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# Big Site of History

A History of Civilization

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## Posts

- [Despots and Condottieri in Italy, 1268-1513](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/despots-and-condottieri-in-italy-1268-1513-the-rise-of-the-nation/) - In Italy the medieval struggle between popes and emperors had promoted the growth of independent communes or city-states, particularly in northern Italy. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the communes were oligarchic republics. The ruling oligarchies, however, were torn by the strife between the pro-papal Guelfs and the pro- imperial Ghibellines. Meantime, something close to class warfare arose between the wealthy, on the one hand, and the small shopkeepers and wage earners, on the other. Dissension grew so bitter that arbitrary one-man government seemed the only remedy.
- [The Popular Front In France, 1936-1937 | The Democracies](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-popular-front-in-france-1936-1937-the-democracies/) - Once more, however, as in the time of Dreyfus, the republican forces rallied to meet the threat, and once more, after the crisis had been surmounted, France moved to the left.
- [Social and Political Tensions In France, 1928-1936 | The Democracies](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/social-and-political-tensions-in-france-1928-1936-the-democracies/) - During World War I the French had temporarily put aside the great political and social conflict they had inherited from 1789. After the war the "sacred union" of political parties that had carried France through the struggle soon dissolved, and the traditional conflict was resumed.
- [Japan In The Late Twentieth Century](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/japan-in-the-late-twentieth-century/) - The occupation of Japan was wholly American. Despite some strong opposition from American opinion, the emperor was left on this throne, deprived of his divine status, and subjected to the close control of the forces of occupation. When the American occupation ended in 1952, the Japanese had made a promising start on a democracy of the Western type. Their economy grew so rapidly that it overtook France and West Germany, to rank third in the world after the Untied States and the Soviet Union.
- [War in the Trenches](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/war-in-in-the-trenches/) - The war in the trenches was unremitting tedium punctuated by moments of intense action. Long after the war a distinguished British historian, Charles Carrington (1897-1981), who was a young man on the Somme, wrote of his experience:
- [Why Women Shouldn't Be Allowed to Vote](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/why-women-shouldnt-be-allowed-to-vote/) - At the height of the movement to gain the vote for women in the United States, Alice Duer Miller (1874-1942), an author and a feminist, compiled a list of all the reasons that were being given in newspaper editorials, by politicians, and in public debate, against allowing women to vote. Noting that the arguments were directly contradictory, she wrote the following set of paired statements to show how the contending arguments canceled each other out. Our Own Twelve Anti-Suffragist Reasons 1. Because no woman will leave her domestic duties to vote.
- [Southeast Asia In The Late Twentieth Century](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/southeast-asia-in-the-late-twentieth-century/) - Once the Japanese occupation ended in southeast Asia, the major Western colonial powers found that they could not revert to the prewar status quo. The United States had granted the Philippines independence in 1946. In 1949 the Dutch had to recognize the independence of the Netherlands East Indies as the republic of Indonesia, with a population of 100 million people.
- [Summary: The Late Twentieth Century](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/summary-the-late-twentieth-century/) - After World War II the nations of western Europe maintained their sovereignty and nationalist outlook but formed an economic union, the Common Market. In Britain a social revolution was accomplished with the nationalization of some industries and the extension of social programs. In the 1980s, however, Britain still faced economic difficulties and the unresolved problem of Northern Ireland. In France, General de Gaulle reestablished republican government after liberation. Although he left office in 1946, he returned in 1968 to preside over the birth of the Fifth Republic.
- [Sumerians | The First Civilizations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/sumerians-the-first-civilizations/) - Recent discoveries have led some scholars to believe that the inventors of writing may have been a people called Subarians who were apparently subjugated about 3100 B.C. by the Sumerians, in the fertile lower valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates. Here the Sumerians were already well established by the year 3000. They had
- [Prospects In The Late Twentieth Century](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/prospects-in-the-late-twentieth-century/) - Historians do not deal with the future. Yet one justification for the writing and reading of history is that it helps us better to understand the present and to interpret more intelligently the future as it rushes in upon us. In 1846 the young French poet Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) defined modernity as that phase of experience in which life is lived in fragments, in which the pace of change and an inability to separate the important from the unimportant create a sense of confusion, of one's life being out of control or in the control of others.
- [Philosophy In The Twentieth Century](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/philosophy-in-the-twentieth-century/) - A philosophy known as existentialism developed from such nineteenth-century sources as Nietzsche and the Danish theologian Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), who assailed the dehumanizing effects of the increasingly materialistic society of his day. In such works as Fear and Trembling (1843) and Either/Or (also 1843), he argued that Christian truth was not to be found in churches but in experiencing extreme human conditions through the act of existence.
- [Other Western European Countries In The Late Twentieth Century](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/other-western-european-countries-in-the-late-twentieth-century/) - The Low Countries shared the general European prosperity and the common problems. In Belgium, which enjoyed great material well-being, the chronic difficulties between the minority of French-speaking Walloons and the majority of Dutch-speaking Flemings continued to worsen and to threaten stability.
- [The Ionian Cities, the Threat to Greece, Marathon | The Greeks](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-ionian-cities-the-threat-to-greece-marathon-the-greeks/) - The new Persian rulers would not allow their subjects political freedom, which was what the now-captive Ionian Greek cities most valued. Their prosperity declined, as the Persians drew away from Ionia the wealth from the trade routes that had formerly so enriched Aegean towns. By 513 B.C. the Persians had crossed the Bosporus, sailed up the Danube, and moved north across modern Romania into the Ukraine in a campaign against a nomadic people called Scythians.
- [The Agricultural Revolution 1750-1900 | The Old Regimes](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-agricultural-revolution-1750-1900-the-old-regimes/) - The agricultural revolution—the second force transforming the modern economy—centered on improvements that enabled fewer farmers to produce more crops. The Netherlands were the leaders, producing the highest yields per acre while also pioneering in the culture of new crops like the potato, the turnip, and clover.
- [Latin America In The Late Twentieth Century](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/latin-america-in-the-late-twentieth-century/) - Although most of the Latin American republics had by 1945 enjoyed political independence for more than a century, they had much in common economically and socially with the emerging nations of Asia and Africa. Like the Asians and Africans, the Latin Americans had been suppliers of foods and raw materials to the rest of the world.
- [Africa In The Late Twentieth Century](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/africa-in-the-late-twentieth-century/) - The rebellion against imperialism reached Africa in the 1950s. Ethiopia was taken from its Italian conquerors after World War II and restored to Emperor Haile Selassie, who had been ousted in 1936. In 1952 he annexed the former Italian colony of Eritrea. Selassie embarked on various programs of internal modernization though not liberalization, and he worked hard to assist in the development of the Organization of African Unity. However, he misjudged both the speed and the nature of his reforms.
- [The Middle East In The Late Twentieth Century](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-middle-east-in-the-late-twentieth-century/) - In Saudi Arabia, in the small states along the Persian Gulf, and in Iraq and Iran, the Middle East possessed the greatest oil reserves in the world. Developed by European and American companies that paid royalties to the local governments, these oil resources influenced the policies of all the powers.
- [South Asia In The Late Twentieth Century](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/south-asia-in-the-late-twentieth-century/) - The Labour victory in Britain in 1945 made the emancipation of India a certainty. But the deep-seated tensions between Muslims and Hindus had assumed critical importance. When the Hindu Congress party and the All-India Muslim League faced the need to draw up a working constitution for the new India, they found themselves in complete disagreement. The Muslims had long been working for separate Hindu and Muslim states, which were in the end reluctantly accepted by the Hindus. In 1947 Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan were set up as separate self-governing dominions within the Commonwealth.
- [The Koreas In The Late Twentieth Century](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-koreas-in-the-late-twentieth-century/) - South Korea had also attempted constitutional government in the Western manner but ran into serious difficulties. After the disruptive Korean War of the early 1950s, the government of Syngman Rhee (1875-1965), South Korean president since 1948, came under mounting criticism for corruption and arbitrary actions.
- [People's Republic of China In The Late Twentieth Century](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/peoples-republic-of-china-in-the-late-twentieth-century/) - The People's Republic of China, the most populous country in the world (in 1994, with an estimated population of 1,190,431,000, the only nation with more than a billion people), remained important in Western economic and political calculations and also relatively isolated. After years of upheaval, with massive purges during the cultural revolution in 1965, the nation's leadership appeared to realize that it had done untold damage to China's educational system, to its industrial capacity, and even to the revolutionary principles it espoused.
- [The Non Western World In The Late Twentieth Century](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-non-western-world-in-the-late-twentieth-century/) - During World War II the Japanese had seized Western possessions in the Far East and had initially defeated Western armies, ending the myth of Western supremacy. Even though Japan was defeated in the end, Western prestige did not recover. Everyone knew that the French and Dutch had not really won, that British power had been seriously weakened. The only real victors in the war were the United States and the Soviet Union, each in its way anti-colonial.
- [Disintegrating Communism in Eastern Europe In The Late Twentieth Century](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/disintegrating-communism-in-eastern-europe-in-the-late-twentieth-century/) - The collapse of repressive regimes was unexpected and sudden. In April 1989 an accord between factions in Poland had promised free elections, and in August the first non-communist head of an Eastern bloc nation was elected prime minister.
- [The Decline of Marxist Ideology In The Late Twentieth Century](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-decline-of-marxist-ideology-in-the-late-twentieth-century/) - When Stalin died, the stage seemed set for a full-scale anti-Semitic drive. But fear of the West and hatred of Zionism alone did not explain Soviet anti-Semitism. Despite long years of preaching cultural autonomy for nationalities, many Soviet leaders were personally antiSemitic and perhaps recognized the latent anti-Semitism of the population at large.
- [Eastern Europe And The Soviet Union In The Late Twentieth Century](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/eastern-europe-and-the-soviet-union-in-the-late-twentieth-century/) - The Soviet Union and the countries of eastern Europe were not exempt from the cycle of prosperity, growth, economic stagnation, and social and political unrest, even though they could prevent the unrest from getting out of hand or from being made known outside their borders. Problems for the Soviet leadership proved to be fully as difficult as those faced by the Western democracies, but totalitarian states did not have to engage in divisive public debate over how to allocate resources.
- [Let the Word Go Forth](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/let-the-word-go-forth/) - In his inaugural address, newly elected President John F. Kennedy demonstrated charismatic powers of oratory. He did more, however, for he also issued a challenge to his fellow Americans that was more dramatic, more sweeping, a tinge more arrogant, and perhaps more idealistic than they had heard, or would hear, for some time.
- [I Have a Dream](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/i-have-a-dream/) - In 1963, on the occasion of a massive civil rights rally held in the U.S. capital, Martin Luther King gave his most famous speech. Fivescore years ago, a great American signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity. But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free; one hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the
- [Canada and Mexico In The Late Twentieth Century](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/canada-and-mexico-in-the-late-twentieth-century/) - One of the nations that briefly surpassed the United States in per capita income was its immediate neighbor, Canada. Exploiting its vast hydroelectric resources and oil and mineral wealth, Canada had become a major industrial nation. Between 1954 and 1959 the United States and Canada built an extensive new seaway to join the Great Lakes with the St. Lawrence River, so that Canadian and mid-western goods could flow to world markets more readily. Yet Canada increasingly asserted an independent foreign policy—independent of both Britain and the United States.
- [The United States In The Late Twentieth Century](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-united-states-in-the-late-twentieth-century/) - Rather than reverting to isolation, the United States took the lead in 1945 in organizing both the United Nations and a network of alliances. It put through vigorous programs of economic aid to other countries, first through the Marshall Plan, then by direct assistance to the newly independent former colonies, and also by massive assistance through internationally organized financial institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
- [North America In The Late Twentieth Century](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/north-america-in-the-late-twentieth-century/) - Nor could the largest and most populous of the Western democracies avoid instability even though it was to provide the leadership for the Western alliance and was clearly a superpower in trade and military terms. Though racked by social tensions at times, the United States was markedly prosperous and politically stable for much of this period. Nonetheless, significant new elements were introduced to the American sense.
- [The Vatican In The Late Twentieth Century](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-vatican-in-the-late-twentieth-century/) - In the eye of the hurricane, one force for continuity seemed clear. The pope, based in the Vatican City, in the heart of Rome, began to assert bold new initiatives in the political sphere, while holding to traditional positions on doctrinal church affairs. The feeling that Pope Pius XII (r. 1939-1958) had not done enough forestall World War II or to assist beleaguered Jews within the Nazi controlled nations persisted, and after the war he and his successors sought to take clear positions on world affairs.
- [Italy In The Late Twentieth Century](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/italy-in-the-late-twentieth-century/) - Unlike Germany, Italy was in turmoil for much of its postwar period. In 1946 a plebiscite showed 54 percent of the voters in favor of a republic, which was therefore established. Some monarchists and fascists remained, but neither group influenced parliamentary politics to any great extent.
- [The Two Germanies In The Late Twentieth Century](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-two-germanies-in-the-late-twentieth-century/) - The West German postwar recovery was the most remarkable of all. The wartime destruction of much of Germany's industrial plant had paradoxically proved beneficial; the new plant was built with the latest technological equipment. The Allied High Commission gradually abolished controls over German industry, save for atomic energy and certain military restrictions. It provided economic aid and scaled down prewar German debts. By the early 1950s West Germany had a favorable balance of trade and a rate of industrial growth as high as 10 percent a year.
- [France In The Late Twentieth Century](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/france-in-the-late-twentieth-century/) - Defeat by the Germans, brutal German occupation and economic exploitation, the spectacle of French collaboration with the enemy—all this was followed by a liberation that, despite the part played in it by the Fighting French and the French Resistance movement, was clearly the work of American, British, and Soviet arms.
- [Is There a Grand Design in History?](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/is-there-a-grand-design-in-history/) - Historians continue to debate their own purposes and their own methods. Some detect clear patterns and may even attempt to predict general trends for the future from their study of the past; others find history to be simply one event after another. Between these positions there are other, more moderate, defenses for the value of history. One finds it poetic, even beautiful, for it gives humanity a sense of itself, of what it is that makes it human. Another finds that while history may seem to lack any grand design, there is a form of design in this random appearance.
- [Great Britain In The Late Twentieth Century](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/great-britain-in-the-late-twentieth-century/) - In Britain a general election in July 1945—after the war had ended in Europe—ousted Churchill and the Conservative party and for the first time gave the Labour party an absolute majority in the House of Commons. The Liberal party was practically extinguished. The new prime minister was Clement Attlee (1883-1967), a middle-class lawyer of quiet intellect who was committed to major social reform at home and the decolonization of much of the British Empire abroad.
- [Western Europe In The Late Twentieth Century](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/western-europe-in-the-late-twentieth-century/) - After 1945 the nations of western Europe successfully preserved the forms of the sovereign state and the politics of nationalism, while also making real attempts to organize a "free Europe" on a level beyond the national state.
- [The Late Twentieth Century](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-late-twentieth-century/) - Although dominated by the cold war, the history of the past five decades also speaks of many triumphs. Despite wars, political intimidation, and terror, both population and longevity have increased.
- [Summary: Twentieth Century Thought and Letters](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/summary-twentieth-century-thought-and-letters/) - Views of history change constantly. As historians view the last forty years, they face the difficulty of evaluating recent historical trends, such as economic cycles or the worldwide impact of the arms race. Today Western civilization can no longer be seen as separate from world culture.
- [Dual Goals, Dual Models In The Twentieth Century](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/dual-goals-dual-models-in-the-twentieth-century/) - Many observers feared that there had been a slow breakdown in what was once understood to be the social contract. Much of humanity was struggling with dual goals: to achieve freedom and to create equality, to protect the rights of the individual and to meet obligations to others.
- [The Other Arts In The Twentieth Century](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-other-arts-in-the-twentieth-century/) - Pop sculpture featured plaster casts of real people surrounded by actual pieces of furniture in a three-dimensional comic strip of devitalized, defeated humanity. At the other extreme, sculpture in the grand manner experienced a rebirth, in good measure due to the work of two British artists.
- [Faulkner on Human Security](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/faulkner-on-human-security/) - The objective conditions of human life have steadily improved over the centuries: the infant mortality rate has fallen, the longevity rate has risen, the caloric intake has increased, a wide range of diseases that once devastated humanity have been conquered, and labor-saving devices have taken the sweat from the brow of millions.
- [Painting In The Twentieth Century](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/painting-in-the-twentieth-century/) - No painter could better serve as a representative of the endless variety and experimentation of twentieth-century painting than the versatile and immensely productive Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). A native Spaniard and adopted Frenchman, Picasso painted in many styles and periods. For example, the paintings of his "blue period" in the early 1900s, with their exhausted and defeated people, had a melancholy, lyrical quality that reflected the
- [Literature In The Twentieth Century](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/literature-in-the-twentieth-century/) - Twentieth-century writers surprised the prophets of doom. Poetry remained, for the most part, what it had become in the late nineteenth century: difficult, cerebral, and addressed to a small audience. An occasional poet broke from the privacy of limited editions to wide popularity; representative was the attention given to T. S. Eliot (1888-1965). His difficult yet moving symbolic poem, "The Waste Land," or his invocation to "The Hollow Men," which closed with the lines This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper
- [Modern Literature and the Arts](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/modern-literature-and-the-arts/) - As societies became more and more literate, reading matter changed, becoming both simpler and much cheaper and also more complex and symbolic in its more elite expressions. This was true of painting and the other arts as well. A wider gulf opened between those who read, or viewed, for entertainment and those who sought information, analyses, or complexity of emotional expressions.
- [Science and the Quality of Life In The Twentieth Century](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/science-and-the-quality-of-life-in-the-twentieth-century/) - Chemistry, which made possible plastics, synthetic fibers, and many other innovations, also greatly affected daily life by its impact on food, clothing, and most material objects. Chemistry assisted the very great gains made by the biological sciences and their application to medicine and public health.
- [The Revolution in Physics In The Twentieth Century](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-revolution-in-physics-in-the-twentieth-century/) - Perhaps the great scientific event of the twentieth century was the revolution in physics symbolized for the public by Albert Einstein (1879-1955). This revolution centered on radical revisions made in the Newtonian world-machine, the mechanistic model of the universe that had been accepted for more than two centuries.
- [Twentieth Century Science](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/twentieth-century-science/) - In the twentieth century each science, and each branch of each science, continued its ever more intense specialization. Cooperation among pure scientists, applied scientists, engineers, bankers, business people, and government officials produced exponential increases.
- [Historicism In The Twentieth Century](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/historicism-in-the-twentieth-century/) - Probably the most widespread philosophical movement of the century developed on the margin of formal philosophy and the social sciences. This movement is called historicism—the attempt to find in history an answer to those ultimate questions of the structure of the universe and of human fate that the philosopher has always asked.
- [Sociology and Political Science In The Twentieth Century](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/sociology-and-political-science-in-the-twentieth-century/) - In the social sciences, the twentieth century continued to question its inheritance of faith in the basic reasonableness and goodness of human nature. In fact, some social scientists found the term human nature to be so all-embracing as to make no sense. The specific programs and values of twentieth-century thinkers in this broad field were very varied. Yet most of them had a sense of the subtlety, the complexities, the delicacy—and the toughness and durability—of the forces that bind human beings together in society but also hold them apart.
- [Sigmund Freud on Modern Civilization](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/sigmund-freud-on-modern-civilization/) - Though not his most famous book, Civilization and Its Discontents, written in 1929-1930, is probably the most frequently read work by Sigmund Freud, for it appears to speak directly to the human condition.
- [Psychology In The Twentieth Century](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/psychology-in-the-twentieth-century/) - Taking its cue from psychology, the twentieth century has put its emphasis on the role of the unconscious in human thought and action, on the non-rationality of much human behavior. Foremost among the thinkers responsible for this emphasis was Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), a physician trained in Vienna in the rationalist medical tradition of the late nineteenth century.
- [The Age of the Computer](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-age-of-the-computer/) - We live today in an information society. Such a society is the result of a long evolution from the development of writing, to movable type, to the high-speed printing press, to the typewriter and carbon paper and the office duplicating machine. More than any other development, however, it has been the exceptionally rapid growth of computer technology—and the application of that technology to education, information retrieval, and word processing—that has changed the way we look at learning. The sociology of knowledge has changed.
- [Modern Thought About Human Nature](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/modern-thought-about-human-nature/) - In the latter part of the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth century, a number of fields of inquiry became professionalized, and those who mastered these fields had a major impact on elite thought and indirectly on popular public opinion. Foremost among these fields were psychology, history, political science, sociology, and philosophy. All but the last subject had direct influence on the shaping of public policy.
- [The Modernity of History](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-modernity-of-history/) - Societies reveal much about themselves in what they choose to take pride in—what they consciously preserve from their past and from their environment. Societies also reveal much about themselves in what they exclude, as when history until recently passed over the underclasses in near-silence or neglected the role of women in national development.
- [Twentieth Century Thought and Letters](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/twentieth-century-thought-and-letters/) - History is constantly changing. So, too, is the way that we view history. Obviously, history extends forward in time, each day bringing new events that make a mockery of any attempt to survey the entire historical past of any one culture, much less of all cultures, or of all Western civilization.
- [Summary | The Second World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/summary-the-second-world-war/) - Some historians today consider the time between the two world wars as simply a twenty-year truce. Yet the 1920s had offered hope for peace, as shown by the Locarno spirit. This hope was dashed by the Great Depression that helped put Hitler in power. Between 1918 and 1938 Soviet leaders shifted their view on the likelihood of a world communist revolution. Hitler's successful rise to power in Germany posed a threat to the Soviet Union. Stalin tried to counter this threat by negotiation. Both the West and the Soviet Union sought to turn Hitler's aggression against the other.
- [The Vietnam War | The Second World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-vietnam-war-the-second-world-war/) - A special problem for the PRC, Soviets, and Americans arose in southeast Asia from the revolt of the Viet Minh (Revolutionary League for the Independence of Vietnam) against France that broke out in French Indochina after World War II.
- [The Soviet-Chinese Split | The Second World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-soviet-chinese-split-the-second-world-war/) - In 1959 Khrushchev told Beijing that the Soviet Union would not furnish the PRC with atomic weapons and tried unsuccessfully to unseat Mao. PRC bombardment of Quemoy and Matsu (1958), offshore islands claimed by Taiwan, plus a savage conquest of Tibet and an invasion of Indian territory in Ladakh were undertaken without consultation between the PRC and the Soviets. The Soviets publicly declared themselves to be neutral between the
- [Conflict in Asia, 1953-1970 | The Second World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/conflict-in-asia-1953-1970-the-second-world-war/) - Between Stalin's death in 1953 and Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin in 1956, Chinese-Soviet relations were basically amicable, and PRC influence rose in the communist world. The Soviets returned Port Arthur and Dairen to China in 1955. But when Khrushchev attacked Stalin without consulting Mao Zedong (1893-1976), the Chinese communist leader, the Chinese denounced him for joining with Tito and the revisionists.
- [Czechoslovakia During The Cold War | The Second World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/czechoslovakia-during-the-cold-war-the-second-world-war/) - The settlement in 1968 on the terms of a nuclear nonproliferation treaty to prevent the spread of atomic arms beyond the nations that already possessed them seemed to represent another step forward, but Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia in the summer of 1968 delayed its ratification.
- [Soviet-American Rivalry and the Cold War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/soviet-american-rivalry-and-the-cold-war/) - In 1947, at the outset of the cold war, as the Soviet Union continued to expand its influence through¬out Europe, a leading American policy analyst, George Kennan (1904— ), published a highly influential article in the American journal Foreign Affairs. In it he discussed what the United States should do to offset Soviet influence. He wrote under the pseudonym "X," though he had, in March 1946, sent the text of his argument, called "The Sources of Soviet Conduct," as a cable directly to the U.S. Department of State.
- [Cuba's Nuclear Tests During The Cold War | The Second World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/cubas-nuclear-tests-during-the-cold-war-the-second-world-war/) - Khrushchev now probed in another way, announcing in August 1961 that the Soviets would resume atomic testing in the atmosphere, a practice stopped by both powers in 1958. In the two months that followed, the Soviets exploded thirty bombs. President Kennedy decided that, unless Khrushchev would agree to a treaty banning all tests, the United States would have to conduct its own new tests. Khrushchev refused, and American testing began again in April 1962.
- [Berlin After World War Two | The Second World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/berlin-after-world-war-two-the-second-world-war/) - In East Germany, there the Soviet Union had created its most industrially productive European satellite, fully integrated into Comecon. Strategically East Germany was of great importance to the USSR; control over East Germany enabled the Soviets to keep Poland surrounded and to keep communist troops within easy reach of West Germany.
- [Eastern Europe After World War Two | The Second World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/eastern-europe-after-world-war-two-the-second-world-war/) - In eastern Europe, the new first secretary to the Soviet Communist party, Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971), sought to heal the breach with Tito. In May 1955 he went in person to Belgrade and publicly apologized for the quarrel. Relations between Tito and Moscow improved, although the Yugoslays never abandoned their ties to the West. Khrushchev even went so far as to declare that many prominent victims of the Titoist purges had been executed wrongly. But in making these admissions Khrushchev opened the door to new troubles.
- [The Korean War | The Second World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-korean-war-the-second-world-war/) - The Korean War, which broke out in June 1950, was in some measure a Soviet-sponsored operation, although the Soviets contributed only support and sympathy and allowed their Chinese ally to take the military lead. Korea had been a target of Soviet interest in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but the Japanese triumph over the Russians in 1905 had led instead to Japanese annexation of the country in 1910.
- [The Yugoslav Rebellion After World War Two | The Second World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-yugoslav-rebellion-after-world-war-two-the-second-world-war/) - Also in 1948, the Soviets faced a rebellion from a country that had previously seemed the most pro-Soviet of all the new communist states of eastern Europe—Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia had overthrown a pro-German government in 1941 and throughout World War II remained a scene of intense guerrilla action against the Germans and Italians.
- [The Soviet Union and the West, 1945-1970 | The Second World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-soviet-union-and-the-west-1945-1970-the-second-world-war/) - The Soviet Union moved rapidly to consolidate its territorial position. Using the Red Army, the Soviets created "people's republics" in Poland, Romania, Hungary. and Bulgaria, which became Soviet satellites.
