty, backroom politics of the decaying Weimar
Republic. That, in fact, brought him to power. In complicated infighting in 1932,
he cleverly succeeded in gaining additional support from key people in the army
and big business, who thought Hitler would advance their interests. When Hitler
demanded the role of chancellor, those in power reasoned that with nine solid
conservatives as ministers and only two other National Socialists, he could be con-
trolled. On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler, leader of the largest party in Germany,
was legally appointed chancellor by Hindenburg.
Hitler moved rapidly to gain total control of Germany.

The Nazi State Continuing to maintain legal appearances, he imme-
and Society diately called for new elections. In the midst of a vio-
lent electoral campaign, the Reichstag building was partly destroyed by fire, and
Hitler blamed the Communists. Fearing further violence, President Hinden-
burg agreed to emergency acts that practically abolished freedom of speech and
assembly as well as most personal liberties. The Nazis in the Reichstag then gave
Hitler absolute power for four years when they pushed through the so-called
Enabling Act on March 23, 1933. President Hindenburg died the next year, and Enabling Act An act pushed through
Hitler consolidated president and chancellor in the role of Führer. the Reichstag by the Nazis that gave
Hitler absolute dictatorial power for
Germany soon became a one-party state. Only the Nazi Party was legal. The four years.
Reichstag was jokingly referred to as the most expensive glee club in the country,
for its only function was to sing hymns of praise to the Führer. Hitler and the Nazis
took over the government bureaucracy intact, installing many Nazis in top posi-
tions. At the same time, they created a series of overlapping Nazi Party organiza-
tions responsible solely to Hitler.
As research in recent years shows, the resulting system of dual government was
riddled with rivalries, contradictions, and inefficiencies. Thus the Nazi state was
sloppy and often disorganized, lacking the all-encompassing unity that its propa-
gandists claimed. Yet this fractured system suited Hitler and his purposes. He could
play the established bureaucracy against his private, personal “party government”
and maintain his freedom of action. Hitler could concentrate on general prin-
ciples and the big decisions, which he always made.
In the economic sphere, strikes were outlawed, and independent labor unions
and professional organizations were replaced by Nazi associations. Publishing houses
were put under Nazi control, and universities and writers were quickly brought into
line. Democratic, socialist, and Jewish literature was blacklisted; banned books were
burned in public squares. Modern art and architecture were ruthlessly prohibited.
Life became violently anti-intellectual. By 1934 a brutal dictatorship character-
ized by frightening dynamism and obedience to Hitler was already largely in place.
Only the army retained independence, and Hitler moved brutally and skill-
fully to establish his control there, too. The Nazi storm troopers (the SA), the
quasi-military band of 3 million toughs in brown shirts who had fought commu-
nists and beaten up Jews before the Nazis took power, expected top positions in the
army and even talked of a “second revolution” against capitalism. Hitler decided
that the SA leaders had to be eliminated. Needing to preserve good relations with
the army as well as with big business, he struck on the night of June 30, 1934.
Hitler’s elite personal guard—the SS—arrested and shot without trial roughly a
thousand SA leaders and assorted political enemies. Shortly thereafter army lead-
ers swore a binding oath of “unquestioning obedience . . . to the Leader of the
German State and People, Adolf Hitler.” The SS grew rapidly. Under its methodi-
cal, inhuman leader, Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945), the SS joined with the
political police, the Gestapo, to expand its network of special courts and concen-
tration camps. Nobody was safe.
From the beginning, Jews were a special object of Nazi persecution, although
Slavs, Roma (Gypsies), Jehovah’s Witnesses, Communists, and homosexuals were
also targets. By the end of 1934, most Jewish lawyers, doctors, professors, civil ser-
vants, and musicians had lost their jobs and the right to practice their professions.
In 1935 the infamous Nuremberg Laws deprived Jews of all rights of citizenship.
By 1938 roughly 150,000 of Germany’s half a million Jews had emigrated, sacrific-
ing almost all their property in order to leave Germany.
In late 1938, the attack on the Jews accelerated. In a well-organized wave of
violence, known to history as “Kristallnacht,” mobs smashed windows, looted shops,
and destroyed homes and synagogues. German Jews were then rounded up and
made to pay for the damage. Another 150,000 Jews fled Germany. Some Germans
privately opposed these outrages, but most went along or looked the other way.
Hitler had promised the masses economic recovery—

Hitler’s Popularity “work and bread”—and he delivered. Breaking with
Brüning’s do-nothing policies, Hitler launched a large
public works program to help pull Germany out of the depression. Work began on
superhighways, offices, gigantic sports stadiums, and public housing, and then
shifted in 1936 toward rearmament and preparation for war. As a result of these
policies (and plain good luck), unemployment dropped steadily and the standard
of living for the average employed worker increased moderately. The profits of
business rose sharply. For millions of people, economic recovery was tangible evi-
dence that Nazi promises were more than show and propaganda.
Millions of modest middle-class and lower-middle-class people felt that Ger-
many was becoming more open and equal, as Nazi propagandists constantly
claimed. But quantitative studies show that the well-educated classes held on to
most of their advantages and that only a modest social leveling occurred in the
Nazi years. It is significant that the Nazis shared with the Italian fascists the stereo-
typic view of women as housewives and mothers. Only under the relentless pres-
sure of war did they reluctantly mobilize large numbers of German women for
work in offices and factories.
Not all Germans supported Hitler, however, and a number of German groups
actively resisted him after 1933. Tens of thousands of political enemies were im-
prisoned, and thousands were executed. But opponents of the Nazis pursued vari-
ous goals, and they were never unified, a fact that helps account for their ultimate
lack of success. In the first years of Hitler’s rule, the principal resisters were the
communists and the socialists in the trade unions. But the expansion of the SS
system of terror after 1935 smashed most of these leftists. A second group of op-
ponents arose in the Catholic and Protestant churches. However, their efforts were
directed primarily at preserving genuine religious life, not at overthrowing Hitler.
Finally in 1938 (and again from 1942 to 1944), some high-ranking army officers,
who feared the consequences of Hitler’s reckless aggression, plotted against him,
unsuccessfully.
Although economic recovery and somewhat greater

Aggression and opportunity for social advancement won Hitler sup-
Appeasement port, they were only byproducts of the Nazi regime.
(1933–1939) The guiding and unique concepts of Nazism remained
space and race—the territorial expansion of the superior German race. As we shall
see, German expansion was facilitated by the uncertain and divided Western de-
mocracies, which tried to appease Hitler to avoid war.
Hitler realized that his aggressive policies had to be carefully camouflaged at
first, for Germany’s army was limited by the Treaty of Versailles to only one hun-
dred thousand men. As he told a group of army commanders in February 1933,
the early stages of his policy of “conquest of new living space in the East and its
ruthless Germanization” had serious dangers. If France had real leaders, Hitler
said, it would “not give us time but attack us, presumably with its eastern satel-
lites.”6 Thus, Hitler loudly proclaimed his peaceful intentions, while signaling
otherwise by withdrawing from the League of Nations.
Following this action, Hitler sought to incorporate independent Austria into a
greater Germany. But a worried Mussolini threatened to fight, and Hitler backed
down. When in March 1935 Hitler repudiated the Treaty of Versailles by establish-
ing a general military draft and declaring Germany’s right to rearm, other coun-
tries appeared to understand the danger. With France taking the lead, Italy and
Great Britain protested strongly and warned against future aggressive actions.
Yet the emerging united front against Hitler quickly collapsed. Of crucial im-
portance, Britain adopted a policy of appeasement, granting Hitler everything he appeasement The British policy
could reasonably want (and more) in order to avoid another horrific war. The first toward Germany prior to World War II
that aimed at granting Hitler whatever he
step was an Anglo-German naval agreement in June 1935 that broke Germany’s wanted, including western Czechoslovakia,
isolation. The second step came in March 1936 when Hitler suddenly marched in order to avoid war.
his armies into the demilitarized Rhineland, brazenly violating the Treaties of
Versailles and Locarno. This was the last good chance to stop the Nazis, but an
uncertain France would not move without British support, and Britain refused to
act (Map 29.1).
As the Great Powers stood on the sidelines, Hitler found allies in Italy and Ja-
pan. He supported their wars of aggression—Italy against Ethiopia and Japan
against China—and they agreed to join the Axis alliance.
The fascist leaders of Germany and Italy came to the aid of another fascist
power in the Spanish civil war (1936–1939). Their support eventually helped Gen-
eral Francisco Franco’s fascist movement defeat republican Spain. Only the Soviet
Union offered official support for the Spanish government, as public opinion in
Britain and especially in France was hopelessly divided on the Spanish question.
In late 1937 Hitler moved forward with plans to crush Austria and Czechoslo-
vakia at the earliest possible moment as the first step in his long-contemplated
drive to the east. Threatening invasion, he forced the Austrian chancellor in March
1938 to put local Nazis in control of the government. The next day, German
armies moved in unopposed, and Austria became part of Greater Germany (see
Map 29.1).
10˚E 20˚E
International boundaries, Tallinn
1936 NORWAY
Germany in 1933 ESTO N I A
0˚
Remilitarized in 1936 N
Annexed in 1938
Satellite states,
March 1939
SWEDEN L AT V IA
Riga
Conquered by Germany
in September 1939 Annexed by Germany,
DE N MAR K Baltic March 1939
Annexed by Soviet Union S e a Memel
in September 1939 LI T H UA N I A
SOV I ET
Vilnius
North U N IO N
Sea Danzig EAST Minsk
PRUSSIA
Hamburg WHITE RUSSIA
U N ITED Elb
K I N GDO M Bremen e V is t
ula
R.
London R. Brest- Pinsk
N ET H E R L A N D S Litovsk
Berlin
Warsaw
RUHR POLAND
GE R M ANY
Dunkirk Cologne
B E LG I U M Od
Rhin
er
R. 50˚N
eR
EN L AN
SU DET D
.
RHINELAND
Prague
Dn
LUX E M B O U R G BOHEMIA ies
SAAR CZEC ter
R.
Nuremberg HOS
. L O VA K I
be R MORAVIA A
Gained by Danu SLOVAKIA RUTHENIA
plebiscite, 1935
Munich To Hungary
Vienna 1938–1939
F R A NCE
A U ST R IA
SWITZERLAND H U N G A RY
ROMANIA
R.
Ad
Y U GO S L AV IA Da n
ub e
I TALY
ria
0 100 200 Km.

tic
Se
0 100 200 Mi. B U LG AR IA

a
MAP 29.1 The Growth of Nazi Germany, 1933–1939

Until March 1939, Hitler brought ethnic Germans into the Nazi state; then he turned on the Slavic peoples he
had always hated. He stripped Czechoslovakia of its independence and prepared for an attack on Poland in
September 1939.
Simultaneously, Hitler began demanding that the pro-Nazi, German-speaking

minority of western Czechoslovakia—the Sudetenland—be turned over to Ger-
many. Yet democratic Czechoslovakia was prepared to resist, and it counted on
France, its ally since 1924, and the Soviet Union, France’s ally. War appeared in-
evitable, but appeasement triumphed again. In September 1938, Britain’s prime
minister Chamberlain flew to Germany three times in fourteen days. In these ne-
gotiations, to which the U.S.S.R. (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) was delib-
erately not invited, Chamberlain and the French agreed with Hitler that the
Sudetenland should be ceded to Germany immediately. Returning to London
from the Munich Conference, Chamberlain told cheering crowds that he had
secured “peace with honor . . . peace for our time.” Sold out by the Western pow-
ers, Czechoslovakia gave in.
The Second World War 767
Appeasement confirmed Hitler’s belief that the Western democracies were Sec tion Review
weak and unwilling to fight. He accelerated his eastern expansion, moving into
the remaining Czech lands in March 1939. The Western public now recognized • Hitler honed his ideas of anti-
Semitism, the superiority of the
Hitler’s moves as acts of aggression since he was seizing Czechs and Slovaks as German race, a vision of conquered
captive peoples. Thus when Hitler used the question of German minorities in territory, and a leader-dictator (Füh-
Danzig as a pretext to claim Poland, a suddenly militant Chamberlain declared rer), and he used his oratory skills to
that Britain and France would fight if Hitler attacked his eastern neighbor. Hitler convince the masses of his economic
did not take Chamberlain’s warning seriously, but he was concerned about the and political plans for recovery.
possible response from Poland’s Soviet neighbor. • Hitler appealed to the youth by pro-
In a stunning about-face, Hitler and Stalin signed a ten-year Nazi-Soviet non- moting national recovery, exciting
change, and personal advancement,
aggression pact in August 1939. Each dictator promised to remain neutral if the and he succeeded in winning the
other became involved in war. In secret they agreed to divide eastern Europe into support of key figures in big business
German and Soviet zones, “in the event of a political territorial reorganization.” and the army to have himself legally
The nonaggression pact itself was enough to make Britain and France cry treach- declared chancellor in 1933.
ery, for they, too, had been negotiating with Stalin. But Stalin had remained dis- • Hitler established himself as Führer
trustful of Western intentions, and Hitler had offered immediate territorial gain. and placed Nazis in key political
For Hitler, everything was set. He told his generals on the day of the nonaggres- positions, using his personal SS troops
to eliminate the SA storm troopers,
sion pact, “My only fear is that at the last moment some dirty dog will come up rivals of the regular German army,
with a mediation plan.” On September 1, 1939, German armies and warplanes and implementing programs that
smashed into Poland from three sides. Two days later, Britain and France, finally discriminated against Jews and other
true to their word, declared war on Germany. The Second World War had begun. enemies.
• The public generally supported Hitler
as he delivered a large public works
program that improved living condi-
tions and employment rates, but
The Second World War resistance existed in the Communist
and Socialist parties, the churches,
How did Germany and Japan create enormous empires that were and some high-ranking officials, all of
defeated by the Allies—Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States? whom were unable to remove Hitler
from power.
War broke out in both western and eastern Europe because Hitler’s ambitions • Hitler’s plan for Germany was to
were essentially unlimited. On both war fronts, Nazi soldiers scored enormous expand the German race and territory,
and he was able to do so by making an
successes until late 1942, establishing a vast empire of death and destruction. Hit-
Axis alliance with Italy and Japan,
ler’s victories increased tensions in Asia between Japan and the United States and annexing Austria, and helping Franco
prompted Japan to attack the United States and overrun much of Southeast Asia. win the Spanish civil war.
Yet reckless aggression by Germany and Japan also raised a mighty coalition deter- • Hitler was able to gain the Sudeten-
mined to smash the aggressors. Led by Britain, the United States, and the Soviet land region of Czechoslovakia with-
Union, the Grand Alliance—to use Winston Churchill’s favorite name for it— out a fight as France and Britain
functioned quite effectively in military terms. Thus the Nazi and Japanese em- wanted to avoid another war at all
costs, but when he tried to take Po-
pires proved short-lived.
land, France and Britain finally de-
clared war.
• Hitler and Stalin signed a ten-year
Using planes, tanks, and trucks in the first example of Nazi-Soviet nonaggression pact in
Hitler’s Empire a blitzkrieg (BLITS-kreeg), or “lightning war,” Hitler’s August 1939, right before the outbreak
(1939–1942) armies crushed Poland in four weeks. While the Soviet of the war.
Union quickly took its part of the booty—the eastern half of Poland and the inde-
pendent Baltic states of Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia—French and British armies
dug in in the west. They expected another war of attrition and economic blockade. blitzkrieg A “lightning war” that used
In spring 1940, the lightning war struck again. After occupying Denmark, Nor- planes, tanks, and trucks; Hitler first
used this method to crush Poland in
way, and Holland, German motorized columns broke through southern Bel- four weeks.
gium, split the Franco-British forces, and trapped the entire British army on the
beaches of Dunkirk. By heroic efforts, the British withdrew their troops but not
their equipment.
London, 1940
Hitler believed that his relentless terror bombing of London—the “blitz”—could break the will of the British
people. He was wrong. The blitz caused enormous destruction, but Londoners went about their business with
courage and calm determination, as this unforgettable image of a milkman in the rubble suggests. (Corbis)
France was taken by the Nazis. Aging marshal Henri-Philippe Pétain formed
a new French government—the so-called Vichy (VISH-ee) government—to ac-
cept defeat, and German armies occupied most of France. By July 1940, Hitler
ruled practically all of western continental Europe; Italy was an ally, and the So-
viet Union and Spain were friendly neutrals. Only Britain, led by the uncompro-
mising Winston Churchill (1874–1965), remained unconquered.
Germany sought to gain control of the air, the necessary first step toward an
amphibious invasion of Britain. In the Battle of Britain, up to a thousand German
planes attacked British airfields and key factories in a single day, dueling with Brit-
ish defenders high in the skies. Losses were heavy on both sides. Then in Septem-
ber Hitler angrily turned from military objectives to indiscriminate bombing of
British cities in an attempt to break British morale. British aircraft factories in-
creased production, and the heavily bombed people of London defiantly dug in.
In September and October 1940, Britain was beating Germany three to one in the
air war. There was no possibility of an immediate German invasion of Britain.
Turning from Britain and moving into the Balkans by April 1941, Hitler now
allowed his lifetime obsession with a vast eastern European empire for the “master
race” to dictate policy. In June 1941, German armies suddenly attacked the Soviet
Union along a vast front (see Map 29.2, p. 774). By October, Leningrad (St. Peters-
burg) was practically surrounded, Moscow was besieged, and most of Ukraine had
been conquered. But the Soviets did not collapse, and when a severe winter struck
German armies outfitted in summer uniforms, the invaders were stopped.
Stalled in Russia, Hitler ruled over a vast European empire stretching from the
outskirts of Moscow to the English Channel. Hitler, the Nazi leadership, and the
loyal German army were positioned to greatly accelerate construction of their
“New Order” in Europe, and they continued their efforts until their final collapse
in 1945. In doing so, they showed what Nazi victory would have meant.
Hitler’s New Order was based firmly on racial imperialism, the guiding prin- New Order Hitler’s program based
ciple of Nazi totalitarianism. Within this New Order, the Nordic peoples—the on the guiding principle of racial
imperialism, which gave preferential
Dutch, Norwegians, and Danes—received preferential treatment, for they were treatment to the Nordic peoples while
racially related to the master race, the Germans. The French, an “inferior” Latin the French, an “inferior” Latin people,
people, occupied a middle position. All the occupied territories of western and occupied a middle position. Slavs in the
northern Europe were exploited with increasing intensity. Material shortages and conquered territories to the east were
treated harshly, as “subhumans.”
both mental and physical suffering afflicted millions of people.
Slavs in the conquered territories to the east were treated with harsh hatred as totalitarianism A dictatorship that
“subhumans.” At the height of his success in 1941 and 1942, Hitler set the tone. exercises unprecedented control over
the masses and seeks to mobilize them
He painted for his intimate circle the fantastic vision of a vast eastern colonial for action.
empire where Poles, Ukrainians, and Russians would be enslaved and forced to die
out, while Germanic peasants resettled the resulting abandoned lands. But he
needed countless helpers and many ambitious initiators to turn his dreams into
reality. These accomplices came forth.
Himmler and the elite corps of SS volunteers shared Hitler’s ideology of bar-
barous racial imperialism, and they rarely wavered in their efforts to realize his
goals.7 Supported (or condoned) by military commanders and German police-
men in the occupied territories, the SS corps pressed relentlessly to implement the
program of destruction and to create a “mass settlement space” for Germans.
Many Poles, Communists, Roma, and Jehovah’s Witnesses were murdered in cold
blood.
Nazi racism culminated in the Holocaust, the system- Holocaust The systematic effort of the
The Holocaust atic, state-sponsored effort to annihilate all the Jews of Nazi state to exterminate all European
Jews, which resulted in the murder of six
Europe. After the fall of Warsaw, the Nazis stepped up million Jews.
their expulsion campaign and began deporting all German Jews to occupied Po-
land. There they and Jews from all over Europe were concentrated in ghettos,
compelled to wear the Jewish star, and turned into slave laborers.
In 1941, following the invasion of the Soviet Union, the large-scale “extermi-
nation” of Jews began. On the Russian front, Himmler’s special SS killing squads
and also regular army units forced Soviet Jews to dig giant pits, which became
mass graves as the victims were lined up on the edge and cut down by machine
guns. Then in late 1941, Hitler and the Nazi leadership, in some still-debated
combination, ordered the SS to stop all Jewish emigration from Europe and
speeded up planning for mass murder. As one German diplomat put it, “The Jew-
ish Question must be resolved in the course of the war, for only so can it be solved
without a worldwide outcry.”8 The “final solution of the Jewish question”—the
murder of every single Jew—had begun. Jews were systematically arrested, packed
like cattle onto freight trains, and dispatched to extermination camps. Many Jews
could hardly imagine the enormity of the crime that lay before them.
Arriving at their destination, small numbers of Jews were sent to nearby slave
labor camps, where they were starved and systematically worked to death. But
most of the victims were moved immediately to the death camps, where they were
taken by force or deception to “shower rooms” that were actually gas chambers.
These gas chambers, first perfected in the quiet, efficient execution of seventy
Prelude to Murder
This photo captures the terrible inhumanity of Nazi racism and the Holocaust. Frightened and bewildered families from the soon-
to-be-destroyed Warsaw Ghetto are being forced out of their homes by German soldiers for deportation to concentration camps.
There they face murder in the gas chambers. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
thousand mentally ill Germans between 1938 and 1941, permitted rapid, hideous,
and thoroughly bureaucratized mass murder. For fifteen to twenty minutes came
the terrible screams and gasping sobs of men, women, and children choking to
death on poison gas. Then, only silence. Special camp workers quickly yanked the
victims’ gold teeth from their jaws, and the bodies were then cremated or some-
times boiled for oil to make soap. At Auschwitz-Birkenau (OUSH-vits beer-ken-
OW), the most infamous of the Nazi death factories, as many as twelve thousand
human beings were slaughtered each day. The extermination of European Jews was
the ultimate monstrosity of Nazi racism and racial imperialism. By 1945, 6 million
Jews had been murdered. (See the feature “Individuals in Society: Primo Levi.”)
Who was responsible for this terrible crime? An earlier generation of historians
usually laid most of the guilt on Hitler and the Nazi leadership. Ordinary Ger-
mans had little knowledge of the extermination camps, it was argued, and those
who cooperated had no alternative given the brutality of Nazi terror and totalitar-
ian control. But in recent years, many studies have revealed a much broader par-
ticipation of German people in the Holocaust and popular indifference (or worse)
to the fate of the Jews.
The reasons for the active participation or complacency of Germans and oth-
ers in the Holocaust are debated. The American historian Daniel Goldhagen has
made the provocative claim that the extreme anti-Semitism of “ordinary Germans”
led them to respond to Hitler and to become his “willing executioners” in World
War II.9 Yet in most occupied countries, local non-German officials also cooper-
ated in the arrest and deportation of Jews to a large extent. As in Germany, only a
Primo Levi
M ost Jews deported to Auschwitz were murdered as
soon as they arrived, but the Nazis made some
prisoners into slave laborers and a few of these survived.
and death over other Jewish prisoners. Though not one
of these Jewish bosses, Levi believed that he himself,
like almost all survivors, had entered the “gray zone” of
Primo Levi (1919–1987), an Italian Jew, became one of moral compromise. Only a very few superior individu-
the most influential witnesses to the Holocaust and its als, “the stuff of saints and martyrs,”
death camps. survived the death camps without
Like much of Italy’s small Jewish community, Levi’s shifting their moral stance.
family belonged to the urban professional classes. The For Levi, compromise and sal-
young Primo graduated in 1941 from the University of vation came from his profession.
Turin with highest honors in chemistry. But since 1938, Interviewed by a German techno-
when Italy introduced racial laws, he had faced growing crat for the camp’s synthetic rubber
discrimination, and two years after graduation he joined program, Levi performed bril-
the antifascist resistance movement. Quickly captured, liantly in scientific German and
he was deported to Auschwitz with 650 Italian Jews in savored his triumph as a Jew over
February 1944. Stone-faced SS men picked only ninety- Nazi racism. Work in the warm
six men and twenty-nine women to work in their respec- camp laboratory offered Levi op-
tive labor camps. Primo was one of them. portunities to pilfer equipment that
Nothing prepared Levi for what he encountered. could then be traded for food and
The Jewish prisoners were kicked, punched, stripped, necessities with other prisoners.
Primo Levi, who never
branded with tattoos, crammed into huts, and worked Levi also gained critical support stopped thinking, writing, and
unmercifully. Hoping for some sign of prisoner solidar- from three saintly prisoners, who speaking about the Holocaust.
ity in this terrible environment, Levi found only a des- refused to do wicked and hateful (Giansanti/Corbis Sygma)
perate struggle of each against all and enormous status acts. And he counted “luck” as es-
differences among prisoners. Many stunned and bewil- sential for his survival: in the camp
dered newcomers, beaten and demoralized by their infirmary with scarlet fever in February 1945 as advanc-
bosses—the most privileged prisoners—simply col- ing Russian armies prepared to liberate the camp, Levi
lapsed and died. Others struggled to secure their own was not evacuated by the Nazis and shot to death like
privileges, however small, because food rations and most Jewish prisoners.
working conditions were so abominable that ordinary After the war Primo Levi was forever haunted by the
Jewish prisoners perished in two to three months. nightmare that the Holocaust would be ignored or for-
Sensitive and noncombative, Levi found himself gotten. Always ashamed that so many people whom he
sinking into oblivion. But instead of joining the mass of considered better than himself had perished, he wrote
the “drowned,” he became one of the “saved”—a com- and lectured tirelessly to preserve the memory of Jewish
plicated surprise with moral implications that he would victims and guilty Nazis. Wanting the world to under-
ponder all his life. As Levi explained in Survival in stand the Jewish genocide in all its complexity so that
Auschwitz (1947), the usual road to salvation in the camps never again would people tolerate such atrocities, he
was some kind of collaboration with German power.* grappled tirelessly with his vision of individual choice
Savage German criminals were released from prison to and moral compromise in a hell designed to make the
become brutal camp guards; non-Jewish political pris- victims collaborate and persecute each other.
oners competed for jobs entitling them to better condi-
tions, and, especially troubling for Levi, a small number Questions for Analysis
of Jewish men plotted and struggled for the power of life 1. Describe Levi’s experience at Auschwitz. How did
camp prisoners treat each other? Why?
2. What does Levi mean by the “gray zone”? How is
* Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Hu- this concept central to his thinking?
manity, rev. ed. 1958 (London: Collier Books, 1961), pp. 79–84,
and The Drowned and the Saved (New York: Summit Books, 3. Will a vivid historical memory of the Holocaust
1988). These powerful testimonies are highly recommended. help to prevent future genocide?
771
few exceptional bystanders did not turn a blind eye. Thus some scholars have
concluded that the key for most Germans (and most people in occupied coun-
tries) was that they felt no personal responsibility for Jews and therefore were not
prepared to help them. This meant that many individuals, conditioned by Nazi
racist propaganda but also influenced by peer pressure and brutalizing wartime
violence, were psychologically prepared to join the SS ideologues and perpetrate
ever-greater crimes. They were ready to plumb the depths of evil and to spiral
downward from mistreatment to arrest to mass murder.
By late 1938, 1.5 million Japanese troops were bogged

Japan’s Empire down in China, holding a great swath of territory but
in Asia unable to defeat the Nationalists and the Communists
(see Map 29.3). Nor had Japan succeeded in building a large, self-sufficient Asian
economic zone, for it still depended on oil and scrap metal from the Netherlands
East Indies and the United States. Thus Japanese leaders followed events in Eu-
rope closely, looking for alliances and actions that might improve their position in
Asia. At home they gave free reign to the anti-Western ultranationalism that had
risen in the 1920s and 1930s. In speeches, schools, and newspapers ultranational-
ists proclaimed Japan’s liberating mission in Asia, glorified the warrior virtues of
honor and sacrifice, and demanded absolute devotion to the semidivine emperor.
The outbreak of war in Europe in 1939 and Hitler’s early victories opened up
opportunities for the Japanese in Southeast Asia, where European empires ap-
peared vulnerable. Expanding the war in China, the Japanese also pressured the
Dutch to surrender control of the Netherlands East Indies and its rich oil fields,
but Dutch colonial officials, backed by the British and the Americans, refused.
The United States had repeatedly condemned Japanese aggression in China, and
it now feared that embattled Britain would collapse if it lost the support of its Asian
colonies.
Japan’s invasion of southern Indochina in July 1941 further worsened relations
with the United States. President Franklin Roosevelt demanded that Japan with-
draw from China, and they refused. The United States responded by cutting off
the sale of U.S. oil to Japan and thereby reducing Japan’s oil supplies by 90 per-
cent. Japanese leaders believed increasingly that war with the United States was
inevitable, for Japan’s battle fleet would run out of fuel in eighteen months, and its
industry would be crippled. After much debate, Japanese leaders decided to launch
a surprise attack on the United States. They hoped to cripple their Pacific rival,
gain time to build a defensible Asian empire while getting oil from Indonesia, and
eventually win an ill-defined compromise peace.
The Japanese attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian
Islands was a complete surprise but a limited success. On December 7, 1941, the
Japanese sank or crippled every American battleship, but by chance all the all-
important American aircraft carriers were at sea and escaped unharmed. More
important, Pearl Harbor united Americans in a spirit of anger and revenge.
Hitler immediately declared war on the United States. Simultaneously, Japanese
armies successfully attacked European and American colonies in Southeast Asia.
Japanese armies were small (because most soldiers remained in China), but they
were well trained, highly motivated, and very successful. By May 1942 Japan held a
vast empire in Southeast Asia and the western Pacific (see Map 29.3, p. 776).
Facing war across both the Pacific and the Atlantic, the
The Grand Alliance United States agreed with its allies Great Britain and
the Soviet Union on a policy of Europe first. Only af- Europe first The Allied policy to
ter Hitler was defeated would the Allies turn toward the Pacific for an all-out attack defeat Hitler in Europe before turning
their attack on Japan.
on Japan, the lesser threat. The Allies agreed to wage war until the “unconditional
surrender” of both Germany and Japan.
The military resources of the Grand Alliance were awesome. The strengths of
the United States were its mighty industry, its large population, and its national
unity. Gearing up rapidly for all-out war in 1942, the United States acquired a
unique capacity to wage global war. In 1943 it outproduced not only Germany,
Italy, and Japan but also all of the rest of the world combined.
Britain continued to make a great contribution as well. The British economy
was totally and effectively mobilized, and the sharing of burdens through rationing
and heavy taxes on war profits maintained social harmony. By early 1943 the
Americans and the British were combining small aircraft carriers with radar-guided
bombers to rid the Atlantic of German submarines. Britain, the impregnable float-
ing fortress, became a gigantic frontline staging area for the decisive blow to the
heart of Germany.
As for the Soviet Union, so great was its strength that it might well have de-
feated Germany without Western help. In the face of the German advance, whole
factories and populations were successfully evacuated to eastern Russia and Sibe-
ria. There war production was reorganized and expanded, and the Red Army was
increasingly well supplied and well led. Above all, Stalin drew on the massive sup-
port and heroic determination of the Soviet people, especially those in the central
Russian heartland. Broad-based Russian nationalism, as opposed to narrow com-
munist ideology, became the powerful unifying force in what the Soviet people
appropriately called the “Great Patriotic War of the Fatherland.”
Finally, the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union had the resources of
much of the world at their command. They were also aided by a growing resis-
tance movement against the Nazis throughout Europe, even in Germany. After
the Soviet Union was invaded in June 1941, communists throughout Europe took
the lead in the underground resistance, joined by a growing number of patriots,
Christians, and agents sent by governments-in-exile in London.
Barely halted at the gates of Moscow and Leningrad in

The War in Europe 1941, the Germans renewed their offensive against the
(1942–1945) Soviet Union in July 1942, driving toward the southern
city of Stalingrad and occupying most of the city in a month of incredibly savage
house-to-house fighting.
Then, in November 1942, Soviet armies counterattacked. They rolled over
Romanian and Italian troops to the north and south of Stalingrad, quickly closing
the trap and surrounding the entire German Sixth Army of 300,000 men. The sur-
rounded Germans were systematically destroyed, until by the end of January 1943
only 123,000 soldiers were left to surrender. Hitler, who had refused to allow a re-
treat, had suffered a catastrophic defeat. In summer 1943, the larger, better-equipped
Soviet armies took the offensive and began moving forward (Map 29.2).
Not yet prepared to attack Germany directly through France, the Western Al-
lies saw heavy fighting in North Africa from 1940 onward. In May 1942, combined
German and Italian armies were finally defeated by British forces only seventy
miles from Alexandria at the Battle of El Alamein (al-uh-MAYN). Almost immedi-
ately thereafter, an Anglo-American force landed in Morocco and Algeria. These
Mapping the Past

MAP 29.2 World War II in Europe
The map shows the extent of Hitler’s empire before the Battle of Stalingrad in late 1942 and the
subsequent advances of the Allies until Germany surrendered on May 7, 1945. This map,
combined with Map 29.1 on page 766, can be used to trace the rise and fall of the Nazi empire
over time. [1] First, using Map 29.1 on page 766, what was the first country to be conquered by
Hitler (and divided with the Soviet Union)? [2] Second, locate Germany’s advance and retreat
on the Russian front at different dates: December 1941, November 1942, Spring 1944, and
February 1945. Locate the position of British and American forces on the battlefield at similar
points in time, and then compare the respective Russian and British-American positions. What
implications might the battle lines on February 1945 have for the postwar settlement in Europe?
0° 10°E N 20°E 30°E 40°E 50°E °N

Hitler’s Greater Germany 60
Allied with Germany

Occupied by Germany and its allies FINLAND
Grand Alliance NORWAY
Neutral nations Helsinki Leningrad
Major battle
SWEDEN
Oslo Siege of Leningrad,
Stockholm Sept. 1941–Jan. 1944
Ru
ssi
North Moscow SOVIET
an
a R.
Sea Riga UNION
fro
a
Volg
NORTHERN
Se
nt,
IRELAND DENMARK
s pr
Copenhagen n Smolensk
lti
i
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UNITED German surrender: Tula Siege of Stalingrad,
g
Rus
Ba
194
IRELAND Reims, May 7, 1945 s i an Aug. 21, 1942–Jan. 31, 1943
KINGDOM fro n
Berlin, May 8, 1945 Pinsk
4
t, No
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Battle of Britain, Elb
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42
Do 50°
fall 1940 R Vis nR
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Ru s si a n fr
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Russian
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NETHERLANDS Berlin R.
London Posen Stalingrad
Dunkirk Warsaw
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GERMANY
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BELGIUM nt
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Battle of per R e c.
AT L A N T I C Rhine Crossing,
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.
March 7, 1945 UKRAINE 1

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Dec. 1944 19 Kraków

, Feb. 1945
O C E A N Invasion of Normandy,
.
Paris 4 D n ie
5 ste
June 6, 1944 e R. SLOVAKIA
nub
Da
rR
FRANCE
.
Vienna HUNGARY
Budapest
SWITZERLAND
Vichy
VICHY ROMANIA Yalta
FRANCE
Axis troops occupy (Occupied Nov. 1942) Po R. Bucharest
S e a
Vichy France, Bologna CROATIA
Da nub e R
. a c k
Nov. 10 and 11, 1942
front, SERBIA B l
PORTUGAL Italian 1945
Fe b . BULGARIA
40°
N
Eb
Allies land in Provence, I T A LY Sofia

ro
Rome
R.
Lisbon Madrid Aug. 15, 1944 (Liberated June 1944)

ALBANIA Ankara
S PA I N Monte Cassino, TURKEY
May 1944
Salerno,
Sept. 1943 GREECE
Allies invade Sicily and
Italy, July–Sept. 1943
SPANISH GIBRALTAR (Gr. Br.) Athens
MOROCCO Sicily SY R IA
ALGER IA Sicily,
Casablanca, (Vichy France) July 1943
Nov. 1942 MALTA Cyprus
M (Gr. Br.)
Crete
(Gr. Br.)
FRENCH Rommel defeated e d (Gr.)
MO RO CCO in Tunisia; Axis i t e PALESTINE
troops evacuated, r r a n e (Br. Mandate) TRANS -
May 1943
a n S e a JORDAN
TUNISIA (Br. Mandate)
Suez 30ºN
Canal
El Alamein,
L I B YA summer 1942 Cairo
0 150 300 Km.
Nile R.
0 150 300 Mi.

EGYPT
French possessions, which were under the control of Pétain’s Vichy government,
quickly went over to the side of the Allies.
Having driven the Axis powers from North Africa by spring 1943, Allied forces
maintained the initiative by invading Sicily and then mainland Italy. Mussolini
was deposed by a war-weary people, and the new Italian government publicly ac-
cepted unconditional surrender in September 1943. Italy, it seemed, was liber-
ated. Yet German commandos rescued Mussolini in a daring raid and put him at
the head of a puppet government. German armies seized Rome and all of north-
ern Italy. Fighting continued in Italy.
Indeed, bitter fighting continued in Europe for almost two years. Germany,
less fully mobilized for war than Britain in 1941, applied itself to total war in 1942
and enlisted millions of German women and millions of prisoners of war and slave
laborers from all across occupied Europe in that effort. Between early 1942 and
July 1944, German war production actually tripled in spite of heavy bombing by
the British and American air forces. German resistance against Hitler also failed.
After an unsuccessful attempt on Hitler’s life in July 1944, SS fanatics brutally
liquidated thousands of Germans. Terrorized at home and frightened by the pros-
pect of unconditional surrender, the Germans fought on with suicidal stoicism.
On June 6, 1944, American and British forces under General Dwight Eisen-
hower landed on the beaches of Normandy, France, in history’s greatest naval in-
vasion. In a hundred dramatic days, more than 2 million men and almost half a
million vehicles pushed inland and broke through German lines. Rejecting pro-
posals to strike straight at Berlin in a massive attack, Eisenhower moved forward
cautiously on a broad front. Not until March 1945 did American troops cross the
Rhine and enter Germany.
The Soviets, who had been advancing steadily since July 1943, reached the
outskirts of Warsaw by August 1944. For the next six months, they moved south-
ward into Romania, Hungary, and Yugoslavia. In January 1945, the Red Army
again moved westward through Poland, and on April 26 it met American forces on
the Elbe River. The Allies had closed their vise on Nazi Germany and overrun
Europe. As Soviet forces fought their way into Berlin, Hitler committed suicide in
his bunker, and on May 7 the remaining German commanders capitulated.
In Asia, as gigantic armies clashed in Europe, the great-

The War in the est naval battles in history decided the fate of warring
Pacific (1942–1945) nations (see Map 29.3). First, in the Battle of the Coral
Sea in May 1942, an American carrier force fought its Japanese counterpart to a
draw, thereby stopping the Japanese advance on Port Moresby and relieving Aus-
tralia from the threat of invasion. This engagement was followed in June 1942 by
the Battle of Midway, in which American carrier-based pilots sank all four of the
attacking Japanese aircraft carriers and established overall naval equality with Ja-
pan in the Pacific. In August 1942 American marines attacked and took Guadal-
canal in the Solomon Islands in heavy fighting.
Hampered by the policy of “Europe first,” the United States gradually won
control of the sea and air as it geared up massive production of aircraft carriers,
submarines, and fighter planes. By 1943 the United States was producing one
hundred thousand aircraft a year, almost twice as many as Japan produced in the
entire war. In July 1943 the Americans and their Australian allies opened an “is-
land hopping” campaign toward Japan. Pounding Japanese forces on a given
island with saturation bombing, American army and marine units would then
hit the beaches with rifles and flame throwers and secure victory in hand-to-hand
100°E 120°E 140°E 160°E 180° 160°W

Bering Sea ALASKA
SOV I ET U N I O N Kamchatka
Kiska I. IS. (U.S.)
19
45 5
194
5 ALEUTIAN
194 Sakhalin I.
Attu I.
45
1943
19
MONGOLIA IS
.
1945 MANCHURIA
der
LE 0 500 1000 Km.
RI
n
rre
KU
su
at
0 500 1000 Mi.
y
or
Beijing
t
40°N
rri
te
JA PA N
e
N
es
KOREA PAC I F IC OC EAN
an
Tokyo
ap
J
C H I NA Hiroshima
TIBET Atom bombs dropped, Midway Is.
Nagasaki
August 1945 (U.S.)
NEPAL BHUTAN
19 19
45 Okinawa
Bonin Is.
Midway
INDIA Marcus I.
45
Apr.–June June 1942 HAWAIIAN IS.

(Gr. Br.) 1945 Iwo Jima Tropic of Cancer (U.S.)
19
Hong 45 45 Feb.–March 1945
20°N Kong 19
194
BURMA (Gr. Br.) MARIANA Wake I. Pearl
(Gr. Br.) PHILIPPINE IS. IS. (U.S.) 3 Harbor
194
5
(U.S.) Dec. 1941
194
THAILAND FRENCH
INDOCHINA Leyte 1944
Oct. 1944 1944 43
5
(Vichy) Guam
July–Aug. 1944 19
BRUNEI
(Gr. Br.) CAROLINE IS.
MALAYA N. BORNEO MARSHALL
(Gr. Br.) SARAWAK (Gr. Br.) 19 IS.
Singapore (Gr. Br.) 44
0° Equator Borneo
Sumatra
Celebes
SOLOMON
IS.
D U TC H EAST INDIES New Guinea
Java
Port Moresby Guadalcanal Farthest advance of
Coral Sea Aug. 1942–
May 1942 Feb. 1943 Japanese conquests, 1942
194
I N D IA N O C EAN 19
42 Allied-controlled territory
3
Allied advance
20°S
Territory gained by Allies
Tropic of Capricorn before Japanese surrender
AUSTR ALI A Japanese-controlled territory
at surrender, August 14, 1945
Major battle
MAP 29.3 World War II in the Pacific

Japanese forces overran an enormous amount of territory in 1942, which the Allies slowly recaptured in a long,
bitter struggle. As this map shows, Japan still held a large Asian empire in August 1945, when the unprecedented
devastation of atomic warfare suddenly forced it to surrender.
combat. Many islands were bypassed, and their Japanese defenders were block-
aded and left to starve.
The war in the Pacific was extremely brutal—a “war without mercy,” in the
words of a leading American scholar—and atrocities were committed on both
sides.10 Knowing of Japanese atrocities in China and the Philippines, the U.S.
Marines and Army troops seldom took Japanese prisoners after the Battle of Gua-
dalcanal, killing even those rare Japanese soldiers who offered to surrender. A
product of spiraling violence, mutual hatred, and dehumanizing racial stereotypes,
the war without mercy intensified as it moved toward Japan.
In June 1944 giant U.S. bombers began a relentless bombing campaign that
intensified steadily until the end of the war. In October 1944, as Allied advances
in the Pacific paralleled those in Europe, American forces won a great victory in
Chapter Review 777
the four-day Battle of Leyte (LEY-tee) Gulf, the Sec tion Review
greatest battle in naval history, with 282 ships in-
volved. The Japanese navy was practically finished. • The Germans used a blitzkrieg to crush Poland and most of western
continental Europe except Britain, turning next to the Soviet Union,
In spite of all their defeats, Japanese troops con- where they gained vast amounts of territory; their aim was to have
tinued to fight with enormous courage and determi- Germanic peoples occupy and populate the conquered territories,
nation. Indeed, the bloodiest battles of the Pacific enslaving and eliminating the “inferior” races there.
war took place on Iwo Jima in February 1945 and • Hitler’s ultimate horror was his goal of racial imperialism, including the
on Okinawa (oh-kee-NAH-wah) in June 1945. deportations to concentration camps and slave labor camps, culminat-
American commanders believed the conquest of ing in the outright mass murder of millions of Jews and other “undesir-
Japan might cost a million American casualties and ables” in the Holocaust.
claim 10 to 20 million Japanese lives. In fact, Japan • Japan tried to expand into Southeast Asia, angering the United States,
was almost helpless, its industry and dense, fragile who cut off the sale of oil to Japan, which responded with a surprise
attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii and European and American colonies
wooden cities largely destroyed by incendiary bomb- in Southeast Asia, sparking Hitler’s declaration of war against the
ing and uncontrollable hurricanes of fire. Yet the United States.
Japanese seemed determined to fight on, ever ready
• The Allied powers agreed to liberate Europe first and then to take on
to die for a hopeless cause. Japan in the Pacific; they effectively mobilized for war, with the United
On August 6 and 9, 1945, the United States States out-producing every other country while Britain and the Soviet
dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima (heer-oh- Union also fielded well-organized war machines.
SHEE-muh) and Nagasaki (nah-gah-SAH-kee) in • The Germans pursued their attack on the Soviet Union but suffered
Japan. Mass bombing of cities and civilians, one of defeat while the Soviets went on the offensive, and with the western
the terrible new practices of World War II, had Allies, closed the noose, surrounding and finally entering Germany
where Hitler committed suicide and the remaining Germans
ended in the final nightmare—unprecedented hu- surrendered.
man destruction in a single blinding flash. On
• The brutal war in the Pacific, a “war without mercy,” involved an Allied
August 14, 1945, the Japanese announced their sur-
“island hopping” campaign on the way to Japan; intense fighting
render. The Second World War, which had claimed pressed Japan to the limit, but the United States dealt the final cata-
the lives of more than 50 million soldiers and civil- strophic blow by dropping two atomic bombs to end the war.
ians, was over.
Chapter Review
How did Stalin and the Communist Party build a modern totalitarian state in
the Soviet Union? (page 753) Key Terms
The crafty Stalin consolidated his power in the 1920s, and in 1928 he launched the five-year plan (p. 753)
five-year plans. In doing so, Stalin’s Soviet Union asserted a total claim on the lives of New Economic Policy (NEP)
its citizens. It posed ambitious goals in the form of rapid state-directed industrialization (p. 753)
and savage collectivization of agriculture. And it found enthusiastic supporters who collectivization (p. 754)
believed that Stalin and the Communist Party were building their kind of socialism
and a new socialist personality at home. Relentless propaganda and the great purges kulaks (p. 754)
reinforced the Party’s claims of unlimited control of its citizens. fascists (p. 760)
Black Shirts (p. 760)
Lateran Agreement (p. 760)
How did Mussolini’s dictatorship come to power and govern in Italy? (page 758)
Nazism (p. 761)
Mussolini began as a socialist but he turned to the right when he received growing
Führer (p. 762)
support from conservatives. Coming to power with the king’s help, Mussolini pro-
claimed the revolutionary, “totalitarian” character of his one-party rule. In fact, Mus- Enabling Act (p. 763)
solini’s government retained many elements of conservative authoritarianism, such as (continued)
compromising with the Catholic Church and keeping women in traditional roles.
How did Hitler gain power, what policies did totalitarian Nazi Germany pursue,
appeasement (p. 765)
and why did they lead to World War II? (page 761)
blitzkrieg (p. 767)
Failing to overthrow the government in 1923 in an attempted coup, Hitler came to New Order (p. 769)
power legally in 1933 by promising voters national renewal and economic recovery
from the Great Depression. His policies appeared to help the economy and he quickly totalitarianism (p. 769)
established a one-party totalitarian regime with ambitious goals and widespread popu- Holocaust (p. 769)
lar support. But whereas Stalin concentrated on building socialism at home, Hitler Europe first (p. 773)
and the Nazi elite aimed at unlimited territorial and racial aggression on behalf of a
master race. He proceeded gradually at first, and Britain and France sought to “ap-
pease” Hitler with various diplomatic concessions. Only Hitler’s unprovoked attack on
Poland in 1939 brought a military response from Britain and France and the begin-
ning of World War II.
How did Germany and Japan create enormous empires that were defeated by
the Allies—Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States? (page 767)
Nazi racism and unlimited aggression made war inevitable, first with the western
European democracies, then with hated eastern neighbors, and finally with the United
States. Joined by Japan after Pearl Harbor, Hitler’s forces overran much of western and
eastern Europe, annihilated millions of Jews, and plunged Europe into the ultimate
nightmare. But unlimited aggression unwittingly forged a mighty coalition led by Brit-
ain, the Soviet Union, and the United States. This Grand Alliance held together and
smashed the racist Nazi empire and its leader. The United States also destroyed Japan’s
vast, overextended empire in the Pacific, thus bringing to a close history’s most destruc-
tive war.
Notes
1. I. Kershaw, The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, 2d ed. (Lon-
don: Edward Arnold, 1989), p. 34.
2. Quoted in I. Deutscher, Stalin: A Political Biography, 2d ed. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1967), p. 325.
3. R. Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 4, 303.
4. R. Thurston, Life and Terror in Stalin’s Russia, 1934–1941 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 1996), esp. pp. 16–106; also Malia, The Soviet Tragedy, pp. 227–270.
5. W. Brustein, The Logic of Evil: The Social Origins of the Nazi Party, 1925–1933 (New Ha-
ven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1996), pp. 52, 182.
6. Quoted in K. D. Bracher, The German Dictatorship: The Origins, Structure and Effects of
National Socialism (New York: Praeger, 1970), p. 289.
7. R. Allen, The Business of Genocide: The SS, Slave Labor, and the Concentration Camps
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), pp. 270–285.
8. Quoted in M. Marrus, The Holocaust in History (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New
England, 1987), p. 28.
9. D. Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New
York: Vintage Books, 1997).
10. J. Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon, 1986).

Stalin Justifies the Five-Year Plan
O n February 4, 1931, Joseph Stalin delivered the follow-

ing address, entitled “No Slowdown in Tempo!,” to the
First Conference of Soviet Industrial Managers. Published the
following day in Pravda, the newspaper of the Communist
Party, and widely publicized at home and abroad, Stalin’s
speech sought to rally the people and generate support for the
party’s program. His address captures the spirit of Soviet
public discourse in the early 1930s.
It is sometimes asked whether it is not possible

to slow down the tempo somewhat, to put a check
on the movement. No, comrades, it is not possible!
The tempo must not be reduced! On the contrary,
we must increase it as much as is within our powers
and possibilities. This is dictated to us by our obli-
gations to the workers and peasants of the U.S.S.R.
This is dictated to us by our obligations to the work-
ing class of the whole world.
“Our program is realistic,” Stalin proclaims on this
To slacken the tempo would mean falling be-
poster, “because it is you and me working together.”
hind. And those who fall behind get beaten. But we (David King Collection)
do not want to be beaten. No, we refuse to be
beaten! One feature of the history of old Russia
was the continual beatings she suffered because of
her backwardness. She was beaten by the Mongol world, looking at us, may say: There you have
khans, . . . the Turkish beys, . . . and the Japanese my advanced detachment, my shock brigade, my
barons. All beat her—because of her backwardness, working-class state power, my fatherland; they are
cultural backwardness, political backwardness, in- engaged on their cause, our cause, and they are
dustrial backwardness, agricultural backwardness. working well; let us support them against the capi-
They beat her because to do so was profitable and talists and promote the cause of the world revolu-
could be done with impunity. . . . Such is the law tion. Must we not justify the hopes of the world’s
of the exploiters—to beat the backward and the working class, must we not fulfill our obligations to
weak. It is the jungle law of capitalism. You are them? Yes, we must if we do not want to utterly
backward, you are weak—therefore you are wrong; disgrace ourselves.
hence you can be beaten and enslaved. You are Such are our obligations, internal and inter-
mighty—therefore you are right; hence we must be national.
wary of you. As you see, they dictate to us a Bolshevik tempo
That is why we must no longer lag behind. . . . of development.
But we have yet other, more serious and more I will not say that we have accomplished noth-
important, obligations. They are our obligations to ing in regard to management of production during
the world proletariat. . . . We must march forward these years. In fact, we have accomplished a good
in such a way that the working class of the whole deal. . . . But we could have accomplished still
779
more if we had tried during this period really to Questions for Analysis
master production, the technique of production, 1. What reasons does Stalin give to justify an
the financial and economic side of it. . . . unrelenting “Bolshevik” tempo of industrial
It is said that it is hard to master technique. That and social change? In the light of history,
is not true! There are no fortresses that Bolsheviks which reason seems most convincing? Why?
cannot capture. We have solved a number of most 2. Imagine that the year is 1931 and you are a
difficult problems. We have overthrown capitalism. Soviet student reading Stalin’s speech. Would
We have assumed power. We have built up a huge Stalin’s determination inspire you, frighten
socialist industry. We have transferred the middle you, or leave you cold? Why?
peasants on the path of socialism. We have already 3. Some historians argue that Soviet socialism was
accomplished what is most important from the a kind of utopianism—that zealots believed
point of view of construction. What remains to be that the economy, the society, and even human
done is not so much: to study technique, to master beings could be completely remade and per-
science. And when we have done that we shall de- fected. What utopian elements do you see in
velop a tempo of which we dare not even dream at Stalin’s declaration?
present. Source: From Joseph Stalin, “No Slowdown in Tempo!”
And we shall do it if we really want to. Pravda, February 5, 1931.
780
CHAPTER 30
Cold War Conflicts
and Social
Transformations
1945–1985
Chapter Preview
The Division of Europe
What were the causes of the cold war?
The Western Renaissance (1945–1968)

Why did western Europe recover so
successfully? How did colonial peoples
win political independence and
American blacks triumph in the civil
rights movement?
Soviet Eastern Europe (1945–1968)

What was the pattern of postwar
rebuilding and development in the
Soviet Union and communist eastern
Europe?
Postwar Social Transformations (1945–1968)

How did changing patterns in
technology, class relations, women’s
work, and youth culture bring major
social transformations?
The youth revolution. London, ca. 1980. (Anthea Sieveking/Wellcome Images)
Conflict and Challenge in the Late Cold

War (1968–1985)
What were the key aspects of political
conflict, economic stagnation, and the
feminist movement in the late cold war?
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY: Margaret Thatcher
LISTENING TO THE PAST: A Feminist Critique

of Marriage 781
782 Chapter 30 Cold War Conflicts and Social Transformations, 1945–1985
T he total defeat of the Nazis and their allies in 1945 laid the basis for one of
Western civilization’s most remarkable recoveries, as Europe dug itself out
from under the rubble and fashioned a great renaissance. Yet there was also a
tragic setback. The Grand Alliance against Hitler gave way to an apparently end-
less cold war in which tension between East and West threatened world peace.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, three major changes marked the end of the
era of postwar Western renaissance. First, as cold war competition again turned
very hot in Vietnam, postwar certainties such as domestic political stability and
social harmony evaporated, and several countries experienced major crises. Sec-
ond, the astonishing postwar economic advance came to a halt, and this had seri-
ous social consequences. Third, new roles for women after World War II led to a
powerful “second wave” of feminist thought and action in the 1970s, resulting in
major changes for women and gender relations. Thus the long cold war created an
underlying unity for the years 1945–1985, but the first half of the cold war era was
quite different from the second.
The Division of Europe

What were the causes of the cold war?
In 1945 triumphant American and Russian soldiers came together and embraced
on the banks of the Elbe River in the heart of vanquished Germany. At home, in
the United States and in the Soviet Union, the soldiers’ loved ones erupted in joy-
ous celebration. Yet victory was flawed. The Allies could not cooperate politically
in peacemaking. Motivated by different goals and hounded by misunderstandings,
the United States and the Soviet Union soon found themselves at loggerheads. By
the end of 1947, Europe was rigidly divided. It was West versus East in a cold war
that was waged around the world for forty years.
The most powerful allies in the wartime coalition—the

The Origins of Soviet Union and the United States—began to quarrel
the Cold War almost as soon as the threat of Nazi Germany disap-
peared. This hostility between the Eastern and Western superpowers was the sad
but logical outgrowth of military developments, wartime agreements, and long-
standing political and ideological differences.
In the early phases of the Second World War, the Americans and the British
chose to avoid discussing with Stalin the shape of the eventual peace settlement.
They feared that hard bargaining would encourage Stalin to consider making a
separate peace with Hitler. They focused instead on the policy of unconditional
surrender to solidify the alliance.
By late 1943, discussion about the shape of the postwar world could no longer
be postponed. The conference that Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill held in the
Iranian capital of Teheran in November 1943 thus proved of crucial importance
Big Three Russia, the United States, in determining subsequent events. There, the Big Three searched for the appropri-
and England. ate military strategy to crush Germany. Roosevelt chose to meet Stalin’s wartime
demands whenever possible and so supported Stalin’s plan for an American-
British frontal assault through France. This strategy meant that the Soviet and the
American-British armies would come together in defeated Germany along a north-
Chronology
south line and that only Soviet troops would liberate eastern 1945–1962 U.S. takes lead in Big Science
Europe. Thus the basic shape of postwar Europe was emerg-
ing even as the fighting continued. 1945–1960s Decolonization of Asia and Africa
When the Big Three met again in February 1945 at Yalta 1947 Truman Doctrine; Marshall Plan
on the Black Sea in southern Russia, advancing Soviet armies 1949 Formation of NATO; Stalin launches
were within a hundred miles of Berlin. The Red Army had verbal attack on Soviet Jews; Beauvoir,
occupied not only Poland but also Bulgaria, Romania, Hun- The Second Sex
gary, part of Yugoslavia, and much of Czechoslovakia. The 1950–1953 Korean War
temporarily stalled American-British forces had yet to cross
the Rhine into Germany. Moreover, the United States was 1953–1964 De-Stalinization of Soviet Union
far from defeating Japan. In short, the Soviet Union’s position 1957 Formation of Common Market
was strong and America’s weak. 1961 Building of Berlin Wall
It was agreed at Yalta that Germany would be divided
1962 Cuban missile crisis; Solzhenitsyn,
into zones of occupation and would pay heavy reparations to
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
the Soviet Union. At American insistence, Stalin agreed to
declare war on Japan after Germany was defeated. An am- 1964 Civil Rights Act in the United States
biguous compromise was reached on Poland and eastern 1964–1973 U.S. involvement in Vietnam War
Europe: their governments were to be freely elected but 1966 Formation of National Organization for
pro-Russian. Women (NOW)
The Yalta compromise over eastern Europe broke down
1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia;
almost immediately. Even before the Yalta Conference, Bul-
student protests in Paris
garia and Poland were controlled by communists who arrived
home with the Red Army. Elsewhere in eastern Europe, 1969 First Apollo moon landing
pro-Soviet “coalition” governments of several parties were 1972 Watergate break-in
formed, but the key ministerial posts were reserved for 1973 OPEC oil embargo
Moscow-trained communists.
At the postwar Potsdam Conference of July 1945, differ- 1979 Margaret Thatcher becomes British
prime minister
ences over eastern Europe finally surged to the fore. The new
American president, Harry Truman, demanded immediate
free elections throughout eastern Eu-
rope. Stalin refused point-blank. “A
freely elected government in any of
these East European countries would
be anti-Soviet,” he admitted simply,
“and that we cannot allow.”1
Here, then, is the key to the
much-debated origins of the cold war.
American ideals, pumped up by the
crusade against Hitler, and American
politics, heavily influenced by mil-
lions of voters from eastern Europe,
demanded free elections in Soviet-
occupied eastern Europe. Stalin, who
The Big Three

In 1945 a triumphant Winston Churchill, an
ailing Franklin Roosevelt, and a determined
Joseph Stalin met at Yalta in southern Russia
to plan for peace. Cooperation soon gave
way to bitter hostility. (Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Library)
had lived through two enormously destructive German invasions, wanted absolute
military security in relation to Germany and its potential Eastern allies. Suspicious
by nature, he believed that only communist states could be truly dependable al-
lies, and he realized that free elections would result in independent and possibly
hostile governments on his western border. Moreover, by the middle of 1945,
there was no way short of war that the United States could control political devel-
opments in eastern Europe, and war was out of the question. Stalin was bound to
have his way.
The American response to Stalin’s refusal to allow