- [The Postwar Settlement | The Second World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-postwar-settlement-the-second-world-war/) - The devastation wrought by the war, including the war in the Pacific, greatly exceeded that in World War I: at least 50 million dead, more than half of them civilians, and more than $2,000 billion in damage. Despite a sharply rising birth rate and vast programs of economic reconstruction, such losses could never be fully repaired. Moreover, new and terrifying problems faced the world. Atomic weapons, hydrogen bombs, and guided missiles made real the fear that a new general war might exterminate all life on this planet.
- [The Cold War Begins | The Second World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-cold-war-begins-the-second-world-war/) - The quarter century following World War II embraces the period conventionally identified as the cold war, even though in some respects a thaw had set in before 1970 and in others the hostilities of the cold war extended to the 1990s. A source of international insecurity, the cold war nonetheless marked a period longer than that between World Wars I and II without a renewed full-scale world war.
- [The Allied Coalition | The Second World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-allied-coalition-the-second-world-war/) - The Grand Alliance, as Churchill liked to call it, known in its last years as the United Nations, had mustered overpowering strength against Germany, Japan, Italy, and such collaborators as the Axis powers could secure in the Balkans, Southeast Asia, and western Europe. Britain and the Commonwealth, the Soviet Union, and the United States were the heart of the Allied coalition.
- [The War in the Pacific | The Second World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-war-in-the-pacific-the-second-world-war/) - V-J Day, the day of victory over Japan, was now the all out goal of Allied effort. The Soviet Union had refrained from adding Japan to its formal enemies as long as Germany was still a threat. Britain and the United States, on the other hand, were anxious for the Soviets to enter the war against the Japanese. This desire was responsible for many of the concessions made to Stalin in the last months of the German war.
- [The Final Solution](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-final-solution/) - During the International Military Tribunal, held at Nuremberg after the war to try German war criminals, a German engineer who was an eyewitness to a massacre of Jews in the Ukraine, where Ukrainian guards were used, dryly described what proved to be a relatively routine event. On 5th October 1942, when I visited the building office at Dubno my foreman told me that in the vicinity of the site, Jews from Dubno had been shot in three large pits, each about 30 metres long and 3 metres deep. About
- [The Axis on the Defensive | The Second World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-axis-on-the-defensive-the-second-world-war/) - In the last two years of the war the Axis powers were on the defensive. Both in Europe and in Asia the Allies attacked with land forces along definite lines of march campaigns of the traditional kind. But the way for these armies was made easier by two new factors in warfare: air power and modern propaganda, or psychological warfare. Air bombardment, at least until the atom bomb at Hiroshima, was never the perfect weapon that the prophets of air power had predicted.
- [Victory for the United Nations | The Second World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/victory-for-the-united-nations-the-second-world-war/) - There were several turning points in the struggle thereafter. The earliest as a series of naval actions in which Japanese expansion was stopped. In these actions, carrier-based American airplanes played a decisive role.
- [The United States Enters the War | The Second World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-united-states-enters-the-war-the-second-world-war/) - Although the United States had a strong isolationist element and some Nazi sympathizers, American opinion had, from the very beginning of the attack on Poland in 1939, been far more nearly unanimous against the Germans and Italians than it had been against the Central Powers in 1914. With the fall of France in 1940, anti-Axis sentiment grew stronger, reinforced by a growing belief that if Hitler won in Europe, the United States would be his next victim.
- [The Mediterranean and Soviet Campaigns](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-mediterranean-and-soviet-campaigns/) - Hitler now faced the possibility of a long stalemate. He turned at first to the strategy of getting at Britain through its Mediterranean lifeline to India and the East. His ally Mussolini invaded Greece from Albania in October 1940 without informing Hitler. The Greeks pushed the Italians back halfway across Albania, but the Germans rescued Mussolini.
- [The Battle of Britain | The Second World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-battle-of-britain-the-second-world-war/) - The Germans had not really worked out a plan for dealing with Britain. Hitler seems to have believed that with France out of the war, Britain would make a separate, compromise peace in which Germany would dominate the Continent of Europe and Britain would retain its overseas empire.
- [Winston Churchill's Leadership](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/winston-churchills-leadership/) - One skill of the highest value to leadership is the ability to inspire others with one's own example, and with one's oratory. Winston Churchill was a superb writer and public speaker. On May 13, 1940, he gave the House of Commons his fearsome prescription for victory. I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this Government: "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat." We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering.
- [Early Successes of the Axis | The Second World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/early-successes-of-the-axis-the-second-world-war/) - The first campaign of World War II reached its expected conclusion. No one had seriously expected isolated Poland to stand up for long against the German and Soviet armed forces or expected Britain and France to act rapidly enough to help their Polish ally decisively. Yet the speed of the German conquest surprised almost everyone. The Luftwaffe (air force) soon gained absolute command of the air and used it to disrupt Polish communications and to spread terror with its dive bombers. Special fully motorized German task forces swept through the less mobile Poles.
- [World War II, 1939-1942 | The Second World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/world-war-ii-1939-1942-the-second-world-war/) - Since military experts tend to prepare for the last war in planning for the next, both France and Germany in the 1930s built confronting lines of fortifications on their common frontier. The Maginot line on the French side and the Siegfried line on the German were far more formidable than were the trenches of 1914 to 1918. With the outbreak of hostilities, most people expected that the war would be decided primarily in the area between France and Germany, and that it would be a closely confined war, perhaps quite brief with at most only diversionary activity in other parts of the world.
- [The Final Step: Poland, 1939 | The Second World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-final-step-poland-1939-the-second-world-war/) - Poland was clearly going to be Hitler's next victim. The Germans regarded the Polish Corridor dividing East Prussia from the rest of Germany as an affront; so, too, was the separation from Germany of the free city of Danzig, German in language and tradition, on the edge of the Polish Corridor. On March 23, 1939, Hitler took the port town of Memel from Poland's northern neighbor, Lithuania. At the end of the month, the British and French responded by assuring Poland of aid in the event of a German attack.
- [A Seventh Step: Czechoslovakia Dismembered, 1938-1939 | The Second World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/a-seventh-step-czechoslovakia-dismembered-1938-1939-the-second-world-war/) - The Czechoslovak republic was the only state in central or eastern Europe where parliamentary democracy had succeeded after World War I. It had inherited some of the most highly developed industrial regions of the old Habsburg Empire; consequently, its economy was far better balanced between industry and agriculture than were those of the other states of eastern Europe.
- [A Sixth Step: Anschluss, 1938 | The Second World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/a-sixth-step-anschluss-1938-the-second-world-war/) - The immediate origins of World War II lay, however, in the mounting series of German aggressions. Hitler had begun openly rebuilding the German armed forces in 1935. Three years later he felt strong enough to make his first open effort at expansion. Ever since 1918 there had been a strong movement among Austrians for union (Anschluss) with Germany. This movement had been opposed by Italy and France, though the Rome-Berlin Axis lessened Mussolini's opposition to Anschluss.
- [A Fifth Step: The Marco Polo Bridge, 1937 | The Second World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/a-fifth-step-the-marco-polo-bridge-1937-the-second-world-war/) - The war between China and Japan had fallen into a lull when, on the night of July 7, 1937, a skirmish between troops of the two nations at the Marco Polo Bridge near Peking led to full-scale war once again.
- [A Fourth Step: The Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 | The Second World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/a-fourth-step-the-spanish-civil-war-1936-1939-the-second-world-war/) - The Spanish Civil War, which broke out in July 1936, was the emotional catalyst that aroused millions of men and women all over the Western world. The war pitted fascists, monarchists, and conservatives of the right against socialists, communists, anarchists, and a few liberals of the left.
- [A Third Step: Ethiopia, 1935 | The Second World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/a-third-step-ethiopia-1935-the-second-world-war/) - Meanwhile, the Italians struck in Ethiopia, where an independent state had precariously maintained itself largely because its imperial neighbors—Britain, France, and Italy—would neither agree to divide it nor let any one of the three swallow it whole.
- [A Second Step: German Rearmament, 1935-1936 | The Second World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/a-second-step-german-rearmament-1935-1936-the-second-world-war/) - The next breach in the League's structure was made by Germans-. In October 1933 Hitler withdrew from the League On March 16, 1935, he denounced the clauses of the Treaty of Versailles that limited German armaments and began openly rebuilding the German armed forces.
- [A First Step: Manchuria, 1931 | The Second World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/a-first-step-manchuria-1931-the-second-world-war/) - The first decisive step along the road to World War II was the Japanese seizure of Manchuria in 1931. Henry L. Stimson (1867-1950), President Hoover's secretary of state, responded to the seizure by announcing that the United States would recognize no gains made by armed force. Stimson hoped that Britain and the other democracies might follow this American lead, but his hopes were largely disappointed. The League of Nations did send a commission headed by the earl of Lytton (1876-1947); the Lytton Report of 1932 condemned the Japanese act as aggression.
- [The Road to War, 1931-1939 | The Second World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-road-to-war-1931-1939-the-second-world-war/) - By the mid-1930s, many commentators believed that a second world war was inevitable. A series of interconnected events, in China and Ethiopia, in Germany, Austria, and Spain, and sometimes faltering responses by Britain, France, the United States, and other nations, brought full- scale war ever closer. Between 1931 and 1939, these events precipitated the world once again into war.
- [Soviet Foreign Policy Before World War Two | The Second World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/soviet-foreign-policy-before-world-war-two-the-second-world-war/) - In 1919 Lenin founded the Third International, known thereafter as the Comintern. It summoned communists all over the world to unite against the "bourgeois cannibals" of capitalism. Gregory Zinoviev was put in charge, and his chief assistants were mainly Russians.
- [The West Between The Wars | The Second World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-west-between-the-wars-the-second-world-war/) - What breaks down the argument that the iniquities of Versailles alone explain the Second World War is the so-called era of fulfillment. The landmark of this era was a series of treaties negotiated in 1925 at Locarno in Switzerland.
- [International Politics between the Wars | The Second World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/international-politics-between-the-wars-the-second-world-war/) - During the first part of the twenty years' truce, international leadership of the democratic world rested with Britain and France. Though supported in principle and at times in practice by the United States, they were increasingly unable to stem the rise of powers hostile to their preferred form of government—Italy, Germany, the Soviet Union, Japan. In the end, Germany once more waged aggressive warfare against the major Allies of 1918, though this time it was allied with two former enemies, Italy and Japan, each disappointed with its share of the spoils of 1918.
- [The Second World War and Its Aftermath](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-second-world-war-and-its-aftermath/) - World War II was, in many ways, a result of the flawed peace settlement at Versailles, though other causes, such as the Great Depression, also played a role. The cold war following World War II was in some ways a continuation in another form of the war of 1939-1945, though it was also in part a reversion to the Western fear of Bolshevism so prevalent in the 1920s. So troubled were international relations for the twenty years after 1919, and so closely in time did the second world war follow on the first, that the interval between the two is sometimes called the "twenty years' truce."
- [Summary | The Democracies and the Non-Western World](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/summary-the-democracies-and-the-non-western-world/) - Great Britain was the first nation to suffer from the ills of postindustrial development. In the postwar period Conservatives wanted to preserve private industry and advocated protective tariffs against foreign competition. Labour called for nationalization of key industries. Political democratization continued in Britain with all men over age twenty-one receiving the vote. Women over age twenty-one finally gained equal voting rights in 1928. A slight economic recovery in the later 1920s was followed by the Great Depression.
- [Naming and Nationalism](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/naming-and-nationalism/) - One aspect of both modernization and nationalism is to change names that have long been used in a way now regarded as derogatory, false, not properly indicative of the values of the new society, or simply out of date as new forms of transliteration replace old in the West.
- [Democracy at the Village Level](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/democracy-at-the-village-level/) - Mohandas Gandhi was in pursuit of Swaraj (independence), and he wrote of it often. In 1921 he sought to explain "the secret of Swaraj." The householder has to revise his or her ideas of fashion and, at least for the time being, suspend the use of fine garments which are not always worn to cover the body. He should train himself to see art and beauty in the spotlessly white Khaddar and to appreciate its soft unevenness. The householder must learn to use cloth as a miser uses his hoard.
- [The Middle East After World War One | The Non-Western World](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-middle-east-after-world-war-one-the-non-western-world/) - The European powers had a long history of attempts to secure an imperial stake in the Middle East. Before 1914 the region was still poverty stricken. But by 1914 the first discoveries of petroleum had been made; today the Middle East contains the richest nations in the world.
- [India After World War One | The Non-Western World](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/india-after-world-war-one-the-non-western-world/) - In India World War I had marked a crucial turning point. Indians, growing in numbers and educated in the Western tradition, responded to Allied propaganda in favor of the war to save the world for democracy. Monetary inflation and other war dislocations fostered growing agitation for self-government.
- [China After World War One | The Non-Western World](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/china-after-world-war-one-the-non-western-world/) - China, meantime, was engaged in a great struggle to free itself from the hold of the Western colonial powers. The struggle was much more than a simple conflict between nationalists and imperialists. It was complicated by two additional elements in particular—the increasing threat to Chinese independence from an expansionist Japan and increasing communist intervention in Chinese politics. China faced the prospect of simply exchanging one set of imperial overlords for another.
- [Japan After World War One | The Non-Western World](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/japan-after-world-war-one-the-non-western-world/) - Alone among non-Western peoples, the Japanese maintained full political independence during the golden age of imperialism. More than that, as the twentieth century opened, Japan was experiencing the industrial revolution and advancing to the status of a great power, a full (if unwelcome) participant in the struggle for imperial position. Since the Japanese made these impressive accomplishments without radically altering their traditional oligarchical and absolutist political structure, they remained fully "of the East," even as they became an integral part of Western history.
- [The Non-Western World And Western History](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-non-western-world-and-western-history/) - The interwar years were marked by a fundamental change in the relations between those nations associated with "Western civilization" and the nations and peoples of Asia and the Middle East, and to a lesser extent, of Africa. Though virtually the whole of the world had been brought into the European and American orbits during the age of imperialism, people in the West had not recognized that the societies of Asia and Africa had histories of their own.
- [The New Deal In America, 1933-1941 | The Democracies](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-new-deal-in-america-1933-1941-the-democracies/) - Victory seemed to give the Democrats a clear mandate to marshal the resources of the federal government against the depression. Franklin Roosevelt took office on March 4, 1933, during a financial crisis that had closed banks all over the country. He at once summoned Congress to an emergency session and declared a bank holiday.
- [The Great Depression In America, 1923-1933 | The Democracies](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-great-depression-in-america-1923-1933-the-democracies/) - In domestic affairs, the 1920s were a time of frantic prosperity for the many who played the stock market. These were the years of Prohibition, of the speakeasy and the bootlegger, when the American media—newspapers, magazines, radio, and motion pictures—gave the impression that the entire nation was absorbed by short skirts, loosened sexual mores, new dances, and bathtub gin.
- [American Isolationism and Internationalism, 1920-1933 | The Democracies](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/american-isolationism-and-internationalism-1920-1933-the-democracies/) - American revulsion against war also took the form of isolationism, the wish to withdraw from international politics outside the Western Hemisphere. The country was swept by a wave of desire to get back to "normalcy," as President Warren Harding phrased it.
- [The United States After World War One | The Democracies](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-united-states-after-world-war-one-the-democracies/) - Neither the human nor the material losses of the United States in World War I were at all comparable with those of Britain and France. American casualties were 115,000 dead and 206,000 wounded; the comparable French figures were 1,385,000 dead and 3,044,000 wounded in a population one-third as large. Moreover, in purely material terms, the United States probably gained from the war. Yet in some ways the American postwar revulsion against the war was as marked as that in Britain, France, and defeated Germany.
- [The Impact of World War One In France, 1918-1928 | The Democracies](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-impact-of-world-war-one-in-france-1918-1928-the-democracies/) - France wanted revenge on Germany in every possible way. The French tried to extract reparations to the last possible sum, undeterred by the arguments of economists that Germany could not pay. But France insisted even more on keeping Germany isolated in international relations and without the physical means to wage war.
- [France After World War One | The Democracies](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/france-after-world-war-one-the-democracies/) - In France both World War I and the postwar difficulties caused even more serious dislocation than they did in Britain. France had lost proportionately more in human lives and in material damage than had any other major belligerent. Two million Frenchmen in the prime of life were either killed or so seriously mutilated as to be incapable of normal living. In a land of only 39 million with an already low birth rate, this human loss affected all phases of activity. Three hundred thousand houses and twenty thousand factories or shops were destroyed.
- [The British Commonwealth, 1931-1939 | The Democracies](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-british-commonwealth-1931-1939-the-democracies/) - Constitutional recognition of the essential independence of the dominions seemed to make them more loyal. The status acquired by the dominions with the Statute of Westminster in 1931 was symbolized by a change in terminology. They were no longer to be considered parts of the British Empire, but free members of the British Commonwealth of Nations. In this new relationship, Britain would have to negotiate with the Commonwealth countries about tariffs, trade conditions, or immigration as with foreign countries.
- [The Irish Question, 1916-1949 | The Democracies](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-irish-question-1916-1949-the-democracies/) - The years between the wars were of great importance for Ireland. In 1916 the British put down the Easter rebellion with grim determination, creating nearly a hundred Irish political martyrs. The British government did not dare extend conscription to Ireland until April 1918, and that attempt led Irish nationalists to boycott the British Parliament. The crisis of 1914, postponed by the war, was again at hand.
- [Politics between the Wars In Great Britain, 1918-1936 | The Democracies](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/politics-between-the-wars-in-great-britain-1918-1936-the-democracies/) - Neither the Conservatives nor the Labourites were able to carry out their full platforms. The Conservatives were frustrated by the refusal of the Commonwealth countries to go any further than to accept certain limited imperial preferences.
- [The Conservative and Labour Programs In Great Britain | The Democracies](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-conservative-and-labour-programs-in-great-britain-the-democracies/) - Against the background of economic depression, British domestic politics during the twenty years' truce continued to display a fairly clear class basis. The Conservatives, still often called Tories, tended to get the support of aristocrats and of middle-class people, who generally wanted to attack new problems with traditional methods and with a minimum of government intervention. The Labour party tended to get the support of trade unionists and of intellectuals from all classes, who demanded that the government intervene more vigorously in the economy.
- [The Postwar Economic Crisis In Great Britain, to 1921 | The Democracies](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-postwar-economic-crisis-in-great-britain-to-1921-the-democracies/) - Besides tragic human losses from the war, Great Britain's economic losses were grave. The national debt after the war was ten times that of 1914. Many British investments abroad had been liquidated to purchase food and war materials. Forty percent of the great British merchant fleet had been destroyed by enemy action.
- [Great Britain After World War One | The Democracies](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/great-britain-after-world-war-one-the-democracies/) - Though on the winning side in World War I, Britain staggered from economic crisis to crisis. Immigration inward was steadily offset by emigration outward, especially to North America. Despite efforts to recover, the steam had left the British economy, which grew at half its prewar rate.
- [The Democracies and the Non-Western World](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-democracies-and-the-non-western-world/) - Idealists like President Wilson HAD expected that the collapse of the Romanov, Habsburg, and Hohenzollern empires would automatically ensure an increase in the number of democratic states. But, instead, much of Europe came under regimes that were hostile to liberal democracy. In the 1920s and 1930s the core of democracy remained the great North Atlantic powers—Britain, France, and the United States; the smaller states of Scandinavia; the Low Countries; Switzerland; and the inheritors of the British tradition—Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
- [Summary | Between The World Wars](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/summary-between-the-world-wars/) - The period from 1919 to 1939 was marked by the success of movements to the right. Although these movements were products of different societies, they had features in common: disillusionment with democracy for its failure to provide stability, aggressive nationalism, a sense of grievance, totalitarian government, and racism.
- [The Soviet Authoritarian State, 1931-1943 | Between The World Wars](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-soviet-authoritarian-state-1931-1943-between-the-world-wars/) - Stalin's program was not achieved without opposition. The crisis of 1931 and 1932, when industrial goals were not being met and starvation swept the countryside, created discontent inside the regime as well as outside. A few officials circulated memoranda advocating Stalin's removal as general secretary, an act that the party had the right to perform. Stalin jailed them for conspiracy, and one leading Bolshevik committed suicide. Stalin's second wife reproached him at this time for the ravages that the terror was working, and she, too, committed suicide in 1932.
- [Mobilizing the Soviet Nation, 1928-1940 | Between The World Wars](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/mobilizing-the-soviet-nation-1928-1940-between-the-world-wars/) - The Communist party congress also ended NEP and proclaimed that the new "socialist offensive" would begin in 1928. The twelve years between 1928 and 1940 were to see massive changes in Russian life—collectivized agriculture, rapid industrialization, forced labor, great purges, the extermination of all political opposition, the building of an authoritarian state apparatus, and a return of bourgeois standards in almost every aspect of social and intellectual life.
- [The Struggle for Power: Stalin against Trotsky, 1921-1927  | Between The World Wars](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-struggle-for-power-stalin-against-trotsky-1921-1927-between-the-world-wars/) - Lenin died in January 1924. During the last two years of his life, he played an ever-lessening role. Involved in the controversy over NEP was also the question of succession to Lenin. Thus an answer to the questions of how to organize industry, what role to give organized labor, and what relations to maintain with the capitalist world depended not only upon an estimate of the actual situation but also upon a guess as to what answer was likely to be politically advantageous. From this maneuvering the secretary of the Communist party, Joseph Stalin, was to emerge victorious by 1928.
- [Authoritarianism in The Soviet Union | Between The World Wars](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/authoritarianism-in-the-soviet-union-between-the-world-wars/) - During the twenty-year crisis between the wars, an already authoritarian government in the Soviet Union became a virtual dictatorship, though one of the left rather than the right. From 1914 Russia had been in turmoil. By 1921, with the end of civil war, industry and agriculture were crippled, distribution was near a breakdown, and the communist regime was perilously near the loss of public support.
- [Other Authoritarian Regimes in Europe | Between The World Wars](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/other-authoritarian-regimes-in-europe-between-the-world-wars/) - In Poland Marshal Josef Pilsudski led a military coup against the democratic government on May 11, 1926, and headed a military dictatorship that became ever more authoritarian.
- [Yugoslavia | Between The World Wars](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/yugoslavia-between-the-world-wars/) - In the new kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, proclaimed in December 1918, there came together for the first time in one state the former south-Slav subjects of Austria and Hungary with those of the former kingdom of Serbia. This was in most respects a satisfactory state from the territorial point of view; revisionism therefore was not a major issue. But the new state had to create a governmental system that would satisfy the aspirations of each of its nationality groups. Over this problem democracy broke down and a dictatorship was established.
- [Hungary | Between The World Wars](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/hungary-between-the-world-wars/) - On October 31, 1918, eleven days before the armistice, Count Michael Karolyi (1895-1955) became prime minister of Hungary, after that country had severed its ties with Austria. One of the richest of the great landed nobles, Karolyi was also a democrat.
- [Austria | Between The World Wars](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/austria-between-the-world-wars/) - The Austria that was left at the end of World War I had a population of about 8 million, about 2 million of whom lived in Vienna. Long the market for an enormous hinterland and the supplier of industrial finished goods to the agricultural provinces, Vienna was now cut off from its former territories by political boundaries and tariff walls.
- [Successor States to the Habsburg Empire | Between The World Wars](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/successor-states-to-the-habsburg-empire-between-the-world-wars/) - The triumphs of the authoritarian right in eastern Europe are explained partly by the lack of a parliamentary tradition; partly by the failure to solve grievous economic problems; and partly by a popular fear of Bolshevism. Perhaps as important as all the other factors put together was the initial impression created by the successes of Mussolini and Hitler. The way to succeed, at least after 1935, seemed to be to put on a uniform, proclaim a doctrine of extreme nationalism, and launch a war of nerves against opponents and neighbors.
- [Authoritarianism in Portugal | Between The World Wars](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/authoritarianism-in-portugal-between-the-world-wars/) - In the meantime, any Falangist designs on Portugal were blocked by the rise to power there of another dictator, Antonio de Oliveira Salazar (1889-1970). Portugal had participated in World War I, and the republican regime, which had driven King Manoel II (r. 1908-1910) from the country in 1910, governed until forced from office by a military coup in 1926.
- [Authoritarianism in Spain | Between The World Wars](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/authoritarianism-in-spain-between-the-world-wars/) - In 1918 Spain was still a nation in which local loyalties contested with national sentiment. Catalonians and Basques continued to work toward separate states, and though the Catholic religion had united Spaniards against Muslims in the Middle Ages and against Protestants in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the church was no longer so strong a force for unity.
- [Authoritarianism in Iberia | Between The World Wars](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/authoritarianism-in-iberia-between-the-world-wars/) - In the troubled years between the wars, nondemocratic authoritarian governments emerged not only in Italy and Germany but also in Spain, in Portugal, in the successor states to the Habsburg Empire (except Czechoslovakia), and in the other states of eastern and southeastern Europe.
- [Ten Commandments for Fascists](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/ten-commandments-for-fascists/) - By 1934 the fascists had pressed their campaign to the point where they could announce a set of ten "secular commandments" that emphasized their militarism, the idea of the garrison state, and the cult of the personality of it Duce (the Leader). 1. Know that the Fascist, and in particular the soldier, must not believe in perpetual peace. 2. Days of imprisonment are always deserved. 3. The nation serves even as sentinel over a can of petrol. 4. A companion must be a brother, first, because he lives with you, and secondly because he thinks like you.
- [Hitler's Racism and Political Theory in Practice | Between The World Wars](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/hitlers-racism-and-political-theory-in-practice-between-the-world-wars/) - Soon after the passage of the enabling law, Hitler struck the first of his many blows against the Jews. In a country of approximately 60 million people, practicing Jews were less than 1 percent of the population. The Jews had become leading members of the professions and the arts and had made outstanding contributions to German culture. Since most Jews were patriotic Germans, many of them would probably have become Nazis if they had been permitted to. Instead, anti-Semitic doctrines required their ruthless elimination.
- [Hitler's Dictatorship | Between The World Wars](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/hitlers-dictatorship-between-the-world-wars/) - Now Hitler could act as he chose, unimpeded by the laws. He instituted a ministry of propaganda under Josef Goebbels (1897-1945). He stripped the state governments of their powers and appointed governors from Berlin who could override the state legislatures. When Hindenburg died in August 1934, Hitler became president as well as chancellor, but he preferred to use the title Der Fiihrer. This new move was approved by a plebiscite in which Hitler obtained 88 percent of the votes.
- [Germany Under Hitler, 1933-1939 | Between The World Wars](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/germany-under-hitler-1933-1939-between-the-world-wars/) - Hitler's first weeks in power were devoted to transforming his chancellorship into a dictatorship. He dissolved the Reichstag and called for new elections. During the campaign, opponents of the Nazis were intimidated by violence and threats and were denied radio time and free use of the press. On the night of February 27, a fire mysteriously broke out in the Reichstag building. When he heard the news, Hitler exclaimed, "Now I have them," for he knew that the fire could be blamed on the communists.
- [Germany and World Depression, 1929-1933 | Between The World Wars](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/germany-and-world-depression-1929-1933-between-the-world-wars/) - But the economic depression had begun to knock the foundations out from under prosperity and moderation. An economic depression is a sharp and deep decline in trade and general prosperity. In the worldwide depression of 1873 to 1896, prices had fallen, agricultural distress had intensified—made worse in Europe by bad harvests followed by wet summers and by competition from Argentine and Australian meat and Canadian and American grain—and banks had collapsed, especially in Austria and France.
- [Economic Recovery, 1924-1929 | Between The World Wars](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/economic-recovery-1924-1929-between-the-world-wars/) - Communist disorders and the Nazi beer hall putsch marked the last phase of the inflation period. Shortly before Hitler's move, Stresemann had given extraordinary financial powers to two tough-minded centrists, Hans Luther (1879-1962), minister of finance, and Hjalmar Schacht (1877-1970), banker and fiscal expert.
- [Years of Instability, 1918-1923 | Between The World Wars](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/years-of-instability-1918-1923-between-the-world-wars/) - Germans were shocked by their defeat in 1918. The military authorities who ran the German Empire during the last years of the war had not revealed to the public the extent of German reverses on the battlefield, and no fighting had taken place on German soil.
- [The Weimar Republic: Germany, 1918-1933 | Between The World Wars](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-weimar-republic-germany-1918-1933-between-the-world-wars/) - Two days before the armistice of November 11, 1918, the German Social Democrats proclaimed a republic. On July 31, 1919, this republic adopted a constitution drawn up by a national assembly at Weimar; it is therefore known as the Weimar Republic.
- [Fascist Dictatorship and Corporative State | Between The World Wars](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/fascist-dictatorship-and-corporative-state-between-the-world-wars/) - Mussolini gradually turned his premiership into a dictatorship. A month after coming to office he obtained dictatorial powers that were supposed to last only until the end of 1923. Although the constitution theoretically remained in force, Mussolini took over the administration.
- [Comparing Fascism and Communism](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/comparing-fascism-and-communism/) - Speaking at Naples in October 1922, Mussolini recognized that at the heart of fascism, as at the heart of nationalism, lay a vital lie—a belief held so strongly that it had the force from truth. He referred to this belief as a myth that, if universally accepted, would become reality:
- [The Rise of Mussolini | Between The World Wars](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-rise-of-mussolini-between-the-world-wars/) - Some Italians, supporting Gabriele d'Annunzio (18631938), seized the city of Fiume, which had not been awarded to Italy by the Treaty of London. D'Annunzio ran his own government in Fiume until the end of 1920. In November 1920, when the Italian government signed the Treaty of Rapallo with Yugoslavia by which Fiume was to become a free city, Italian forces drove d'Annunzio out. But d'Annunzio's techniques of force, haranguing of mobs from a balcony, straight-arm salute, black shirts, rhythmic cries, and plans for conquest inspired Benito Mussolini (1883-1945), founder of Italian fascism.
- [The First Triumph of Fascism: Italy | Between The World Wars](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-first-triumph-of-fascism-italy-between-the-world-wars/) - Although Italy was one of the victorious Allies, it finished World War I with a sense of defeat. Six hundred and fifty thousand Italians had been killed and a million wounded. Italian industry slumped immediately after the war, and within a few months 10 percent of the industrial workers were unemployed.
- [Between The World Wars](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/between-the-world-wars/) - The Years Between World War I and World War II were marked more by movements to the extreme right than by movements to the extreme left, despite the Western democracies' fear of Bolshevism. Beginning in the early 1920s a fascist regime took over in Italy and by the 1930s in Germany and Spain.
- [Summary | The First World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/summary-the-first-world-war/) - The creation of a unified Italy and Germany altered the balance of power in Europe in the 1860s and 1870s. Nationalism, imperialism, great-power alliances, and public opinion—influenced by newspapers and photos—helped fuel tensions. By the early 1900s the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente had taken shape. A naval arms race between Germany and Britain as well as diplomatic and military crises in Morocco, the Balkans, and elsewhere contributed to an uneasy peace.
- [Civil War, 1918-1921 | The Russian Revolution of 1917](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/civil-war-1918-1921-the-russian-revolution-of-1917/) - During the months following Brest-Litovsk, disorder in the countryside as a result of requisitioning and class warfare was swelled by the outbreak of open civil strife. During the war a legion of Czechs resident in the country and of deserters from the Habsburg armies had been formed inside Russia.
- [Lenin's Address at the Finland Station](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/lenins-address-at-the-finland-station/) - On the day Lenin arrived at the Finland station in Petrograd, he declared that the World War must be transformed into a series of civil wars, the bourgeois revolution into a social revolution, so that a crisis of European capitalism might be precipitated. In a memorable confrontation, he instantly revealed that he would not accept the more moderate expectations of the Petrograd Soviet. The following account is drawn from the notebooks of a journalist who was on the spot:
- [War Communism, 1917-1920 | The Russian Revolution of 1917](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/war-communism-1917-1920-the-russian-revolution-of-1917/) - The first period of Soviet history, which runs from the end of 1917 to the end of 1920, is usually called the period of war communism, or military communism. The term implies that the main features of the period were deter- mined by military events; civil war raged, and foreign powers intervened on Russian soil.
- [The November Revolution | The Russian Revolution of 1917](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-november-revolution-the-russian-revolution-of-1917/) - The provisional government faced a crisis. Kerensky, now war minister, emerged as the dominant leader. He failed to realize that it was no longer possible to restore the morale of the armies. A new offensive ordered on July 1 collapsed as soldiers refused to obey orders, deserted their units, and hurried home to their villages, eager to seize the land. The soviets became gradually more and more Bolshevik in their views. Although the June congress of soviets in Petrograd was less than 10 percent Bolshevik, the Bolshevik slogans of peace, bread, and freedom won overwhelming support.
- [Lenin | The Russian Revolution of 1917](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/lenin-the-russian-revolution-of-1917/) - The most important of the returning Bolshevik exiles was Lenin. His real name was Vladimir Ilyich Ulianov (1870-1924), but in his writings he used the pen name Lenin, to which he sometimes prefixed the initial N, a Russian abbreviation for "nobody," to tell his readers that he was using a pseudonym.
- [Simple Errors: The West and Russian History](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/simple-errors-the-west-and-russian-history/) - The way in which certain simple matters of fact are sometimes dealt with in the West when the subject is Russia illustrates the problem of understanding the historical development of a relatively isolated nation. For example, for years some writers insisted that Lenin's first name was Nikolai or Nicholas because of his use of the initial N, not understanding Russian and communist customs concerning abbreviations and pseudonyms. This "discovery" was repeated in the American press as recently as 1983.
- [The Provisional Government | The Russian Revolution of 1917](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-provisional-government-the-russian-revolution-of-1917/) - The provisional government—which held office between mid-March and early November 1917—was a total failure. Russian moderates had no experience of authority. They were separated by a great cultural gulf from the lower classes. Their opportunity to rule came amid a fearful war, which they felt they had to pursue while reconstructing and democratizing the enormous and unwieldy Russian Empire.
- [The March Revolution | The Russian Revolution of 1917](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-march-revolution-the-russian-revolution-of-1917/) - By February only ten days' supply of flour was left in the capital, and the regional commander set up a rationing system. Long lines, closed shops, and the prospect of starvation led to disorder. In the Duma "unfit ministers" were attacked. The left-wing deputies turned to the secret organizations, which had already been working up public opinion against the government's dismissal of thousands of factory workers after a strike. The strikers demonstrated in the streets, and thousands of other workers, led by the wives of the workers, massed in a march that was broken up by mounted police.
- [The Immediate Background to Revolution, 1914-1917 | The Russian Revolution of 1917](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-immediate-background-to-revolution-1914-1917-the-russian-revolution-of-1917/) - Russia was geographically isolated from the munitions and supplies that would otherwise have come from the Allies. Despite Russia's great resources in agriculture and potential for industry, transportation was inadequate from the beginning, and when the trains were used to move troops, food shortages developed in the cities. Losses in battle were staggering from the first; the Russians suffered nearly 4 million casualties during the first year of war.
- [The Russian Revolution of 1917](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-russian-revolution-of-1917/) - Though Russia was shaken by domestic crisis in 1914, the country greeted the outbreak of World War I with demonstrations of national patriotism. The Duma supported the war, while the left-wing parties abstained from voting for war loans but offered to assist the national defense. Yet it was the war and the regime's failure to deal with the crises it provoked that precipitated revolution.
- [Peacemaking and Territorial Settlements, 1918-1923 | The First World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/peacemaking-and-territorial-settlements-1918-1923-the-first-world-war/) - The peace conference first met formally on January 18, 1919. Nearly thirty nations involved in the war against the Central Powers sent delegates. Russia was not represented. The defeated nations took no part in the deliberations; the Germans, in particular, were given little chance to comment on or criticize the terms offered them. German anger over this failure of the Allies to accept their new republic was to play a large part in the ultimate rise of Adolf Hitler.
- [Postwar Instability | The First World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/postwar-instability-the-first-world-war/) - The most worrisome crises were in Russia. No sooner had the Germans been forced to withdraw from the regions they had gained at Brest-Litovsk than the Allies sent detachments to various points along the perimeter of Russia—on the Black Sea, on the White Sea in the far north, and on the Pacific. The Allies' dread of final Bolshevik success and of the possible spread of Bolshevism westward added to the tensions at Versailles.
- [The Peace Settlements | The First World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-peace-settlements-the-first-world-war/) - The warring powers met at Versailles to settle with the Germans and at other châteaux around Paris to settle with the rest. Peace congresses never meet in a world that is really at peace, for there is always an aftermath of local war, crises, and disturbances. In 1918-1919 these were so numerous and acute that they conditioned the work of the peace congresses. In addition, throughout 1918-1919 an influenza epidemic more devastating than any disease since the Black Death swept across the world, taking 20 million lives and disrupting families and work everywhere.
- [The Home Fronts | The First World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-home-fronts-the-first-world-war/) - In World War I soldiers and sailors were, for the most part, civilians, unused to military ways. Behind the front—subject to rationing and regimentation in daily living—families, too, were part of this great "total war." They, too, bore up under it, though in France in 1917, after the bloody failure of the "one big push," civilian and military discontent almost broke French morale. And in Germany the armistice was the result, in part, of a psychological collapse under intolerable spiritual and material pressures.
- [Allied Victory: The Entry of the United States | The First World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/allied-victory-the-entry-of-the-united-states-the-first-world-war/) - Both sides knew that the entry of the United States, with its fresh forces and vast industrial capacity, would be telling, were the war to last another year. But the Central Powers anticipated victory before American forces could be in the field.
- [Allied Victory: New Weapons | The First World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/allied-victory-new-weapons-the-first-world-war/) - This war also saw the beginnings of air warfare. German dirigibles (known as Zeppelins) raided London many times in 1916 and 1917, and both sides made airplane bombing raids on nearby towns. But the total damage was relatively light and did not affect the final result. The airplane was more important for scouting. The fighter plane was greatly improved during the war, and a base was laid for the development of the modern air force.
- [Allied Victory: The War at Sea | The First World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/allied-victory-the-war-at-sea-the-first-world-war/) - In the long run British sea power and American supplies proved decisive. The Allied command of the sea made it possible to draw on the resources of the rest of the world, and in particular to transfer large numbers of British and later American troops to the crucial western front.
- [The "Blank Check"](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-blank-check/) - There is some debate among historians as to just how sweeping the "blank check" given to Austria by Germany actually was. A report by the Austrian ambassador on his meeting with the kaiser at Potsdam on July 5, 1914, indicates what the Austrian believed to be the case:
- [Military Campaigns, The Near East and the Colonies | The First World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/military-campaigns-the-near-east-and-the-colonies-the-first-world-war/) - This truly worldwide war, fought in the Near East, Africa, and the Far East, as well as in every ocean, made it clear that non-Continental events were no longer mere sideshows. The war in the Near East, in particular, would unleash nationalisms that continue to the present day.
- [Military Campaigns, The Dardanelles and the Balkans | The First World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/military-campaigns-the-dardanelles-and-the-balkans-the-first-world-war/) - Ultimately more significant was the Dardanelles campaign of 1915. With the entry of Turkey into the war on the side of the Central Powers in November 1914, and with the French able to hold the western front against the Germans, a group of British leaders decided that British strength should be put into amphibious operations in the Aegean area, where a strong drive could knock Turkey out of the war by the capture of Constantinople.
- [Military Campaigns, The Italian Front | The First World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/military-campaigns-the-italian-front-the-first-world-war/) - In the meantime, in April 1915 Italy had concluded with Britain, France, and Russia the secret Treaty of London, which promised the Italians Trent and Trieste plus other lands at Austro-Hungarian and Turkish expense. In May the Italians formally declared war on Austria-Hungary, and a new front was added along the Austro-Italian frontier at the head of the Adriatic.
- [Military Campaigns, The Eastern Front | The First World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/military-campaigns-the-eastern-front-the-first-world-war/) - The eastern front, where the Russians faced both the Germans and the Austrians, was crucial to Allied tenacity in the West. Millions of men were involved on both sides, and had the Russians not held out until the end of 1917, the Allies in the West could hardly have withstood the reinforcements that the Germans and Austrians would have been able to send to France and Italy. Though the war in the East was more fluid than the war in the West, even in the East there were long periods of stalemate.
- [Military Campaigns, The Western Front | The First World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/military-campaigns-the-western-front-the-first-world-war/) - The German attack through Belgium was the first stage in the plan prepared by Alfred Graf von Schlieffen (1833-1913), chief of the general staff from 1891 to 1906. The strong right wing was to take Paris and fall on the rear of the French, who would be pinned down by the left wing. With France quickly eliminated, the Germans would then unite their forces and attack the Russians, who would still be in the throes of mobilization. Britain, an island nation, would be held off and attacked if necessary.
- [Resources of the Belligerents | The First World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/resources-of-the-belligerents-the-first-world-war/) - Even before the American entry, the Allies had an overwhelming superiority in total population and resources. The Central Powers had in their own Continental lands not more than 150 million people; Britain, France, Russia, and Italy in their own Continental lands had at least 125 million more people than their enemies.
- [The Course of the War | The First World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-course-of-the-war-the-first-world-war/) - World War I took the lives of 8 million soldiers, and caused far more deaths through malnutrition, war-spawned diseases, and birth deficits arising from economic dislocations and the loss of precisely the age-group most likely to beget children. The collapse of the Russian economy, followed by widespread famine and epidemic, meant that, despite staggering military losses, northwestern Europe emerged from the war in a dominant position once again.
- [Nationalism | The First World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/nationalism-the-first-world-war/) - Why did war begin precisely where and as it did? Need all the nations that were drawn into it have participated? Which nation was primarily responsible for causing the war? Within that nation, which groups, which leaders? Given war, need it have taken the form that it did? In part because the victor writes the history, the majority of historians have blamed Germany or the tottering Austro-Hungarian Empire for the war. However, most historians do agree on certain matters concerning the outbreak of the war.
- [The Entry of Other Powers | The First World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-entry-of-other-powers-the-first-world-war/) - By August 6, when Austria declared war on Russia, all the members of the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente had entered the war, with the exception of Italy, which declared neutrality. The Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary stood against the Allies—Russia, France, Britain, and Serbia.
- [The Final Crisis, July-August 1914 | The First World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-final-crisis-july-august-1914-the-first-world-war/) - The diplomats and statesmen were drawn into war because they believed that a diplomatic defeat or loss of face for their nation was worse than war. Austria-Hungary believed that the Serbian government had had some suspicion of Princip's assassination plot and should have given Austria warning.
- [Triple Alliance and Triple Entente, 1879-1918 | The First World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/triple-alliance-and-triple-entente-1879-1918-the-first-world-war/) - After 1871 Bismarck sought to isolate France diplomatically by building a series of alliances from which it was excluded. He sought to keep on good terms with both Austria and Russia, and, what was more difficult, to keep both these powers on good terms with each other. Since both wanted to dominate the Balkans, Bismarck's task was formidable.
- [Shifting National Self-Images | The First World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/shifting-national-self-images-the-first-world-war/) - Nationalism and the accompanying shifts in the balance of power both influenced and were profoundly influenced by public opinion, often shaped by the public press. Throughout western Europe and in the United States a jingoistic press, often intent on increasing circulation, competed for "news," and not all papers were careful to separate the verifiable from the rumor, the emotional atrocity story (even when true) from the background account that would explain the context for the emotion.
- [Causes Of The First World War | The First World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/causes-of-the-first-world-war-the-first-world-war/) - One factor that made war more likely was the unification of Germany and of Italy. The creation of these two new major states altered the balance of power in the European state system; the efforts of statesmen during the next forty years to adjust the system ultimately proved unsuccessful. The older established powers were unwilling to give up their own claims, and after 1850, with the principle of national sovereignty well established, smaller western European states were no longer open to annexation by the great powers.
- [The First World War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-first-world-war/) - In June 28, 1914, the Habsburg arch duke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, and his wife, Sophie Chotek, were assassinated in the streets of Sarajevo, capital of the province of Bosnia, which had been occupied by Austria-Hungary since 1878. The assassin, Gavrilo Princip (1895-1918), was a Serbian nationalist. The Austro-Hungarian government, alarmed by the ambitions of Serbian nationalists, took the occasion of the assassination to issue a severe ultimatum to Serbia.
- [Summary | Modern Empires and Imperialism](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/summary-modern-empires-and-imperialism/) - In the nineteenth century Britain emerged as a parliamentary democracy. The Reform Bills of 1832 and 1867 accomplished revolutionary changes without violence. The cabinet controlled Parliament; representation was increased through the extension of suffrage and the reform of electoral districts. In the stable political atmosphere of England, the two-party system grew. Disraeli and Gladstone, leaders of Conservatives and Liberals respectively, dominated politics in this age of reform.
- [Empire Challenged | Modern Empires and Imperialism](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/empire-challenged-modern-empires-and-imperialism/) - By 1914 it was quite clear that many non-European peoples, including the colonies of exploitation, were beginning to reject claims of white supremacy. The concept of nationalism, new outside of Europe and the Americas, had continued to spread. In the early twentieth century it was most evident in Japan and, to some extent, China, Egypt, and India.
- [The Japanese Empire | Modern Empires and Imperialism](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-japanese-empire-modern-empires-and-imperialism/) - One more empire was being formed during the decades before World War I, the only modern empire to be created by a non-European people. Even during their long, self-imposed isolation the Japanese had maintained an interest in Western developments.
- [The United States | Modern Empires and Imperialism](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-united-states-modern-empires-and-imperialism/) - While the industrial powers of Europe were expanding overseas, the United States acquired by purchase and conquest the remainder of its Manifest Destiny—a dominion from sea to sea that was "to bring the blessings of liberty" to the entire continent. The United States believed it had a moral obligation to expand in order to extend the area of freedom against monarchical or dictatorial governments.
- [Other Continental Powers | Modern Empires and Imperialism](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/other-continental-powers-modern-empires-and-imperialism/) - Italy got very little out of the partition of Africa. Tunis, which Italy coveted, went instead to France. Italy's major effort centered on the lands at the southern end of the Red Sea, but after the defeat by the Abyssinians in 1896, Italy had to be content with a few thousand square miles, most of it desert, in Eritrea and Somaliland.
- [The French Empire | Modern Empires and Imperialism](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-french-empire-modern-empires-and-imperialism/) - During the nineteenth century France acquired a colonial empire second in area only to that of the British. France, despite frequent revolutionary changes in government, maintained an imperialist policy that added some 50 million people and close to 3.5 million square miles to the lands under the French flag. This empire was concentrated in North, West, and Equatorial Africa, and in Indochina.
- [Other Empires | Modern Empires and Imperialism](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/other-empires-modern-empires-and-imperialism/) - Most industrial nations competed with the British for imperial riches, responsibilities, and "glory." France remained Britain's primary competitor, though Germany, Italy, Belgium, Portugal, the Netherlands, the United States, and Denmark had overseas empires or colonies by the end of the century. Japan, Russia, even remnants of the Spanish empire, remained players in "the great game."
- [India, the "Crown Jewel of Empire," 1815-1915 | Modern Empires and Imperialism](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/india-the-crown-jewel-of-empire-1815-1915-modern-empires-and-imperialism/) - India was the richest of Britain's overseas possessions, the center and symbol of empire, as the imaginative Disraeli realized when in 1876 he had Queen Victoria proclaimed empress of India. It was over India that the British most often debated the merits of direct intervention versus indirect control, massive social reform imposed from without versus creation of a collaborating elite that would carry out the reforms from within, and whether nature (that is, race) or nurture (that is, environment) most determined a people's future.
- [Egypt and Africa South of the Sahara, 1859-1914 | Modern Empires and Imperialism](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/egypt-and-africa-south-of-the-sahara-1859-1914-modern-empires-and-imperialism/) - In the late nineteenth century French prospects in Egypt seemed particularly bright. Between 1859 and 1869 the private French company headed by Ferdinand de Lesseps built the Suez Canal, which united the Mediterranean with the Red Sea and shortened the sea trip from Europe to India and the Far East by thousands of miles. The British had opposed the building of this canal under French patronage; but now that it was finished, the canal came to be considered an essential part of the lifeline of the British Empire.
- [South Africa, 1815-1910 | Modern Empires and Imperialism](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/south-africa-1815-1910-modern-empires-and-imperialism/) - The legacy of empire was particularly complex in South Africa, where there were two, not one, white settlement groups. Britain acquired the Cape Colony from the Netherlands in 1815. Because the Cape was strategically important and the climate seemed suited to European settlement, Britishers arrived and soon began to compete for land with the older European colonists, the Boers (Dutch for "farmer").
- [Canada, the First Dominion, 1783-1931 | Modern Empires and Imperialism](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/canada-the-first-dominion-1783-1931-modern-empires-and-imperialism/) - Most of the precedents by which the British Empire evolved into a commonwealth of self-governing nations were first developed in Canada. Between 1783 and 1931 Canada became the first dominion, fully independent from at least 1931 and probably earlier, and essentially self-governing from 1867.
- [Technology and Empire](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/technology-and-empire/) - The industrial revolution in Europe had given the West an immense advantage throughout the world in weaponry, shipping, invention, and health. This advantage would last until air transport and the potential for atomic warfare again changed, by a quantum leap, the technological distance between societies, forcing a new formulation of the definitions of world power.
- [The British Empire | Modern Empires and Imperialism](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-british-empire-modern-empires-and-imperialism/) - By 1815 the British recognized that colonies occupied largely by settlers from the British Isles would most likely move toward independence, and therefore they sought to control the pace and nature of this movement in order to assure continued loyalty to the concept of a Greater Britain. The colonies of settlement were originally rather thinly inhabited lands. The Europeans were not settling virgin land, however, and they had to displace a resident population. Though the settlers saw themselves as "civilized" and the indigenous population as "savages," these were relative terms.
- [The New Imperialism, 1870-1931 | Modern Empires and Imperialism](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-new-imperialism-1870-1931-modern-empires-and-imperialism/) - The industrial revolution had led to a demand for goods aimed at specific markets and appealing to national fashions. Higher-quality goods made for a critical market required European control over the processes of manufacture, over methods of planting and cultivation, over port facilities, storage depots, communications systems, and even local finance. Home industries often related to colonial markets and sources of materials in startling ways.
- [Rudyard Kipling's View of Imperialism](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/rudyard-kiplings-view-of-imperialism/) - Many were pleased to be called imperialists, determined to "take up the White Man's burden ... To seek another's profit. And work another's gain." In the words of the poet laureate of empire, Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), the United States too must 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. Take up the White Man's burden— The savage wars of peace— Fill All the mouth of Famine
- [Motives for Empire | Modern Empires and Imperialism](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/motives-for-empire-modern-empires-and-imperialism/) - Between 1800 and roughly 1870 European nations acquired new territories mainly from other European powers. Britain rested its continuing ascendancy upon sea power, and those colonies it kept after victories over Continental nations were retained largely for strategic reasons, such as the need to protect the sea route to India and the Far East.
- [The Great Modern Empires and the Question of Imperialism | Modern Empires and Imperialism](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-great-modern-empires-and-the-question-of-imperialism-modern-empires-and-imperialism/) - The transition from modern to what some scholars refer to as postmodern history is marked by the rise and collapse of the great modern empires. The age of maritime exploration and early colonialism had knit the globe together into one intellectual construct; the age of imperialism would give political and economic reality to this set of mental maps. Imperialism, both as word and as deed, became part of the power struggle among the Western powers and, in the twentieth century, among non- Western nations as well.
- [An Imperial Issue Close to Home: The Irish Question | Modern Empires and Imperialism](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/an-imperial-issue-close-to-home-the-irish-question-modern-empires-and-imperialism/) - As in eastern Europe, a nationality problem peculiar to Britain grew more acute near the end of the nineteenth century. This was "the Irish problem," as the English called it. The English, and the Scots who came to settle in the northern Irish province of Ulster in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, had remained as privileged Protestant landowners over a subject population of Catholic Irish peasants. Although there were also native Irish among the ruling classes, many of them had been Anglicized and had become Protestant.
- [Beatrice Webb on "Why I Became a Socialist"](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/beatrice-webb-on-why-i-became-a-socialist/) - One of the leading intellectuals in the socialist movement in Britain was Beatrice Potter, who became the wife of the Fabian socialist and administrator Sidney Webb. In My Apprenticeship she addressed the question, "Why I Became a Socialist." Can I describe in a few sentences the successive steps in my progress towards Socialism?
- [Issues and Parties in the Early Twentieth Century | Modern Empires and Imperialism](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/issues-and-parties-in-the-early-twentieth-century-modern-empires-and-imperialism/) - By the 1880s the prosperity, sense of confidence, and general air of political and social innovation associated with early and mid-Victorian leaders were on the wane. There was an undeniable depression in arable farming, a drop in prices for commerce, and a slowing in the rate of industrial growth.