West Versus East elections was to “get tough.” In May 1945, Truman
abruptly cut off all aid to the U.S.S.R. In October he
declared that the United States would never recognize any government estab-
lished by force against the free will of its people. In March 1946, former British
prime minister Churchill ominously informed an American audience that an
“iron curtain” had fallen across the continent, dividing Germany and all of Eu-
rope into two antagonistic camps. Emotional, moralistic denunciations of Stalin
and communist Russia emerged as part of American political life. Yet the United
States also responded to the popular desire to “bring the boys home” and demobi-
lized its troops with great speed. Some historians have argued that American lead-
ers believed that the atomic bomb gave the United States all the power it needed,
but “getting tough” really meant “talking tough.”
Stalin’s agents quickly reheated what they viewed as the “ideological struggle
against capitalist imperialism.” The large, well-organized Communist Parties of
France and Italy obediently started to uncover “American plots” to take over Eu-
rope and challenged their own governments with violent criticisms and large
strikes. The Soviet Union also put pressure on Iran, Turkey, and Greece, while a
bitter civil war raged in China. By the spring of 1947, it appeared to many Ameri-
cans that Stalin was determined to export communism by subversion throughout
Europe and around the world.
The United States responded to this challenge with the Truman Doctrine,
which was aimed at “containing” communism to areas already occupied by the
Red Army and supporting governments facing a communist threat. To begin, Tru-
man asked Congress for military aid to Greece and Turkey, countries that Britain,
weakened by war and financially overextended, could no longer protect. Then, in
June, Secretary of State George C. Marshall offered Europe economic aid—the
Marshall Plan Secretary of State Marshall Plan—to help it rebuild.
George C. Marshall’s plan of economic Stalin refused Marshall Plan assistance for all of eastern Europe and attempted
aid to Europe to help it rebuild, which
Stalin refused for all of eastern Europe.
unsuccessfully to add West Berlin to the Soviet bloc. In 1949, intent on contain-
ment, the United States formed an anti-Soviet military alliance of Western govern-
NATO The North Atlantic Treaty ments: the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO. Stalin countered by
Organization, an anti-Soviet military tightening his hold on his satellites, later united in the Warsaw Pact. Europe was
alliance of Western governments.
divided into two hostile blocs and the bitter cold war was begun (see Map 30.1,
cold war The long period after World page 786).
War II during which Europe and the In late 1949, the communists triumphed in China, which many Americans
United States were divided between
East and West into two hostile military
perceived as new evidence of a powerful worldwide communist conspiracy. When
alliances and the tension threatened the Russian-backed communist army of North Korea invaded South Korea in
world peace. 1950, President Truman acted swiftly. American-led United Nations forces under
General Douglas MacArthur intervened. The bitter, bloody contest seesawed back
and forth, but President Truman rejected General MacArthur’s call to attack
China and fired him instead. In 1953 a fragile truce was negotiated, and the fight-
The Western Renaissance (1945–1968) 785
ing stopped. Thus the United States extended its policy of containment to Asia but Sec tion Review
drew back from an attack on communist China and possible nuclear war.
• Stalin and the Western Allies could
not agree on a post-war settlement:
Stalin argued for communist states in
The Western Renaissance (1945–1968) eastern Europe as dependable allies
and the west pushed for free elec-
Why did western Europe recover so successfully? How did colonial peoples tions; Stalin, in a stronger position
win political independence and American blacks triumph in the civil militarily, got his way.
rights movement? • The Americans responded by cutting
off aid to the U.S.S.R., issuing the
Truman Doctrine to “contain” com-
As the cold war divided Europe into two blocs, the future appeared bleak on both
munism; negative propaganda was
sides of the iron curtain. European economic conditions were the worst in genera- pursued by both sides; the United
tions, and the overseas empires of western Europe were crumbling in the face of States formed the anti-Soviet military
nationalism in Asia and Africa. Yet in less than a generation, western Europe and alliance, NATO, while Stalin formed
the United States achieved unprecedented economic prosperity and social trans- the Warsaw pact, dividing Europe
into two hostile zones, initiating the
formation. It was an amazing rebirth—a true renaissance.
cold war.
• When China fell to the communists
and North Korea attacked South
After the war, the people of western Europe faced se- Korea, the United States defended the
The Postwar vere shortages and hardships. Suffering was most in- Truman Doctrine by sending troops to
Challenge tense in defeated Germany. The major territorial intervene in Korea, but held short of
change of the war had moved the Soviet Union’s border far to the west. Poland was invading China.
in turn compensated for this loss to the Soviets with land taken from Germany. To
solidify these changes in boundaries, 13 million Germans were driven from their
homes and forced to resettle in a greatly reduced Germany. The Russians were
also seizing factories and equipment as reparations in their zone, even tearing up
railroad tracks and sending the rails to the Soviet Union.
In 1945 and 1946, conditions were not much better in the Western zones, for
the Western allies also treated the German population with severity at first. Count-
less Germans sold prized possessions to American soldiers to buy food. By the
spring of 1947, Germany was on the verge of total collapse and threatening to drag
down the rest of Europe. Yet the seeds of recovery were also planted, for the people
had had enough of old ideas, and new leaders were coming to the fore to guide
these aspirations for change. In Italy, France, and the Federal Republic of Ger-
many (as Western Germany was officially known), the Christian Democrats and Christian Democrats Progressive
Catholic Party offered strong leaders. They steadfastly rejected authoritarianism Catholics and revitalized Catholic
political parties that became influential
and narrow nationalism and placed their faith in democracy and cooperation. The after the Second World War.
socialists and the communists, active in the resistance against Hitler, also emerged
from the war with increased power and prestige, especially in France and Italy.
They, too, provided fresh leadership and pushed for social change and economic
reform. In the immediate postwar years, welfare measures such as family allow-
ances, health insurance, and increased public housing were enacted throughout
continental Europe. Britain followed the same trend, as the newly elected socialist
Labour Party established a “welfare state.” Many British industries were national-
ized, and the government provided free medical service. Thus all across Europe,
social reform complemented political transformation, creating solid foundations
for a great European renaissance.
Massive economic aid and ongoing military protection from the United States
was also essential to rebuilding Europe. As Marshall Plan aid poured in, the bat-
tered economies of western Europe began to turn the corner in 1948. The out-
break of the Korean War in 1950 further stimulated economic activity, and Europe
entered a period of rapid economic progress that lasted into the late 1960s. Never
0˚ 20˚E 40˚E
20˚W Arctic Circle 60˚N
FINLAND $ Participants in the Marshall Plan
N O RWAY
$ Oslo Helsinki Member of NATO,*
I CEL A N D SWEDEN formed in 1949
$$
U.S. loan of $3.5 billion, 1946
Exploded first atomic bomb, 1952 $ Stockholm
Member of COMECON,** formed in
Reykjavik
Reykjavik Joined Common Market, 1973 1949, and the Warsaw Pact,
organized in 1955
20˚W
North Member of the European
Sea Common Market, formed in 1958
DENMARK Moscow
IRELAND Iron Curtain
$ Dublin Joined Common $ Baltic
Market, 1973 Copenhagen Sea * North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Joined Common UNITED ** Council for Mutual Economic Assistance
Market, 1973 KINGDOM UNION OF SOVIET
$ SOCIALIST REPUBLICS
Amsterdam Berlin blockade, 0 200 400 Km.
London West
NETHERLANDS 1948–1949 Exploded first atomic bomb, 1949
Berlin
$ East Berlin Warsaw 0 200 400 Mi.
Brussels Bonn EAST
BELGIUM POLAND
AT L A N T I C $ WEST
GERMANY
Volg
GERMANY Communist coup, 1948 a R.
Paris LUX. Prague
O C E A N $
$ U.S.S.R. invasion, 1968
Dni
epe
R.
CZE r R. Don
CHO
Joined NATO, 1955 S LO C
Exploded first atomic bomb, 1960 VA K I
Withdrew from NATO, 1966
A
a
Vienna
sp a
Se
SWITZ. AUSTR I A
ia
Bern Budapest
$ $
n
F R ANCE H U N GARY
$ Zones of occupation
Joined Common Market, 1986
ended, 1955 RO M A N IA
Revolution, 1956
Bucharest
Belgrade
PORTUGAL
SPA I N Y U GO S L AV IA Danube R. B l a c k S e a
$ ITA LY 40˚
N
Madrid Tito-Stalin schism, 1948
Lisbon $ B U LGAR I A
Corsica
Rome Sofia
Joined NATO, 1982
Joined Common Market, 1986 Tiranë
Sardinia Left COMECON, 1961 Ankara
Balearic Is. Withdrew from WP, 1968 ALBANIA
Truman Doctrine, 1947
Medi
terr GR EECE TURKEY Joined NATO, 1952
ane $ $
an N
Athens
Se Sicily
a Truman Doctrine, 1947
Joined NATO, 1952
Joined Common Market, 1981 CYPRUS Nicosia
Mapping the Past

MAP 30.1 European Alliance Systems, 1949–1989
After the cold war divided Europe into two hostile military alliances, six western European
countries formed the Common Market in 1957. The Common Market grew later to include most
of western Europe. The communist states organized their own economic association—
COMECON. [1] Identify the countries that were the original members of the Common Market.
What do they have in common? [2] Identify the members of COMECON. What communist
country or countries did not join COMECON? Why? [3] Which non-allied nations had joined the
Common Market by 1989?
before had the European economy grown so fast. In most countries, there were
many people ready to work hard for low wages and the hope of a better future.
Moreover, although many consumer products had been invented or perfected
since the late 1920s, few Europeans had been able to buy them. In 1945 the elec-
tric refrigerator, the washing machine, and the automobile were rare luxuries.
There was a great potential demand, which the economic system moved to satisfy.
Finally, western European nations abandoned protectionism and gradually cre-
ated a large unified market known as the Common Market (see Map 30.1). This Common Market The European
historic action, which certainly stimulated the economy, was part of a larger search Economic Community, created by
six western European nations in 1957
for European unity. as part of a larger search for European
The development of the Common Market fired imaginations and encouraged unity.
hopes of rapid progress toward political as well as economic union. In the 1960s,
however, these hopes were frustrated by a resurgence of more traditional national-
ism. France took the lead. Mired in a bitter colonial war in Algeria, the French
turned in 1958 to General de Gaulle (duh GOHL), who established the Fifth Re-
public and ruled as its president until 1969. Charles de Gaulle (1890–1970) was
at heart a romantic nationalist, and he viewed the United States as the main threat
to genuine French (and European) independence. He withdrew all French mili-
tary forces from the “American-controlled” NATO, developed France’s own nu-
clear weapons, and vetoed the scheduled advent of majority rule within the
Common Market. Thus throughout the 1960s, the Common Market thrived eco-
nomically but remained a union of sovereign states.
In the postwar era, Europe’s long-standing overseas ex-

Decolonization pansion was dramatically reversed. Future generations
in East Asia will almost certainly see this rolling back of Western
expansion as one of world history’s great turning points.
The most basic cause of imperial collapse—what Europeans called decol-
onization—was the rising demand of Asian and African peoples for national self- decolonization The reversal of
determination, racial equality, and personal dignity. This demand spread from Europe’s overseas expansion caused by
the rising demand of Asian and African
intellectuals to the masses in nearly every colonial territory after the First World peoples for national self-determination,
War. As a result, colonial empires had already been shaken by 1939, and the way racial equality, and personal dignity.
was prepared for the eventual triumph of independence movements.
European empires had been based on an enormous power differential between
the rulers and the ruled, a difference that had greatly declined after western Europe
was battered by war. In addition, strong nationalist movements continued to de-
velop under the Japanese occupation of European colonies in Southeast Asia. With
their political power and moral authority in tatters in 1945, many Europeans had
little taste for bloody colonial wars and wanted to concentrate on rebuilding at home.
Gandhi Arrives in Delhi, October 1939

A small and frail man, Gandhi possessed enormous courage and determination. His campaign of nonviolent
resistance to British rule inspired the Indian masses and nurtured national identity and self-confidence. Here he
arrives for talks with the British viceroy after the outbreak of World War II. (Corbis)
India, Britain’s oldest, largest, and most lucrative nonwhite possession, played
a key role in decolonization. Nationalist opposition to British rule coalesced after
the First World War under the leadership of British-educated lawyer Mohandas
“Mahatma” Gandhi (GAHN-dee) (1869–1948), one of the twentieth century’s
most significant and influential figures. In the 1920s and 1930s Gandhi built a
mass movement preaching nonviolent “noncooperation” with the British. In 1935
the British agreed to a new constitution that was practically a blueprint for inde-
pendence. When the Labour party came to power in Great Britain in 1945, it was
ready to relinquish sovereignty.
If Indian nationalism drew on Western parliamentary liberalism, Chinese na-
tionalism developed and triumphed in the framework of Marxist-Leninist ideol-
ogy. In the turbulent early 1920s, a broad alliance of nationalist forces within the
Soviet-supported Guomindang (Kuomintang) (kwoh-min-TANG), or National
People’s party, was dedicated to unifying China and abolishing European conces-
sions. But in 1927 Chiang Kai-shek (chang kie-SHEK) (1887–1975), successor to
Sun Yat-sen (see page 693) and leader of the Guomindang, broke with his more
radical communist allies, headed by Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) (maow dzuh-
DONG), and tried to destroy them.
In the civil war that ensued, Mao’s Soviet-backed forces defeated Chiang’s
American-backed forces, with the crucial support of the Chinese peasantry.
Chiang’s nationalists withdrew to the island of Taiwan in 1949. Mao (1893–1976)
and the communists united China’s 550 million inhabitants in a strong centralized
state, expelled foreigners, and began building a new society along Soviet lines, col-
lectivizing the peasants and implementing five-year plans to expand heavy industry.
Most Asian countries followed the pattern of either India or China. In 1946 the
Philippines achieved independence peacefully from the United States. Britain
quickly granted Sri Lanka (Ceylon) and Burma independence in 1948. However,
Indonesian nationalists had to beat off attempts by the Dutch to reconquer the
Dutch East Indies before Indonesia emerged in 1949 as a sovereign state.
The French also tried their best to re-establish colonial rule in Indochina, but
despite American aid, they were defeated in 1954 by forces under the communist
and nationalist guerrilla leader Ho Chi Minh (hoh chee min) (1890–1969), who
was supported by the Soviet Union and China. But Indochina was not unified,
and two independent Vietnamese states came into being, which led to civil war
and subsequent intervention by the United States (see pages 800–801).
In the Middle East, the movement toward political in-

Decolonization in dependence continued after World War II. In 1944 the
the Middle East French gave up their League of Nations mandates in
and Africa Syria and Lebanon. In British-mandated Palestine,
where after 1918 the British government established a Jewish homeland alongside
the Arab population, violence and terrorism mounted on both sides. In 1947 the
frustrated British decided to leave Palestine, and the United Nations then voted in
a nonbinding resolution to divide Palestine into two states—one Arab and one
Jewish, which became Israel. The Jews accepted the plan but the Arabs did not,
and in 1948 they attacked the Jewish state as soon as it was proclaimed. The Is-
raelis drove off the invaders and conquered more territory, as roughly 900,000 Ar-
abs fled or were expelled. Holocaust survivors from Europe streamed into Israel, as
Theodor Herzl’s (HER-tsuhl) Zionist dream came true (see page 665). The next
fifty years saw four more wars between the Israelis and the Arab states and innu-
merable clashes between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
The Arab defeat in 1948 triggered a powerful nationalist revolution in Egypt in
1952, where a young army officer named Gamal Abdel Nasser (gah-MAHL AHB-
dal NAH-suhr) (1918–1970) drove out the pro-Western king. In 1956 Nasser
abruptly nationalized the foreign-owned Suez Canal Company, the last symbol
and substance of Western power in the Middle East. Infuriated, the British and the
French, along with the Israelis, invaded Egypt. This was, however, the dying gasp
of traditional imperial power: the Americans joined with the Soviets to force the
British, French, and Israelis to withdraw. Nasser and anti-Western Egyptian na-
tionalism triumphed.
The failure of Britain and France to unseat Nasser in 1956 encouraged Arab
nationalists in Algeria. Although they met tough resistance from the country’s
large French population, the Algerians won their independence in 1962. South of
the Sahara, decolonization proceeded with little or no bloodshed. Beginning in
1957, Britain’s colonies achieved independence and then entered a very loose as-
sociation with Britain as members of the British Commonwealth of Nations. In
1958 the clever de Gaulle offered the leaders of French black Africa the choice of
a total break with France or immediate independence within a kind of French
commonwealth. All but one of the new states chose association with France. In
exchange for aid from France, the African countries granted the French access to
untapped markets for their industrial goods, raw materials for their factories, out-
lets for profitable investment, and good temporary jobs for their engineers and
teachers. The British acted somewhat similarly.
As a result, western European countries actually managed to increase their

economic and cultural ties with their former African colonies in the 1960s and
1970s. Above all, they used the lure of special trading privileges and heavy invest-
ment in French- and English-language education to enhance a powerful Western
presence in the new African states. This situation led a variety of leaders and schol-
ars to charge that western Europe (and the United States) had imposed a system of
neocolonialism A system designed neocolonialism on the former colonies. According to this view, neocolonialism
to perpetuate Western economic was a system designed to perpetuate Western economic domination and under-
domination and undermine the promise
of political independence, thereby
mine the promise of political independence, thereby extending to Africa (and
extending to Africa (and much of Asia) much of Asia) the economic subordination that the United States had established
the economic subordination that the in Latin America in the nineteenth century. At the very least, enduring influence
United States had established in Latin in sub-Saharan Africa testified to western Europe’s resurgent economic and politi-
America in the nineteenth century.
cal power in international relations.
The Second World War cured the depression in the

America’s Civil Rights United States and brought about an economic boom.
Revolution In the postwar years, America experienced a genuine
social revolution. The civil rights movement threw off a deeply entrenched sys-
tem of segregation, discrimination, and repression of African Americans. As civil
rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968), told the white power structure,
“We will not hate you, but we will not obey your evil laws.”2 Through civil dis-
obedience and court challenges, separate schools and facilities for African Ameri-
cans were deemed illegal, as were job discrimination and obstacles to voting
The March on Washington, August 1963

The march marked a dramatic climax in the civil rights struggle. More than 200,000 people gathered at the
Lincoln Memorial to hear the young Martin Luther King, Jr., deliver his greatest address, the “I have a dream”
speech. (Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)
Soviet Eastern Europe (1945–1968) 791
rights. By the 1970s, substantial numbers of blacks had been elected to public and Sec tion Review
private office throughout the southern states, a sign of dramatic changes in Amer-
ican race relations. • New leadership in western Europe
provided social reform and rapid
President Lyndon Johnson (1908–1973) also declared “unconditional war on economic progress with the United
poverty,” and Congress and the administration created a host of antipoverty pro- States Marshall Plan’s economic aid
grams intended to aid all poor Americans and bring greater economic equality. and the Common Market; however,
Thus the United States promoted in the mid-1960s the kind of fundamental social the French withdrew their forces from
reform that western Europe had embraced immediately after the Second World NATO and vetoed majority rule in
the Common Market.
War. The United States became more of a welfare state, as government spending
for social benefits rose dramatically and approached European levels. • Increasing demands for indepen-
dence by colonies led to a period of
decolonization; India led the way,
gaining freedom through Mahatma
Soviet Eastern Europe (1945–1968) Gandhi’s program of nonviolence,
with Sri-Lanka, Burma, the Philip-
What was the pattern of postwar rebuilding and development in the pines, and Indonesia eventually also
Soviet Union and communist eastern Europe? gaining independence.
• China fought a civil war that left the
Soviet-backed communists in charge
While western Europe surged ahead economically after the Second World War
and set up a strong centralized state,
and increased its political power as American influence in Europe gradually while in Vietnam fighting led to two
waned, eastern Europe followed a different path. The Soviet Union first tightened independent states that remained
its grip on the “liberated” nations of eastern Europe under Stalin and then refused at odds.
to let go. Thus postwar economic recovery in eastern Europe proceeded along • In the Middle East, tensions mounted
Soviet lines, and political and social developments were strongly influenced by and came to violence when the
changes in the Soviet Union. United Nations divided Palestine into
two states, one Arab and the other
Jewish, which became Israel; in
Egypt, Nasser’s anti-Western Egyptian
The “Great Patriotic War of the Fatherland” had fos- nationalism triumphed over the
Stalin’s Last Years tered Russian nationalism and had unified the Russian British and French.
(1945–1953) people under their leaders. Having made a heroic war • In Africa, Algeria won its indepen-
effort, many people hoped in 1945 that a grateful party and government would dence and other African states gained
grant greater freedom and democracy. Such hopes were soon crushed. independence under the umbrella of
the British Commonwealth of Na-
Stalin’s new foreign foe in the West provided an excuse for re-establishing a
tions; France similarly granted free-
harsh dictatorship. Many returning soldiers and ordinary citizens were purged in doms but maintained economic
1945 and 1946, as Stalin revived the terrible forced-labor camps of the 1930s. Art- markets and industry in its former
ists who did not promote anti-Western ideology were denounced, and Soviet Jews colonies.
were accused of being pro-Western and antisocialist. • The civil rights movement in the
Five-year plans were reintroduced to cope with the enormous task of economic United States, headed by Martin
reconstruction. Once again, heavy industry and the military were given top prior- Luther King, Jr.’s commitment to
nonviolence, led to civil rights reforms
ity, and consumer goods, housing, and collectivized agriculture were neglected.
and an end to legal segregation while
Everyday life was very hard. In short, it was the 1930s all over again in the Soviet other social reforms and antipoverty
Union, although police terror was less intense. programs improved the condition of
Stalin’s prime postwar innovation was to export the Stalinist system to the the poorest Americans.
countries of eastern Europe. One-party states were established by 1948 and the
middle class was stripped of its possessions. Forced industrialization lurched for-
ward, and the collectivization of agriculture began.
Only Josip Broz Tito (TEE-toh) (1892–1980), the resistance leader and Com-
munist chief of Yugoslavia, was able to resist Soviet domination successfully. Tito
stood up to Stalin in 1948, and since there was no Russian army in Yugoslavia, he
got away with it. Yugoslavia prospered as a multiethnic state until it began to break
apart in the 1980s. Tito’s proclamation of independence infuriated Stalin. Else-
where Stalin sought obedient leaders and purged those who had the potential to
challenge him.
Sergei Eisenstein:
Ivan the Terrible
Eisenstein’s final masterpiece—one of
the greatest films ever—was filmed
during the Second World War and
released in two parts in 1946. In this
chilling scene, the crafty paranoid tyrant,
who has saved Russia from foreign
invaders, invites the unsuspecting Prince
Vladimir to a midnight revel that will
lead to his murder. The increasingly
demonic Ivan seemed to resemble
Stalin, and Eisenstein was censored
and purged. (David King Collection)
By the time of Stalin’s death in 1953, it was apparent

Reform and that support for the system was eroding and reforms
De-Stalinization were needed. However, the Communist leadership
(1953–1964) was badly split on the extent of changes needed. Con-
servatives wanted to make as few changes as possible. Reformers, who were led by
Nikita Khrushchev (KROOSH-chof), argued for major innovations. Khrushchev
(1894–1971), who had joined the party as an uneducated coal miner in 1918 and
risen to a high-level position in the 1930s, emerged as the new ruler in 1955.
To strengthen his position and that of his fellow reformers within the party,
Khrushchev launched an all-out attack on Stalin and his crimes at a closed session
of the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956. In gory detail, he described to the startled
Communist delegates how Stalin had tortured and murdered thousands of loyal
Communists, how he had trusted Hitler completely and bungled the country’s
defense, and how he had “supported the glorification of his own person with all
conceivable methods.” Khrushchev’s “secret speech” was read at Communist Party
meetings held throughout the country, and it strengthened the reform movement.
de-Stalinization The liberalization The liberalization—or de-Stalinization, as it was called in the West—of the
of the post-Stalin Soviet Union, led Soviet Union was genuine. While the Communist Party maintained its monopoly
by reformer Nikita Khrushchev.
on political power, Khrushchev brought in new members with new ideas. Some
resources were shifted from heavy industry and the military toward consumer
goods and agriculture, and Stalinist controls over workers were relaxed. The Soviet
Union’s very low standard of living finally began to improve and continued to rise
substantially throughout the booming 1960s.
De-Stalinization created great ferment among writers and intellectuals who
hungered for cultural freedom. The writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (sol-zhuh-
NEET-sin) (b. 1918) created a sensation when his One Day in the Life of Ivan
Denisovich was published in the Soviet Union in 1962. Solzhenitsyn’s novel por-
trays in grim detail life in a Stalinist concentration camp—a life to which Sol-
zhenitsyn himself had been unjustly condemned—and is a damning indictment
of the Stalinist past.
Khrushchev also de-Stalinized Soviet foreign policy. “Peaceful coexistence”
with capitalism was possible, he argued, and great wars were not inevitable.
Soviet Eastern Europe (1945–1968) 793
Khrushchev even made concessions, agreeing in 1955 to real independence for a

neutral Austria after ten long years of Allied occupation. Thus there was consider-
able relaxation of cold war tensions between 1955 and 1957. At the same time,
Khrushchev began wooing the new nations of Asia and Africa—even if they were
not communist—with promises and aid.
De-Stalinization stimulated rebelliousness in the eastern European satellites.
Poland took the lead in 1956, when extensive rioting brought a new government
that managed to win greater autonomy. In Hungary, revolution brought tragic re-
sults. Soviet troops were forced out and a new liberal communist leader was made
chief in October 1956. But after the new government promised free elections and
renounced Hungary’s military alliance with Moscow, the Russian leaders ordered
an invasion and crushed the national and democratic revolution. Fighting was
bitter until the end, for the Hungarians hoped that the United States would come
to their aid. When this did not occur, most people in eastern Europe concluded
that their only hope was to strive for small domestic gains while following Russia
obediently in foreign affairs.
By late 1962, opposition in party circles to Khrushchev’s

The End of Reform policies was strong, and in 1964 Leonid Brezhnev
(BREZH-nef) (1906–1982) took control. Under Brezh-
nev, the Soviet Union began a period of stagnation and limited “re-Stalinization.”
The basic reason for this development was that Khrushchev’s communist col-
leagues saw de-Stalinization as a dangerous threat to the dictatorial authority of
the party.
Another reason for conservative opposition was that Khrushchev’s policy
toward the West was erratic and ultimately unsuccessful. In 1958 he ordered the
Western allies to evacuate West Berlin within six months. In response, the allies
reaffirmed their unity in West Berlin, and Khrushchev backed down. Then in
1961, as relations with communist China deteriorated dramatically, Khrushchev
ordered the East Germans to build a wall between East and West Berlin, thereby
sealing off West Berlin in clear violation of existing access agreements between the
Great Powers. The recently elected U.S. president, John F. Kennedy, acquiesced
to the construction of the Berlin Wall. Emboldened and seeing a chance to change
the balance of military power decisively, Khrushchev ordered missiles with nuclear
warheads installed in Fidel Castro’s communist Cuba in 1962. President Kennedy
countered with a naval blockade of Cuba. After a tense diplomatic crisis, Khrush-
chev agreed to remove the Soviet missiles in return for American pledges not to
disturb Castro’s regime. Khrushchev looked like a bumbling buffoon; his influ-
ence, already slipping, declined rapidly after the Cuban fiasco.
When Brezhnev and his supporters took over, they launched a massive arms
buildup to counter American nuclear superiority. Yet Brezhnev and company
avoided direct confrontation with the United States. They were, however, willing
to act as aggressor against any Soviet bloc country moving toward liberalization.
The 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia exemplified the Brezhnev Doctrine regard- Brezhnev Doctrine The doctrine
ing the Soviet Union’s right to intervene in any socialist country whenever they created by Leonid Brezhnev and
exemplified by the Soviet invasion of
saw the need. Czechoslovakia in 1968, according to
In January 1968, the reform elements in the Czechoslovak Communist Party which the Soviet Union had the right
had gained a majority and voted out the long-time Stalinist leader in favor of to intervene in any socialist country
Alexander Dubček (DOOB-chek) (1921–1992), whose new government aimed to whenever it saw the need.
build what they called “socialism with a human face.” Local decision making by
trade unions, managers, and consumers replaced rigid bureaucratic planning, and
censorship was relaxed. Hardliners in Poland and East Germany were afraid that
The Invasion of Czechoslovakia

Armed with Czechoslovakian flags, courageous Czechs in downtown Prague try to stop a Soviet tank and repel
the invasion and occupation of their country by the Soviet Union and its eastern European allies. This dramatic
confrontation marked a high point, because the Czechs and the Slovaks realized that military resistance would
be suicidal. (AP/Wide World Photos)
the reform movement would spread and push them out of power, while Moscow
feared that a liberalized Czechoslovakia would eventually be drawn to neutrality
or even to the democratic West. Thus the Eastern bloc countries launched a con-
certed campaign of intimidation against the Czechoslovak leaders, and in August
1968, 500,000 Russian and allied eastern European troops suddenly occupied
Czechoslovakia. The arrested leaders surrendered to Soviet demands, and the re-
form program was abandoned.
The 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia was the crucial event of the Brezhnev
era, which really lasted beyond the aging leader’s death in 1982 until the emergence
in 1985 of Mikhail Gorbachev (GORE-beh-chof). The invasion demonstrated the
determination of the ruling elite to maintain the status quo throughout the Soviet
bloc. Only in the 1980s, with Poland taking the lead, would a strong current of
reform and opposition develop again to challenge Communist Party rule.
Determined to maintain firm control of eastern Eu-

The Soviet Union rope, Soviet leaders set the example at home. There
re-Stalinization An attempt by Soviet
to 1985 was a certain re-Stalinization of the U.S.S.R., but now
leaders to maintain firm control of dictatorship was collective rather than personal, and coercion replaced terror. This
eastern Europe.
compromise seemed to suit the leaders and a majority of the people.
Postwar Social Transformations (1945–1968) 795
A slowly rising standard of living for ordinary people contributed to the appar- Sec tion Review
ent stability in the Soviet Union, although long food lines and innumerable short-
ages persisted. Ambitious individuals had a tremendous incentive to do as the state • Stalin’s post-war programs were harsh,
building up industry and the military
wished in order to gain access to special, well-stocked stores, to attend special at the expense of consumer goods,
schools, and to travel abroad. housing, and agriculture; in eastern
The strength of the government was expressed in the re-Stalinization of cul- Europe, Soviet-backed countries, with
ture and art. Acts of open nonconformity and public protest were often punished the exception of Yugoslavia, set up
by blacklisting, leaving the dissident unable to find a decent job. More determined similar programs.
protesters were quietly imprisoned, while celebrated nonconformists such as Alek- • Stalin’s successor Khrushchev
sandr Solzhenitsyn were permanently expelled from the country. brought to light the horrors of Stalin’s
regime and began de-Stalinizing the
Eliminating the worst aspects of Stalin’s dictatorship strengthened the regime, country, bringing reforms that im-
and almost all Western experts concluded that rule by a self-perpetuating Com- proved the standard of living; he also
munist Party elite in the Soviet Union appeared to be quite solid in the 1970s and relaxed Soviet foreign policy, albeit
early 1980s. Yet Soviet life was changing profoundly in the Brezhnev era, laying erratically, easing cold war tensions.
the groundwork for the revolution to come under Gorbachev. The urban popula- • Khrushchev’s successor Brezhnev
tion grew rapidly in the 1960s and 1970s, and these city dwellers were better edu- went back to a Stalinist type of rule,
cated and more sophisticated than the peasants of earlier generations. Many of ending reform and implementing
strict control of Eastern bloc coun-
them were highly trained scientists, managers, and specialists. Educated people tries, putting down a progressive new
read, discussed, and formed definite ideas on important issues, many of which government in Czechoslovakia in
could be approached and debated in “nonpolitical” terms. Developing ideas on 1968 and launching an arms buildup
such questions as environmental pollution and urban transportation, educated to counter American superiority.
urban people increasingly saw themselves as worthy of having a voice in society’s • The Soviet dictatorship was collective
decisions, even its political decisions. and domestic conditions improved,
but personal advancement was based
on loyalty to the party, which pun-
ished dissenters, although an increas-
ingly educated public began to gain
Postwar Social Transformations (1945–1968) interest in influencing political
decisions.
How did changing patterns in technology, class relations, women’s work,
and youth culture bring major social transformations?
During the postwar period, the patterns of everyday life and the structure of West-
ern society were changing along with the economy and politics. New inventions
and technologies profoundly affected human existence. The structure of women’s
lives changed dramatically. An international youth culture took shape and rose to
challenge established lifestyles and even governments.
With the advent of the Second World War, most lead-

Science and ing university scientists went to work on top-secret
Technology government projects. British scientists, for example,
developed radar to detect enemy aircraft, which was key to Britain’s victory in the
battle for air supremacy in 1940. The air war also greatly stimulated the development
of jet aircraft and spurred further research on electronic computers, which calcu-
lated the complex mathematical relationships between fast-moving planes and
anti-aircraft shells to increase the likelihood of a hit. However, it was the atomic
bomb, the product of three years of intensive research, that showed the world both
the awesome power and the heavy moral responsibilities of modern science.
The spectacular results of directed research during World War II inspired Big Science The combination of
theoretical work with sophisticated
a new model for science—Big Science. By combining theoretical work with engineering in a large organization to
sophisticated engineering in a large organization, Big Science could attack ex- create improved consumer products and
tremely difficult problems, from better products for consumers to new and improved military weapons.
weapons for the military. Big Science was extremely expensive, requiring large-
scale financing from governments and large corporations.
Populous, victorious, and wealthy, the United States took the lead in Big Sci-
ence after World War II. Between 1945 and 1965, spending on scientific research
and development in the United States grew five times as fast as the national in-
come, and by 1965 such spending took 3 percent of all U.S. income. It was gen-
erally accepted that government should finance science heavily in both the
“capitalist” United States and the “socialist” Soviet Union. In both countries a
large portion of all postwar scientific research went for “defense.” New weapons
such as rockets, nuclear submarines, and spy satellites demanded breakthroughs
no less remarkable than those of radar and the first atomic bomb. Sophisticated
science, lavish government spending, and military needs all came together in the
space race of the 1960s. In 1957 the Soviets put a satellite in orbit, and in 1961
they sent the world’s first cosmonaut circling the globe. The United States raced
to catch up with the Soviets and landed a crewed spacecraft on the moon in 1969.
Four more moon landings followed by 1972.
The rise of Big Science and of close ties between science and technology
greatly altered the lives of scientists. The scientific community grew much larger
than ever before. There were about four times as many scientists in Europe and
North America in 1975 as in 1945. With increased specialization, modern scien-
tists and technologists normally had to work as members of a team, typically in
large bureaucratic organizations. There the individual was very often a small cog
in a great machine. Modern science also became highly, even brutally, competi-
tive. James Watson, who worked with Francis Crick to discover the structure of
DNA, exemplified the competitive spirit in his race to crack the molecule of he-
redity before another research team. With so many thousands of like-minded re-
searchers in the wealthy countries of the world, scientific and technical knowledge
rushed forward in the postwar era.
Scientists and engineers were not the only people to

The Changing experience a transformation of the workplace in the
Class Structure postwar years. For both the middle and lower classes,
the new economy brought new opportunities for making and spending money.
A new breed of managers and experts replaced traditional property owners as
the leaders of the middle class. Well paid and highly trained, often with back-
grounds in engineering or accounting, these experts increasingly came from all
social classes, even the working class. The ability to serve the needs of a big organi-
zation largely replaced inherited property and family connections in determining
an individual’s social position. This new middle class was more open, democratic,
and insecure than the old propertied middle class. At the same time, the middle
class grew massively and became harder to define.
The lower classes were also transformed, as many people abandoned the tradi-
tional, rooted life of the farm for a more mobile urban existence. Meanwhile, the
number of factory jobs ceased to expand and began to decline, and the remaining
industrial workers became better educated and more specialized. Job opportuni-
ties for white-collar and service employees grew rapidly.
European governments were reducing class tensions with a series of social se-
curity reforms. Many of these reforms—such as increased unemployment benefits
and more extensive old-age pensions—simply strengthened social security mea-
sures first pioneered in Bismarck’s Germany before the First World War (see page
661). Other programs were new, like comprehensive national health systems
directed by the state. Most countries introduced family allow-

ances—direct government grants to parents to help them raise
their children. Most European governments also gave mater-
nity grants and built inexpensive public housing. These and
other social reforms provided a humane floor of well-being.
Reforms also promoted greater equality because they were
paid for in part by higher taxes on the rich.
The rising standard of living and the availability of credit
made consumer goods such as washing machines, refrigera-
tors, vacuum cleaners, radios, TVs, and even automobiles
more accessible to workers. With the expansion of social secu-
rity safeguards for hard times and old age, ordinary people
were increasingly willing to take on debt. This change had
far-reaching consequences.
Leisure and recreation occupied an important place in
consumer societies. The most astonishing leisure-time devel-
opment was the blossoming of mass travel and tourism. With
month-long paid vacations required by law in most European
countries and widespread automobile ownership, beaches
and ski resorts came within the reach of the middle class and
much of the working class. By the late 1960s, packaged tours
with cheap group flights and bargain hotel accommodations
had made even distant lands easily accessible. Truly, consum-
erism had come of age.
The postwar era saw significant

New Roles transformations in the lives of
for Women Consumers on the Move
women, preparing the way for the
In the early postwar years the Italians had their motor scooters
success of a new generation of feminist thinkers and a militant and the French their motorbikes. This ad promises young people
women’s movement in the 1970s and 1980s (see pages 802– that “sooner or later” they will have a “Velo,” and it subtly assures
803). Building on trends that had developed with the Indus- housewives that the bike is safe. In small towns and villages the
trial Revolution, this period was one of early marriage, early slow-moving motorbike could be a godsend for errands and daily
childbearing, and small family size in wealthy urban areas. By shopping. (Roger Perrin/ The Bridgeman Art Library)
the early 1970s, about half of Western women were having
their last baby by the age of twenty-six or twenty-seven. When
the youngest child trooped off to kindergarten, the average mother had more than
forty years of life in front of her.
This was a momentous change. Throughout history male-dominated society
insisted on defining most women as mothers or potential mothers, and mother-
hood was very demanding. In the postwar years, however, motherhood no longer
absorbed the energies of a lifetime, and more and more married women looked for
new roles in the world of work outside the family (see Figure 30.1).
Three major forces helped women searching for jobs. First, the economy
boomed from about 1950 to 1973 and created a strong demand for labor. Second,
the economy continued its gradual shift away from the old, male-dominated heavy
industries, such as coal, steel, and shipbuilding, to the more dynamic, “white-
collar” service industries, such as government, education, trade, and health care.
Some women had always worked in these service fields. Third, young Western
women shared fully in the postwar education revolution and could take advantage
of the growing need for office workers and well-trained professionals. Thus more
and more married women became full-time and part-time wage earners.
FIGURE 30.1 The Decline of the Birthrate and the

27.5 50 Increase of Married Working Women in the United
States, 1952–1979
Percentage of married working women

25.0 45 The challenge of working away from home encouraged American
Birthrate
wives to prefer fewer children and helped lower the birthrate.
Births (per thousand)
22.5 40
20.0 35
The trend went the furthest in communist eastern
17.5 30 Europe, where women accounted for almost half of all
employed persons. In noncommunist western Europe
15.0 Married working women 25 and North America, there was a good deal of variation,
with the percentage of married women in the workforce
rising from a range of roughly 20 to 25 percent in 1950 to
1952 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1979 a range of 40 to 70 percent in the early 1980s.
Note: Data for married working women includes only women
with husbands present.
Married women entering (or re-entering) the labor
force faced widespread, long-established discrimination
in pay, advancement, and occupational choice in com-
parison to men. Moreover, many women could find only
part-time work. As the divorce rate rose in the 1960s, part-time work, with its low
pay and scanty benefits, meant poverty for many women with teenage children.
Finally, in the best of circumstances, married working women still carried most of
the child-raising and housekeeping responsibilities. A reason for many to accept
part-time employment, this gendered imbalance meant an exhausting “double
day”—on the job and at home—for the full-time worker.
The injustices that married women encountered as wage earners contributed
greatly to the subsequent movement for women’s equality and emancipation. A
young unmarried woman of a hundred years ago was more likely to accept such
problems as temporary nuisances because she looked forward to marriage and
motherhood for fulfillment. In the postwar era, a married wage earner in her thir-
ties gradually developed a very different perspective. She saw employment as a
permanent condition within which she, like her male counterpart, sought not
only income but also psychological satisfaction. Sexism and discrimination in the
workplace—and in the home—grew loathsome and evoked the sense of injustice
that drives revolutions and reforms. When powerful voices arose to challenge the
system, they found widespread support among working women.
The “baby boom” generation born after World War II

Youth and the developed a distinctive and very international youth
Counterculture culture, which eventually became a “counterculture”
of social rebellion.
Young people in the United States took the lead. By the late 1950s the “beat”
movement was stoking the fires of revolt in selected urban enclaves, such as the
Near North Side of Chicago. There the young (and the not-so-young) fashioned a
highly publicized subculture that blended radical politics, unbridled personal ex-
perimentation (with drugs and communal living, for example), and new artistic
styles. This subculture quickly spread to major American and western European
cities. In the words of folksinger Bob Dylan, “the times they are a’changing.”3
Certainly the sexual behavior of young people appeared to change dramati-
cally in the 1960s and into the 1970s. More young people engaged in sexual inter-
course, and they did so at an earlier age, in part because the discovery of safe and
effective contraceptive pills could eliminate the risk of unwanted pregnancy. Per-
haps even more significant was the growing tendency of young unmarried people
to live together in a separate household on a semipermanent basis, demonstrating
in effect that the long-standing monopoly of married couples on legitimate sexual
unions was dead.
Several factors contributed to the emergence of the international youth cul-
ture in the 1960s. First, mass communications and youth travel linked countries
and continents together. Second, the postwar baby boom meant that young people
became an unusually large part of the population and could therefore exercise
exceptional influence on society as a whole. Third, postwar prosperity and greater
equality gave young people more purchasing power than ever before. This en-
abled them to set their own trends and patterns of consumption, which fostered
generational loyalty. Finally, prosperity meant that good jobs were readily avail-
able, and employers might be more willing to hire unconventional young people.
The youth culture practically fused with the counterculture in opposition to the
established order in the late 1960s. Student protesters saw the materialistic West as
hopelessly rotten but believed that better societies were being built in the newly
independent countries of Asia and Africa. Thus the Vietnam War was perceived
by young radicals as an immoral and imperialistic war against a small and heroic
people. As the war intensified, so did worldwide student opposition to it.
Student protests in western Europe were also a response to the negative conse-
quences of the rapid expansion of higher education. Classes were badly over-
crowded and competition for grades became intense. Moreover, although more
practical areas of study were gradually added, many students felt that they were not
getting the kind of education they needed for jobs in the modern world. At the
same time, some reflective students feared that universities would soon do nothing
but turn out docile technocrats both to stock and to serve “the establishment.”
Student Rebellion in Paris

These rock-throwing students in the Latin Quarter of Paris are trying to force education reforms and even to topple de
Gaulle’s government. Throughout May 1968 students clashed repeatedly with France’s tough riot police in bloody street
fighting. De Gaulle remained in power, but a major reform of French education did follow. (Bruno Barbey/Magnum Photos)
Sec tion Review The many tensions within the exploding university population came to a head
in the late 1960s and early 1970s, most famously in France in May 1968. Students
• Big Science became the trend as sci- occupied buildings and took over the University of Paris, which led to violent
ence and technology developed new
weapons that required huge govern-
clashes with police. In defiance of union officials, many workers across France
ment expenditures, fueling the compe- joined the protest by going on strike. It seemed certain that President de Gaulle’s
tition between the U.S.S.R. and the Fifth Republic would collapse.
United States that extended into space. In fact, de Gaulle stiffened, like an old-fashioned irate father. He moved troops
• The middle class changed from the toward Paris and called for new elections. The masses of France, fearing an even-
owners of inherited property to well- tual communist takeover, voted overwhelmingly for de Gaulle’s party and a return
educated managers in big business, to law and order. Workers went back to work, and the mini-revolution collapsed.
while the lower classes enjoyed stronger
social welfare programs, increasing
Yet within a year de Gaulle resigned. Growing out of the counterculture and
consumer goods, and substantial leisure youthful idealism, the student rebellion of 1968 signaled the end of an era and the
activities. return of unrest and uncertainty in the 1970s and early 1980s.
• The women’s movement for equality
and emancipation was driven by edu-
cated young women who saw them-
selves as permanent members of the Conflict and Challenge in the Late Cold War
workforce, yet who still faced discrimi-
nation in pay, advancement, and occu- (1968–1985)
pational choices.
What were the key aspects of political conflict, economic stagnation,
• A generation of educated youths, open and the feminist movement in the late cold war?
to experimentation and radical politics,
with money and strength in numbers,
and linked globally through mass com- The Vietnam War also marked the beginning of a new era of challenges and un-
munications, exerted their influence by certainties in the late 1960s. The war and its aftermath divided the people of the
protesting the Vietnam War and, in
United States, shook the ideology of containment, and weakened the Western al-
France, the higher education system.
liance. A second challenge affecting the whole world appeared when the great
postwar economic boom came to a close in 1973, opening a long period of eco-
nomic stagnation, widespread unemployment, and social dislocation. The era also
saw the birth of new liberation movements, including the women’s movement for
gender equality.
President Johnson wanted his legacy to be as the cham-

The United States pion of civil rights and the leader of the “war on pov-
and Vietnam erty.” Instead, his presidency is better known for having
drafted thousands of young American men for a foreign war that divided the
nation.
American involvement in Vietnam was primarily a product of the cold war
and the policy of containing the spread of communism. As western Europe began
to revive and China established a communist government in 1949, efforts to con-
tain communism shifted to Asia. The bloody Korean War (1950–1953) ended in
stalemate, but the United States did succeed in preventing a communist victory in
South Korea. After the Vietnamese won their independence from France in 1954,
the United States refused to sign the Geneva Accords that temporarily divided
Vietnam into two zones pending national unification by means of free elections.
(Ho Chi Minh led a socialist state in the northern zone.) When the anticommu-
nist South Vietnamese government declined to hold elections, President Eisen-
hower supported it with military aid. President Kennedy greatly increased the
number of American “military advisers” in South Vietnam to sixteen thousand.
After winning the 1964 election on a peace platform, President Johnson greatly
expanded the American role in the Vietnam conflict. The United States gave
South Vietnam massive military aid, American forces in the South gradually grew
Conflict and Challenge in the Late Cold War (1968–1985) 801
to half a million men, and the United States bombed North Viet-
nam with ever-greater intensity.
The undeclared war in Vietnam, fought nightly on American
television, eventually divided the nation. In October 1965, student
protesters joined forces with old-line socialists, New Left intellectu-
als, and pacifists in antiwar demonstrations in fifty American cities.
By 1967 a growing number of critics denounced the war as a crim-
inal intrusion into a complex and distant civil war. Criticism reached
a crescendo in January 1968, after the Tet Offensive, the first com-
prehensive attack by the Vietcong on major cities in South Viet-
nam. Although the Vietcong suffered heavy losses, the Tet Offensive
signaled that the war was not close to ending, as Washington had
claimed. President Johnson called for negotiations with North
Vietnam and announced that he would not stand for re-election.
The new president, Richard Nixon (1913–1994), promised
“peace with honor.” In his second term in office, Nixon and Secre-
tary of State Henry Kissinger finally reached a peace agreement
with North Vietnam. The 1973 agreement allowed American
forces, which had been withdrawing since 1971, to complete their
withdrawal, and the United States reserved the right to resume
bombing if the accords were broken. Fighting declined markedly
in South Vietnam, where the South Vietnamese army appeared to
hold its own against the Vietcong. But in early 1974, when North Seymour Chwast: End Bad Breath
Vietnam launched a general invasion against South Vietnamese Antiwar messages came in every shape and form as
armies, the United States Congress refused to permit a military re- opposition to the Vietnam War heated up. This vibrant
sponse. At this point Nixon had resigned as a result of the Water- poster assumes, quite reasonably, that the American viewer
gate scandal, in which he and others were exposed in lies about the is steeped in the popular culture of the mass media. It
illegal break-in of the Democratic Party headquarters. The belated ridicules American military involvement with a sarcastic
parody of familiar television commercials. (Courtesy, Seymore
fall of South Vietnam in the wake of Watergate shook America’s
Chwast/PushPin Group)
postwar confidence and left the country divided and uncertain
about its proper role in world affairs. Watergate The scandal in which
Nixon’s assistants broke into the
Democratic Party headquarters in July
1972 and the administration attempted
One alternative to the badly damaged policy of con- to cover it up.
Détente or Cold War? taining communism was the policy of détente (dey-
TAHNT), or the easing of cold war tensions. Thus while détente The progressive relaxation of
cold war tensions.
the cold war continued to define superpower relations between the Soviet Union
and the United States, West Germany took a major step toward genuine peace
in Europe.
West German leader Willy Brandt (1913–1992) aimed at nothing less than a
comprehensive peace settlement for central Europe and the two German states
established after 1945. Winning the chancellorship in 1969, Brandt negotiated
treaties with the Soviet Union, Poland, and Czechoslovakia that formally accepted
existing state boundaries in return for a mutual renunciation of force or the threat
of force. Using the imaginative formula of “two German states within one German
nation,” Brandt’s government also broke decisively with the past policy of refusing
to recognize the legitimacy of East Germany and entered into direct relations with
that state. He aimed for modest practical improvements rather than reunification,
which at that point was inconceivable.
The policy of détente reached its high point when all European nations (ex-
cept Albania), the United States, Canada, and the Soviet Union signed the Final
Act of the Helsinki Conference in 1975. The thirty-five nations participating
agreed that Europe’s existing political frontiers could not be changed by force.
They also solemnly accepted numerous provisions guaranteeing the human rights
and political freedoms of their citizens.
Hopes for détente in international relations gradually faded in the later 1970s.
Many Americans became convinced that the Soviet Union was steadily building
up its military might and pushing for political gains and revolutions in Africa, Asia,
and Latin America. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, which
was designed to save an increasingly unpopular Marxist regime, was especially
alarming. Fearing that the oil-rich states of the Persian Gulf would be next, Amer-
icans looked to the Atlantic alliance to thwart communist expansion and hold
Brezhnev to the human rights provisions of the Helsinki Agreement.
President Jimmy Carter (b. 1924), elected in 1976, tried to lead the Atlantic
alliance beyond verbal condemnation and urged economic sanctions against the
Soviet Union. Yet only Great Britain among the European allies supported the
American initiative. The alliance showed the same lack of concerted action when
the Solidarity movement rose in Poland. Some observers concluded that the alli-
ance had lost the will to think and act decisively in dealing with the Soviet bloc.
The Atlantic alliance endured, however. The U.S. military buildup launched
by Carter in his last years in office was greatly accelerated by President Ronald
Reagan (1911–2004), who referred to the Soviet Union as the “evil empire.” In-
creasing defense spending enormously, the Reagan administration concentrated
on nuclear arms and an expanded navy as keys to American power in the post-
Vietnam age.
A broad swing in the pendulum toward greater conservatism in the 1980s gave
Reagan invaluable allies in western Europe. In Great Britain, Margaret Thatcher
worked well with Reagan and was a forceful advocate for a revitalized Atlantic al-
liance. In West Germany, Helmut Kohl worked with the United States to coordi-
nate military and political policy toward the Soviet bloc. In maintaining the
alliance, the Western nations gave indirect support to ongoing efforts to liberalize
authoritarian communist eastern Europe.
The 1970s marked the birth of a broad-based feminist

The Women’s movement devoted to securing genuine gender equal-
Movement ity and promoting the general interests of women.
Three basic reasons accounted for this major development. First, ongoing changes
in underlying patterns of motherhood and paid work created novel conditions and
new demands (see pages 797–798). Second, a vanguard of feminist intellectuals
articulated a powerful critique of gender relations, which stimulated many women
to rethink their assumptions and challenge the status quo. Third, taking a lesson
from the civil rights movement in the United States and worldwide student protest
against the Vietnam War, dissatisfied individuals recognized that they had to band
together if they were to influence politics and secure fundamental reforms.
One of the most influential written works produced by this new feminist wave
was The Second Sex (1949) by the French writer and philosopher Simone de
Beauvoir (1908–1986). Beauvoir analyzed the position of women within the
framework of existential thought (see pages 728–729). She argued that women
had almost always been trapped by particularly inflexible and limiting conditions.
(See the feature “Listening to the Past: A Feminist Critique of Marriage” on pages
808–809.) Only by courageously embracing her freedom could a woman escape
the role of the inferior “other.” Drawing on history, philosophy, psychology, biol-
ogy, and literature, Beauvoir’s massive investigation inspired a generation of fe-
male intellectuals.
Conflict and Challenge in the Late Cold War (1968–1985) 803
Celebrating Women’s History

Judy Chicago’s multimedia creation The Dinner Party
features thirty-nine handcrafted placemats and ceramic
plates, each embellished with a painted motif associated
with the woman being honored. Begun in 1974 and
completed in 1978 with the participation of more than
one hundred women, The Dinner Party was intended to
represent the “historic struggle of women to participate
in all the aspects of society.” It attracted enormous
crowds. (© Judy Chicago, 1979/Artists Rights Society [ARS], New York)
One such woman was the American writer

and organizer Betty Friedan (fri-DAN) (1921–
2006). In The Feminine Mystique (1963),
Friedan concluded that many well-educated
women shared her growing dissatisfaction with
a life devoted to the service of husbands and
children. According to Friedan, women faced
a crisis of identity because they were not per-
mitted to become mature adults and genuine
human beings. In short, women faced what feminists would soon call sexism, a
pervasive social problem that required drastic reforms.
Friedan took the lead in 1966 in founding the National Organization for
Women (NOW) to press for women’s rights. NOW flourished, growing from seven
hundred members in 1967 to forty thousand in 1974. Many other women’s organi-
zations took root in Europe and the United States. Throughout the 1970s, a pro-
liferation of publications, conferences, and institutions devoted to women’s issues
reinforced the emerging international movement.
This movement generally shared the common strategy of pushing for new stat-
utes in the workplace: laws against discrimination, “equal pay for equal work,” and
supportive measures such as maternal leave and affordable day care. In addition, the
movement concentrated on gender and family questions, including the right to di-
vorce (in some Catholic countries), legalized abortion, the needs of single mothers,
and protection from rape and physical violence. In almost every country, the effort to
decriminalize abortion served as a catalyst in mobilizing an effective, self-conscious
women’s movement (and in creating an opposition to it, as in the United States).
The sharply focused women’s movement of the 1970s was successful in winning
new rights for women. Subsequently, the movement became more diffuse, a vic-
tim of both its successes and the resurgence of an antifeminist opposition.
The accomplishments of the women’s movement encouraged mobilization by
many other groups. Gay men and lesbian women pressed their own demands, or-
ganizing politically and calling for an end to legal discrimination and social harass-
ment. People with physical disabilities joined together to promote their interests.
Thus many subordinate groups challenged the dominant majorities, and the ex-
pansion and redefinition of human liberty—one of the great themes of modern
Western and world history—continued.
The 1970s and early 1980s witnessed the worst eco-

Society in a Time of nomic decline since the Great Depression. The great
Economic Uncertainty postwar boom had been fueled by cheap oil from the
Middle East, which permitted energy-intensive industries—automobiles, chemicals,
and electric power—to expand rapidly and lead other sectors of the economy for-
OPEC The Arab-led Organization of ward. By 1971 the Arab-led Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)
Petroleum Exporting Countries. was no longer satisfied to see the price of oil decline as the price of manufactured
goods rose, and they presented a united front against the oil companies. When
OPEC declared an embargo on oil shipments to the United States, during the
fourth Arab-Israeli war in October 1973, oil prices quadrupled within the year.
Governments, industry, and individuals had no other choice than to deal piecemeal
with the so-called oil shock—a “shock” that turned out to be an earthquake.
The energy-intensive industries that had driven the economy upward in the
1950s and 1960s now dragged it down. Unemployment rose; productivity and liv-
ing standards declined. By 1976 a modest recovery was in progress. But when a
fundamentalist Islamic revolution struck Iran and oil production collapsed in that
country, the price of crude oil doubled in 1979 and the world economy suc-
cumbed to its second oil shock. Unemployment and inflation rose dramatically
before another uneven recovery began in 1982. In 1985 the unemployment rate
in western Europe rose to its highest level since the Great Depression. Nineteen
million people were unemployed.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, anxious observers, recalling the disastrous
consequences of the Great Depression, worried that the Common Market would
disintegrate in the face of severe economic dislocation and that economic nation-
alism would halt steps toward European unity. Yet the Common Market—now
officially known as the European Economic Community—continued to attract
new members. In 1973 Denmark and Iceland, in addition to Britain, finally joined.
Greece joined in 1981, and Portugal and Spain entered in 1986. The nations of the
European Economic Community also cooperated more closely in international
undertakings, and the movement toward unity for western Europe stayed alive.
As a consequence of the economic stagnation of the 1970s and early 1980s,
optimism gave way to pessimism; romantic utopianism yielded to sober realism.
This drastic change in mood—a complete surprise only to those who had never
studied history—affected states, institutions, and individuals in countless ways.
Governments responded with social programs to prevent mass suffering and
degradation. Indeed, government spending increased sharply in most countries dur-
ing the 1970s and early 1980s. In all countries, however, people were much more
willing to see their governments increase spending than raise taxes. This imbal-
ance contributed to the rapid growth of budget deficits, national debts, and infla-
tion. By the late 1970s, a powerful reaction against government’s ever-increasing role
had set in, however, and Western governments were gradually forced to introduce
austerity measures to slow the growth of public spending and the welfare state.
This conservative backlash helped bring Margaret Thatcher (b. 1925) to power
in Britain in 1979. Thatcher was determined to scale back the role of government
in Britain, and in the 1980s—the “Thatcher years”—she pushed through a series
of controversial “free market” policies that transformed postwar Britain. In one of
its most popular actions, Thatcher’s Conservative government encouraged low-
and moderate-income renters in state-owned housing projects to buy their apart-
ments at rock-bottom prices. This initiative, part of Thatcher’s broader privatization
campaign, created a whole new class of property owners, thereby eroding the elec-
toral base of Britain’s socialist Labour Party. (See the feature “Individuals in Soci-
ety: Margaret Thatcher.”)
President Ronald Reagan’s success in the United States was more limited.
With widespread support, Reagan in 1981 pushed through major cuts in income
taxes all across the board. But Reagan and Congress failed to cut government
spending, which increased as a percentage of national income in the course of his
Margaret Thatcher
M argaret Thatcher (b. 1925), the first woman elected
to lead a major European state, stands as one of the
most significant leaders of the late twentieth century. The
Thatcher’s second term was the high point of her
success and influence. Her whole hearted commitment
to privatization changed the face of British industry.
controversial “Iron Lady” attacked socialism, promoted More than fifty state-owned companies, ranging from
capitalism, and changed the face of modern Britain. the state telephone monopoly
Born Margaret Roberts in a small city in southeast- to the nationalized steel trust,
ern England, her father was a small shopkeeper who were sold to private investors.
instilled in his daughter the classic lower-middle-class Small investors were offered
virtues—hard work, personal responsibility, and practi- shares at bargain prices to
cal education. A scholarship student at a local girls promote “people’s capitalism.”
school, she entered Oxford in 1943 to study chemistry Thatcher also curbed the
but soon found that politics was her passion. Elected power of British labor unions
president of the student Conservatives, she ran in 1950 with various laws and actions.
for Parliament in a solidly Labour district to gain experi- Most spectacularly, when in
ence. Articulate and attractive, she also gained the atten- 1984 the once mighty coal
tion of Denis Thatcher, a wealthy businessman who miners rejected more mine
drove her to campaign appearances in his Jaguar. Mar- closings and doggedly struck
ried a year later, the new Mrs. Thatcher abandoned for a year, Thatcher stood firm
chemistry, went to law school, gave birth to twins, and and beat them. This outcome
practiced as a tax attorney. In 1959, she returned to pol- had a profound psychological
itics and won a seat in the Conservative triumph. impact on the public. Margaret Thatcher as prime
For the next fifteen years Mrs. Thatcher served in Elected again in 1987, minister. (AP Images/Staff-Caulkin)
Parliament and held various ministerial posts when the Thatcher became increasingly
Conservatives governed. In 1974, as the economy soured stubborn, overconfident, and
and the Conservatives lost two close elections, a rebel- uncaring. Working well with her ideological soul mate,
lious Margaret Thatcher adroitly ran for the leadership U.S. president Ronald Reagan, she opposed greater po-
position of the Conservative Party and won. In the 1979 litical and economic unity within the European Com-
election, as the Labour government faced rampant in- munity. This, coupled with an unpopular effort to assert
flation and crippling strikes, Mrs. Thatcher promised to financial control over city governments, proved her un-
reduce union power, lower taxes, and promote free mar- doing. In 1990, as in 1974, party stalwarts suddenly re-
kets. Attracting swing votes from skilled workers, she volted and elected a new Conservative leader. Raised to
won and became prime minister. the peerage by Queen Elizabeth II, the new Lady
A self-described “conviction politician,” Thatcher Thatcher then sat in the largely ceremonial House of
rejected postwar Keynesian efforts to manage the econ- Lords. The transformational changes of the Thatcher
omy, arguing that governments had created inflation by years endured, consolidated by her Conservative succes-
printing too much money. Thus her government re- sor and largely accepted by the “New Labour” prime
duced the supply of money and credit, and it refused to minister, the moderate Tony Blair.
retreat as interest rates and unemployment soared. Her
popularity plummeted. But Thatcher was saved by good
luck—and courage. In 1982, the generals ruling Argen- 1. Why did Margaret Thatcher want to change Brit-
tina suddenly seized the Falkland Islands off the Ar- ain, and how did she do it?
gentine coast, the home of 1,800 British citizens. Ever a 2. Historians have often debated whether great leaders
staunch nationalist, Thatcher detached a naval armada determine the course of history, or whether they
that recaptured the Falklands without a hitch. Britain only ride successfully the major forces of their time.
loved Thatcher’s determination, and the “Iron Lady” Which view of history is supported by Thatcher’s
was reelected in 1983. achievements? Why?
805
Sec tion Review presidency. Reagan’s massive military buildup was partly responsible, but spend-
ing on social programs also grew rapidly as more people needed unemployment
• The United States backed the anti- and welfare benefits. Thus the budget deficit soared and the U.S. government debt
communist South Vietnamese militar-
ily, gradually expanding the American
tripled in a decade.
presence in Vietnam until protests at Individuals felt the impact of austerity at an early date, for unlike governments,
home led to a peace agreement with they could not pay their bills by printing money and going ever further into debt.
North Vietnam and fighting subsided, The energy crisis of the 1970s forced them to re-examine not only their fuel bills
but when the North invaded the South, but also the whole pattern of self-indulgent materialism in the postwar years. A
the United States did not respond and
the South fell to the communists.
growing number of experts and citizens concluded that the world was running out
of resources and decried wasteful industrial practices and environmental pollu-
• The Helsinki conference gave hope
that political and human rights for
tion. In West Germany young activists known as the Greens in 1979 founded a
European countries was ensured, but political party to fight for environmental causes. The German Green movement
the Soviets invaded Afghanistan and the elected some national and local representatives, and similar parties developed
United States revitalized NATO to throughout Europe as environmentalism became a leading societal concern.
contain the Soviet “evil empire.” Another consequence of austerity in both Europe and North America was a
• Feminist leaders founded the National self-improvement movement that focused on strict diet and exercise routines as a
Organization for Women, pressing for means to longevity. In addition, men and women were encouraged to postpone
an end to sexual discrimination, giving
strength to other subordinate group
marriage until they had put their careers on a firm foundation, so the age of
movements such as gays and lesbians, marriage rose sharply for both sexes in many Western countries. Indeed, career
but also creating an anti-feminist planning became important to a generation faced with the very real threat of
movement, mostly angered by the unemployment or “underemployment” in a dead-end job.
abortion issue. Harder times also help explain why ever more women entered or remained in
• Economic decline and a sharp rise in the workforce after they did marry. Although attitudes related to personal fulfill-
unemployment followed increasing oil ment were one reason for the continuing increase—especially for well-educated,
prices; governments responded by
increasing social welfare programs and
upper-middle-class women—many wives in poor and middle-class families simply
going into debt; the new austerity had to work outside the home because of economic necessity. As in preindustrial
sparked a trend toward environmental- Europe, the wife’s earnings provided the margin of survival for millions of hard-
ism and health consciousness. pressed families.
Chapter Review
What were the causes of the cold war? (page 782)
The Cold War grew out of the way World War II was fought in Europe. American
Key Terms
and British forces met Stalin’s armies in the middle of Germany and central Europe, Big Three (p. 782)
so that the war-torn continent was already divided militarily in 1945. Extremely suspi- Marshall Plan (p. 784)
cious of the West and well aware that democratic governments in eastern Europe NATO (p. 784)
would be opposed to the Soviet Union, Stalin gradually established dependent Com-
munist dictatorships in eastern Europe to ensure the security of the Soviet Union. cold war (p. 784)
Stalin’s action in Eastern Europe, together with bitter disagreements between the war- Christian Democrats
time allies over the treatment of Germany, then led to a spiraling ideological confron- (p. 785)
tation between East and West. The Cold War match-up in Europe was institutionalized Common Market (p. 787)
and extended to Asia, Africa, and Latin America for a long generation.
decolonization (p. 787)
neocolonialism (p. 790)
Why did western Europe recover so successfully? How did colonial peoples win de-Stalinization (p. 792)
political independence and American blacks triumph in the civil rights move-
Brezhnev Doctrine (p. 793)
ment? (page 785)
re-Stalinization (p. 794)
Western Europe’s success was due to a combination of political recovery, fundamen-
Big Science (p. 795)
tal social changes, and unprecedented economic expansion. Political recovery included
the establishment of democratic governments, the NATO alliance for military security, Watergate (p. 801)
and the movement toward European unity. A whole series of social reforms provided
Chapter Review 807
the citizens of the welfare state with national health systems, family allowances, paid détente (p. 801)
vacations, and shorter workweeks. In about 1950 economic growth took off for a gen-
eration, fueled by Marshall Plan aid, a consumer revolution, and the liberal trade poli- OPEC (p. 804)
cies of the new Common Market. The transition from imperialism to decolonization
proceeded rapidly, surprisingly smoothly, and without serious damage to western Eu-
rope. American blacks won victories in the struggle for civil rights because of their
courageous determination and the inspired leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr.
What was the pattern of postwar rebuilding and development in the Soviet
Union and communist eastern Europe? (page 791)
Postwar developments in the Soviet Union and communist eastern Europe displayed
both similarities to and differences from developments in western Europe and North
America. Perhaps the biggest difference was that Stalin imposed harsh one-party rule
in the lands occupied by his armies, which led to the bitter cold war. Stalin also re-
imposed rigid central planning in the Soviet Union after the war and made satellite
countries follow his lead. Nevertheless, the Soviet Union became less dictatorial under
Khrushchev, and the standard of living in the Soviet Union improved markedly in the
1950s and 1960s.
How did changing patterns in technology, class relations, women’s work,

and youth culture bring major social transformations? (page 795)
In the years after 1945 pure science combined with applied technology to achieve
remarkable success. The triumphs of applied science contributed not only to eco-
nomic expansion but also to a more fluid, less antagonistic class structure, in which
specialized education was the high road to advancement for men and women. Mar-
ried women entered the labor force in growing numbers. The growing prosperity of the
postwar era gave young people confidence and money, spurring the development of a
distinct youth culture in the 1960s.
What were the key aspects of political conflict, economic stagnation,

and the feminist movement in the late cold war? (page 800)
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Europe and North America entered a time of crisis
and rapid change. Many nations, from France to Czechoslovakia to the United States,
experienced major political difficulties, as cold war conflicts and ideological battles
divided peoples and shook governments. Beginning with the oil shocks of the 1970s,
severe economic problems added to the turmoil and brought real hardship to millions
of people. Yet in western Europe and North America, the welfare system held firm,
and both democracy and the movement toward European unity successfully passed
through the storm. The women’s movement mobilized effectively and won expanded
rights in the best tradition of Western civilization. Finally, efforts to achieve détente in
central Europe while still maintaining a strong Atlantic alliance met some success.
This modest progress helped lay the foundations for the sudden end of the cold war
and the opening of a new era.
Notes
1. Quoted in N. Graebner, Cold War Diplomacy, 1945–1960 (Princeton, N.J.: Van Nostrand,
1962), p. 17.
2. Quoted in S. E. Morison et al., A Concise History of the American Republic (New York: Ox-
ford University Press, 1977), p. 697.
3. Quoted in N. Cantor, Twentieth-Century Culture: Modernism to Deconstruction (New York:
Peter Lang, 1988), p. 252.