- [The Program of the Utilitarians | Modern Empires and Imperialism](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-program-of-the-utilitarians-modern-empires-and-imperialism/) - The Reform Bill of 1832 was soon followed by other reform measures. Part of the inspiration for these reforms came from a middle-class group of Utilitarians, the Philosophic Radicals, who believed that, if properly educated, people are impelled by rational self-interest and thus automatically do what is best for themselves and their fellows.
- [Triumph of the Two-Party System | Modern Empires and Imperialism](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/triumph-of-the-two-party-system-modern-empires-and-imperialism/) - The Conservative and Liberal parties were very different from their ancestors, the oligarchical eighteenth-century factions of Tories and Whigs. The Conservatives kept their old electoral following among country gentlemen, army and navy officers, and Anglican clergymen, but they added many new supporters among agricultural laborers, tradespeople, and even some of the urban working and white-collar classes.
- [Slow British Democratization, to 1885 | Modern Empires and Imperialism](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/slow-british-democratization-to-1885-modern-empires-and-imperialism/) - Britain emerged from the Napoleonic wars with an executive composed of a prime minister and his cabinet of ministers who were wholly under the control of Parliament.
- [Britain: Toward the Postmodern, 1815-1914 | Modern Empires and Imperialism](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/britain-toward-the-postmodern-1815-1914-modern-empires-and-imperialism/) - In the years immediately after Waterloo, Britain went through an intense postwar economic crisis. Unsold goods accumulated, and the working classes experienced widespread unemployment and misery. Popular suffering increased as a result of the Corn Law of 1815, which forbade the importation of cheap foreign grain until the price of the home-grown commodity rose to a specified level. This assured the profits of the English grain farmer and probably raised the cost of bread for the average English family.
- [Modern Empires and Imperialism](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/modern-empires-and-imperialism/) - In the Nineteenth Century one Western democracy led all others—Britain. At its height Britain possessed the greatest empire the world has ever seen. Nineteenth-century Britain grew into a Greater Britain, and its domestic history was inextricably bound up in imperial history, as foreign affairs were yoked to economic and industrial developments.
- [Summary | The Modernization of Nations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/summary-the-modernization-of-nations/) - During the nineteenth century a sense of patrie, or commonality, brought the French together. A coup d'etat engineered by Louis Napoleon in 1851 ended the Second Republic and gave birth to the Second Empire. Napoleon III promised to reform but did little to improve the standard of living of the working class. Population expansion and industrial growth were smaller in France than in many other western European nations. The Franco-Prussian War ended the Second Empire.
- [The United States Becomes a World Power, 1898-1914 | The Modernization of Nations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-united-states-becomes-a-world-power-1898-1914-the-modernization-of-nations/) - Quite as clear, though still the subject of complex debate among Americans, was the emergence of the United States as a great international power. From the very beginning it had a department of state and a traditional apparatus of ministers, consuls, and, later, ambassadors. By the Monroe Doctrine of the 1820s it took the firm position that European powers were not to extend further their existing territories in the Western hemisphere. This was an active expression of American claims to a far wider sphere of influence than the continental United States.
- [The Influence of Sea Power](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-influence-of-sea-power/) - The new "navalism," which already had assertive advocates in Britain and Germany, derived many of its doctrines from the writings of an American officer, Captain Alfred T. Mahan (1840-1914). Mahan's book The Influence of Sea Power upon History (1890), and his later works assigned navies a place of preeminent importance in determining power status and found an influential audience at home and abroad, especially in Germany, Britain, and Japan.
- [United States Free Enterprise and Government Regulation, 1865-1917 | The Modernization of Nations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/united-states-free-enterprise-and-government-regulation-1865-1917-the-modernization-of-nations/) - In 1865 the American economy was still in some respects "colonial"; that is, it produced mainly foods and other raw materials, to be exchanged abroad for manufactured goods. In financial terms, it was dependent on foreign money markets.
- [The United States Civil War and Reconstruction, 1861-1877 | The Modernization of Nations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-united-states-civil-war-and-reconstruction-1861-1877-the-modernization-of-nations/) - The greatest test of the Federal Union was the war that broke out in 1861 after long years of sectional strife within the union between North and South. The Civil War was really an abortive nationalist revolution, the attempt of the Confederate (Southern) states to set up a separate sovereignty, as the southern Democrats lost political control at the national level.
- [The US Federal Union, 1787-1861 | The Modernization of Nations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-us-federal-union-1787-1861-the-modernization-of-nations/) - The land that became so powerful in little more than a century was, in the late 1700s, almost empty of cultivation beyond the Appalachians. Most observers expected the central parts of the North American continent to fill up eventually with settlers, but few realized how quickly this would occur.
- [The United States: Modernization at Top Speed | The Modernization of Nations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-united-states-modernization-at-top-speed-the-modernization-of-nations/) - Two sets of statistics dramatically point up the speed of American growth. In 1790 the United States comprised 892,000 square miles, and in 1910, 3,754,000 square miles. Even more important, the population of the United States was 3,929,000 in 1790, and 91,972,000 in 1910—a total greater than that of either of the most powerful European states, Germany and Great Britain, and second only to that of Russia. And, still more important, the combined industrial and agricultural capacities of America by 1910 were greater than those of any other single country.
- [The Dumas, 1906-1914 | The Modernization of Nations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-dumas-1906-1914-the-modernization-of-nations/) - Suffrage for the Duma was universal but indirect. Voters chose an electoral college, which then selected the 412 deputies. Although SRs and SDs boycotted the elections, many of them were elected. The Kadets were the strongest party. Contrary to the expectations of the government, the peasant vote was highly liberal. But even before the First Duma had met, Witte was able to reduce its powers. He secured a large French loan, which made the government financially independent of the Duma, and issued a set of "fundamental laws," which the Duma was not to alter.
- [The Revolution of 1905 | The Modernization of Nations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-revolution-of-1905-the-modernization-of-nations/) - Immediately after the Russo-Japanese War the future Kadets held banquets throughout Russia to adopt a series of resolutions for presentation to a kind of national congress of zemstvo representatives. Although the congress was not allowed to meet publicly, its program—a constitution, basic civil liberties, class and minority equality, and extension of zemstvo responsibilities—became widely known and approved. The czar issued a statement so vague that all hope for change was dimmed, and took measures to limit free discussion.
- [The Russo-Japanese War | The Modernization of Nations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-russo-japanese-war-the-modernization-of-nations/) - Trans-Siberian railway construction made it desirable for the Russians to obtain a right-of-way across Chinese territory in Manchuria. The Russians took the initiative in preventing Japan from establishing itself on the Chinese mainland after Japan defeated China in 1895; in exchange, Russia then required the Chinese to allow the building of the new railroad. In 1897 Russia seized Port Arthur, the very port it had earlier kept out of Japanese hands. Further friction with the Japanese took place in Korea, in which both Japan and Russia were interested.
- [The Years of Reaction, 1881-1904 | The Modernization of Nations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-years-of-reaction-1881-1904-the-modernization-of-nations/) - The reign of Alexander III and the first decade of the reign of his son, Nicholas II, formed a quarter-century of consistent policies (1881-1904) of the kind Tolstoy attacked so eloquently. Both czars hated the earlier liberal reforms and were determined that there would be no more.
- [The Idea of an Intelligentsia | The Modernization of Nations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-idea-of-an-intelligentsia-the-modernization-of-nations/) - Early in Nicholas's reign, Russian professors and students, influenced by German philosophers, were devoting themselves to discussions on art, philosophy, and religion. Russian universities were generally excellent and at the cutting edge of the great variety of modernizing ideas associated with the nineteenth century.
- [Alexander II and Reform, 1855-1881 | The Modernization of Nations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/alexander-ii-and-reform-1855-1881-the-modernization-of-nations/) - The economic developments of the early nineteenth century had rendered the system of serfdom less and less profitable. In the south, where land was fertile and crops were produced for sale as well as for use, the serf usually tilled his master's land three days a week, but sometimes more. In the north, where the land was less fertile and could not produce a surplus, the serfs often had a special arrangement with their masters called quit-rent.
- [Nicholas I, 1825-1855 | The Modernization of Nations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/nicholas-i-1825-1855-the-modernization-of-nations/) - Reactionary and autocratic, literal-minded and devoted to military engineering, Nicholas I worked hard at the business of the state. Although he despised all constitutions, he honored the liberal constitution that his elder brother Alexander had granted to the Poles until the Poles themselves revolted in 1831.
- [Russia, 1825-1914 | The Modernization of Nations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/russia-1825-1914-the-modernization-of-nations/) - In Russia the process of modernization took far longer than in western Europe. There was no parliament in Russia until 1905. Serfdom was not abolished until 1861. Each time reform came—in the 1860s and in 1905 and 1906—it came as a result of military defeat abroad.
- [Society and Politics in Austria and Hungary, 1867-1914 | The Modernization of Nations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/society-and-politics-in-austria-and-hungary-1867-1914-the-modernization-of-nations/) - Since Austria was 90 percent Catholic, it did not experience the strenuous Kulturkampf of Germany. However, liberals did fight clerical conservatives over religious issues and forced through bills legalizing civil marriages, quasi- secularized schools, and taxes on church property.
- [Minorities in Hungary | The Modernization of Nations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/minorities-in-hungary-the-modernization-of-nations/) - In Hungary minority problems were more acute. The Slovaks, the Romanians, and the Serbs and Croats living in Hungary were the worst victims of a deliberate policy of Magyarization. The Magyar aim was to destroy the national identity of the minorities and to transform them into Magyars; the weapon used was language.
- [The Nationality Question in Austria | The Modernization of Nations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-nationality-question-in-austria-the-modernization-of-nations/) - After 1867 many Czechs argued that the lands of the Crown of St. Wenceslaus, a martyred prince of Bohemia (d. 929), possessed rights comparable to those that the Magyars had successfully claimed for the lands of the Crown of St. Stephen (c. 975-1038), who had been crowned as first king of Hungary in 1001.
- [The Dual Monarchy, 1867 | The Modernization of Nations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-dual-monarchy-1867-the-modernization-of-nations/) - This formula was the Ausgleich, or "compromise," which created the unique dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary. The Hungarian constitution of 1848 was restored, and the entire empire was reorganized as a strict partnership.
- [The Growth of Bureaucracy](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-growth-of-bureaucracy/) - Bureaucracy is one of those words that has changed in connotation while also describing a major development that is part of "modernization." As nation-states became ever more centralized and powerful, they tended to take on more and more responsibilities with respect to their citizens. Agencies of government, that is bureaus, were created to administer the various aspects of government: foreign affairs, excise and taxation, the police, social welfare, national education, and so forth.
- [The Habsburg Empire: Dividing Humanity Into Nations | The Modernization of Nations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-habsburg-empire-dividing-humanity-into-nations-the-modernization-of-nations/) - In a sense, nationalism was a doctrine invented in Europe in the nineteenth century to account for social, economic, and political changes that required a single descriptive term.
- [Eating Well in the Nineteenth Century](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/eating-well-in-the-nineteenth-century/) - In June 1867, the Dinner of the Three Emperors brought together Alexander II, czar of Russia, the czarevich (the future Alexander III), and the future emperor William I (then king of Prussia) at the Cafe Anglais in Paris to dine most royally, as the menu indicates. Guests had a choice of soups and could substitute fritters of beef brain steeped in Seville orange juice for one of the main courses. Otherwise all foods and wines were served to everyone. Soups Imperatrice Fontanges Intermediate Course Souffle a la Reine Fillet of sole Venetian Collops of turbot au gratin
- [Imperial Germany, 1871-1914 | The Modernization of Nations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/imperial-germany-1871-1914-the-modernization-of-nations/) - Even before this peace had been imposed, King William of Prussia was proclaimed emperor of Germany. When a constitution for the new empire was adopted, it was simply an extension of the constitution of the North German Confederation of 1867. As chancellor of the German Empire from 1871 to 1890, Bismarck became the leading statesman in Europe. As diplomat, he worked for the preservation of Germany's gains against threats from abroad, especially by any foreign coalition against Germany. As politician, he worked for the preservation of the Prussian system against all opposing currents.
- [War and the Strengthening of German Nationhood, 1863-1871 | The Modernization of Nations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/war-and-the-strengthening-of-german-nationhood-1863-1871-the-modernization-of-nations/) - When the king of Denmark died in late 1863, a controversy over Schleswig-Holstein gave Bismarck further opportunities. In brief, the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein at the southern base of the Danish peninsula had been ruled by the king of Denmark, but not as part of Denmark. A fifteenth-century guarantee assured the duchies that they could never be separated from one another. Yet Holstein to the south was a member of the German Confederation; Schleswig to the north was not. Holstein was mostly German in population; Schleswig was mixed German and Danish.
- [Prussia and the German Confederation, 1848-1862 | The Modernization of Nations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/prussia-and-the-german-confederation-1848-1862-the-modernization-of-nations/) - The first major question facing the leaders of central Europe after the revolutions of 1848 was whether Prussia or Austria would dominate the German Confederation. The "Big German" solution called for federation with Austria; the "Little German" solution called for separation from Austria or even from south Germany. The "Little German" program also meant Prussian domination of the non-Austrian states, and therefore became Bismarck's goal.
- [Assets and Liabilities of a United Italy | The Modernization of Nations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/assets-and-liabilities-of-a-united-italy-the-modernization-of-nations/) - The new kingdom started out with the asset of favorable public opinion. Italian national unity seemed natural and desirable, and it had been achieved with little bloodshed through a mixture of Garibaldian romance and Cavourian realism. The enthusiasm that had brought the Risorgimento to fruition was now in the service of a united Italy.
- [Cavour and Garibaldi | The Modernization of Nations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/cavour-and-garibaldi-the-modernization-of-nations/) - Cavour was a superlatively adept practitioner of the brand of diplomacy often called Realpolitik, or the politics of realism and power. As chief minister of Piedmont, he cultivated French and English support, bringing Piedmont into the Crimean War on their side against Russia.
- [Italy and Union, 1849-1914 | The Modernization of Nations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/italy-and-union-1849-1914-the-modernization-of-nations/) - Italian national unity seemed remote after Piedmont's two decisive defeats by Austria in 1848 and 1849, yet it was accomplished by 1870. The three leaders of the Risorgimento in its years of triumph were the romantic nationalist adventurer Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807-1882); Victor Emmanuel II of the house of Savoy (1849-1878), king of Piedmont-Sardinia (and later of a united Italy); and, above all, Victor Emmanuel's chief minister, Count Camillo Cavour (1810-1861).
- [The Third Republic, 1870-1914 | The Modernization of Nations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-third-republic-1870-1914-the-modernization-of-nations/) - The Second Empire might have converted into a constitutional monarchy with full parliamentary government. Yet the changes had been wrung from an ailing and vacillating emperor by frequent popular agitation. It is also possible that a radical republican groundswell would have submerged the empire in any case.
- [A Second Empire, 1851-1870 | The Modernization of Nations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/a-second-empire-1851-1870-the-modernization-of-nations/) - The coup d'etat of December 2, 1851, was skillfully timed to coincide with the anniversaries of the coronation of Napoleon I and the greatest Napoleonic victory, Austerlitz.
- [France: A Second Empire, A Third Republic | The Modernization of Nations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/france-a-second-empire-a-third-republic-the-modernization-of-nations/) - Sometime between 1850 and the outbreak of World War I in 1914, rural France joined urban France in expressing a common sense of identity—nationhood. By the end of the century popular and elite cultures were united in their sense of patrie (fatherland), of nationality, even when they continued to disagree over the nation's goals. The modernization of France at times set one French group against another; equally often, as external forces appeared to threaten France, it strengthened the sense of common identity and community.
- [The Modernization of Nations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-modernization-of-nations/) - In recent years Historians have often asked whether the best unit for study is a society or a nation, since many questions relating broadly to demography and society cannot be properly addressed within a single nation's bor ders.
- [Summary | The Industrial Society](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/summary-the-industrial-society/) - The industrial revolution transformed people's lives in western Europe, the United States, and elsewhere. Most historians agree that from the 1820s to the 1890s industrialization proceeded in four stages mechanization of the textile industry, metals, chemicals, and finally electricity. Each stage led to the next. Britain held the lead in the early industrial revolution from the 1760s to the 1850s. It had developed an efficient agriculture system, accumulated capital from foreign and colonial trade, had extensive iron and coal deposits, and was favored by geographic compactness.
- [The Other Arts in Industrial Societies | The Industrial Society](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-other-arts-in-industrial-societies-the-industrial-society/) - An age that had mastered the industrial arts so well produced monumental statues, of which the most famous was Liberty in New York harbor, the work of the French sculptor Frederic Bartholdi (1834-1904), a gift from the Third French Republic to the American republic.
- [Painting in Industrial Societies | The Industrial Society](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/painting-in-industrial-societies-the-industrial-society/) - In the nineteenth century the painter faced a formidable competitor in depicting the physical realities of nature and life—the photographer. After Louis J. M. Daguerre (1789-1851) made the daguerreotype commercially possible, the science and art of photography developed until, through the work of the American George Eastman (1854-1932), roll film made it feasible for each person to be an artist.
- [Literature in Industrial Societies | The Industrial Society](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/literature-in-industrial-societies-the-industrial-society/) - In literature the last two thirds of the nineteenth century proved to be a great period for the novel of realism that depicted the problems and triumphs of the industrial society, drawing upon the stylistic canons of the romantics while pursuing starkly realistic themes.
- [Literature And The Arts In Industrial Societies | The Industrial Society](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/literature-and-the-arts-in-industrial-societies-the-industrial-society/) - The scientific and industrial revolutions and the debate over idealism and realism helped to stimulate an explosion of creativity and artistic experimentation that transformed the novel, drama, and the fine arts. The gap between "genteel" writing and the cruder and more vigorous forms was widening because so much important work was produced and encouraged by men and women in conscious revolt against the tastes of the politically and economically dominant class of their time—that is, the middle class.
- [The Song of the Shirt](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-song-of-the-shirt/) - The Song of the Shirt," by the minor English poet Thomas Hood (1799-1845), was prompted by a London news report about the arrest of a seamstress for pawning articles belonging to her employer. Paid by the piece, she could earn at the maximum seven shillings a week, on which she was expected to support herself and two young children. Work—work—work Till the brain begins to swim; Work—work—work Till the eyes are heavy and dim! Seam, and gusset, and band, Band, and gusset, and seam, Till over the buttons I fall asleep And sew them on in a dream! 0! Men, with Sisters dear!
- [Elitism | The Industrial Society](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/elitism-the-industrial-society/) - The German philosopher Nietzsche was representative of the elitist view. The central line of his thinking led to the concept of a new aristocracy—the "higher man" or Ubermensch.
- [Idealism and Realism | The Industrial Society](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/idealism-and-realism-the-industrial-society/) - The American philosopher William James (1842-1910) summed up the antithesis of idealism and realism by arguing that people are either "tender-minded" or "tough-minded." The tough-minded are convinced that the world of sense experience is the real world; the tender-minded are convinced that the world of sense experience is somehow an illusion, or at any rate a flawed copy of the real world, which exists perfectly only in God's mind. This abstract argument was a modern formulation of the ancient debate between the Platonists and the Aristotelians.
- [Comte and Positivism | The Industrial Society](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/comte-and-positivism-the-industrial-society/) - It was Auguste Comte (1798-1857) who coined the term positivism. His recommendations for bettering the human conditions retained some of the utopian and messianic qualities of Saint-Simonian teachings. Comte applied the term positivist to the third stage of humanity's attitude toward the world. First, in the infant period of history, humanity was in the theological age, standing in awe and fear of nature and seeking to placate the gods that controlled it.
- [Racism | The Industrial Society](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/racism-the-industrial-society/) - By far the commonest way out of the dilemma facing the Social Darwinists lay in the notion that the struggle for existence really goes on among human beings organized in groups—as tribes, races, or national states.
- [Social Darwinism | The Industrial Society](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/social-darwinism-the-industrial-society/) - This theological conflict had pretty well run its course by the beginning of the twentieth century. More important in the long run was the use made of some of Darwin's basic concepts in debates on matters moral, economic, and political. The blanket term Social Darwinism covers these transfers of ideas from biology to the social sciences and human relations. The central idea that social and political thinkers took over from Darwin was that of competition among individuals and groups.
- [Darwinism, 1859-1871 | The Industrial Society](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/darwinism-1859-1871-the-industrial-society/) - It was a revolutionary new theory in biology that most transformed thought, and thus action. In 1859 there was published in London Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. It rested in the study of natural history, the long record of the hundreds of thousands of years of organic life on earth.
- [A New Age of Science | The Industrial Society](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/a-new-age-of-science-the-industrial-society/) - The telegraph, the submarine cable, the telephone, the massive railroad bridges and tunnels, and the high-speed printing press not only improved communications but also demonstrated the practical utility of science.
- [Christian Socialists and Christian Democrats | The Industrial Society](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/christian-socialists-and-christian-democrats-the-industrial-society/) - Still other efforts to mitigate class antagonisms came from the Anglican and Catholic churches. In England the Christian Socialists urged the Church of England to put aside theological disputes and direct its efforts toward ending social abuses.
- [Pope Leo XIII Attacks Socialism](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/pope-leo-xiii-attacks-socialism/) - Pope Leo XIII was concerned with issues of liberty and political power. He was sympathetic to the plight of the workers and felt that the Church should recognize their concerns, though he did not believe in the inevitable clash of labor and capital. Thus in Rerum novarum he wrote that it was a "great mistake" to believe that class is naturally hostile to class, and that the wealthy and the workingmen are intended by nature to live in mutual conflict.... Each needs the other: Capital cannot do without Labor, nor Labor without Capital... .
- [Anarchists | The Industrial Society](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/anarchists-the-industrial-society/) - Other apostles of violence called themselves anarchists, believing that the best government was no government at all. For them it was not enough that the state should wither at some distant time, however; such an instrument of oppression should be annihilated at once. The weapon of the anarchist terrorists was the assassination of heads of state, and by the turn of the century they had killed the French president Carnot in 1894, King Humbert of Italy in 1900, and the American president William McKinley in 1901.
- [Apostles of Violence and Nonviolence | The Industrial Society](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/apostles-of-violence-and-nonviolence-the-industrial-society/) - The various forms of liberalism and socialism did not exhaust the range of responses to the economic and social problems created in industrial societies. Nationalists reinvigorated old mercantilist ideas, not only advocating tariffs to protect agriculture and industry but also demanding empires abroad to provide new markets for surplus products, new fields for the investment of surplus capital, and new settlements for surplus citizens. Others advocated anarchy and violence, while nonviolent preachers of mutualism, goodwill, and good work sought to return to primitive Christianity.
- [Marxism after 1848 | The Industrial Society](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/marxism-after-1848-the-industrial-society/) - From 1849 until his death in 1883, Marx lived in London, where, partly because of his own financial mismanagement, his family experienced the misery of a proletarian existence in the slums of Soho.
- [Friedrich Engels and The Communist Manifesto | The Industrial Society](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/friedrich-engels-and-the-communist-manifesto-the-industrial-society/) - Meanwhile, Marx began his friendship and collaboration with Friedrich Engels (1820-1895). In many ways, the two men made a striking contrast.
- [Karl Marx (1818-1883) | The Industrial Society](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/karl-marx-1818-1883-the-industrial-society/) - With Karl Marx (1818-1883) socialism moved to a far more intense form—revolutionary communism. Whereas the early socialists had anticipated a gradual and peaceful evolution toward Utopia, Marx forecast a sudden and violent proletarian uprising by which the workers would capture governments and make them the instruments for securing proletarian welfare. From Blanc he derived the summary of socialist goals: "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." Marx found three laws in the pattern of history.
- [The Utopians | The Industrial Society](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-utopians-the-industrial-society/) - Utopian socialists derived their inspiration from the Enlightenment. If only people would apply reason to solving the problems of an industrial economy, if only they would wipe out artificial inequalities by letting the great natural law of brotherhood operate freely—then utopia would be within their grasp, and social and economic progress would come about almost automatically. This was the common belief linking together the four chief Utopians of the early nineteenth century: Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, Robert Owen, and Louis Blanc.
- [Socialist Responses: Toward Marxism | The Industrial Society](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/socialist-responses-toward-marxism-the-industrial-society/) - In his later years, Mill referred to himself as a socialist; by his standard, however, most voters today are socialists. Universal suffrage for men and for women, universal free education, the curbing of laissez faire in the interests of the general welfare, the use of the taxing power to limit the unbridled accumulation of private property— all these major changes foreseen by Mill are now widely accepted.
- [Humanitarian Liberalism | The Industrial Society](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/humanitarian-liberalism-the-industrial-society/) - John Stuart Mill grew up in an atmosphere dense with the teachings of utilitarianism and classical economics. From his father, he received an education almost without parallel for intensity and speed. He began the study of Greek at three, was writing history at twelve, and at sixteen organized an active Utilitarian Society. At the age of twenty the overworked youth suffered a breakdown. He turned for renewal to music and to the poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge; presently he fell in love with Mrs. Harriet Taylor, to whom he assigned the major credit for his later writings.
- [The Utilitarians | The Industrial Society](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-utilitarians-the-industrial-society/) - One path of retreat from stark laissez-faire doctrines originated with Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), an eccentric philosopher. Bentham founded his social teachings on the concept of utility: that the goal of action should be to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number.
- [The Classical Economists | The Industrial Society](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-classical-economists-the-industrial-society/) - Educated for the ministry, Malthus became perhaps the first professional economist in history; he was hired by the East India Company to teach its employees at a training school in England. In 1798 he published his Essay on Population, a dramatic warning that the human species would breed itself into starvation. In the Essay, Malthus formulated a series of natural laws: The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in earth to produce subsistence for man. Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence only increases in an arithmetical ratio."
- [The Responses of Liberalism | The Industrial Society](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-responses-of-liberalism-the-industrial-society/) - Faced with the widening cleavage, both real and psychological, between rich and poor, nineteenth-century liberals at first held to the doctrine of laissez faire: Suffering and evil are nature's admonitions; they cannot be got rid of and the impatient attempts of benevolence to banish them from the world by legislation . . . have always been productive of more evil than good.
- [A Day at the Mills](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/a-day-at-the-mills/) - Frequently, entire families had to work as a matter of sheer economic necessity. A factory worker testified before a British parliamentary committee in 1831-1832: At what time in the morning, in the brisk time, did those girls go to the mills? In the brisk time, for about six weeks, they have gone at 3 o'clock in the morning, and ended at 10, or nearly half-past, at night. What intervals were allowed for rest or refreshment during those nineteen hours of labour? Breakfast a quarter of an hour, and dinner half an hour, and drinking of ale a quarter of an hour.
- [Class Grievances and Aspirations | The Industrial Society](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/class-grievances-and-aspirations-the-industrial-society/) - In the Britain of the 1820s, the new industrialists had small opportunity to mold national policy. Booming industrial cities like Manchester and Birmingham sent not a single representative to the House of Commons. A high proportion of business leaders belonged not to the Church of England but were nonconformists who still suffered discrimination when it came to holding public office or sending their sons (not to speak of their daughters) to Oxford or Cambridge. Even in France, despite the gains made since 1789, the bourgeoisie often enjoyed only second-class status.
- [The Experience of Immigration](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-experience-of-immigration/) - The movement of people from one land to another, from one continent to another, has marked history since antiquity, and today is one of the most notable realities of a world in a steady state of enormous change. Entire societies have moved from one place to another; millions of individuals change the place where they live, the environment in which they work and learn, even the language they speak, every year.
- [The Population Explosion and the Standard of Living | The Industrial Society](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-population-explosion-and-the-standard-of-living-the-industrial-society/) - When Britain abandoned any pretense of raising all the basic foods its people needed, its population was growing so rapidly that self-sufficiency was no longer possible. The number of inhabitants in England and Wales more than tripled during the nineteenth century, from about 9 million in 1800 to 32.5 million in 1900.
- [Economic and Social Change | The Industrial Society](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/economic-and-social-change-the-industrial-society/) - With industrialization there came a population explosion, a dramatic rise in the standard of living for many (and harsh, but different, conditions for others), and a desire to have greater control over birth and death rates. This desire expressed itself through the state and also in a social demand for improved working conditions.
- [British Decline | The Industrial Society](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/british-decline-the-industrial-society/) - After 1850 Britain began to lose its advantage. Politically its leaders had positioned it well to the forefront. The Reform Act of 1832 had put Parliament into the hands of the propertied classes, which proceeded to pass legislation favorable to industry.
- [Money, Banking, and Limited Liability | The Industrial Society](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/money-banking-and-limited-liability-the-industrial-society/) - The exploitation of these new developments required a constant flow of fresh capital. From the first, the older commercial community supported the young industrial community. Bankers played such an important role that the Barings of London and the international house of Rothschild were among the great powers of Europe.
- [Transport and Communication | The Industrial Society](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/transport-and-communication-the-industrial-society/) - Steam, coal, and iron brought the railway age. Coal powered the railways and the railways carried coal. Though railways based on wooden rails were known from the sixteenth century, iron and steel rails made it possible to carry huge weights and mount giant locomotives to pull long trains.
- [Textiles, Coal, and Iron | The Industrial Society](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/textiles-coal-and-iron-the-industrial-society/) - The textile industry was the first to exploit the potentialities of power-driven machinery. Beginning with the spinning jenny in the 1760s, the use of machinery gradually spread to other processes.
- [British Leadership, 1760-1850 | The Industrial Society](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/british-leadership-1760-1850-the-industrial-society/) - The process of industrialization began in Britain. After the 1760s England enjoyed a long period of relative economic prosperity. Starting in the sixteenth century, a new group of landed proprietors—squires and townspeople— saw land as an investment; thus they were concerned with improved production and profit.
- [Stages of Industrial Growth | The Industrial Society](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/stages-of-industrial-growth-the-industrial-society/) - Economic change generally takes place gradually, and therefore some historians feel it is misleading to speak of an industrial revolution, since the process was clearly evolutionary, rather than revolutionary.
- [The Industrial Society](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-industrial-society/) - When the Liverpool and Manchester Railway line opened in September of 1830, the railway train—drawn by the Rocket, then the fastest and strongest of the locomotives—ran down and killed William Huskisson, a leading British politician and an ardent advocate of improving transport and communication, who had under-estimated its speed. This, the first railway accident in history, was symbolic of the new age to come, which benefited many, brought destruction to some, and transformed society far more rapidly than anyone had predicted.
- [Summary | Romanticism, Reaction, and Revolution](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/summary-romanticism-reaction-and-revolution/) - Romanticism, materialism, and idealism overlapped as strands of thought in a period of rapid change. Romantics rejected the narrow optimism and mechanistic world of Enlightenment rationalists. The style of the romantics was imaginative, emotional, and haunted by the supernatural and by history. They stressed the individual and emotional ties to the past.
- [The Habsburg Domains | The Revolutions of 1848](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-habsburg-domains-the-revolutions-of-1848/) - The fate of German and Italian nationalism in 1848 hinged partly on the outcome of the revolutions in the Habsburg Empire. If these revolutions had immobilized the Habsburg government for a long period, the Italian and German unification might have been realized. But Austria rode out the storm. The success of the counterrevolution in the Habsburg Empire also assured its victory in Italy and Germany.
- [Germany | The Revolutions of 1848](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/germany-the-revolutions-of-1848/) - Now the German revolutions in 1848 roughly paralleled those in Italy. In Germany, too, liberalism and nationalism won initial victories and then collapsed before internal dissension and Austrian resistance.
- [Italy | The Revolutions of 1848](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/italy-the-revolutions-of-1848/) - In Italy new reform movements supplanted the discredited Carbonari. By the 1840s three movements were competing for the leadership of Italian nationalism. Two were moderate. One of these groups, based in the north, favored the domination of Piedmont; its leader, Count Camillo Cavour (1810-1861), was an admirer of British and French liberalism.
- [France | The Revolutions of 1848](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/france-the-revolutions-of-1848/) - The economic crisis hit France with particular severity. Railroad construction almost ceased, throwing more than half a million out of work; coal mines and iron foundries, in turn, laid off workers.
- [The Revolutions of 1848 | Romanticism, Reaction, and Revolution](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-revolutions-of-1848-romanticism-reaction-and-revolution/) - Nationalism was a common denominator of several revolutions in 1848. It prompted the disunited Germans and Italians to attempt political unification, and it inspired the subject peoples of the Habsburg Empire to seek political and cultural autonomy. The new nationalism tended to focus on language.
- [The Lessons of 1830 | The Revolutions of 1830](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-lessons-of-1830-the-revolutions-of-1830/) - The revolutionary wave of the 1830s confirmed two major political developments. First, it widened the split between the West and the East already evident after the revolutions of 1820. Britain and France were committed to support cautiously liberal constitutional monarchies both at home and in Belgium. On the other hand, Russia, Austria, and Prussia were more firmly committed than ever to counterrevolution. In 1833 Czar Nicholas I, Metternich, and King Frederick William III formally pledged their joint assistance to any sovereign threatened by revolution.
- [Failure in Poland, Italy, and Germany | The Revolutions of 1830](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/failure-in-poland-italy-and-germany-the-revolutions-of-1830/) - The course of revolution in Poland contrasted tragically with that in Belgium. In 1815 the kingdom of Poland had the most liberal constitution on the Continent; twenty years later it had become a dependency of the Russian Empire.
- [Success in Belgium | The Revolutions of 1830](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/success-in-belgium-the-revolutions-of-1830/) - The union of Belgium and the Netherlands, decreed by the peacemakers of 1815, worked well only in economics. The commerce and colonies of Holland supplied raw materials and markets for the textile, glass, and other manufactures of Belgium.
- [Success in France | The Revolutions of 1830](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/success-in-france-the-revolutions-of-1830/) - The ambiguities of Louis XVIII's policies were most evident in the constitutional charter that he issued in 1814. Some sections sounded like the absolute monarchy of Louis XIV; for example, the preamble asserted the royal prerogative: "The authority in France resides in the person of the king." But the charter also granted a measure of constitutional monarchy.
- [The Revolutions of 1830 | Romanticism, Reaction, and Revolution](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-revolutions-of-1830-romanticism-reaction-and-revolution/) - The next revolutionary wave, that of 1830, swept first over France. King Louis XVIII (r. 1814-1824) would have preferred to be an absolute ruler, but he knew that returning to the Old Regime was impractical, especially since he was declining in health and suffered from the additional political handicap of having been imposed on the French by their enemies.
- [The Monroe Doctrine](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-monroe-doctrine/) - In foreign relations, the United States sought to isolate itself as best it could from the contamination of European wars. Clearly those wars would spread to the New World if the European powers acquired new colonies in the Western Hemisphere. President James Monroe addressed this point in 1823 in what came to be known as the Monroe Doctrine.
- [The Decembrist Revolt in Russia, 1825 | Romanticism, Reaction, and Revolution](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-decembrist-revolt-in-russia-1825-romanticism-reaction-and-revolution/) - Russia, which did so much to determine the outcome of revolutions elsewhere, itself felt the revolutionary wave, but with diminished force. Liberal ideas continued to penetrate the country, spread by the secret societies that flourished in Russia after 1815.
- [Serbian and Greek Independence, 1804-1829 | Romanticism, Reaction, and Revolution](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/serbian-and-greek-independence-1804-1829-romanticism-reaction-and-revolution/) - The Greek revolt was part of the general movement of the Balkan nations for emancipation from their Turkish overlords. During the last quarter of the eighteenth century many peoples of the Balkan peninsula were awakening to a sense of national identity under the impact of French revolutionary and romantic ideas. They examined their national past with new interest and put particular stress on their native languages and on their Christian religion, which separated them from the Islamic Turks.
- [The Persistence of Revolution, 1820-1823 | Romanticism, Reaction, and Revolution](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-persistence-of-revolution-1820-1823-romanticism-reaction-and-revolution/) - The revolutionary leaders of the post-Napoleonic generation remained firm for liberty, equality, and fraternity. The first two words of the great revolutionary motto continued to signify the abolition of noble and clerical privileges in society and, with few exceptions, laissez-faire economics. They also involved broadening civil rights, instituting representative assemblies, and granting constitutions, which would bring limited monarchy or possibly even a republic.
- [The Congress of Vienna, 1814-1815 | Romanticism, Reaction, and Revolution](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-congress-of-vienna-1814-1815-romanticism-reaction-and-revolution/) - In 1814 and 1815 Metternich was host to the Congress of Vienna, which approached its task of rebuilding Europe with conservative deliberateness. For the larger part of a year, the diplomats indulged in balls and banquets, concerts and hunting parties. "The Congress dances," quipped an observer, "but it does not march." Actually, the brilliant social life distracted hangers-on while the important diplomats settled matters in private.
- [The Reconstitution of a European Order | Romanticism, Reaction, and Revolution](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-reconstitution-of-a-european-order-romanticism-reaction-and-revolution/) - The romantic movement was too intellectually scattered to provide a blueprint for the reconstruction of Europe after the defeat of Napoleon. The general guidelines for reconstruction were to be found in the writings of the English orator Edmund Burke (1729-1797), who set the tone for counterrevolutionary conservatism.
- [The Romantic Style | Romanticism, Reaction, and Revolution](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-romantic-style-romanticism-reaction-and-revolution/) - The style of romanticism was not totally at variance with that of the Enlightenment; not only a modified doctrine of progress but also the cosmopolitanism of the eighteenth century lived on into the nineteenth. Homer, Cervantes, Shakespeare, and Scott had appreciative readers in many countries; giants of the age such as Beethoven and Goethe were not merely Austrian or German citizens but citizens of the world.
- [Religion and Philosophy and The Romantic Period | Romanticism, Reaction, and Revolution](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/religion-and-philosophy-and-the-romantic-period-romanticism-reaction-and-revolution/) - The romantic religious revival was marked at the institutional level by the pope's reestablishment in 1814 of the Jesuit order, whose suppression in 1773 had been viewed as one of the great victories of the Enlightenment. Catholicism gained many converts among romantic writers, particularly in Germany, and the Protestants also made gains.
- [The Arts and The Romantic Period | Romanticism, Reaction, and Revolution](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-arts-and-the-romantic-period-romanticism-reaction-and-revolution/) - The virtual dictator of European painting during the first two decades of the nineteenth century was the French neoclassicist Jacques Louis David (1748-1825). David became a baron and court painter under Napoleon, then was exiled by the restored Bourbons. No matter how revolutionary the subject, David employed traditional neoclassical techniques, stressing form, line, and perspective.
- [Music and The Romantic Period | Romanticism, Reaction, and Revolution](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/music-and-the-romantic-period-romanticism-reaction-and-revolution/) - Romantic musicians, like romantic poets, sought out the popular ballads and tales of the national past; they also sought to free their compositions from classical rules. Composers of opera and song turned to literature: Shakespeare's plays, Scott's novels, Byron's poetry, and the poems and tales of Goethe and Pushkin.
- [The Return to the Past | Romanticism, Reaction, and Revolution](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-return-to-the-past-romanticism-reaction-and-revolution/) - The romantics' enthusiasm for the Middle Ages in general and for the earlier history of their own nations in particular linked the universal (nature) to the particular (the nation-state). Nationalism was an emotional, almost mystical force. The romantic return to the national past, though intensified by French expansionism, had begun before 1789 as part of the repudiation of the Enlightenment. The pioneers of romanticism tended to cherish what the philosophes detested, notably the Middle Ages and the medieval preoccupation with religion.
- [Shelley on the Decay of Kings](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/shelley-on-the-decay-of-kings/) - In 1817 the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley captured the romantic sense of despair in his poem "Ozymandias," which stated anew the biblical warning that the overweening aspirations of arrogant humanity would be as dust to dust. I met a traveler from an antique land Who said "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
- [An Age of Feeling and Poetry, 1790-1830 | Romanticism, Reaction, and Revolution](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/an-age-of-feeling-and-poetry-1790-1830-romanticism-reaction-and-revolution/) - Romanticism is best revealed through literature. Literary romanticism may be traced back to the mid-eighteenth century—to novels of "sensibility" like Rousseau's La Nouvelle Héloïse and to the sentimental "tearful comedies" of the French stage. In the 1770s and 1780s a new intensity appeared in the very popular works of the German Sturm and Drang, for example, Goethe's morbidly sensitive Sorrows of Young Werther, and The Robbers, a drama of social protest by J. C. E von Schiller (1759-1805).
- [The Romantic Protest | Romanticism, Reaction, and Revolution](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-romantic-protest-romanticism-reaction-and-revolution/) - The romantic period (usually dated 1780 to 1830) was one in which political and cultural thought showed such a varied concern for tradition that many historians dispute that there was sufficient unity of thought to refer to a "movement" at all. Moreover, writers of "the romantic school" in Germany were quite different from writers in England or France at the same time; the various romantic thinkers tended to be united by what they disliked more than by what they liked.
- [Romanticism, Reaction, and Revolution](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/romanticism-reaction-and-revolution/) - The origins of the Modern West lay in the French Revolution, and the rising nationalism stimulated by it and by the conquests of Napoleon. They lay also in the developments of the short, intense period between the Congress of Vienna and the wave of revolutions that moved across Europe in 1848. During this time and into the 1880s, the industrial revolution was also transforming Western societies, especially Britain, Germany, and the United States.
- [Summary | The French Revolution and Napoleon](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/summary-the-french-revolution-and-napoleon/) - Years of fiscal mismanagement contributed to the severe financial crisis that precipitated the French Revolution. Louis XVI, irresolute and stubborn, was unable to meet the overwhelming need for reform. The third estate, which constituted over 97 percent of the population, held some land, but rural poverty was widespread.
- [The Legacy of the Revolution | The French Revolution](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-legacy-of-the-revolution-the-french-revolution/) - The French Revolution was the most fundamental event of the nineteenth century, and its meaning, its causes, and its impact continue to be debated. One debate is whether there was an autonomous peasant revolution directed against feudalism imbedded within the larger revolution, with the peasants seeking their own road to capitalism. Clearly hostility to harvest dues and other seigneurial burdens had unified many rural communities to the point that protests continued well after the National Assembly had declared feudalism abolished.
- [Napoleon's Fall, 1813-1815 | Napoleon and Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/napoleons-fall-1813-1815-napoleon-and-europe/) - The British had been the first to resist Napoleon successfully, at Trafalgar and on the economic battlefields of the Continental System. Then had come Spanish resistance, followed by Russian. Now in 1813 almost every nation in Europe joined the final coalition against the French. Napoleon raised a new army, but he could not so readily replace the equipment lost in Russia. In October 1813 he lost the "Battle of the Nations," fought at Leipzig in Germany, necessitating his retreat into France.
- [The Russian Campaign, 1812-1813 | Napoleon and Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-russian-campaign-1812-1813-napoleon-and-europe/) - The event that defeated Napoleon's great designs was the French debacle in Russia. French actions after 1807 soon convinced Czar Alexander that Napoleon was not keeping the Tilsit bargain and was intruding on Russia's sphere in eastern Europe.
- [German National Awakening | Napoleon and Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/german-national-awakening-napoleon-and-europe/) - German intellectuals launched a campaign to check the great influence that the French language and French culture had gained over their divided lands.
- [The Peninsular War, 1808-1813 | Napoleon and Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-peninsular-war-1808-1813-napoleon-and-europe/) - In Europe the political and military consequences of the Continental System formed a decisive and disastrous chapter in Napoleonic history, a chapter that opened in 1807 when the emperor decided to impose the system on Britain's traditional ally, Portugal. The Portuguese expedition furnished Napoleon with an excuse for the military occupation of neighboring Spain. In 1808 he overthrew the Spanish royal family and made his brother Joseph his puppet king of Spain.
- [The Continental System | Napoleon and Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-continental-system-napoleon-and-europe/) - Nowhere was Napoleon's imperialism more evident than in the Continental System. This was an attempt to regulate the economy of the whole Continent. It had a double aim: to build up the export trade of France and to cripple that of Britain.
- [Napoleon Rallies His Troops](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/napoleon-rallies-his-troops/) - In the Italian campaign Major General Bonaparte, still only in his twenties, cleared the Austrians out of their strongholds in one year and made them sue for peace. He showed a remarkable ability to strike quickly and to surprise his opponents before they could consolidate their defenses. He also showed a gift for propaganda and public relations, as this proclamation from the early phases of the campaign illustrates: Soldiers! In two weeks you have won six victories; you have made fifteen-thousand prisoners; you have killed or wounded more than ten-thousand men.
- [The War, 1800-1807 | Napoleon and Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-war-1800-1807-napoleon-and-europe/) - Napoleon had barely launched the Consulate when he took to the field again. The second coalition was falling to pieces. Czar Paul of Russia alarmed Britain and Austria by his interest in Italy, and Britain offended him by retaining Malta, the headquarters of his Knights. Accordingly, the czar formed a Baltic League of Armed Neutrality linking Prussia, Sweden, and Denmark with Russia against Britain.
- [Napoleon and Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/napoleon-and-europe/) - To many in France, Napoleon was and remains the most brilliant ruler in French history. To many Europeans, on the other hand, Napoleon was a foreigner who imposed French control and French reforms. Napoleonic France succeeded in building up a vast and generally stable empire, but only at the cost of arousing the enmity of other European nations.
- [Economics | Napoleon and France](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/economics-napoleon-and-france/) - Political aims also governed the economic program of an emperor determined to promote national unity. French peasants wanted to be left alone to enjoy the new freedom acquired in 1789. Napoleon did little to disrupt them, except to raise army recruits.
- [Religion and Education | Napoleon and France](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/religion-and-education-napoleon-and-france/) - Political considerations generally colored Napoleon's decisions on religion. Since French Catholics loathed the anti-clericalism of the Revolution, Napoleon sought to appease them by working out a reconciliation with Rome. The Concordat (a treaty with the Vatican) negotiated with Pope Pius VII (r. 1800-1823) in 1802 accomplished this reconciliation. While it canceled only the most obnoxious features of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, the French state agreed to end the popular election of bishops and priests.
- [Law and Justice | Napoleon and France](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/law-and-justice-napoleon-and-france/) - Napoleon revived some of the glamor of the Old Regime but not its glaring inequalities. His series of law codes, the Code Napoleon (1804-1810), declared all men equal before the law without regard to rank and wealth. It extended to all the right to follow the occupation and embrace the religion of their own choosing. It gave France the single coherent system of law that the philosophes had demanded and that the revolutionary governments had been unable to formulate.
- [Consulate and Empire | Napoleon and France](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/consulate-and-empire-napoleon-and-france/) - The constitution of the Year VIII was the fourth attempt by revolutionary France to provide a written instrument of government, its predecessors being the constitutions of 1791, 1793, and 1795. The new document erected a very strong executive, the Consulate. Although three consuls shared the executive, Napoleon as first consul left the other two only nominal power. Four separate bodies had a hand in legislation: The Council of State proposed laws; the Tribunate debated them but did not vote; the Legislative Corps voted them but did not debate; the Senate had the right to veto legislation.
- [Bonaparte's Rise | Napoleon and France](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/bonapartes-rise-napoleon-and-france/) - By the close of 1795 only Britain and Austria remained officially at war with France. To lead the attack against Habsburg forces in northern Italy, the French Directory picked a youthful general who was something of a philosophe and revolutionary, as well as a ruthless, ambitious adventurer. He was born Napoleone Buonaparte on Corsica in 1769, soon after the French acquisition of that Mediterranean island from Genoa, and he retained throughout his life an intense family loyalty and a view of public affairs that was essentially anti-French.
- [Napoleon and France](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/napoleon-and-france/) - As late as 1792 Catherine the Great predicted that ten thousand soldiers would suffice to douse the "abominable bonfire" in France. The war that broke out in the spring of 1792 soon destroyed such illusions. Almost all the European powers eventually participated, and the fighting ranged far beyond Europe. By the time the war was a year old, Austria and Prussia had been joined by Holland, Spain, and Great Britain. By 1794 the French had definitely gained the advantage, and in 1795 French troops occupied Belgium, Holland, and the Rhineland.
- [The Thermidorean Reaction and the Directory, 1794-1799 | The French Revolution](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-thermidorean-reaction-and-the-directory-1794-1799-the-french-revolution/) - The leaders of the Thermidorean Reaction, or the move toward moderation, many of them former Jacobins, now dismantled the machinery of the Terror.
- [The Death of a King](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-death-of-a-king/) - There were many eyewitnesses to the events of the French Revolution. The English, of course, followed its destructive path with fascination. The following is an account (no doubt biased) by one such eyewitness, Henry Essex Edgeworth, a Catholic who went to Paris to be spiritual director to the Irish who lived in the capital. The carriage proceeded thus in silence to the Place de Louis XV,* and stopped in the middle of a large space that had been left round the scaffold: this space was surrounded with cannon, and beyond, an armed multitude extended as far as the eye could reach....
- [The Reign of Terror, 1793-1794 | The French Revolution](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-reign-of-terror-1793-1794-the-french-revolution/) - How was it that the advocates of democracy now imposed a dictatorship on France? Let Robespierre explain: To establish and consolidate democracy, to achieve the peaceful rule of constitutional laws, we must first finish the war of liberty against tyranny . . . We must annihilate the enemies of the republic at home and abroad, or else we shall perish.
- [Gironde and Mountain, 1792-1793 | The French Revolution](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/gironde-and-mountain-1792-1793-the-french-revolution/) - In theory the election of deputies to the National Convention in 1792 marked the beginning of political democracy in France. Virtually all male citizens were invited to the polls. Yet only 10 percent of the potential electorate of 7 million actually voted; the rest abstained or were turned away from the polls by the watchdogs of the Jacobin clubs, ever on the alert against "counterrevolutionaries."
- [The First Republic | The French Revolution](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-first-republic-the-french-revolution/) - The weeks between August 10 and the meeting of the Convention on September 21 were a time of extreme tension. The value of the assignats depreciated by 40 percent during August alone. Jacobin propagandists, led by Jean Paul Marat (1743-1793), an embittered Swiss physician turned journalist, continually excited the people of Paris. Excitement mounted still higher when the news arrived that Prussian troops had invaded northeastern France. In the emergency, Danton, the minister of justice, won immortality by urging patriots to employ "boldness, more boldness, always boldness."
- [The Legislative Assembly | The French Revolution](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-legislative-assembly-the-french-revolution/) - On October 1 the first and only Legislative Assembly elected under the new constitution began deliberations. No one faction commanded a majority in the new Assembly, though the Center had the most seats. Since they occupied the lowest seats in the assembly hall, the deputies of the center received the derogatory nickname of the Plain or Marsh.
- [The Constitution of 1791 | The French Revolution](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-constitution-of-1791-the-french-revolution/) - The major undertaking of the National Assembly was the Constitution of 1791. To replace the bewildering complex of provincial units that had existed under the Old Regime, the Assembly divided the territory of France into eighty-three departments of approximately equal size; the departments were subdivided into arrondissements, or "districts," and the districts into communes—that is, municipalities. In the communes and departments, elected councils and officials enjoyed considerable self-government.
- [Reforming the Church | The French Revolution](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/reforming-the-church-the-french-revolution/) - Since the suppression of tithes and the seizure of ecclesiastical property deprived the church of its revenue, the National Assembly agreed to finance ecclesiastical salaries. The new arrangement made the French church subject to constant government regulation. Few difficulties arose from the Assembly's prohibition of monastic vows or from the liquidation of some monasteries and convents, since many of these establishments were already far gone in decay, but an uproar arose over legislation altering the status of the secular clergy.
- [Women's Rights in the French Revolution](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/womens-rights-in-the-french-revolution/) - Olympe de Gouges (b. 1748) was a leading female revolutionary. A butcher's daughter, she believed that women had the same rights as men, though these rights had to be spelled out in terms of gender. In 1791 she wrote her Declaration of the Rights of Women and for the next two years demanded that the revolutionary government act upon it. In November 1793, the National Convention, worried that her demands would threaten the revolution by losing supporters for it, charged her with treason. Found guilty, she was sent to the guillotine.
- [Forging a New Regime | The French Revolution](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/forging-a-new-regime-the-french-revolution/) - The outlines of the new regime were already starting to take shape before the October Days. The Great Fear prompted the National Assembly to abolish in law what the peasants were destroying in fact. On the evening of August 4, 1789, the deputies voted that taxation would be paid by all inhabitants of the kingdom in proportion to their revenues, and that public expenses would be borne equally by all.
- [Popular Uprisings, July-October 1789 | The French Revolution](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/popular-uprisings-july-october-1789-the-french-revolution/) - Reaction to Necker's dismissal was immediate. On July 12 and 13 the Parisian electors formed a new municipal government and a new militia, the National Guard, both loyal to the National Assembly. Paris was forging the weapons that made it the leader of the Revolution.