A Feminist Critique of Marriage
T he existentialist writer Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986)

turned increasingly to feminist concerns after World
War II. Her most influential work was The Second Sex
(1949), a massive declaration of independence for contempo-
rary women. Beauvoir argued that men had generally used
education and social conditioning to create a dependent
“other,” a negative nonman who was not permitted to grow
and strive for freedom.
Marriage—on men’s terms—was part of this unjust and
undesirable process. Beauvoir’s conclusion that some couples
could establish free and equal unions was based in part on her
experience with philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, Beauvoir’s
encouraging companion and sometime lover.
In domestic work, with or without the aid of ser- Simone de Beauvoir as a teacher in 1947, when she was
vants, woman makes her home her own, finds so- writing The Second Sex. (Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis)
cial justification, and provides herself with an
occupation, an activity, that deals usefully and sat-
isfyingly with material objects—shining stoves, fresh, the matron, her occupation makes her dependent
clean clothes, bright copper, polished furniture— upon husband and children; she is justified through
but provides no escape from immanence and little them; but in their lives she is only an inessential
affirmation of individuality. . . . Few tasks are more intermediary. . . .
like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with The tragedy of marriage is not that it fails to as-
its endless repetition: the clean becomes soiled, the sure woman the promised happiness—there is no
soiled is made clean, over and over, day after day. such thing as assurance in regard to happiness—
The housewife wears herself out marking time: she but that it mutilates her; it dooms her to repetition
makes nothing, simply perpetuates the present. and routine. The first twenty years of woman’s life
She never senses conquest of a positive Good, but are extraordinarily rich, as we have seen; she discov-
rather indefinite struggle against negative Evil. . . . ers the world and her destiny. At twenty or there-
Washing, ironing, sweeping, ferreting out rolls of abouts mistress of a home, bound permanently to a
lint from under wardrobes—all this halting of de- man, a child in her arms, she stands with her life
cay is also the denial of life; for time simultaneously virtually finished forever. Real activities, real work,
creates and destroys, and only its negative aspect are the prerogative of her man: she has mere things
concerns the housekeeper. . . . to occupy her which are sometimes tiring but never
Thus woman’s work within the home gives her fully satisfying. . . .
no autonomy; it is not directly useful to society, it Marriage should be a combining of two whole,
does not open out on the future, it produces noth- independent existences, not a retreat, an annexa-
ing. It takes on meaning and dignity only as it is tion, a flight, a remedy. . . . The couple should not
linked with existent beings who reach out beyond be regarded as a unit, a closed cell; rather each in-
themselves, transcend themselves, toward society dividual should be integrated as such in society at
in production and action. That is, far from freeing large, where each (whether male or female) could
808
flourish without aid; then attachments could be Questions for Analysis
formed in pure generosity with another individual 1. Do you agree with Beauvoir’s assertion that
equally adapted to the group, attachments that domestic work is neither creative nor fully
would be founded upon the acknowledgment that satisfying? How is domestic work depicted in
both are free. This balanced couple is not a utopian current popular culture?
fancy: such couples do exist, sometimes even 2. What was Beauvoir’s solution to the situation
within the frame of marriage, most often outside it. she described? Was her solution desirable?
Some mates are united by a strong sexual love that Realistic?
leaves them free in their friendships and in their 3. What have you learned about the history of
work; others are held together by a friendship that women that supports or challenges Beauvoir’s
does not preclude sexual liberty; more rare are analysis? Include developments since World
those who are at once lovers and friends but do not War II and your own reflections.
seek in each other their sole reasons for living.
Many nuances are possible in the relations between
a man and a woman: in comradeship, pleasure, Source: The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir, trans-
lated by H. M. Parshley, copyright © 1952 and renewed
trust, fondness, co-operation, and love, they can be
1980 by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House,
for each other the most abundant source of joy, Inc. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of
richness, and power available to human beings. Random House, Inc.
809
CHAPTER 31
Revolution, Rebuilding,
and New
Challenges
1985 to the Present
Chapter Preview
The Collapse of Communism in Eastern
Europe and the Soviet Union
How did Mikhail Gorbachev try to
revitalize communism in the Soviet
Union? What were the radical
consequences of his policies?
Building a New Europe in the 1990s

How, in the 1990s, did the different
parts of a reunifying Europe meet the
challenges of postcommunist
reconstruction, resurgent nationalism,
and economic union?
New Challenges in the Twenty-first Century

Why did the prospect of population
decline, the reality of large-scale
immigration, and concern for human
rights emerge as critical issues in
contemporary Europe?
The West and the Islamic World

How and why did relations between the Italians protesting government economic policies gather in front of
West and the Islamic world deteriorate the Roman Coliseum during a nationwide strike in October 2003.
dramatically in the early twenty-first (Philippe Desmazes/AFP/Getty Images)
century?
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY: Tariq Ramadan
LISTENING TO THE PAST: The French Riots: Will They

Change Anything?
810
The Collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union 811
I n the late twentieth century, massive changes swept through eastern Europe
and opened a new era in human history. In the 1980s a broad movement to
transform the communist system took root in Poland, and efforts to reform and
revitalize the communist system in the Soviet Union snowballed out of control. In
1989 revolutions swept away communist rule throughout the entire Soviet bloc.
The cold war came to a spectacular end, West Germany absorbed East Germany,
and the Soviet Union broke into fifteen independent countries. Thus after forty
years of cold war division, Europe regained an underlying unity, as faith in demo-
cratic government and some kind of market economy became the common Euro-
pean creed. In 1991 hopes for peaceful democratic progress throughout Europe
were almost universal.
The post–cold war years saw the realization of some of these hopes, but the
new era brought its own problems and tragedies. The cold war division of Europe
had kept a lid on ethnic conflicts and nationalism, which suddenly burst into the
open and led to a disastrous civil war in the former Yugoslavia. Moreover, most
western European economies were plagued by high unemployment and were
struggling to adapt to the global economy. In eastern Europe, the process of re-
building shattered societies was more difficult than optimists had envisioned in
1991, and in western Europe, the road toward greater unity and eastward expan-
sion proved bumpy. Nevertheless, the will to undo the cold war division prevailed,
and in 2004 eight former communist countries as well as the islands of Cyprus and
Malta joined the European Union—a historic achievement.
The twenty-first century brought a growing awareness of a new set of funda-
mental challenges, which were related to the prospect of population decline, the
reality of large-scale immigration, and the promotion of human rights. These chal-
lenges promise to preoccupy Western society for years to come.
More dramatically, the old, often contentious question of relations with the
Islamic world suddenly reemerged as a critical issue after the attack on New York’s
World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001. Although the West united in a
quick response against al Qaeda (al-KIGHduh) and the Taliban in Afghanistan, the
subsequent war in Iraq divided western Europe and threatened the future of West-
ern cooperation in world affairs. The war in Iraq also complicated the ongoing
integration of Europe’s rapidly growing Muslim population.
The Collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe

and the Soviet Union
How did Mikhail Gorbachev try to revitalize communism in the Soviet
Union? What were the radical consequences of his policies?
Following the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia (pages 793–794), the Soviet

Union repeatedly demonstrated that it was determined to uphold its rule through-
out eastern Europe. Periodic efforts to achieve fundamental political change were
doomed to failure sooner or later—or so it seemed to most Western experts into
the mid-1980s.
And then Mikhail Gorbachev burst on the scene. The new Soviet leader opened
an era of reform that was as sweeping as it was unexpected. His reforms rapidly
transformed Soviet culture and politics, and they drastically reduced cold war ten-
sions. But communism, which Gorbachev wanted so desperately to revitalize in
812 Chapter 31 Revolution, Rebuilding, and New Challenges, 1985 to the Present
order to save it, continued to decline as a functioning system throughout the So-
viet bloc. In 1989 Gorbachev’s plan to reform communism snowballed out of con-
trol. A series of largely peaceful revolutions swept across eastern Europe, overturning
existing communist regimes and ending the communists’ monopoly of power.
The revolutions of 1989 had momentous consequences. First, the countries of
eastern and western Europe were no longer separate, and a new European Union
slowly emerged. Second, an anticommunist revolution swept through the Soviet
Union, which broke into a large Russia and fourteen other independent states.
Third, West Germany quickly absorbed its East German rival and emerged as the
most influential country in Europe. Finally, the long cold war came to an abrupt
end, and the United States suddenly stood as the world’s only superpower.
Fundamental change in Russian history has often come

Gorbachev’s Reforms in short, intensive spurts, which contrast vividly with
in the Soviet Union long periods of immobility. The era of reform launched
by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985 was one such decisive transformation. Gorbachev’s
initiatives brought political and cultural liberalization to the
Soviet Union, and they then permitted democracy and na-
tional self-determination to triumph spectacularly in the old
satellite empire and eventually in the Soviet Union itself, al-
though this was certainly not Gorbachev’s original intention.
As we have seen, the Soviet Union’s Communist Party elite
seemed secure in the early 1980s as far as any challenge from
below was concerned. The long-established system of adminis-
trative controls continued to stretch downward from the cen-
tral ministries and state committees to provincial cities, and
from there to factories, neighborhoods, and villages. At each
level of this massive state bureaucracy, the overlapping hierar-
chy of the Communist Party, with its 17.5 million members,
continued to manage every aspect of national life. Yet the
massive state and party bureaucracy was a mixed blessing. It
safeguarded the elite, but it promoted apathy in the masses.
Therefore, when the ailing Brezhnev finally died in 1982, his
successor Yuri Andropov (YOOR-ee an-DROH-pawf) (1914–
1984) tried to invigorate the system. Relatively little came of
these efforts, but they combined with a sharply worsening
economic situation to set the stage for the emergence in 1985
of Mikhail Gorbachev (b. 1931), the most vigorous Soviet
leader in a generation.
Gorbachev believed in communism, but he realized it was
failing to keep up with Western capitalism and technology.
This was eroding the Soviet Union’s status as a superpower.
Mikhail Gorbachev
In his acceptance speech before the Supreme Soviet (the U.S.S.R.’s
parliament), newly elected president Mikhail Gorbachev vowed to assume
“all responsibility” for the success or failure of perestroika. Previous
parliaments were no more than tools of the Communist party, but this one
actively debated and even opposed some government programs. (Vlastimir
Shone/Gamma Presse/EYEDEA)
Chronology
Thus Gorbachev (and his wife, Raisa, a professor 1985 Glasnost leads to greater freedom of speech and
of Marxist-Leninist thought) wanted to save the expression in the Soviet Union
Soviet system by revitalizing it with fundamental
1985– Decline in birthrate in industrialized nations
reforms. In his first year in office, Gorbachev at-
continues
tacked corruption and incompetence in the bu-
reaucracy, and alcoholism and drunkenness in 1986 Single European Act lays groundwork for single
Soviet society. He consolidated his power and currency
elaborated his ambitious reform program. August 1989 Solidarity gains power in Poland
The first set of reform policies was designed November 1989 Collapse of the Berlin Wall
to transform and restructure the economy, in or-
November– Velvet Revolution ends communism in
der to provide for the real needs of the Soviet
December 1989 Czechoslovakia
population. To accomplish this economic “re-
structuring,” or perestroika (per-ih-STROY-kuh), October 1990 Reunification of Germany
Gorbachev and his supporters permitted an eas- 1990–1991 First war with Iraq
ing of government price controls on some goods, July 1991 Failed coup against Gorbachev in Russia
more independence for state enterprises, and the
setting up of profit-seeking private cooperatives November– Dissolution of the Soviet Union
December 1991
to provide personal services for consumers. While
these reforms produced a few improvements, the 1991 Maastricht treaty sets financial criteria for
economy stalled at an intermediate point between European monetary union
central planning and free-market mechanisms. 1991–2000 Resurgence of nationalism and ethnic conflict in
By late 1988, widespread shortages threatened eastern Europe
the entire reform program. 1991–2001 Civil war in Yugoslavia
Gorbachev’s bold and far-reaching campaign
1992–1997 “Shock therapy” in Russia causes decline of the
“to tell it like it is” was much more successful.
economy
Very popular in a country where censorship, dull
uniformity, and outright lies had long character- 1993 Creation of the European Union; growth of illegal
ized public discourse, the newfound “openness,” immigration in Europe
or glasnost (GLAZ-nost), of the government and 1998– Growing support for global human rights in Europe
the media marked an astonishing break with the 1999 Russian economy booms
past. Long-banned writers sold millions of copies
2000 Controversy over Muslim headscarves in French
of their works in new editions, while denuncia-
schools begins
tions of Stalin and his terror became standard
fare in plays and movies. Thus initial openness September 2001 Terrorist attack on the United States
in government pronouncements quickly went 2001 War in Afghanistan
much further than Gorbachev intended and led January 2002 New euro currency goes into effect in the
to something approaching free speech and free European Union
expression, a veritable cultural revolution.
2003 Second war with Iraq begins
Democratization was the third element of
reform. Beginning as an attack on corruption in 2004 Ten new states join European Union
the Communist Party, it led to the first free elec-
tions in the Soviet Union since 1917. Gorbachev perestroika Economic restructuring
and reform implemented by Gorbachev
and the party remained in control, but a minor- that permitted an easing of government
ity of critical independents was elected in April 1989 to a revitalized Congress of price controls on some goods, more
People’s Deputies. Millions of Soviets then watched the new congress for hours on independence for state enterprises, and
television as Gorbachev and his ministers saw their proposals debated and even the setting up of profit-seeking private
cooperatives to provide personal services
rejected. The result was a new political culture at odds with the Communist Party’s for consumers.
monopoly of power and control.
The Soviet leader also brought “new political thinking” to the field of foreign glasnost Openness, part of Gorbachev’s
campaign to tell it like it is, marked a
affairs. He withdrew Soviet troops from Afghanistan and pledged to respect the break from the past; long-banned writers
political choices of the peoples of eastern Europe, repudiating the Brezhnev Doc- sold millions of copies of their works, and
trine. Of enormous importance, he sought to halt the arms race with the United denunciations of Stalin and his terror
were standard public discourse.
States and convinced President Ronald Reagan of his sincerity. In December

1987, the two leaders agreed in a Washington summit to eliminate all land-based
intermediate-range missiles in Europe, setting the stage for more arms reductions.
Both leaders saw the opportunity to ease the strains on their national budgets that
the arms race had created.
Gorbachev’s reforms interacted with a resurgence of

The Revolutions popular protest in the Soviet Union’s satellite empire.
of 1989 Developments in Poland were the most striking and
significant.
Poland had been an unruly satellite from the beginning. Stalin said that intro-
ducing communism to Poland was like putting a saddle on a cow. As a result of
widespread riots in 1956, Polish Communists dropped their efforts to impose
Soviet-style collectivization on the peasants and to break the Roman Catholic
Church. Yet they were determined to plan the economy, with poor results. Even
the booming 1960s saw little economic improvement.
In 1970 Poland’s working class rose again in angry protest. A new Communist
leader came to power, and he wagered that massive inflows of Western capital and
technology, especially from rich and now-friendly West Germany (see pages 801–
802), could produce a Polish “economic miracle.” Instead, bureaucratic incompe-
tence and the first oil shock in 1973 put the economy into a nosedive. Then the
real Polish miracle occurred: Cardinal Karol Wojtyla (KAH-rol voy-TIL-ah), arch-
bishop of Cracow, was elected pope in 1978. The following year, now as Pope
John Paul II, he returned from Rome and electrified the Polish nation with talk of
the “inalienable rights of man.” The economic crisis became a moral and spiritual
crisis as well.
In August 1980, the sixteen thousand workers at the gigantic Lenin Shipyards
in Gdansk (gdahynsk) (formerly known as Danzig) laid down their tools and oc-
cupied the plant. As other workers joined “in solidarity,” the strikers advanced
revolutionary demands, including the right to form free trade unions, freedom of
speech, release of political prisoners, and economic reforms.
Led by Lenin Shipyards electrician Lech Walesa (leck wah-LENS-ah) (b. 1943),
the workers proceeded to organize their free and democratic trade union. They
Solidarity Led by Lech Walesa, this called it Solidarity. Joined by intellectuals and supported by the Catholic Church,
group of workers in Poland organized Solidarity became the union of a nation. By March 1981, it had 9.5 million union
their free and democratic trade union
and quickly became the union of a
members. Yet as the economic situation worsened and some members of Solidar-
nation with a full-time staff of 40,000 ity became more radical, the Polish Communist leadership shrewdly denounced
and 9.5 million union members by Solidarity for promoting economic collapse and provoking the Soviet Union. In
March 1981. December 1981, Communist leader General Wojciech Jaruzelski (VOI-chekh
yah-roo-ZEL-skee) suddenly struck, proclaiming martial law, arresting Solidarity’s
leaders, and “saving” the nation.
Although it was driven underground, Solidarity maintained its organization
and continued to voice the aspirations of the Polish masses after 1981. Part of the
reason for the union’s survival was the government’s unwillingness (and probably
its inability) to impose full-scale terror. Moreover, millions of Poles decided to
continue acting as if they were free, even though they were not. Cultural and intel-
lectual life remained extremely vigorous as the faltering Polish economy contin-
ued to deteriorate. Thus popular support for outlawed Solidarity remained strong
under martial law in the 1980s, preparing the way for the union’s political rebirth
during the Gorbachev era at the end of the decade.
Lech Walesa and Solidarity

An inspiration for fellow workers at the Lenin Shipyards in the dramatic and successful strike against the
Communist bosses in August 1980, Walesa played a key role in Solidarity before and after it was outlawed.
Speaking here to old comrades at the Lenin Shipyards after Solidarity was again legalized in 1988, Walesa
personified an enduring opposition to Communist rule in eastern Europe. (G. Merrillon/Gamma Presse/EYEDEA)
In early 1989, on the brink of economic collapse and political stalemate, Po-
land became the first eastern European country to experience revolution. Solidar-
ity skillfully pressured Poland’s frustrated Communist leaders into legalizing
Solidarity and declaring that a large minority of representatives to the Polish par-
liament would be chosen by free elections in June 1989. Still guaranteed a parlia-
mentary majority and expecting to win many of the contested seats, the Communists
believed that the status quo could be maintained.
Instead the Communists were roundly defeated. Solidarity mobilized the
country and won most of the contested seats in an overwhelming victory. More-
over, many angry voters crossed off the names of unopposed party candidates, so
that the Communist Party failed to win the majority its leaders had anticipated.
Solidarity members jubilantly entered the Polish parliament, and a dangerous
stalemate quickly developed. But Solidarity’s gifted leader Lech Walesa adroitly
obtained a majority as two minor procommunist parties that had been part of the
coalition government after World War II now joined forces with Walesa. In August
1989, the editor of Solidarity’s weekly newspaper was sworn in as Poland’s new
noncommunist leader.
In its first year and a half, the new Solidarity government eliminated the hated shock therapy The Solidarity-led
government’s radical take on economic
secret police, the Communist ministers in the government, and finally Jaruzelski
affairs that were designed to make a
himself, but it did so step by step in order to avoid confrontation with the army or clean break with state planning and
the Soviet Union. However, in economic affairs, the Solidarity-led government move to market mechanisms and private
was radical from the beginning. It applied shock therapy designed to make a clean property.
break with state planning and move quickly to market mechanisms and private
property. Thus the Solidarity government abolished controls on many prices on
January 1, 1990, and reformed the monetary system with a “big bang.”
Hungary followed Poland. Hungary’s Communist Party boss, János Kádár
(KAH-dahr), had permitted liberalization of the rigid planned economy after the
1956 uprising in exchange for political obedience and continued Communist
control. In May 1988, in an effort to retain power by granting modest political
concessions, the party replaced Kádár with a reform communist. But opposition
groups rejected piecemeal progress, and in the summer of 1989 the Hungarian
Communist Party agreed to hold free elections in early 1990. Welcoming Western
investment and moving rapidly toward multiparty democracy, Hungary’s Com-
munists now enjoyed considerable popular support, and they believed, quite mis-
takenly it turned out, that they could defeat the opposition in the upcoming
elections. In an effort to strengthen their support at home and also put pressure on
East Germany’s hard-line Communist regime, the Hungarians opened their bor-
der to East Germans and tore down the barbed-wire “iron curtain” with Austria.
Thus tens of thousands of dissatisfied East German “vacationers” began pouring
into Hungary, crossed into Austria as refugees, and continued on to immediate
resettlement in thriving West Germany.
The flight of East Germans led to the rapid growth of a homegrown protest
movement in East Germany. Intellectuals, environmentalists, and Protestant min-
isters took the lead, organizing huge candlelight demonstrations and arguing that
a democratic but still socialist East Germany was both possible and desirable.
These “stayers” failed to convince the “leavers,” however, who continued to flee
the country en masse. In a desperate attempt to stabilize the situation, the East
German government opened the Berlin Wall in November 1989, and people
danced for joy atop that grim symbol of the prison state. East Germany’s aging
Communist leaders were swept aside, and a reform government took power and
Alliance for Germany A political party scheduled free elections. In March 1990, the East German Alliance for Germany,
that was set up in East Germany, calling which was closely tied to Kohl’s West German Christian Democrats, won almost
for the unification of East and West
Germany, which they felt would lead to
50 percent of the votes in an East German parliamentary election. The Alliance
an economic bonanza in East Germany. for Germany quickly negotiated an economic union on favorable terms with
In March 1990 they won almost Chancellor Kohl.
50 percent of the votes in the East Finally, in the summer of 1990, the crucial international aspect of German
German parliamentary election, thereby
beating out the Socialist party. unification was successfully resolved. In a historic agreement signed by Gorbachev
and Kohl in July 1990, Germany solemnly affirmed its peaceful intentions and
pledged never to develop nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons. In October
1990, East Germany merged into West Germany, forming henceforth a single na-
tion under the West German laws and constitution.
In Czechoslovakia, communism died in December 1989 in only ten days.
Velvet Revolution The moment This so-called Velvet Revolution grew out of popular demonstrations led by stu-
when communism died in 1989 dents, intellectuals, and a dissident playwright turned moral revolutionary named
with an ousting of Communist bosses
in only ten days; it grew out of popular
Václav Havel (VAH-slav HAH-vel). The protesters practically took control of the
demonstrations led by students, streets and forced the Communists into a power-sharing arrangement, which
intellectuals, and a dissident playwright. quickly resulted in the resignation of the Communist government. As 1989 ended,
the Czechoslovakian assembly elected Havel president.
Only in Romania was revolution violent and bloody. There, ironfisted Com-
munist dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu (chow-CHES-ku) (1918–1989) had long com-
bined Stalinist brutality with stubborn independence from Moscow. Faced with
mass protests in December, Ceauşescu, alone among eastern European bosses,
ordered his ruthless security forces to slaughter thousands, thereby sparking a clas-
sic armed uprising. After Ceauşescu’s forces were defeated, the tyrant and his wife
The Fall of the Berlin Wall

The sudden opening of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 dramatized the spectacular collapse of communism
throughout eastern Europe. Built by the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in 1961, the hated barrier had stopped
the flow of refugees from East Germany to West Germany. (Patrick Piel/Gamma Presse/EYEDEA)
were captured and executed by a military court. A coalition government emerged

from the fighting, although the legacy of Ceauşescu’s oppression left a very
troubled country.
The breakdown of barriers between western and eastern Europe, with the
peaceful reunification of Germany as a key element, led to agreements liquidating
the cold war. In November 1990, delegates from twenty-two European countries
joined those from the United States and the Soviet Union in Paris and agreed to a
scaling down of all their armed forces. The delegates also solemnly affirmed that
all existing borders in Europe—from unified Germany to the newly independent
Baltic republics—were legal and valid. The Paris Accord was for all practical pur- Paris Accord A general peace treaty
poses a general peace treaty, bringing an end to World War II and the cold war. that brought an end to World War II and
the cold war that followed; it called for a
In the months that followed, the United States and the Soviet Union agreed to scaling down of all armed forces and the
scrap a significant portion of their nuclear weapons. In September 1991, the lead- acceptance of all existing borders as legal
ers of both countries canceled the around-the-clock alert status for bombers outfit- and valid.
ted with atomic bombs. For the first time in four decades, Soviet and American
nuclear weapons were no longer standing ready to destroy capitalism, commu-
nism, and life itself.
As 1990 began, revolutionary changes had triumphed

The Disintegration of in all but two eastern European states—tiny Albania
the Soviet Union and the vast Soviet Union. The great question now be-
came whether reform communism would give way to a popular anticommunist
revolution.
The elections of February 1990 provided the first indication that reform com-
munism would not survive. As in the eastern European satellites, democrats and
anticommunists won clear majorities in the leading cities of the Russian Federa-
tion. Moreover, in Lithuania the people elected an uncompromising nationalist as
president, and the newly chosen parliament declared Lithuania an independent
state. Gorbachev responded by placing an economic embargo on Lithuania, but
he refused to use the army to crush the separatist government. The result was a
tense political stalemate, which undermined popular support for Gorbachev. Sep-
arating himself further from Communist hard-liners, Gorbachev asked Soviet citi-
zens to ratify a new constitution, which formally abolished the Communist Party’s
monopoly of political power and expanded the Power of the Congress of People’s
Deputies. Retaining his post as party secretary, Gorbachev convinced a majority of
deputies to elect him president of the Soviet Union.
Gorbachev’s eroding power and his unwillingness to risk a universal suffrage
election for the presidency strengthened his great rival, Boris Yeltsin (1931–2007).
A radical reform communist who had been purged by party conservatives in 1987,
Yeltsin embraced the democratic movement, and in May 1990 he was elected
leader of the Russian Federation’s parliament. He boldly announced that Russia
would put its interests first and declare its independence from the Soviet Union.
Gorbachev tried to save the Soviet Union with a new treaty that would link the
member republics in a looser, freely accepted confederation, but six of the fifteen
Soviet republics rejected Gorbachev’s pleas.
Opposed by democrats and nationalists, Gorbachev was also challenged again
by the Communist old guard. A gang of hard-liners kidnapped a vacationing Gor-
bachev and his family in the Caucasus and tried to seize the Soviet government in
August 1991. But the attempted coup collapsed in the face of massive popular re-
sistance, which rallied around Yeltsin. As the world watched spellbound on televi-
sion, Yeltsin defiantly denounced the hard-liners from atop a stalled tank in central
Moscow and declared the “rebirth of Russia.” The army supported Yeltsin, and
Gorbachev returned to power as head of the Soviet Union.
The leaders of the coup wanted to preserve Communist power, state owner-
ship, and the multinational Soviet Union, but they succeeded only in destroying
all three. An anticommunist revolution swept the Russian Federation as Yeltsin
and his supporters outlawed the Communist Party and confiscated its property.
Locked in a personal and political duel with Gorbachev, Yeltsin and his demo-
cratic allies declared Russia independent and withdrew from the Soviet Union. All
the other Soviet republics also left. The Soviet Union—and Gorbachev’s job—
ceased to exist on December 25, 1991 (see Map 31.1). The independent republics
of the old Soviet Union then established a loose confederation, the Common-
wealth of Independent States, which played only a minor role in the 1990s.
As the Soviet Union collapsed, losing both the will and

The Gulf War of 1991 the means to intervene in global conflicts, the United
States emerged rather suddenly as the world’s only sur-
viving superpower. In 1991 the United States used its military superiority to chal-
20°E 40°E 60°E 80°E 100°E 120°E 140°E 160°E

North
Sea NORWAY
A R C T I C O C E A N
DENMARK SWEDEN
Capital city
GERMANY
Balt FINLAND N
ic Sea 0 400 800 Km.
(RUSSIA) Riga Tallinn
°N
POLAND ESTONIA
60
0 400 800 Mi.
LITHUANIA St. Petersburg
Vilnius LATVIA (Leningrad)
Le
a
n
Minsk R.
Yenisey
BELARUS Volg
a e
Circl
.
Ob R
MOLDOVA Arctic
R.
Chernobyl Moscow
R.
Chisinau Kiev
Dnieper R.
R U S S I A
R.
a
UKRAINE Ka m
Bl
R.
R . Irty
lga
na
sh
ac
Vo
Le
Do Am
b
nR
k
ur
R.
R.
. Ura
Se
Lake
R.
lR
Baikal
a
TURKEY CHECHNYA
GEORGIA Astana
Sea
ARMENIA Tbilisi Aral

Yerevan Sea
AZERBAIJAN
KAZAKHSTAN
ian
Baku Lake
(AZER.) Balkhash MONGOLIA
sp
IRAQ °N
UZ
TU 40
Ca
RK
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Tashkent
KIS
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Bishkek
EN
Ashkhabad
TAN
IS
KYRGYZSTAN
TA
I RA N Dushanbe C H I N A
N
TAJIKISTAN
AFGHANISTAN
MAP 31.1 Russia and the Successor States

After the attempt in August 1991 to depose Gorbachev failed, an anticommunist revolution swept
the Soviet Union. Led by Russia and Boris Yeltsin, the republics that formed the Soviet Union
declared their sovereignty and independence. Eleven of the fifteen republics then formed a loose
confederation called the Commonwealth of Independent States, but the integrated economy of the
Soviet Union dissolved into separate national economies, each with its own goals and policies.
lenge Iraq’s August 1990 invasion and annexation of its oil-rich southern neighbor,
Kuwait.
Reacting vigorously to free Kuwait, the United States mobilized the U.N. Se-
curity Council, which in August 1990 imposed a strict naval blockade on Iraq.
Receiving the support of some Arab states, as well as of Great Britain and France,
the United States also landed 500,000 American soldiers in Saudi Arabia near the
border of Kuwait. When the defiant Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein (sah-DAHM
who-SANE) (1937–2006) refused to withdraw from Kuwait, the Security Council
authorized the U.S.-led military coalition to attack Iraq. The American army and
air force then smashed Iraqi forces in a lightning-quick desert campaign, although
the United States stopped short of toppling Saddam because it feared a sudden “new world order” President George
disintegration of Iraq. H. W. Bush’s vision after the U.S. defeat
of Iraqi armies in the Gulf War that
The defeat of Iraqi armies in the Gulf War demonstrated the awesome power
would feature the United States and a
of the U.S. military, rebuilt and revitalized by the spending and patriotism of the cooperative United Nations working
1980s. Little wonder that in the flush of yet another victory, the first President together to impose peace and stability
Bush spoke of a “new world order,” an order that would apparently feature the throughout the world.
Sec tion Review United States and a cooperative United Nations working together to impose stabil-
ity throughout the world.
• Gorbachev attempted to save commu-
nism through perestroika (restructur-
ing), easing government control of
economic markets; glasnost (openness), Building a New Europe in the 1990s
easing censorship of the media; demo-
cratization, allowing free elections; and How, in the 1990s, did the different parts of a reunifying Europe meet the
by easing foreign policy and the arms challenges of postcommunist reconstruction, resurgent nationalism, and
race with the United States. economic union?
• Poland experienced a revolution led by
the Solidarity movement that won free
The fall of communism, the end of the cold war, and the collapse of the Soviet
elections and control of the govern-
ment, defeating the communists, elimi- Union opened a new era in European and world history. The dimensions and
nating the secret police, and abolishing significance of this new era, opening suddenly and unexpectedly, are subject to
state controls. debate. We are so close to what is going on that we lack vital perspective. Yet the
• Hungary followed Poland in its bid for historian must take a stand.
free elections, ousting the communists First, we shall focus on three of the most important trends: the pressure on
and opening the border for East Ger- national economies increasingly caught up in global capitalism; the defense of
mans to leave, which promoted pro-
social achievements under attack; and a resurgence of nationalism and ethnic
tests, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the
rejoining of East and West Germany. conflict. Second, with these common themes providing an organizational frame-
work, we shall examine the course of development in the three overlapping but
• Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution
ended communism there; only in still distinct regions of contemporary Europe. These are Russia and the western
Romania was revolution accompanied states of the old Soviet Union, previously communist eastern Europe, and western
by fighting, as Eastern European coun- Europe.
tries joined the West at the Paris Ac-
cord, ending the cold war.
• Political unrest plagued the Soviet The end of the cold war and the disintegration of the
Union, with Gorbachev trying to save Common Patterns Soviet Union ended the division of Europe into two
reformed communism while Yeltsin and Problems opposing camps with two different political and eco-
declared independence for the Russian
Federation along with the other Soviet nomic systems. Thus, although Europe in the 1990s was a collage of diverse
republics, forming a loose confedera- peoples, the entire continent shared an underlying network of common develop-
tion, the Commonwealth of Indepen- ments and challenges (see Map 31.2).
dent States.
Of critical importance, in economic affairs European leaders embraced, or at
• The United States challenged Iraq’s least accepted, a large part of the neoliberal, free-market vision of capitalist devel-
invasion of Kuwait in 1991 and then,
opment. Postcommunist governments in eastern Europe freed prices, turned state
authorized by the United Nations’
Security Council, attacked and de- enterprises over to private owners, and sought to move toward strong currencies
feated Iraqi forces in a quick desert and balanced budgets. In western Europe, new free-market initiatives produced
campaign. changes in western Europe’s still-dominant welfare capitalism, which featured
government intervention, high taxes, and high levels of social benefits.
Two factors were particularly important in accounting for this ongoing shift
from welfare state activism to tough-minded capitalism. First, western Europeans
Mapping the Past

MAP 31.2 Contemporary Europe
No longer divided by ideological competition and the cold war, today’s Europe features a large
number of independent states. Several of these states were previously part of the Soviet Union
and Yugoslavia, both of which broke into many different countries. Czechoslovakia also divided
on ethnic lines, while a reunited Germany emerged, once again, as the dominant nation in
central Europe. [1] Which countries shown here were previously part of the Soviet Union?
[2] Which countries were part of Yugoslavia? [3] Where did the old “iron curtain” run?
(See Map 30.1, page 786, if necessary.)
30˚W 20˚W 10˚W 10˚E 20˚E 30˚E 50˚E 60˚E 70˚E 80˚E
˚N
0˚ 70˚N 40˚E
60
Reykjavik
ICELAND
Arctic
Circle
N
Faroe Islands
(Den.)
SWEDEN
Shetland ˚N
F I N L AN D 50
Islands N O R WAY
A T L A N T I C
(U.K.) Lake
Ladoga
R U S S I A
Helsinki
Oslo
O C E A N Stockholm Tallinn
St. Petersburg
NORTHERN
IRELAND ESTONIA
Glasgow
North R
lg a .
Vo
IRELAND Sea Riga
Moscow
a
DENMARK LATVIA
Se
Dublin Copenhagen
UNITED LITHUANIA
.
c
aR
KINGDOM lti Vilnius K A Z A K H S T A N
Ba
g
Vol
NETHERLANDS (RUSSIA)
Hamburg
E Gdansk Minsk
lb
London Amsterdam POLAND
eR
Berlin BELARUS Ar al
.
Sea
Brussels G E R M A N Y
Vis
Warsaw
tul
Bonn Leipzig
BELGIUM
a R.
Kiev
.
Frankfurt Kharkov
nR
U Z B E K I S TA N
Se
Paris Dn
Luxembourg Prague
in e
iep
Do
Loire R LUX. R CZECH UKRAINE er R
.
. . Stuttgart .
R
Donetsk ˚N
e
REPUBLIC Dnepropetrovsk 40
Rhi n
SLOVAKIA
FRANCE Munich
Bratislava
Zurich LIECH. Vienna MOLDOVA C
Bern Vaduz AUSTRIA Budapest
Geneva Chisinau
a
SWITZ. HUNGARY TU R KM EN I STAN
s
Lyons Ljubljana Odessa
p
Milan SLOVENIA Zagreb ROMANIA
ia
Porto Turin Po R . CROATIA
n
ANDORRA San Belgrade GEORGIA
PORTUGAL Monaco BOSNIA & Bucharest
S PA I N Marino Tbilisi Baku
Andorra HERZEGOVINA SERBIA Danube R. ck Sea
Bla AZERBAIJAN
S
la Vella MONACO Sarajevo
Lisbon Madrid SAN KOSOVO ARMENIA
e
Tagu Corsica Pris̆tina
s R. Barcelona MARINO MONT. Yerevan
a
(Fr.) Rome Podgorica Sofia B U LGAR IA
Balearic Islands I T A LY ALBANIA Skopje AZER.
Istanbul
(Sp.) VATICAN Naples Tiranë MACEDONIA
Sardinia CITY
(It.)
Ankara
IRAN
M e d i t GREECE
Gibraltar e r r T U R K E Y
(U.K.) a n
e Sicily Athens
MOROCCO a (It.) ˚N
30
0 200 400 Km. ALGERIA n SYR IA
Valletta MALTA Nicosia
0 200 400 Mi. S e a Crete
(Gr.) CYPRUS I R AQ
TUNISIA LEBANON
looked to the stronger U.S. economy and borrowed the practices and ideologies
instituted there and in Great Britain in the 1980s (see page 804). Second, eastern
Europeans wanting to compete in the global economy were compelled to follow
the rules of Western governments, multinational corporations, and international
financial organizations such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF). These
rules called for the free movement of capital and goods and services, as well as low
inflation and limited government deficits.
The ongoing computer and electronics revolution strengthened the move
toward a global economy. The computer revolution reduced the costs of distance,
speeding up communications and helping businesses tap cheaper labor overseas.
Reducing the friction of distance made threats of moving factories abroad ring true
and helped hold down wages at home.
globalization The emergence of a freer Globalization, the emergence of a freer global economy, probably did speed
global economy; it also refers to the up world economic growth as enthusiasts invariably claimed, but it also had pow-
exchange of cultural, political, and
religious ideas throughout the world.
erful and quite negative social consequences. Millions of ordinary citizens in west-
ern Europe believed that global capitalism and freer markets were undermining
hard-won social achievements. As in the United States and Great Britain in the
1980s, the public in other countries generally associated globalization with the
increased unemployment that accompanied corporate downsizing, the efforts to
reduce the power of labor unions, and, above all, government plans to reduce so-
cial benefits. The reaction was particularly intense in France and Germany, where
unions remained strong and socialists championed a minimum of change in social
policies.
Indeed, the broad movement toward neoliberal global development sparked a
powerful counterattack as the 1990s ended. Critics insisted that globalization hurt
the world’s poor, because multinational corporations destroyed local industries
and paid pitiful wages, and because international financial organizations de-
manded harsh balanced budgets and deep cuts in government social programs.
These attacks shook global neoliberalism, but it remained dominant.
In politics, European countries embraced genuine electoral competition, with
elected presidents and legislatures and the outward manifestations of representa-
tive liberal governments. With some notable exceptions, such as discrimination
against Roma (Gypsies), countries also guaranteed basic civil liberties. Thus, for
the first time since before the French Revolution, almost all of Europe followed
the same general political model of liberal democracy, although with variations.
Politics and economics were closely intertwined in

Recasting Russia Russia after the attempted Communist coup in 1991
and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. President Bo-
ris Yeltsin and his economic ministers listened to those Western advisers who ar-
gued that private economies were always best and opted in January 1992 for
breakneck liberalization. Their “shock therapy” freed prices on 90 percent of all
Russian goods, with the exception of bread, vodka, oil, and public transportation.
The government also launched a rapid privatization of industry and turned thou-
sands of factories and mines over to new private companies. Each citizen received
a voucher worth 10,000 rubles (about $22) to buy stock in private companies, but
control of the privatized companies usually remained in the hands of the old
bosses—the managers and government officials from the communist era.
President Yeltsin and his economic reformers believed that shock therapy
would revive production and bring prosperity after a brief period of hardship. The
results of the reforms were in fact quite different. Prices increased 250 percent on
Building a New Europe in the 1990s 823
the very first day, and they kept on soaring, increasing twenty-six times in the
course of 1992. At the same time, Russian production fell a staggering 20 percent.
Nor did the situation stabilize quickly. Throughout 1995 rapid but gradually slowing
inflation raged, and output continued to fall. Only in 1997 did the economy stop
declining, before crashing yet again in 1998 in the wake of Asia’s financial crisis.
Runaway inflation and poorly executed privatization brought a profound so-
cial revolution to Russia. A new capitalist elite acquired great wealth and power,
while large numbers of people fell into abject poverty, and the majority struggled
in the midst of decline to make ends meet.
Rapid economic decline in 1992 and 1993 and rising popular dissatisfaction
encouraged a majority of communists, nationalists, and populists in the Russian
parliament to oppose Yeltsin and his coalition of democratic reformers and big-
business interests. The erratic, increasingly hard-drinking Yeltsin would accept no
compromise and insisted on a strong presidential system. Winning in April 1993
the support of 58 percent of the population in a referendum on his proposed con-
stitution, Yeltsin then brought in tanks to crush a parliamentary mutiny in October
1993 and literally blew away the opposition. Subsequently, Yeltsin consolidated
his power, and in 1996 he used his big-business cronies in the media to win an
impressive come-from-behind victory. But effective representative government
failed to develop, and many Russians came to equate “democracy” with the cor-
ruption, poverty, and national decline they experienced throughout the 1990s.
This widespread disillusionment set the stage for the “managed democracy” of
Vladimir Putin (VLAD-ih-mir POO-tin), first elected president as Yeltsin’s chosen
successor in 2000 and re-elected in a landslide in March 2004. An officer in the
secret police in the communist era, Putin maintained relatively free markets in the
economic sphere but gradually re-established semi-authoritarian political rule.
Aided greatly by high prices for oil, Russia’s most important export, this combina-
tion worked well and seemed to suit most Russians. In 2007, the Russian economy
had been growing rapidly for eight years, the Russian middle class was expanding,
and the elected parliament supported Putin overwhelmingly. Proponents of lib-
eral democracy were in retreat, while conservative Russian intellectuals were on
the offensive, arguing that free markets and capitalism required strong political
rule to control corruption and prevent chaos. Historians saw a reassertion of Rus-
sia’s long authoritarian tradition. In March 2008 Putin’s ally and hand-picked suc-
cessor, Dmitry Medvedev, was elected president in a landslide.
Putin’s forceful, competent image in world affairs also soothed the country’s
injured pride and symbolized its national resurgence. Nor did the government per-
mit any negative television reports on the civil war in Chechnya (CHECH-nee-ah),
the tiny republic of one million Muslims on Russia’s southern border, which in
1991 had declared its independence from the Russian Federation (see Map 31.1).
The savage conflict in Chechnya continued, largely unreported, with numerous
atrocities on both sides.
Developments in eastern Europe shared important

Progress in similarities with those in Russia, as many of the prob-
Eastern Europe lems were the same. Thus the postcommunist states of
the former satellite empire worked to replace state planning and socialism with
market mechanisms and private property. Western-style electoral politics also took
hold, and as in Russia, these politics were marked by intense battles between pres-
idents and parliaments and by weak political parties. The social consequences of
these revolutionary changes were similar to those in Russia. Ordinary citizens and
the elderly were once again the big losers, while the young and the ex-Communists
were the big winners. Inequalities between richer and poorer regions also in-
creased. Capital cities such as Warsaw, Prague, and Budapest concentrated wealth,
power, and opportunity as never before, while provincial centers stagnated and old
industrial areas declined. Crime and gangsterism increased in the streets and in
the executive suites.
Yet the 1990s saw more than a difficult transition, with high social costs, to
market economies and freely elected governments in eastern Europe. Many citi-
zens had never fully accepted communism, which they equated with Russian im-
perialism and the loss of national independence. The joyous crowds that toppled
communist regimes in 1989 believed that they were liberating the nation as well
as the individual. Thus communism died and nationalism was reborn.
The surge of nationalism in eastern Europe recalled a similar surge of state
creation after World War I. Then, too, authoritarian multinational empires had come
crashing down in defeat and revolution. Then, too, nationalities with long histo-
ries and rich cultures had drawn upon ideologies of popular sovereignty and na-
tional self-determination to throw off foreign rule and found new democratic states.
The response to this opportunity in the former communist countries was quite
varied in the 1990s, but most observers agreed that Poland, the Czech Republic,
and Hungary were the most successful (see Map 31.2, page 821). Each of these
three countries met the critical challenge of economic reconstruction more suc-
cessfully than Russia, and each could claim to be the economic leader in eastern
Europe, depending on the criteria selected. The reasons for these successes in-
cluded considerable experience with limited market reforms before 1989, flexibil-
ity and lack of dogmatism in government policy, and an enthusiastic embrace of
capitalism by a new entrepreneurial class. In the first five years of reform, Poland
created twice as many new businesses as Russia, with a total population only one-
fourth as large.
The three northern countries in the former Soviet bloc also did far better than
Russia in creating new civic institutions, legal systems, and independent broad-
casting networks that reinforced political freedom and national revival. Lech
Walesa in Poland and Václav Havel in Czechoslovakia were elected presidents of
their countries and proved as remarkable in power as in opposition. After Czecho-
slovakia’s “Velvet Revolution” in 1989, Havel and the Czech parliament accepted
a “velvet divorce” in 1993 when Slovakian nationalists wanted to break off and
form their own state. All three northern countries managed to control national and
ethnic tensions that might have destroyed their postcommunist reconstruction.
Above all, and in sharp contrast to Russia, the popular goal of “rejoining the
West” reinforced political moderation and compromise. Seeing themselves as
heirs to medieval Christendom and liberal democratic values of the 1920s, Poles,
Hungarians, and Czechs hoped to find security in NATO membership and eco-
European Union The new name as of nomic prosperity in western Europe’s ever-tighter European Union (the former
1993 for the European Community. Common Market or EEC, see page 787). Membership required many proofs of
character and stability, however. Providing these proofs and endorsed by the Clin-
ton administration, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic were accepted into
the NATO alliance in 1997. Gaining admission to the European Union (EU) proved
more difficult, because candidates also had to accept and be ready to apply all the
rules and regulations that the EU had developed since 1956—an awesome task.
Romania and Bulgaria were the eastern European laggards in the postcom-
munist transition. Western traditions were much weaker there, and both countries
were much poorer than neighbors to the north. In 1993 Bulgaria and Romania
had per capita national incomes of $1,140, in contrast to Hungary ($3,830) and
the Czech Republic ($2,710). Although Romania and Bulgaria eventually made
progress in the late 1990s, full membership for both countries in either NATO or
the EU still lay far in the future.
The great postcommunist tragedy was Yugoslavia,

Tragedy in Yugoslavia which under Josip Tito had been a federation of repub-
lics and regions under strict communist rule. Yugosla-
via had the most ethnically diverse population of Europe (see Map 31.3), and the
different ethnic groups held historic grievances against one another. After Tito’s
death in 1980, power passed increasingly to the sister republics. Tensions among
the republics mounted throughout the decade as they desired greater autonomy.
The revolutions of 1989 accelerated the breakup of Yugoslavia. Serbian president
Slobodan Milosevic (SLOH-buh-dain muh-LOH-suh-vich) (1941–2006) pushed
to unite all Serbs, including those living outside the existing borders of Serbia, into
a “greater Serbia.” The republics of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and
Macedonia rejected this idea while advocating for separation. In June 1991 Slove-
nia and Croatia declared their independence from Yugoslavia.
15˚E 20˚E
SLOVAK IA Ethnic majority
Bratislava Bosnians or
Vienna
Albanians
Sandzak Muslims
Danu R.
be Bulgarians Romanians
A U STR I A
A L P S
Croats Serbs
Budapest
Hungarians Slovenes
H U N G A RY Macedonians No majority present
Montenegrins
Ljubljana
SLOVENIA Zagreb
1991 Former Yugoslavia
R O MAN IA
CROAT I A VOJVODINA Yugoslavia in 1991
45˚N 1991
Novi Sad 1991 Date of independence
Banja Luka Bosnia-Herzegovina

Autonomous region
Belgrade boundaries
N B OS N IA-
H ERZEGOV I NA Federation of Bosnia and
1992 SERBIA
Sarajevo 2006 Herzegovina, 1994
Bosnian Serb Republic, 1992
25˚E
I TA LY d
A
MONTENEGRO
ri 2006
Pris̆tina Sofia B U LG A R I A
a
ti Podgorica
KOSOVO
Rome
c 2008
S
e Skopje
a
M AC ED O N IA
Tiranë 1991
0 50 100 Km. TURKEY
ALBANIA
0 50 100 Mi. G R EEC E
MAP 31.3 The Ethnic Composition of Yugoslavia, 1991

Yugoslavia had the most ethnically diverse population in eastern Europe. The Republic of Croatia
had substantial Serbian and Muslim minorities. Bosnia-Herzegovina had large Muslim, Serbian,
and Croatian populations, none of which had a majority. In June 1991, Serbia’s brutal effort to
seize territory and unite all Serbs in a single state brought a tragic civil war.
Milosevic, who controlled the Yugoslavian army and intended to maintain a

united Yugoslavia under Serbian domination, sent forces to the break-off repub-
lics. Slovenia repulsed this attack, but Milosevic’s armies managed to take about
30 percent of Croatia.
In 1992 the conflict spread to Bosnia-Herzegovina, which was home to Catho-
lic Croats, Orthodox Serbs, and Muslim Slavs. When the republic voted for inde-
pendence, the Serbian minority rebelled. They shared the goal of their military
ally Milosevic—a “greater Serbia” composed of all Serbian-held lands. The result-
ing civil war between the three ethnic groups unleashed ruthless brutality, with
murder, rape, destruction, and the herding of refugees into concentration camps.
In 1994, the Muslims and Croats called a truce and formed an alliance. The turn-
ing point came in July 1995, when Bosnian Serbs overran Srebrenica—a Muslim
city previously declared a United Nations “safe area”—and killed several thousand
civilians. World outrage prompted NATO to bomb Bosnian Serb military targets
intensively, and the Croatian army drove all the Serbs from Croatia. In November
1995, President Bill Clinton helped the warring sides agree to a complicated ac-
cord dividing the country between the Serbs and Muslim-Croats. Troops from
NATO countries patrolled Bosnia to try to keep the peace.
Violence then flared in Kosovo, a province within Serbia that was stripped of
self-rule by Milosevic in 1989. Most Kosovars were Muslim ethnic Albanians. In
Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) early 1998, frustrated Kosovar militants formed the Kosovo Liberation Army
Formed in 1998 by frustrated Kosovar (KLA) to fight for independence. Serbian repression of the Kosovars increased,
militants who sought to fight for their
independence.
and in 1998 Serbian forces attacked both KLA guerrillas and unarmed villagers,
displacing 250,000 people within Kosovo. By January 1999, the Western powers,
led by the United States, were threatening Milosevic with heavy air raids if he did
not withdraw Serbian armies from Kosovo and accept self-government (but not
independence) for Kosovo. Milosevic refused, and in March 1999 NATO began
bombing Yugoslavia (now reduced to Serbia and Montenegro). Serbian paramili-
tary forces responded by driving about 780,000 Kosovars into exile. NATO re-
doubled its highly destructive bombing campaign, which eventually forced
Milosevic to withdraw and allowed the joyous Kosovars to regain their homeland.
The impoverished Serbs eventually voted the still-defiant Milosevic out of office,
and in July 2001 a new pro-Western Serbian government turned him over to the
war crimes tribunal in the Netherlands. Milosevic died while standing trial for
crimes against humanity.
The movement toward a European identity that tran-

Unity and Identity in scended destructive national rivalries was revitalized in
Western Europe the 1980s and 1990s as European leaders put forth
new proposals for economic and political unity. Implementing a 1986 agreement,
the European Union went to a single market in 1993 through which labor, capital,
services, and goods could travel freely. The next step, a monetary union and single
currency, the euro, went into effect on January 1, 2002, after more than a decade
of planning and debate. Then on May 1, 2004, the European Union added
70 million people and expanded to include 455 million citizens in twenty-five dif-
ferent countries. The largest newcomer by far was Poland, followed in descending
size by the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, Slovakia, Estonia, Lithuania, Lat-
via, Malta, and Cyprus.
In June 2004, more than two years after charging a special commission to write
“a new constitution for European citizens,” the leaders of the European Union
reached agreement on the final document. Above all, the new constitution, with
Turkey’s Struggle for EU Membership

Turkish elites and the general population want to “join Europe,” but the road to EU membership is proving
long and difficult. The EU has required Turkey to make many constitutional reforms and give greater
autonomy to Turkish Kurds. Yet the Turks face ever more demands, and many now believe that the real
roadblock is Europe’s anti-Muslim feeling. (CartoonStock Limited)
almost 350 articles, established a single rulebook to replace the com-

plex network of treaties concluded by the member states since the Sec tion Review
1957 creation of the European Economic Community. The EU
• Most European countries adopted free-market capi-
constitution created a president, a foreign minister, and a voting sys- talism but as neoliberal global development
tem weighted to reflect the number of people in the different states. emerged, critics argued that it hurt the poor and
The result of intense debate and many compromises, the constitu- undermined social welfare programs.
tion moved toward a more centralized federal system in several • Yeltsin’s rapid privatization of industry was successful
fields, but each state retained veto power in the most sensitive areas, only for the new elite, while the masses struggled;
such as taxation, social policy, and foreign affairs. In order for the Putin re-established semi-authoritarian rule while
constitution to take effect, each and every EU country needed to maintaining free markets and managed some eco-
nomic recovery and a resurgence of nationalism.
ratify it.
Nine countries, led by Germany, Italy, and seven east European • Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic were
able to make the transition from communism to
members, soon ratified the constitution by parliamentary action, capitalism and regain prosperity far better than Rus-
while seven states planned to go beyond the political elites and let sia, Romania, or Bulgaria due to their leadership,
the voters decide. The referendum campaigns were noisy and con- flexibility, and ability to control ethnic and national
tentious, as generally well-informed citizens debated whether the tensions.
new constitution surrendered too much national sovereignty to an • Ethnic tensions within Yugoslavia led to civil war,
emerging central European government in Brussels. British voters with the Serbian president Milosevic pushing for a
were considered most likely to vote no, but both the French and the “greater Serbia” and other republics wanting inde-
pendence, before NATO intervened and replaced
Dutch beat them to it, rejecting the new constitution by clear ma- Milosevic with a pro-Western Serbian government.
jorities. Nationalist fears about losing sovereignty were matched by
• The European Union reworked itself and expanded
fears that an unwieldy European Union would grow to include to include more countries, redrafting its constitution,
Ukraine, Georgia, and Muslim Turkey—countries with cultures and although not all countries ratified it because they
histories that were very different from those in western Europe. Thus feared losing their national sovereignty.
the long postwar march toward ever-greater European unity stopped,
or at least stalled, and the European Union concentrated on fully integrating the
new eastern European members and redrafting the constitution.
New Challenges in the Twenty-first Century

Why did the prospect of population decline, the reality of large-scale
immigration, and concern for human rights emerge as critical issues in
contemporary Europe?
As the twenty-first century opened, European society faced new uncertainties. Of

baby bust Falling European birthrates great significance, Europe continued to experience a remarkable baby bust, as
at the opening to the twenty-first century, birthrates fell to levels that seemed to promise a shrinking and aging population in
that seemed to promise a shrinking and
aging population in the future.
the future. At the same time, the peaceful, wealthy European Union attracted rap-
idly growing numbers of refugees and illegal immigrants from the former Soviet
Union, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. The unexpected arrival of so many new-
comers raised many perplexing questions and prompted serious thinking about
European identity, Europe’s humanitarian mission, and its place in the world.
Population is still growing rapidly in many poor coun-

The Prospect of tries, but this is not the case in the world’s industrial-
Population Decline ized nations. In 2000 women in developed countries
had only 1.6 children on average; only in the United States did women have, al-
most exactly, the 2.1 children necessary to maintain a stable population. In Euro-
pean countries, where women had been steadily having fewer babies since the
1950s, national fertility rates ranged from 1.2 to 1.8 children per woman.
If the current baby bust continues, the long-term consequences could be dra-
matic, though hardly predictable. At the least, Europe’s population would decline
and age. Projections for Germany are illustrative. Total German population, bar-
ring much greater immigration, would gradually decline from 82 million in 2001
to only 62 million around 2050. The number of people of working age would drop
by a third, and almost half of the population would be over sixty. Social security
taxes paid by the shrinking labor force would need to soar for the skyrocketing
costs of pensions and health care for seniors to be met—a recipe for generational
tension and conflict.
Why, in time of peace, were birthrates falling? Certainly the uneven, uninspir-
ing European economic conditions of the 1980s and much of the 1990s played
some role. But in our view, the ongoing impact of careers for married women and
the related drive for gender equality remained the decisive factors in the long-term
decline of postwar birthrates. Research showed that European women (and men)
in their twenties, thirties, and early forties still wanted to have two or even three
children—about the same number as their parents had wanted. But unlike their
parents, young couples did not realize their ideal family size. Many women post-
poned the birth of their first child into their thirties in order to finish their educa-
tion and establish themselves in their careers. Then, finding that raising even one
child was more difficult and time-consuming than anticipated, new mothers
tended to postpone and eventually forgo a second child. This was especially true
of professional women.
By 2005 some population experts believed that European women were no
longer postponing having children. At the least, birthrates appeared to have stabi-
lized. Moreover, the frightening implications of dramatic population decline had
New Challenges in the Twenty-first Century 829
emerged as a major public issue. Opinion leaders, politicians, and the media
started to press the case for more support for families with children.
While the European birthrates declined in the 1990s,

The Growth of population numbers got a push from the surge in im-
Immigration migration. The collapse of communism in the East
and savage civil wars in Yugoslavia sent hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing
westward. Equally brutal conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and Rwanda—to
name only four countries—brought thousands more from Asia and Africa. Illegal
immigration into the European Union also exploded, rising from an estimated
50,000 people in 1993 to perhaps 500,000 a decade later. This movement ex-
ceeded the estimated 300,000 unauthorized foreigners entering the United States
each year.
In the early twenty-first century, many migrants still applied for political asy-
lum and refugee status, but most were eventually rejected and classified as illegal
job-seekers. Certainly, greater economic opportunities exerted a powerful pull.
Germans earned on average five times more than neighboring Poles, who in turn
earned much more than people farther east and in North Africa.
Illegal immigration also soared because powerful criminal gangs turned to
“people smuggling” for big, low-risk profits. A large portion of the illegal immi-
grants were young women from eastern Europe, especially Russia and Ukraine.
Often lured by criminals promising jobs as maids or waitresses and sometimes
simply kidnapped and sold like slaves from hand to hand for a few thousand
Illegal Immigrants from Eritrea

Italian police have just rescued these young immigrants from an overloaded boat off the coast of Italy. Fleeing
civil war and desperate for work, the immigrants are weary because of the long and dangerous voyage from
Libya. Every year thousands of illegal immigrants try to reach Italy and Spain from North Africa. Many are found
dead on the shoreline. (Mimi Mollica/Corbis)
dollars, these women were smuggled into the most prosperous parts of central
Europe and into the European Union and forced into prostitution or slavery.
Illegal immigration generated intense discussion and controversy in western
Europe. A majority opposed the newcomers, who were accused of taking jobs
from the unemployed and somehow undermining national unity. The idea that
cultural and ethnic diversity could be a force for vitality and creativity ran counter
to deep-seated beliefs. Concern about illegal migration in general often fused with
fears of Muslim immigrants and Muslim residents who had grown up in Europe.
As busy mosques came to outnumber dying churches in parts of some European
cities, rightist politicians especially tried to exploit widespread doubts that immi-
grant populations from Muslim countries would ever assimilate to the different
national cultures. These doubts increased after the attack on New York’s World
Trade Center, as we shall see later in the chapter.
An articulate minority challenged the anti-immigrant campaign and its racist
overtones. They argued that Europe badly needed newcomers—preferably tal-
ented newcomers—to limit the impending population decline and provide valu-
able technical skills. European leaders also focused on improved policing of EU
borders and tougher common procedures to combat people smuggling and pun-
ish international crime. Above all, growing illegal immigration pushed Europeans
to examine the whys of this dramatic human movement and to consider how it
related to Europe’s proper role in world affairs.
The tide of refugees and illegal job-seekers, the ethnic