- [The Dissolution of the Monarchy | The French Revolution](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-dissolution-of-the-monarchy-the-french-revolution/) - The National Assembly had barely settled down to work when a new wave of rioting swept over France, further undermining the position of the king. Economic difficulties grew more severe in the summer of 1789. Unemployment increased, and bread seemed likely to remain scarce and expensive, at least until after the harvest. Meanwhile, the commoners feared that the king and the privileged orders might attempt a counterrevolution. Large concentrations of troops appeared in the Paris area early in July—to preserve order and protect the National Assembly, the king asserted.
- [The Estates General, 1789 | The French Revolution](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-estates-general-1789-the-french-revolution/) - In summoning the Estates General Louis XVI revived a half-forgotten institution that he thought was unlikely to initiate drastic social and economic reforms. The three estates, despite their immense variation in size, had customarily received equal representation and equal voting power, so that the two privileged orders could be expected to outvote the commoners.
- [The Financial Emergency, 1774-1788 | The French Revolution](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-financial-emergency-1774-1788-the-french-revolution/) - The chronic financial difficulties of the French monarchy strengthened the hand of the middle-class reformers. The government debt, already large at the accession of Louis XVI, tripled between 1774 and 1789. The budget for 1788 had to commit half the total estimated revenues to interest payments on debts already contracted; it also showed an alarming deficit in the face of continued high expenditures to support the court.
- [The Third Estate | The French Revolution](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-third-estate-the-french-revolution/) - The first two estates included only a small fraction of the French nation; over 97 percent of the population fell within the third estate. Most of these commoners were peasants, whose status was in some respects more favorable in France than anywhere else in Europe. Serfdom, still prevalent in central and eastern Europe, had disappeared almost entirely. While enclosures were gradually pushing small farmers off the land in England, small peasant holdings existed by the millions in France.
- [The Clergy and the Nobility | The French Revolution](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-clergy-and-the-nobility-the-french-revolution/) - The first estate, the clergy, occupied a position of conspicuous importance in France. Though only .5 percent of the population, the clergy controlled about 15 percent of French lands. They performed many essential public functions—running schools, keeping records of vital statistics, and dispensing relief to the poor. The French church, however, was a house divided.
- [The Causes of Revolution | The French Revolution](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-causes-of-revolution-the-french-revolution/) - Honest, earnest, and pious, but also clumsy, irresolute, and stubborn, Louis XVI (r. 1774-1792) was most at home hunting, eating, or tinkering with locks. He also labored under the handicap of a politically unfortunate marriage to a Habsburg. Marie Antoinette (1755-1793), the youngest of the empress Maria Theresa's sixteen children, was badly educated, extravagant, and completely isolated in the artificial social world of Versailles. To French patriots she was a constant reminder of the ill-fated alliance with Austria during the Seven Years' War.
- [The French Revolution and Napoleon](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-french-revolution-and-napoleon/) - In France, as in Britain's North American colonies, a financial crisis preceded a revolution. There was not only a parallel but also a direct connection between the revolution of 1776 and that of 1789. French participation in the American War of Independence enormously increased an already excessive governmental debt. Furthermore, the example of America fired the imagination of those French who were discontented.
- [Summary | The Enlightenment](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/summary-the-enlightenment/) - French cultural leadership in the eighteenth century was preeminent. The key concepts of the eighteenth-century philosophes, or intellectuals, were reason, natural law, and progress. Philosophes, who expressed optimism in human abilities to apply reason, owed a debt to John Locke for their ideas on government and human psychology. Under the direction of Diderot, philosophes produced the thirtythree-volume Emyclopédie, advancing views of progress and reason, exposing superstition and ignorance, and denouncing inequality in the light of natural law and science.
- [Literature and the Arts | The Enlightenment](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/literature-and-the-arts-the-enlightenment/) - The literary landmarks of the century included both the classical writings of the French philosophes and the English Augustans, and new experiments in the depiction of realism and "sensibility," that is, the life of the emotions. In England the Augustan Age of letters took its name from the claim that it boasted a group of talents comparable to those of Vergil, Horace, and Ovid, who had flourished under the emperor Augustus in Rome.
- [Pietists and Methodists | The Enlightenment](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/pietists-and-methodists-the-enlightenment/) - The popular reaction, on the other hand, was an evangelical revival that began with the German Pietists. The Pietists asserted that religion came from the heart, not the head, and that God was far more than a watchmaker, more than the remote creator of the world-machine.
- [Challenges to the Enlightenment | The Enlightenment](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/challenges-to-the-enlightenment-the-enlightenment/) - The philosophes expected people to see reason when it was pointed out, to give up the habits of centuries, and to revise their behavior in accordance with natural law.
- [Implications of the Revolution | The Enlightenment](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/implications-of-the-revolution-the-enlightenment/) - For the mother country the American Revolution implied more than the secession of thirteen colonies. It involved Britain in a minor world war that jeopardized its dominance abroad and weakened the power and prestige of King George III at home.
- [The Stamp Act Congress Asserts the Right of Local Representation](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-stamp-act-congress-asserts-the-right-of-local-representation/) - The Stamp Act Congress met in New York City in October 1765 and declared: That His Majesty's liege subjects in these colonies are entitled to all the inherent rights and liberties of his natural born subjects within the kingdom of Great Britain. That it is inseparably essential to the freedom of a people, and the undoubted right of Englishmen, that no taxes be imposed on them but with their own consent, given personally or by their own representatives.
- [Background of the American Revolt, 1760-1776 | The Enlightenment](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/background-of-the-american-revolt-1760-1776-the-enlightenment/) - The breach between the colonies and Britain first became serious after the Seven Years' War, when Britain began to interfere more directly and frequently in colonial matters. By 1763 the colonies had become accustomed to regulating their own affairs, though the acts of their assemblies remained subject to the veto of royally appointed governors or of the king himself. The vast territories acquired in 1763 in Canada and west of the Allegheny Mountains brought Britain added opportunities for profitable exploitation and added responsibilities for government and defense.
- [King George III and American Independence | The Enlightenment](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/king-george-iii-and-american-independence-the-enlightenment/) - Though Catherine the Great failed to apply the ideas of the Age of Reason, her name often appears on lists of enlightened despots. Another name is at times added to the list—George III, king of Great Britain (r. 1760-1820). George III tried to wrest control of the House of Commons from the long-dominant Whig oligarchy and retain it through patronage and bribery. Virtuous as a person and devoted to his family, George as a monarch was stubborn, shortsighted, and in the long run unsuccessful.
- [Foreign Policy, 1725-1796 | The Enlightenment](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/foreign-policy-1725-1796-the-enlightenment/) - Between the death of Peter the Great and that of Catherine, Russian foreign policy still pursued the traditional goals of expansion against Sweden, Poland, and Turkey. But Russia found that these goals increasingly involved it with the states of central and western Europe. In the War of the Polish Succession (1733-1735) Russian forces were allied with those of Austria.
- [Paul, r. 1796-1801, and Alexander I, r. 1801-1825 | The Enlightenment](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/paul-r-1796-1801-and-alexander-i-r-1801-1825-the-enlightenment/) - Catherine's son Paul succeeded her in 1796 at age forty- two. He appeared to be motivated chiefly by a wish to undo his mother's work. He exiled some of her favorites and released many of her prisoners. Paul's behavior, however, was unpredictable. On the one hand, he imposed a strict curfew on St. Petersburg and forbade the importation of sheet music. On the other hand, in a decree in 1797 he prohibited the requirement of labor on Sunday.
- [Catherine the Great, 1762-1796 | The Enlightenment](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/catherine-the-great-1762-1796-the-enlightenment/) - Brought up in a petty German court, Catherine found herself transplanted to St. Petersburg as a young girl, living with a husband she detested, and forced to pick her way through the intrigues that flourished in the Russian capital.
- [Nobles and Serfs, 1730-1762 | The Enlightenment](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/nobles-and-serfs-1730-1762-the-enlightenment/) - In 1730 the gentry set out to emancipate themselves from the servitude placed upon them by Peter. By 1762 the nobles no longer needed to serve at all unless they wished to do so; simultaneously, the authority of noble proprietors over their serfs was increased. The former became the government's agents for collecting the poll tax; the latter could no longer obtain their freedom by enlisting in the army and could not engage in trade or purchase land without written permission from their masters.
- [Russia, 1725-1825 | The Enlightenment](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/russia-1725-1825-the-enlightenment/) - Russia had two sovereigns who could be numbered among the enlightened despots: Catherine II, the Great (r. 17621796) and her grandson Alexander I (r. 1801-1825). For the thirty-seven years between the death of Peter the Great and the accession of Catherine the autocracy was without an effective leader as the throne changed hands seven times. More important than the individuals who governed during these years were the social groups contending for power and the social processes at work in Russia.
- [The Limitations of Enlightened Despotism | The Enlightenment](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-limitations-of-enlightened-despotism-the-enlightenment/) - Enlightened despotism was impaired by the problem of succession. So long as monarchs came to the throne by the accident of birth, there was nothing to prevent the unenlightened or incapable from succeeding the enlightened and able. Even the least of the enlightened despots deserves credit for having reformed some of the bad features of the Old Regime; but not even the best of them could strike a happy balance between enlightenment and despotism. Joseph II was too doctrinaire, too inflexible in his determination to apply the full reform program of the Age of Reason.
- [Charles III, Pombal, Gustavus III, 1759-1792 | The Enlightenment](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/charles-iii-pombal-gustavus-iii-1759-1792-the-enlightenment/) - As king of Spain (r. 1759-1788), Charles III energetically advanced the progressive policies begun under his father, Philip V. Though a pious Catholic, Charles forced the Jesuits out of Spain. He reduced the authority of the aristocracy, extended that of the Crown, and made Spain more nearly a centralized national state.
- [Maria Theresa, Joseph II, Leopold II, 1740-1792 | The Enlightenment](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/maria-theresa-joseph-ii-leopold-ii-1740-1792-the-enlightenment/) - Frederick's decisive victory in the War of the Austrian Succession had laid bare the basic weaknesses of the Habsburgs' dynastic empire. The empress Maria Theresa (r. 1740-1780) believed in the need for reform and often took as her model the institutions of her hated but successful rival, Frederick II of Prussia.
- [Frederick the Great, r. 1740-1786 | The Enlightenment](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/frederick-the-great-r-1740-1786-the-enlightenment/) - Of all the eighteenth-century rulers, Frederick II, the Great, king of Prussia from 1740 to 1786, appeared best attuned to the Enlightenment. As a youth he had rebelled against the drill-sergeant methods of his father, Frederick William I. An attentive reader of the philosophes, he exchanged letters with them and brought Voltaire to live for a time as his pensioner in his palace at Potsdam, near Berlin.
- [Enlightened Despots | The Enlightenment](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/enlightened-despots-the-enlightenment/) - The concept of an enlightened despot has proved attractive in many cultures. Those rulers who were versed in the thought of the Enlightenment, may have realized that great social and economic changes were at hand, but some were more adept than others in their understanding of these changes and of how best to prepare their states for the future. Of course, a bookish knowledge of Enlightenment thinkers was not always translated into enlightened actions.
- [The Beginning of "Modern History"](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-beginning-of-modern-history/) - Identifying when modern history began is really only a matter of convenience. Modern history relates to the presence of activities and customs that seem less strange to us today than do certain very ancient customs. Consider the range of such changes. In the Renaissance astrology was an accepted branch of learning; religious objections to it, largely because its concept of human actions as being governed by the heavenly bodies threatened the doctrine of free will, lessened its significance, until Pope Sixtus V condemned it in 1586.
- [Political Thought | The Enlightenment](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/political-thought-the-enlightenment/) - In The Spirit of the Laws (1748), the baron de la Brede et de Montesquieu (1689-1755), an aristocratic French lawyer and philosophe, laid down the premise that no one system of government suited all countries. Laws, he wrote, should be in relation to the climate of each country, to the quality of its soil, to its situation and extent, to the principal occupation of the natives, whether husbandmen, huntsmen,
- [The Attack on Religion | The Enlightenment](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-attack-on-religion-the-enlightenment/) - Attacks on clerical teaching formed part of a vigorous body of criticism of the role of the clergy in the Old Regime. In denouncing fanaticism and superstition, the philosophes singled out the Society of Jesus.
- [Adam Smith on Free Trade](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/adam-smith-on-free-trade/) - Adam Smith extended the theory of natural liberty to the realm of economics, formulating the classic statement in favor of free trade. It is the maxim of every prudent master of a family, never to attempt to make at home what it will cost him more to make than to buy. The taylor does not attempt to make his own shoes, but buys them of the shoemaker.
- [Justice and Education | The Enlightenment](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/justice-and-education-the-enlightenment/) - The disposition to let nature take its course also characterized the outlook of the philosophes on questions of justice. They believed that legislation created by humans prevented the application of the natural laws of justice. They were horrified by the cumbersome judicial procedures of the Old Regime and by its antiquated statutes. New lawgivers were needed to simplify legal codes, and a new science was needed to make the punishment of crime both humane and effective.
- [Laissez-Faire Economics | The Enlightenment](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/laissez-faire-economics-the-enlightenment/) - The economic program of the philosophes was introduced in articles written for the Encyclopedic by the versatile Francois Quesnay (1694-1774), biologist, surgeon, and personal physician to the French court. Quesnay headed a group of publicists who adopted the name Physiocratsbelievers in the rule of nature. The Physiocrats expected that they would, as Quesnay claimed, discover natural economic laws "susceptible of a demonstration as severe and incontestable as those of geometry and algebra."
- [French Leadership | The Enlightenment](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/french-leadership-the-enlightenment/) - The cosmopolitan qualities of the century were expressed in the Enlightenment. Yet the Age of Reason also marked the high point of French cultural leadership, when, as Thomas Jefferson put it, every man had two homelands, his own and France.
- [Locke's Theory of Knowledge](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/lockes-theory-of-knowledge/) - In the age-old debate as to the most formative influences on an individual's life—heredity or environment—and the most significant tool for comprehending either—faith or reason—John Locke came down squarely in favor of environment and reason.
- [The Philosophes and their Program of Reform, 1690-1776 | The Enlightenment](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-philosophes-and-their-program-of-reform-1690-1776-the-enlightenment/) - The philosophes hailed improvements in industry and agriculture and the continued advance of science. A Swedish botanist and physician, Carolus Linnaeus (Carl von Linne, 1707-1778), proposed a system for classifying plants and animals by genus and species, which biologists still follow today.
- [The Enlightenment](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-enlightenment/) - Reason, Natural Law, Progress - these are the words by the eighteenth century. It was the Age of Enlightenment, when it was widely assumed that human reason could cure past ills and help achieve utopian government, perpetual peace, and a perfect society. Reason would enable humanity to discover the natural laws regulating existence and thereby assure progress.
- [Summary  | The Old Regimes](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/summary-the-old-regimes/) - The Old Regime, the institutions that existed in France and Europe before 1789, exhibited features of both the medieval and early modern worlds. The economy was largely agrarian, but in western Europe serfdom had disappeared. The social foundations of the Old Regime were based on three estates. Increasingly, the economic, social, and political order of the Old Regime came under attack in the eighteenth century.
- [The International Balance in Review | The Old Regimes](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-international-balance-in-review-the-old-regimes/) - The peace settlements of Hubertusburg and Paris ended the greatest international crisis that was to occur between the death of Louis XIV and the outbreak of the French Revolution. New crises were to arise, but they did not fundamentally alter the international balance; they accentuated the shifts that had long been underway. And although American independence cost Britain thirteen of its colonies, the maritime and imperial supremacy it had gained in 1763 was not otherwise seriously affected.
- [The Diplomatic Revolution and the Seven Years' War, 1756-1763 | The Old Regimes](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-diplomatic-revolution-and-the-seven-years-war-1756-1763-the-old-regimes/) - In Europe the dramatic shift of alliances called the Diplomatic Revolution immediately preceded the formal outbreak of the Seven Years' War, which had already begun in the colonies. Britain, which had joined Austria against Prussia in the 1740s, now paired off with Frederick the Great. And in the most dramatic move of the Diplomatic Revolution, France, joined with its hereditary enemy, Habsburg Austria.
- [The Austrian Succession, 1739-1748 | The Old Regimes](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-austrian-succession-1739-1748-the-old-regimes/) - Britain and France collaborated in the 1720s and 1730s because both Walpole and Fleury sought stability abroad to promote economic recovery at home. The partnership, however, collapsed over the competition between the two Atlantic powers for commerce and empire. Neither Walpole nor Fleury could prevent the worldwide war between Britain and the Bourbon monarchies that broke out in 1739 and that lasted, with intervals of peace, until the final defeat of Napoleon in 1815. This "Second Hundred Years' War" had, in fact, already begun half a century earlier, in the days of Louis XIV.
- [The Turkish and Polish Questions, 1716-1739 | The Old Regimes](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-turkish-and-polish-questions-1716-1739-the-old-regimes/) - In 1716 the Ottoman Empire became embroiled in a war with Austria that resulted in the Treaty of Passarowitz (1718), by which Charles VI recovered the portion of Hungary still under Turkish rule, plus some other Ottoman lands in the Danube valley. Another Austro Turkish war (1735-1739) modified the Passarowitz settlement.
- [War and Diplomacy, 1713-1763 | The Old Regimes](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/war-and-diplomacy-1713-1763-the-old-regimes/) - In the early eighteenth century the international balance was precarious. Should the strong states decide to prey upon the weak, the balance was certain to be upset. One such upset resulted from the Great Northern War, which enabled Russia to replace Sweden as the dominant power in the Baltic.
- [The Polish and Ottoman Victims | The Old Regimes](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-polish-and-ottoman-victims-the-old-regimes/) - By the early eighteenth century, Poland and the Ottoman Empire still bulked large on the map, but both states suffered from incompetent government, a backward economy, and the presence of large national and religious minorities. The Orthodox Christians in Catholic Poland and Muslim Turkey were beginning to look to Russia for protection.
- [Peter the Great](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/peter-the-great/) - Interpretations of Peter the Great vary enormously. Voltaire considered him to be the model of the "enlightened despot." Nicolai M. Karamzin (1766-1826), who was Russia's first widely read novelist, attacked the Petrine myth and argued that Peter was subverting traditional Russian values:
- [Russia and Peter the Great, 1682-1725 | The Old Regimes](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/russia-and-peter-the-great-1682-1725-the-old-regimes/) - Even more spectacular than the rise of Prussia was the emergence of Russia as a major power during the era of Peter the Great (r. 1682-1725). In 1682, at the death of Czar Fedor Romanov, Russia was still a backward country, with few diplomatic links with the West and very little knowledge of the outside world. Contemporaries, Russians as well as foreigners, noted the brutality, drunkenness, illiteracy, and filth prevalent among all classes of society. Even most of the clergy could not read.
- [Prussia and the Hohenzollerns, 1715-1740 | The Old Regimes](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/prussia-and-the-hohenzollerns-1715-1740-the-old-regimes/) - Prussia's territories were scattered across north Germany from the Rhine on the west to Poland on the east. Consisting in good part of sand and swamp, these lands had meager natural resources and supported relatively little trade. With fewer than 3 million inhabitants in 1715, Prussia ranked twelfth among the European states in population.
- [The Newcomers | The Old Regimes](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-newcomers-the-old-regimes/) - Significant new players were emerging onto the international stage throughout the first half of the eighteenth century. The most important of these would be Prussia and Russia. Two once-powerful states would suffer as a result: Poland and the Ottoman Turks. The result would be a series of diplomatic and far-reaching political changes and growing international instability.
- [An Age of Manners](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/an-age-of-manners/) - In 1729 a French guide to behavior for the "civilized Christian" covered such subjects as speech, table manners, bodily functions, spitting, nose blowing and behavior in the bedroom. This guide to good manners was reissued with increasingly complex advice through 1774, though with significantly changing emphases, as certain behavior (blowing one's nose into a kerchief no longer worn about the neck but now carried in the hand, hence handkerchief) became acceptable, and other behavior more closely regulated.
- [Other States of Western Europe | The Old Regimes](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/other-states-of-western-europe-the-old-regimes/) - Spain was the only other state in western Europe with a claim to great power status. Sweden and the Dutch republic could no longer sustain the major international roles they had undertaken during the seventeenth century. The Great Northern War had withered Sweden's Baltic empire. The Dutch, exhausted by their wars against Louis XIV, could not afford a large navy or an energetic foreign policy. Still, Dutch seaborne trade remained substantial, and the republic settled down to a life of relative prosperity and decreased international significance.
- [France, 1715-1774 | The Old Regimes](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/france-1715-1774-the-old-regimes/) - Where Britain was strong, France was weak. Barriers to social mobility were more difficult to surmount, though commoners who were rich or aggressive enough did overcome them. France suffered particularly from the rigidity of its colonial system, the inferiority of its navy refused to allow the colonies administrative control of their own affairs.
- [Britain, 1714-1760 | The Old Regimes](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/britain-1714-1760-the-old-regimes/) - In the eighteenth century British merchants outdistanced their old trading rivals, the Dutch, and gradually took the lead over their new competitors, the French. Judged by the touchstones of mercantilism—commerce, colonies, and sea power—Britain was the strongest state in Europe.
- [The Established Powers | The Old Regimes](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-established-powers-the-old-regimes/) - Britain and France were the dominant European powers of the eighteenth century. At the beginning of the century Spain was still powerful, though it would decline throughout the century. The Dutch remained prosperous, while the once-powerful Swedes declined even further. Economic change was the touchstone.
- [The Beginnings of the Industrial Revolution, to 1789 | The Old Regimes](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-beginnings-of-the-industrial-revolution-to-1789-the-old-regimes/) - By increasing productivity and at the same time releasing part of the farm labor force for other work, the revolution in agriculture contributed to that in industry. Industry also required raw materials, markets, and capital to finance the building and equipping of factories. Thus the prosperity of commerce also nourished the growth of industry.
- [Commerce and Finance, 1713-1745 | The Old Regimes](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/commerce-and-finance-1713-1745-the-old-regimes/) - Many of the basic institutions of European business life had developed before 1715—banks and insurance firms in the Renaissance, for example, and chartered trading companies in the sixteenth century. Mercantilism had matured in the Spain of Philip II, in the France of Louis XIV and Colbert, and in Britain between 1651 and the early eighteenth century. The steady growth of seaborne trade, stimulated by an increasing population and a rising demand for food and goods, was a main force in quickening the pace of commerce.
- [The Economic "Revolutions" | The Old Regimes](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-economic-revolutions-the-old-regimes/) - The changes that undermined the Old Regime were most evident in western Europe. They were in some respects economic revolutions. In the eighteenth century the pace of economic change was slower than it would be in the nineteenth or twentieth, and it provided less drama than such political upheavals as the American and French revolutions. Yet in the long run the consequences of the economic "revolutions" were fully as revolutionary as were the political and social ones of 1776 and 1789.
- [The Coffeehouse](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-coffeehouse/) - The thriving maritime trade changed public taste, as it brought a variety of new produce into the British and Continental markets. Dramatic examples are the rise of the coffeehouse and the drinking of tea at home.
- [The Old Regimes](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-old-regimes/) - The term Old Regime is used to describe the institutions prevailing in Europe, and especially in France, before 1789. This was the "Old Regime" of the eighteenth century, in contrast to the "New Regime" that was to issue from the French Revolution. On the surface, the Old Regime followed the pattern of the Middle Ages, though the forces that were to transform the economy, society, and politics of modern Europe were already at work. To be sure, the economy was still largely agrarian, for most Europeans lived in farming villages and retained the localized outlook of the peasant.
- [Summary | The Problem of Divine-Right Monarchy](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/summary-the-problem-of-divine-right-monarchy/) - The seventeenth century was dominated by France. During the reign of Louis XIII, Cardinal Richelieu created an efficient centralized state. He eliminated the Huguenots as a political force, made nobles subordinate to the king, and made the monarchy absolute. Louis XIV built on these achievements during his long reign. Louis XIV moved his capital from the turbulence of Paris to Versailles, where he built a vast palace and established elaborate court rituals that further limited the power of the nobles.
- [Who Built the Towers of Thebes?](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/who-built-the-towers-of-thebes/) - In the seventeenth century the underclasses, that unspoken for and, for the historian who relies solely on written records, unspeaking mass of humankind, began to speak and to answer the questions posed in the twentieth century by a radical German dramatist and poet, Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956): Who built Thebes of the seven gates? In the books you will find the names of kings. Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock? And Babylon, many times demolished
- [Social Trends in 17th Century Europe | The Problem of Divine-Right Monarchy](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/social-trends-in-17th-century-europe-the-problem-of-divine-right-monarchy/) - Throughout the seventeenth century the laborer, whether rural or urban, faced repeated crises of subsistence, with a general downturn beginning in 1619 and a widespread decline after 1680. Almost no region escaped plague, famine, war, depression, or even all four. Northern Europe and England suffered from a general economic depression in the 1620s; Mediterranean France and northern Italy were struck by plague in the 1630s; and a recurrent plague killed 100,000 in London in 1665.
- [Music in The Baroque Era | The Problem of Divine-Right Monarchy](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/music-in-the-baroque-era-the-problem-of-divine-right-monarchy/) - Baroque composers, especially in Italy, moved further along the paths laid out by their Renaissance predecessors. In Venice, Claudio Monteverdi (1567- 1643) wrote the first important operas. The opera, a characteristically baroque mix of music and drama, proved so popular that Venice soon had sixteen opera houses, which focused on the fame of their chief singers rather than on the overall quality of the supporting cast and the orchestra.
- [Architecture and the Art of Living in The Baroque Era | The Problem of Divine-Right Monarchy](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/architecture-and-the-art-of-living-in-the-baroque-era-the-problem-of-divine-right-monarchy/) - Baroque architecture and urban planning were at their most flamboyant in Rome, where Urban VIII (1623-1644) and other popes sponsored churches, palaces, gardens, fountains, avenues, and piazzas in their determination to make their capital once again the most spectacular city in Europe. St. Peter's Church, apart from Michelangelo's dome, is a legacy of the baroque rather than the Renaissance.
- [Curiosity and Change](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/curiosity-and-change/) - In his Pensees (Thoughts), Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) remarked upon the transitions in history: Rivers are roads which move, and which carry us whither we desire to go. When we do not know the truth of a thing, it is of advantage that there should exist a common error which determines the mind of man, as, for example, the moon, to which is attributed the change of seasons, the progress of diseases, etc. For the chief malady of man is restless curiosity about things which he cannot understand; and it is not so bad for him to be in error as to be curious to no purpose.