Promoting Human violence of Yugoslavia, and western Europe’s relative
Rights prosperity were some of the factors prompting Euro-
pean visionaries to seek a leadership role in promoting human rights.
In practical terms, western Europe’s evolving human rights mission meant,
first of all, humanitarian interventions to stop civil wars and to prevent tyrannical
governments from slaughtering their own people. Thus the European Union
joined with the United States to intervene militarily to stop the killing in Bos-
Sec tion Review nia, Kosovo, and Macedonia and to protect the rights of embattled minorities.
The states of the EU also vigorously supported U.N.-sponsored conferences and
• Population growth continues in many treaties that sought to verify the compliance of anti–germ warfare conventions,
poor countries but is declining in the
industrialized nations, most likely outlawed the use of hideously destructive land mines, and established a new inter-
because of the impact of education and national court to prosecute war criminals.
careers for women who delay first births Europeans also pushed for broader definitions of individual rights. Abolishing
as they face the expense and difficulty the death penalty in the European Union, for example, they condemned its con-
of managing a career and family. tinued use in China, the United States, Saudi Arabia, and some other countries as
• Immigration rates soared as refugees inhumane and uncivilized. Rights for Europeans in their personal relations also
fleeing civil war and poverty sought continued to expand. In the pacesetting Netherlands, for example, a growing net-
refuge in the European Union, but con-
flicts over illegal immigration pushed work of laws gave prostitutes (legally recognized since 1917) pensions and full
Europeans to debate and plan their role workers’ rights and legalized gay and lesbian marriages, the smoking of pot in li-
in this human dilemma. censed coffee shops, and assisted suicide (euthanasia) for the terminally ill.
• Europeans led the way in promoting As the twenty-first century opened, western Europeans also pushed as best they
human rights around the world by could to extend their broad-based concept of social and economic rights to the
agreeing to humanitarian intervention world’s poor countries. For example, Europe’s moderate social democrats com-
in civil wars, ending the use of land bined with human rights campaigners in 2001 to help African governments secure
mines and germ warfare, opening an
international court, broadening indi- drastic price cuts from the big international drug companies on the drug cocktails
vidual rights, and offering help to Afri- needed to combat Africa’s AIDS crisis. Strong advocates of greater social equality
can nations for the AIDS crisis. and state-funded health care, European socialists embraced morality as a basis for
action and the global expansion of human rights as a primary goal.
The West and the Islamic World 831
The West and the Islamic World

How and why did relations between the West and the Islamic world
deteriorate dramatically in the early twenty-first century?
A hundred years from now, when historians assess developments in the early
twenty-first century, they will almost certainly highlight the dramatic deterioration
in the long, rich, up-and-down relationship between the West and the Islamic
world. They will examine the reasons that the peaceful conclusion of the cold war
and the joyful reunification of a divided continent gave way to spectacular terrorist
attacks, Western invasions of Muslim countries, and new concern about Muslims
living in the West. Unfortunately, we lack the perspective and the full range of
source materials that future historians will have at their disposal. Yet we are deeply
involved in this momentous historical drama, and we must try to find insight and
understanding.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, two hijacked al-Qaeda A terrorist organization led by
The al-Qaeda Attack passenger planes from Boston crashed into and de- Osama bin Laden that is committed to
of September 11, 2001 stroyed the World Trade Center towers in New York jihadist revolution in Muslim countries,
violently anti-Western, and responsible
City. Shortly thereafter a third plane crashed into the Pentagon, and a fourth, be- for the September 11, 2001, attack on
lieved to be headed for Washington, crashed into a field in rural Pennsylvania. New York’s World Trade Center.
These terrorist attacks took the lives of more than three thousand people from
many countries.
The United States, led by President George W. Bush, launched a military cam-
paign to destroy the perpetrators of the crime—Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda net-
work of terrorists and Afghanistan’s reactionary Muslim government, the Taliban.
With the support of an international coalition, the United States joined its tremen-
dous airpower with the faltering Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, which had been
fighting the Taliban for years. In mid-November the Taliban collapsed, and Af-
ghan opposition leaders and United Nations mediators worked out plans for a new
broad-based government. The hunt for bin Laden, however, was unsuccessful.
The use of terrorist tactics by organized groups against governments has its
roots in the early twentieth century. Beginning in the 1920s and peaking in the
1960s, many nationalist movements used terrorism in their battles to achieve po-
litical independence and decolonization. This was the case in several new states,
including Algeria, Cyprus, Ireland, Israel, and Yemen.1 In the Vietnam War era, a
second wave of terrorism saw some far-left supporters of the communist Vietcong,
such as the American Weathermen, the German Red Army Faction, and the Ital-
ian Red Brigade, practicing “revolutionary terror.” They added airplane hijacking
to the earlier tactics of bombings, assassinations, and kidnappings. More than one
hundred passenger planes a year were hijacked in the 1970s, as terrorists used civil-
ian hostages to achieve the release of fellow terrorists or other demands. Some
terrorists trained in the facilities of the PLO (the Palestine Liberation Organiza-
tion) operated international networks and targeted Israel and U.S. installations
abroad. This second wave receded in the 1980s as painstaking police work and
international cooperation defeated these “revolutionaries” in country after country.
Scholars of the contemporary wave of terrorism have avoided the media’s ten-
dency to focus almost exclusively on extreme Islamic fundamentalism as the
motivation for attacks. They have noted that recent deadly attacks had been
committed by terrorists inspired by several religious faiths and religious sects and
New York, September 11, 2001

Pedestrians race for safety as the World Trade Center towers collapse after being hit by jet airliners.
Al-Qaeda terrorists with box cutters hijacked four aircraft and used three of them as suicide missiles
to perpetrate their unthinkable crime. Heroic passengers on the fourth plane realized what was
happening and forced their hijackers to crash in a field. (AP Images/Suzanne Plunkett)
were by no means limited to Islamic extremists.2 Instead they trace the terrorists’
roots to political conflicts and civil wars.
In the case of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda members, two stages stand out.
First, bin Laden and like-minded “holy warriors” developed terrorist skills and a
fanatical Islamic puritanism over years of fighting against the Soviet Union and
local communists in Afghanistan. They also developed a hatred of most existing
Arab governments, which they viewed as corrupt, un-Islamic, and unresponsive to
the needs of ordinary Muslims. The objects of their hostility included Egypt, Iraq,
and bin Laden’s native country, Saudi Arabia. Second, when al-Qaeda members
returned home from Afghanistan and began to organize, they were usually jailed
or forced into exile, often in tolerant Europe. There they blamed the United States
for being the supporter and corrupter of existing Arab governments, and they
organized murderous plots against the United States—a despised proxy for the
Arab rulers they could not reach.
Unfortunately, Western unity in Afghanistan soon

The War in Iraq turned into bitter quarreling and international crisis
over the prospect of war with Iraq. Many in the Bush
administration believed that the United States could create a democratic, pro-
American Iraq, an Iraq that would transform the Middle East, make peace with
Israel, and ensure access to the world’s second-largest oil reserves. They publicly
The West and the Islamic World 833
argued that Saddam Hussein was still developing weapons of mass destruction in
flagrant disregard of his promise to end all such programs following the first war
with Iraq, in 1991.
Iraq declared that it had destroyed all prohibited weapons, and it allowed
United Nations weapons inspectors to return to the country. As 2003 opened, the
inspectors operated freely in Iraq and found no weapons of mass destruction. How-
ever, the United States and Britain said Iraq was hiding prohibited weapons,
moved armies to the Middle East, and lobbied for a new United Nations resolu-
tion authorizing immediate military action against Iraq. France, Russia, China,
Germany, and a majority of the smaller states argued for continued weapons in-
spections. Western governments became bitterly divided, and the Security Coun-
cil deadlocked and failed to act.
In March 2003 the United States and Britain invaded Iraq from bases in Ku-
wait and quickly toppled Saddam’s dictatorship. The allies found no weapons of
mass destruction, which raised many questions about a prewar manipulation of
intelligence data.
American efforts to establish a stable, pro-American Iraq proved difficult if not
impossible. Poor postwar planning and management by President Bush, Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and other top aides was one factor, but there were
others. Modern Iraq, a creation of Western imperialism after World War I (see
page 720), is a fragile state with three distinct groups: non-Arab Kurds, and Sunnis
and Shi’ites—Arab Muslims who were forever divided by a great schism in the
seventh century. Saddam’s dictatorship preached Arab and Iraqi nationalism, but
it relied heavily on the Sunni minority—20 percent of the population—and re-
pressed the Shi’ites, who made up 60 percent of the population. Jailed or ousted
from their positions by American forces for having supported Saddam, top Sunnis
quickly turned against the occupation, rallied their supporters, and launched
an armed insurgency. By late 2004, radical Sunnis and al-Qaeda converts were
The Golden Mosque of Samara: Before and After

Built to commemorate two of Shi’ite Islam’s most revered saints, the Golden Mosque drew countless
Shi’ite pilgrims. Then, on June 13, 2006, insurgents dressed as Iraqi policemen entered the mosque,
overwhelmed the guards, and detonated two bombs that collapsed the golden dome and destroyed
the mosque. Sectarian conflict exploded. (A second terrorist bombing in June 2007 leveled the two
minarets seen on the right.) (AP Images/Khalid Mohammed, Hameed Rasheed)
slipping into Iraq, where they directed horrendous suicide bombings at American
soldiers, Iraqi security forces, and defenseless Shi’ite civilians.
Believing in democracy and representative institutions, the Americans restored
Iraqi sovereignty in July 2004, formed a provisional government, and held rela-
tively free national elections in January 2005. Boycotted by the Sunnis, these elec-
tions brought the Shi’ite majority to power and marked the high point of Iraqi and
American hopes for security and a gradual reconciliation with the Sunni popula-
tion. Instead, Sunni fighters and jihadist (ji-HAHD-ist) extremists stepped up their
deadly campaign. Then, in February 2005 in a carefully planned operation, they
blew up the beautiful Golden Mosque of Samarra, one of the most sacred shrines
of Shi’ite Islam. This outrage touched off violent retaliation. Shi’ite militias be-
came death squads, killing Sunnis and driving them from their homes. By 2006 a
deadly sectarian conflict had taken hold of Baghdad. American solders, loyally
continuing to do their duty, were increasingly caught in the crossfire.
In 2007, in the face of widespread American opposition to the war, President
Bush ordered more troops to Iraq in an attempt to quell the growing chaos. Amer-
ican commanders on the ground succeeded in forming a critical alliance with
some Sunni tribal leaders, who accepted American money and arms and agreed to
fight against rather than for the al-Qaeda–led Sunni extremists. As 2008 opened,
the military situation in some Sunni provinces and in Baghdad had improved, but
Iraq was still very far from peace, stable government, and American withdrawal.
After the attacks of September 11, the people of the

The West and Its United States braced for further terrorist acts. But in-
Muslim Citizens stead Europe was next to receive the extremists’ blows.
In May 2004 Moroccan Muslims living in Spain exploded bombs planted on
morning trains for Madrid and killed 252 commuters. A year later a similar attack
was carried out in London by British citizens of Pakistani descent, young men who
had grown up in Britain. The brutal murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh (van
GOH) by a young Dutch Muslim avenging van Gogh’s satirical depiction of Mu-
hammad seemed to illustrate the depths of Muslim intolerance.
These spectacular attacks and lesser actions by Islamic militants led a shrill
chorus to warn that Europe’s rapidly growing Muslim population threatened the
West’s entire Enlightenment tradition of freedom of thought, representative gov-
ernment, toleration, separation of church and state, and, more recently, equal
rights for women and gays. Muslim clerics were believed to turn their followers
into anti-Western radicals, and even those who urged assimilation were viewed
with suspicion. (See the feature “Individuals in Society: Tariq Ramadan.”) And
time was on the side of Euro-Islam. Europe’s Muslim population, estimated at 15
million in 2006, appeared likely to double to 30 million by 2025, and it would
increase rapidly thereafter as the percentage of non-Muslim Europeans plum-
meted because of their baby bust.
Admitting that Islamic extremism could pose a serious challenge, many main-
stream observers focused instead on the problem of immigrant integration.
Whereas the first generation of Muslim immigrants had found jobs as unskilled
workers in Europe’s great postwar boom, many Muslims of the second and third
generations were finding themselves locked out of work in their adopted countries.
This argument was strengthened by widespread rioting in France in November
2005 that saw hundreds of young second- and third-generation Muslim men torch
automobiles night after night in Paris suburbs and large cities. (See the feature
“Listening to the Past: The French Riots: Will They Change Anything?” on pages
Tariq Ramadan
R eligious teacher, activist professor, and media star,
Tariq Ramadan (b. 1962), is Europe’s most famous
Muslim intellectual. He is also a controversial figure,
laws, although in rare cases they may need to plead
“conscientious objection” and disobey on religious
grounds. Becoming full citizens and refusing to live in
praised by many as a moderate bridge-builder and de- parallel as the foreign Other, Muslims should work with
nounced by others as an Islamic militant in clever non-Muslims on matters of common con-
disguise. cern, such as mutual respect, better
Born in Switzerland of Egyptian ancestry, Ramadan schools, and economic justice.* Ramadan
is the grandson of Hassan al-Banna, the charismatic is most effective with second- or third-
founder of the powerful Muslim Brotherhood. Al-Banna generation college graduates. He urges
fought to reshape Arab nationalism within a framework them to think for themselves and distin-
of Islamic religious orthodoxy and anti-British terrorism guish the sacred revelation of Islam from
until he himself was assassinated in 1949. Growing up the nonessential cultural aspects that their
in Geneva, where his father sought refuge in 1954 after parents brought from African and Asian
Nasser’s anti-Islamic crackdown in Egypt, the young villages.
Tariq attended mainstream public schools, played soc- With growing fame has come growing
cer, and absorbed a wide-ranging Islamic heritage. For controversy. In 2004, preparing to take up
example, growing up fluent in French and Arabic, he a professorship in the United States, he
learned English mainly from listening to Pakistani Mus- was denied an entry visa on the grounds
lims discuss issues with his father, who represented the that he had contributed to a Palestinian
Muslim Brotherhood and its ideology in Europe. charity with ties to terrorists. Defenders Tariq Ramadan.
(AP Images/Keystone/
Ramadan studied philosophy and French literature disputed the facts and charged that his Salvatore Di Nolfi)
as an undergraduate at the University of Geneva, and he criticism of Israeli policies and the inva-
then earned a doctorate in Arabic and Islamic Stud- sion of Iraq were the real reasons. Rama-
ies. Marrying a Swiss woman who converted to Islam, dan’s critics also claim that he says different things to
Ramadan moved his family to Cairo in 1991 to study different groups: hard-edged criticism of the West found
Islamic law and philosophy. It proved to be a pivotal on tapes for Muslims belies the reasoned moderation of
experience. Eagerly anticipating the return to his Mus- his books. Some critics also argue that his recent con-
lim roots, Ramadan gradually realized that only in Europe demnation of Western capitalism and globalization is
did he feel truly “at home.” In his personal experience an opportunistic attempt to win favor with European
he found his message: that Western Muslims should feel leftists, and does not reflect a self-proclaimed Islamic
equally “at home” and that they should participate fully passion for justice. Yet, on balance, Ramadan’s reputa-
as active citizens in their adopted countries. tion remains intact.† An innovative bridge-builder, he
In developing his message, Ramadan left the class- symbolizes the growing importance of Europe’s Muslim
room and focused on creating non-scholarly books, au- citizens.
dio cassettes that sell in the tens of thousands, and media
events. Slim and elegant in well-tailored suits and open Questions for Analysis
collars, Ramadan is a brilliant speaker. His public lec- 1. What is Ramadan’s message to Western Muslims?
tures in French and English draw hundreds of Muslims How did he reach his conclusions?
(and curious non-Muslims). 2. Do you think Ramadan’s ideas are realistic? Why?
Ramadan argues that Western Muslims basically live
in security, have fundamental legal rights, and can freely
practice their religion. He notes that Muslims in the
West are often more secure than are believers in the
*See, especially, Tariq Ramadan, Western Muslims and the Fu-
Muslim world, where governments are frequently re- ture of Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
pressive and arbitrary. According to Ramadan, Islamic †See Ian Buruma, The New York Times Magazine, February 4,
teaching requires Western Muslims to obey Western 2007.
835
Sec tion Review 838–839.) The rioters complained bitterly of very high
unemployment, systematic discrimination, and exclu-
• The terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, sion. Religious ideology appeared almost nonexistent in
2001, motivated by al-Qaeda’s hatred of Arab governments sup-
ported by the West, inspired a U.S. military campaign against
their thinking. Studies sparked by the rioting in France
Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network and Afghanistan’s Muslim found poor, alienated Muslims in unwholesome ghettos
government, the Taliban. throughout western Europe.
• The United States and Britain invaded Iraq without United Finally, as Europe has become more secular, western
Nations sanction under the pretense of finding weapons of mass Europeans have tended to find all traditional religious be-
destruction, which they failed to find, and in their attempt at lief irrational and out-of-date. The renowned French
setting up a pro-Western government, touched off a civil war scholar Olivier Roy argues that Europe must recognize
between opposing Muslim groups, with American soldiers
caught in the middle.
that Islam is now a European religion and a vital part of
European life. This recognition, he argues, will open the
• Discrimination and fear of Muslims increased as the war in Iraq
waged, while Muslim immigrant populations in Europe grew
way to eventual full acceptance of European Muslims in
and complained of unfair treatment; acceptance of European both political and cultural terms. It will head off the re-
Muslims is the way to mutual understanding and the prevention sentment that can drive Europe’s Muslim believers to
of future violence. separatism and acts of terror.
Chapter Review
How did Mikhail Gorbachev try to revitalize communism in the Soviet Union?
What were the radical consequences of his policies? (page 811) Key Terms
Gorbachev was an idealist who wanted to reform communism in order to save it. His perestroika (p. 813)
initiatives sought to restructure the stagnant economy, provide accurate information, glasnost (p. 813)
have meaningful elections, and improve relations with the West. When he refused to Solidarity (p. 814)
use Soviet armies in eastern Europe, the peoples of the satellite nations revolted. Led
by Solidarity in Poland, they overturned communist rule in the spectacular, peaceful shock therapy (p. 815)
revolutions of 1989. The democratic movement then triumphed in the Soviet Union, Alliance for Germany (p. 816)
East Germany was reunited with West Germany, and the cold war ended. Emerging Velvet Revolution (p. 816)
as the only superpower, the United States defeated Iraq in the first Gulf war.
Paris Accord (p. 817)
“new world order” (p. 819)
How, in the 1990s, did the different parts of a reunifying Europe meet the chal- globalization (p. 822)
lenges of postcommunist reconstruction, resurgent nationalism, and economic European Union (p. 824)
union? (page 820) Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA)
In the 1990s, post–cold war Europe grappled with neoliberal market economies, (p. 826)
welfare systems under continuing attack, and globalization. Post-communist recon- baby bust (p. 828)
struction in Russia was less successful than it was in the newly independent countries al-Qaeda (p. 831)
of eastern Europe. The former Yugoslavia, tragically destroyed by resurgent ethnic
nationalism and civil war, was the glaring exception. Eastern Europe’s rebuilding and
its determination to “rejoin Europe” stimulated the long postwar movement toward
European unity, and the newly named European Union expanded to include almost
all of Europe west of Russia, Ukraine, and the Caucasus. This expansion was the shin-
ing achievement of the post–cold war era.
Chapter Review 837
Why did the prospect of population decline, the reality of large-scale immigra-
tion, and concern for human rights emerge as critical issues in contemporary
Europe? (page 828)
The failure of Europeans to reproduce themselves posed a multitude of serious long-
term problems related to pensions, health care, and social vitality. Immigrants fleeing
civil war and poverty in Africa and Asia offered a possible solution to Europe’s “baby
bust,” but most Europeans were not prepared to accept large numbers of illegal im-
migrants from very different cultures. Forced to examine their consciences, Europeans
concentrated on promoting human rights around the world, agreeing to humanitarian
intervention in civil wars, promoting international courts of justice, and offering help
to African nations for the AIDS crisis.
How and why did relations between the West and the Islamic world deteriorate
dramatically in the early twenty-first century? (page 831)
The most disturbing development in the early twenty-first century was the renewed
hostility between the West and the Islamic world, which was marked indelibly by the
al-Qaeda attack of 2001, the American campaign to punish Afghanistan, and the
American and British invasion of Iraq. The Anglo-American occupation of Iraq began
as a confident effort to remake Iraq (and the Arab world) along Western lines, but early
optimism quickly faded. American soldiers in Iraq ran up against a potent combina-
tion of Arab nationalism, Islamic extremism, and sectarian conflict between Sunnis,
Shi’ites, and Kurds. In western Europe, war in the Middle East encouraged shrill cries
about an ominous Muslin threat from immigrants living in western Europe, but a
thoughtful consideration of Tariq Ramadan and his audience suggests that these fears
were greatly exaggerated.
Notes
1. D. Rappaport, “The Fourth Wave: September 11 in the History of Terrorism,” Current His-
tory, December 2001, pp. 419–424.
2. Ibid.

The French Riots: Will They Change Anything?
I n late November 2005, young Muslim males rioted for

several nights in the suburbs of Paris and other French
cities. Intensely reported, this explosion of car-burning and
arson ignited controversy and debate throughout France and
across Europe. What caused the riots? What could, what
should, be done? How did the conditions of second- and third-
generation Muslims in France compare with conditions of
Muslims in other Western countries? One penetrating com-
mentary, aimed at an American audience and reprinted here,
came from William Pfaff, a noted author and political colum-
nist with many years of European experience.
The rioting in France’s ghetto suburbs is a phe-

French police face off with young rioters, silhouetted against the
nomenon of futility—but a revelation nonetheless. frames of burning automobiles. (Reuters/Corbis)
It has no ideology and no purpose other than to
make a statement of distress and anger. It is beyond
politics. It broke out spontaneously and spread in big business in the American ghetto; they are not
the same way, communicated by televised example, that big in France. The crimes of the French ghetto
ratified by the huge attention it won from the press are robbery and shoplifting, stealing mobile phones,
and television and the politicians, none of whom stealing cars for joyrides, burning them afterward to
had any idea what to do. . . . eliminate fingerprints, or burning cars just for the
[The rioters’] grandfathers came to France, hell of it, as well as robbing middle-class students in
mostly from North Africa, to do the hard labor in the city and making trouble on suburban trains,
France’s industrial reconstruction after the Second looking for excitement.
World War. Their fathers saw the work gradually Religion is important . . . in the French ghetto,
dry up as Europe’s economies slowed, following it provides the shell that protects against the France
the first oil shock in the early 1970s. After that came that excludes Muslims. To the European Muslim,
unemployment. The unemployment rate in the it seems that all of the powerful in the world are in
zones where there has been the most violence is collusion to exclude Muslims—or are at war with
nearly 40 percent and among young people it is them. The war in Iraq, on television, is the con-
higher. Many of the young men in these places stant backdrop to Muslim life in Europe. There are
have never been offered a job. When they applied, itinerant imams who can put the young ghetto
their names often excluded them. Muslim on the road to danger and adventure in
Their grandfathers were hard-working men. Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq—or elsewhere. There
Their fathers saw their manhood undermined by are plenty more who preach a still deeper ghetto-
unemployment. These young men are doomed to ization: a retreat inside Islamic fundamentalism,
be boys. They often take their frustration out on totally shutting out a diabolized secular world.
their sisters and girlfriends, who are more likely to One would think there would be a revolution-
have done well in school and found jobs—and fre- ary potential in these ghettos, vulnerability to a mo-
quently a new life—outside the ghetto. . . . bilizing ideology. This seems not to be so. We may
The Muslim mothers and wives of the French be living in a religious age, but it is not one at po-
ghetto are often confined in the home. Drugs are litical ideology. In any case, it is difficult to imagine
838
how the marginalized, thirteen- to twenty-three- with all the rights and privileges of citizenship—
year-old children of the Muslim immigration could including the right to be unemployed.
change France other than by what they are doing,
which is to demonstrate that the French model of
assimilating immigrants as citizens, and not as 1. Describe the situation of young Muslims in
members of religious or ethnic groups, has failed France. What elements of their situation strike
you most forcefully? Why?
for them. It has failed because it has not seriously
been tried. 2. France has maintained that, since all citizens
The ghettoization of immigrant youth in France are equal, they should all be treated the same
way. Why has this policy failed for French
is the consequence of negligence. It has been as
Muslims? What alternatives would you sug-
bad as the ghettoization through political correct-
gest? Why?
ness of Muslims in Britain and the Netherlands,
where many people who thought of themselves as
Source: William Pfaff, “The French Riots: Will They
enlightened said that assimilation efforts were acts
Change Anything?” Reprinted with permission from
of cultural aggression. The immigrant in France is The New York Review of Books, December 15, 2005,
told that he or she is a citizen just like everyone else, pp. 88–89.
839
Index
Aachen, 178, 183, 199 789–790; AIDs crisis in, 830. See also Alcibiades (Athens), 53
Abandoned children, 228–229 and North Africa Alcohol and drunkenness, 625, 630; Is-
illus., 517 African American civil rights of, 790–791 lamic prohibition on, 166; peasant
Abbasid Empire, 176 African slave trade, 371, 373, 411, 497, deaths and, 226; in Russia and Soviet
Abbot (abbess), 240, 266, 267; in double 566; ideas about race and, 393–394; Union, 456, 813; women and, 628–629
monasteries, 181; appointment of, 329, Portuguese and, 325–326, 380, 387; Alcuin, 174, 183, 184
361. See also Monasteries and convents Atlantic economy and, 386, 389, Aldegund (Abbess), 157
Abd al-Rahman III (Umayyad), 169 496(map), 501–504; end of, 687 Aldhelm (Saint), 182(illus.)
Abd al-Rahman (Umayyad), 168 Afrikaners, 681, 683, 684 Alexander I (Russia), 555, 558; at Congress
Abdülhamid (Ottoman Empire), 658 Afterlife: Egyptian view of, 14, 15; in mys- of Vienna, 591(illus.); Holy Alliance
Abelard, Peter, 239, 261–262 tery religions, 78; Christian view of, 115; and, 593
Abolition, of slave trade and slavery, 502, and death, in Middle Ages, 233–234 Alexander II (Russia), 655, 656
550, 687; in United States, 654 Agamemnon, 42–43 Alexander III (Russia), 656
Abortion rights, 803. See also Birth control Agatha (Saint), 230 Alexander VI (Pope), 310, 331, 382
Abraham (Bible), 28; Islam and, Age of anxiety (1900–1940), 726–751 Alexander the Great, 39, 66–71; conquests
164(illus.), 165 Age of crisis, 402–405 of, 67–68 and map, 75, 81, 84; legacy
Absolute monarchy and absolutism, Age of Discovery, 370–385. See also Explo- of, 68–71
401–457, 423; in Western Europe, ration; Voyages of discovery Alexandra (Russia), 712
401–431; state building and, 403–405; Agesilaos (Sparta), 61 Alexandria, 74, 373, 678; library of, 81
in central and eastern Europe, Agincourt, battle of, 287 Alfonso VI (Castile and León), 201
432–457; culture of, 415–418; and Agora, 44 Alfonso VIII (Castile and León), 201
decline, in Spain, 413–415; Enlighten- Agricultural Adjustment Act (United Alfred (Wessex), 154, 195, 221
ment and, 474–480; in France, 362, States), 746 Algebra (al-Khwarizmi), 169
406–412; in Ottoman Empire, 433, Agriculture: Neolithic, 3; irrigation and, 4, Algeria, 773, 831; France and, 606, 658,
593–594, 654; in Prussia, 433, 438, 439, 12, 169; in Fertile Crescent, 11; in 683, 787, 789
442–444; in Russian Empire, 433, 593, Hammurabi’s code, 12; in Egypt, 13; Ali (Caliph), 167
654, 712. See also Divine right of kings Roman, 96, 126; Christian saints and, Allah (god), 165, 166
Abu Bakr (Caliph), 167 149; barbarian groups, 156; German Allan, David, 514(illus.)
Ab Urbe Condita (Livy), 110 and Celtic, 150; Muslims and, Alliance for Germany, 816
Academies of science, 464, 468 168(illus.), 169; Carolingian, 174; in Alliance(s): Near East, 19; Greek, 51, 53,
Academy, in Athens, 60 High Middle Ages, 220(illus.), 222, 61, 70; Roman, 87, 91, 94, 102;
Accounting, commercial, 255 224–226; mechanization in, 224–225; papacy-Frankish kingdom, 153,
Achaean League, 70 14th century crisis in, 242; open-field 172–173; Hungary-papacy, 188;
Achaeans, 42 system for, 224, 487; after Thirty Years’ modern state and, 259; papacy-Italian
Acre, 211, 212 War, 436; in Prussia, 475; in England, cities, 200, 310; War of Spanish
Acrobats, African, 96(illus.) 486(illus.), 487–488, 520; in Low Coun- Succession and, 411; in French
Acropolis, 44, 53, 54(illus.) tries, 487, 520; 18th century revolution court, 417; Thirty Years’ War, 435;
Actium, battle of, 103 in, 486–488; Industrial Revolution and, Denmark-Russia-Poland, 448; War
Ada Gospels, 183(illus.) 566; slave-based, in United States, 654; of Spanish Succession and, 411; in
Adalbert of Prague, 206(illus.) Soviet collectivization of, 754–755, 791. French court, 417; Thirty Years’ War,
Administration: Ostrogothic, 153; French See also Farms and farming; Peasant(s); 435; Denmark-Russia-Poland, 448;
kings and, 198; Sicilian, 200, 201; colo- Serfs and serfdom coalitions against Napoleon, 546, 550,
nial Americas, 391. See also Government Ahriman, 35 555, 560; at Congress of Vienna,
Aegean basin, 39, 40(map), 42, 76 Ahuramazda (god), 35 590–593; Austria-Prussia, 650–651;
Aegina, 51 Aircraft: in Second World War, 768, 775, France-Italy, 648; before First World
Aeneid (Virgil), 110 776, 795; in terrorist attacks, 831, War, 699–700; First World War, 703,
Aeschylus, 50, 53–54 832(illus.) 705, 706(map), 707, 708, 711; Little
Aetolian League, 70 Akan peoples, 373 Entente, 738; Second World War,
Afghanistan, 69, 75, 829, 832; Soviet Akhenaten (Egypt), 17, 18 733–777 and maps, 767, 782; Cold
invasion of, 802, 813, 832; Taliban in, Akkad, Sargon of, 11 War, 786(map), 787
811, 831 Alamanni, 123, 152, 160, 172 All Quiet on the Western Front
Africa, 25, 167; acrobat from, 96(illus.); Al-Andalus. See Andalusia (Remarque), 704, 705
Portuguese exploration of, 378–380 and Alaric (Visigoth), 146, 152 Almanacs, 519
map; world trade and, 373–374; Dutch Al-Athir, Ibn, 218 Almohad dynasty, 170
and, 426, 427(map); railroads in, 675; Albania, 122, 702, 826 Alphabet: Phoenician, 27; Greek, 86;
Cecil Rhodes and, 681, 684; Christian Albert of Mainz, 339–340 Etruscan, 86; Roman, 86, 188; Cyrillic,
missionaries in, 688; European coloni- Albert of Wallenstein, 435 147; runic, 155. See also Writing
zation of, 676, 681–685, 689; First Albigensian heresy, 271, 272(illus.); cru- Al-Qanun (Avicenna), 170
World War and, 707; decolonization of, sade against, 197(map), 212, 213 Alsace, 411, 436, 661
I-1
I-2 Index
Alsace-Lorraine, 718(map), 719 Aphrodisias, 65(illus.) French, 329, 410, 411; Ottoman, 374;
Amalgamated Society of Engineers, 585 Apocalypticism, 113 size of, 402; Spanish, 353, 414(illus.);
Ambrose (Milan), 140 Apollo (god), 44(illus.), 56, 58 state sovereignty and, 405; English civil
American Revolution, 538–539, 594 Apothecary, Spanish, 250(illus.) war, 420–421; Austrian, 439, 611;
Americas (New World): Columbian ex- Appeasement, of Hitler, 765–767 Cossack, 446; Ottoman Janissary, 450,
change and, 389, 391; settlement of, Apprenticeships, 250, 251, 261; in High 452; Prussian, 442, 443 and illus., 475,
385–386; silver from, 391–392; Spanish Middle Ages, 227, 228, 267 555, 612(illus.), 650, 651; Russian, 448
conquests in, 383–385; mercantilism Aquinas, Thomas, 264, 272, 459 and illus, 449, 478, 611, 657, 714;
and colonial warfare in, 495, 497; Aquitane, 197; English claim to, 286, French, under Louis XVI, 541, 542;
Atlantic economy and, 496(map); slave 289, 290 French, under Napoleon, 555–556,
labor in, 501, 502 and illus., 520; new Arabic language, 165, 167, 168; medical 558, 560; French revolutionary, 547,
foods from, 520; white settlers in, 676. treatises in, 170, 261 548, 550; Egyptian, 678; European
See also North America; Latin America; Arabs and Arab world, 135, 377; caravan colonial, 685; First World War,
specific countries trade and, 76; Byzantines and, 137; 698(illus.), 703–705, 707, 711, 716;
Amerindians (Native Americans), 497, Islam and, 163–164, 166, 167; learning Greek, in Turkey, 720, 721; Nazi Ger-
676; Christianity and, 386; Columbian in, 169, 263, 377, 378; invasions by, man, 764, 765, 767–768, 769, 773–775
exchange and, 391; encomienda system 185(map); Christendom and, 180; view and map; Soviet (Red), 715, 773, 775,
and, 386; racial mixing and, 500(illus.) of Crusades in, 218–219; driven from 783, 794 and illus.; Second World War,
Amiens, Treaty of (1802), 554 Spain, 331; slave trade and, 373; trade 767, 773–777 and maps; American, in
Amiens Cathedral, 269 and illus. routes of, 390(map); after First World Vietnam War, 800–801; Paris Accord
Amon-Ra (god), 14, 26 War, 719–720 and illus.; Palestine and, and, 817; American, in Gulf War, 819.
Amorites, 11 719, 720, 724 and illus.; revolt against See also Military; specific battles
Amsterdam, 426; Jews in, 424; religious Ottomans by, 705; nationalism in, and wars
toleration in, 425; population of, 487 719–720 and illus., 724–725; OPEC Armenian genocide, 705, 707(illus.)
Anatolia, 11, 31, 34; Hittites in, 20; Greeks and, 804; terrorism and, 832. See also Arms race, Cold War, 793, 813–814
and, 40(map); Turks in, 209; Ottomans Crusades; Islam Army Order No. 1 (Russia), 713
in, 374, 450. See also Ottoman Empire; Arago, François, 610 Arnold of Brescia, 271
Turkey (Turks) Aragon, 169, 291, 310, 330; reconquista Arouet, François Marie. See Voltaire
Anaximander (Greece), 59, 639 and, 201 Art and artists: Assyrian, 32–33 and illus.;
Andalusia, 168, 170, 201 Aramaic language, Talmud in, 264 Minoan, 41; Athenian, 53–55; Roman,
Andropov, Yuri, 812 Ara Pacis (Altar of Peace), 112(illus.) 97; Christian, 115; monastic, 181;
Angevin dynasty (England), 197 Archaic Age (Greece), 46–50, 58 Dutch, 425, 426(illus.); Michelangelo,
Anglican Church. See Church of England Archimedes, 79–81 307(illus.), 308, 316, 322–323; northern
(Anglicans) Architecture: Sumerian, 9(illus.); Renaissance, 322 and illus.; patrons
Anglo-Dutch wars (1652–1674), 495 Athenian, 53, 54(illus.); Greek, 50; and, 310, 320, 322; Renaissance,
Anglo-French Entente (1904), 700 Hellenistic, 65(illus.), 73, 95(illus.); 307(illus.), 308, 320–324; Reformation,
Anglo-Saxon England, 151(map), 152, Roman, 98; Romanesque, 266, 268; 344–345 and illus., 347(illus.); religious
172(illus.); Celts and, 148, 153–154; Gothic, 266–267, 268–270 and illus.; ideas in, 342(illus.); Spanish, 388 and
Christianity and, 148; epic poetry of, Renaissance, 316, 321–322; baroque, illus., 416(illus.); baroque, 345 and
182; Northumbria, 181–183; Vikings 415; palace building, 416, 440–441; illus., 409(illus.), 415; Pareja,
and, 186, 195, 196 Russian, 447(illus.); modernist, 732, 416(illus.); Dutch, 425, 426(illus.);
Anglo-Saxons, 700 733(illus.). See also Cathedrals rococo, 472; romanticism in, 598, 599,
Anne of Austria, 407 Arch of Constantine, 127(illus.) 600, 601(illus.); French, 625(illus.);
Anne of Brittany, 329 Archon, Solon as, 49 modern, 732–733; abstract, 736; dada-
Anthony of Egypt (Saint), 142 Ardagh silver chalice, 147(illus.) ism and surrealism, 733; Picassso and
Anticlericism, 338–339 Argentina, 391; immigration to, 679 and cubism, 734–735 and illus.; women’s
Anti-Corn Law League, 603 figure, 680 history in, 803(illus.). See also Architec-
Antigonas Gonatas (Macedonia), 69 Arianism, 141–142 ture; Literature; specific arts. See also
Antigone (Sophocles), 54 Aristarchus (Samos), 79 Painting; Sculpture
Antigonid dynasty (Macedonia), 69 Aristocracy. See Nobility (aristocracy) Artemis (goddess), 56
and map Aristophanes, 55 Arthurian legend, 154, 266
Antigua, plantation slavery on, 502(illus.) Aristotle, 60, 169, 170, 263, 465; universe Artisans (craftsmen): Mycenaean, 41;
Antioch, 211, 218 of, 79, 459–460 and illus., 461, 462 Athenian, 55; on manorial estates,
Antiochus Epiphanes, 74 Ark of the Covenant, 29, 37(illus.) 180; in medieval towns, 247, 253;
Antiochus III (Seleucid), 74 Arkwright, Richard, 567, 578 cathedrals and, 267; advice to wives
Anti-Semitism, 331, 424, 660; Dreyfus Armagnacs, 329 of, 305–306; foreign, in France, 410;
affair and, 662; Zionism and, 664–666; Armed forces, 402, 405; Sumerian, 11; Puritanism and, 420(illus.); factory-
in Nazi Germany, 761, 762. See also Egyptian, 16, 17; Greek hoplites, 44, made goods and, 571; industrialization
Jews and Judaism 45(illus.); Hellenistic, 73; of Alexander and, 577; British law and, 584; collec-
Antiutopias, 731–732 and illus. See also the Great, 67, 68; Roman, 99, 100, 116, tive actions by, 585; revolution of
Utopian socialism 118, 123; Augustus and, 108, 109; 1848 and, 609; labor aristocracy
Antonines (Rome), 117, 118 Byzantine, 135; Hunnic, 152; Islamic, and, 628
Antony, Marc, 103, 110 165; Magyar, 188; Crusades, 211, 212; Asceticism, 143; flagellants, 284–285 and
Anxiety, age of, 726–751. See also Hundred Years’ War, 287; Mongol, and illus.. See also Monasticism
Modernism plague, 280; Italian cities, 309, 310; Asclepius (god), 64(illus.)
Index I-3
Ashley Mines Commission, 587–588 Audiencia, 391 Babylonian Captivity: of Judah, 29; of
Asia: French-Dutch rivalry for trade with, Augsburg, Peace of (1555), 350, 435 Christian Church, 291
410; European trade with, 504–505; Augsburg Confession, 350 Bach, Johann Sebastian, 415
European empires and, 676, 685, Augustine of Canterbury, 147, 156 Bacon, Francis, 463–464, 524
686(map), 689; migration from, 680; Augustine of Hippo (Saint), 144, 149, 184, Bactria, 34, 68, 69 and map, 73
railroads in, 675; in 1914, 686(map); 230, 354; City of God, 146, 173; Confes- Baghdad, 168, 169, 176, 263
First World War and, 707; Second sions of, 145–146; on government, 205 Bahamas, Columbus in, 381
World War in, 775; containment policy Augustus (Octavian, Rome), 100, 103, Balance of power: in Germany, 208;
and, 785; decolonization in, 787–789. 108–113, 123; as imperator, 109, among Italian city-states, 310–312;
See also specific countries 110(illus.); successors of, 116–118 Thirty Years’ War and, 435; Peace of
Asia Minor: Greek migration and, Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, 770, 771 Utrecht and, 411, 497; Thirty Years’
40(map), 42, 46; Alexander the Great Austerlitz, battle of, 555 War and, 435; in England, 468; in
in, 67 and map; challenges to Rome in, Australia: aborigines of, 676; in Second eastern Europe, 478; Napoleon and,
100; Christianity in, 143; Turks in, 209. World War, 775; white settlers in, 676, 555; Industrial Revolution and, 566;
See also Near East 680–681, 691 Congress of Vienna and, 590–593
Aspasia, 57 and illus. Austria, 109, 411, 412(map), 717; plague Baldwin, Stanley, 737, 742
Assemblies: Greek, 44, 49; Hellenistic, 72; in, 282; absolutism in, 433; Habsburgs Baldwin IX (Flanders), 211
Roman, 90; of French nobles, 197, 286; of, 348, 435, 437(map), 438–439; Balfour Declaration, 666, 719
after Hundred Years’ War, 290; in absolutism in, 433; Habsburgs of, Balkan region: Germanic peoples in, 123;
France, 540, 609, 610. See also Na- 412(map), 435, 437(map), 438–439, Huns in, 152; Orthodox Christianity
tional Assembly; specific assemblies 546; in 1715, 412(map); church control in, 187; Slavs in, 186; slaves from,
Assimilation: Christian, 148–149; Celtic, of, 439; Russia and, 478; marriage in, 180(illus.), 252, 375, 387; Ottoman
151; barbarian, 153; in Spain, 168; of 511; Napoleon and, 554, 555, 558, 560; Empire and, 450, 658; class distinctions
Slavs, 187; of Anglo-Saxons, 196; of war with France, 546, 547; Holy in, 624; nationalism in, 658, 663,
Vikings, 187, 196 Alliance and, 593; revolt in (1848), 701–702; Alliance System and, 699; in
Assyria and Assyrian Empire, 11, 30–33; 610–611; Germany and, 613; Czech First World War, 701, 702 and map; in
Israel and, 29, 31; Medes and, 25, 34 nationalism and, 615; Italy and, Second World War, 768. See also
Astell, Mary, 465 592(map), 648; Prussia and, 650–651; specific countries
Astrolabe, 377, 378 Zollverein and, 650; women’s rights in, Ball, John, 296
Astronomy, 4, 467(illus.), 638; Hellenistic, 709; peace treaty with, 719; Great Baltic region, 442; clan chieftains in, 177;
79; Arab, 169; Aristotle and, 459–460; Depression in, 743; Hitler and, 765, Christianization of, 213; migration into,
Copernicus and, 460–461; Galileo and, 766(map); independence of, 793; 222; Black Death in, 282; Dutch power
461–463, 464; Newton and, 463. See opening border with Hungary, 816. in, 426; Swedish power in, 436, 442;
also Scientific revolution; Universe; See also Austro-Hungarian Empire after Thirty Years’ War, 436; Peter the
specific astronomers Austrian Netherlands, 547, 548, 554, 591. Great and, 448; Second World War
Atahualpa (Inca), 385 See also Belgium and, 767; Soviet Union and, 767;
Atatürk (Mustafa Kemal), 720–721 Austro-Hungarian Empire (Austria- independence in, 817
Athena (goddess), 44(illus.), 53, 56, 58 Hungary), 663–664; socialists in, 669; Balzac, Honoré de, 639–640
Athens, 41, 61, 70; acropolis of, 44, 53, Alliance System and, 699–700; Balkan Banks, 297; Florentine, 308–309 and
54(illus.); arts in, 53–55; democracy in, nationalism and, 701, 702–703 and illus., 320–321; industrial investment
45, 48–50; empire of, 51; Macedonia map; break up of, 716–717, 718(map), and, 576, 647; Jews and, 577; financial
and, 62; Peloponnesian War and, 719; First World War and, 705, panic and, 743, 745. See also Credit;
51–53; plague in, 52, 64 and illus. 706(map), 711, 716 Finance; Investment; Moneylending
Atlantic alliance, 802. See also NATO Austro-Prussian War (1866), 650–651, 663 Banten, Java, 372(illus.)
Atlantic economy, 495, 646; in 1701, Authoritarianism: in British India, 691; in Baptism, 114, 160(illus.), 172(illus.);
496(map); African slave trade and, 375, Japan, 692; in Putin’s Russia, 823. See infant, 233; Anabaptists and, 343
386, 389, 496(map), 501–504; Spain in, also Dictators and dictatorship Baptists, 343
496(map), 500 Authority. See Power (authority) Barbarians: Greeks and, 110, 149–150;
Atlantic islands, 326; Portuguese planta- Authorized Bible, 395 Rome and, 109–110, 117, 128, 129,
tions on, 375, 378, 387, 389. See also Automobiles, steam-powered, 571 134; Christianity and, 147; migrations
specific islands Avars, 134, 135, 180 by, 150, 151(map); society of, 154–157
Atlantic Ocean, exploration of, 375. See also Averroes, 170 Barbarossa. See Frederick I Barbarossa
Columbus, Christopher; Exploration Avicenna (ibn-Sina), 169–170 (Holy Roman Empire)
Atomic bombs, 730 and illus., 784; Hiro- Avignon, popes in, 256, 291, 293 Barcelona, 325
shima, Nagasaki and, 776(map), 777; Axis powers, Second World War, 775. See Baroque art and music, 345 and illus.,
research required for, 795, 796; also Italy; Japan; Nazi Germany 409(illus.), 415
US-Soviet agreement and, 817. See Azores, 378, 389 Barracks emperors (Rome), 117, 123, 127
also Nuclear weapons Aztec Mexico, Spanish in, 383–385 Barter, 46
Atomic power, discoveries in, 730 and illus. Barth, Karl, 728–729
Atomic theory, 59 Basel, Zionist Congress in (1897), 665
Aton (god), 14, 17, 18 Baby boom, 798. See also Birthrate Basilica (church), 266
Attalus III (Pergamum), 99 Baby bust, in Europe, 828 Basil (Saint), 143
Attica, 39, 50, 77 Babylon and Babylonia, 11, 19, 20, 34; Basques, 174, 244
Attila the Hun, 152 Assyria and, 30, 32; Ishttar Gate, Bastille, storming of (1789), 541–542
Auden, W. H., 729 24(illus.) Bauhaus architecture, 732, 733(illus.)
I-4 Index
Bavaria, 172, 174, 183, 188, 438 Birthrate: in 17th century, 489; illegiti- Bombs and bombings: blitzkrieg and, 767;
Bayeaux Tapestry, 195(illus.) macy and, 513, 514, 515; decline of, of cities, in Second World War, 768 and
Bayle, Pierre, 466–467, 469 635 and figure; decline, in Great De- illus.; in Pacific islands, 776 and map;
Beat subculture, 798 pression, 744; decline, in postwar era, atomic, 730 and illus, 776(map), 777,
Beattie, James, 474 798(figure); in Western Europe, 828. 784, 795, 817 (See also Nuclear weap-
Beauvoir, Simone de, 802, 808–809 See also Childbearing, women and ons); of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
Bechuanaland, 681, 682(map) Bishops, 153, 357; of Rome, 140; Islam 776(map), 777; in Vietnam War, 801;
Becket, Thomas, 193(illus.), 204, 302 and, 170; Frankish, 173, 174; feudalism in Yugoslavia, 826; in Iraq, 833(illus.),
Bede (Venerable), 154, 181–182 and, 179; appointment of, 178, 208, 834. See also Terrorism
Bedouins, 163 329, 331, 361; secular power of, Bonaparte family. See Napoleon III (Louis
Beethoven, Ludwig von, 600–601 206(illus.), 238; in eastern Europe, 213; Napoleon); Napoleon I (Napoleon
Beguines, in Netherlands, 272 in Scandinavia, 213; cathedrals and, Bonaparte)
Beijing (Peking), 693; foreign occupation 266, 267; feudal nobility and, 270; Boniface (Saint), 172 and illus., 181, 184
of, 676 English Puritans and, 419. See also Boniface VIII (Pope), 207, 273
Belgium, 413, 556, 593, 739; as Austrian Papacy (popes); specific bishops Book of Common Order (Knox), 355
Netherlands, 547, 548, 554, 591; Bismarck, Otto von, 650–653; Prussian Book of Common Prayer, 353, 419
industrialization in, 575; corporate Parliament and, 650, 651; Franco- Book of Revelation, 278
banks in, 576; Africa and, 682(map), Prussian War and, 651, 653 and illus.; Book of the Dead (Egypt), 14
683 and illus.; invasion of, 703 and as chancellor, 660–661; Berlin Confer- Books: Anglo-Saxon, 181–182; in Char-
illus.; in First World War, 711; Treaty ence and, 683; African territory and, lemagne’s court, 183, 184; in monaster-
of Versailles and, 719; Nazi occupation 683; Alliance System of, 699–700 ies, 181; textbooks, 263; lay literacy and,
of, 767 Bithus (Roman soldier), 119 302; censorship of, 319–320; printing
Belorussia, 715 Bjørnson, Martinius, 680 of, 318–319; Reading revolution and,
Benedict of Nursia and Benedictines, 143, Black Death, 280–285, 309; consequences 470–471 and illus.; in Enlightenment,
144, 238, 240, 242; monastic reform of, 284–285, 377; Jews blamed for, 283, 472; burning of, in Nazi Germany, 763.
and, 178, 239 285, 331; spread of, 280–282 and map; See also Libraries; Literacy; Literature;
Benefices (offices), 338–339 treatment of, 282–284; decline follow- Manuscripts
Benet Biscop, 181–182 ing, 433, 488, 489. See also Plague Bordeaux, 255
Bentham, Jeremy, 619 Blacklisting, in Soviet Union, 795 Borders and boundaries: Locarno Agree-
Beowulf, 182 Blacks, 325–326; American jazz and, ments and, 740, 741; after Second
Berbers, 168 742(illus.). See also under Africa; World War (See Iron Curtain); of
Berg, Alban, 736 African Hungary, 816. See also Frontiers
Bergson, Henri, 728 Black Sea area: Huns in, 152; plague in, Borgia, Cesare, 310, 315
Berlin, 736; ironworks in, 575(illus.); 280–281; Genoese in, 375, 387; slaves Borodino, battle of, 558
Constituent Assembly in, 611; Confer- from, 387; Crimean War in, 655 Borsig ironworks (Berlin), 575(illus.)
ence, 683; Jews in, 664; Congress of Black Shirts (Italy), 760 Bosnia, 450, 830
(1878), 699, 702(map); workers in, Blair, Tony, 805 Bosnia-Herzegovina, 701, 702 and map;
671(illus.), 716 Blake, William, 579 civil war in, 826; independence of, 825
Berlin Wall, 793; dismantling of, 816, Blanc, Louis, 597, 609 and map
817(illus.) Blitzkrieg, 767 Bossuet (French theologian), 406
Bernard of Clairvaux (Saint), 213, Blood, purity of, 331–332, 360 Botswana, 681
239, 301 Blood libel, Jews and, 214 Botticelli, Sandro, 321(illus.), 323
Berno (abbot of Cluny), 239 Blood sports, 530, 630 Boucher, François, 512(illus.)
Bernstein, Edward, 669 Bloody Sunday (St. Petersburg), 656 Boule (council), 49
Berruguete, Pedro, 272(illus.) Blum, Léon, 748 Boundaries. See Borders and boundaries;
Béthune, Maximilien de (duke of Sully), Boarstall Manor (England), 223(map) Frontiers
406, 410 Boats. See Ships and shipping Bourbon dynasty, 391, 648; absolutism
Bible (Scripture), 460; golden calf in, 29 Bocaccio, Giovanni, 316 and, 406; Spain and, 411, 412(map);
and illus.; Hebrew (Jewish), 28, 30, 37, Boeotia, 39, 51, 62 restoration of, 560, 590
425; Old Testament, 144; Vulgate, 144; Boers, in South Africa, 681 Bourgeoisie, 248, 417, 537, 607; Marx on,
authority of, 261, 263, 264; Wyclif’s Boetian Confederacy, 45 597, 598
English translation, 292, 293; Erasmus Bohemia, 213, 255, 293, 651; migrants in, Bouvines, battle of, 204
and, 317; Gutenberg, 318; Protestants 282, 300; Reformation in, 355–356; Boxer rebellion (China), 693
and, 342; King James, 395; reading of, Thirty Years’ War and, 435; Czech, 615 Boyars (Russian nobles), 187–188
518, 519, 527. See also New Testament (See also Czech nationalism) Brahe, Tycho, 461, 464
(Gospels) Bohemian Estates, 438 Brandenburg-Prussia, 436, 442 and map,
Bigarny, Felipe, 332(illus.) Boleyn, Anne, 351 442(map). See also Prussia
Big Three (Second World War), 782–783 Bolivia, silver mines in, 386, 391–392 Brandt, Willy, 801
and illus. Bologna, 309; Concordat of (1516), Brassey, Thomas, 571
Bill of exchange, 257 329, 361; University of, 260–261, Brazil: Portuguese in, 378, 382, 387(illus.),
Bill of Rights (England), 423 262(illus.), 285 389, 392; slavery and sugar plantations
A Bill-Poster’s Fantasy (Perry), 617(illus.) Bolshevik Revolution, 713–714, 721, 753 in, 387(illus.), 389, 392, 496(map), 501;
Bin Laden, Osama, 829, 832 Bolsheviks, 715, 721, 753, 759; five-year immigration to, 679 and figure
Birth control (contraception), 635, 798; plans and, 779–780. See also Commu- Breast-feeding, 634–635. See also Wet
abortion rights, 803 nist Party (Soviet Union) nurses
Index I-5
Breshnev, Leonid, 793, 794, 802; death Bush, George H.W., 819–820 Capitalism, 297; beginnings of, 258;
of, 812 Bush, George W., 831 Protestant ethic, 419; Smith and, 505;
Breshnev Doctrine, 793, 813 Business, 76; in Middle Ages, 255–257; in globalized, 521; bourgeoisie and, 537;
Brest-Litovsk, Treaty of, 706(map), Italian Renaissance, 309; investment in Britain, 567; industrial, 585; social-
715, 719 by, 573; women and, 578; liberalism ists and, 609; imperialism and, 688;
Breteuil, Gabrielle-Emilie Le Tonnelier and, 594. See also Commerce communism and, 812; neoliberal, 820;
de. See Châtelet, Marquise du Byblos, 26 in Russia, 823; in eastern Europe, 824
Bretons, 183 Byron, Lord (George Gordon Noel), 602 Capitalist ethic, 419
Briand, Aristide, 740, 741 Byzantine Empire, 134–139, 135(map), Capitalists, 490
Bridge building, in England, 163; Eastern Roman Empire as, 126 Capital (Marx), 597(illus.)
570(illus.), 571 and map, 134; intellectual life in, Caravan trade, 163, 253, 373; camels in,
Bridget of Kildare, 147 136–137; Christian missionaries from, 76; plague and, 280
Britain, battle of, 768 147; Muslims and, 166, 188; Russia Carcassonne, 248(illus.)
Britain (British Isles): Roman, 122, and, 147, 187, 446, 447(illus.); Caribbean region (West Indies), 386, 520;
124–125 and illus.; missionaries in, Crusades and, 211–212; Venetia and, Columbus in, 381–382, 398–399;
147–148; Celts in, 151; Runic inscrip- 174, 253 slavery and sugar plantations in, 389,
tions in, 155(illus.); folk law in, 156; Byzantium, 128. See also Constantinople 501, 570. See also Saint-Domingue
culture of, 183; histories of, 182; Viking Carlsbad Decrees, 593
invasions and, 186. See also England, Carmelite order, 360
Ireland; Scotland “Cabal,” in England, 422 Carnival, 513, 530
British Broadcasting Corporation, 737 Cabot, John, 379(map), 383 Caroline miniscule (script), 183
British Commonwealth of Nations, 789 Cabral, Pedro Alvares, 380, 382 Carolingian Empire, 171, 172–177, 234;
British East India Company, 505, 689 Cadeau-Cambrésis, Treaty of (1559), 361 renaissance in, 183–184. See also
British Empire, 411, 686(map); India and, Caesar. See Augustus (Octavian); Julius Charlemagne, empire of
689–691, 788 and illus.. See also Eng- Caesar Carpaccio, 325(illus.)
land (Britain) Cairo, 168; Mamelukes in, 373, 374; Carter, Jimmy, 802
Britons, 122, 151, 152, 154 modernization of, 678 Cartesian dualism, 464
Brittain, Vera, 710 and illus. Caius Duilius, column of, 93(illus.) Carthage, 27, 91–94, 110
Brittany, 154 Cajamarca, 385 Cartier, Jacques, 379(map), 383
Bronze Age, 17, 42 Calais, England and, 329 Cartwright, Edmund, 568
Brothels, 298, 628. See also Prostitution Calicut, Da Gama in, 376, 380 Cassiodorus, 153
The Brothers Karamazov (Dostoevski), 636 Caligula (Rome), 116 Castiglione, Baldassare, 314 and illus.
Bruges, 248, 253, 257 Caliph, 167 Castile, 169, 291, 330; reconquista
Brunel, Isambard Kingdom, The Calling of Saint Matthew (Pareja), and, 201
570(illus.), 571 416(illus.) The Castle (Kafka), 732
Brunelleschi, Filippo, 320, 321–322 Callisthenes, 67 Castlereagh, Robert, 591
Brüning, 764 Calvin, John and Calvinism, 351, 354–355 Catacombs, in Rome, 115 and illus.
Brussels, 248, 827 and illus., 356, 358(map), 361, 435, Catalonia, 169; revolt in, 405, 413
Bubonic plague, 137, 280, 403, 489; labor 460, 528; English Puritans, 353, 395, Catapults, 80, 81 and illus.
shortage from, 386. See also Black 419, 421; in France (See Huguenots); Cateau-Cambrésis, Treaty of, 361
Death in Netherlands, 344, 345(illus.), Cathars. See Albigensian heresy
Buffon, Comte de, 473 362–363 and illus.; Scottish Presbyterian- Cathedrals: Hagia Sophia, 133(illus.);
Bulgaria, 109, 663, 705; Balkan war and, ism, 355, 419; work ethic and, 355, 362 schools in, 183, 259–260 and map, 261;
701, 702 and map; after First World Cambridge University, 262 French, 267, 269–270 and illus.; organ-
War, 718(map), 719; communism in, Cameroons, 683 izing and building of, 267–270; in
783; in postcommunist era, 824–825 Canada, 691, 801; Vikings in, 186; French Florence, 320; Saint Peter’s Basilica,
Bureaucracy, 402; Roman, 116, 118; in, 379(map), 383, 410, 497; immigra- 316; in Moscow, 447(illus.). See also
medieval, 194; Sicilian, 201; of papal tion to, 679 and figure; income in, 681 Church (building)
curia, 291; lay literacy and, 303; Eng- Canals, 489, 575; in England, 566, 570; Catherine of Aragon, 330, 351, 353
lish, 353; centralization and, 404, 405; Panama, 675; Suez, 675, 678, 687, 690 Catherine the Great (Russia), 450,
Prussian, 443, 475, 650; Russian, 449; Canary Islands, 375, 381, 382, 387, 389 477–478 and illus.; League of Armed
Ottoman, 450, 452; Austrian reforms, Cannae, battle of, 93 Neutrality and, 539
480; church, 526; British India, 691; Cannon (artillery), 287, 380 Catholic Church, 435, 729; Ebo of Reims
Chinese, 693; Russian, 712; Nazi Canon law, 142, 208 and, 178; social advancement in, 178;
German, 763, 770; scientific research Canterbury, 147–148, 193(illus.); arch- Slavs and, 186–187; in Hungary, 188,
and, 796; Soviet, 812; Polish, 814. See bishop of, 296, 419, 420; pilgrims 356; in Uppsala, 213; usury and, 257;
also Government in, 204 Thomas Aquinas and, 264; Joan of Arc
Burgher, 248. See also Bourgeoisie Canterbury Tales (Chaucer), 301, 302 and, 289; Babylonian Captivity of, 291,
Burgundians, 153, 227, 289, 329, 348 Canton, 676 338; Great Schism and, 291–293, 338;
Burials, 233 and illus.; Egyptian, 15; Canute, 196 Conciliar movement in, 292–293; lay
Etruscan, 87(illus.); catacombs of Cape Colony, 684 piety and, 345; mysticism and, 241,
Rome, 115 and illus.; plague and, 285. Cape of Good Hope, 426 360; reformation of, 357, 359–361;
See also Tombs Capetian dynasty (France), 197, 286–287 Counter-Reformation and, 345 and
Burke, Edmund, 545 Cape Town, 681, 682(map) illus., 356; indulgences in, 234,
Burma, independence of, 789 Cape Verde Islands, 389 339–340 and illus., 357; Protestantism
I-6 Index
Catholic Church (continued) government of, 174–176; legacy of, 181, China: papermaking and, 169, 318; porce-
and, 350, 352, 358(map), 361–363; in 199; renaissance in, 183–184; wars of, lain of, 392(illus.); silks from, 255, 371,
Ireland, 352–353, 420, 421, 604, 663; 173–174, 180 392; Mongol emperors of, 372; trade of,
in Poland, 356, 814; on marriage, 346; Charles I (England), 419–421 371; trade routes of, 390(map); silver
in England, 353, 419, 423; in France, Charles II (England), 422–423 trade and, 392; industrialization and,
406, 407, 408; baroque art and, 415; in Charles II (Spain), 411, 414 576; European trade with, 676; British
Austria, 438, 439; in German states, Charles III (Spain), 391 war with, 676, 677(illus.); migration
436; Voltaire and, 469; Copernican Charles IV (France), 286 from, 680; in 1914, 686(map); impe-
hypothesis and, 460; church regulation Charles V (Holy Roman Empire), 340, rialism and, 685; Japan and, 693, 707,
by, 526; contributions to social and 353, 386; Augsburg Confession and, 765, 772, 776; missionaries in, 688,
religious life, 527; Pietism and, 350; Catholicism of, 350; global empire 693; Qing (Manchu) dynasty, 676, 693;
528–530; French Revolution and, of, 348, 349(map); Low Countries and, rebellion in, 693; civil war in, 784, 788;
544, 547, 551; Napoleon and, 554; in 362; sack of Rome and, 312, 351 communists in, 784–785, 788–789,
England, 603; French government and, Charles V (Spain), 332, 382, 383(illus.) 793; Korean War and, 784; death
662; missionaries, 688; working class Charles VI (Austria), 439, 475 penalty in, 830
and, 630; existentialism and, 729; in Charles VII (France), 289, 329 Chinggis Khan, 444
fascist Italy, 759, 760–761; Nazi Ger- Charles VIII (France), 311 Chivalry, 235 and illus., 236, 275, 299,
many and, 765; in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Charles X (France), 606 321. See also Knights
826. See also Papacy (popes) Charles XI (Sweden), 440 Chlodio (Franks), 153
Catholic League, 435 Charles XII (Sweden), 448 and illus. Chocolate, 521
Catholic party: of France, 785; of Germany, Charles Martel, 172, 174, 177 Cholera epidemic, 619–620
660, 717, 719, 785; of Italy, 759, 785 Charles the Bald, 175(map), 177, 185, 191 Chopin, Frédéric, 600
Cato the Elder, 94–95, 97 and illus. Christendom, 172, 208, 214; Great
Caucasus, Russia and, 478 Charles the Good (Flanders), 191 Schism of, 291. See also Christianity
Cavaignac, Louis, 610 Charles the Simple (Franks), 186 The Christening Feast (Steen), 426(illus.)
Cavendish, Margaret, 465 Charles University, 294 Christian Democrats, 785, 816
Cavour, Camillo Benso di, 648–650 Charpentier, Marc-Antoine, 417 Christian existentialism, 728–729
Ceausescu, Nicolae, 816–817 Chartist movement, 585 Christian Holy League, 450
Cederstrom, Gustaf, 448(illus.) Chartres Cathedral, 267 and illus., Christianity, 35, 72, 113–116; growth of,
Celibacy, 206, 207; clerical, 239, 338, 341; 269(illus.), 270 137, 140–144; in Roman Empire, 126,
superiority of marriage to, 346 Châtelet, Marquise du, 468, 469(illus.) 128; missionaries and, 114–115,
Celtic language, 150, 153 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 301, 302 146–149; conversion to (See Conver-
Celtic peoples, 87, 122, 150–151; Ger- Chaumont, Treaty of (1814), 560 sion); spread of, 114–115, 134, 141(map);
mans compared to, 150; in Ireland, Chechnya, civil war in, 823 Theodora of Constantinople and, 138,
147(illus.), 148; migrations of, 151; Chedworth (Britain), Roman villa in, 139; appeal of, 115–116; classical
Anglo-Saxons and, 153–154. See also 124–125 and illus. culture and, 183; in Ireland, 147(illus.);
Gaul and Gauls Cheka (Soviet secret police), 715, 758 Slavs and, 186–187, 213; in Spain, 168,
Cemeteries. See Burials; Tombs Chemistry, 637 169, 170; Islam and, 165, 166, 168, 170;
Censorship, 319–320, 606; in Puritan Chiang Kai-shek, 788 of Clovis, 160–161; heresy and, 114,
England, 421; in Russia, 655; in First Chicago, Judy, 803(illus.) 212, 297(map); in Iberian reconquista
World War, 711; in Nazi Germany, Childbearing, women and, 232–233, 298, and, 201–202, 222, 231, 376; in Scandi-
763; in Soviet Union, 754, 792(illus.), 515; in Rome, 112; in Frankish king- navia, 213; Jews and, after Crusades,
813 doms, 156; midwives and, 56, 228, 233, 213–214; in High Middle Ages,
Central Europe: absolutism in, 438–444; 426(illus.), 523, 524, 525; mortality in, 229–234; in medieval villages, 229–230;
warfare and social change in, 433–437 82(illus.), 228; delayed, in postwar era, popular beliefs in, 231; childbirth and,
and map; serfdom in, 433–434; nation- 797, 798. See also Birthrate 232; death and, 233–234; symbolism in,
alism in, 595; Jews of, 664. See also Child labor, 636; in textile industry, 492; 230; usury and, 257; and Muslim
specific countries cottage industry, 580; in factories, culture, in Spain, 275; humanism and,
Central Powers, First World War, 705, 568–569; laws restricting, 569, 581; in 312, 316–317; Erasmus on, 335–336;
706(map), 707, 711 mines, 581, 587–588 Orthodox, 142, 144, 187, 358(map),
Cervantes, Miguel de, 414–415 Childrearing, 634–636; wet-nurses, 433, 446; slave trade and, 180, 252, 325,
Ceuta, Portuguese in, 378 515–516 and illus., 517, 518; literature 326, 394; Amerindian, 386; Nietszche
Ceylon (Sri Lanka), 393, 789 on, 634–635; Rousseau on, 518; work- on, 727. See also Christian Orthodoxy;
Chabas, Paul-Émile, 625(illus.) ing women and, 583, 797, 798 Jesus of Nazareth; Reformation; specific
Chadwick, Edwin, 579, 619–620 Children: as oblates, 181–182, 228, Christian sects
Chaeronea, battle of, 62 229(illus.); peasant, 223; abandonment Christian IV (Denmark), 435
Chamberlain, Neville, 766, 767 of, 228–229 and illus., 517; religion Christian missionaries and missions,
Champagne fairs, 253 and, 233; noble, 235; labor of, 252; 114–115, 134, 374; Anglo-Saxon,
Chapels, 321. See also Church as Ottoman tax, 450; nursing and, 147–148; conversion and, 146–149;
(building) 515–516; infanticide of, 517; 18th Carolingians and, 172; Columbus as,
Chaplin, Charlie, 736, 737(illus.) century attitudes toward, 517–518; 381; Slavs and, 147, 186; Spanish, 500;
Charcoal, in iron industry, 569 illegitimate, 512(illus.), 513, 514–515, imperialism and, 687, 688; in China,
Chariots, 17; Persian, 33(illus.); Greek, 584, 630, 631; in 19th century, 688, 693
45(illus.); Roman, 120 634–636. See also Families Christian Orthodoxy, 358(map); Byzantine
Charlemagne, empire of, 173–180, 238; Chile, 389, 391 church as, 142; in eastern Europe, 187;
Index I-7
monasticism and, 144; Russian, 187, 517; illegitimacy in, 514; amusements 174, 183; feudalism and, 179; nobility
433, 446, 593–594; Greek, 602; Ser- in, 530, 617(illus.); consumer economy and, 179, 180; lay investiture and,
bian, 826 in, 523; industry and growth of, 198–199, 208; morality of, 205,
Church: book censorship and, 319; Chris- 618–619; in 19th century, 618–622; 270–271; celibacy and, 206, 338;
tian, 137, 140–144; meaning of term, working class in, 625; sanitation in, Magna Carta and, 205; as social order,
137; nobles and, 237; moneylending 619–620; transportation in, 621–622 221 and illus.; monasticism and, 143,
and, 257; cities and, 270–273; sin and, and illus.; Chinese trade and, 676; 238; universities and, 260; cathedrals
284; state and, 292; in Spain, 331; in bombing of, in Second World War, 762 and, 268; heresies in towns and, 270;
Scotland, 514(illus.); parish, 526; and illus., 777; Soviet, 755, 795. See wealth of, 271, 273; plague and, 284;
institutional, 526–527; national, 526, also Urban areas; specific cities Hundred Years’ War and, 287, 289;
544; Hogarth on, 528(illus.); working Citizens and citizenship: Greek, 43, 45, hypocrisy of, 292(illus.); confraternities
class and, 630. See also Religion; spe- 49–50, 51, 57; Hellenistic, 74; Roman, and, 293; absenteeism by, 339–340;
cific religions 86, 93, 99, 102, 119, 131–132; Roman Henry VIII and, 352, 353; reforms of,
Church (building), 148(illus.); relics in, voting and, 88–89, 91, 98; in modern 205, 357; Reformation and, 338, 340;
268, 269; in medieval villages, 226; state, 194; Italian commune, 309; superstitions of, 338; education of, 357;
architecture of, 266–270; Romanesque, More’s Utopia, 317; denied to German Protestant, 342, 343, 361; taxation and,
266, 267; iconoclasts in, 363 and illus.; Jews, 764 342; local parish, 526; Pietism and, 527,
music in, 270; Reformation, 344–345 City of God (Augustine), 146, 173 529; French, 536, 541; in French
and illus. See also Cathedrals City-states: Greek polis, 43–46, 70, 72 (See Revolution, 544. See also Bishops;
Church councils. See Councils; specific also Athens; Sparta); in Italy, 310–312 Priests and priestesses
councils and map; east Africa, 373 Clients, in Sumeria, 10
Churchill, Winston, 767, 782–783 and Civilization(s): Mesopotamian, 4–5; Climate change: “little ice age” and, 278,
illus.; “iron curtain” speech, 784 Egyptian, 16; Aztec, 384; race and, 474; 403; famine and, 485
Church of England (Anglicanism), romantic view of, 473. See also Clinton, Bill, 824, 826
353–354, 358(map), 604, 663; Puritans Culture(s); specific civilizations Clive, Robert, 505
and, 353, 395, 419; monarchy and, 422, Civilizing mission, 687, 688 Clocks, mechanical, 258 and illus.
423; Methodism and, 527, 528 Civil war(s): in Rome, 100, 102–103, 108, Clothar I, 157
Church of Scotland. See Presbyterian 113, 123; in Muslim Spain, 169; Viking Clothing: of Iceman, 6–7; Roman toga,
Church invasions and, 177; in Germany, 200; in 87; for Jews and Muslims, 209, 252;
Church-state separation, 343; in France, France, 287, 329, 362, 406; in Nether- social status and, 252; sumptuary laws
662; in Italy, 759; in Turkey, 721 lands, 363; in Inca Empire, 385; in and, 327(illus.); Western, in Russia,
Cicero, 100, 102 England, 329, 420–421; in Ottoman 449; fashion and, 493, 522, 624,
Cimon, 51 Empire, 452; in St. Domingue, 556; in 626–627; consumerism and, 522; poor
Circuit judges, 203 Switzerland, 607; in United States, 654; and, 568; of workers, 580, 626; of
Cistercians, 239–240, 257, 270 in Russia, 714–716, 753; in Spain, middle class, 624; ready-made, 626,
Cities and towns: Neolithic, 3–4; Sume- 735(illus.), 748, 765; in China, 784; in 629. See also Textile industry (cloth
rian, 5; Syrian, 20; Mycenaean, 41; Yugoslavia, 811, 826, 829; humanitar- making)
Greek polis, 43–46; Crusades, 211; ian intervention in, 830 Clotild (Franks), 160
Hellenistic, 70, 71–72, 73, 75, 76; Civitas, 171, 174 Clovis (Franks), 147, 151(map); conver-
Roman veterans in, 99; Gallo-Roman, Clare of Assisi, 272 sion of, 153, 160–161 and illus., 171
87; in Roman Empire, 122, 153; along Class-consciousness, 584; Marx and, Cluny abbey, 238–239
caravan routes, 163; in Middle Ages, 577, 597 Cnossus, 41
180, 246–274; Muslim Spain, 168–169, Classes: in Egypt, 16; in Rome, 89, 90; Coal mining, 619, 656; in Wales, 566;
201; northern Italian, 200; fortification medieval orders, 221 and illus.; wealth- railroads and, 571; in England,
of (walls), 135, 247, 248(illus.); eco- based, 326–327; in London, 498–499; 572(map); steam engines and, 569, 570;
nomic revival in, 222, 255–259; in in France, 536–537; factory owners as, in Europe, 574(map); child labor in,
eastern Europe, 213; liberties in, 577; liberal politics and, 595; in urban 587–588; German Ruhr, 739; English
248–249; merchant guilds in, 249; areas, 622–625; women’s fashions and, strikers, 742, 805
population of, 248; apothecaries in, 626–627; First World War and, 709; Codes. See Law and law codes
250(illus.); guilds in, 249–251, 297, Marxian concept of, 713; Soviet, 757; Coenobitic monasticism, 143
490, 493; pollution in, 251; servants in, in Italy, 759; in Nazi Germany, 764; Coffee drinking, 472, 533
252; sumptuary laws in, 252; poor changing structure, in postwar era, Coffee plantations, 497, 500, 521, 550
people in, 251, 253; food supplies to, 796–797. See also specific class Coinage, 257; Greek, 46, 64(illus.); Ro-
278; long-distance trade and, 213, Classicism: French, 417–418, 598, 599; man, 127; silver, 255; Spanish devalua-
253–255 and map; church and, Italian Renaissance, 321–322 tion of, 413. See also under Money
270–273; Black Death and, 281–282, Claudius Ptolemy. See Ptolemy, Claudius Colbert, Jean-Baptiste, 409–410, 493
283; prostitution in, 253, 298, Claudius (Rome), 116, 131–132, 153 Cold War, 781–809; origins of, 782–785;
299(illus.); hierarchies of orders and Cleisthenes, 49 Truman Doctrine and, 784; Korean
class in, 326–327; in Italian Renais- Clemenceau, Georges, 711, 717 War and, 784, 800; eastern Europe and,
sance, 308–312, 320; clergy and, 339; Clement V (Pope), 291 793–794, 814–817; Khrushchev and,
Indian Ocean ports, 371, 372, 380; Clement VII (Pope), 291, 351 792–793; Vietnam War and, 782,
royal authority, in France, 405; Dutch, Cleon (Athens), 52 800–801; détente and, 801–802;
426; decline of, in eastern Europe, Cleopatra VII (Egypt), 102, 103, 110 Reagan’s military buildup and, 802,
434–435; Prussian, 443; Russian, 446; Clergy: regular vs. secular, 143; Roman 806, 814; arms race in, 793, 813–814;
English, 488, 572(map); foundlings in, state and, 140, 142; Charlemagne and, collapse of communism and, 811–818,
I-8 Index
Cold War (continued) disruption in, after First World War, Congress of People’s Deputies (Soviet
819(map); Gorbachev and end of, 738. See also Business; Slave trade; Union), 813, 818
811–814, 817; superpowers in, 782, specific commodities Congress of Vienna (1815), 590, 648
801, 812 (See also Soviet Union; Committee of Public Safety, 548, 550, 551 Congress (United States), 801
United States) Commoners, 290; in Mesopotamia, 10, Conrad III (Germany), 200
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 599 12; Roman plebians, 89, 90; Italian Consent of the governed, 423
Collective bargaining, 669 popolo, 309. See also Peasants Conservatism: French Revolution and,
Collectivization: in Soviet Union, Common law, 203, 330 545; in Holy Alliance, 593; in Ottoman
754–755, 791; in China, 789 Common Market, 786(map), 787. See also Empire, 593–594; in Germany, 653;
College of cardinals, 206 European Economic Community British, 662, 742; in fascist Italy, 760; in
Colleges. See Universities Common Peace (Greece), 60, 61 and Soviet Union, 793; British privatization
Colloquy of Marburg (1529), 342 illus., 62 and, 804, 805
Cologne, 248, 251 Commonwealth, 21 Constable, John, 599, 600
Colombia, 391 Commonwealth of Independent States, Constance, council of (1414–1418), 293,
Colonies and colonization, 675; Greek, 818, 819(map) 294, 340
46–47; Hellenistic, 70–71; Roman, 91, Communes, 309; Paris (1871), 661, 667 Constantine (Rome), 123, 126, 134; arch
102–103; Spanish Americas, 375, Communication(s): in Persian Empire, 35; of, 127(illus.); Christian church and,
381–386, 391; Genoese, in Black Sea, commercial, 255; nationalism and, 595; 128, 140–141; Constantinople and,
387; mercantilism and warfare in, 495, global, 675; telegraph and, 675; in 135; Donation of, 315–316
497; in Americas, 495–497 and map, British India, 691; radio, 737; comput- Constantine the African, 261
566; European consumerism and, 522; ers and, 822 Constantinople, 153, 187, 255, 705; con-
Industrial Revolution and, 566; by Communion. See Eucharist (Lord’s struction of, 128–129; fortification of,
West, 675; French, 606, 673(illus.); in Supper) 135; Hagia Sophia in, 133(illus.);
Asia, 685, 686(map); investments in, The Communist Manifesto (Marx & Theodora of, 138–139; Roman popes
676; in Africa, 681–685; new impe- Engels), 597–598 and, 176; patriarch of, 209; Crusader
rialism and, 681–693; Anglo-French Communist Party: in Germany, 741; in assault on, 211–212; Ottoman conquest
Entente and, 700; First World War and, France, 748, 784, 785; in Czechoslova- of, 374 and illus., 387, 446, 450; as
707, 719; neocolonialism and, 789–790; kia, 793; in East Germany, 816; in Istanbul, 451, 452(illus.). See also
decolonization, after Second World Hungary, 816; in Italy, 784, 785; in Byzantine Empire
War, 787–790. See also Imperialism; Poland, 794, 814, 815 Constituent Assembly (France), 609, 610
New Imperialism; specific colonies Communist Party (Soviet Union), 715, Constituent Assembly (Russia), 715
Columbian exchange, 389, 391, 520 753, 754; Stalin’s purges of, 757–758; Constitution: United States, 343, 468, 539;
Columbus, Christopher, 214, 375; as de-Stalinization and, 792; elite, 795, Montesquieu’s theories and, 468;
devout Christian, 376; voyages of, 812; corruption in, 813; Gorbachev’s French, 551, 560, 594, 606, 607, 610,
379(map), 380–382, 398–399 and illus. reforms and, 818 647; Haitian, 557; German, 595; Hun-
Combination Acts, 584–585 Communists and communism: in China, garian, 610; Prussian, 651; Russian,
Comitatus, Germanic, 155 784–785, 788–789, 793; totalitarianism 656; Sardinia-Piedmont, 648; Soviet
Comites, 171, 174 and, 753; containment of, 784–785, Union, 818; European Union,
Commerce (trade): Babylonian, 11; Phoe- 802; Nazis and, 762, 763, 764, 769; in 826–827
nician, 20, 27; Assyrian, 30; Minoan, eastern Europe, 783, 824; Tito and, Constitutional Charter (France, 1814),
39; Persian, 34; Mycenaean, 41; cara- 791; Gorbachev’s reform and, 811–812. 560, 594, 606, 607
van trade, 76, 163; Etruscan, 86, 87; See also Cold War Constitutionalism, 418–427; in England,
Hellenistic, 73, 74, 75–76; Roman, 109, Community: control by, 513; sense of, 596 418–424; in Netherlands, 424, 426–427
120; Germanic, 157; Hungarian, 188; Company (compagnie), 255. See also Constitutional monarchy, 403; in Rome,
in medieval towns, 180, 213; Muslim, Business; East India Companies 108–109; in England, 424; in France,
170, 188; Viking, 186, 187; Crusades Compass, 377, 380 540, 543; in Spain and Italy, 593; in
and, 213; business practices and, The Complete Indian Housekeeper (Steel Prussia, 611; in Russia, 656–657
255–256; Hanseatic League and, 257; & Gardiner), 696–697 Consuls, of Rome, 89, 90, 108–109
Italian merchants, 253, 255, 259; long- Compostela. See Santiago de Compostela Consumer goods: credit and, 797; after
distance, 213, 222, 253–255 and map; Comte, Auguste, 637–638, 639 Second World War, 787, 797(illus.);
medieval revolution in, 258–259; Concentration camps: Nazi, 769–772; in eastern Europe, 793; youth culture
Hundred Years’ War and, 289; in Ren- Soviet, 792 and, 799
aissance, 308–309; global, 371; in Conciliar movement, 292, 293 Consumer revolution, 520, 521–523
Indian Ocean, 371–375; Muslim, 380; Concordat of Bologna (1516), 329, 361 Contraception. See Birth control
of 16th and 17th century empires, The Condition of the Working Class in Convents: cloistered, 207; lifestyle in, 240;
390(map); French, 406, 409; competi- England (Marx), 579 medieval, 238–242; education in, 240;
tion with Spanish, 413; Dutch, 426, Condottieri rule, in Italy, 310 Hildegarde of Bingen and, 241; oblates
427(map), 487; English, 421, 495, 497; Confederate States of America, 654 in, 229. See also Monasteries and
after Thirty Years’ War, 436; colonial, Confederation, 427 convents; Nuns
495, 497; in Atlantic region, 496(map); The Confessions (Augustine), 145–146 Conversations on the Pluralitiy of Worlds
with Asia, 504–505; liberalism and, 594; Confraternities, 293 (Fontenelle), 467(illus.)
Ottoman reforms and, 658; in 19th Congo free state, 683 and illus. Conversion: Christian, 146–149; of Clovis,
century, 675–676; transportation and, Congo River, 683 153, 160–161 and illus., 171; of Géza
675; world market and, 675; China and, Congregationalists, 343 (Magyar), 188; of Jews, 214, 331; of
676; Japan and, 677; World War I, 708; Congress of Berlin (1878), 699, 702(map) Muslims to Christianity, 231; of Catho-
Index I-9
lics to Calvinism, 361; of Amerindians, Cranach, Lucas the Younger, 344 and 120, 151, 152; Greco-Roman, 122, 149,
386. See also Missionaries illus. 183; in Roman provinces, 122; Chris-
Conway, Anne, 465 Crane, Diana, 627 tianity and classical, 145; Muslim, 168,
Copernican hypothesis, 460–461, 462, 463 Crassus (Rome), 102 275; Northumbrian, 181–183; early
Copernicus, Nicolaus, 79, 460–461 Credit, 255; bill of exchange and, 257; in medieval, 181–184; Germanic, 152;
Coral Sea, battle of, 775, 776(map) Spain, 413; in Britain, 567; consumer- Norman, 186; vernacular, 265–266;
Le Corbusier (Charles-Edouard Jean- ism and, 797. See also Debt; Money- courtly, 310; oral, 303, 320, 530; of
neret), 732 lending retribution, 405; of absolutism,
Córdoba, 168–169, 201, 263 Creoles, in Spanish colonies, 500–501 415–418; classicism in, 417–418;
Corinth, 45, 51 Crete, 387; Minoan, 39–40 Enlightenment, 466–474; urban,
“A Corner of the Table” (Chabas), 625(illus.) Crick, Francis, 796 470–472; popular, 530–531, 547; na-
Corn Laws (Britain), 602, 603 Crime: Hammurabi’s Code and, 12; in tional unity and, 595; middle class,
Corporations, industrialization and, 576 High Middle Ages, 202–204 and illus.; 624–625; imperialism and, 689; Soviet
Corpus juris civilis, 136. See also Laws and manorial justice and, 203, 223–224, society, 756–757, 813; youth,
law codes, Justinian 237; illegal activities, 253; fur-collar, 781(illus.), 798–800. See also Art and
Corruption, in Soviet bureaucracy, 813 299–300; sodomy as, 299; illegal artists; Renaissance; specific cultures
Corsica, 91, 93 immigration and, 830. See also Cuneiform writing, 8 and figure
Cortés, Hernan, 376, 383–385 Justice; Law(s) Curie, Marie, 464 and illus., 729
Cortes, in Spain, 330 Crimea, 76; Genoese colonies in, 387; Currency: devaluation of French, 411;
Cossacks, 446, 447, 449 Tartars of, 442 paper, in French Revolution, 544;
Cottage industry: putting-out system in, Crimean War (1853–1856), 655 Weimar German, 741; euro, 816. See
490–491, 567, 580; early marriage and, Crisis, age of, 402–405 also Coinage; under Money
514–515; factory-made goods and, 571; Croatia (Croats), 450, 664; in Austria- Customs: barbarian, 155; of Aragon,
family labor in, 517, 581; wages in, 568; Hungary, 702; in Hungary, 610; Ser- 203(illus.)
workers in, 576 bian aggression and, 825–826 and map Cuzco, 385
Cotton industry, 501; in Britain, 567–569, Croesus (Lydia), 35 Cyprus, 387, 811, 826, 831
570, 675; in Industrial Revolution, Crompton, Samuel, 568 Cyril and Methodius (missionaries), 147
567–569; Irish workers in, 581–582; Cromwell, Oliver, 421, 422(illus.), 495 Cyrillic alphabet, 147
Ure on, 579; factory conditions in, 580, Cromwell, Richard, 421 Cyrus the Great (Persia), 34–35; Jews and,
582(illus.); strike, in Manchester, 585; Cromwell, Thomas, 351, 353 29, 35
in United States, 653–654; in Egypt, Crop rotation, 486 Czechoslovakia: after First World War,
678. See also Textile industry Crusades, 174, 209–214, 235; First, 717, 719; Little Entente and, 738; Nazis
Coudray, Angelique Marguerite Le 209–211 and map; Richard I in, 204, in, 765–767 and map; liberalization in,
Boursier du, 525 210(map), 211; Jerusalem and, 209, 793; Soviet invasion of, 793–794 and
Council of Blood (tribunal), 363 210, 211, 212; motives and course illus., 811; German disputes with, 740,
Councils: in Athens, 49; at Nicaea, of, 210–212; Second, 210(map), 239; 801; Velvet revolution in, 816, 824;
141–142; at Whitby (664), 148, 181; Third, 210(map), 211–212; Fourth, Slovakia and, 824
church, 142, 207; Lateran (1059), 206, 210(map), 211–212; religious orders in, Czech people: in Bohemia, 186, 355–356;
230(illus.); at Pisa, 293; of Constance, 212–213; routes of, 210(map); against Jan Hus and, 293, 294–295, 355; na-
293, 294, 340; of Trent, 345, 357, 359 Albigensians, 197(map), 212, 213; tionalism and, 596, 611, 615–616, 664,
Counter-Reformation, 356, 357; Baroque Iberian, 201–202, 376, 378; in Europe, 711; nobility, 439
art and, 345 and illus. 212–213; new religious orders in, Czech Republic, 824, 826
Counties, in Carolingian Empire, 174 212–213; consequences of, 213–214,
Counts, in Carolingian Empire, 174–175 237; Jews and, 215; Muslims and, 170,
Coup d’état, 647; by Napoleon, 552; 209, 211–212, 213, 214, 218–219 Dadaism, 733
attempted, in Soviet Union, 818 Cryptograms, 283 Da Gama, Vasco, 376, 379(map), 380
Couperin, François, 417 Crystal Palace exhibition (1851), 571 Dala-Kolsson, Hoskuld, 186
Court, Joseph, 608(illus.) Cuba: Columbus in, 381, 398; missile d’Alembert, Jean le Rond, 469, 472
The Courtier (Castiglione), 314 crisis in, 793 Dalmatia, 122, 174
Courtiers, 314, 416. See also Nobility Cubism, Picasso and, 734–735 Damascus, 166, 168, 705; General Syrian
(aristocracy) Cults: Egyptian, 18; of golden calf, 29; Congress in, 720, 724
Court (legal), 405, 512; craft guilds and, Greek, 42, 58, 71; Hellenistic, 76–77 Dance and dancing, 266, 326; Diaghilev
250; papal, 291; manorial, 237; sodomy and illus.; mystery, 77–78; of Serapis, and, 733, 735
and, 299 78; of Isis, 78; Roman, 96, 113, 151; Dance of Death, 285
Court of Star Chamber, 330 Scandinavian, 213; of saints, 230; of Danegeld, 186
Court (royal): Merovingian, 171; Italian Saint Maurice, 235(illus.); of Huitzilo- Daniel, Arnuat, 275
signori, 310; culture, 416–417. See also pochtli, 384 Dante Alighieri, 170, 301–302
Versailles palace Cultural relativism, 394 Danton, Georges Jacques, 547, 551
Covenant, 30, 37 and illus. Culture(s): of Western world, 3; Stone- Danube Plain, 174
Craft guilds, 249–251, 258, 266, 297. See henge, 4; Mesopotamian, 11–13; ex- Dardenelles, 720
also Artisans (craftsmen); Guilds changes of, 20; Nubian, 27; Assyrian, Darius (Persia), 34(illus.), 35, 66(illus.)
Craft unions, 609 32–33 and illus.; Greek, 42, 73, 74; Dark Age (Greece), 41–42
Cramner, Thomas, 353 Minoan, 39; Hellenistic, 70–71, 72, 73; Darwin, Charles, 638(illus.), 639, 761. See
Cranach, Lucas the Elder, 342(illus.), 344, Greco-Egyptian, 74 and illus.; global also Social Darwinists
347(illus.) contacts and, 371; Roman, 109, 119, Dating method, in history, 162
I-10 Index
Datini, Francesco, 256 Descartes, René, 464, 465, 467 urban middle class, 623–624; ethnic, in
David, Jacques Louis, 555(illus.) Dessalines, Jean Jacques, 556, 557 Yugoslavia, 825
David (Israel), 28 De Staël, Germaine, 599 Divine Comedy (Dante), 301–302
Dawes Plan, 739 Détente, in Cold War, 801–802 Divine office, 143, 240
Death, 233–234, 386. See also Afterlife; Developed countries, income in, 674 Divine right of kings, 405–406; in Eng-
Burials; Mortality and illus. land, 419, 421, 423; in France, 408,
Death penalty, 830 Devil (Satan): evil and, 231; witches and, 538, 541; in Prussia, 612–613
De Beers Mining Company, 684 361, 363, 364, 365 Division of labor, 490, 505; gendered, 3,
Debt, 339; Crusader, 214; prostitution Dia, Countess of, 276 233, 582–584
and, 298; bankruptcy, 309; Spanish Diaghilev, Sergei, 733, 735 Diwan, in Sicily, 200, 201
crown, 413; English crown, 419; British Dialect, 265. See also Language Doctors. See Physicians
wars, 538; French wars, 539; Egyptian, Dialectic process, 598 Domesday Book, 196
678; from First World War, 738; govern- Dialogue on the Two Chief Systems of the Domestic industry. See Cottage industry
ment (1970s), 804; United States, 806 World (Galileo), 462 Domestic servants, 124, 512, 581; women
Debt peonage, 500 Diamond mines, in Africa, 684 as, 252, 297, 298, 628–629 and illus.,
Decameron (Boccacio), 316 Diana (goddess), 101 631; blacks as, 326; middle class and,
Declaration of Independence, 538–539 Diaz, Bartholomew, 376, 378, 380 623, 624; schools for, 629(illus.); in
Declaration of Pillnitz, 546 Dictators and dictatorship, 753; military, British India, 696–697
Declaration of the Rights of Man, in England, 421; Directory (France) as, Dominicans, 271, 272, 340, 386
535(illus.), 542, 544 552; in British India, 691; in European Dominic (Saint), 271, 272(illus.)
“Declaration of the Rights of Women” colonies, 688; in First World War, 711; Domitian (Rome), 117
(Gouges), 563–564 and illus. radio propaganda and, 737; Mussolini Donatello, 321
Decolonization, 787–790. See also Colo- as, 758–761; Enabling Act (Germany) Donation of Constantine, 315–316
nies and colonization and, 763; Soviet Union, 714, 715, Don Quixote (Cervantes), 414–415
The Deeds of Otto (Hroswitha of Gander- 753–758, 791, 794, 795; in Iraq, 833. Dostoevski, Feodor, 636
sheim), 199 See also specific dictators Double monastery, 181
Defensor Pacis (Marsiglio), 292 Diderot, Denis, 469, 478 Draco (Athens), 48
Defoe, Daniel, 517 Dido (Carthage), 110 Drama, 326; Athenian, 50, 53–55; Roman,
De Gaulle, Charles, 787, 789; youth Diet. See Food (diet) 98; medieval, 229, 266; Shakespearean,
protests and, 799(illus.), 800 Diet (political): of Brandenburg, 443; of 308, 395; French classicism, 417–418
Deified kings, 71. See also Divine right Worms, 340–341 Draussen und Drinnen (Grosz), 726(illus.)
of kings Digest (Justinian), 136 Dressmaking, by women, 493. See also
Deities. See Gods and goddesses; specific Dinner parties, 625(illus.) Clothing
deities The Dinner Party (Chicago), 803(illus.) Dreyfus Affair, 662, 685
Delacroix, Eugène, 600 Dioceses, 126, 140, 213 Droz, Gustave, 634, 635
Delcassé, Théophile, 700 Diocletian (Rome), 122, 123, 126–127, Drunkenness. See Alcohol and
Delian League, 51, 53 128; government and, 126, 140 drunkenness
Delos, harbor of, 75(illus.) Dionysos, 38(illus.), 77(illus.) Dualism, Cartesian, 464
Delphic oracle, 44(illus.), 56 Diphtheria, 620–621 Dual revolution, in politics, 590, 593, 646
Deme, in Athens, 49 Diplomacy: gunboat, 691, 693; revolution Dubcek, Alexander, 793
Demesne (home farm), 222 in, 700 Due process of law, 205, 419. See also Law
Demeter (goddess), 56 Directory (France), 552 Duma (Russian parliament), 656–657, 712
Democracy: in Athens, 44, 45, 48–50, Discovery. See Age of Discovery; Expan- Dupin, Amandine Aurore Lucie (George
51; in England, 424, 585; fascist sion; Voyages of discovery Sand), 600
opposition to, 747; in Germany, 741; in Discrimination: against Asians, 680–681; Dutch East India Company, 372(illus.),
West Germany, 785; in Soviet Union, against women workers, 798, 803; 393, 426
813, 823 against African Americans, 790; sex- Dutch East Indies, 685, 686(map), 772; as
Democracy in America (Tocqueville), 609 based, 798; against Gypsies, 822. See Indonesia, 789
Democritus (Greece), 59 also specific groups Dutch Empire, trade routes in,
Demographic crisis, 403–404. See also Disease: Great Plague at Athens, 52, 64; 390(map), 393
Population Muslim medicine and, 170; famine Dutch Republic, 424, 426–427. See also
Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (Picasso), 734 and, 278, 403, 605; epidemics, 278, Netherlands
and illus. 413, 619–620. See also Black Death; Dutch War (1672–1678), 410
Denmark, 154, 182; Christianization of, Plague; Amerindians and, 386; Atlantic Dutch West India Company, 389, 393,
178, 213; Vikings from, 184, 186, 189; slave trade, 389; innoculation against, 426
Protestantism in, 351; Thirty Years’ War 489, 524, 526; 18th century medicine Dylan, Bob, 798
and, 435, 437(map); alliance with and, 489; children and, 515; demonic Dynasties. See specific dynasties
Russia, 448; Enlightenment in, 474; view of, 523, 529; in Ireland, 605;
Schleswig-Holstein and, 611; war with smallpox, 489, 524, 526; in urban areas,
Prussia and Austria, 650–651; Nazi 618, 619–620; vaccination against, 282, Ea (goddess), 23
occupation of, 767; European unity 680(illus.); germ theory of, 620–621; East, the: Greece and, 73; mystery reli-
and, 804. See also Scandinavia pasteurization and, 620; AIDs in Africa, gions from, 77–78; Byzantine Empire
Dentistry, 624 830. See also Black Death; Medicine and, 135; commerce with West, 75–76,
Depression. See Great Depression Diversity: in Sicily, 200; in Parisian life, 253; Rome and, 94, 102; Crusades and,
Desacralization, of French monarchy, 538 533–534; in Poland-Lithuania, 356; in 213; Italian trade with, 374. See also
Index I-11
Asia; Middle East; Near East; specific Ming China, 372; moral, 403; French, Egypt (ancient), 2(illus.), 5(map), 13–20,
regions and countries under Colbert, 409–410; scientific 76; agriculture in, 13; Assyria and, 31
East Africa, 683 revolution and, 465; mercantilism and, and map; Nubia and, 17, 27; Old
East Asia: Dutch trade in, 426; First World 495, 505; 18th century expansion of, Kingdom, 14 and map, 15; people of,
War and, 707; decolonization in, 485; Atlantic region, 495, 496(map), 16; pharoah in, 15–16 and illus., 18;
787–789. See also specific countries 500–504; consumer, 523; slaves in New Kingdom, 14(map), 16, 17;
East Berlin, 793. See also Berlin Americas and, 501, 653–654; British Hyksos in, 16–17; Bronze Age in, 17;
Eastern Europe, 802; Slavs in, 186–187, industrialization and, 566, 567, 569; Hittites in, 19; Sea Peoples and, 20, 27;
213; Vikings in, 187; German immi- dual revolution and, 590; population Africa and, 25; hieroglyphs in, 27; Wen-
grants in, 213, 300; Reformation in, growth and, 572; protectionism and, Amon in, 26; Hebrews in, 28; Alexan-
355–356; absolutism in, 432–435; 660; scientific research and, 637; Rus- der the Great and, 67; Hellenism in,
serfdom in, 433–435; warfare and social sian modernization and, 655–656; 73, 75, 76; mystery religions and, 78;
change in, 433–436, 437(map); nation- imperialism and, 681, 685; First World Caesar and, 102; pyramids of, 15–16,
alism in, 595–596; British imports from, War, 708; Nazi Germany, 764; Soviet 25(illus.), 267. See also Ptolemies
602; after First World War, 718(map), Union, 753–754; Second World War, (Egypt); specific dynasties
738; Second World War in, 767, 768, 773; Marshall Plan and, 784, 785; Egypt (modern): monasticism in, 142–143;
774(map), 775; wartime conferences consumerist, 790; Keynesian, 744, 783, Islam in, 166, 211; Mamluke Empire
and, 783–784; Marshall Plan and, 784; 805; neocolonialism and, 790; Polish in, 373, 374; modernization of, 658,
COMECON in, 786(map); commu- shock therapy, 815–816; Soviet per- 678; British rule in, 678, 682(map),
nism in, 783, 784, 791; Czech invasion estroika, 812(illus.), 813; eastern Euro- 683, 685, 700; Ottomans in, 374; Suez
and, 793–794; de-Stalinization and pean, 824; birthrates and, 828. See also Canal in, 678; nationalist revolution
revolt in, 792–793; working women in, Capitalism; Commerce; Finances; in, 789
798; revolutions of 1989 in, 812, Global economy Einhard, 173, 176
814–817; postcommunist, 823–825; Ecuador, 391 Einstein, Albert, 729
refugees from, 829. See also specific Edessa, 211 Eirene, 61(illus.)
countries Edict of Nantes, 406, 423; revocation of, Eisenhower, Dwight, 775, 800
Eastern Roman Empire, 123, 126 and map, 408, 423 Eisenstein, Sergei, 737, 792(illus.)
134, 152. See also Byzantine Empire Edict of Restitution (1629), 435 Ekklesia, 137
East Germany: West Germany and, 793, Edict on Idle Institutions, 527 El Alamein, battle of, 773, 774(map)
801, 811, 812, 816; Berlin Wall and, 793 Edison, Thomas, 313 Eleanor of Aquitane, 197, 266
East India Companies: British, 504, 505, Edmund (East Anglia, Saint), 204(illus.) Elections: in France, 609, 647; in Russia,
689; Dutch, 372(illus.), 393, 426; Education, 302; in Sumeria, 8; in Plato’s 657; in eastern Europe, 815, 816. See
French, 410 Academy, 60; in Rome, 97, 95–96; in also Voting rights (franchise)
East Indies: Dutch and, 685, 686(map), Byzantine Empire, 136; in monastic Elector of Brandenburg, 439
772, 789; Second World War in, 772 schools, 143–144, 183, 240; in Muslim Electricity, 637
Ebo of Reims, 178 Spain, 169; of nobles, 180, 235, 263; by Electric streetcars, 621–622 and illus.
Ecclesia (assembly), 49 priests, 259; in cathedral and monastic The Elements of Geometry (Euclid),
Eck, Johann, 340 schools, 247, 259–260 and map, 261; in 79, 169
Economic crisis: 17th century, 402–403; medieval universities, 259–264; Scho- Eleonore of Portugal, 348
Black Death and, 433; Thirty Years’ lastic approach to, 263, 264; in Renais- Eleusian mysteries, 77
War and, 436; in Ottoman Empire, sance, 314; humanist view of, 314; of Eliot, George (Mary Ann Evans), 640
452; French Revolution and, 494, 538, clergy, 357; Jesuit, 361; of Russian Eliot, T. S., 729
541; crash in (1837), 576; in Britain, nobles, 448; reading revolution and, Elites: peasant protest and, 486; popular
602; revolution of 1848 and, 609; in 470–471; of women, 472, 546, 632, literature and, 519; popular culture
Germany, 738, 739; Great Depression 757, 797; of children, 515, 518–519, and, 530; in St. Domingue, 544, 545;
and, 743–744, 746; oil shock (1970s) 636; Rousseau on, 518; literacy and, costume of, 626; absolutism and, 654;
and, 804. See also Inflation 518–519 and illus.; of medical practi- colonial, 689, 691; in India, 691; in
Economic equality, 596, 791. See also tioners, 524, 525; popular, 527; for child Soviet Union, 757. See also Nobility
Rich-poor gap workers, 581; national language and, (aristocracy)
Economic interests: railroads and, 571; 596; of middle class, 624, 625, 636; in Elizabeth I (England), 326, 328, 346,
marriage and, 631; of West, 674; new Ottoman Empire, 658; for domestic 352(illus.), 419; literature and, 395;
imperialism and, 685, 688 servants, 629(illus.); in France, 662; in personal power of, 418; plot to assassi-
Economic liberalism, 594. See also Japan, 692; in Soviet Union, 757, 795; nate, 353
Free trade neocolonialism in Africa and, 790; Elizabeth of Bohemia, 465
Economic planning. See Planned student protests and, 799–800 and Elmo (Saint), 230
economies illus. See also Literacy; Schools; Embroidery, 195(illus.), 323
Economic rights, of workers, 647 Universities Emich of Leisingen, 215
Economy: Mycenaean, 41; Greek polis, Education of a Christian Prince Emperors: Augustus as, 109, 110(illus.); in
43, 44, 46, 51; Hellenistic world, 75–76; (Erasmus), 317 Rome, 117, 118, 120, 123, 127,
in Roman Empire, 109, 121(map), 127; Edward I (England), 214, 273 140–142; Byzantine, 142; Charlemagne
barbarian, 157; in High Middle Ages, Edward II (England), 280 as, 173–177, 180; Otto I as, 198–199,
180; money, 255; commercial revolu- Edward III (England), 286–287, 290, 309 213; Frederick II (Holy Roman Em-
tion and, 258–259; medieval cities and, Edward IV (England), 330 pire), 200–201, 212, 338, 436; Mongol,
222, 253–259; plague and, 284; Hun- Edward VI (England), 352, 353 in China, 372. See also specific emper-
dred Years’ War and, 289; English, 353; Ego, id, and superego, 730 ors and empires
I-12 Index
Empires: in Near East, 11; Egyptian, 17; Ireland and, 153, 300–301, 330, 720, 721; in 1920s, 738, 739, 741–742;
Assyrian, 31–33; Persian, 25, 33–35; 352–353; humanism in, 316; More in, unemployment in, 742; appeasement of
Athenian, 51–53; of Alexander the 317; Renaissance in, 329–330; trading Hitler by, 765–767; Great Depression
Great, 66–69; of Carthage, 91; Roman, empire of, 390(map); constitutional in, 744, 745(map), 747; in Second
79, 94; of Charlemagne, 173–180; government in, 404; food riot in, World War, 767, 782; Dunkirk and,
Angevin, 197; of Charles V, 349(map); 404(illus.); French Canada and, 411; 767; decolonization and, 789; Palestine,
Portuguese, 378–380 and map; trade of, 413; in Grand Alliance, 411; Israel and, 789; privatization in, 804,
Spanish, 331, 379(map), 381–386; Glorious Revolution in, 423–424; 805; Thatcher in, 802, 804, 805; Falk-
Ottoman, 374; trade of, in 16th and absolutism in, 420, 422; cabinet system lands War and, 805; Gulf War and, 819;
17th century, 390(map), 392–393; in, 422; Dutch and, 427; Restoration in, Iraq war and, 833. See also Great Brit-
rivalries over, 495, 497; French 422; Jews in, 421; balance of power in, ain; under British
Napoleonic, 556, 558, 559(map); in 468; Peter the Great and, 448; Enlight- English East India Company, 504,
Asia, 504–505; political, 681; after First enment in, 467, 474; Atlantic economy 505, 689
World War, 716–717, 718(map), 719; and, 496(map); Dutch and, 427, 495; English language, 265, 292, 301; Anglican
decolonization and, 787–790. See also science in, 463; Voltaire on, 468, 469; Church and, 353; in India, 691
Colonies and colonization; Imperial- wars with France, 475, 495, 497, 539, Enkidu (god), 10, 22
ism; New imperialism; specific emperors 566, 579; mercantilism in, 421, 495, Enlightenment, 466–480, 529; emergence
and empires 497, 505; agricultural revolution in, of, 466–467; philosophes of, 295, 459,
Empirical method, 464, 487. See also 486(illus.), 487–488, 520; enclosure 467–470; absolutism and, 474–480; in
Science in, 486(illus.), 488; textile industry in, France, 467–470; in Russia, 450,
Empiricism, logical, 728 490–491; Great Britain and, 412(map), 477–478 and illus.; urban culture and
Employment. See Unemployment; Work 495, 566; trade of, 413, 421, 495, 497; public sphere, 470–472, 536; Austrian
Enabling Act (Germany), 763 consumer revolution in, 520; slave Habsburgs and, 478–480; race and,
Enclosure movement, 486–487, 488 trade and, 501, 502, 504, 566; India 473–474; Frederick the Great and, 475;
Encomienda system, 386 and, 504–505 and illus.; literacy in, Jewish, 476; salons, 471 and illus., 472;
Encyclopedia (Diderot and d’Alembert), 518; delayed marriage in, 511; charity childhood and, 518; educated public
469–470, 478 schools in, 518; infant mortality in, 516; and, 531; skepticism and, 466, 527;
Energy (power): water, 567–568, 580; from Methodism in, 527–528 and illus.; political ideas from, 536; romanticism
coal, 569; steam, 569–570, 571, 573, American Revolution and, 538–539; and, 599; in Russia, 450; ideals of, 727
580, 636; conservation of, 637; electri- Napoleon and, 555, 558, 560; popula- Enlil, 10, 22–23
cal, 637; atomic, 730 and illus.; oil tion growth in, 488(figure), 572; rail- Ennius, 98
embargo (1970s) and, 803–804, 806 roads in, 570–571; iron industry in, 566, Entertainment, 519; in cities, 617(illus.);
Engels, Friedrich, 579, 597, 598 569, 570, 571, 584; steam engine in, films as, 736, 737. See also Games and
Engineering, 624, 637, 656, 795; British, 569–570; continental industrialization sports; Leisure
570(illus.), 571 in, 573–574; Industrial Revolution Entrêpot, 372
England (Britain), 179, 253, 646; Neo- and, 566–572, 573, 576, 579; unions Environmentalism, 806
lithic, 4; Roman, 122, 124–125 and in, 584–585 and illus.; workers in, Epaminondas, 61
illus., 153; Christianization of, 579–582; Congress of Vienna and, Epic literature: Epic of Gilgamesh, 10,
147–148; Anglo-Saxon, 151(map), 152, 590–592; liberalism in, 594, 602–603; 22–23 and illus.; Homer, 42–43, 71;
153–154, 172(illus.) 195; feudalism in, Marx and, 598; romanticism in, 599, Song of Roland, 174; Beowulf, 182. See
177; Norman conquest of, 154, 186, 600; agricultural workers in, 625; fash- also Literature
195(illus.), 196; Vikings in, 186, 189, ion for women in, 627(illus.); Greek Epicureanism, 78
196; Northumbrian culture in, independence and, 602; Irish famine Epidemics: plague, 52, 64 and illus., 137,
181–183; Danelaw in, 186; in High and, 604, 605, 606; growth of cities in, 152 (See also Black Death); typhoid,
Middle Ages, 195–197; politics and 618–619; income distribution in, 623; 278; South America, 413; cholera
state in, 194; Domesday Book in, 196; women’s rights in, 632, 659(illus.); (1846), 619–620
agriculture in, 224; finance in, 196 and declining birth rate in, 635 and figure; Equality: economic, 596, 791 (See also
illus., 204; health care and physicians domestic servants in, 628; Irish immi- Rich-poor gap); social, 709, 741–742;
in, 227; Jews expelled from, 214, 232; grants in, 630, 679; Crimean War and, youth culture and, 799
monasteries and convents in, 239; 655; realist literature in, 640; income Equiano, Olaudah, 502, 503 and illus.
nobles in, 237; clocks in, 258; silver in, 674(illus.); Egypt and, 678; opium Erasmus, Desiderius, 318, 338; New
mines in, 255; universities in, 262; trade and, 676; Africa and, 681, Testament of, 317, 341; on Age of
troubadour poetry in, 266; plague in, 682(map), 683–685; declining death Gold, 335–336; Holbein’s portrait of,
281; France and, 291; wool trade of, rate in, 621(figure); Egypt and, 678, 335(illus.)
253, 255, 278, 286(illus.), 290, 330; 682(map), 683, 685, 700; India and, Eratosthenes, 81
grain shortage, and famine in, 280; 504–505 and illus., 675, 689–691; Eremitical monasticism, 142–143
population in, 282; Black Death in, urban population in, 618–620 and map; Eritrea, immigrants from, 829(illus.)
281, 282, 284; Hundred Years’ War and, Asian empire of, 668(map); rivalry with Erlach, Joseph Bernhard Fischer von,
286–290; Wyclif in, 292; peasant revolts Germany, 700–701; British women in 440, 441
in, 296–297; Robin Hood legend in, India and, 696–697; First World War Eschenbach, Wolfram von, 170
300; serfdom ended in, 296–297; taxa- alliances, 699–700, 703; in First World Essay Concerning Human Understanding
tion in, 196, 296, 330; schools in, 302; War, 704, 705, 707, 711, 716; alliance (Locke), 467
common law in, 330; Catholic Church with Japan, 707; France and, 721–722; Essay on the Principle of Population
in, 353; Protestantism in (See Church Treaty of Versailles and, 717; Middle (Malthus), 572
of England); slave trade and, 389; East and, 719–720, 724; Turkey and, Essays (Montaigne), 394
Index I-13
Estates: latifundia, 99; Dutch, 424; Bohe- lation in, 834, 836; terrorist attacks in, Families: Hammurabi on, 12–13; aristo-
mian, 438, 439; taxation of, 442; 834. See also specific regions cratic, 177; Roman, 90, 95, 112(illus.),
French, 536–537 European Economic Community, 119; Christian spiritual, 144; Germanic,
Estates General (France), 408, 804, 827 157; on manors, 223, 226; in medieval
540–541, 544 European Union (EU), 812; admission to, towns, 251; handweaving and, 492;
Esther Before Ahasuerus (Gentileschi), 824; unity and identity of, 826–828; nuclear, 223, 511; marriage and,
324(illus.) membership in, 811, 826; constitution 511–515; Napoleon and, 554; of factory
Estonia, 434(illus.), 449, 767, 826 of, 826–827; illegal immigration and, owners, 577, 578; as mill workers, 581,
Ethelbert (Kent), 147, 156 828, 830 582; as mine workers, 581; cottage
Ethiopia, 373, 681; Italian conquest of, Eurymedon River, battle of, 51 industry and, 580; kinship, 581, 631;
682(map), 759(illus.), 765 Evolution, 637–639 and illus. working class, 634(illus.), 636; in 19th
Ethnic minorities. See Minorities Evolutionary Socialism (Bernstein), 669 century, 630–636; fathers, 635–636;
Ethnic tensions, in Middle Ages, Exchequer, in England, 196 and illus., gender and, 631–632, 635–636; size of,
300–301 351, 353 635; British colonial, 690; government
Etruscans, 86–88, 89 Excommunication, 209; of Henry IV grants for, 797. See also Children;
Eucharist (Lord’s Supper), 116, 128, (Holy Roman Empire), 207, 208; Great Marriage
230(illus.), 272, 422; Hus and, 294; Schism and, 291; of Marsiglio, 292; Famine, 278–280; disease and, 278, 403,
Luther on, 344; Protestants on, threat of, 387 605; in Ireland, 604–606, 607, 662; in
341–342; transubstantiation and, 208, Existentialism, 728–729 Ukraine, 757
341, 357 Expansion: Roman, 91–94 and map, Faraday, Michael, 637
Euclid, 79, 169 109–110, 111(map); Islamic, 166–167 Farms and farming: in Hammurabi’s code,
Eugene of Savoy, 441 and map; by Charlemagne, 173–174, 12; in Rome, 96, 99; in Roman Empire,
Eugénie (France), 645(illus.) 175(map); medieval, 194; reconquista 127–128; serfdom and, 179; open-field
Eugenius (Pope), 241 and, 201–202 and map; of Christianity, system for, 224, 487; horses for, 225;
Eumenes, 69 214; Spanish, 331, 379(map), 381–386; town markets and, 251; peasant villages,
Euripedes, 50, 54–55, 98 French, under Louis XIV, 410–411; in 402; Thirty Years’ War and, 436; enclo-
Europe: in Early Middle Ages, 173–192; central Europe, 442(map); Russian, sure and, 488; scientific improvements
medieval trade and manufacturing, 412(map), 445(map), 447, 479(map), in, 486. See also Agriculture; Manors
253, 254(map); Jewish communities 593, 602, 655, 685; Ottoman Empire, and manoralism; Peasants
in, 213–214; intellectual centers of, 374, 450–452, 593; maritime, Fascism: in France, 747–748; in Italy, 747,
260(map); climate in 14th century, 278; 484(illus.); in 18th century, 484–509; 758–761; in Spain, 748; totalitarianism
Great Famine in, 278–280; printing in, Spanish missionaries and, 500; Prus- and, 758. See also Nazi Germany
319(map); religious divisions in, sian, 475, 651; balance of power and, Fashion, 493, 522, 624, 626–627
358(map); exploration and conquest 592 and map; French, under Napoleon, Fashion merchants, 522 and illus.
by, 370–383; voyages of discovery from, 554–556, 558, 559(map); in late 19th Fatalism, 640
370–385; and world, after Columbus, century, 671; great migration and, Fathers, 12, 635–636. See also Families;
385–395; racism in, 392–394; in 1715, 679–681; of Western society, 679; Patriarchy
412(map); Thirty Years’ War in, Japanese, 692–693; Nazi German, 753, Faulkner, William, 731
435–437 and map; Enlightened mon- 765–769; communist, 802. See also Federalism, in Greece, 45–46, 60–61, 62
archs in, 474–480; population growth Colonies and colonization Federal Republic of Germany. See West
in, 488–489 and figure, 566; 18th Expatriates, American, 741 Germany
century expansion of, 484–509; French Experimental method, 461–462, 464 The Feminine Mystique (Friedan), 803
Revolution and, 545, 546; French Exploration, 370–383; causes of, 376–377; Feminists, 632, 782; women’s movement
expansion in, 554–556; in 1810, Chinese (Zeng He), 372–373; before and, 802–803
559(map); Industrial Revolution and, Columbus, 371–375; by Columbus, Ferdinand and Isabella (Spain), 330–332
573–576; balance of power in, 590–593; 379(map), 380–382, 398–399 and illus.; and illus., 348, 381, 386; Columbus
in 1815, 592(map); large cities in, later explorers, 382–383; by Portugal, and, 398–399
620(map); foreign investment by, 676; 376, 378–380 and map; technology for, Ferdinand I (Austria), 610, 611
China and, 676; Egypt and, 678; popu- 370(illus.), 377–378 Ferdinand I (Sicily), 593
lation in, 679; migration from, Extermination camps. See Holocaust, Ferdinand II (Bohemia), 438
679–680; Africa partitioned by, 676, Jews and Ferdinand III (Bohemia), 438
681–685, 689; civilizing by, 687, 688; Ferdinand (Bohemia), 435
imperialism of, 681–689; tariff barriers Ferdinand (Castile and León), 201
in, 675; “civilizing” by, 687, 688; First Fabius Pictor, 98 Ferrara, 310, 311(map)
World War and, 706(map); Great Factories, 567–568, 618; owners, 577–579; Ferry, Jules, 685
Depression in, 744, 745(map); dictators working conditions in, 580–582 and Fertile Crescent, 11
in, 753; Second World War in, 773–775 illus.; in Russia, 656; in Soviet Festivals and holidays, 13; Greek drama at,
and map; division of, 782–785; Mar- Union, 755 53, 55; Roman, 110; Christian, 149,
shall Plan and, 784, 785; after Second Factory Act (1833), 581 227; Jewish, 232; Carnival, 513, 530;
World War, 785; alliance systems in, Factory workers, 576–577, 579–582, 598; May Day, 668 and illus.
786(map), 787; growth of science in, labor aristocracy and, 628; in Russian Feudalism, 155, 156, 177, 179; English
796; self-improvement movement cities, 655, 656 monarchy and, 196; homage and fealty
in, 806; in 1990s, 820–828; challenges Fagus shoe factory (Gropius), 733(illus.) in, 191–192, 208, 238; in Japan, 691.
to, in 21st century, 828–830; contempo- Faith: Aquinas on, 264; salvation by, 341 See also Serfs and serfdom
rary, 821(map); growing Muslim popu- Falklands War, Thatcher and, 805 Fief (land grant), 177, 179, 200, 205, 210
I-14 Index
Fifth Republic (France), 787, 800 ages, in France, 541; in 18th century, parlements in, 538; estates in, 536–537;
Film industry. See Movies (films) 489, 520–521; potato and, 489, 520, bourgeoisie in, 537; American Revolu-
Final Act (Helsinki Conference), 801–802 521(illus.); British industrialization and, tion and, 538–539; limited monarchy
Finances: in England, 196 and illus., 204; 566, 579, 580; middle class, 624, in, 542–544; constitution (1795)
in Sicily, 201; Hundred Years’ War and, 625(illus.). See also Famine of, 551; wars with England, 539, 566,
289; in France, 198, 329; in monasteries Food production, climate change and, 579, 580; First Republic in, 547; Jews
and convents, 240; cathedral-building 278. See also Agriculture; Farms and in, 544, 577; Napoleon I in, 552–560;
and, 267; French absolutism and, farming industrialization in, 573, 574(map);
409–410, 411; Spanish, 413; French Food shortage. See Famine corporate banking in, 576, 577; alli-
Revolution and, 538, 539–540; for Suez Forced labor: in Egypt, 16; encomienda ances of, 592; at Congress of Vienna,
Canal, 678; Great Depression and, system, 386; in Russia, 449; in Soviet 590–591; liberalism in, 593; utopian
743–744, 745, 748; for research, 796. Union, 756(illus.), 758, 791. See also socialism in, 596–597; romantic writers
See also Banks; Debt; Investment Slaves and slavery in, 599–600; Algeria and, 606, 658;
Finns, 436, 715 Foreign investment, 676. See also revolution of 1830 in, 606–607; Greek
First Citizen, Augustus (Rome) as, Investments independence and, 602; Second Re-
108, 118 Foreign policy, Soviet, 792–793 public in, 607, 646–647; democratic
First Coalition, 546, 550 Forest resources, 223, 569 republic in, 607–610; agricultural
First Crusade, 209–211 and map Formosa (Taiwan), 693, 788 workers in, 625; public health concerns
First Republic (France), 547 Fortifications (city walls): of Constanti- in, 620; cities in, 621; declining birth
First Triumvirate (Rome), 102 nople, 135; in Middle Ages, 247–248; rate in, 635(figure); declining death rate
First World War, 698–722, 728; origins of, of Carcassonne, 248(illus.) in, 621(figure); women’s fashions in,
699–701; outbreak of, 701–703; in Forum, in Rome, 85(illus.), 87 627(illus.); marriage manuals in, 634;
Europe, 706(map); fronts in, 705–708; Fourteen Points (Wilson), 717 Italian alliance with, 648, 649; Napo-
home front in, 708–711; invasion of Fourth Crusade, 210(map), 211–212 leon III in, 646–647, 649; Crimean War
Belgium in, 703 and illus.; in Middle Fourth Lateran Council (1215), 208–209, and, 655; realist literature in, 639–640;
East, 705, 707, 719–721; revolution in 230 and illus. Second Empire in, 646–647, 651;
Germany, 716–717; Russian revolution France, 179, 253, 651; Charlemagne and, socialists in, 669; Third Republic, 652,
and, 711–716; trench warfare in, 173; England and, 177, 197, 204; 660–661; war with Prussia, 651–653,
698(illus.), 703–705 and illus.; United kingdom of, 197–198 and map; politics 661; colonial empire of, 673(illus.);
States in, 707–708, 716; Versailles and state in, 194; Capetians in, 197; Dreyfus affair and, 662, 685; unions in,
Treaty, 717, 719, 721–722; casualties in, Roman law in, 203; agriculture in, 224; 647, 748; Madagascar and, 673(illus.);
704, 705, 710, 712; territorial changes finance in, 198, 329; Jews expelled foreign investment by, 676; Egypt
after, 718(map) from, 214, 232; monasteries in, 239; and, 678; Suez Canal and, 678; in
Fishing, 223, 279, 426 nobles in, 237; Albigensians in, Africa, 681, 682(map), 683, 684; in
Five Good Emperors (Rome), 118 197(map), 212, 271; clocks in, 258; Indochina, 685, 686(map); Alliance
Five Pillars of Islam, 166 silver mines in, 255; troubadours in, System and, 699–700; Russian alliance
Five-year plans: in China, 789; in eastern 265–266; universities in, 260 and map; with, 703; First World War and, 704,
Europe, 791; in Soviet Union, 753, taxation in, 198, 296, 329, 361; cathe- 706(map), 707, 711, 716; Rhineland
754–756, 779–780 dral schools in, 260; Gothic cathedrals and, 717, 719; Treaty of Versailles and,
Flagellants, 284–285 and illus. in, 267, 269–270 and illus.; Black 717, 719; Middle East and, 719–720;
Flanders (Flemish), 253, 255, 259; art of, Death in, 281; Great Famine in, existentialism in, 728; Little Entente
322; famine in, 278; cloth making in, 279–280; Avignon pope and, 291, 293; and, 738; Ruhr crisis and, 739; Great
279, 286(illus.), 297, 375; schools in, civil wars in, 287, 329, 362; Hundred Depression in, 747; appeasement of
302; France and, 410; scientific Years’ War and, 286–290; Jacquerie in, Hitler by, 765–767; Popular Front in,
farming in, 486, 487; rural industry 296; Joan of Arc and, 289, 290, 329; 748; Nazi occupation of, 768, 769;
in, 491 humanism in, 316; Renaissance in, Vichy government in, 768, 775; Alge-
Flavian dynasty (Rome), 116–118 329; Habsburgs and, 348; Canada and, rian War and, 787, 789; Fifth Republic
Florence, 248, 253, 311 and map, 315, 379(map), 383, 410; witch trials in, 365; in, 787, 800; nationalism in, 787;
648; cloth production in, 258; plague Ottoman fears in, 374; Habsburg-Valois neocolonialism and, 789, 790; Gulf
in, 281, 282, 284; bankers and mer- Wars and, 311, 350, 361; absolutism in, War and, 819; globalization and, 822;
chants, 308–309 and illus., 320–321; art 406–412; culture of retribution in, 405; European Union and, 827; protests and
of, 320, 321; art patrons of, 323; courtly Fronde in, 407; Dutch and, 427; North strike in, 799(illus.), 800; Muslim riots
culture in, 310; Leonardo in, 313; America and, 411; Spain and, 407, 413, in, 834, 836, 838–839. See also French
Medicis of, 462, 463 436, 495, 497; Versailles court life, Revolution; Paris; specific dynasties and
Fontenelle, Bernard de, 467(illus.) 430–431; classicism in, 417–418; rulers. See also under French
Food (diet): in Rome, 97(illus.); barbarian Enlightenment in, 467–470; Mon- Franchise. See Voting and voting rights
groups, 156; Islamic rules of, 166, 168, tesquieu’s theories and, 468, 473; tradi- Francia, 184
231; Muslim Spain, 169; on manors, tional agriculture in, 487; wars with Franciscans, 271, 272–273, 386
226 and illus., 227; in High Middle England, 475, 495, 497; Atlantic econ- Francis I (France), 329, 335, 361
Ages, 226; Jewish laws for, 232; of urban omy and, 496(map); guilds in, 493, Francis II (Austria), 546, 555
workers, 252; plague, and inflated 508–509; India and, 505; marriage in, Francis Ferdinand, assassination of, 702
prices for, 284; scarcity, and famine, 511; illegitimacy in, 513; wet-nursing Francis Joseph (Austria), 611, 711
278; peasant, 402–403; Dutch, in, 516 and illus.; midwife training in, Francis (Saint), 271, 272
426–427; Thirty Years’ War and, 436; 524, 525; Jesuit expulsion from, 527; Franco, Francisco, 765
riots over, 404(illus.), 405, 712; short- Jansenism in, 528–529; literacy in, 518; Franco-Prussian War, 651–653, 661
Index I-15
Frankfurt Assembly, 611–613 and illus., 272–273; Luther as, 339. See also Gentileschi, Artemisia, 324(illus.)
615; Jews in, 664 Dominicans; Franciscans Geography: of Egypt, 13; Hellenistic, 81,
Franklin, Benjamin, 539 Friedan, Betty, 803 377; medieval, 170
Franks and Frankish kingdom, 123, 147, Friedrich, Caspar David, 601(illus.) Geography (Ptolemy), 377, 381
151(map), 152, 168; laws of, 153, 156; Frisians, 172, 184 Geometry, 464; of Euclid, 79, 169. See
Merovingian dynasty, 153; Muslims Fritigern (Visigoth), 152 also Mathematics
and, 172, 188; Charlemagne and, Froissart, Jean, 287 George III (England), 539
173–174 Fronde uprising (1648–1653), 407 Georgics (Virgil), 110
Frederick I Barbarossa (Holy Roman Frontiers, Helsinki Agreement and, 802. German Confederation of the Rhine, 555,
Empire), 199(map), 200, 208; in Third See also Borders and boundaries 592(map), 593; Frankfurt Assembly
Crusade, 210(map), 211 Führer, Hitler as, 762, 763 and, 611–613 and illus.
Frederick I (Prussia), 443 Fulda Abbey, 172(illus.) German Empire, 407, 653 and illus.; as
Frederick II (Holy Roman Emperor), 436 Functionalism, in architecture, 732, model for Japan, 692 and illus.; Social
Frederick II (Holy Roman Empire), 733(illus.) Democratic party in, 660–661; Weimar
200–201, 436; papacy and, 212, 338 Fundamental Laws (Russia), 656–657 Republic and, 717; after First World
Frederick III (Holy Roman Empire), 348 Funeral rites, 233. See also Burials; Tombs War, 718(map)
Frederick (Palatinate of the Rhine), 435 Germanic languages, 150, 265, 439, 442;
Frederick the Great (Prussia), 416, 425, Luther’s New Testament in, 343
440, 475, 478, 479(map); potato and, Gaia (goddess), 43 Germanic peoples: Rome and, 100, 109,
521(illus.) Gaius Appuleius Diocles, 120 117, 123, 134; Christianity and, 147;
Frederick William I (Prussia), 443–444 Galbert of Bruges, 191, 192 migrations by, 151(map), 152, 168;
Frederick William IV (Prussia), 611, Galicia, 245 kingdoms of, 147, 153; in England,
612–613, 650 Galileo Galilei, 461–463, 464 154; laws of, 153, 202; gift-giving
Frederick William (Brandenburg-Prussia), Gambetta, Léon, 661 among, 157; nobility, 234; in Bohemia,
439, 442 Games and sports: Olympic games, 58; in 355. See also Barbarians
Freedom: for slaves, 96, 222; serfs and, Rome, 120, 122(illus.); of knights, 236; German Trade Union Congress, 669
222; in medieval towns, 248–249; of in medieval cities, 266; blood sports, Germany, 179; Charlemagne and,
expression, 295; liberalism and, 594; 530, 630 173–174, 176; Magyars and, 188; royal
Locke on, 424 Gandhi, Mohandas “Mahatma,” 788 authority in, 194; civil war in, 200;
Free market, 664, 820; in Britain, 567, and illus. Frederick II (Holy Roman Empire)
804. See also Capitalism Gardiner, Grace, 696–697 in, 200–201; in Holy Roman Empire,
Free people of color, in Haiti, 544, 545, Garibaldi, Giuseppe, 649–650 200; lay investiture in, 198–199, 207,
550–551 Gattinara, 348 208; migrations from, 222; nobles
Free trade, 505, 594 Gaugamela, battle of, 67 in, 237; agriculture in, 224, 487;
French Academy, 415, 417 Gaul and Gauls: Romans and, 87, 100, clocks in, 258; silver mines in, 255;
French armies. See under Armed forces, 109, 126(map), 131–132; culture of, cathedrals in, 267; Hanseatic League
French 183; Germanic people in, 123, 150, and, 257; troubadour poetry in, 266;
French East India Company, 410 152; Clovis in, 153, 171; evangelization Black Death in, 282, 284; Czechs and,
French language, 265, 415, 417, 418, 467 in, 181. See also France 294; schools in, 302; humanism in, 316;
French nobility, 475; troubadours and, Gays and lesbians, 830. See also Homo- printing in, 318; Lutheranism and,
266; absolutism and, 361, 406, 407, sexuality 342–343; Peasants’ War (1525), 346;
408, 416–417; French Revolution and, Gdansk, shipyard protest at, 814 Reformation and politics in, 348,
536, 537, 606; Napoleon and, 554 Geminal (Zola), 640 350; Habsburgs and, 348; Bach and,
French Revolution, 536–545; American Gender, 473; law applied by, 12–13; in 415; Jews in, 425; Thirty Years’ War
Revolution and, 538–539; background religious law, 30; division of labor, 3, and, 436; Enlightenment in, 476;
to, 536–540; chronology of, 549; crisis 223, 582–584; in Athens, 55–56; in marriage in, 512; compulsory education
of political legitimacy in, 537–538; Christianity, 144–145; categorizing in, 518; corporate banks in, 576; cus-
economic liberalization following, 494; people by, 327–328; dress and, 522, toms union in, 575; Pietism in, 527,
financial crisis in, 538, 539–540; guil- 627; family life and, 631–632, 635–636; 528; Napoleon and, 554, 555, 556;
lotine in, 547, 551; Reign of Terror in, second wave feminism and, 782. See corporate banking in, 576; industrializa-
548, 550; sans-coulottes and, 547, also Men; Women tion in, 576, 577; iron industry in,
548(illus.), 550, 551; second revolution General History of the Indies (Oviedo), 377 575(illus.); nationalism in, 595 and
to, 547–548; St. Domingue and, General Syrian Congress, 720, 724–725 illus., 596; romanticism in, 599, 600,
544–545, 550–551; Thermidorian Geneva Accords, 800 601(illus.); declining death rate in,
Reaction and Directory in, 551–552; Genevan Consistory, 354–355 621(figure); germ theory in, 620; chem-
women’s rights and, 543, 545–546, Genius, in Renaissance, 313, 323 ical industry in, 637; declining birth
563–564 and illus.; aftermath, 573, Genoa, 309, 311(map), 315, 325; defeat of rate in, 635(figure); Social Democrats
602 Morocco by, 280; trade of, 254(map); in, 632; women physicians in, 633;
Frescoes: Minoan, 41; religious wars, plague in, 281; Black Sea colonies, 387; agricultural workers in, 625; unification
337(illus.); Renaissance Italy, explorers from (See Cabot, John; Co- of, 652(map); immigrants in, 679;
307(illus.), 316(illus.), 327(illus.). See lumbus, Christopher) Bismarck in, 650–653, 683; unions in,
also Painting Genocide: Armenian deportation and, 669, 763; Africa and, 681, 682(map),
Freud, Sigmund, 636, 730–731 705, 707(illus.); Nazi Holocaust, 683; Alliance System and, 699–700;
Friars, 271–273; medieval heresy and, 271; 769–772 naval expansion by, 700, 701(illus.);
mendicant, 271; papacy and, 271, Gentiles, Paul on, 114 mobilization in (First World War),
I-16 Index
Germany (continued) 71; mystery religions, 77; Roman, 282; in Columbian exchange, 389; in
703; Bauhaus architecture in, 732, 95(illus.), 96; Christianity in Rome and, peasant diet, 402, 403; price of, 279,
733(illus.); Social Democrats in, 113; Germanic, 147, 149, 150; Islamic, 404(illus.), 411; crop rotation and, 486;
660–661, 667, 669, 717; peace settle- 165, 166; Trinity doctrine, 166, 170, British Corn Laws and, 602, 603; Ger-
ment with Russia, 714–715; women’s 261, 264; plague and, 284. See also man tariffs on, 660
rights in, 709; existentialism in, specific gods and goddesses Granada, 201, 330, 332, 381
727–728; in First World War, 703–704, Gold, 414; African, 373; in Spanish em- Grand Alliance, 411; against Louis XIV,
705, 706(map), 707, 711, 716; revolu- pire, 376, 381, 385, 392; in French 411; in Second World War, 767,
tion in, 716–717; Treaty of Versailles economy, 409; mercantilism and, 495; 773–777 and maps, 782
and, 717–719 and map, 721, 738; films in South Africa, 681; standard, in Grand Empire, of Napoleon, 556, 558,
from, 736, 737; reparations and, 719, Russia, 656; reserves, 743 559(map)
738, 739; Western powers and, Golden Age: in Rome, 110, 120–122; in Grand National Consolidated Trades
738–739, 741; Ruhr crisis and, 739; Netherlands, 424, 426–427 Union, 585
Dawes plan and, 739; Weimar Republic Golden calf, 29 and illus. Graneri, Michele, 510(illus.)
in, 717, 738–740, 741; Great Depres- Golden Horde, 444 Granicus River, battle at, 67
sion in, 743; Hitler in (See Hitler, Goldhagen, David, 770 Great Britain, 412(map), 495, 566; life on
Adolph); Holocaust and, 769–772; in Good and evil: Zoroastrianism on, 35; the dole in, 750–751. See also British
Second World War (See Nazi Ger- Albigensians on, 212 Empire; England (Britain)
many); division, after Second World Gorbachev, Mikhail, 794, 795, 816; re- Great Depression, 743–748; financial
War, 793, 801; reunification of, 811, forms of, 811–814; attempt to depose, crisis in, 743–744; unemployment in,
812, 816, 817; globalization and, 822; 818, 819(map) 744, 745(map), 750–751; in Scandina-
European Union and, 827; income Gospels. See New Testament (Gospels) via, 746–747 and illus.; in England,
levels in, 829; population decline in, Gothic architecture, 267–268, 269–270 745(map), 747; in France, 747–748; in
828. See also Nazi Germany and illus. Germany, 762; motion pictures and,
Germ theory of disease, 620–621 Goths, 123; migrations of, 151(map), 152. 736; relief programs in, 746; in United
Gerritz, Decker Cornelis, 492(illus.) See also Ostrogoths; Visigoths States, 744–746
Gestapo, in Nazi Germany, 764 Gouges, Olympe de, 546, 563–564 Great Famine (Europe), 278–280
Gesù church, ceiling of, 345 and illus. and illus. Great Fear (France, 1789), 542
Géza (Magyar), 188 Government: Neolithic, 4; Mesopotamian, Great Fire of 1666 (London), 498
Ghana, gold of, 373 5; Persian Empire, 35; Greek (polis), Great migration, 679–681
Ghent, 248, 253 44–46; Athenian democracy, 49–50; Great Northern War (1700–1721), 448
Ghiberti, Lorenzo, 320 Roman, 89–90, 91, 98, 123, 126; Caro- Great Powers: Prussia as, 475; at Congress
Ghirlandio, Ridolpho, 398(illus.) lingian, 174–176; Sicilian, 200; in High of Vienna, 590–593; on revolutions,
Gibraltar, 411 Middle Ages, 194, 205; in medieval 602; First World War and, 699, 700
Gilbert (Saint), 239 towns, 249, 251; English, 196, 353; Great Rebellion (India), 689–690
Gilgamesh, 10, 22–23 and illus. French, 198, 279; of papacy, 291, 292; Great Schism, 291–293
Giotto, 321 censorship by, 319; in Italian cities, 309, Great Silk Road, 76
Girondists, 547 310; in Renaissance, 314–315, 328; Great War. See First World War
Gladiators, in Rome, 120, 122(illus.) Spanish, 376; of Poland-Lithuania, 356; Great white walls, 680–681
Glasgow, Irish workers in, 581–582 Inca Empire, 385; age of crisis and, 402; Greco-Roman culture, 122, 144, 149, 183;
Glasnost (openness), in Soviet Union, municipal, 405; centralized power of, Renaissance and, 314, 317
813 404–405; Dutch, 424; Ottoman Empire, Greece (ancient), 176; drama and art of,
Global trade, 371 450; Russian, 448, 449; science and, 464; 53–55; Hittites and, 19; Anatolia and,
Global (world) economy, 495–505, 822; Montesquieu on, 468; of English Puri- 34, 40(map); Archaic Age, 46–50, 58;
birth of, 392–393; Asian trade and, tans, 495; A. Smith on, 505; industrializa- astronomy of, 460; barbarians and,
404–405; Atlantic economy and, 495, tion and, 567, 574–576; urban conditions 149–150; classical period in, 50–60;
496(map), 500, 501–504, 646; eco- and, 619, 620; expanded services of, 624; Minoan civilization and, 39, 41; Myce-
nomic liberalism and, 505; London in, Prussian, 651; French, 621, 647; loyalty nae and, 41–42; Dark Age of, 41–42;
498–499; mercantilism and colonial to, 659, 660; Russian reforms, 655, 656; migrations from, 42, 72–73; city-states
wars, 495, 497; slave trade in, Egyptian reforms, 678; Japanese reforms, (polis) in, 43–46; government of,
496(map), 497, 501–504; imperialism 692; First World War and, 708, 709; 44–46; colonization by, 46–48; democ-
and, 691; industrialization and, Russian Revolution and, 712–713, 715; racy in, 44, 45, 48–50, 51; federalism
674–678; 1929–1933 financial crisis Great Depression and, 744; Soviet in, 45–46, 60–61; Hellenic period in,
and, 743–744; oil prices and, 804 Union, 758; German, 741, 763; pro- 38–62; literature of, 136; Macedonian
Glorious Revolution (1688, England), Soviet, in eastern Europe, 783; funding ascendancy and, 62, 66; medicine of,
423–424 research, 796; dissatisfaction with, 804; 261; Persia and, 35, 50–51, 52(map),
Glückel of Hameln, 425 British privatization and, 804, 805. See 53, 60, 61; philosophy, 50, 58–60, 129,
Goa, Portuguese in, 380, 392 also Law(s); specific countries 263; religion in, 56–58 and illus.;
God, absolutism and. See Divine right Gozzoli, Bennozzo, 316(illus.), 326 Theban hegemony in, 61; Hellenistic
of kings Gracchus brothers, 99–100 world and, 39, 45, 61, 73; Rome and,
Gods and goddesses: Mesopotamian, 9, Grain: woman grinding, 55(illus.); trade 94; Muslim transmission of learning
10, 11, 30; Egyptian, 2(illus.), 14–15 in, 76; in Rome, 120; barbarian diet, from, 169–170, 263; Crusades and, 213
and illus., 17, 18; Kushite, 27; Jewish, 156; mills for grinding, 224–225 and Greece (modern), 702, 784; national
29, 30, 37 and illus.; Iranian, 35; Greek, illus.; open-field system, 224; famine, liberation in, 658; Turkey and, 720,
43, 56, 58, 59(illus.); ruler cults and, and lack of, 278, 280; distribution of, 721; European unity and, 804
Index I-17
Greek fire (weapon), 137 Hardy, Thomas, 640 Hermit monks, 142–143
Greek language, 41, 73, 74, 129, 317 Hargreaves, James, 567, 568(illus.) Herod (Judaea), 113
Greene, Graham, 729 Harold (Denmark), 178 Herodotus, 13, 50
Greenland, Vikings in, 186, 189 Harold Godwinson, 195(illus.), 196 Herophilus, 81–82
Green movement, 806 Harrow (farm tool), 225 Herzegovina. See Bosnia-Herzegovina
Gregory I (Pope), 147 Harun al Rashid (Abbasid Caliph), 176 Herzl, Theodore, 664–666, 789. See also
Gregory VII (Pope), 205, 270–271; reforms Hasdrubal (Carthage), 93 Zionism
of, 206–208 Hatshepsut (Egypt), 18 Hesiod, 42, 43
Gregory XI (Pope), 291 Hattusilus I (Hititte), 19 Hetaira (companion), 57
Grien, Hans Baldung, 364(illus.) Haussmann, George, 621 Hierarchy of wealth, 326–327. See also
Grimm brothers, 600 Havel, Václav, 816, 824 Classes
Grimshaw, Atkinson, 626 Hawaiian Islands: Asians in, 680(illus.); Hiero (Syracuse), 80
Gropius, Walter, 732, 733(illus.) Japanese attack, 772 High Middle Ages (1000–1300): origins of
Gross national product (GNP), 572 Health care: in High Middle Ages, modern state in, 194–195; political
Grosz, George, 726(illus.) 227–228; public, 489, 619–621; na- revival in, 194–202; Jews in, 214, 215,
Guadalcanal, battle for, 775, 776(map) tional, 796–797. See also Disease; 231–232; law and justice in, 202–205;
Guadeloupe, 497 Medicine; Physicians papacy in, 205–210; Crusades in,
Guanches, 375 Heart of Darkness (Conrad), 688 209–214, 218–219; village life
Guangzhou, battle of, 677(illus.) Hebrews, 28–30, 37; culture of, 25. See in, 221–229; agriculture in, 220(illus.),
Guernica (Picasso), 735 and illus. also Jews and Judaism 224–226; health care in, 227–228;
Guibert of Nogent, 235 Hecate, 78 popular religion in, 229–234; nobility
Guilds: capitalism and, 297; craft, 249–251, Hegel, Georg, 598 in, 234–237; monasteries and convents
258, 266, 297; English riots and, 296; Hegemony, in Greece, 61 in, 238–242; cities and towns in,
merchant, 249, 309; in universities, 262; Heisenberg, Werner, 730 246–274; climate change in, 278;
plague and, 284; women in, 251, 297, Hejaz, 163, 720 drama in, 229, 266; state and church
493–494, 512, 583; urban, 490, 493; Heliocentric theory, 79 in, 193–219. See also Middle Ages
abolition of, in France, 493, 508–509 Hellas, 39. See also Greece (ancient) Hijira, 165
Guillotine, in French Revolution, Hellenism, 66, 71 Hilda of Whitby (Saint), 148, 181
547, 551 Hellenistic world, 39, 45, 61, 65–84; cities Hildebrand, 265
Gunboat diplomacy, 691, 693 and kingdoms in, 69–70 and map, Hildebrandt, Johann Lucas von, 441
Guomindang (China), 788 71–73; spread of, 71–74; ruler cult in, Hildegard of Bingen, 241
Gustavus Adolphus (Sweden), 407, 436 72; men and women in, 72–73; econ- Himmler, Heinrich, 764, 769
Gutenberg, Johan, 318 omy of, 75–76; Jews and, 74; Near East Hindenburg, Paul von, 762, 763
and, 66, 73–74; religion in, 76–78, 113; Hindus: number system of, 169; in India,
intellectual advances in, 76–82; phi- 690(illus.), 691
Habeas corpus, 603 losophy in, 78–79; polis and, 70, 72; Hippocrates, 59, 81, 169
Habsburg dynasty, 363, 412(map), 475; science in, 79–81; medicine in, 81–82; Hiroshima, atomic bombing of,
France and, 348; in Hungary, 356, 455, Rome and, 79, 94, 97–98. See also 776(map), 777
611; in Spain, 413, 435, 437(map); Alexander the Great; Greece (ancient) Hispaniola, 386; Columbus in, 382, 398
Thirty Years’ War and, 435, 436; Otto- Heloise, Abelard and, 262 Historians: Herodotus, 13, 50; Xenophon,
man Empire and, 374, 452, 455; Ca- Helots, in Sparta, 47 32; Thucydides, 50, 53, 64; Sallust, 94;
tholicism of, 407, 439, 518; in Austria, Helsinki Agreement (1975), 801–802 Roman, 98; Procopius, 137, 138–139;
433, 435, 437(map), 438–439, 478–480; Henry II (England), 203–204, 249; Elea- Tacitus, 155; Gregory of Tours,
elementary education in, 518; France nor of Aquitane and, 197, 266 160–161; Bede, 154, 181–182; dating
and, 546; end of, 716 Henry III (France), 362 methods, 182; Oviedo, 377; on French
Habsburg-Valois Wars, 311–312, 350, 361 Henry IV (England), 329 Revolution, 537; on factory workers,
Hadith, 165, 167, 168 Henry IV (France), 362 579; on nationalism, 596; Michelet,
Hadrian (Rome), expansion under, Henry IV (Holy Roman Empire), 207–208 596, 608; Palacky, 615–616; Tolstoy,
111(map) and illus. 640; on colonial power, 687; on Holo-
Hadrian’s Wall, 107(illus.) Henry IV (the Great, France), 406, caust and anti-Semitism, 770. See also
Hagia Sophia, 133(illus.) 409(illus.) specific historians
Hagiographies, 230 Henry the Navigator, 376, 378 Historical and Critical Dictionary (Bayle),
Haitian independence, 536, 556. See also Henry V (England), 287 466–467
Saint-Domingue Henry VII (England), 329–330, 383 History of France (Michelet), 608
Halim, Pasha, 657(illus.) Henry VIII (England), 330, 351–352 and A History of My Calamities (Abelard),
Hamburg, 257 illus., 353, 419 261–262
Hameln, Chayim, 425 Heraclides of Tarentum, 82 The History of the Franks (Gregory of
Hameln, Glückel, 425 Hera (goddess), 56, 96 Tours), 160–161
Hamilcar (Carthage), 93 Heresy, 114, 293; Arian, 141–142; Albigen- Hitler, Adolf, 667, 770, 772, 773; rise
Hammurabi (Babylon), 11–12 sian, 197(map), 212, 271; Waldensian, to power, 761–763; Chaplin as,
Handicraft workers. See Artisans 271; Inquisition and, 212, 273, 357; of 737(illus.); Mussolini and, 747,
(craftsmen) Joan of Arc, 289; in Middle Ages, 748, 759(illus.), 762; appeasement
Hannibal (Carthage), 93, 99 270–271; punishment for, 212, 272, of, 765–767; empire of, 765–769;
Hanseatic League, 257, 279 273, 355; of Wyclif, 294; witchcraft New Order of, 769; pact with Stalin,
Harald III (Norway), 196 as, 364 767, 792; radio and movie use by,
I-18 Index
Hitler, Adolf (continued) Houdon, 482(illus.) Ibn-Sina (Avicenna), 169–170