- [Painting in The Baroque Era | The Problem of Divine-Right Monarchy](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/painting-in-the-baroque-era-the-problem-of-divine-right-monarchy/) - The most restrained baroque painter was probably Diego Velasquez (1599-1660), who spent thirty-four years at the court of Philip IV of Spain. Velasquez needed all his skill to soften the receding chins and large mouths of the Habsburgs and still make his portraits of Philip IV and the royal family instantly recognizable. His greatest feat of technical wizardry is The Maids of Honor.
- [The Baroque Era | The Problem of Divine-Right Monarchy](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-baroque-era-the-problem-of-divine-right-monarchy/) - Baroque, the label usually applied to the arts of the seventeenth century. probably comes from the Portuguese barroco, "an irregular or misshapen pearl." Some critics have seized upon the suggestion of deformity to criticize the impurity of seventeenth-century art in contrast with the purity of the Renaissance. Especially among Protestants, the reputation of baroque suffered because it was identified with the Counter-Reformation and many of its leading artists appeared to he propagandists for Rome. Many viewers were also repelled by the flamboyance of baroque works.
- [Literature in the 17th Century | The Problem of Divine-Right Monarchy](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/literature-in-the-17th-century-the-problem-of-divine-right-monarchy/) - Just as Henry IV, Richelieu, and Louis XIV brought greater order to French politics after the civil and religious upheavals of the sixteenth century, so the writers of the seventeenth century brought greater discipline to French writing after the Renaissance extravagance of a genius like Rabelais.
- [Progress and Pessimism in the 17th Century | The Problem of Divine-Right Monarchy](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/progress-and-pessimism-in-the-17th-century-the-problem-of-divine-right-monarchy/) - Scientists and rationalists helped greatly to establish in the minds of the educated throughout the West two complementary concepts that were to serve as the foundations of the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century: first, the concept of a "natural" order underlying the disorder and confusion of the universe as it appears to unrefleeting people in their daily life; and, second, the concept of a human faculty, best called reason, which is obscured in most of humanity but can be brought into effective play by good—that is, rational—perception.
- [Century of Genius, Century of Everyman | The Problem of Divine-Right Monarchy](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/century-of-genius-century-of-everyman-the-problem-of-divine-right-monarchy/) - In the seventeenth century the cultural, as well as the political, hegemony of Europe passed from Italy and Spain to Holland, France, and England. Especially in literature, the France of le grand siecle set the imprint of its classical style on the West through the writings of Corneille, Racine, Moliere, Bossuet, and a host of others.
- [The Glorious Revolution and Its Aftermath, 1688-1714 | The Problem of Divine-Right Monarchy](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-glorious-revolution-and-its-aftermath-1688-1714-the-problem-of-divine-right-monarchy/) - The result was the Glorious Revolution, a coup d'etat engineered at first by a group of James's parliamentary opponents who were called Whigs, in contrast to the Tories who tended to support at least some of the policies of the later Stuarts. The Whigs were the heirs of the moderates of the Long Parliament, and they represented an alliance of the great lords and the prosperous London merchants.
- [The Restoration, 1660-1688 | The Problem of Divine-Right Monarchy](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-restoration-1660-1688-the-problem-of-divine-right-monarchy/) - The Restoration of 1660 left Parliament essentially supreme but attempted to undo some of the work of the Revolution. Anglicanism was restored in England and Ireland, though not as a state church in Scotland. Protestants who would not accept the Church of England were termed dissenters. Although they suffered many legal disabilities, dissenters remained numerous, especially among artisans and middle-class merchants.
- [Blackstone on the Law](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/blackstone-on-the-law/) - By the eighteenth century the English recognized that a unique constitution had evolved from the period of their Civil War. Basically unwritten, rooted in the common law, this constitution would contribute to a remarkable period of political stability. In 1765 an English jurist, William Blackstone (1723-1780), would prepare a lengthy set of commentaries on the laws of England in which the process dramatically accelerated by the English Revolution was described:
- [The English Revolution in Review 1640-1660 | The Problem of Divine-Right Monarchy](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-english-revolution-in-review-1640-1660-the-problem-of-divine-right-monarchy/) - At the height of their rule in the early 1650s some Puritans had attempted to enforce on the whole population the austere life of the Puritan ideal. This enforcement took the form of "blue laws": prohibitions on horse racing, gambling, cock fighting, bear baiting, dancing on the greens, fancy dress, the theater, and a host of ordinary pleasures of daily living. Yet this attempt to legislate morality, coming too early for modern techniques of propaganda and regimentation, was not entirely effective.
- [Oliver Cromwell](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/oliver-cromwell/) - Even today the character of Oliver Cromwell is the subject of much debate. Judgments on the English Civil War are shaped in some measure by opinions about Cromwell's motives, actions, and policies. His supporters and detractors are no less firmly committed today than in Cromwell's time, especially in Britain, where the role of the monarchy continues to be debated even now. Some commentators feel that Cromwell, as Lord Protector, simply replaced the king; others argue that he fundamentally transformed England, despite the eventual restoration of the monarchy.
- [King Cromwell and the Interregnum, 1649-1660 | The Problem of Divine-Right Monarchy](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/king-cromwell-and-the-interregnum-1649-1660-the-problem-of-divine-right-monarchy/) - The next eleven years are known as the Interregnum, the interval between two monarchical reigns. England was now a republic under a government known as the Commonwealth. Since the radicals did not dare to call a free election, which would almost certainly have gone against them, the Rump Parliament continued to sit.
- [The Civil War, 1642-1649 | The Problem of Divine-Right Monarchy](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-civil-war-1642-1649-the-problem-of-divine-right-monarchy/) - England was split along lines that were partly territorial, partly social and economic, and partly religious. Royalist strength lay largely in the north and west, relatively less urban and less prosperous than other parts, and largely controlled by gentry who were loyal to throne and altar. Parliamentary strength lay largely in the south and east, especially in London and in East Anglia, where Puritanism commanded wide support. The Scots were a danger to either side, distrustful of an English Parliament but equally distrustful of a king who had sought to put bishops over their kirk.
- [King Charles I, 1625-1642 | The Problem of Divine-Right Monarchy](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/king-charles-i-1625-1642-the-problem-of-divine-right-monarchy/) - Under his son. Charles I, all James's difficulties came to a head very quickly. England was involved in a minor war against Spain, and though the members of Parliament hated Spain, they were most reluctant to grant Charles funds to support the English forces. Meanwhile, despite his French queen, Charles became involved in a war against France, which he financed in part by a forced loan from his wealthier subjects and by quartering troops in private houses at the householders' expense.
- [King James I, 1603-1625 | The Problem of Divine-Right Monarchy](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/king-james-i-1603-1625-the-problem-of-divine-right-monarchy/) - In the troubled reign of James I there were three major points of contention—money, foreign policy, and religion. In all three issues the Crown and its opposition each tried to direct constitutional development in its own favor. In raising money James sought to make the most of revenues that did not require a parliamentary grant; Parliament sought to make the most of its own control over the purse strings by insisting on the principle that it had to approve any new revenues.
- [Stuart England | The Problem of Divine-Right Monarchy](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/stuart-england-the-problem-of-divine-right-monarchy/) - To the extent that English government utilized the new methods of professional administration developed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, it was potentially as absolute as any divine-right monarchy. But the slow growth of representative government checked this potential, generating a set of rules not to be altered easily by the ordinary processes of government.
- [French Aggression in Review | The Problem of Divine-Right Monarchy](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/french-aggression-in-review-the-problem-of-divine-right-monarchy/) - Proponents of the view that Europe underwent a severe crisis during the seventeenth century can find much evidence in the horrors resulting from Louis XIV's aggressions. The total cost of his wars in human lives and economic resources was very great, especially in the deliberate French devastation of the German Palatinate during the War of the League of Augsburg.
- [The Last Two Wars of King Louis XIV | The Problem of Divine-Right Monarchy](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-last-two-wars-of-king-louis-xiv-the-problem-of-divine-right-monarchy/) - But in the last three decades of Louis's reign most of his assets were consumed. Not content with the prestige he had won in his first two wars, Louis took on most of the Western world in what looked like an effort to destroy the independence of Holland and most of western Germany and to bring the Iberian peninsula under a French ruler.
- [The First Two Wars of King Louis XIV | The Problem of Divine-Right Monarchy](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-first-two-wars-of-king-louis-xiv-the-problem-of-divine-right-monarchy/) - The main thrust of this vast effort was northeast, toward the Low Countries and Germany. Louis XIV sought also to secure Spain as a French satellite with a French ruler. Finally, French commitments overseas in North America and in India drove him to attempt, against English and Dutch rivals, to establish a great French empire outside Europe.
- [French Expansion after The Thirty Years' War](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/french-expansion-after-the-thirty-years-war/) - France was the real victor in the Thirty Years' War, acquiring lands on its northeastern frontier. In a postscript to the main conflict, it continued fighting with Spain until the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659, securing additional territories. Prospering economically, France was ready for further expansion when the young and ambitious Louis XIV began his personal rule in 1661.
- [Mercantilism and Colbert | The Problem of Divine-Right Monarchy](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/mercantilism-and-colbert-the-problem-of-divine-right-monarchy/) - Divine-right monarchy was not peculiarly French, of course, nor was the mercantilism practiced by the France of Louis XIV. But like divine-right rule, mercantilism flourished most characteristically under the Sun King. Mercantilism was central to the early modern effort to construct strong, efficient political units.
- [The Royal Administration | The Problem of Divine-Right Monarchy](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-royal-administration-the-problem-of-divine-right-monarchy/) - Of course, in a land as large and complex as France, even the tireless Louis could do no more than exercise general supervision. At Versailles he had three long conferences weekly with his ministers, who headed departments of war, finance, foreign affairs, and the interior.
- [Divine-Right Monarchy | The Problem of Divine-Right Monarchy](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/divine-right-monarchy-the-problem-of-divine-right-monarchy/) - The much admired and imitated French state, of which Versailles was the symbol and Louis XIV the embodiment, is also the best historical example of divine-right monarchy. Perhaps Louis never actually said, "Letat c'est moi" (I am the state), but the phrase clearly summarizes his convictions about his role. In theory, Louis was the representative of God on earth—or at least in France.
- [Le Grand Monarque](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/le-grand-monarque/) - At age twenty-two Louis XIV already displayed an impressive royal presence, as reported by Madame de Motteville (d. 1689), an experienced observer of the French court:
- [King Louis XIV, 1643-1714 | The Problem of Divine-Right Monarchy](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/king-louis-xiv-1643-1714-the-problem-of-divine-right-monarchy/) - When Mazarin died in 1661, Louis XIV began his personal rule. He had been badly frightened during the Fronde when rioters had broken into his bedroom, and he was determined to suppress any challenge to his authority, by persuasion and guile if possible, and by force if necessary. In 1660 he married a Spanish princess for political reasons; after a succession of mistresses, he married again, in 1685. Madame de Maintenon, a devout former Huguenot, was the governess of his illegitimate children; she did much to assure dignified piety at court for the rest of his reign.
- [Jules Mazarin 1602-1661 | The Problem of Divine-Right Monarchy](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/jules-mazarin-1602-1661-the-problem-of-divine-right-monarchy/) - The deaths of Richelieu in 1642 and Louis XIII in 1643, the accession of another child king, and the regency of the hated queen mother, Anne of Austria (actually a Habsburg from Spain, where the dynasty was called the house of Austria), all seemed to threaten a repetition of the crisis that had followed the death of Henry IV. The new crisis was dealt with by the new chief minister, Jules Mazarin (1602-1661), a Sicilian who had been picked and schooled by Richelieu himself and was exceptionally close to Anne.
- [Louis XIII and Richelieu, 1610-1643 | The Problem of Divine-Right Monarchy](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/louis-xiii-and-richelieu-1610-1643-the-problem-of-divine-right-monarchy/) - Louis was fortunate in securing the assistance of the remarkably talented duc de Richelieu (1585-1642), who was an efficient administrator as bishop of the remote diocese of Autun. Tiring of provincial life, Richelieu moved to Paris and showed unscrupulous skill in political maneuvering during the confused days of the regency.
- [Bourbon France | The Problem of Divine-Right Monarchy](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/bourbon-france-the-problem-of-divine-right-monarchy/) - In 1610 the capable and popular Henry IV was assassinated in the prime of his career by a madman who was believed at the time to be working for the Jesuits—a charge for which there is no proof. The new king, Louis XIII (r. 1610-1643), was nine years old; the queen mother, Marie de Medici, served as regent but showed little political skill. Her Italian favorites and French nobles, Catholic and Huguenot alike, carried on a hectic competition that threatened to undo all that Henry IV had accomplished.
- [The Problem of Divine-Right Monarchy](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-problem-of-divine-right-monarchy/) - The peace of Westphalia in 1648 ended the Thirty Years' War but also marked the end of an epoch in European history. It ended the Age of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, when wars were both religious and dynastic in motivation, and the chief threats to a stable international balance came from the Catholic Habsburgs and from the militant Protestants of Germany, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia.
- [Summary | European Exploration and Expansion](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/summary-european-exploration-and-expansion/) - In the early modern period explorers representing western European nations crossed vast oceans to discover other civilizations. With superior material and technological strength, especially firearms, Europeans were able to win empires. The motives for European expansion varied from desire to serve God, to glory, gold, and strategic need.
- [The Importance of Cotton](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-importance-of-cotton/) - Cotton had been known from time immemorial in Egypt, India, and China; it was introduced into Spain in the ninth century, but it was hardly known in England until the fifteenth century. Only in the seventeenth century was it introduced extensively from India, and then into other "divers regions," including the southern colonies of English North America, and, in time, Africa. Empire thus made cotton the world's best known, most important plant fiber.
- [The Slave Trade](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-slave-trade/) - The Dutch slave ship St. Jan started off for Curacao in the West Indies in 1659. Its log recorded deaths of slaves aboard, until between June 30 and October 29 a total of 59 men, 47 women, and 4 children had died. They were still 95 slaves aboard when disaster struck, thus matter-of-factly recorded:
- [The Impact of Expansion | European Exploration and Expansion](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-impact-of-expansion-european-exploration-and-expansion/) - The record of European expansion contains pages as grim as any in history. The African slave trade—begun by the Africans and the Arabs and turned into a profitable seaborne enterprise by the Portuguese, Dutch, and English—is a series of horrors, from the rounding up of the slaves by local chieftains in Africa, through their transportation across the Atlantic, to their sale in the Indies. American settlers virtually exterminated the native population east of the Mississippi. There were, of course,
- [North by Sea to the Arctic | European Exploration and Expansion](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/north-by-sea-to-the-arctic-european-exploration-and-expansion/) - Henry Hudson had found not only the Hudson River but also Hudson Bay in the far north of Canada. In 1670 English adventurers and investors formed the Hudson's Bay Company, originally set up for fur trading along the great bay to the northwest of French Quebec. In the late sixteenth century the Dutch had penetrated far into the European Arctic, had discovered the island of Spitsbergen to the north of Norway, and had ranged eastward across the sea named after their leader, William Barents (d. 1597).
- [Russia: East by Land to the Pacific | European Exploration and Expansion](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/russia-east-by-land-to-the-pacific-european-exploration-and-expansion/) - The victories of Ivan the Terrible over the Volga Tatars led to the first major advances, with private enterprise leading the way. By the end of the sixteenth century the Stroganov family had obtained huge concessions in the Ural area, where they made a great fortune in the fur trade and discovered and exploited Russia's first iron mines.
- [Russia | European Exploration and Expansion](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/russia-european-exploration-and-expansion/) - Russian exploration and conquest of Siberia matched European expansion in the New World, both chronologically (the Russians crossed the Urals from Europe into Asia in 1483) and politically, for expanding Muscovite Russia was a "new" monarchy. This Russian movement across the land was remarkably rapid—some five thou¬sand miles in about forty years.
- [Africa and the Far East: Areas of Influence | European Exploration and Expansion](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/africa-and-the-far-east-areas-of-influence-european-exploration-and-expansion/) - To reach the East all three of the northern maritime powers used the ocean route around Africa that the Portuguese had developed in the fifteenth century. All three secured African posts, with the Dutch occupying the strategic Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of the continent in 1652.
- [A Japanese Folk Tale](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/a-japanese-folk-tale/) - The age of exploration, discovery, and conquest was a two-way street, for the non-Western culture often reacted quickly and effectively to the arrival of Europeans. The following Japanese tale, a clever variant on the dictim that in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king, suggests one form of interaction. Once upon a time there was a man who did nothing all day long—he just waited and hoped that suddenly he would meet with unexpected good fortune and become rich in an instant without any effort.
- [The Two Indies, West and East: Areas of Conquest | European Exploration and Expansion](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-two-indies-west-and-east-areas-of-conquest-european-exploration-and-expansion/) - The French, Dutch, and English all sought to gain footholds in South America, but had to settle for the unimportant Guianas. They thoroughly broke up the Spanish hold on the Caribbean, however. In early modern times these islands were one of the great prizes of imperialism. Cheap slave labor raised tobacco, fruits, coffee, and, most profitably, cane sugar.
- [The French in North America | European Exploration and Expansion](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-french-in-north-america-european-exploration-and-expansion/) - To the north and west of the fourteen colonies, in the region of the St. Lawrence basin, the French built upon the work of Cartier and Champlain. The St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes gave the French easy access to the heart of the continent, in contrast to the Appalachian ranges that stood between the English and the Mississippi River.
- [English, Dutch, and Swedes in North America | European Exploration and Expansion](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/english-dutch-and-swedes-in-north-america-european-exploration-and-expansion/) - The English did not immediately follow up the work of the Cabots. Instead, they put their energies into breaking into the Spanish trading monopoly. In 1562 John Hawkins started the English slave trade; his nephew, Francis Drake, reached the Pacific and claimed California for England under the name of New Albion.
- [The North Atlantic Powers | European Exploration and Expansion](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-north-atlantic-powers-european-exploration-and-expansion/) - Spain and Portugal enjoyed a head start of nearly a century in founding empires of settlement. The northern Atlantic states soon made up for their late start, however. As early as 1497 John Cabot (d. c. 1498) and his son Sebastian, Italians in English service, saw something of the North American coast and gave the English territorial claims based on their explorations.
- [The Hazards of Exploration](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-hazards-of-exploration/) - A routine entry from the journal of Antonio Pigafetta (c. 1491–c. 1536), who completed the circumnavigation of the globe begun by Magellan, tells of daily pain and deprivation. On Wednesday the twenty-eighth of November, one thousand five hundred and twenty, we issued forth from the said strait [of Magellan] and entered the Pacific Sea, where we remained three months and twenty days without taking on board provisions or any other refreshments, and we ate only old biscuit turned to powder, all full of worms and stinking of the urine which the rats had made on it, having eaten the good.
- [The Growth of the Spanish Empire | European Exploration and Expansion](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-growth-of-the-spanish-empire-european-exploration-and-expansion/) - By the Treaty of Tordesillas Spain and Portugal had divided the world open to trade and empire along a line cut through the Atlantic, so that Brazil became Portuguese. This same line extended across the poles and cut the Pacific, so that some of the islands Magellan discovered came into the Spanish half. Spain conveniently treated the Philippines as if they, too, were in the Spanish half of the globe, though they were actually just outside it.
- [Columbus Describes the New World](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/columbus-describes-the-new-world/) - As he neared the end of his first voyage, Christopher Columbus prepared a letter for the king of Spain in which he described the islands he had discovered.
- [Columbus and Later Explorers | European Exploration and Expansion](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/columbus-and-later-explorers-european-exploration-and-expansion/) - Columbus (1451-1506), born in Genoa, was an experienced sailor and had gone at least once to the Gold Coast of Africa; he may also have sailed to Iceland. His central obsession, that the Far East ("the Indies") could be reached by sailing westward from Spain, was not unique. No educated person in 1492 seriously doubted that the earth was round, but as it turned out most scholars had greatly underestimated its size.
- [West by Sea to the Indies | European Exploration and Expansion](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/west-by-sea-to-the-indies-european-exploration-and-expansion/) - In the earliest days of concerted effort to explore the oceans, the rulers of Spain had been too busy disposing of Muslim Granada and uniting the separate parts of Spain to patronize scientific exploration as the Portuguese had done. But Spanish traders were active, and Spain was growing in prosperity.
- [The Growth and Decline of the Portuguese Empire | European Exploration and Expansion](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-growth-and-decline-of-the-portuguese-empire-european-exploration-and-expansion/) - Along the coasts of Africa, India, and China, the Portuguese established a series of trading posts over which they hoisted their flag as a sign that these bits of territory had been annexed to the Portuguese Crown. Such posts were often called factories after the factors, or commercial agents, who were stationed there to trade with the local population.
- [China | European Exploration and Expansion](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/china-european-exploration-and-expansion/) - China, too, resisted the West. China also saw its armed forces beaten whenever they came into formal military conflict with European or European-trained armies or fleets. It, too, was forced to make many concessions to Europeans—to grant treaty ports, and above all, extraterritoriality, that is, the right of Europeans to be tried in their own national courts for offenses committed on Chinese soil. Yet China, unlike India, was never annexed by a European power and never lost its sovereignty.
- [India | European Exploration and Expansion](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/india-european-exploration-and-expansion/) - India had been marginally in touch with Europe for several thousand years. Throughout the Middle Ages the Arabs had served as a link in trade, and in the sixteenth century a direct link was forged between the West and India, never to be loosened.
- [Prince Henry and the Portuguese | European Exploration and Expansion](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/prince-henry-and-the-portuguese-european-exploration-and-expansion/) - Prince Henry of Portugal (1394-1460), known as "the Navigator," was a deeply religious man who may well have been moved by a desire to convert the populations of India and the Far East. Indeed, many in the West were convinced that these distant peoples were already Christian, and for true salvation needed only to be brought in direct contact with the Roman Catholic church.
- [East by Sea to the Indies | European Exploration and Expansion](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/east-by-sea-to-the-indies-european-exploration-and-expansion/) - Over the broad sweep of the growth of European empires, there was a strong tendency for one nation to dominate for a century or so and then decline. The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries tended to be dominated by the Iberian states, the seventeenth century by the Dutch, the eighteenth by the French, and the nineteenth by the British. The first on the scene were the Portuguese.
- [European Exploration and Expansion](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/european-exploration-and-expansion/) - Westerners were not the first people to migrate over vast reaches of water. Even before the Viking voyages in the Atlantic, the Polynesians had settled remote Pacific islands. But the Polynesians and other early migrants were not societies in expansion, but groups of individuals on the move. The expansion of the West was different. From its beginning in ancient Greece and Rome, records were kept, maps were made, and the nucleus always remained in touch with its offshoots.
- [Exploration and Expansion](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/exploration-and-expansion/) - During the early modern centuries, when Europeans were experiencing the Renaissance and the Reformation and their long aftermath of traumatic conflict, some nations took part in a remarkable expansion that carried European sailors, merchants, missionaries, settlers, and adventurers to almost every quarter known world" meaning known to them— of the globe. What Westerners called "the spread outward at a breathtaking pace.
- [Summary | The Great Powers in Conflict](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/summary-the-great-powers-in-conflict/) - By the sixteenth century, changes in political, social, family, and economic structure were underway that marked the beginning of what historians call the modern period. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the modern state system took shape as well-organized states competed for power in western Europe. With the emergence of Spain, France, and England came the growth of national patriotism. European states developed diplomatic services and professional armies. The first modern navies were also built. Increases in population, trade, and prices fostered conditions that led to warfare.
- [World-Machine, Rationalism, and Materialism | The Great Powers in Conflict](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/world-machine-rationalism-and-materialism-the-great-powers-in-conflict/) - All these investigations in the various sciences tended to undermine the older Aristotelian concept of a thing's being "perfect." Instead of perfect circles, post-Copernican astronomy posited ellipses; instead of bodies moving of themselves, Newton pictured bodies responding to forces acting upon them.
- [The Scientific Revolution 1543-1700 | The Great Powers in Conflict](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-scientific-revolution-1543-1700-the-great-powers-in-conflict/) - A major role in the cultivation of a new scientific attitude was taken by the English thinker and politician Francis Bacon. Though not himself a successful practitioner of science, Bacon was a tireless proponent of the need to observe and to accumulate data. In Novum Organum (1620) he wrote that scientists must think all things possible until all things could be tested. By relying on "the empirical faculty," which learns from experience, Bacon was promoting what he called induction, which proceeds from the particular observed phenomenon to the general conclusion to be drawn.
- [Science and Religion in the 16th Century | The Great Powers in Conflict](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/science-and-religion-in-the-16th-century-the-great-powers-in-conflict/) - During the long sixteenth century and deep into the seventeenth, a slow transition from societies based on religious certainties to societies derived from secular concerns was taking place throughout western Europe. The pace was uneven; it differed markedly from place to place, and for most people religion remained at the root of human concern, since salvation was still the desired end of life. But religion was receding toward the background, and security and stability seemed to be a matter for the state rather than the church.
- [The Thirty Years' War: The Peace of Westphalia, 1648 | The Great Powers in Conflict](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-thirty-years-war-the-peace-of-westphalia-1648-the-great-powers-in-conflict/) - The terms of the peace extended the Augsburg settlement to Calvinists as well as to Lutherans and Catholics. Princes would still "determine" the faith of their subjects, but the right of dissidents to emigrate was recognized. In most of Protestant Germany, multiplicity of sects was in fact accepted.
- [The Thirty Years' War: The Habsburg-Bourbon Conflict, 1635-1648 | The Great Powers in Conflict](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-thirty-years-war-the-habsburg-bourbon-conflict-1635-1648-the-great-powers-in-conflict/) - The remainder of the Thirty Years' War was a Habsburg- Bourbon conflict. The Protestant commander had to promise future toleration for Catholicism in Germany and to undertake to fight on indefinitely in exchange for a guarantee of French men and money. The war became transformed into a struggle between emerging national identities. The armies on both sides were a mixture of men from every nationality in Europe; they fought as professional soldiers, changing sides frequently. As these armies ranged across central Europe, the land was laid waste in their wake.