737, 762(illus.); Allied conferences Households: on manors, 223; medieval, Iceland, 804; Vikings in, 186, 189
and, 782, 783; rallies of, 752(illus.), 226–227; in Renaissance, 320–321; Iceman, 6–7
762(illus.); resistance to, 764–765, 785; consumer economy and, 523; urban Iconoclasm, 362, 363 and illus.
suicide of, 775. See also Nazi Germany; poverty in, 583; income of, 636; women Id, ego, and superego, 730
Second World War in, 632. See also Families Ideograms, 8 and figure
Hittites, 20, 27, 43; invasion by, 17, 19; House of Commons, 662. See also Parlia- Ideologies, 590, 594–599; liberalism as,
solar disc of, 19(illus.) ment (Britain) 594–595, 609; nationalism as, 595–596;
Hobbes, Thomas, 406 House of Orange, 424 separate spheres, 582–584, 632; roman-
Hobsbawm, Eric, 590 Housing: in Rome, 120, 124–125 and ticism as, 598–599; utopian socialism
Hobson, J. A., 688 illus.; peasant, 226–227; medieval as, 596–597; in Paris revolution of 1848,
Hoche, General, 550 towns, 251, 281–282; in London, 609; liberation, 688; Soviet Union,
Ho Chi Minh, 789, 800 498–499 and illus.; worker, 580, 647; 756–757, 758; Marxist-Leninist, in
Hogarth, William, 528(illus.) urban, 619; in Paris, 621; middle class, China, 788. See also Capitalism; Marx,
Hohenstaufen dynasty, 200 621, 622, 624; in Stalin’s Soviet Union, Karl and Marxism
Hohenzollern dynasty, 439 756; public, 797 Île-de-France, 197(map), 198, 267
Holbein, Ambrosius, 302(illus.) Hroswitha of Gandersheim, 168, 199 Iliad (Homer), 42–43, 71
Holbien, Hans the Younger, 335(illus.) Huascar (Inca), 385 Illegitimacy, 630; in cities and towns,
Holidays. See Festivals and holidays Hudson Bay territory, 411, 497 512(illus.), 514; explosion of, 514, 584;
Holland. See Netherlands (the Dutch, Hugh Capet, 197 marriage patterns and, 513, 514–515,
Holland) Hugh of Cluny, 208(illus.) 631
Hollywood film industry, 736 Hugo, Victor, 599–600 Illuminated manuscripts. See Manuscripts,
Holocaust, Jews and, 769–772 Huguenots, 358(map), 361, 407, 408, 466; illuminated
Holtby, Winifred, 710 massacre of, 337(illus.), 362 Illyria, 122
Holy Alliance, 593 Huitzilopochtli cult, 384 Imam, 167
Holy Land. See Crusades; Israel; Jeru- The Human Comedy (Balzac), 640 Immigrants and immigration: illegal in
salem; Palestine Humanism, 312; Christian, 316–317; European Union, 829–830; growth of,
Holy Office, 357 Erasmus and, 335–336 and illus., 341; 829–830; from Eritrea, 829(illus.);
Holy Roman Empire, 346; division of, Protestants and, 341, 342; in Renais- Muslim, 830, 834; ghettoization of,
175(map), 177; Otto I and, 199; Sicily sance, 466 in France, 836, 838–839. See also
and, 199(map), 200–201; Habsburg- Human rights, 386, 683(illus.), 691, 802, Migration
Valois Wars and, 311–312; power shar- 811. See also Rights Immortality, 22–23, 35, 114. See also
ing in, 200; justice in, 203; papacy Hunchback of Notre Dame (Hugo), 600 Afterlife
and, 176, 199, 207–208; patron of, Hundred days of reform (China), 693 Imperator, Augustus as, 109, 110(illus.)
235(illus.); Jews in, 232; powerful Hundred Years’ War, 198, 286–290, 299; Imperialism: capitalism and, 688; racism
nuns in, 240; Protestantism and, 340; Joan of Arc and, 289, 290 and, 687–688, 691, 769, 770; Ottoman
Charles V and, 348, 350(map); witch Hungary, 109, 189, 213, 455; Magyars in, and Western, 656; political, 681; inhu-
trials in, 365; Peace of Utrecht and, 188, 356; migrants in, 282, 300; Otto- mane practices of, 683(illus.); critics of,
411, 412(map); Thirty Years’ War and, man Empire and, 350, 356, 374; 688–689; in Asia, 685, 686(map);
435, 436, 438; elector of Brandenburg Habsburgs and, 356, 455, 611; Ottoman response to, 689–693; British in India,
and, 439. See also Germany; Habsburg defeat of, 430, 450; revolt in, and divi- 689–691; Japanese, 685, 692–693;
dynasty sion of, 439; in Austrian Empire, Western, 681–693, 720; League of
Homer, 42–43, 71 610–611; Magyar nationalism in, 663, Nations and, 720; Nazi racial, 769. See
Homestead Act (United States), 654 664; republic of, 717; peace treaty also Empires; New Imperialism; specific
Homosexuality (same-sex relations): in with, 719; alliance against, 738; Second empires
Sparta, 48; in Greece, 47(illus.); of World War and, 775, 783; revolution Imperialism (Hobson), 688
C. Rhodes, 684; Christianity and, 145; in (1956), 793; in postcommunist era, Inca Empire, Spanish conquest of, 385
in Middle Ages, 299; Nazi persecution 824, 826. See also Austro-Hungarian Income: global gap in, 674–675; in Great
of, 764; women and, 47(illus.), 299, Empire Britain, 674(figure); women’s contribu-
803; legalized marriage for, 830 Huns, 134, 151(map), 152, 265 tions to, 632, 798; in Third World, 674
Hong Kong, 676 Hürrem, 453–454 and illus.; in white settler colonies, 681;
Honor, social status and, 327 Hus, Jan, 293, 294–295, 340, 355 in eastern Europe, 824–825. See also
Honorius of Autun, 221, 236–237 Hussein, Saddam, 819, 833 Wages
Hoover, Herbert, 745 Hussein Faisal, 705, 719, 720(illus.) Indentured labor, 680
Hoplites, in Greece, 44, 45(illus.) Hussein ibn-Ali, 705, 719 Independence movements: Haitian,
Horace, 96–97, 110, 112 Huxley, Aldous, 729 536, 556; Greek, 602; Irish, 606. See
Horse collar, 225 Hyksos, 16–17 also Decolonization; National self-
Horses, 33 and illus., 251, 571; in agricul- determination
ture, 225. See also Chariots India: Alexander in, 68, 71; Hellenistic
Horthemels, Magdelaine, 529(illus.) Iaroslav the Wise (Kiev), 187 culture in, 69, 71, 75; Muslims in, 167;
Horus (god), 15(illus.), 18 Iberian Peninsula: Muslims in, 168–169, trade with, 371, 372, 373; Portuguese
Hosius, Stanislaus, 356 231, 275; migrations in, 201, 222; trade with, 380; Anglo-French conflicts
Hospitals, 517; monastic, 240; plague African slaves in, 326; reconquista of, in, 497, 505; Britain and, 504–505 and
and, 283(illus.); classical design in, 201–202 and map, 209, 231, 331, 376. illus.; missionaries in, 688; industrial-
321–322 See also Portugal; Spain ization and, 576; Britain and, 675,
Index I-19
689–691, 696–697; opium and, 676; 363, 526; heresy and, 212, 273, 357; Irnerius, 261
English language in, 691; migration Holy Office and, 357; witchcraft and, Iron and iron industry, 19; barbarian, 157;
from, 680; imperialism in, 685, 365; Galileo and, 462 Celtic, 151; agricultural tools, 225; in
689–691; decolonization and indepen- Instinctual drives, 730–731 Europe, 574(map); in Britain, 566, 569,
dence in, 788 and illus. Institutes of the Christian Religion (Cal- 570, 571, 584; in Germany, 575(illus.);
Indian National Congress, 691 vin), 354 steel mills, 656, 739
Indian Ocean trade, 371–373; lateen sails Instrument of Government, 421 Iron curtain, in Eastern Europe, 784, 785,
in, 377; Portuguese and, 380, 381(illus.) Intellectual thought, 636–639; of Stone- 786(map); opening of, 816. See also
Indians, American. See Native Americans henge people, 4; Greek, 58–60; Helle- Cold War
Individualism, 312, 343, 537, 596; roman- nistic, 76–82; Roman, 110; Byzantine, Irrigation, 678, 691; in Mesopotamia, 4,
ticism and, 598 136–137; Islamic, 169; Charlemagne 12; in Muslim Spain, 169
Individual rights, 727. See also Rights and, 181; Scholastics and, 263; in Isabella of Este (Mantua), 326
Indochina: French in, 685, 686(map), Renaissance, 312–320; scientific revolu- Isabella (Spain), 330–332. See also Ferdi-
789; Japanese invasion of, 772; nation- tion and, 459–465; women and, 465; nand and Isabella (Spain)
alism in, 789. See also Vietnam Comte on, 637–638; social science and, Ishttar Gate (Babylon), 24(illus.)
Indo-European language, 17, 32 637–639; modernist crisis in, 727–736; Isis (goddess), 15, 78
Indonesia: Dutch in, 393; independence Stalin and, 757; de-Stalinization and, Islam, 141(map), 167(map), 231; Zoroas-
of, 789 792; feminist, 802–803, 808–809; Polish trianism and, 35, 36; in Arab world,
Indulgences, 234, 339–340 and illus., 357 Solidarity and, 814. See also Enlighten- 163–164, 166, 167; spread of, 163–170;
Industrialization: population and, ment; Ideologies; Literature; Philoso- Five Pillars of, 166; Christians and, 165,
491(map), 572; factory owners and, phy; specific thinkers 166, 168, 170; in western literature,
577; romanticism and, 599; urbaniza- Intendants (officials), in France, 391, 407 170; teachings of, 165–166; conversion
tion and, 618; middle class and, The Interesting Narrative. . . . Himself from, 261; learning in, 263; Qur’an,
623–624; women and, 631; science (Equiano), 503 165, 166, 167, 168, 231, 234; Sunni-
and, 637; in Russia, 655, 656; world Interest rates, 279; usury, 166, 257 Shi’ite rivalry in, 167, 168, 374,
economy and, 674–678; imperialism International Monetary Fund, 822 833–834; Christian missions and, 688;
and, 685; in Soviet Union, 755, 757 and International trade, 255, 371. See also fundamentalist terrorism and, 831–832;
illus.; in eastern Europe, 791 Global (world) economy West and, 831–836. See also Arabs and
Industrial Revolution, 566–588; consumer International Working Men’s Association, Arab world; Crusades; Qur’an; Muslims
economy and, 523; colonization and, 667–668 Ismail (Egypt), 678
566; agriculture and, 566; labor patterns Invasions: Hittite, 17; of Egypt, 16–17, 19; Isolationism: in Japan, 677; in Great
and, 576–588; in Britain, 566–572, 573, of England, 154; Muslim, 168; of ninth Britain, 700; in United States, 721
576, 579; critics of, 579; railroads century, 185(map); Viking, 175(map), Israel (ancient), 28–30, 37; Assyria and, 31
and, 570–571 and illus., 572(map), 177, 184–186, 187, 238, 247; Magyar, Israel (modern): General Syrian Congress
574(map), 575–576, 647; urban areas 185(map), 188, 238; of Italy, 152–153, and, 724; establishment of, 789; terror-
and, 571, 618; global inequality and, 311. See also Expansion ism in, 831; war with Arabs, 804. See
674; steam engine and, 569–570, 571, Investiture, lay, 198–199, 206–207, 261 also Arab-Israeli wars; Jews and Juda-
573, 580; in continental Europe, Investments: in Dutch trade, 426; in ism; Palestine
573–576 railroads, 573; in Belgian industry, 576; Issus, battle of, 66(illus.), 67
Industrious revolution, 494–495 European, 676; American stock market Istanbul, 374; Topkapi palace in, 451,
Industry, 403; in 18th century, 490–493; and, 743 452(illus.). See also Constantinople
cities and, 618–619; sweated, 629; Ionia, 61; Greeks in, 39, 50, 58 Italian language, 265
chemical, 637; in England, 747. See Ipatescu, Ana, 589(illus.) Italy, 179, 356; Greek colonies in, 46;
also Cottage industry; specific industries Iran, 25, 32, 33, 35, 784; Islamic revolu- Etruscans in, 86–88; Roman conquest
Inertia, law of, 461–462 tion in, 804. See also Persia of, 87–89, 91; in Middle Ages, 183;
Inferno (Dante), 170 Iraq, 135, 705, 829; after World War I, Lombards in, 134, 172, 173; Ostrogoths
Infidel, 170, 209 719, 720, 725; invasion of Kuwait by, in, 153, 156; Visigoth invasion of, 152;
Inflation, 414; in Rome, 127; Black Death 819; Sunni-Shi’ite rivalry in, 833–834; Holy Roman Emperor in, 200, 208;
and, 284; Spanish silver and, 414, 436; United States’ war in, 832–834. See also Jews in, 231, 771; clocks in, 258; mer-
after Thirty Years’ War, 436; in France, Mesopotamia chants of, 249, 253, 255, 259; Hanseatic
551, 573; in Germany, 738, 739, 740, Ireland, 177, 255, 831; Christianity in, League and, 257; silver mines in, 255;
741; in 1970s, 804; in Russia, 823 147(illus.); missionaries from, 148; universities in, 260–261 and map;
Ingeborg of Denmark, 208 Celts in, 147(illus.), 148, 151; Vikings cathedrals in, 267; cities and city-states,
Inheritance: in Hammurabi’s Code, 13; by and, 186; England and, 153, 300–301, 252, 271, 310–312 and map; trouba-
women, 10, 13, 95; in Rome, 95; mar- 330, 352–353; Protestant Reformation dours in, 266; Black Death in, 281, 282;
riage and, 112; barbarian kin groups and, 352–353; Catholic Church in, Renaissance in, 308–312, 327(illus.);
and, 157; medieval peasants and, 222; 420, 421, 742; rebellion of, 420; linen communes in, 309; Papal States in,
primogeniture, 187, 236; unigeniture, industry in, 449(illus.); factory workers 310, 311 and map, 357; Habsburg-
in Russia, 449 from, 581–582; voting rights in, 603; Valois wars in, 311, 350, 361; arts in,
Innocent III (Pope), 208–209, 211, 212 potato in, 603, 605; Great Famine in, 320–322; sugar plantations and, 387;
Inquest, in England, 196, 200 604–606, 607, 662; immigration from, baroque art in, 415; education for
Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the 605–606, 630, 679 and figure; national- women in, 465; agriculture in, 485;
Wealth of Nations (Smith), 505 ism in, 606, 662–663; home rule for, Napoleon and, 554, 555, 556; kingdom
Inquisition, 450; Dominicans, Franciscans 662–663 and illus.; autonomy for of Two Sicilies in, 593, 650 and map;
and, 272–273; Spanish, 272(illus.), 331, southern, 742 unification of, 596, 648–650 and map;
I-20 Index
Italy (continued) Persia and, 35; Zoroastrianism and, 35; 364–365. See also Courts (legal);
immigrants from, 679 and figure, 680; in Hellenistic world, 74; Messiah in, Judiciary
Africa and, 681, 682(map); in Triple 113, 114; Christianity and, 114, Justinian (Rome), 133(illus.), 134; law
Alliance, 699, 700; in First World War, 213–214; in Spain, 168, 170, 232, 360; code of, 136 and illus., 261, 263;
705, 711; Treaty of Versailles and, 717, Islam and, 165, 166; Rome and, 117; plague of, 137; Theodora and, 137,
759; Turkey and, 720; Mussolini and expelled from England, 214, 232; in 138–139
fascism in, 737, 747, 758–761; Ethiopia Sicily, 201; Crusades and, 215; of
and, 759(illus.), 765; in Second World Speyer, 214, 215, 231; as moneylend-
War, 773; Allied invasion of, 775; Chris- ers, 213–214, 215, 257, 279, 331; child- Kaaba, 164, 165
tian Democrats in, 785; general strike birth and, 232; circumcision among, Kádár, János, 816
in, 810(illus.); European Union and, 233; death and, 233(illus.), 234; cloth- Kaddish (Jewish prayer), 234
827; illegal immigrants in, 892(illus.) ing laws for, 209, 252; attacks on, 279, Kadesh, battle of, 19, 20
Ivan III (Russia), 444, 445(map) 283, 285; on law and religion, 264; Kaffa, plague in, 280–281
Ivan the Terrible (Russia), 445(map), 446, printing technology and, 319(map); Kafka, Franz, 731–732, 736
447(illus.); film about, 792(illus.) anti-Semitism and, 331, 424; conver- Kandinsky, Wassily, 732
Iwo Jima, battle for, 776(map), 777 sion of, in Spain, 331; expelled from Kant, Immanuel, 473
Spain, 332; in Poland-Lithuania, 356; Kellogg, Frank B., 741
Dutch, 424; in England, 421; in Ger- Kellogg-Briand Pact, 741
Jacobean literature, 395 many, 425; in Ottoman Empire, 450; Kemal, Mustafa (Atatürk), 720–721
Jacobin club, 535(illus.), 546 Enlightenment and, 475–476; in Kennedy, John F., 793, 800
Jacob’s Room (Woolf), 731 France, 544, 577; Dreyfus affair and, Kepler, Johannes, 461
Jacquerie revolt (1358), 296 662; emancipation of, 664; migration Kerensky, Alexander, 713, 714
Jager, Hugo, 752(illus.) of, 679; Russian, 630, 655, 667, 680; Keynes, John Maynard, 738, 744, 805
James I (England), 395, 418–419 homeland for, 664–666, 719, 724 and Khedives, of Egypt, 678
James II (England), 423 illus., 729, 789; in fascist Italy, 771; Khrushchev, Nikita, 792–793
James the Conqueror of Aragon, 201, Nazis and, 764, 769–772; Soviet, 769, Al-Khwarizmi, 169
203(illus.) 791. See also Anti-Semitism; Israel Kierkegaard, Søren, 728
Janissary corps, 450, 452 Jihad, 165 Kievan Rus, 187, 189, 444
Jansenism, 528–529 and illus. Joad, Cyril, 729 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 790 and illus.
Japan, 691–693; silver from, 392; Joan of Arc, 289, 290, 329 King, Robert, 503
isolation of, 677; Perry’s opening John II (Portugal), 378 King James Bible, 395
of, 677, 691; war with Russia, 656, John IV (Portugal), 413 Kings and kingdoms: Sumerian, 10;
693; migration from, 680; imperialism John XXII (Pope), 270 Babylonian, 11; Egyptian pharoahs,
in, 685, 692–693; Meiji Restoration John (England), 198, 208; Magna Carta 15–16 and illus.; in Near East, 25,
in, 692; military in, 692 and illus.; and, 204–205 29(map); Nubian, 27; Hebrew, 28–29,
allied with Britain, 707; First World John of Spoleto, 292 37; Assyrian, 32 and illus.; Minoan
War and, 707, 719; empire of, John Paul II, Pope, 814 Crete, 41; Greek, 41; Hellenistic, 69
686(map), 776(map); in Second World Johnson, Lyndon, 791, 800–801 and map, 71, 72; deification of, 71;
War, 772, 775–777 and map, 783; Johnson, Samuel, 599 barbarian, 155; Frankish, 151(map),
atomic bombing of, 776(map), 777; Joliet, Louis, 410 171–172, 174; Germanic, 147, 153;
war with China, 693, 707, 765, 772 Jonson, Ben, 517 Merovingian, 153, 171–172; Crusader,
Jaruzelski, Wojciech, 814, 815 Jordan (Transjordan), 719, 724 210(map); Inquisition and, 273;
Java, 372(illus.), 685 Joseph II (Austria), 478–480, 527, 530 Naples, 310, 311 and map. See also
Jefferson, Thomas, 538–539, 556 Journeyman, 250, 251 Empire; Monarchy; specific kings and
Jehovah’s Witnesses, 764, 769 Joust, 236 kingdoms
Jenner, Edward, 524, 526 Joyce, James, 731 Kinship, 581, 631; barbarian, 155, 156,
Jerome (Saint), 144, 149 Judaea, revolt in, 113, 117 157. See also Families
Jerusalem, 28, 117; Crusades and, 194, Judah, 29, 31, 37 Kipling, Rudyard, 687, 688
209, 210, 211; temple in, 29, 35, 74 Judaism. See Jews and Judaism Kirov, Sergei, 757
Jesuits (Society of Jesus), 345 and Judgment day. See Last Judgment Kissinger, Henry, 801
illus., 361, 415, 435, 526–527; Judiciary (judges): English, 203–204, 423; Kitchener, Horatio H., 683, 685, 690
Ignatius Loyola and, 359, 360; in colonial audiencia, 391. See also Courts Knights: fiefs and, 177, 179, 210;
Americas, 386 (legal); Justice defeated by infantry, 200; in Crusades,
Jesus of Nazareth (Christ), 140; Islam and, Jugurtha, 100 209–211, 212–213; education and
164(illus.), 165, 166, 170; life and Julio-Claudians (Rome), 116, 117 training of, 236; noble status of,
teachings of, 114, 116, 146, 212, 230; Julius Caesar (Rome), 102 and illus., 234–235; youth of, 237; Arthurian
relationship to God the Father, 108, 150 legend, 154, 266; chivalry and, 235
141–142; relics of, 269; Second Julius II (Pope), 316, 323 and illus., 236, 275, 299; in English
Coming of, 144, 145; suffering and Junkers of Prussia, 442–443, 444, 660 Parliament, 290; in Hundred Years’
death of, 322(illus.). See also Juno (goddess), 96 War, 287, 290; criminal behaviors,
Christianity Jupiter (god), 96 299–300
The Jewish Bride (Rembrandt), 425(illus.) Juries, 203, 204 Knights Templars, 212–213, 239
The Jewish State (Herzl), 665 Justice: in England, 203–204; in High Knox, John, 355
Jews and Judaism, 28–30; religion of, 29, Middle Ages, 202–205; manorial, 203, Koch, Robert, 620
30, 37 and illus.; Assyrians and, 29; 223–224, 237; in witchcraft trials, Kohl, Helmut, 802, 816
Index I-21
Korea, Japan and, 693 Roman Empire, 122; German(ic), 150, namics, 636–637; of universal gravita-
Korean War, 784–785, 800 265, 343, 439, 442; Arabic, 165, 167, tion, 463
Kornilov, Lavr, 714 168, 170, 261; Slavic, 180; vernacular, Lay investiture, 198–199, 206–207, 261
Kosovo, 830 183–184, 231, 265–266, 301–302; Laypeople (laity), 339; in monasteries,
Kosovo Liberation Army, 826 Aramaic, 264; French, 265, 415, 417, 239, 240; priests and, 271; literacy of,
Kristallnacht attack (1938), 764 418; of Luther, 343; English, 265, 292, 302–303, 320; confraternities of, 293; in
Kulaks (peasants), 754–755, 756(illus.) 301, 353, 691; French, 415, 417, 418, councils, 292; lay piety, 345; instruction
Kulturkampf, in Germany, 660 467; nationalism and, 596, 664. See also of, 357
Kush kingdom, 25, 27 Latin language League of Armed Neutrality, 539
Kuwait, Iraqi invasion of, 819 Languedoc, 248(illus.), 281, 298 League of Nations, 717; Germany and,
La Rochelle, siege of (1628), 407 741, 765; mandates of, 719–720, 789
Lartie Seianti, sarcophagus of, 87(illus.) Lebanon, 27; General Syrian Congress
Labor: peasant, 223, 296; Black Death La Salle, Robert, 410 and, 720, 724, 725; independence
and, 284; gendered division of, 3, 223, Las Casas, Bartolomé de, 386 of, 789
582–584; Amerindian, 386; Dutch, 427; Las Navas de Tolosa, battle of, 201 Lechfeld, battle of, 188, 199
Russian, 449; division of, 490, 505; guild Last Judgment: in Zoroastrianism, 35; in Leclerc, Charles-Victor-Emmanuel,
system and, 490, 493; in cottage indus- Islam, 165–166; in Christianity, 229 556, 557
tries, 490, 492–493; away from home, The Last Judgment (Michelangelo), Legal systems. See Law and legal codes
512; child, 492, 568–569, 580, 581, 307(illus.) Legnano, battle of, 200
587–588, 636; patterns of, 567–588; in The Last Supper (Leonardo), 313 Lehmus, Emilie, 633
England, 567, 572; on railroads, 571; Lateen sails, 377 Leigh, Mary, 659(illus.)
Ricardo on, 598; migrant, 680 and Lateran Agreement (1929), 760 Leighton, Roland, 710
illus.; indentured, 680; in First World Lateran Councils: (1059), 206; Fourth Leisure: working class, 629–630; travel and
War, 709 and illus. See also Slaves and (1215), 208–209, 230 and illus. tourism, 625, 797. See also Entertain-
slavery; Unemployment; Workers Latifundia (estates), 99 ment; Games and sports
Labor aristocracy, 628 Latin language, 129, 151, 188, 261; Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich: Bolshevik Revolu-
Labor movement, in England, 584–585 Romance languages and, 122; in tion and, 713–714, 721; New Eco-
Labor strikes. See Strikes Byzantine Empire, 136; Franks nomic Policy, 753–754; Soviet film
Labor unions: outlawing of, 584–585, 594; and, 171; nobles and, 235; translations industry and, 737
English, 584–585 and illus.; French, into, 169, 170; vernacular and, Leningrad, siege of, 768. See also St.
647, 748; German, 669, 763; revision- 183–184, 265 Petersburg
ism and, 668–669; First World War and, Latin (South) America: Dutch and, 426, Leo I (Pope), 152, 176
709; in Great Depression, 748; Italian, 427(map); Atlantic economy and, Leo IX (Pope), 205, 206
760; British, 805; Polish Solidarity, 814; 496(map); Creoles in colonial, Leo X (Pope), 329, 339
globalization and, 822 500–501; Britain and, 566; indepen- Leo XIII, Pope, 662
Labouchère, Henry, 688 dent republics in, 593; railroads in, 675; León, 169
Labour Party (England), 669, 742, 747, US economic dominance in, 790 Leonardo da Vinci, 313 and illus., 733
785; Indian independence and, 788 Latium, 87, 88, 93 Leonidas, at Thermopylae, 50(illus.)
Lady with an Ermine (Leonardo), Latvia, 449, 767, 826 Leopold (Austria), 440
313(illus.) Laud, William (Canterbury), 419, 420 Leopold II (Austria), 480
Lafayette, Marquis de, 539, 542, 543 Lausanne, Treaty of (1923), 721 Leopold II (Belgium), 683 and illus.
Laissez faire doctrine, 594, 596, 605 Law and legal codes: of Hammurabi, Lepanto, battle of, 450
Lake District (England), 599 12–13 and illus.; Ten Commandments, Lepidus, 103
Lake Trasimene, battle of, 93 29, 30, 342(illus.), 344; of Draco, Leprosariums, 227, 240
Lamarck, Jean Baptiste, 639 48–49; spread of Greek, 59, 60; Roman, Lesbians, 47(illus.). See also
Land: Sumerian, 10; in Rome, 99, 128; 79, 90, 95, 98, 136; Justinian, 136, 261, Homosexuality
Vandals as, 150(illus.); Frankish aristoc- 263; due process of, 205, 419; Celtic, Letters of exchange, 257
racy and, 174; warrior-nobles and, 156, 151; church canons, 142, 208; Salic, Levant, 489
187; fiefs, 177, 179, 200, 205, 210; in 153, 156; barbarian customs, 155, 157; Le Vau, Louis, 440
High Middle Ages, 222; monastic, 171, Germanic, 153, 202; Islamic, 167–168; Leviathan (Hobbes), 406
271; in England, 330; enclosure of, Danelaw, 186; customs of Aragon, Lewis, C. S., 729
486–487, 488; reforms, in Denmark, 203(illus.); English, 203–204, 300, 301, Leyte Gulf, battle of, 776(map), 777
474; in 18th century, 485–488; in 330; common vs. Roman systems, 203, Liberals and liberalism: economic, 505;
British America, 501; French peasants 330; university study of, 263; for prosti- Metternich on, 593; ideology of,
and, 542, 609; reforms, in Russia, tution, 252; Jewish commentaries on, 594–595, 609; in England,
657; migrants and, 680. See also Agri- 264; in High Middle Ages, 300–301; 594, 602–603, 662; in Prussia, 611;
culture; Villas Muslim, in Ottoman Empire, 450; nationalism and, 596, 689; French
Landlords: in eastern Europe, 433–434; Prussian, 475; Napoleonic Code middle class, 647; in Ottoman Empire,
Thirty Years’ War and, 436; English (1804), 553, 554; natural, 474, 518, 658; in Germany, 651; in Meiji Japan,
enclosure and, 486, 487; in London, 639; child labor, 569, 581; public 692; in Soviet Union, 812
498; in Ireland, 604, 605 health, 620; reforms, in Russia, 655; Liberia, 681
Langland, William, 170 barring Asians, 680–681 Libraries: of Alexandria, 81; of
Language(s), 404; Indo-European, 17, 32; Lawrence, T. E., 705, 720(illus.) Charlemagne, 183; of Constantinople,
Celtic, 150, 153; Greek, 41, 73, 74, Laws (scientific): of inertia, 461–462; of 211; Enlightenment and, 472. See
129, 317; in Hellenistic world, 73, 74; planetary motion, 461; of thermody- also Books
I-22 Index
Lifestyle: in Athens, 55; Roman, 94–96, Lombards, 134, 151(map), 172–173, 253; Lübeck, Hanseatic League and, 257
98, 120; in Roman provinces, 122; Charlemagne and, 174, 180 Lucretia, rape of, 87, 110
Christian, 144–145; on manors, Lombardy, 592 and map, 648 Luddites, 579
222–224, 226; religion and, 229–234; of London: Steelyard, 257; East India dock Ludendorff, Erich, 716
nobility, 234–237; monastic, 240, 242; in, 484(illus.); growth of, 497, 498–499; Lueger, Karl, 664, 761
medieval cities, 251–252; of rural coal heat in, 569; Crystal Palace exhibi- Luke (Saint), 183(illus.)
workers, 402–403; changes in, 485; tion, 571; poor of, 579; blitzkrieg in, Lully, Jean-Baptiste, 417
consumerism in, 521–523; Parisian, 768 and illus.; youth revolution in, Lunéville, Treaty of (1801), 554
533–534; quality of, in urban areas, 781(illus.) Lusitania, sinking of, 708
618; urban, 618; middle class, 624–625 Long-distance trade, 213, 253–255 and Luther, Martin, 339–342, 460; linguistic
and illus.; Soviet, 756–757; Nazi slave- map. See also Caravan trade; Ships and skills of, 343; art and, 344; on Eucha-
labor camp, 771. See also Standard shipping rist, 341–342; German patriotism and,
of living Long Parliament, 420 348, 350; on German peasants, 346; On
Limited liability corporations, 576 Lopez de Legazpi, Miguel, 392 Christian Liberty, 368–369. See also
Lincoln, Abraham, 654 Lords: peasant obligations to, 177, 179, Lutheranism; Protestantism
Lincoln, England, 249 222, 434, 438; vassals and, 177, 179, Lutheranism, 350, 355–356, 358(map),
Lindisfarne Gospel, 181, 182 196, 237, 238; warfare and, 235; manors 527; Bach and, 415; in Hungary, 356;
Linear A script, 41 and, 222, 224; monasteries and, 238; in Low Countries, 362, 363; in Sweden,
Linear B script, 41 town self-government and, 249; in 407, 436; Thirty Years’ War and,
Linné, Carl von, 473 eastern Europe, 433–434. See also 435, 436
Lisbon, 326 Landlords; Nobility (aristocracy) Luxembourg, 348
List, Frederick, 575, 656 Lord’s Supper. See Eucharist (Lord’s Luxury goods, 180, 392(illus.); Crusades
Lister, Joseph, 620 Supper) and, 213; in Renaissance, 320–321. See
Liszt, Franz, 600 Lorraine, 410, 661. See also Alsace- also Silk trade
Literacy, 518–519 and illus., 551; Greek, Lorraine Lydia, 34, 35, 46
46; Hellenistic, 73; nobility and, 235; Lothar (Holy Roman Empire), 175(map), Lyell, Charles, 638
in Middle Ages, 259; of laypeople, 177, 178 Lyrical Ballads, 599
302–303, 320; printing and, 320; Prot- Lotto, Lorenzo, 327(illus.) Lysander (Sparta), 53
estantism and, 342; reading revolution, Louisiana, 410, 500
470–471 and illus. Louis II (Hungary), 356
Literature: Greek, 42–43, 47–48, 49; Louis VI (France), 198 Macao, 392
Roman, 98, 110; Byzantine, 136; Arthu- Louis IX (France), 203, 269 MacArthur, Douglas, 784
rian, 154, 266; Islam in, 170; Beowulf Louis XI (France), 329 Macchiavelli, Niccolò, 314–315, 330
and, 182; vernacular, 182, 265–266, Louis XII (France), 329 McDonald, Daniel, 605(illus.)
301–302; plague and, 285; Renaissance, Louis XIII (France), 406, 407, MacDonald, Ramsay, 742, 747
308, 312, 316; Elizabethan and Jaco- 409(illus.), 440 Macedonia, 830; army in, 62; Philip II
bean, 395; Cervantes, 414–415; popu- Louis XIV (France), 407–409, 441, 443; and, 39, 62, 66; Hellenistic rulers from,
lar, 519; romanticism in, 599–600; on Charles II (England) and, 423; court 69; Rome and, 94. See also Alexander
child rearing, 634–635; realism in, culture of, 416–417, 430–431; Jan- the Great
639–640; imperialism and, 687; of senists and, 529(illus.); nobles and, 404; Madagascar, French in, 673(illus.)
First World War, 704, 705; in Age of Versailles and, 415, 430–431, 440; wars Madame Bovary (Flaubert), 640
Anxiety, 731–732; stream of conscious- of expansion and, 410–411, 442; alli- Madeira Islands, 378, 387, 389
ness in, 731; Soviet de-Stalinization, ance with Spain, 497 Madrid, public transport in, 622(illus.)
792; of women’s movement, 802–803. Louis XV (France), 527, 537–538 Magellan, Ferdinand, 379(map),
See also Poets and poetry; specific Louis XVI (France), 543; capture of, 546; 382–383, 392
writers economy and, 538, 539–540; French Magic: Hellenistic, 78; cures through, 82;
Lithuania, 715, 767, 826; in Poland- Revolution and, 545; guillotining for love, 105–106; cryptograms, 283;
Lithuania, 356, 446; Soviet embargo of, 547 witchcraft and, 364
of, 818 Louis XVIII (France), 560, 594, 606 Magistrates: Greek archon, 49; in
Little Entente, 738 Louis Napoleon. See Napoleon III (Louis Rome, 89
Little Ice Age (1300–1450), 278, 403 Napoleon) Magna Carta (England), 204–205
Littré, Emile, 638(illus.) Louis Philippe (France), 606–607 Magnetic compass, 377, 380
Liturgy, in monastic houses, 240 Louis the German, 175(map), 177, 178 Magyars: invasions by, 185(map), 188,
Liverpool, 571, 582 Louis the Pious, 176, 178, 184 238; in Germany, 199; Lutheranism
Livery, 252 L’Ouverture, Toussaint, 550–551, 556, 557 and, 356; nationalism and, 663, 664.
Livestock breeding, 487. See also Horses; Louvois, Marquis de (François le See also Hungary
Oxen Tellier), 410 Mahmud II (Ottoman Empire), 658
Livy, 110 Low Countries: textile industry in, Maintenon, Madame de, 417
Lloyd George, David, 662, 717 248, 254(map); merchant guilds in, Mainz, Jews in, 215
Locarno Agreements (1925), 740, 741, 765 249; famine in, 278; humanism in, 316; Malacca, 372, 380, 392, 426
Locke, John, 424, 467 Hundred Years’ War in, 287; Lutheran- Mali, 373
Lodge, Henry Cabot, 721 ism in, 362, 363; agriculture in, 487, Malta, 811, 826
Logical empiricism, 728 520; cottage industry in, 491(map). See Malthus, Thomas, 572, 639
Lollards, 292–293 also Belgium; Flanders; Netherlands Mameluke Egypt, 373, 374
Lombard, Peter, 263 Loyola, Ignatius, 359, 360 Manchester, 571, 585, 603, 619
Index I-23
Manchu dynasty (China), 676 630–631; virginity before, 631; work- university studies of, 184, 227, 261;
Manchuria, 656, 693, 776(map) ing women and, 797–798 and figure; hospitals and, 227, 240, 283(illus.),
Manet, Edouard, 640(illus.) youth counterculture and, 799; 321–322, 517; Black Death and,
Manila, Philippines, 392–393 feminist critique of, 808–809; in 282–283; in 18th century, 489; quack
Mannerist art, 323 early 1980s, 806; legalized gay and doctors and, 82, 510(illus.); practise of,
Manors and manoralism, 179; courts lesbian, 830 523–526; public health movement and,
under, 237; justice in, 203; lifestyle of, Marseilles, 325, 489; plague in, 281, 282 620–621; improvements in, 679;
222–224, 226; peasant revolts and, 296. Marshall, Alfred, 637 women in, 633 and illus., 757; national-
See also Feudalism; Serfs and serfdom Marshall, George C., 784 ized, 785. See also Disease; Health
Mansa Musa, 373 Marshall Plan, 784, 785 care; Midwives
Mantegna, Andrea, 321 Marsiglio of Padua, 292 Medina, 163, 165
Mantua, 310 Martial law, in Poland, 814 Mediterranean region, 224; Phoenicians
Manual on the Art of Childbirth (Cou- Martin, Pierre-Denis, 440(illus.) in, 20, 27, 28(illus.); Carthage and,
dray), 525 Martinez Cubellis y Ruiz, Enrique, 91; Greeks in, 46, 47; Alexander the
Manuel (Portugal), 380 622(illus.) Great and, 68; Etruscans and, 86;
Manufacturing, 577; Greek, 46, 76; in Martinique, 497 Rome and, 89, 94; Byzantine
medieval Europe, 253, 254(map); Martin V (Pope), 293 Empire and, 137; Christianity in,
Atlantic economy and, 501; putting out Marx, Karl and Marxism, 579, 632, 637, 146; Muslims and, 166; agriculture
system for, 490–491, 567, 580; Western, 667–669; in Afghanistan, 802; class in, 224; trade in, 253, 254(map);
675. See also Industrialization; Industry; consciousness and, 577, 597; revision- Genoese trade in, 375; Ottoman trade
specific industries ism and, 668–669; in Russia, 655, 711; in, 374; slavery in, 386–387; quarantine
Manumission, of slaves, 96, 222 Social Darwinists and, 639 in, 489
Manuscripts, 182(illus.), 220(illus.); illu- Marxian socialism, 761; Lenin and, 689, Medvedev, Dmitry, 823
minated, 183 and illus., 193(illus.), 713; Bolsheviks and, 714 Meiji Restoration (Japan), 692
203(illus.), 246(illus.) Mary, mother of Jesus, 231, 275 Mein Kampf (Hitler), 741, 762
Manzikert, battle of, 209 Mary, Queen of Scots, 351, Melba, Nellie, 737
Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung), 788 352(illus.), 353 Melesippus, 51, 53
Mapmaking, 377, 383(illus.) Mary of Burgundy, 348 Melos, 52–53
Marathon, battle of, 50 Master craftsmen, 257. See also Artisans Memoirs (Saint-Simon), 430–431
Marburg, Colloquy of (1529), 342 (craftsmen) Men: as fathers, 12, 635–636; Spartan, 48;
Marcel, Gabriel, 729 Masurian Lakes, battle of, 705 in Hellenistic monarchies, 72–73; on
Marcellus, 80 Materialism, 806 manors, 223; noble, 235; delayed
March on Washington (1963), 790(illus.) Mater Matuta, Temple of, 95(illus.) marriage of, 298; as married heads of
Marcus Aurelius (Rome), 118(illus.) Mathematics: Mesopotamian, 8; of Archi- household, 328. See also Families;
Marduk (god), 11 medes, 79–81; of Euclid, 79, 169; Gender; Patriarchy
Margaret of Valois, 362 geometry, 79, 169, 464; place value in, Mendeleev, Dimitri, 637
Maria Theresa (Austria), 478–480, 497, 169; Muslim, 169; of Descartes, 464; of Mendelssohn family, 476; Dorothea, 476;
527; Frederick the Great and, 475 Newton, 463; scientific revolution and, Felix, 476; Moses, 475–476
Marie Antoinette (France), 543, 546 459, 461 Mendicants, 271
Marie of Champagne, 266 Matilda (England), 197 Menes (Egypt), 14
Marina, Doña (La Malinche), 384(illus.) Matilda of Tuscany, 207, 208(illus.) Menkaure (Egypt), 16(illus.)
Maritime trade. See Ships and shipping Matteotti, Giacomo, 760 Mercantilism: in colonial Brazil, 391;
Market agriculture, 520 Maupeou, René de, 538 colonial wars and, 495, 497; in Eng-
Markets: Greek agora, 44; peasant access Maurice (Saint), 235(illus.) land, 421, 495, 497, 505; in France,
to, 225, 227; in medieval towns, 248, Maximilian (Austria), 657(illus.) 409; free economy and, 594; in Spain,
251; regional fairs and, 253; Italian May Day festival, 668 and illus. 500. See also Capitalism
village, 510(illus.); Parisian, 533; factory- Mazarin, Jules, 407, 408 Mercenaries, 44, 68, 70. See also Armed
made goods and, 571; world, 675–676. Mazzini, Giuseppe, 596, 646, 649 forces
See also Free market; Merchants Mecca, 163, 164, 165; pilgrimage to, 166 Merchant capitalists, 537, 567. See also
Marne, battle of, 703, 706(map), 716 Mechanics and mechanization: Archime- Capitalism
Marquette, Jacques, 410 des and, 79, 80; siege machines, 80, Merchant marine: English, 421; French,
Marriage: Sumerian, 10; Hammurabi’s 81(illus.); of agriculture, 224–225; 410; Dutch, 426. See also Ships and
Code on, 12–13; Jewish, 30; Greek, 48; clocks, 258(illus.); in textile industry, shipping
Hellenistic, 73 and illus.; Roman, 95, 567–568; laws of, 636. See also Steam Merchants, 253; Hammurabi’s code on,
112; Christian, 145; Islamic polygyny, power 12; Mesopotamian, 11, 12; Phoenician,
166; Charlemagne and, 173; Christian- Medes, 25, 32, 34 20, 27; Greek, 75, 76; Roman, in Eng-
Muslim, 168, 211; medieval, 232–233; Medical schools, 184, 227, 261 land, 153; in Hungary, 188; in medieval
noble, 236; delayed, 297–298; in Ire- De’ Medici family, 462, 463; Cosimo, 310, towns, 180, 247, 248–249; Crusades
land, 301, 605; gender roles and, 328; 326; Lorenzo, 310, 323; chapel of, and, 211, 213; Jews as, 231; craftspeople
Spanish unity and, 330; Luther on, 346; 316(illus.); Marie, 406, 409(illus.), 415; and, 250; Hanseatic, 257; clocks and,
Protestant, 346–347 and illus.; church Catherine, 361, 362 258; education of, 263; guilds of, 249,
consent for, 357, 359; in Ottoman Medicine: Mesopotamian, 9; Hippocrates 309; hospitals founded by, 283(illus.);
court, 452; interracial, 500(illus.); and, 59, 169; Romans and, 82; Helle- Italian, 253, 255, 280, 309–310,
patterns of, 511–515; late, and popula- nistic, 81–82; Byzantine, 137; Islamic, 326–327; wealth of, 326–327; wool
tion growth, 572; in 19th century, 169–170; in monastic schools, 143–144; trade, 279, 286(illus.); as capitalist
I-24 Index
Merchants (continued) land, 330; in Spain, 331; Renaissance Armed forces; specific battles and
investors, 297; Florentine, 308, 320; art and, 321; Protestantism and, 342; wars
prostitutes and, 298, 299(illus.); slave Louis XIV and, 408; Puritanism, Military dictatorship: in England, 421; in
trade, 180, 325, 373, 387; African, 373; 420(illus.); Russian, 446; French salons European colonies, 688
Indian Ocean ports, 371, 380; Persian, and, 471; urban guilds and, 493; Military orders, 212–213
374; Dutch, 424; Russian, 446, 449; French revolution and, 546, 547, 551, Millet system, in Ottoman Empire, 451
textile industry and, 492–493; slave 606; marriage in, 512, 630–631; British, Mills, 224–225 and illus., 581. See also
trade, 501; Creole class, 500–501; 568; women, 577, 578, 640, 731; Factories; Textile industries
fashion, 522 and illus.; families of, 577; French, and Napoleon, 553, 558, 646; Milosevic, Slobodan, 825–826
putting-out system and, 490, 580; industrialization and, 577–579; repre- Mines Act of 1842, 584, 587
foreign, in Ottoman Empire, 658; sentative government and, 590; Marx Ming Dynasty (China), 372
British opium, 676. See also on, 597; voting rights and, 603, 607; Minoans, in Crete, 39–40
Commerce (trade) child rearing in, 515, 635, 636; culture Minorities: in Austrian Empire, 610–611;
Mercier, Louis-Sébastien, 533–534 of, 624–625; revolution of 1848 and, in Russia, 656; in Austro-Hungarian
Merian, Maria Sibylla, 464(illus.) 609–610; government and, 619; hous- Empire, 664; rights of, 830. See also
Merici, Angela, 359 ing for, 621, 622; in 19th century, specific groups
Merk, J. C., 443(illus.) 623–625; morality and, 625, 631, 639; Miracle plays, 266
Merovingian dynasty, 174, 183; founding Russian, 446, 656, 657, 712, 823; wom- Misogyny, 145, 327, 364
of, 153, 171 en’s fashion and, 626–627 and illus.; Missi dominici (officials), 175–176
Merowig, 153, 171 youth and sexuality in, 643–644; Ger- Missionaries and missions, 114–115, 134,
Mesopotamia, 3, 4–5; Assyria and, 30; man, 595(illus.), 661, 739; Jews in, 664; 374; Anglo-Saxon, 147–148; conversion
culture of, 10–13; thought and Prussian, 650, 651; Italian fascism and, and, 146–149; Carolingians and, 172;
religion, 8–10; gods in, 9, 10, 11, 30; 760; Nazi Germany, 762, 764; eastern Columbus as, 381; Slavs and, 147, 186;
Hittites in, 17, 43; Syria and, 20; Persia Europe, 791; in postwar era, 796, 797; Spanish, 500; imperialism and, 687,
and, 34; Sasanids in, 123. See also working mothers in, 806 688; in China, 688, 693
Babylon and Babylonia; Iraq; Sumer Middle East: learning in, 169; pilgrimages Mississippi River, 410, 497
and Sumeria to, 209; Alliance System and, 699; First Mobilization: in French Revolution, 550;
Messenian Wars, 47–48 World War and, 705, 707, 719–721; oil for First World War, 708–709 and illus.;
Messiah, 113, 114 embargo and, 803–804. See also Arabs in Russia (First World War), 712
Mestizo (mixed race), 500(illus.) and Arab world; Crusades; specific Modena, 310
Metals and mining, 491(map). See also country Modernism, 727–736; in art and design,
Gold; Iron and iron industry; Silver Middlemarch (Eliot), 640 732–735 and illus.; Freudian psychol-
Metaurus, battle of, 93 Midlands, in England, 572(map) ogy and, 730–731; in literature,
Methodism, 527–528 and illus. Midway, battle of, 775, 776(map) 731–732; new physics and, 729–730;
Metropolis, Greek city as, 46 Midwives, 56, 228, 233, 426(illus.), 523, philosophy and, 727–729
Metternich, Klemens von, 591 and illus., 524, 525. See also Childbearing, Modernization: of Ottoman Empire, 654,
602, 646; conservatism and, 593; on women and 657–658; of Russia, 655–657; definition
Italy, 648 Migration: Hebrew, 28; Indo-European, of, 654–655; of Egypt, 678; of colonies,
Mexico, 391; silver mines in, 386, 392; 33; Iranian, 33; Greek, 42, 71; Roman, 689; of Japanese army, 692(illus.); of
Spanish conquest of, 376, 383–385; 120; barbarian, 149–150, 151(map), Turkey, 721
Spanish immigrants in, 389; racial 155; Germanic, 152, 213; Slavic, 186; Mohács, battle of, 450
mixing in, 500(illus.) peasant, 179; in Iberian Peninsula, 201, Mohammed II (Sultan), 374
Mexico City, 391 222; in Middle Ages, 222, 247; Black Moliére (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin), 417–418
Michael III (Byzantine Empire), 147 Death and, 282; ethnicity and, Moluccas, 382
Michelangelo, 307(illus.), 308, 316, 300–301; Spanish, to New World, Mona Lisa (Leonardo), 313, 733
322–323 385–386; slave trade and, 501; from Monarchy: Egyptian pharoahs and, 15–16
Michelet, Jules, 596, 607, 608 and Ireland, 605–606, 630, 679 and figure; and illus., 18; Jewish, 28; Greek, 44;
illus., 646 Western expansion and, 679–681; Hellenistic, 69 and map, 70, 71, 73;
Middle Ages (600–1000), 404, 434; early, European, 679–680; from Asia, Roman, 108, 116, 118, 123; English,
162–192; Islam in, 163–170; health 680–681; to Soviet cities, 755; after 196, 329–330; papacy and, 207; female
and medicine, 169–170; Charlemagne Second World War, 785, 796; of Holo- rulers, 328; French, 212, 286, 329;
and, 173–180; scholarship and culture caust survivors, 789; in 1990s, 829–830 Spanish conquests and, 376, 381, 392;
in, 181–184; Crusades in, 209–214; and illus. See also Immigrants and constitutional, 108, 403, 424; serfdom
invasions and migrations, 184–189; immigration; specific groups and and, 434; serfdom and, 434; Enlight-
aristocracy in, 234–237; cities in, countries ened, 474–480; state religion and, 526;
246–273; commerce and trade Milan, 248, 311 and map; Sforza family of, in French family, 554. See also Absolute
in, 258–259; business procedures in, 310, 313 monarchy and absolutism; Constitu-
255–257; church architecture Military: Assyrian, 31–32; Spartan, 48; tional monarchy; Kings and kingdoms;
in, 266–270; manufacturing in, 253, Roman, 88, 150; barbarian, 156; Byzan- specific rulers
254(map); universities in, 259–264; tine, 137; Frankish, 171, 174; in Hun- Monasteries and convents: Northumbrian
vernacular culture in, 265–266; Later dred Years’ War, 287, 290; Italian culture and, 181; medicine and health
period, 277–306. See also Carolingian condottieri, 310; Prussian, 443–444 care in, 143–144; double, 181; at
dynasty; High Middle Ages and illus.; Russia, 655; Cold War Cluny, 238–239; children sent to,
Middle class: Greco-Roman, 114; in science and, 796; American buildup, 228(illus.), 229; timekeeping in, 258;
European society, 237, 259; in Eng- under Reagan, 802, 806. See also Cistercian, 239–240, 257; friars com-
Index I-25
pared, 271–272; education in, 259–260 Movies (films), 736; propaganda, 737 and legal code of, 553, 554; at Waterloo,
and map; in High Middle Ages, illus.; Soviet, 737, 792(illus.) 560, 593; Congress of Vienna after,
238–242; lifestyle in, 240, 242; closing Mr., Mrs., and Baby (Droz), 634, 635 590–593
of, in Reformation, 347, 351, 353; Mughals, in India, 504–505 Napoleon III (Louis Napoleon), 608, 610,
criticisms of, 338; noble endowment of, Muhammad Ali (Egypt), 658, 678 645(illus.); urban planning and, 621;
171, 181, 240, 242, 272; prayer in, 238, Muhammad (Prophet), 163–167, 170, Second Empire of, 647; Second Repub-
240; in Spain, 413; dissolved, in Austria, 834. See also Islam; Muslims lic of, 646–647, 652; Italian unification
527; abolished, in France, 544. See also Munich, Hitler’s armed uprising in, 762 and, 648
Friars; Monasticism; Nuns Munich Conference (1938), 766 Narva, seige of, 448 and illus.
Monasticism: Eastern, 142–143, 144; Rule Murder, Hammurabi’s code on, 12 Nasser, Gamal Abdel, 789
of Saint Benedict and, 143, 144; West- Muscovy, 450. See also Moscow National Assembly (France): free blacks
ern, 143–144; military orders, 213. See Music, 326; of Hildegard of Bingen, 241; and, 544–545; French Revolution and,
also Monasteries and convents churches and, 270; Reformation and, 540–541, 542, 543–545; Napoleon III
Monetary reform, in Poland, 816 343, 344; baroque, 415; French classi- and, 646–647; Paris Commune and,
Monetary union, in Europe, 816 cism, 417; romantic, 600–601; atonal, 667; Third Republic and, 662
Money, minting of, 248, 255, 257. See also 736; modern, 733, 736; on radio, 737; National broadcasting networks, 737
Coins; Currency jazz, 742(illus.) National Convention (France), 546–547,
Moneylending: by Jews, 213–214, 215, Musikiysky, Grigory, 449(illus.) 551
257, 279, 331. See also Bankers; Credit Muslims: in Spain, 152, 162(illus.), National debt. See Debt
Mongols, 381; plague and, 280; China 168–169, 188–189, 300; science and Nationalism, 290, 350; in England, 354;
and, 372; Moscow and, 444, 446 medicine of, 169–170, 265; Christians romantics and, 599; in France, 550,
Monotheism: in Egypt, 17; in Judaism, 30; and, 170, 231; Charles Martel and, 172; 554, 558, 596, 606, 608; age of,
in Islam, 165, 166 invasions by, 185(map), 188, 238; Sicily 645–672; Czech, 596, 611; in Italy,
Montagu, Mary Wortley, 524 and, 188, 200, 209; Crusades and, 170, 596, 648–650, 759; in France, under
Montaigne, Michel de, 394, 517 209, 211–212, 213, 214, 218–219; Napoleon III, 646–647; in Germany,
Montcalm, Marquis de, 497 clothing laws for, 209; childbirth and, 650–653 and illus., 665; in United
Montenegro, 825(map), 826 232; circumcision among, 233; death States, 653–654; in Russia, 654–657,
Montesquieu, baron de (Louis-Joseph de), and, 234; cryptograms and, 283; trade 699; in Ireland, 606, 662–663; in Otto-
468, 473 by, 170, 188, 380; in Indonesia, man Empire, 657–658; Magyar, in
Montezuma II (Aztec), 384–385 372(illus.); slave trade and, 180, 325; Hungary, 663, 664; in Egypt, 678, 789;
Moral economy, 403 expelled from Spain, 413; in Ottoman socialism and, 671; First World War
Morality: Jewish, 30; Roman, 112; Islamic, Empire, 358(map), 433, 444, 450, 658; and, 701–703 and map, 711; in India,
166; kingship, 183; sumptuary laws and, at Omdurman, 685; in Algeria, 606; in 691, 788 and illus.; in Turkey, 721;
252; Renaissance, 315; of clergy, 205, Sudan, 683, 685; in Balkans, 702; in Arab, 719–720 and illus., 724–725;
338; Calvinist, 354–355; Freud and, Chechnya, 823; in former Yugoslavia, tariffs and, 744; economic, 744; in
731; middle class, 625, 631, 639, 643; 825(map), 826; as immigrants, 830, Soviet Union, 757, 773, 791; in Japan,
in Nazi death camps, 771; Nietszche 834; as threat to European culture, 830; 772; Cold War era, 787–789; in eastern
on, 727; human rights and, 830 Tariq Ramadan and, 835; riots in Europe, 824
Moravia, 147, 186, 189 France, 834, 838–839. See also Arabs Nationalization: in Britain, 785; in
More, Thomas, 317, 351 and Arab world; Islam Egypt, 789
Morocco, 170, 373, 773; Genoa and, 280; Mussolini, Benito, 775; propaganda and, National liberation, in Greece, 602. See
Portuguese and, 378; France and, 700 737; dictatorship of, 758–781; Hitler also National self-determination
Mortality: in childbirth, 82(illus.), 228; and, 747, 748, 759(illus.), 762 National Organization for Women
decline in rate, 489, 620–621 and Mycenaean Greece, 41–42 (NOW), 803
figure; from plague, 280–281, 282, 284; Mystery plays, 229, 266 National People’s Party (Guomindang),
in 17th century, 489; public health Mystery religions, 77–78; Greek, 788
and, 489 77; Egyptian, 78; Hellenistic, National self-determination, 689; Ver-
Mosaics: Greek, 47(illus.); Roman, 77(illus.), 113 sailles treaty and, 717, 719, 721, 724;
97(illus.); Byzantine, 136(illus.) Mysticism, 272; Catholic, 241, 360 decolonization after Second World
Moscow, 282, 445(map), 447, 655; Mon- Myths: Mesopotamian, 10; of Rome’s War, 787–789; in eastern Europe, 824
gols and, 444, 446; princes of, 444, 446; founding, 86, 110; Celtic, 154 National Socialist German Workers’ Party,
Cossack rebellion and, 447; St. Basil’s 741, 762. See also Nazi Germany
Cathedral, 447(illus.); as Third Rome, National workshops, in France, 609–610
147, 446; Napoleon in, 558; Nazi seige Nagasaki, atomic bombing of, Nation state. See Nationalism; State
of, 768 776(map), 777 (nation)
Moses, 28, 29, 164(illus.) Nahum (prophet), 32 Native Americans (Amerindians),
Mothers. See Childbirth and childbearing; Nanking, Treaty of, 676 497, 676; Christianity and, 386;
Women, childbearing and Nantes, Edict of, 362, 406, 423; revocation Columbian exchange and, 391; enco-
Motion, scientific view of: Aristotle on, of, 408 mienda system and, 386; racial mixing
459–460; Kepler’s laws of, 461; Galileo Naples, kingdom of, 310, 311 and map and, 500(illus.)
on, 461–462; Newton on, 463 Naples (Italy) uprising in, 607 NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organiza-
Motion pictures. See Movies (films) Napoleonic Code (France), 553, 554 tion), 784, 786(map); French with-
The Mountain (France), 547 Napoleon I (Napoleon Bonaparte), 536, drawal from, 787; Poland, Hungary and
Movable type, 317, 318. See also Printing 552–560, 573; coronation of, Czech Republic in, 824; bombing of
Movement of peoples. See Migration 555(illus.); Europe in 1810 and, 559; Yugoslavia, 830; Kosovo and, 830
I-26 Index
Natural law, 79, 80; Rousseau on, 474, 426–427; Spanish, 410, 411; war with 48; Athenian, 48–49; Roman, 90; as
518; realist literature and, 639 England, 421; golden age in, 424; genre social order, 156; Carolingian, 176,
Natural philosophy, 459 painting in, 425, 426(illus.); trade of, 177, 180; English, 205, 330; Frankish,
Natural rights, 424, 542 390(map), 413, 426, 427(map); Thirty 171–172, 174; medieval, 181; Russian
Natural science, 263. See also Science Years’ War and, 436; Enlightenment in, (boyars), 187–188; peasants and, 221;
Nature: represented as female, 465; clas- 467, 474; Peter the Great and, 448; Crusades and, 211, 213; education of,
sification of, 473; romanticist view of, farming in, 487; scientific illustration, 180, 235, 263; origins of, 234–235;
598–599 465(illus.); rural industry in, 491; childhood and youth of, 235–236;
Navarino, battle of, 602 Atlantic economy and, 496(map); Asian German, 207, 208, 213; in High Mid-
Navarre, 169, 201, 244–245, 330, 331 trade and, 504; slave trade and, 501; dle Ages, 234–237, 259; marriage of,
Navigation, 465; astrolabe, 377, 378; Austrian, 547, 548, 554; Napoleon and, 236; papal, 205, 316; power and respon-
compass, 377, 380; nocturnal, 554, 556; Dutch East Indies and, 685, sibility of, 236–237; women’s mirror
377(illus.); Portuguese and, 463 686(map), 789; in Africa, 681; in Java, case and, 237(illus.); monastic endow-
Navigation Act (England), 421, 495 685; Nazi occupation of, 767; Euro- ments by, 181, 240, 242, 272; Hundred
Navy (warships): Athenian, 51; Spartan, pean union and, 827; expanded rights Years’ War and, 287; French trouba-
53; Ming Chinese, 372–373; Roman, in, 830; Muslims in, 834. See also under dours, 266; crimes of, 299–300; peasant
80, 93 and illus.; Spanish Armada, Dutch revolts and, 296; German, 346; Italian,
353–354; Dutch, 424; English, 497; Neutron, 730 309, 320, 326; Lutheranism and, 343;
French, 555; Turkish, 602; British, 676, Nevinson, Christopher, 698(illus.) Polish, 356, 434; class organization and,
677(illus.), 687, 700; Japanese, 692; Nevsky, Alexander, 444 327; French absolutism and, 361, 406,
gunboat diplomacy, 691, 693; subma- New Amsterdam, 495 407, 408, 416–417; landless poor and,
rine warfare, 708, 773; German, 700, New Christians, in Spain, 331, 360 402; power of, 404; Spanish, 331, 413,
701(illus.); First World War, 707–708, Newcomen, Thomas, 569 414; Bohemian peasants and, 438;
719; Anglo-German agreement, 765; New Conservatism, 653 Czech, 439; Dutch, 424; German, in
Second World War, 772, 775, 777; New Deal (United States), 746, 748 Estonia, 434(illus.); Hungarian, 439,
United States, 793, 802 New Economic Policy (Soviet Union), 664; Junkers of Prussia, 442–443;
Nazi Germany: mass rally in, 752(illus.), 753–754 Polish, 434; Russian (boyars), 446, 448,
761–762; Hitler and, 747, 761–769; New England, 383, 488; textile mills 449, 478, 655, 712; French, 471; Prus-
empire and expansionism of, 753, of, 654 sian, 475; Austrian, 480; enclosure
765–769; Italian fascism and, 760, 764; Newfoundland, 186, 383, 411, 497 movement and, 487; childrearing, 515;
propaganda in, 737 and illus., 761, 762, New Granada, 391 Creole, 500–501; dress and, 522; sword
764, 772; in Second World War, New Imperialism, 674, 681–693; in Africa, vs. robe, 537; French, under Napoleon,
773–775 and map, 782–783; state and 681–685; causes of, 685, 687; response 554; French revolution and, 536, 537,
society, 763–764; Holocaust and, to, 689–693; spread of Christianity 606; English landowning, 602–603;
769–772. See also Hitler, Adolph; and, 688 Austrian, 611; labor, 628; upper middle
Second World War New Kingdom Egypt, 14(map), 16, 17 class as, 623
Nazism: defined, 762; racial imperialism New Model Army, 421 Nocturnal (instrument), 377(illus.)
and, 769, 770 New Order, of Hitler, 769 Nomads, 3; Bedouins, 163. See also
Nazi-Soviet nonaggression pact, 767 New Spain, 391 Migrations
Near East, 3, 5(map); Mesopotamia and, New Stone Age. See Neolithic period Nonindustrial nations. See Third World
13; Indo-Europeans in, 16; Hittites in, New Testament (Gospels), 114, 145(illus.), Nordic peoples, 769
17, 19; kingdoms and empires in, 25, 231, 271, 317; monasticism and, 142, Normandy: Vikings in, 186, 189; England
29(map); Israel in, 28–30; Assyrian 144; Book of Revelation, 278; of Eras- and, 196; France and, 198; in Hundred
power in, 31–32; balance of power in, mus, 317, 341; illuminated, 183(illus.); Years’ War, 287, 289
34; Persian empire in, 34–35; Hellenis- letters of Paul, 137, 146, 339, 368; of Normandy invasion (1944), 775
tic Greece and, 66, 73–74, 75. See also Luther, 343 Normans: conquest of England (1066),
East; Middle East Newton, Isaac, 169, 469, 730; physics of, 154, 186, 195(illus.), 196; in Sicily, 168,
Nefertiti (Egypt), 17, 18 and illus. 463, 636, 729; Principia, 466, 467, 468, 186, 188, 189, 199(map). See also
Nelson, Lord, 555 469(illus.) Normandy; Vikings
Neocolonialism, 789–790. See also New New World. See Americas (New World) North Africa: Phoenicians in, 27; Romans
imperialism New World Order, 819–820 and, 100, 102; Vandals in, 153; Mus-
Neoliberalism, 820, 822 New York City, 495; bankers, 743; terror- lims in, 166; trade with, 253, 308;
Neolithic period, 3–4, 6–7, 39 ism in, 811, 831, 832 and illus. Ottoman conquest of, 374; Second
NEP. See New Economic Policy Nicaea, Council of, 141–142 World War in, 773, 774(map), 775;
Nero (Rome), 116, 128 Nicholas I (Russia), 611 illegal immigrants from, 829(illus.)
Netherlands (the Dutch, Holland), 348, Nicholas II (Russia), 703, 712 North America: Vikings in, 189; French
350; windmills in, 225; Hanseatic Nicias, Peace of (421 b.c.e.), 52 in, 379(map), 383, 410; Atlantic econ-
League and, 257; lay piety in, 272; Nietszche, Friedrich, 727–728, 731 omy and, 496(map); European conflicts
spoon from, 292(illus.); humanism in, Nigeria, Christianity in, 688 over, 495, 497; African slavery in, 501;
317; art of, 322(illus.); Calvinism in, Nile River, 13 urban consumerism in, 523; Industrial
344, 345(illus.), 362–363 and illus.; 1984 (Orwell), 731(illus.), 732 Revolution and, 566; revolution in,
Protestantism in, 357, 361; indepen- Nineveh, 30, 32 538–539, 594; growth of science in,
dence of, 362–363, 405, 414(illus.), Nixon, Richard, 801 796; married working women in, 798;
424; competition with France, 410; Nobility (aristocracy), 436; Sumerian, 10; self-improvement movement in, 806.
constitutional government in, 404, 424, Mesopotamian, 12; Greek, 41; Spartan, See also Americas; specific countries
Index I-27
North Atlantic Treaty Organization. See Olearius, Adam, 456–457 Hungary and, 439; Austrian victory
NATO Oleg (Varangian), 187 over (1718), 442(map); Muslim faith
Northcliffe, Lord, 737 Oligarchy: Greek, 44, 45, 48; in Italian in, 358(map), 433, 444; palace women
Northern Europe: Roman expansion in, cities, 249, 309–310, 320, 327; Dutch in, 451–452, 453–454; absolutist gov-
109–110; Christianity in, 213; great Estates, 424; British aristocracy, 567 ernment in, 433, 593–594, 654; Jews
famine in, 278–280; Hanseatic League Olympic games, 58 in, 450; growth of, 450–452; in 1795,
in, 257; Renaissance in, 317, 322 and Omdurman, battle of, 685 479(map); conservatism in, 593–594;
illus.; Freudian psychology in, 731. See On Cannibals (Montaigne), 394 Greek nationalism and, 602; Crimean
also specific locations On Christian Liberty (Luther), 368–369 War and, 655; decline of, 657–658, 699;
Northern Ireland (Ulster), 663 and illus. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich Russia and, 593–594; Tanzimat reform
North German Confederation, 651 (Solzhenitsyn), 792 of, 658; trade and, 658; Egypt in, 658;
North Korea, 784 On Floating Bodies (Archimedes), 79 in 1914, 686(map); Balkan nationalism
Northumbria, 181–183 On Germany (de Staël), 599 and, 663, 701, 702 and map; First
North Vietnam, 801. See also Vietnam On Plane Equilibriums (Archimedes), 79 World War and, 705, 707(illus.), 719;
Norway, 154; Vikings from, 184, 186, 189; On Pleasure (Valla), 315 partition of, 719
Christianity in, 213; vote for women in, On the Dignity of Man (Mirandola), 312 Ovid, 110
660; nationalism in, 663; migration On the False Donation of Constantine Oviedo, Fernández de, 377
from, 680; Protestantism in, 351; Oslo (Valla), 315–316 Owen, Robert, 581, 585
breakfast, 747(illus.); Nazi occupation On the Origin of Species by Means of Oxen, as draft animals, 225, 251
of, 767. See also Scandinavia Natural Selection (Darwin), 639 Oxford University, 262, 263
Notre Dame Cathedral (Paris), 267; school On the Revolutions of the Heavenly
of, 261 Spheres (Copernicus), 460
Nova Scotia, 411, 497 OPEC. See Organization of Petroleum Pachomius, 143
Novels. See Literature Exporting Countries Pacific Ocean region: Magellan in, 382,
Novgorod, 282, 444 Open Door policy, in China, 693 383; Second World War in, 775–777
NOW. See National Organization for Open-field agriculture, 224, 487 and map
Women Opimius, 100 Pagans and paganism, 529–530; Roman,
Nubia, 17, 25, 27 Opium trade, China and, 676 113, 128; missionaries and, 149, 172; in
Nuclear family, 223, 511. See also Opus Dei (Benedict), 143 Scandinavia, 213
Families Oracles, Greek, 44(illus.), 56 Painting: Assyrian, 32(illus.); Minoan
Nuclear war, fear of, 785 Oral culture, 303, 320, 530 frescoes, 41; Spanish court, 272(illus.);
Nuclear weapons, 787, 802; in Cuba, 793; Orange Free State, 681, 682(map) in Italian Renaissance, 307(illus.), 313,
US-Soviet agreement on, 817. See also Orders, 221 and illus.; in Rome, 90; reli- 314(illus.), 321, 323; of northern Ren-
Atomic bombs gious, 212–213, 238, 359, 361; social aissance, 322 and illus.; by women,
Number system, Arabs and, 169. See also classes as, 326; French estates, 536–537. 323–324 and illus.; baroque, 345 and
Mathematics See also Clergy; Nobility; Peasants illus., 409(illus.), 415; British, 571;
Nuns, 157; monasticism and, 143; in Oresteia (Aeschylus), 53–54 romantic, 601(illus.); Spanish,
Ireland, 147; learning and, 181, Organic chemistry, 637 622(illus.); realism in, 640(illus.);
182(illus.); dramatist, 199; cloistering Organization of Petroleum Exporting surrealist, 733; modern, 732–733;
of, 207; Cistercian, 239–240; clergy Countries (OPEC), 804 Picasso and cubism, 734–735 and illus.
and, 221(illus.); Carmelite, 360; Ursu- Orleáns, Joan of Arc at, 289, 290 See also Art and artists; Manuscripts,
lines, 359; Jansenist, 529(illus.). See Orlov, Grigory Grigoryevich, 477 illuminated
also Convents; specific orders and illus. Palaces: Persian, 34(illus.); Minoan and
Nur-as-Said, 720(illus.) Ormuz, 380 Mycenaean, 41; Italian, 310, 321; court
Nuremberg, Nazi rally at, 737 Orthodox Christianity, 358(map); Byzan- cultture and, 416; Swedish, 440; Aus-
Nuremberg Laws (Germany), 764 tine church as, 142; in eastern Europe, trian (Vienna), 439, 440, 441 and illus.;
Nurses, 624, 710 and illus. 187; monasticism and, 144; Russian, Ottoman, 451, 452(illus.). See also
187, 433, 446, 593–594, 602; Greek, Versailles palace
602; Serbian, 826 Palacky, Frantisek, 615–616
Oath of the Tennis Court (France), 541 Orwell, George, 731(illus.), 732, 750–751 Paleolithic period, 3
Oblates, children given to monasteries as, Osiris, 2(illus.), 14, 15 and illus., 35, 78 Palestine, 11, 75; Egypt and, 17, 20; He-
181–182, 228(illus.), 229 Ostrogoths, 134, 151(map); conquest of brews in, 28; Assyrians and, 31; Cru-
Octavian. See Augustus (Octavian, Rome) Italy by, 153, 156 sades and, 209, 213; Ottomans and,
October Manifesto, 656 Oswin (Northumbria), 148 374; Jewish homeland in, 666, 719,
Odo, abbot of Cluny, 239 Othman, 165 720, 724 and illus., 789; Balfour Decla-
Odoacer (Ostrogoths), 134 Otto I (Germany): church and, 198–199; ration and, 719; division of, 789. See
Odyssey (Homer), 43 spread of Latin Christianity and, 213 also Israel
Oedipus plays (Sophocles), 54 Otto III (Holy Roman Empire), 206(illus.) Palestine Liberation Organization, 831
Ogé, Vincent, 545 Ottoman Empire, 376, 437(map); printing Panama, 391
Oil and oil industry: in East Indies, 772; technology in, 319(map); conquest of Panama Canal, 675
embargo (1973), 803–804; in Iraq, 832; Hungary by, 350, 356; Constantinople Pandora, 43
in Russia, 823 and, 374 and illus., 387; expansion of, Papacy (popes), 205–210, 436, 479; resi-
Okinawa, battle for, 776(map), 777 374; in 1722, 412(map); Habsburgs dence of, 141; authority of, 140; Frank-
Old Kingdom Egypt, 14 and map, 15 and, 439; Muslim faith in, 433, 444; ish kings and, 153, 172–173; Poland
Old Testament, in Latin, 144. See also Bible tributary states and, 437(map); and, 187; Hungary and, 188; election
I-28 Index
Papacy (popes) (continued) and, 737. See also House of Commons Peking. See Beijing
of, 206; Gregorian reforms, 205–207; (England) Peloponnesian War, 51–53 and map, 60;
Holy Roman emperor and, 176, 199, Parliament (Prussia), 650, 651 Thucydides on, 50, 53
207–208; Crusades and, 209–210, 211; Parma, 309 Peloponnesus, 39, 47, 70
Inquisition and, 212; French heretics Parthenon, 53, 54(illus.) Penitentials (manuals), 149
and, 212; friars and, 271, 272–273; in Parthia, 34, 69(map), 111(map) Penn, William, 422
Great Schism, 291–293; monarchies Partitions: of Poland, 478, 479(map); Pentagon, attack on (2001), 811
and, 273; administration of, 291; Con- of Africa, 681–685 and map; of The People (Michelet), 608
ciliar movement and, 292; in Avignon, Palestine, 689 People’s Budget (Britain), 662
256, 291, 293; Italian cities allied with, Passarowitz, Treaty of (1718), 455 Perestroika (Soviet Union), 812(illus.),
200, 315; France and, 329, 361; tempo- Pasteur, Louis, 620 813
ral authority of, 315–316; in Renais- Paterfamilias (Rome), 90 Pergamum (Anatolia), 69, 70(illus.),
sance, 316, 322–323; Curia Romana of, Patriarch (church), 140, 209 72(illus.); Rome and, 94, 99
339; indulgences and, 339–340 and Patriarchy, 10, 60, 145, 157, 583; in Pericles, 51, 52, 53, 57
illus.; Reformation and, 350, 351; Islam, 167 Periculoso (Boniface VIII), 207
Jesuits and, 526–527; French revolution Patricians (Rome), 89, 90 Perry, John, 617(illus.)
and, 544; infallibility of, 660; Italian Patrick (Saint), 147 Perry, Matthew, 677, 691
unification and, 648; Mussolini and, Patriotism, 668; in Germany, 653, 661, Persepolis, 34(illus.), 35, 67
759, 761. See also Catholic Church; 739; imperialism and, 687. See also Persia, 25, 135, 169; Jews and, 35; Assyr-
specific popes Nationalism ians and, 33; Zoroastrianism and,
Papal States, 310, 311 and map, 357 Patronage, in French court, 417 35–36; Greek culture in, 73; Sasanid,
Papermaking, 169, 265, 318 Patrons, of art, 310, 320, 322 123, 134, 135(map), 163; Safavid, 374.
Paraguay, 391 Paul III (Pope), 357 See also Iran
Pareja, Juan de, 388 and illus., 416(illus.) Paul of Tarsus (Saint), 114, 145, 354; Persian Empire, 31(map), 123; wars with
Paris, 248, 251; Viking seige of, 186; letters of, 137, 146, 339, 368 Greeks, 50–51, 52(map), 53, 60, 61;
Parlement of, 203; cathedrals in, 261, Pax Romana, 94, 107–108; economic Alexander the Great and, 66–68, 75;
267, 269(illus.); university in, 261, 262, aspects of, 121(map); Roman citizen- Muslims in, 166
263, 264, 285; Treaty of (1259), 286; ship and, 131–132. See also Roman Persian Gulf War (1991), 818–820
Huguenot massacre in, 337(illus.), 361; Empire Peru, 389, 391; Inca Empire in, 385; Old
salons in, 471 and illus., 472; guilds in, Peace associations, 200 World diseases in, 386
493; London compared to, 498; wet Peace of Augsburg (1555), 350, 435 Pétain, Henri-Philippe, 711, 768, 775
nurses in, 516(illus.), 518; fashion in, Peace of Nicias (421 b.c.e.), 52 Peter III (Russia), 475, 477
522; midwives in, 524, 525; lifestyle in, Peace of Paris, 590, 593 Peterloo, battle of, 603
533–534; Parlement of, 538, 539, 540, Peace of Utrecht (1713–1715), 411, Peter (Saint), 140, 206
541; French Revolution in, 541–542; 412(map), 497 Peter the Great (Russia), 416, 449(illus.),
socialism in, 597; Peace of, 590, 593; Peace of Westphalia (1648), 436 477; crown of, 432(illus.); Estonia and,
revolution of 1848 in, 609–610; wom- Pearl Harbor attack (1941), 772 434(illus.); expansion under, 445(map);
en’s fashion in, 626 and illus.; prostitu- Peasant revolts: in England, 296–297; in reforms of, 447–450
tion in, 631; in Second Empire, 647; in Flanders, 293, 296; in Germany, 346 Petrarch, Francesco, 312, 317
Franco-Prussian War, 652; urban plan- Peasant(s): Egyptian, 16; Roman, 99; Petrine Doctrine, 140. See also Papacy
ning in, 621, 647; peace conference in medieval, 179; obligations to lord, 177; Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’
(See Versailles, Treaty of); modernist art Russian, 187–188; in High Middle Deputies, 713, 714
and music, 732, 733, 735; American Ages, 221–223; health of, 227; housing Petroleum. See Oil and oil industry
expatriates in, 741; blacks and jazz in, for, 226–227; in monasteries, 240; Pfaff, William, 838–839
742(illus.); student protests in, markets and, 225; religious beliefs of, Pharmacists (apothecaries), 523
799(illus.), 800. See also France 231; education of, 259; in towns, 249; Pharoahs (Egypt), 15–16 and illus., 18, 67
Paris, Treaty of: in 1763, 497, 505; in 1783, plague and, 284; Luther on, 346; diet Philinus, 82
539. See also Versailles Treaty of, 402–403, 521(illus.); French, in Philip I (France), 207, 273
Paris Accord (1990), 817 Quebec, 410; Spanish, 414; Bohemian, Philip II (Macedonia), 39, 62, 66
Paris Commune (1871), 661, 667 438; agricultural revolution and, Philip II (Spain), 352(illus.), 353, 354;
Parlement of Paris, 203 486–487; Austrian, 480; cottage indus- Netherlands and, 362, 363
Parlements (French courts), 538 try and, 490; Russian, 446, 447, 449, Philip III (Spain), 413, 414
Parliamentary monarchy, 650 656, 657, 667; community controls and, Philip IV (Spain), 405, 414; revolts
Parliament (Austrian), 664 513; marriage of, 511–512, 515; popu- against, 405
Parliament (Britain), 290, 330, 351, 594; lar literature and, 519; Prussian, Philip V (Macedonia), 94
Charles I and, 419; under Puritans, 521(illus.); religion of, 529–530; in Philip VI (France), 286, 287
419; Stuart absolutism and, 420, 422, French Revolution, 542, 544, 547, 606; Philip Augustus (France), 197(map),
423; constitutional monarchy and, 423, French, under Napoleon, 553, 558; in 198, 204, 208; in Third Crusade,
424; slave trade abolished by, 502; revolution of 1848, 610; Irish, 604–605; 210(map), 211
American revolution and, 538; French in 19th century, 625; Sicilian, 650; Philip of Anjou, 411
Revolution and, 545; labor law and, Indian, 690(illus.), 691; Russian Revo- Philip the Fair (France), 214, 273,
581, 584–585; liberal reforms and, lution and, 713; in Soviet Union, 279, 291
602–603; aristocratic conservatives in, 753–755. See also Commoners; Serfs Philippine Islands, 372; Magellan in, 382,
662; House of Lords, 663; Irish question and serfdom 392; migration from, 680; U.S. con-
and, 663; India and, 690; BBC radio Peasants’ War (Germany), 346 quest of, 685, 686(map), 687; Second
Index I-29
World War in, 776(map), 777; indepen- Plays. See Drama Pontifex maximus (Rome), 99, 109
dence of, 789; Spanish in, 392–393 Plebeians (Rome), 89, 90 Poor Clares, 272
Philistines, 28 Plows, 225 Poor people (poverty): in Roman cities, 99;
Philosophical Dictionary (Voltaire), Pluralism, of clergy, 338–339 monastic care for, 240; in medieval
482–483 Plutarch, 57 towns, 251, 253; as friars, 271, 272; in
Philosophy: Greek, 50, 58–60, 129, 263; Poets and poetry: Sumerian epic, 10; Prague, 294; prostitution and, 298; as
Hellenistic, 78–79, 145; Greco-Roman, Greek, 42–43, 47–48, 49; Roman, 98, sailors, 376; diet of, 402–403; landless,
145; epistemology and, 264; Scholastic, 110, 112; Celtic bards, 151; Welsh, 154; 402, 488; of female spinners, 492; work
263, 301; humanism, 312, 316–317; view of Islam in, 170; Anglo-Saxon, of, 512; English, 518, 632; Jansenism
absolutism and, 406; Aristotelian, 182; troubadours, 265–266, 275–276; and, 529; French Revolution and, 541,
459–460; of Descartes, 465, 469; natu- Divine Comedy, 301–302; Italian Ren- 550, 551; Industrial Revolution and,
ral, 459; Enlightenment philosophes, aissance, 312; romantic, 579, 599. See 566; cheap cotton clothing for, 568;
295, 467–470, 471, 473; existentialist, also Literature; specific poets and works English poorhouses, 580; in London,
728–729; modern, 727–729. See also Poincaré, Raymond, 738, 739 579; socialists and, 596; in Ireland,
Intellectual thought Poitiers, battle of, 172 604–605; voting rights of, 603; in idus-
Phoenicians, 20, 30, 75; alphabet of, 27; Poland-Lithuania, 356, 446 trial towns, 618, 619, 623; First World
ships of, 28(illus.) Poland (Poles), 664; Roman Christianity War jobs and, 709; in Great Depres-
Physicians (doctors), 524; Hellenistic in, 187; Christianity in, 213; Hanseatic sion, 744; working mothers and, 583,
quacks, 82; Arab, 169–170; Black Death League and, 257; Black Death and, 806; United States “war” on, 791, 800;
and, 282–283; Jewish, 331; Italian 282; migrants in, 300; Baltic region globalization and, 822
quacks, 510(illus.); women as, 633 and and, 442; Catholic Church in, 356, Popes. See Papacy (popes); specific pope
illus., 757. See also Medicine 814; Russia and, 447, 448; partitions of, Popp, Adelheid, 669–670
Physics, 459, 636–637; Aristotelian, 460; 478, 479(map); nationalism in, 596; Popular culture: religion and, 526–531; in
Newtonian, 463, 636, 729; new, revolt in, 607; in Austro-Hungarian Soviet Union, 757
729–730 Empire, 607; migration from, 679; Popular Front (France), 748
Piankhy (Kush), 27 Russia and, 591(illus.), 715; after First Popular literature, 519
Picasso, Pablo, 734–735 World War, 718(map); Treaty of Ver- Popular religion, in Middle Ages, 229–234
Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni, 312 sailles and, 719; German disputes with, Popular revolts, 405. See also Revolts and
Pictographs, 8 and figure 740; Little Entente and, 738; Nazi rebellions
Picts of Scotland, 151, 153 invasion of, 766(map), 767, 769; com- Population: agriculture and, 3, 13; Greek,
Piero della Francesca, 321 munism in, 783, 794, 814, 815; riots in, 46; of Rome, 120; Carolingian, 179,
Pietism, 527–528 793; Solidarity movement in, 802, 180; of European cities, 248; Black
Pilate, Pontius, 114 814–816; West Germany and, 801; Death and, 282, 284, 377, 433; Thirty
Pilgrimage of Grace (England), 352 economy of, 815–816, 824; in post- Years’ War and, 436; of Amsterdam,
Pilgrimages: Roman catacombs, communist era, 824, 826 487; rural industrialization and, 490;
115(illus.); Islamic, 166; Canterbury, Polis (Greece), 43–46; Greek colonization 18th century explosion, 488–489; of
204, 302; indulgences and, 234; to and, 46–47; dieties in, 43; origins of, London and Paris, 498; of African
Middle East, 209, 210, 211; to Santiago 43–44; Hellenistic period, 70, 72 slaves, 501; Industrial Revolution and,
de Compostela, 244–245 Political empires, 681 566, 572; Malthus on, 572, 639; of
Pipe rolls (England), 196(illus.) Political parties: in Germany, 660–661, Britain, 566, 572; growth of, in cities,
Pippin II (Franks), 172 669, 671–672; anti-Semitic, 660; social- 498, 618–619; Irish famine and,
Pippin III (Franks), 172, 173 ist, 667–668, 669, 671–672; in England, 604–606; limits on, 572, 639; Darwin
Pirates, 76, 253, 280 669 (See also Labour Party (England)); and, 639; European migration and,
Pisa, 261, 281; council at (1409), 293 in France, 748. See also specific parties 679; Soviet cities, 795; decline in
Pisistratus, 49 Political prisoners, Napoleon and, 554 Europe, 828–829; Muslim, 834
Pitt, William, 497 Politics: legacy of Alexander the Great in, Population movement. See Migration
Pius VII, Pope, 554 68–70; Roman, 98; Carolingian, 174; Porcelain, Chinese, 392 and illus.
Pius IX, Pope, 660 feudal, 177, 179; papal, 206; Renais- Portraiture: Roman, 102(illus.); mosaic,
Pizan, Christine de, 305–306, 327 sance, 314–315, 328–332; German 46(illus.), 136(illus.); Renaissance, 313
Pizarro, Francisco, 385 Reformation and, 348, 350; revolution and illus., 314(illus.), 321
Plague, 152; in Athens, 52, 64 and illus.; in (1775–1815), 535–564; dual revolu- Portugal, 169, 291; reconquista in, 201,
of Justinian, 137. See also Black Death tion in, 590, 593, 646; liberal, 594–595 202 and map; Hanseatic League and,
Planck, Max, 729 (See also Liberals and liberalism); 257; Spain and, 330, 332; African gold
Planned economies: in France, 548, 550, nationalism and, 595, 659; Ottoman, and, 373; exploration from, 376,
551; socialists on, 596; First World War 657(illus.); after First World War, 378–380 and map; Brazil and, 378, 382,
and, 708, 711; New Deal and, 746, 748; 737–742; Hitler and, 763; women’s 387(illus.), 389, 392; caravel (ship)
in eastern Europe, 814, 816. See also movement and, 802 of, 377; slave trade of, 325–326, 387,
Five-year plans Politiques, 362 389, 392, 501; sugar plantations of, 375,
Plantations: in British India, 691; Pollution, in medieval towns, 251 387; trading empire of, 390(map), 392;
indentured Asian labor for, 680 and Polo, Marco, 372 revolt in, 405, 413; navigational studies
illus.; slave labor for, 497, 500, 501, Poltava, battle of, 449 in, 463; Atlantic economy and,
502(illus.); in St. Domingue, 497, 500, Polygyny, in Islam, 166 496(map); semi-tropical fruit in, 520;
557. See also Sugar plantations Polyphony, in music, 270 Napoleon and, 558; migrants from, 679;
Plato, 57, 59, 60 Polytheism, 9, 14, 150 India and, 689; colonies in Africa,
Plautus, 98 Pompey (Rome), 102 682(map); European unity and, 804
I-30 Index
Positivist method, 637–638 Printing: in Renaissance, 317–320; tion, 755; student, 799 and illus., 801,
Potatoes: introduced in Europe, 489, 520, growth, in Europe, 319(map); 802; in France, 799–800 and illus. See
521(illus.); in Ireland, 603, 605 and Luther’s ideas and, 342–343. See also Revolts and rebellions; Riots;
illus., 607 also Books Strikes
Potosí silver mine, 391–392 Prior (prioress), 240. See also Monsteries Provence: Jews in, 214; troubadours in,
Potsdam Conference (1945), 783 and convents 265, 275
Poverty. See Poor people (poverty) Priskos (Byzantine Empire), 135 Provinces: Roman, 122–126; French,
Power (authority): Assyrian, 32–33; of Privatization: in Thatcher’s Britain, 804, 197(map), 198; Dutch, 427. See also
papacy, 140, 207–208; decentralization 805; in Russia, 813, 823 Colonies and colonization
of, 177, 194; in Holy Roman Empire, Procession of the Magi (Gozzoli), Provisional government, in Russia,
200; of nobility, 236–237, 404; gender 316(illus.) 712–713
and, 328; Renaissance art and, Procopius, 137, 138, 139 Prussia, 213, 412(map), 647; absolutism
320–321; centralization of, 404–405; Production: cottage industries, 490; in, 433, 438, 442–444; migrations in,
state, 402, 406; of lords in eastern English domination of, 573. See also 222; in War of Spanish Succession,
Europe, 434; princes in Moscow, 446; Manufacturing; specific products and 411; court culture in, 416; peasants in,
scientific, 464; in Atlantic region, 485; industries 434; absolutism in, 433, 438, 442–444;
in Germany, 651; Western political and Progress, 687; concept of, 466, 485; as in 17th century, 439; army of, 442, 443
economic, 675; in European alliances, Enlightenment ideal, 727 and illus., 475, 555; partition of Poland
700. See also Absolute monarchy and Proletarianization, 488, 494 and, 479(map); compulsory educa-
absolutism; Authoritarianism; Balance Proletariat, 597. See also Workers tion in, 518; potato cultivation in,
of power. See also Balance of power Propaganda: in First World War, 711; 521(illus.); railroads in, 575; expansion
Power (energy). See Atomic power; Energy in fascist Italy, 760; radio and, 737; of, 475, 651; Austria and, 546, 547;
(power) of Stalin, 753, 757(illus.); in Nazi Napoleon and, 555–556, 558, 560; war
Power looms, 568 Germany, 737 and illus., 761, 762, against France, 546, 547; at Congress of
Praetorian Guard, 116 764, 772 Vienna, 590–591, 592 and map; Holy
Praetors, of Rome, 89 Property rights: in England, 419, 424; in Alliance and, 593; army of, 612(illus.),
Pragmatic Sanction, 475 France, 553, 609, 646; socialism and, 650, 651; Frankfurt Assembly and,
Prague: defenestration of, 435; Soviet 596; voting rights and, 595; of women, 611–613 and illus.; Frederick William
invasion of, 794(illus.) 632. See also Inheritance in, 612–613; Bismarck and, 650–651.
The Praise of Folly (Erasmus), 317, 338 Prostitution, 236, 643; in Rome, 98; laws See also Germany
Predestination doctrine, 354, 528 regulating, 252; in medieval cities, 253, Psychology and psychoanalysis, Freud and,
Prefectures, in Roman Empire, 123, 298, 299(illus.); in 16th and 17th centu- 636, 730–731
126(map) ries, 513; in 19th century, 628, 631; Ptolemies (Egypt), 69 and map; trade and,
Pregnancy: marriage and, 513; contracep- illegal immigrants and, 830; legalized, 75; mystery cults and, 78; Rome and,
tion and, 799. See also Childbearing, in Netherlands, 830 94, 102. See also Egypt (ancient)
women and Protectionism, 660. See also Tariffs Ptolemy, Claudius, 79, 460, 461, 462;
Presbyterianism, in Scotland, 355, 419, Protectorate: in England, 421; African Geography of, 377, 381
514(illus.) colonial, 683 Public health, 489, 619–621
Pre-Socratic philosophers, 59 Protestant ethic, 419 Public opinion: Enlightenment salons
Press, censorship of, 606. See also Books; Protestantism, 341–343; salvation in, 339, and, 471; Louis XVI and, 540; Napo-
Printing 341; in England, 423 (See also Angli- leon III on, 647; before First World
Prester John myth, 374, 378 canism (Church of England)); in War, 708
Price and wage controls, 280; in French France, 406, 407, 544 (See also Hugue- Public sphere, 472, 473, 536
Revolution, 548; in First World War, nots); baroque art and, 415; in Scot- Public works programs: in France,
708; lifting of, in Soviet Union and land, 355, 419; in Bohemia, 438; of 609–610, 647; in Nazi Germany,
Russia, 813, 822–823 Hungarian nobles, 439; Thirty Years’ 764; New Deal (U.S.), 746; in Scandi-
Priests and priestesses: Mesopotamian, 9; War and, 435–436; Copernican theory navia, 746
in Athens, 56; Hellenistic, 78; celibacy and, 460; Bible reading and, 518, 519, Pugachev, Emelian, 478
and, 145, 338; Celtic druids, 151; 527; monarchy and, 526; revival of, Punic Wars, 91–94, 110
Christian, 149; anointment of, 173; in 527–528; dissenters in, 577; working Purgatory, 234
peasant villages, 229, 231; power of, class and, 630; in Ireland, 663; mission- Purges, in Stalinist Russia, 757–758,
208; marriage and, 206, 346; local aries in Africa, 688; Christian existen- 792(illus.)
parish, 526; Pietism and, 527, 529; tialism in, 728–729; in Nazi Germany, Puritans, 353, 395, 419; Cromwell
sacraments and, 230, 233; French, 536, 765. See also Calvinism; Church of and, 421
541; in French Revolution, 544. See England; Lutheranism Pushkin, Aleksander, 600
also Bishops; Clergy; Monks; Papacy Protestant Reformation, 337–356; Wyclif Putin, Vladimir, 823
Prignano, Bartolomeo. See Urban VI and, 292, 294; appeal of, 342–343; Putting-out system, 490–491, 567, 580
(Pope) Calvin and, 354–355; marriage and, Pyramids, 15–16, 25(illus.), 267
Primavera (Botticelli), 321(illus.) 346–347; in England and Ireland, Pyrenees, Treaty of (1659), 413
Primogeniture, 187, 236 351–353; in eastern Europe, 355–356; Pyrrhic victory, 91
The Prince (Machiavelli), 314–315 in Netherlands, 357, 361. See also Pythian games, 58
Princeps civitatis (Rome), 108 specific individuals
Principate, Roman, 108–109, 113 Protestant Union, 435
Principia (Newton), 466, 467, 468, Protest(s): British liberal reform and, Al Qaeda, 811, 831, 832 and illus.
469(illus.) 602–603; against forced collectiviza- Qing (Manchu) dynasty (China), 676, 693
Index I-31
Quadruple Alliance, 590–593 modernist crisis and, 727; Freudian death and, 233–234; Black Death and,
Quakers, 343, 422, 577 psychology and, 730–731. See also 284; in art, 322 and illus.; French
Quality of life, 669. See also Lifestyle; Enlightenment national unity and, 408; after Thirty
Living, standard of Rebellions. See Revolts and rebellions Years’ War, 436, 438; in England,
Quarantines, 489; plague and, 282 Recession (1937–1939), 746 419–421; in Bohemia, 438; in Ottoman
Quebec, France and, 383, 410, 497 Reconquista, of Iberian peninsula, Empire, 444, 451; Voltaire on,
Queens. See Monarchy; specific 201–202 and map, 209, 231, 331, 376 482–483; popular culture and,
individuals Recordkeeping, in business, 256 526–531; of peasants, 529–530; French
Quinto, 392 Recreation, in postwar era, 797. See also Revolution and, 544, 551; imperialism
Quintus Sertorius, 101 Games and sports; Leisure and, 687, 688; of working class, 630;
Qur’an, 165, 166, 167, 168, 231, 234 Red Army Faction (Germany), 831 science and, 639; secularists and, 639;
Red Army (Soviet Union), 715, 754; Polish intellectuals and, 728–729; European
Solidarity and, 815; in Second World attitudes about, 836. See also Gods and
Race and racism: anti-Semitism and, War, 773, 775, 783 goddesses; Theology; specific religion
331–332; in Renaissance, 325–326; Red Brigade (Italy), 831 Religious emotionalism, 415
Enlightenment and, 473–474; impe- Rede, Edmund, 223(map) Religious freedom, 423; in France, 544
rialism and, 687–688, 691, 769, 770; Red Shirts (Italy), 650 Religious orders, 212–213, 238; Catholic
nationalism and, 762; Nazis and, 761, Reflections on the Revolution in France reformation and, 359, 361. See also
762, 769, 770; new ideas about, (Burke), 545 Monasteries and convents
393–394; Japan, in Second World Reformation, of Christian church, Religious toleration: in Sicily, 200; in
War, 776; African American civil 338–361; Lollards and, 292–293; arts England, 421, 422; in France, 362, 406;
rights and, 791. See also Ethnic in, 344–345 and illus.; Catholic, 345 in Netherlands, 424, 426; in Ottoman
groups; Holocaust; Slaves and slavery; and illus., 357, 359–361; Counter- Empire, 451; in Prussia, 475; in
specific groups Reformation, 345 and illus., 356, 357; Russia, 478
Racine, Jean, 418 in eastern Europe, 355–356; German Religious wars, in France, 337(illus.),
Radegund, Clothar I and, 157 politics and, 348, 350; marriage and, 361–362
Radio, 737, 762(illus.) 346–347 and illus.; Protestant, Remarque, Erich, 704, 705
Ra (god), 14 337–356; radical, 343; witchcraft trials Rembrandt van Rijn, 425(illus.)
Railroads: bridges for, 570(illus.), 571; in and, 363–365. See also Protestant Remigius (Saint), 160–161 and illus.
England, 565(illus.), 570–571, Reformation Renaissance, 307–336; Carolingian,
572(map); in continental Europe, Reform Bill of 1832 (Britain), 603 183–184; commercial developments,
574(map), 575–576; in France, 647; in Reform(s): Greek, 49; Roman, 90, 99–100, 308–309; communes and republics in,
Japan, 686(map), 692; in Prussia, 651; 102, 126; Byzantine, 139; of papacy, 309–310; economic and political devel-
in Russia, 655, 656, 686(map); in 205–207; English judicial, 204; monas- opments in, 308–312; education in,
Africa, 685; investment in, 573, 676; in tic, 178, 239; of Christianity, 291; of 314; gender in, 327–328; humanism in,
India, 686(map), 691; Western eco- Peter the Great, in Russia, 447–450; 312, 316–317, 335–336; intellectual
nomic interests and, 675 Enlightenment, 469; in Austria, thought in, 312–320; secularism in,
Rákóczy, Francis, 439 478–480; in France, 554, 558; English 315–316; Italian, 308–312, 320–321;
Rameses II (Egypt), 19 workers and, 581; in Russia, 655–657; arts in, 307(illus.), 308, 320–324; in
Raoux, 519(illus.) Ottoman Tanzimat, 658; in China, 693; North, 317, 322 and illus.; patrons in,
Rape: vs. seduction, in Athens, 56; in in Egypt, 678; in Japan, 692 and illus.; 463; political thought, 314–315; print-
Rome myth, 87, 110; in Middle Ages, after Second World War, 785; in ing in, 317–320; social hierarchy in,
298–299 West Germany, 785; in Soviet 324–328; state (nation) in, 328–332;
Raphael, 314(illus.) Union, 792–793, 811–814; in United European exploration and, 377; West-
Raphael Sanzio, 323 States, 791; social security, in Europe, ern (1945–1968), 785–791
Rashi (Solomon bar Isaac), 264 796–797; in Russia, 822–823 Renaissance man, 313, 395
Rasputin, 712 Refugees, in 1990s, 816, 829 Reparations, for war: Germany and, 719,
Rationalism. See Reason and rationalism Reichstag (Germany): Bismarck and, 660, 738, 739; after Second World War,
Ravaillac, François, 406 661; Stresemann and, 740; Hitler and, 785
Raw materials: imperialism and, 687; 762, 763 Representative assemblies. See Assemblies
transportation of, 566, 675–676; from Reign of Terror: in French Revolution, Representative government, 590; in Eng-
African countries, 789. See also specific 550, 551; in Stalin’s Soviet Union, land, 424 (See also Parliament (Brit-
materials 757–758 ain)); liberalism and, 594, 595
Raymond of Toulouse, 272(illus.) Reinhart, Anna, 346 Republican government, in England, 421
Razin, Stenka, 447, 478 Relativity, theory of, 729 Republic(s): in Italy, 309, 310, 311(map);
R&D. See Research and development Relics: of Christ, 269; of saints, 149, Dutch, 426–427; in France, 547, 607,
Reading: revolution in, 470–471 and illus.; 204(illus.), 230, 244, 268, 529 646–647, 652, 660–662, 787, 800; in
popular literature and, 519. See also Relief programs, in Great Depression, 746 Latin America, 593; in China, 693;
Books; Literacy Religion(s), 466; in Mesopotamia, 9; in Weimar (Germany), 717, 738–740, 741.
Reagan, Ronald, 804, 805, 814; military Egypt, 14–15 and illus., 17; Jewish, 29, See also Dutch Republic; England
buildup under, 802, 806 30; Iranian, 35–36; festivals and, 53, 55, (Britain); specific countries
Realist literature, 639–640 58; Greek, 56–59 and illus.; Hellenistic, Research and development (R&D), 464,
Reason and rationalism, 529, 544; use of 76–78, 113; Roman, 96, 113; Ger- 637; during and after Second World
term, 466; Descartes on, 464; Voltaire manic, 147; popular, in medieval War, 795–796
on, 469; Rousseau’s attack on, 472; villages, 229–234; children and, 233; Res Gestae (Augustus), 108
I-32 Index
Resistance: to Nazis, 764–765; in Second 790–791. See also Citizens and citizen- in, 90, 99–100; religion in, 96; Spain
World War, 771, 773 ship; Voting rights; Women’s rights and, 101. See also Roman Empire;
Restoration of 1660 (England), 422 Riots: food, 404, 405(illus.), 712; in Russia, Rome; specific rulers
Reunification, of Germany, 811, 812, 712; in Poland, 793; in France, 834, Romantic movement, 598–601; Rousseau
816, 817 836, 838–839 and, 473, 599; tenets of, 598–599
Revisionism, socialists and, 668–669 Rite of Spring (Stravinsky), 733 Rome, 82, 315, 415; founding of, 86;
Revolts and rebellions: by Thasos, 51; in Rites and rituals: Christian, 128, 146 (See forum in, 85(illus.), 87; citizenship in,
Judaea, 113, 117; Byzantine, 138; by also Sacraments); Muslim, 231 88–89; conquest of Italy by, 87–89;
Slavs, 213; by peasants, 293, 296–297, Roads and roadbuilding: Persian, 35; Etruscans and, 86–88; baths in, 98;
346; England (1536), 352; in Aztec Roman, 109, 118; English, 255; in 18th Greek culture and, 97; Macedonia and,
Mexico, 384, 385; in 17th century, 405, century, 489; European governments 94; catacombs in, 115 and illus.; Chris-
413; popular, 405; Fronde, in France, and, 575; in British India, 690(illus.) tianity in, 115; gladiators in, 120,
407; in Scotland, 419, 420; by Hungar- Robert (Capetians), 197 122(illus.); golden age in, 120–122;
ian nobles, 439; Locke on, 424; in Robespierre, Maximilien, 545, 550; execu- population of, 120; plague in, 281; sack
Russia, 447, 478; in Ottoman Empire, tion of, 551 and illus. of, 152, 188, 312; Baroque art in, 345
452; against Napoleon, 558; by St. Rocket (steam engine), 571 and illus.; Italian unification and, 650;
Domingue slaves, 540; in Ireland, Rococo style, 472 in Second World War, 775; strike in,
662–663; in Philippines, 685; in Egypt, Roger de Hauteville, 200 810(illus.). See also Papacy (popes);
678; in India, 689–690; by Arabs, 719; Roger II (Sicily), 261 Roman Empire; Roman Republic
students in, 799–800 and illus.; in Roland (knight), 174, 265 Romulus and Remus, 86, 110
eastern Europe, 793, 812, 814–817 Roma (Gypsies), 764, 769, 822 Romulus Augustus (Rome), 134
Revolution(s), 535–564; scientific, Roman Catholic Church. See Catholic Roosevelt, Franklin Delano: fireside chats
459–465, 466; agricultural, 486–488; Church of, 737; New Deal of, 746, 748; Japa-
French revolution, 536–544; consumer, Romance languages, 122 nese expansion and, 772; at wartime
520, 521–523; in politics, 535–564; Roman culture, 96, 113, 151. See also conferences, 782–783 and illus.
American, 538–539, 594; in St. Domin- Greco-Roman culture Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 472–473,
gue, 550–551; dual, 590, 593, 646; Roman Empire: under Augustus, 103, 474, 518
Marx and, 597; of 1830 (France), 108–113; provinces and, 122; expansion Roy, Olivier, 836
606–607; of 1848 (Europe), 590, of, 109–110, 111(map); Christianity Royal African Company, 389
607, 609–613; of 1908 (Ottoman Em- and, 114–116; culture of, 151; East- Royal authority, 177. See also Kings and
pire), 658; of 1905 (Russia), 656–657; West division of, 123, 126 and map; kingdoms; Monarchy
of 1917 (Russia), 711–716; African economy in, 109, 121(map), 127; Royal councils: in England, 330; in Spain,
American civil rights, 790–791; Islamic, England and, 153; five good emperors 331; in France, 406, 408
in Iran, 804; in eastern Europe (1989), in, 118; Jews and, 117; literature in, Royal despotism, 538. See also Absolutism
814–817; in computers, 822. See also 98, 110; paganism in, 113, 128; Pax “The Royall Oake of Britayne,” 422(illus.)
Industrial Revolution; specific Romana in, 94, 107–108; trade routes Royal road, in Persia, 35
revolutions in, 121(map); Eastern, 123, 126(map), Rubens, Peter Paul, 409(illus.), 415
Rhineland, 255, 547, 548, 739, 759(illus.); 134, 152; villas in, 122, 124–125 and Ruhr district, 739
France and, 717, 719, 765; Jews in, illus., 128; invasions of, 152–153; legacy Ruirik dynasty, 187
215, 231 of, 194; Charlemagne and, 176. See Rule of Benedict, 143, 144, 178, 238, 239,
Rhine River, 109 also Byzantine Empire; Holy Roman 242. See also Benedict of Nursia
Rhodes, Cecil, 681, 684 Empire; Roman Republic Rump Parliament (England), 421
Rhodesia, 681, 682(map) Romania, 109, 450, 663, 664, 719; inde- Runic alphabet, 155(illus.)
Ribiero, Diego, map of, 383(illus.) pendence of, 701, 702(map); Little Rural areas: Roman, 122; society in,
Ricardo, David, 598 Entente and, 738; in Second World 402–403; cottage industry in, 490,
Richard II (England), 293, 296 War, 773, 775, 783; revolution in 492–493; wet-nursing in, 516; French
Richard III (England), 329 (1989), 816–817; in postcommunist era, Revolution and, 551; industrialization
Richard I (Lion-Hearted, England), 204, 824–825 in, 567. See also Agriculture; Farms and
210(map), 211 Romanians, in Hungary, 611 farming; Peasants
Richelieu (Armand Jean du Plessis), Roman law, 79, 90, 95, 98; common law Russian Federation, 812, 818, 819(map);
406–407, 415, 417, 436 and, 203; in England, 330; in High economic reforms in, 822–823
Rich-poor gap, 623, 688, 709, 823; global Middle Ages, 200, 203; Justinian code, Russian Orthodox Church, 433, 446,
economy and, 674. See also Wealth 136 and illus., 261, 263; teaching 593–594, 602
Riefenstahl, Leni, 737 of, 261 Russian Revolution (1905), 656–657
Rigaud, André, 556, 557 Romanov, Michael, 447 Russian Revolution (1917), 711–716, 759
Rights: in Greece, 45; voting in Rome, Roman Republic, 89–106; founding of, 87, Russia (Russian Empire), 253, 412(map),
88–89, 91, 98; in Spanish colonies, 386; 110; government of, 89–90; sieges and, 444–450, 651, 669; Byzantine Empire
of French Protestants, 407; natural, 80; society in, 90; Stoics and, 79, 90; and, 147; Kievan Rus, 187, 189, 444;
424, 542; of peasants, 487; in American love charms in, 105–106; Struggle of furs from, 255; plague in, 282; foreign
revolution, 539; in French Revolution, the Orders in, 90; civil war in, 100, travelers in, 456–457; tsar and people to
542; in Saint-Domingue, 544; liberal- 102–103; colonies of, 91, 102–103; East 1689, 446–447; absolutism in, 433, 593,
ism and, 594; in revolutionary Russia, and, 94, 102; expansion by, 91–94; 654, 712; peasants (serfs) in, 434, 446,
656; individual, 727; denied to German Punic Wars and, 91–94; Greek culture 447, 449, 478; Peter the Great’s reforms
Jews, 764; human rights, 683(illus.), and values in, 94–98; Hellenistic world in, 447–450; war with Sweden, 448 and
691, 802, 811; African Americans, and, 73; laws in, 79, 90, 95, 98; reforms illus., 449; Orthodox Christianity in,
Index I-33
187, 433, 446, 593–594, 602; popula- Salvation: in Christianity, 146, 208, 230, Scientific farming, 486
tion growth in, 488; Enlightenment 233, 293; prayers and, 271; by faith, Scientific method, 464, 466
and, 477–478 and illus.; Westernization 341; Luther on, 339; Protestants on, Scientific revolution, 459–465, 466; from
of, 477–478; Napoleon and, 555, 556, 341; Calvinist, 528; Methodist, 528; Brahe to Galileo, 461–463; causes of,
558, 560; expansion of, 479(map), 593, Hitler and, 762 463–464; Copernican hypothesis
602, 685; at Congress of Vienna, 590, Samara, golden mosque of, 833(illus.), 834 and, 460–461; scientific thought to
591, 592; Holy Alliance and, 593; Same-sex relations. See Homosexuality 1500, 459–460
nationalism in, 596, 655; Ottoman Samnite wars, 88, 91 Scipio Aemilianus (Rome), 94, 96, 97
Empire and, 593–594, 602; Transylva- Samuel (Hebrew judge), 37 Scipio Africanus, 93
nia and, 589(illus.); Austria and, 611, Samurai warriors, of Japan, 691–692 Scipionic Circle, 98
613, 650; Pushkin’s poetry and, 600; SA (Nazi stormtroopers), 764 Scotland (Scots), 436, 577; Celts in, 154;
railroads in, 655, 656, 686(map); Sand, George (Amandine Aurore Lucie Picts of, 151, 153; English in, 300, 330;
realist fiction in, 640; Crimean War Dupin), 600 James I and, 418–419; Presbyterianism
and, 655; foreign investment in, 656; Sanitation and sewerage: in Rome, 120; in, 355, 419, 514(illus.); revolt by, 419,
modernization of, 654–657; anti- plague and, 281; urban, 619, 620, 621; 420; Great Britain and, 495, 566; penny
Semitism and Jews in, 630, 655, 667, Chadwick and, 619–620 wedding in, 514(illus.); literacy in, 518;
680; Marxists in, 655; industrialization Sans-culottes, 547, 548(illus.), 550, mining in, 569
in, 655, 656; war with Japan, 656, 551, 590 Scott, Samuel, 484(illus.)
693; Alliance System and, 699–700; Santiago de Compostela, 244–245 Scribes: Egyptian, 16; Sumerian, 8; Greek,
immigration from, 679, 680, 829; Sappho, 47(illus.) 41. See also Writing
Balkan Wars and, 702, 703; impact Sarajevo, 702 Scripture. See Bible (Scripture); Qur’an
of First World War on, 705, 706(map), Sardinia, 91, 93 Sculpture: Assyrian, 33; Greek, 53,
711–712, 718(map); peace settlement Sardinia-Piedmont, 655; Italian unifica- 59(illus.); Hellenistic, 73(illus.); Ro-
with Germany, 714–715, 719; dic- tion and, 648–650 and map man, 96(illus.), 102(illus.); Renais-
tatorship and civil war in, 714–716; Sargon II (Assyria), 31 sance, 321, 332(illus.)
modernist art of, 732, 733, 735; Nazi Sargon of Akkad, 11 Sea Peoples, 20, 27
Germany and, 769. See also Russian Sartre, Jean-Paul, 728 Second Coming of Christ, 144, 145
Revolution; Soviet Union; specific Sasanid Persians, 123, 134, 135(map), 163 Second Crusade, 210(map), 239
rulers Sassoon, Siegfried, 704 Second International, 668, 669
Rutherford, Ernest, 729 Satan. See Devil (Satan) Second Republic (France), 607, 646–647
Rwanda, 829 Saudi Arabia, 164, 720, 819, 830, 832. See The Second Sex (Beauvoir), 802, 808–809
also Arabs and Arab world Second Treatise on Civil Government
Saul (Israel), 28, 37 (Locke), 424
Sacraments, 146, 212; administration of, Savery, Thomas, 569 Second Triumvirate (Rome), 103
230–231, 233; marriage as, 346. See Saxons, 123, 172, 173, 180, 183. See also Second World War, 765–777; Big Three
also Eucharist Anglo-Saxon England conferences in, 782–783 and illus.; in
Sacrifice, Greek, 58(illus.) Saxony, 438, 518, 592(map) Europe, 773–775 and map; Holocaust
Sadowa, battle of, 651 Scandinavia, 154, 184; Varangians, 187; in, 769–772; Japan’s Asian empire and,
Safavid Persia, 374 Christianity in, 213; farming in, 222, 772; Nazi expansion and, 765–769; in
Saguntum, siege of, 93 224; Great Depression in, 746–747 and Pacific, 775–777; research in, 795
St. Petersburg, 449, 478, 655; Bloody illus. See also Denmark; Finland; Secret History (Procopius), 137, 138
Sunday massacre in, 656; as Norway; Sweden; Viking invasions Secret police: Soviet Cheka, 715, 758;
Leningrad, 768 Schism: in Islam, 167; in Christianity, 285, Polish, 815
Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, 291–293 Secularism, 315–316, 343
337(illus.), 362 Schleswig-Holstein, 611 Sedan, battle of, 651–652
Saint Basil’s Cathedral (Moscow), Scholars, Islamic (ulama), 168 Seleuceus (Macedonia), 69
447(illus.) Scholastica (Saint), 143, 238 Seleucid dynasty, 69 and map, 74, 75
Saint-Domingue (Haiti), 536; slave revolt Scholasticism, 263, 264, 301 Self-determination. See National self-
on, 540, 550–551, 556; slavery in, 497, Schönberg, Arnold, 736 determination
500, 544–545; Toussaint L’Ouverture Schönbrunn palace (Vienna), 439, 440, Self-government, 596; by Roman allies,
and, 550–551, 556, 557 441(illus.) 91; in medieval villages, 224; in
Saint-Requier abbey, 240 Schools, 515, 518; for servants, 629(illus.). towns, 249
Saint(s): Becket as, 193(illus.), 204; images See also Education; Universities Self-improvement movement, 806
of, 345 and illus.; relics of, 149, Science: Hellenistic, 79–81; Byzantine, Self-sufficiency: in peasant villages, 402;
204(illus.), 230, 244, 268, 529; 137; Arab, 169; medieval, 263; women French state, 409–410; Chinese, 676
sacraments and, 230–231. See also in, 465 and illus., 468, 469(illus.); Selim II (Ottoman), 453
specific saints religion and, 639; evolution and, Seljuk Turks, 209
Saint-Simon, Count Henri, 596 638–639 and illus.; society and, Semites, 11, 16, 20, 30
Saint-Simon, Duke of, 417, 430–431 637–639; in 19th century, 636–639; Senate, in Rome, 89, 90, 100, 109,
Saladin, 211 Western, in Japan, 692; new physics, 113, 131
Salerno, 184; University of, 260, 261, 263 729–730; research, 464, 637, 795–796; Seneca, 394
Salic law, 153, 156 Big Science (1945–1968), 795–796. See Senegal, 683
Sallust, 94 also Astronomy; Mathematics; Physics; Sententiae (Lombard), 263
Salons, 471 and illus., 472, 485 Technology Separate spheres, 582–584, 632
Saltash Bridge, 570(illus.) Scientific community, 464–465 Separation of powers, 468
I-34 Index
Serapion, 82 Siberia, 447, 715 Slovakia, 824, 826

Serapis, cult of, 78 Sicily, 200–201, 387; Greek colonies Slovenia, 825–826 and map
Serbia (Serbs), 109, 663; plague in, 282; in in, 46, 53; Rome and, 91; Ostrogoths Smallpox, innoculation against, 489,
Hungary, 611; Ottoman Empire and, in, 153; Normans in, 168, 186, 188, 524, 526
658; First World War and, 701–703, 189, 199(map), 209; plague in, 281; Smith, Adam, 505, 594
705; Yugoslavia and, 717; Milosevic food protest in, 405; kingdom of, 593, Snayers, Peeter, 414(illus.)
and, 825–826 and map 650 and map; in Second World The Social Contract (Rousseau), 473
Serfs and serfdom, 259; helots, in Sparta, War, 775 Social Darwinists, 639, 687, 688
47; free peasant transition to, 179–180, Siderus Nuncius (Galileo), 462 Social Democrats: in Germany, 660–661,
188; compared to slavery, 221–222; end Siege machines, 32, 80, 81 and illus., 137 667, 669, 717, 719, 741, 763, 764; in
of, in England, 296–297; in eastern Siena, 309, 310 Russia, 667; women as, 671–672; in
Europe, 433–435; Thirty Years’ War Sigismund (Germany), 293, 294 Scandinavia, 746; human rights
and, 436; in Prussia, 475; in Russia, Sigismund I (Poland-Lithuania), 356 and, 830
434, 449, 450, 478, 655; in Denmark, Signori cities, in Italy, 310 Social equality, 709, 741–742
474; debt peonage compared to, 500; Silesia, 475, 479 Socialism: utopian, 596–597, 609; Zola
abolished, in Austria, 480, 610. See also Silk Road, 76 and, 640; in First World War, 708, 709;
Peasants Silk trade, 374; Chinese, 255, 371, 393 in France, 596–597, 609, 646, 662, 748,
Servants. See Domestic servants; Slaves Silver: for coinage, 255; from Spanish 785; women and, 671–672; in Russia,
and slavery Americas, 386, 391–392, 393, 500; 712, 713, 715; in Italy, 785; globaliza-
Servetus, Michael, 355 Spanish inflation and, 414, 436 tion and, 822. See also Marx, Karl and
Service nobility, in Russia, 446 Simony, 205, 239 Marxism
Seven Years’ War (1756–1763), 475; Sin, 231, 261; Augustine on, 146; penance Socialist International, 667–668
French defeat in, 538, 539; Treaty of for, 149; plague as punishment for, 284 Socialist party, in Italy, 759, 760
Paris ending, 497, 505 Sistine Chapel, 307(illus.), 323 Socialist realism, 757(illus.)
Seville, 201, 325; Genoese in, 375 Six Acts (Britain, 1819), 603 Social mobility, 178, 327
Sewerage. See Sanitation and sewerage Sixtus IV (Pope), 331 Social orders, 221 and illus.
Sewing machine, 629 Skepticism, 394, 466, 527, 544 Social reform. See Reform(s)
Sex and sexuality: in Greece, 56 and illus., Skin color, distinctions based on, 325 Social science, 466, 637–639
57; in Christianity, 144–145, 146; Islam Slave morality, 727 Social services, monastic orders and,
and, 166; rape, 56, 87, 110, 298–299; Slave revolt, in Haiti, 540, 550–551, 556 240, 242
witch trials and, 364, 365; African Slaves and slavery: Mesopotamian, 12; Social War (Rome), 100
women and, 394; domestic servants Sumerian, 10; Egyptian, 16, 17, 28; Social welfare: in Germany, 661; in Great
and, 628; contraception and, 635, 799, Greek, 41, 49, 50, 53, 55; Hellenistic Britain, 662, 785; in Scandinavia, 746;
803; middle class and, 643–644, 731; trade in, 76; Roman, 96, 122(illus.); in Soviet Union, 757; reforms in,
premarital, 512–513 and illus., 514, Gothic, 152; neck shackle and, 796–797; government debt and,
630–631, 798–799; of women, 634, 180(illus.); prisoners of war as, 157, 804, 806
643, 671, 731, 803; youth and, 180; Vikings and, 186; Russian, 187, Society: Stonehenge peoples, 3–4; Meso-
643–644, 798–799. See also Homosexu- 456; from Balkans, 180(illus.), 252, 375, potamian, 12; Sumerian, 10; Egyptian,
ality; Illegitimacy; Prostitution 387; household servants, 252; serfdom 16; ancient Israelite, 29; Minoan, 41;
Sexism, 583, 798, 803 compared, 221–222; in Brazil, 389, Greek, 43; Athenian, 55; Roman, 112;
Sexual division of labor. See Labor, gen- 391; Pareja, 388 and illus.; sugar and, barbarian, 154–157; Muslim Spain,
dered division of 386–387 and illus., 389; in central 168; High Middle Ages, 221 and illus.;
Seymour, Jane, 351 Europe, 442; Mongols and, 444; in medieval towns, 252; heresy and, 273;
Sforza family of Milan, 310, 313 Ottoman Empire, 450, 451, 657(illus.); Marsigilio on, 292; Machiavelli on,
Shakespeare, William, 308, 395 in Saint-Domingue, 497, 500, 544–545; 315; utopia and, 317; humanism
Shalmaneser (Assyria), 31 abolition of, 550, 654; in United States, and, 312, 317; Renaissance hierarchy,
Shari’a (Islamic law), 167–168 653, 654. See also African slave trade 324–328; science and, 464–465; French
Sheriffs, 195, 196(illus.), 203 Slave trade, 180; Vikings and, 186; Chris- Old Regime, 537; factory workers and,
Shi’ite Islam, 167, 168, 374, 833–834 tianity and, 180, 252, 325, 326, 394; 576–577; diversity in, 623; realist litera-
“Ship money” (tax), 420 Genoa and, 375; Portugal and, ture and, 640; Nazi Germany, 764;
Ships and shipping, 254(map); 325–326; Venice and, 375; Mediterra- transformation (1945–1968), 795–800;
Phoenician, 28(illus.); Egyptian, 26; nean, 386–387; Atlantic, 375, 386, 389 energy crisis (1970s) and, 803–804;
Hellenistic, 76; piracy and, 76, 253, Slave trade, African, 371, 373, 411, 497, globalization and, 822. See also Classes;
280; Viking, 184, 186 and illus.; Italian 566; abolition of, 502, 687; ideas about Orders; specific groups
merchant, 280; plague quarantine of, race and, 393–394; Portuguese and, Socrates, 53, 57, 59, 170
285; Portuguese, 377, 381(illus.); 325–326, 380, 387; Atlantic economy Sodomy, 299. See also Homosexuality
French, 410; English, 420, 421; Dutch, and, 386, 389, 496(map), 501–504; end Solar system, 79. See also Copernican
425, 426, 434; in London, 484(illus.); of, 687 hypothesis
slave trade and, 501, 503; steam- Slavic languages, 147, 180 Soldiers: Greek (hoplites), 44; Roman,
powered, 675, 677(illus.); whaling, off Slavs, 134, 147, 180, 232, 664; Christianity 108, 109, 119, 122. See also Armed
Japan, 677; imperialism and, 687. See and, 186–187; Germans and, 213, 222, forces; Military
also Navy (warships) 235(illus.); Mongol Yoke and, 444; Solidarity movement (Poland), 802,
Shock (economic) therapy: in Poland, romanticism in, 600; South, 186, 717; 814–816
815–816; in Russia, 822–823 Hitler’s hatred for, 761, 764, 766(map), Solomon (Israel), 28, 29
Shoguns, of Japan, 691–692 769. See also Poland; Russia Solon (Greece), 49
Index I-35
Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, 792, 795 500; artists, 388 and illus.; conquista- century, 402, 403–405; in Austria, 438.
Somalia, 829 dors, 376, 383–385; expansion of, See also Nationalism
Somme, battle of, 704, 706(map) 379(map), 381–386; New World em- States General (Netherlands), 424
Songhay, 373 pire of, 348, 349(map), 385–386; popu- State socialism, in First World War, 708
Song of Roland, 174 lar revolts and, 405; war with France, Statute of Kilkenny, 301
Sophia of Bavaria, 611 407, 436; decline of, 413–415; Steam power, 569–570, 571, 573, 580,
Sophocles, 50, 54 Habsburgs in, 413, 435, 437(map); 636. See also Railroads
Sordi, Marta, 128 alliance with France, 495, 497; Ameri- Steam ships, 675, 677(illus.)
The Sound and the Fury (Faulkner), can colonies of, 497, 500–501 and Steel, Flora Anna, 696–697
731 illus.; slave trade and, 501; Atlantic Steel industry, 656, 739. See also Iron and
South Africa, Dutch colony of, 681 economy and, 496(map), 500; Jesuits iron industry
South African War, 681, 683, 684, 700 expulsed from, 527; revolt against Steel swords, 157
South America. See Latin (South) Napoleon in, 558; revolutionaries in, Steen, Jan, 426(illus.)
America 593; urban transport in, 622(illus.); Stein, Gertrude, 741
South China Sea, trade in, 372, 373, 392 migrants from, 679 and figure; Africa Stem (complex) household, 223
Southeast Asia: goods from, 371; Japanese and, 682(map); Picasso, 734–735 Stephen I (Hungary), 188
invasion of, 767, 772; nationalism in, and illus.; civil war in, 735 and illus., Stephen II (Pope), 173
787, 789. See also Indochina; Vietnam 748, 765 Stephenson, George, 571
South Korea, 784, 800 Spanish-American War, 685, 687 Stock market crash: in 1873, 664; in
Southwest Africa, 683 Spanish Netherlands, 363, 410, 411. See 1929, 743
Sovereign, Greek polis as, 72 also Belgium Stoicism, 78–79, 90, 394
Sovereignty, state, 402, 403–405 Sparta, 44, 50, 58; Common Peace and, Stone age. See Neolithic period
Soviet Union (USSR), 715, 766; collectiv- 61, 62; growth of, 47–48; Peloponnesian Stonehenge, 4 and illus.
ization in, 754–755; filmmaking in, War and, 51–53; Hellenistic, 70, 94 Strasbourg, 411
737, 792(illus.); five-year plans, 753, Speculum Virginum, 220(illus.) Stravinsky, Igor, 733
754–756, 779–780, 791; Jews in, 769, Spencer, Herbert, 639 Stream-of-consciousness technique, 731
791; purges in, 757–758, 792(illus.); Speyer: Diet of (1529), 341; Jews of, 214, Streetcars, 621–622 and illus.
Red Army, 715, 773, 775, 783; in Sec- 215, 232 Stresemann, Gustav, 739, 740–741
ond World War, 767, 768–769, 773, Spice trade, 255, 372, 380, 504; Strikes: prohibition of, in Britain,
774(map); Spanish civil war and, 765; Dutch and, 393; Portuguese and, 382, 584–585; workers’ right to, 647; in
under Stalin, 753–758, 767, 773, 383, 392 Russian Revolution (1905), 656; May
779–780; Stalin’s division of Europe Spinning jenny, 567, 568 and illus. Day, 668 and illus.; in First World War,
and, 782–784; support for decoloniza- Spinoza, Benedict, 424 711; in German Ruhr, 739; by English
tion by, 789; reform and de-Stalinization The Spirit of Laws (Montesquieu), 468 coal miners, 742, 805; prohibition of, in
in, 792–793; Breshnev Doctrine in, Sport. See Games and sports Germany, 763; in France, 800; in Italy,
793; re-Stalinization in, 794–795; SPQR (Senatus Populusque Romanum), 810(illus.)
scientific research in, 796; invasion of 89, 129 Strozzi family of Florence, 320–321
Czechoslovakia and, 793–794, 811; Srebrenica massacre, 826 Struggle of the Orders (Rome), 90
détente policy and, 801–802; war in Sri Lanka (Ceylon), 393, 789 Strutt, Elizabeth and Jedediah, 578
Afghanistan, 802, 813, 832; Gorbachev SS (elite Nazi guard), 764–765, 769; and illus.
and reform, 811–814; American arms genocide and, 771, 772, 775 Stuart dynasty (England), 418–419, 423
agreement with, 817; breakup of, 811, Stadtholder, 424 Student protests, 799–800 and illus.
812, 818, 819(map). See also Cold War Stained glass windows, 267(illus.), 270 Sturm und Drang, 598
Space race, 796 Stalin, Joseph, 753–758, 795; five-year Submarine warfare, 708, 773
Spain, 804; Carthage and, 93; Greek plans and, 753, 754–756, 779–780, Sub-Saharan Africa, 688; decolonization
expansion to; Rome and, 93, 94, 101, 791; nonaggression pact with Hitler, of, 789–790. See also specific country
102; Visigoths in, 152; Basques of, 174, 767; purges of, 757–758, 792(illus.); Suburbs (faubourgs), 247
244; Muslims in, 152, 162(illus.), Second World War and, 773; at war- Sudan, British in, 683, 685
168–169, 170, 188–189, 231, 275, 300; time conferences, 782–784 and illus.; Sudetenland, Nazi invasion of, 766
papermaking in, 169, 265; Char- de-Stalinization and, 792–793, 813 and map
lemagne and, 183; Jews in, 168, 170, Standard of living: Dutch, 426; in colonial Suez Canal, 675, 678, 687, 690; national-
232, 360; apothecary in, 250(illus.); America, 502; industrial workers and, ization of, 789
cathedrals in, 267; Hanseatic League 566, 580; rise in, 679; rise in worker, Suffrage. See Voting rights (franchise)
and, 257; plague in, 281; reconquista 623, 669; decline in, English, 742; in Sugar plantations, 326, 502(illus.), 520,
in, 201–202 and map, 209, 231, 331; Nazi Germany, 764; in Soviet Union, 550; on Atlantic islands, 375, 378, 387;
monasteries in, 239 and illus.; French 756, 792, 795; consumer goods and, slave labor for, 386–387 and illus., 389,
migrants in, 300; blacks in, 326; Chris- 797; decline in (1970s), 804. See also 391; in Brazil, 387(illus.), 389, 392,
tianity in, 301; in Renaissance, Lifestyle 496(map), 501; mills on, 570; in
330–332; Inquisition in, 272(illus.), Stanley, Henry M., 683 Hawaii, 680(illus.)
331, 363, 526; New Christians in, 331; Starvation. See Famine Suleiman the Magnificent (Ottoman),
Dutch independence and, 363, 427; State (nation): Stoics on, 79; origins of 356, 374, 450, 452(illus.), 657; Ukrai-
Genoese merchants in, 375; Jews “modern,” 194–195; church and, 292, nian wife of, 453–454
expelled from, 332, 375; Italy and, 355; in Middle Ages, 292; and Renais- Sulla (Rome), 100
361; trading empire of, 390(map); sance politics, 328–332; in France, 406; Sully, duke of (Maximilien de Béthune),
American silver in, 386, 391–392, 393, power, 402, 406; sovereignty of, in 17th 406, 410
I-36 Index
Sultans, in Ottoman Empire, 450 480; French Revolution and, 538, Theogony (Hesiod), 43
Sumer and Sumeria, 3, 5, 9(illus.); Sem- 539–540; under Napoleon, 558; in Theology: Petrine doctrine, 140; Augus-
ites and, 11; social and gender divisions Ireland, 605; in France, 741; in Soviet tine and, 146; medieval peasants and,
in, 10 Union, 755; Scandinavian socialism 231; sacraments and, 230; afterlife and,
Summa Theologica (Aquinas), 264 and, 747 234; Aquinas and, 264; Scholastics
Sumptuary laws, 252, 327(illus.) Teachers, 624. See also Education and, 263; Reformation, 340, 343; Cal-
Sundiata Keita (Mali), 373 Tea consumption, 520, 521 vinist, 354; women and, 360; absolut-
Sunni Islam, 167, 168, 374, 833–834 Technology, 624; Muslim, 169; handwrit- ism and, 405–406; science and, 462;
Sun Yat-sen, 693, 788 ing, 183; papermaking, 169, 265, 318; Voltaire and, 469; Christian existential-
Superpowers, in Cold War, 782, 801, 812. of European exploration, 377–378; big ism and, 728–729. See also Religion
See also Soviet Union; United States science and, 795–796. See also Industri- Thermidorinan Reaction, 551
Surgeons, 524 alization; Science Thermodynamics, laws of, 636–637
Surrealism, 733 Teheran Conference (1943), 782–783 Thermopylae, battle of, 50(illus.), 51
Survival in Auschwitz (Levi), 771 Telegraph, 675 Thessaly, 39
Survival of the fittest, 639 Telescope, 462 and illus., 463 Thiers, Adolphe, 661
Sweated industries, 629 Tellier, François le, 410 Third Coalition, against Napoleon, 555
Sweden, 154, 182, 442; Vikings from, 184, Temples: in Jerusalem, 29, 35, 74; Third Crusade, 210(map), 211
189; Christianity in, 213; treaty with Athenian, 44, 53, 54(illus.); Roman, Third estate, 326
France, 407; Thirty Years’ War and, 95(illus.) Third Republic (France), 652, 660–661
436, 437(map); royal palace in, 440; Tenant farmers, 402. See also Farms and Third Rome, Moscow as, 147, 446
war with Russia, 448 and illus., 449; farming Third World, 674 and illus.
Napoleon and, 555; declining birth rate Ten Commandments, 29, 30, Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), 356, 433,
in, 635(figure); declining death rate in, 342(illus.), 344 435–437, 466; consequences of,
621(figure); Norwegian nationalism Ten Hours Act of 1847 (Britain), 603 436–437(map), 442(map); Dutch
and, 663; migration from, 680. See also Tenochtitlán, 383–384 independence and, 424, 436; France
Scandinavia Terapylon of Aphrodisias, 65(illus.) and, 406, 407, 410, 436; Protestantism
Switzerland, 302(illus.); Protestantism in, Teresa of Ávila (Saint), 360 and, 435–436; Spain and, 413, 436
344; Zwingli in, 341, 343; religious war Terrorism: French Revolution, 550, 551; Three Emperors’ League, 699
in, 350; witch trials in, 364, 365; civil anti-foreign, in Japan, 692; Nazi Ger- Three Musicians (Picasso), 734, 735(illus.)
war in, 607; female medical students in, many, 765, 775; Stalinist, 757–758; Thucydides, 50, 53, 64
633; Russian exiles in, 667 Islamic fundamentalist, 831–832 Thutmose III (Egypt), 18
Syracus, siege of, 80 and illus. Tiberius (Rome), 113
Syria, 19, 75, 489, 719; Assyrians and, 11; Tertulian, 144 Tiburtius, Franziska, 633 and illus.
Egypt and, 17, 20; Muslims in, 166; Test Act of 1673 (England), 422, 423 Tiglath-pileser III (Assyria), 31
Crusades and, 211, 213, 218; Ottoman Testament of Youth (Brittain), 710 Timbuktu, 378
Empire and, 374, 658, 705; General Tet Offensive (Vietnam War), 801 Timekeeping, 258 and illus.
Congress in, 720, 724–725 Tetrarchy (Rome), 117, 123 and illus., 126 “Time of Troubles” in Russia, 447
The System of Nature (Linné), 473 Teutonburger, battle of, 109 Titian, 323
System of Positive Philosophy (Comte), Teutonic Knights, 213 Tito, Josip Broz, 791, 825
637–638 Tewfiq (Egypt), 678 Tobacco, 501, 521
Textile industry (cloth making), 403; Tocqueville, Alexis de, 609
Phoenician, 27; in Low Countries, 248, Toga (clothing), 87
Tabula rasa, 467 254(map); urban poor and, 253; Flem- Togo (Africa), 683
Tacitus, 155 ish, 279, 286(illus.), 297; fulling of, Toledo, Spain, 169, 263, 360
Tai Ping rebellion (China), 693 225; medieval production of, 223, 253, Toleration. See Religious toleration
Taiwan (Formosa), 693, 788 255; Irish linens, 449(illus.); silk trade, Tolstoy, Leo, 640
Taliban (Afghanistan), 811, 831 76, 255, 371, 374; French, 410; putting- Tombs: Egyptian, 15–16, 18; Etruscan,
Talleyrand, Charles, 591, 600 out system for, 490–491, 567, 580; 87(illus.); Jewish, in Worms, 233(illus.).
Talmud, 264 Spanish, 414; women in, 225, 410, 411, See also Burials
Tannenberg, battle of, 705 492, 494(illus.), 568(illus.), 580, Topkapi palace (Istanbul), 451, 452(illus.)
Tanzimat (Ottoman), 658 582(illus.); mechanization of, in Brit- Tordesillas, Treaty of (1494), 382
Tapestry making, 270 ain, 567–568. See also Cotton industry; Torture: in Inquisition, 273, 365; in Sta-
Tariffs, 410, 675; in Russia, 656; China Wool trade lin’s Soviet Union, 758
trade and, 676; in Germany and Thales, 59 Totalitarianism: in novels, 732; commu-
France, 574–575, 660, 685; nationalism Thasos, 51 nism and, 753; fascism and, 758; in
and, 744 Thatcher, Denis, 805 Stalin’s Soviet Union, 753, 758; in Nazi
Tartars of Crimea, 442, 478 Thatcher, Margaret, 802, 805 Germany, 761, 769. See also Commu-
Taxation, 402; in Rome, 127; payable in Theater. See Drama nists and communism; Nazi Germany;
kind, 127; Danegeld, 186; of serfs, 222, Thebes, 41, 45, 52, 61, 62 Soviet Union
449; assemblies and, 290; in England, Themistocles, 50 Total war: in French Revolution, 548, 550;
196, 296, 330, 419, 420; in France, 198, Theodora of Constantinople, 137, First World War as, 708, 711; social
296, 329, 361, 406, 411; Italian cities, 138–139 and illus. impact of, 711; Russia and, 712; Sec-
309; clergy, 342; popular protests of, Theodoric (Ostrogoth), 153, 156 ond World War as, 773
405; in Prussia, 443, 650; Mongol, 444; Theodosius II (Rome), 135 Totonac people, 384
of Russian peasants, 449; in Austria, Theodosius (Rome), 128, 142 Tournament, 236
Index I-37
Town charter, 249 Tudor dynasty (England), 329–330, 351, 789; in First World War, 707, 708, 716;
Towns. See Cities and towns 352(illus.) Freudian psychology in, 731; Treaty of
Toynbee, Arnold, 729 Tull, Jethro, 487 Versailles and, 717, 721; German
Trade. See Commerce (trade) Turgot, Jacques, 508–509, 538 reparations and, 739; isolationism of,
Trade corporations. See Guilds Turkey (Turks), 784; Crusades and, 209, 722, 738; modern architecture in, 732;
Trade routes, Dutch, 426, 427(map) 211, 212; Russia, Prussia and, 478; films from, 736, 737(illus.); radio in,
Trade unions, 585, 764; Polish Solidarity Greek independence and, 602; 737; stock market crash in, 743; Great
and, 814. See also Labor unions Young Turks and, 658; Atatürk and, Depression in, 744–746 and map;
Trading companies. See East India Com- 720–721; independence of, 720–721; Japan and, 767; New Deal in, 746, 748;
panies; East India Company European Union and, 827 and illus. Pearl Harbor attack and, 772; in Sec-
Trafalgar, battle of, 555 See also Anatolia; Ottoman Empire ond World War, 773–777 and maps,
Training. See Education Turner, Joseph M. W., 571, 600 783; atomic bombing of Japan by, 777;
Trajan (Rome), 118, 128 Tuscany, 253, 255, 648; plague in, 281 containment policy of, 784–785;
Transatlantic trade. See Atlantic economy Two Sicilies, kingdom of, 593, 650 Kellogg-Briand Pact and, 741; Korean
Transjordan (Jordan), 719, 724 and map War and, 784; Latin America and, 790;
Transportation, 489, 575; horses and, 251. Tyche, cult of, 77, 78 Marshall Plan and, 784; nationalism
See also Chariots; in England, 566, Tyrants and tyranny: in Greece, 44, 61; in and, 646, 787; civil rights movement in,
570–571; public, 621–622 and illus.; Athens, 49. See also Dictatorship 790–791 and illus., 802; science and
motorbikes for, 797(illus.). See also Tyrtaeus, 47–48 technology in, 796; married working
Canals; Railroads; Roads women in, 798(figure); youth subcul-
Transubstantiation, 208, 341, 357. See also ture in, 798; Vietnam War and, 799,
Eucharist Ukraine, 187, 447, 450; industry in, 656; 800–801, 802; women’s movement in,
Transvaal, 681, 682(map), 684 Bolsheviks in, 715; famine in, 757; Nazi 803; Atlantic alliance and, 802; oil
Transylvania, 455; Habsburgs and, 439, Germany and, 768, 769; European embargo and, 804; Reagan budget
455; revolutionaries in, 589(illus.) Union and, 827, 829 deficit in, 804, 806; public health
Travel and tourism, 625; Peter the Great, Ulster, 663 and illus. concern in, 620; end of cold war and,
447–448; in postwar era, 797. See also Ulysses (Joyce), 731 817; Gulf War (1991) and, 818; Kosovo
Exploration; Voyages of discovery Umayyad dynasty, 166, 168–169 and, 826; birthrate in, 828; human
Traveler Looking over a Sea of Fog (Fried- Uncertainty principle (Heisenberg), 730 rights in, 830; illegal immigration to,
rich), 601(illus.) Unemployment: French Revolution and, 829; terrorist attacks on, 811, 831, 832
Travels in Muscovy (Olearius), 456–457 541; revolution of 1848 and, 609; in and illus.; Iraq War (2003–), 832–834.
The Treasure of the City of Ladies (Pizan), England, 742, 750–751; in United See also Cold war
305–306 States, 744, 745(map), 746; in Great Unity movement, in western Europe,
Trebia, battle of, 93 Depression, 744, 745(map), 762; Or- 826–828
Treitschke, Heinrich von, 687 well on, 750–751; in Germany, 762; Universalism, 115
Trench warfare (First World War), in 1970s, 804; globalization and, 822; Universal suffrage, 597, 647; male, 595,
698(illus.), 703–705 and illus. in western Europe, 806; in France, 603, 607, 610, 651, 653, 656, 758; in
Trent, Council of (1545–1563), 345, 834, 838 Russia, 656
357, 359 Unification: of Germany, 652(map); of Universe, 599; of Aristotle, 79, 459–460; of
The Trial (Kafka), 731 Italy, 596, 648–650 and map Copernicus, 460–461; of Newton, 463;
Trials: by ordeal, 203–204; for witchcraft, Unigeniture, in Russia, 449 new physics and, 729, 730
364–365. See also Court (legal) Union of South Africa, 682(map), 683; Universities, 463; of Naples, 201; of Tou-
Tribes: Jewish, 28; Spanish, 94; Irish, apartheid in, 684 louse, 212; medical training in, 184,
147; barbarian, 155–156; Arab, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. See 227, 261; of Bologna, 260–261,
163–164, 167 Soviet Union (USSR) 262(illus.); clothing in, 252; of
Tribunes, of Rome, 90 Union of Utrecht (1581), 363 Salerno, 260, 261, 263; medieval,
Tribute, 51, 186 Unions. See Labor unions; Trade unions 259–264 and map; of Paris, 261, 262,
Triennial Act (England), 420 United Kingdom. See England (Britain) 263, 264, 285; women excluded
Trinity doctrine, 166, 170, 261, 264 United Nations (UN), 826; Korean War from, 263; instruction and curriculum
Triple Alliance, 699, 700 and, 784; Palestine division by, 789; in, 262–264; degrees awarded in,
Triple Entente, 703, 705, 706(map), human rights and, 830; Afghanistan 263–264; colleges founded in, 285; in
707, 708 and, 831; Iraq and, 819, 833 Prague, 294; student protests in,
Tripoli, 211 United Provinces of the Netherlands. See 799–800 and illus.; women in, 633
The Triumph of the Will (film), 737 Netherlands (the Dutch, Holland) Upper classes, 303, 623; English, 351;
Troppau Conference, 593 United States: Montesquieu’s theories and, Soviet, 757. See also Elites; Nobility
Trotsky, Leon, 714, 715, 754 468; Constitution of, 539; French (aristocracy)
Troubadours, 265–266, 275–276 Revolution and, 545; tariff barriers, 675; Urban areas: in Mesopotamia, 5; plague
Troy, 42, 43 China and, 693; nation building in, and, 281–282; discontent in, 297;
Troyes, Chrétien de, 266 653–654; cotton industry in, 653–654; culture in, 470–472; guilds in, 490,
The True and False Churches (Cranach), slavery in, 653, 654; détente and, 493; illegitimacy in, 512(illus.), 514;
347(illus.) 801–802; European migration to, 679 railroads and, 571; poverty in, 583;
Truman, Harry S., 783, 784 and figure, 680–681; opening of Japan lifestyle in, 618–622; social classes in,
Truman Doctrine, 784 by, 677; annexation of Hawaii by, 622–625, 628–630; in Soviet Union,
Tsars, of Russia, 434, 446, 456. See also 680(illus.); imperialism of, 685, 687; 755, 795. See also Cities and towns;
specific tsars Philippines and, 685, 686(map), 687, specific cities
I-38 Index
Urban II (Pope), 215 Saint-Simon on, 430–431; women’s Wages, 494; children, 636; cottage indus-
Urbanization, Industrial Revolution march on, 542–543 and illus. try and, 490, 568; Marx on, 598; for
and, 618 Versailles Treaty, 737–738; national self- men vs. women, 492, 493, 494,
Urban planning, in Paris, 621, 647 determination and, 717, 719, 721, 724; 582–583; for workers, 579, 618, 623
Urban VIII, Pope, 462 territorial changes in, 718(map), 719; Wagner, Richard, 625
Urban VI (Pope), 291–292 Hitler’s defiance of, 765. See also Waksman, Selman, 282
Ure, Andrew, 579 League of Nations Waldo, Peter and Waldensians, 271
Ursuline order, 359 Vespasian (Rome), 116 Walesa, Lech, 815 and illus., 824
Uruguay, 391 Vespucci, Amerigo, 382 Wales (Welsh), 618; Celts in, 151, 154; in
Uruk, Gilgamesh of, 10, 22 Vesta (goddess), 96 Great Britain, 566; declining birth rate
USSR. See Soviet Union (USSR) Vichy government, France, 768, 775 in, 635(figure); declining death rate in,
Usury, 166, 257 Vico, Giovanni Battista, 608 621(figure)
Utilitarianism, 619 Victor Emmanuel III (Italy), 760, 761 Wallenstein, Albert of, 435
Utnapishtim, 22–23 Victor Emmanuel (Italy), 648, 650 War and Peace (Tolstoy), 640
Utopia (More), 317, 351 Victoria and Albert (Britain), 645(illus.) War communism, 715
Utopian socialism, 596–597, 609; in Soviet Vienna, 439, 441(illus.), 560, 736; plague War debt. See Debts; Reparation
Union, 756 in, 282; Ottoman siege of (1529), 350, War of Austrian Succession, 479, 497,
Utrecht, Peace of (1713–1715), 411, 374; palace in, 439, 440, 441 and illus.; 538; territorial changes at end of,
412(map), 497 Ottoman siege of (1683), 450, 452; 442(map), 475
revolution of 1848 in, 610, 611; Con- War of the League of Augsburg, 410
gress of (1815), 590, 648; Jews in, War of the Spanish Succession, 411, 427,
Vaccination, 282, 680(illus.) 664, 665 443, 497
Vaclav IV (Bohemia), 294 Vietcong, Vietnam War and, 801, 831 Warriors: Greek hoplites, 45(illus.); Mace-
Valencia, 201 Vietnam, nationalism in, 789 donian, 62; German comitatus, 155;
Valens (Rome), 152 Vietnam War, 782, 800–801; protest Japanese samurai, 691–692. See also
Valéry, Paul, 727 against, 799, 801, 802 Knights
Valla, Lorenzo, 315–316 Viking invasions, 175(map), 180, 184–188; Wars and warfare: Egyptian, 17; Assyrian,
Vallain, Nanine, 535(illus.) decentralization of power and, 177; 31–32; Spartan, 47–48; Greek,
Valmy, battle of, 547 Slavs and, 186–188; in England, 195; 45(illus.), 50–51; Greco-Macedonian
Vandals, 150(illus.), 151(map), 152, 168; fortification against, 247; monasteries style of, 62; siege machinery in, 80, 81
in North Africa, 153 and, 238. See also Normans and illus.; Roman, 91–94, 100; barbar-
Van der Weyden, Rogier, 322(illus.) Villages: Christian rituals in, 149; ian invaders and, 155–156; against
Van Eyck, Jan, 322 churches in, 229; in High Middle Ages, Muslims, 172 (See also Crusades);
Van Gogh, Theo, 834 220(illus.), 221–229; families in, 179, Charlemagne, 173–174, 180; German
Varangians, Vikings as, 187 223; self-sufficiency in, 402–403; enclo- princes and, 176; medieval peasants
Varus (Rome), 109 sure movement and, 486–487; commu- and, 221; nobles and, 235, 237; French-
Vasari, Giorgio, 308, 313, 323, 337(illus.) nity control and, 513; markets in, English, 286–290; Habsburg-Valois,
Vassals, 177, 179, 237, 238; English mon- 510(illus.); Soviet collectivization and, 311–312; Spain-England, 353–354;
archy and, 196 755. See also Cities and towns; Manors religious, in France, 337(illus.),
Vatican: Sistine Chapel in, 307(illus.); and manoralism 361–362; in central and eastern Eu-
Lateran Agreement and, 760–761. See Villas: Roman Empire, 122, 124–125 rope, 433, 435–437 and map; in Russia,
also Papacy (popes) and illus., 128; Frankish nobles and, 448 and illus., 449; colonialism and,
Velázquez, Diego, 388 and illus. 171 495, 497, 681; Napoleonic, 554–556,
Velvet revolution, in Czechoslovakia, Vindication of the Rights of Women (Woll- 558–560 and map; industrialization
816, 824 stonecraft), 545–546 and, 573; trench warfare (First World
Venetia, 174, 592 and map, 648, 651. See Virgil, 110, 112 War), 698(illus.), 703–705 and illus.;
also Venice Visigoths, 151(map), 152, 153, 168 submarine warfare, 708, 773; blitzkrieg,
Venezuela, 382, 391 Vivaldi brothers, 375 767; fear of nuclear, 785. See also
Venice, 248, 310, 311 and map, 315; Voltaire, 468, 469, 478; on religion, Armed forces; Civil war(s); Navy (war-
plague in, 281, 284; artists of, 323, 482–483 ships) specific battles and wars
325(illus.); trade of, 253, 254(map), Von Bora, Katharina, 346, 347(illus.) Warsaw Ghetto, 770(illus.)
374–375; black slaves in, 325(illus.), Vortigern (Celts), 154 Warsaw Pact, 784, 786(map)
326; Egyptian trade and, 373, 374; Voting rights (franchise): in Rome, 88–89, Warships. See Navy
Italian unification and, 650 91, 98; Chartists and, 585; liberalism Wars of the Roses (England), 329
Verdi, Giuseppe, 625 and, 595; in England, 585, 603; in Warthmüller, R., 521(illus.)
Verdun, battle of, 704, 706(map) France, 606, 607, 609, 647; in Austria- Washington, George, 539
Verdun, Treaty of (843), 175(map), Hungary, 610; in Italy, 650; for women, Washington, March on (1963), 790(illus.)
177, 184 632, 659–660 and illus., 709; for work- Water frame, 567–568
Vernacular language, 183–184, 231; Latin ers, 668; for African Americans, Watergate Scandal, Nixon and, 801
and, 183–184, 265; literature in, 182, 790–791. See also Universal male Waterloo, battle of, 560, 593
265–266, 301–302 suffrage Water mills, 224–225
Versailles palace, 415, 418, 440 and illus.; Voyages of discovery: Chinese, 372–373; Waterpower, 580; in Britain, 567–568
court culture, 416–417, 418; gardens of, Columbus, 379(map), 380–382, Watson, James, 796
441 and illus.; Hall of Mirrors, 440, 653 398–399 and illus.; European, Watt, James, 569
and illus., 719; Estates General in, 541; 375–383, 379(map) Waugh, Evelyn, 729
Index I-39
Wealth: Greek, 45; Roman, 120; barbar- West India Company, Dutch, 389, 525; fashion and, 493, 522, 624,
ian, 156; commercial revolution and, 393, 426 626–627; literacy of, 518–519 and illus.;
259; of clergy, 271, 273; Renaissance, West Indies. See Caribbean region (West as wet nurses, 515–516 and illus., 517,
316, 320–321; hierarchy of, 326–327; Indies) 518; Rousseau on, 518; in French
political power and, 603; of upper Westphalia, Peace of (1648), 436 Revolution, 542–543 and illus.; Napole-
middle class, 623; disparities in, 623, Wet nurses, 515–516 and illus., 517, 518 onic Code and, 554; middle class, 577,
688, 709; in Russia, 823. See also In- Whitby, Synod of (664), 148, 181 578, 640, 731; sexism and, 583; sexual
come White-collar workers, 624, 796, 797 division of labor and, 582–584; in coal
Weapons: Hyksos, 17; Hitite, 19; Assyrian, White man’s burden, 687, 688 mines, 581; in factories, 581; as nurses,
31–32; Greek hoplite, 44; seige ma- White Mountain, battle of, 435 624, 710 and illus.; as doctors, 633 and
chines, 32, 80, 81 and illus., 137; White people: Enlightenment thinkers on, illus., 757; working class, 629–630;
Byzantine, 137; cannon, 287, 380; 473; African American rights and, 790. literature and, 640; socialist, 671–672;
machine guns, 684, 685, 688, See also Race and racism British Empire and, 690–691; in First
698(illus.), 703; in Second World War, Wilkinson, John, 569 World War, 709–710 and illus.; in
775; science and, 796 William and Mary (England), 423 Soviet Union, 757 and illus.; sexuality
Weapons of mass destruction, 816, 833. See William I (Prussia), 650, 651, 653 and of, 634, 643, 671, 731, 803; in fascist
also Atomic bombs; Nuclear weapons illus., 660 Italy, 761; in Nazi Germany, 764;
Weather. See Climate change William II (Germany), 661, 700 changes roles for, in postwar era,
Weavers and weaving, 491–492 and illus. William the Conqueror, 195(illus.), 797–798; sexism and, 798, 803; Beau-
See also Textile industry 196, 207 voir on, 808–809; working wives, 806;
Weimar Republic (Germany), 717, William the Pious (Aquitaine), 238 birthrate declines and, 828; as illegal
738–740, 741; Hitler and, 762, 763 Wilson, Woodrow, 708, 724, 725; Fourteen immigrants, 830. See also Families;
Welfare state: in Britain, 742, 785, 804; Points of, 717; League of Nations and, Gender; Marriage; Nuns: Prostitution
shift to capitalism, 804, 820; United 719, 721 Women, childbearing and, 82(illus.),
States as, 791, 806. See also Social Windmills, 225 and illus. 232–233, 298; in Rome, 112; in Frank-
welfare Witch hunts, 361, 363–365 ish kingdoms, 156; midwives and, 56,
Welsh people. See Wales (Welsh) Witte, Sergei, 656 228, 233, 426(illus.); mortality in,
Wen-Amon (Egypt), 26 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 728 82(illus.), 228
Wenceslaus (Bohemia), 293 Wojtyla, Karol (Pope John Paul II), 814 Women’s movement, 802–803
Wergeld (monetary value), 156 Wollstonecraft, Mary, 545–546, 632 Women’s rights, 803; French Revolution
Werner, Anton von, 653(illus.) Women: Sumerian, 10; Hammurabi’s and, 543, 545–546, 563–564 and illus.;
Wesley, John, 517, 527–528 Code on, 12–13; inheritance and, 10, in England, 632, 659(illus.); in Turkey,
Wesley, Susannah, 517–518 13, 95; Jewish, 30; Spartan, 48; Athe- 721; voting rights, 632, 659–660 and
West, the. See Western world nian, 55–56 and illus.; in mystery illus., 709
West Africa: slave trade in, 497; impe- religions, 78; Aristotle on, 60; Hellenis- Women’s suffrage. See Women’s rights,
rialism in, 681 tic, 73 and illus., 78; Roman, 95, 98, voting rights
West Berlin, 784, 793 112; Christianity and, 114–115, 145; Woodblock printing, 318
Western Europe: Vikings in, 184–188; Byzantine, 138–139; monasticism and, Woolen textiles, 403, 492
serfdom in, 179–180, 221; grain distribu- 145; division of labor and, 3, 223; Salic Woolf, Virginia, 731
tion in, 282; Peter the Great and, Law on, 156; in Islam, 166, 168; fiefs Wool trade, English, 253, 255, 278,
447–448, 449; agriculture in, 485; and, 179; in Crusades, 211; in village 286(illus.), 290, 330
population explosion in, 489; Cold war life, 223, 224; as troubadours, 265, Wordsworth, William, 579, 599
in, 784, 787; Common Market in, 787; 275–276; noble, 235, 236, 237 and Workers: in Athens, 55 and illus.; house-
neocolonialism in Africa and, 790; illus.; religious orders of, 272; university hold, 252; Dutch, 426–427, 427;
unemployment in (1980s), 804; shift education for, 263; as Lollards, 293; putting out system and, 490–491;
from welfare state to capitalism, 820, homosexuality and, 47(illus.), 299; as employers and, 492–493; debt peonage
822; unity and identity in, 826–828; domestic servants, 252, 297, 298, and, 500; in factories, 576–577,
migration to, 829–830 and illus. See 628–629 and illus., 631; Christine de 579–582; work conditions of, 569,
also specific countries Pizan and, 305–306, 327; as Renais- 580–582, 618, 669; in England,
Westernization: of Russia, 449, 477–478; sance painters, 323–324 and illus.; as 584–585; railroads and, 571; socialism
of Japan, 692; of colonies, 689, 691. See rulers, 328; as witches, 364; humanists and, 597, 646; Marx on, 597–598; in
also Modernization and, 314; literacy of, 303; misogyny France, 646; May Day and, 668 and
Western Roman Empire, 123, 126(map) and, 145, 327, 364; in guilds, 251, 297, illus.; migrants as, 680 and illus.; living
Western World: Greece and, 73; 493–494, 512; Native American, standards of, 669; women, in First
commerce with East, 75–76, 253; 384(illus.); sailor’s wives, 376; in World War, 709 and illus.; Russian
organization into time periods, French court, 417; in French drama, revolution and, 714; Great Depression
163; colonization by, 675; expansion of, 418; Dutch, 426, 465 and illus.; in and, 744; in Germany, 764; Soviet, 757;
679; new imperialism of, 674; Renais- Ottoman palace, 451–452, 453–454; in women as, 761, 797–798 and figure;
sance in (1945–1968), 785–791; values Enlightenment, 471–472 and illus., French strike and, 800. See also Labor;
in, 727; Islam and, 831–836 473; in sciences, 465 and illus., 468, Peasant(s); Working class
West Germany, 785; economic recovery 469(illus.); abolition of slavery and, Workers’ associations, 544
of, 785; Green movement in, 806; East 502; education of, 472, 546, 632, 757, Work ethic, Calvinist, 355, 362
Germany and, 793, 801, 811, 812, 816; 797; in textile industry, 225, 410, 492, Working class, 576–577; labor movement
Berlin Wall and, 793, 816. See also 494(illus.), 568(illus.), 580, 582 and and, 584–585; revolution of 1848 and,
Germany illus.; as midwives, 426(illus.), 523, 524, 609–610; childrearing in, 636, 797,
I-40 Index
Working class (continued) Wright, Frank Lloyd, 732 738; ethnic groups in, 711, 719, 825
798; divisions in, 625, 628; Germany Wright, Joseph, 578(illus.) and map; Second World War in, 775;
nationalism and, 653, 661; marriage in, Writ, 196 Tito in, 791, 825; civil war in, 811, 826,
631, 632; in England, 603, 751; leisure Writing: invention of, 3; Sumerian cunei- 829; disintegration of, 825–826 and
and religion of, 629–630; homes of, form, 5, 8 and figure; Egyptian, 26 and map; NATO and, 826
632, 634 and illus.; in realist literature, illus.; Judaism and, 30; Mycenaean
639, 640; political divisions in, 741; Greek, 41; runic, 155(illus.). See also
postwar changes for, 796, 797; Polish Alphabet; Literature Zacharias (Pope), 172
protest, 814. See also Workers Wyclif, John, 292, 294 Zanzibar, 683
Workplace, conditions in, 569, 580–582, Zapolya, Janos, 356
618, 669 Zarathrushtra, 35
Workshops, in Paris, 609–610 Xenophon, 32 Zealots, 113, 114
Works Progress Administration (WPA), 746 Xerxes (Persia), 34(illus.), 35, 50, 68 Zemstvo, in Russia, 655
Workweek, hours in, 603 Zeno, 78–79
World economy. See Global economy Zeus (god), 43, 56, 58, 67, 96
World empire, 35. See also Empire; Yaghi Siyan, 218–219 Zheng He, voyages of, 372–373
Imperialism Yahweh, 29, 30, 37, 114 Ziggurat, 9(illus.)
The World of Yesterday (Zweig), 643–644 Yalta Conference (1945), 783 and illus. Zionism, 664–666, 724, 789. See also
World Trade Center, terrorist attacks on, Yeltsin, Boris, 818, 819(map), 822–823 Israel (modern)
811, 831, 832 and illus. Yemen, 163, 831 Zola, Emile, 640 and illus.
World Wars. See First World War; Second Young Turks, 658 Zollverein, 575, 650
World War Youth culture, 781(illus.), 798–800; Hitler Zoroastrianism, 35–36, 163
Worms: conference at (1122), 208; Jews of, and, 763 Zurich, Switzerland, 342, 343, 633
215(illus.), 233(illus.); diet of, 340–341 Ypres, 253 Zweig, Stephan, 643–644
Wozzeck (Berg), 736 Ypsilanti, Alexander, 602 Zwingli, Ulrich, 341, 342, 343, 344, 346;
WPA. See Works Progress Administration Yugoslavia, 122, 717; Little Entente and, death of, 350

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Western Society: A Brief History

Publisher for History: Mary Dougherty

President: Joan E. Feinberg

Library of Congress Control Number: 2008928070

Copyright © 2010 by Bedford/St. Martin’s

Manufactured in the United States of America.

For information, write: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 75 Arlington Street, Boston, MA 02116

ISBN-10: 0–312–68299–9 ISBN-13: 978–0–312–68299–6 (combined edition)

Published and distributed outside North America by:

Clare Haru Crowston

Central Themes and Approach

Pedagogy and Features

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2 Small Kingdoms and Mighty Empires in the Near East,

3 Classical Greece, ca. 1650–338 b.c.e. 38

4 The Hellenistic World, 336–146 b.c.e. 65

5 The Rise of Rome, ca. 750–44 b.c.e. 85

6 The Pax Romana, 31 b.c.e.–450 c.e. 107

7 Late Antiquity, 350–600 133

8 Europe in the Early Middle Ages, 600–1000 162

9 State and Church in the High Middle Ages, 1000–1300 193

11 The Creativity and Challenges of Medieval Cities 246

12 The Crisis of the Later Middle Ages, 1300–1450 277

13 European Society in the Age of the Renaissance, 1350–1550 307

14 Reformations and Religious Wars, 1500–1600 337

15 European Exploration and Conquest, 1450–1650 370

16 Absolutism and Constitutionalism in Western Europe, ca. 1589–1715 401

17 Absolutism in Central and Eastern Europe to 1740 432

18 Toward a New Worldview, 1540–1789 458

19 The Expansion of Europe in the Eighteenth Century 484

20 The Changing Life of the People 510

21 The Revolution in Politics, 1775–1815 535

22 The Revolution in Energy and Industry, ca. 1780–1860 565

23 Ideologies and Upheavals, 1815–1850 589

24 Life in the Emerging Urban Society in the Nineteenth Century 617

25 The Age of Nationalism, 1850–1914 645

26 The West and the World, 1815–1914 673

27 The Great Break: War and Revolution, 1914–1919 698

28 The Age of Anxiety, ca. 1900–1940 726

29 Dictatorships and the Second World War, 1919–1945 752

30 Cold War Conﬂicts and Social Transformations, 1945–1985 781

31 Revolution, Rebuilding, and New Challenges: 1985 to the Present 810

Origins, ❚ Assyria, the Military Monarchy 30

❚ The Classical Period (500–338 b.c.e.)

The Hellenistic World, Scipio Aemilianus: Greek Culture

❚ Augustus’s Successors 116 ❚ Christian Missionaries and Conversion 146

7 Expansion and Schism 166