- [The Thirty Years' War: Intervention by Denmark and Sweden, 1625-1635 | The Great Powers in Conflict](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-thirty-years-war-intervention-by-denmark-and-sweden-1625-1635-the-great-powers-in-conflict/) - A vigorous and ambitious monarch, King Christian IV sought to extend Danish political and economic power over northern Germany. To check the Danish invasion, the German Catholics enlisted the help of the private army of Albert of Wallenstein (1583-1634). Wallenstein recruited and paid an army that lived off the land.
- [The Thirty Years' War: The Struggle over Bohemia and the Palatinate, 1618-1625 | The Great Powers in Conflict](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-thirty-years-war-the-struggle-over-bohemia-and-the-palatinate-1618-1625-the-great-powers-in-conflict/) - A major physical obstacle blocking Spanish communications was the Palatinate, a rich area in the Rhineland ruled by a Calvinist prince, the Elector Palatine. In 1618 the Elector Palatine, Frederick V, also headed the Protestant Union. Frederick hoped to break the Catholic hold on the office of emperor upon the death of the emperor Matthias (r. 1612-1619), who was old and childless.
- [Germany and the Thirty Years' War | The Great Powers in Conflict](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/germany-and-the-thirty-years-war-the-great-powers-in-conflict/) - Like the great wars of the sixteenth century, the Thirty Years' War of 1618-1648 was in part a conflict over religions. This time, however, most of the fighting took place in Germany. The Habsburg emperor, Ferdinand II (r. 1619-1637), made the last serious political and military effort to unify Germany under Catholic rule. The Thirty Years' War began as a conflict between Catholics and Protestants; it ended as a struggle to reduce the power of the Habsburgs. The war finally involved most of the European powers and their colonies. It was, in the context of the times, the first "world war."
- [The Dutch Republic, 1602-1672 | The Great Powers in Conflict](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-dutch-republic-1602-1672-the-great-powers-in-conflict/) - The United Provinces of the Northern Netherlands gained independence from Spain before the death of Philip II, though formal recognition of that independence came only in 1648. The Dutch state was an aristocratic merchant society, the first significant middle-class state in Europe with virtually no landed aristocracy. Despite its small size, it was a great power, colonizing in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, trading everywhere, and supporting an active and efficient navy.
- [The English Aristocracy](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-english-aristocracy/) - Historians today emphasize that the political differences between England and the Continent reflected differences in social structure. England had its nobility or aristocracy ranging from barons to dukes. These nobles, plus Anglican bishops, composed the House of Lords. But in England, the younger sons of nobles were not themselves titled nobles, as they were on the Continent.
- [The English Renaissance: The Elizabethan Era | The Great Powers in Conflict](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-english-renaissance-the-elizabethan-era-the-great-powers-in-conflict/) - Elizabeth's reign was marked by intrigue, war, rebellion, and personal and party strife. Yet there were solid foundations under the state and society that produced the wealth and victories of the Elizabethan Age and its attainments in literature, music, architecture, and science. The economy prospered in an era of unbridled individual enterprise.
- [Tudor England: Queen Elizabeth I, r. 1558-1603 | The Great Powers in Conflict](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/tudor-england-queen-elizabeth-i-r-1558-1603-the-great-powers-in-conflict/) - When Mary died in 1558, Henry VIII's last surviving child was Elizabeth, daughter of Anne Boleyn. She had been declared illegitimate by Parliament in 1536 at her father's request; Henry's last will, however, had rehabilitated her, and she now succeeded as Elizabeth I (r. 1558-1603). She had been brought up a Protestant, and so once more the English churchgoer was required to switch faith. This time the Anglican church was firmly established; the prayer book and Thirty-nine Articles of 1563 issued under Elizabeth have remained to this day the essential documents of the Anglican faith.
- [Tudor England: King Edward VI and Queen Mary, r. 1547-1558 | The Great Powers in Conflict](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/tudor-england-king-edward-vi-and-queen-mary-r-1547-1558-the-great-powers-in-conflict/) - The death of Henry VIII in 1547 marked the beginning of a period of extraordinary religious shifts. Henry was succeeded by his only son, the ten-year-old Edward VI (r. 1547-1553), borne by his third wife, Jane Seymour. Led by the young king's uncle, the duke of Somerset, as lord protector, Edward's government pushed on into Protestant ways.
- [Tudor England: King Henry VIII, 1509-1547 | The Great Powers in Conflict](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/tudor-england-king-henry-viii-1509-1547-the-great-powers-in-conflict/) - Critics have often accused European royalty of ruinous expenditures on palaces, retinues, pensions, mistresses, and high living in general, and yet such expenditures were usually a relatively small part of government outlays. War was really the major cause of disastrous financial difficulties for modern governments. Henry VIII's six wives, his court, his frequent royal journeys did not beggar England; the wars of Charles V and Philip II did beggar Spain.
- [The Edict of Nantes](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-edict-of-nantes/) - By this edict Henry IV granted religious freedom to the Huguenots. Its key provisions follow: We have by this perpetual and irrevocable Edict pronounced, declared, and ordained and we pronounce, declare and ordain: I. Firstly, that the memory of everything done on both sides from the beginning of the month of March, 1585, until our accession to the Crown and during the other previous troubles, and at the out¬break of them, shall remain extinct and suppressed, as if it were something which had never occurred.
- [The First Bourbon King: Henry IV, 1589-1610 | The Great Powers in Conflict](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-first-bourbon-king-henry-iv-1589-1610-the-great-powers-in-conflict/) - Henry of Navarre was now by law Henry IV (r. 15891610), the first king of the house of Bourbon. In the decisive battle of Ivry in March 1590, he defeated the Catholics, who had set up the aged cardinal of Bourbon as "King Charles X." But Henry's efforts to besiege Paris were repeatedly frustrated by Spanish troops sent down from Flanders by Philip II.
- [France: Toward Absolutism, 1547-1588 | The Great Powers in Conflict](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/france-toward-absolutism-1547-1588-the-great-powers-in-conflict/) - The long-established French monarchy began to move toward more efficient absolutism after the Hundred Years' War, particularly under Louis XI. In this development, France had certain advantages. None of its provinces showed quite the intense regionalism that could be found in Catalonia or among the Spanish Basques.
- [Don Quixote](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/don-quixote/) - A tension runs through Cervantes' Don Quixote. Its hero struggles against reality, and in his aspirations he is ennobled even in a world where evil often triumphs. This class work is the source of our word quixotic.
- ["The Spanish Century" | The Great Powers in Conflict](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-spanish-century-the-great-powers-in-conflict/) - Spanish supremacy, though short-lived, was real enough. The Spanish "style" was set in this Golden Age, which has left the West magnificent paintings, architecture, and decoration, and one of the few really universal books, Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616). This Spanish style is not at all like those of France and Italy, even though they are often tied with Spain as "Latin." Many historians see the Spanish spirit as among the most serious, most darkly passionate, in the West—a striving spirit, carrying to an extreme the chivalric concept of honor.
- [The Spanish Economy | The Great Powers in Conflict](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-spanish-economy-the-great-powers-in-conflict/) - The Iberian peninsula is mountainous, and its central tableland is subject to droughts, but its agricultural potential is considerable and it has mineral resources, notably iron. Spain was the first major European state to secure lands overseas and to develop a navy and merchant marine to integrate the vast resources of the New World with a base in the Old World. Yet all this wealth slipped through Spain's fingers in a few generations. An important factor here was the immense cost of the wars of Charles V and Philip II.
- [Spanish Absolutism, 1516-1659 | The Great Powers in Conflict](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/spanish-absolutism-1516-1659-the-great-powers-in-conflict/) - Spain in its Golden Age, 1516-1659, offers a case study of the clash between the ideal of absolutism and the persistence of the varied groups on which the monarchy sought to impose its centralized, standardizing rules. The reigns of its two hard-working monarchs, Charles V (r. 1516-1556) and Philip II, span almost the entire century.
- [The Catholic Monarchies: Spain and France | The Great Powers in Conflict](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-catholic-monarchies-spain-and-france-the-great-powers-in-conflict/) - Such labels as Age of Absolutism and Age of Divine-Right Monarchy are frequently applied to the early modern centuries; over most of Europe the ultimate control of administration rested with a hereditary monarch who claimed a God-given right to make final decisions. But while the greater nobles were losing power and influence to the monarchy, the lesser nobles continued to dominate the countryside, where medieval local privileges survived vigorously almost everywhere, together with local ways of life quite different from those of the court and the capital.
- [The Wars of Philip II and the Dutch Revolt, 1556-1598 | The Great Powers in Conflict](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-wars-of-philip-ii-and-the-dutch-revolt-1556-1598-the-great-powers-in-conflict/) - In 1556 Charles V abdicated both his Spanish and imperial crowns and retired to a monastery, where he died two years later. His brother, who became Emperor Ferdinand I (r. 1556-1564), secured the Austrian Habsburg territories; his son, Philip II of Spain (r. 1556— 1598), added the Spanish lands overseas (Mexico, Peru, and in the Caribbean), the Burgundian inheritance of the Netherlands, and Milan and Naples in Italy.
- [Francis I versus Charles V, 1515-1559 | The Great Powers in Conflict](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/francis-i-versus-charles-v-1515-1559-the-great-powers-in-conflict/) - There were now two aggressors: the French house of Valois, still bent on expansion, and the house of Habsburg. When the Habsburg Charles V (who was Charles I in Spain), succeeded his grandfather Maximilian as emperor in 1519, he had inherited Spain, the Low Countries, the Habsburg lands in central Europe, the Holy Roman Empire, and the new preponderance in Italy. He apparently had France squeezed in a vise.
- [The Italian Wars of Charles VIII and Louis XII, 1483-1515 | The Great Powers in Conflict](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-italian-wars-of-charles-viii-and-louis-xii-1483-1515-the-great-powers-in-conflict/) - Charles VIII of France (r. 1483-1498) continued Louis XI's policy of extending the royal domain by marrying the heiress of the duchy of Brittany. Apparently secure on the home front, Charles decided to expand abroad. As the remote heir of the Angevins, Charles disputed the right of the Aragonese, then led by Ferdinand (1458-1494), to hold the throne of Naples.
- [The Instruments of Foreign Policy | The Great Powers in Conflict](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-instruments-of-foreign-policy-the-great-powers-in-conflict/) - By 1500 almost all European sovereign states possessed, at least in rudimentary form, most of the social and political organs of a modern state. They had two essential instruments: a professional diplomatic service and a professional army. The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries saw the steady development of modern diplomatic agencies and methods.
- [Renaissance Monarchies, 1450-1650 | The Great Powers in Conflict](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/renaissance-monarchies-1450-1650-the-great-powers-in-conflict/) - In early modern times, Western society was a group of states, each striving to grow, usually by annexing other states or at least bringing them under some sort of control. At any given moment some states were on the offensive, trying to gain land, power, and wealth; others were on the defensive, trying to preserve what they had. The units in this competitive system are usually termed sovereign states, which means in practice that their rulers had armed forces to carry out their policies and could take initiatives independently of other states.
- [A Long Duree | The Great Powers in Conflict](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/a-long-duree-the-great-powers-in-conflict/) - In the long struggle between the European nations for hegemony, there was an enduring theme—a "long sixteenth century," or long duree, of population growth and price inflation during which the Mediterranean basin largely remained the economic and military heart of Europe. In the past a steady increase in population tended to exceed the capacity of a society to feed the new mouths.
- [The Great Powers in Conflict](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-great-powers-in-conflict/) - Here is no general agreement on which date, or even which development, best divides the medieval from the modern. Some make a strong case for a date associated with the emergence of the great, ambitious monarchs: Louis XI in France in 1461; or Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, who were married in 1469; or the advent of Henry VII and the Tudors in England in 1485. Scholars who value international relations tend to choose 1494, when Charles VIII of France began what is often called "the first modern war" by leading his army over the Alps to Italy.
- [Summary | The Protestant Reformation](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/summary-the-protestant-reformation/) - In 1517 Martin Luther touched off a revolution when he drew up Ninety-five Theses for debate. In them he questioned church practices, specifically the practice of granting indulgences—popularly believed to grant forgiveness of sin and remission of punishment. Luther himself had come to believe in the primacy of faith over good works and in the priesthood of individual believers.
- [Nationalism, Modernity, and the Reformation | The Protestant Reformation](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/nationalism-modernity-and-the-reformation-the-protestant-reformation/) - After the great break of the sixteenth century, both Protestantism and Catholicism became important elements in the formation of modern nationalism. Neither Protestants nor Catholics were always patriots. French Protestants sought help from the English enemy, and French Catholics from the Spanish enemy. But where a specific religion became identified with a given political unit, religious feeling and patriotic feeling reinforced each other. This is most evident where a political unit had to struggle for its independence.
- [Conflicting Views of Protestantism | The Protestant Reformation](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/conflicting-views-of-protestantism-the-protestant-reformation/) - The German sociologist Max Weber explored this question in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, first published in 1904. What started Weber's exploration was evidence suggesting that in his own day German Protestants had a proportionately greater interest in the world of business, and German Catholics a proportionately smaller interest, than their ratio in the German population would lead one to expect.
- [How "Modern" Was Protestantism? | The Protestant Reformation](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/how-modern-was-protestantism-the-protestant-reformation/) - The Reformation has often been interpreted, especially by Protestants, as peculiarly modern, forward-looking, and democratic—as distinguished from the stagnant and class-conscious Middle Ages. This view seems to gain support from the fact that those parts of the West that in the last three centuries have been most prosperous, that have seemed to have worked out democratic government most successfully, and that have often made the most striking contributions to science, technology, and culture were predominantly Protestant.
- [The Inquisition](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-inquisition/) - In the sixteenth century the Inquisition inquired into the faith and correctness of view of many people who considered themselves to be Christians. In 1583 Domenico Scandella, called Menocchio (1532-1599), was denounced for heresy. Menocchio had been asked about the relationship of God to chaos, and he had answered "that they were never separated, that is, neither chaos without God, nor God without chaos." This led to further efforts to clarify Menocchio's views. This selection ends with the exact moment when Menocchio commits heresy.
- [The Council of Trent, 1545-1564 | The Protestant Reformation](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-council-of-trent-1545-1564-the-protestant-reformation/) - If anything, revulsion against the Protestant tendency toward the "priesthood of the believer" hardened Catholic doctrines into a firmer insistence on the miraculous power of the priesthood. Protestant variation promoted Catholic uniformity. Not even on indulgences did the church yield; interpreted as a spiritual rather than a monetary transaction, indulgences were reaffirmed by the Council of Trent.
- [The Jesuits and the Inquisition, 1540-1556 | The Protestant Reformation](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-jesuits-and-the-inquisition-1540-1556-the-protestant-reformation/) - The greatest of these clerical orders by far was the Society of Jesus, founded in 1540 by the Spaniard Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556). Loyola, who had been a soldier, turned to religion after receiving a painful wound in battle. From the first the Jesuits were the soldiery of the Catholic church; their leader bore the title of general, and a military discipline was laid down in Loyola's Spiritual Exercises, which set the rules for the order.
- [The Catholic Reformation | The Protestant Reformation](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-catholic-reformation-the-protestant-reformation/) - The religious ferment from which Protestantism emerged was originally a ferment within the Catholic church, to which many who remained Catholics had contributed. Erasmus and other Christian humanists greatly influenced the early stages of what came to be called the Catholic Reformation. Particularly in Spain, but spreading throughout the Catholic world, there was a revival of mysticism and of popular religion.
- [The Radicals | The Protestant Reformation](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-radicals-the-protestant-reformation/) - Among the radicals, preaching was even more important than in other forms of Protestantism, and more emotionally charged with hopes of heaven and fears of hell. Many sects expected an immediate Second Coming of Christ and an end of the material world. Many were economic equalitarians, communists of a sort; they did not share wealth, however, so much as they shared the poverty that seemed to them an essential part of the Christian way.
- [Calvinism and Predestination | The Protestant Reformation](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/calvinism-and-predestination-the-protestant-reformation/) - For Calvinists the main theological concern was the problem of predestination against free will. The problem arose from the concept that God is all-powerful, all-good, all- knowing; this being so, he must determine all that happens, even willing that the sinner must sin. For if he did not so will, a person would be doing something God did not want, and God would not be all-powerful. There is a grave difficulty here. If God wills that the sinner sin, the sinner cannot be blamed for it. Logical argument appeared to be at a dead end.
- [The Conservative Churches | The Protestant Reformation](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-conservative-churches-the-protestant-reformation/) - The divergent beliefs and practices that separated the Protestant churches one from another may be arranged most conveniently in order of their theological distance from Catholicism. The Church of England managed to contain almost the whole Protestant range, from High Church to extreme Low Church.
- [Common Denominators of Protestant Beliefs and Practices | The Protestant Reformation](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/common-denominators-of-protestant-beliefs-and-practices-the-protestant-reformation/) - There were certain common beliefs and practices that linked all Protestant sects and set them apart from Catholicism. The first of these common denominators was repudiation of Rome's claim to be the one true faith. The difficulty here was that each Protestant sect initially considered itself to be the one true faith, the legitimate successor to Christ and his apostles.
- [Anabaptists and Other Radicals, 1521-1604 | The Protestant Reformation](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/anabaptists-and-other-radicals-1521-1604-the-protestant-reformation/) - Socially and intellectually less "respectable" than the established Lutheran and Anglican churches or the sober Calvinists was a range of radical sects, the left wing of the Protestant revolution. In the sixteenth century most of these were known as Anabaptists (from the Greek for "baptizing again").
- [Protestant Founders: King Henry VIII, 1509-1547 | The Protestant Reformation](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/protestant-founders-king-henry-viii-1509-1547-the-protestant-reformation/) - In England, the Reformation arose from the desire of King Henry VIII (b. 1491; r. 1509-1547) to put aside his wife, Catherine of Aragon (1485-1536) because she had not given him a male heir. In 1533 Henry married Anne Boleyn (1507-1536), whom he had made pregnant; Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556), the archbishop of Canterbury, annulled the marriage with Catherine. When annulment invalid, Henry's answer was the Act of Supremacy of 1534, which made the king supreme head of the church in England.
- [Protestant Founders: John Calvin, 1509-1564 | The Protestant Reformation](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/protestant-founders-john-calvin-1509-1564-the-protestant-reformation/) - Another Swiss city ripe for Protestant domination was Geneva. A new religious and political regime developed there under the leadership of the French-born Jean Chauvin—John Calvin. Calvin shaped the Protestant movement as a faith and a way of life in a manner that gave it a more broadly European basis. Both Calvin and Zwingli worked their reforms through and with the town councils of their respective cities. Once again lay piety, a growing literacy, and a desire for local control aided the reformers.
- [Protestant Founders: Ulrich Zwingli, 1484-1531 | The Protestant Reformation](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/protestant-founders-ulrich-zwingli-1484-1531-the-protestant-reformation/) - There were many other figures who attacked the Church of Rome. Some of these, like Thomas Miintzer (c. 1470— 1525), strongly opposed Luther's views. But among the many founders of what came to be known as Protestantism, the first in sequence was Ulrich Zwingli (1484– 1531), the first in importance John Calvin (1509-1564).
- [Martin Luther: A Conservative Revolutionary | The Protestant Reformation](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/martin-luther-a-conservative-revolutionary-the-protestant-reformation/) - Luther did not push his doctrines of justification by faith and the priesthood of all believers to their logical conclusion, namely, that if religion is wholly a matter between "man and God," an organized church would be unnecessary. When radical reformers inspired by Luther attempted to apply these concepts to the churches of Saxony in the early 1520s, there was immense confusion, rioting, and vandalism.
- [Martin Luther on Christian Liberty](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/martin-luther-on-christian-liberty/) - In 1520 Martin Luther wrote On Christian Liberty. Considered to be "the most beautiful" of Luther's writings, the Treatise on the Liberty of a Christian Man (its correct formal title) was an affirmation rather than a protest. Luther said he was sending his long essay as a gift to Pope Leo X.
- [Reasons for Martin Luther's Success | The Protestant Reformation](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/reasons-for-martin-luthers-success-the-protestant-reformation/) - Fundamentally Luther succeeded because his ideas appealed to people of all classes. In its maturity his theology was seen as revolutionary in economic, social, and political—as well as intellectual and doctrinal ways. The printing press quickly made Luther's ideas more accessible and assured that they were recorded in permanent forms. Political circumstances also favored Luther and Lutheranism. The protection provided to Luther by his local prince meant that Luther's ideas took hold before resistance to them could be felt.
- [Protestant Founders: Martin Luther, 1483-1546 | The Protestant Reformation](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/protestant-founders-martin-luther-1483-1546-the-protestant-reformation/) - Martin Luther (1483-1546) was a professor of theology the University of Wittenberg. In 1517 he was undergoing a great religious awakening. Luther's father had sent him to the University of Erfurt, then the most prestigious in Germany, to study law. Luther yearned instead to enter the religious life. On his way back to Erfurt he was terrified by a severe thunderstorm and vowed that he would become a monk. Against his father's opposition, Luther joined the Augustinian friars.
- [The Protestant Reformation](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-protestant-reformation/) - In October 1517, at Wittenberg in the German electorate of Saxony, the Augustinian monk Martin Luther drew up ninety-five theses for theological disputation and thereby touched off the sequence of events that produced the Protestant Reformation. Luther's provocative theses were soon translated from Latin into German and, when printed, were read and debated far beyond the local academic and religious community for which he originally intended them.
- [Summary | The Renaissance](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/summary-the-renaissance/) - Scholars have debated what the Renaissance was and when it began. However, most accept that it began in Italy about 1300 and lasted for about three centuries. The outpouring of intellectual and artistic energy was not only marked by a revival of interest in classical Greek and Roman values but also owed a debt to medieval Christian civilization.
- [The Courtier](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-courtier/) - The Italian Baldassare Castiglione (1478-1529) was said to be "one of the finest gentlemen in the world.
- [The Artist's Life](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-artists-life/) - Benvenuto Cellini's fame rests as much on his Autobiography as on his art. Begun in Florence in 1558, it is filled with court gossip, attacks on fellow artists, and accounts of Cellini's often riotous life. It could take him months, even years, to complete a single commissioned work of art, for he faced many distractions. One of his most famous works, a great figure of Perseus (son of Zeus in Greek myth), took an especially long time, interrupted as it was by other commissions, difficult working conditions, poor workmanship by some assistants, and the death of his brother-in-law.
- [The Art of Daily Living | The Renaissance](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-art-of-daily-living-the-renaissance/) - Indoors, Renaissance buildings reflected the improving standard of life among the affluent. Smaller rooms were easier to heat than the vast drafty halls of the Middle Ages, and items of furniture began to multiply beyond the medieval complement of built-in beds, benches, cupboards, and tables. Although chairs were still largely reserved for the master of the house and important guests, benches or stools were becoming more common.
- [Architecture | The Renaissance](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/architecture-the-renaissance/) - In 1546, at the age of seventy, Michelangelo agreed to become the chief architect of St. Peter's in Rome. St. Peter's exemplifies many of the features that distinguish Renaissance architecture from Gothic. Gothic cathedrals were topped by great spires and towers; Sc. Peter's was crowned by Michelangelo's massive dome, which rises 435 feet above the floor. Gothic buildings, with their great windows, pointed arches, and high-flung vaults, create an impression of aspiration and grace, of scarcely being earthbound; St.
- [Sculpture | The Renaissance](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/sculpture-the-renaissance/) - Renaissance sculpture and painting were closely related, and Italian pictures owed some of their three-dimensional quality to the artists' study of sculpture. The first Renaissance sculptor was Donatello (1386-1466), whose statue of the condottiere Gattamelata in Padua was even then a landmark in the history of art.
- [Painting in Northern Europe | The Renaissance](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/painting-in-northern-europe-the-renaissance/) - In northern Europe the masters of the fifteenth century were influenced by their Gothic traditions as well as by Titian and other Italians. The ranking northern painters included two Germans, Albrecht Durer (1471-1528) and Hans Holbein (c. 1496-1543), and two from the Low Countries, Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450-1516) and Pieter Brueghel (c. 1525-1569).
- [Renaissance Satire](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/renaissance-satire/) - The following is an excerpt from a satirical work written in 1515 and titled The Letters of Obscure Men. The two authors were Ulrich von Hutten and Crotus Rubeanus. For you must know that we were lately sitting in an inn, having our supper, and were eating eggs, when on opening one, I saw that there was a young chicken within. This I showed to a comrade; whereupon quoth he to me, "Eat it up speedily, before the taverner sees it, for if he mark it, you will have to pay for a fowl." In a trice I gulped down the egg, chicken and all. And then I remembered that it was Friday!
- [The Fine Arts | The Renaissance](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-fine-arts-the-renaissance/) - Even more than the writers and preachers of the Renaissance, its artists displayed an extraordinary range of originality in their interests and talents. They found patrons both among the princes of the church and among merchant princes, condottieri, and secular rulers. They took as subjects their own patrons and the pagan gods and heroes of antiquity, as well as Christ, the Virgin, and the saints. Although their income was often meager, they enjoyed increasing status both as technicians and as creative personalities.
- [The Renaissance and the Church | The Renaissance](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-renaissance-and-the-church-the-renaissance/) - Renaissance science as a whole aroused discord within the church. Even though Copernicus dedicated his great book to the pope, Christendom did not welcome a theory that questioned the belief in an earth-centered, human-centered universe. By Copernicus's time, Western Christendom was preoccupied by its division into the warring factions of Catholic and Protestant. To what extent was the Renaissance responsible for the Reformation?
- [Music | The Renaissance](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/music-the-renaissance/) - In the medieval curriculum music was grouped with the sciences because mathematics underlies musical theory and notation. The mainstay of medieval sacred music was the Gregorian chant or plainsong, which relied on a single voice. At the close of the Middle Ages musicians in the Low Countries and northern France developed the technique of polyphony, which combined several voices in complicated harmony.
- [Astronomy | The Renaissance](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/astronomy-the-renaissance/) - The year 1543 marked the publication of Copernicus's De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (Concerning the Revolutions of Heavenly Bodies). Born in Poland of German extraction, Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) studied law and medicine at Padua and other Italian universities and spent thirty years as canon of a cathedral near Danzig. His work in mathematics and astronomy led him to attack the hypothesis of the geocentric (earth- centered) universe. In its place he advanced the revolutionary new hypothesis of the heliocentric (sun-centered) universe.
- [Invention, Technology, Medicine | The Renaissance](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/invention-technology-medicine-the-renaissance/) - The most important invention of the Renaissance—the technology for printing books—furnishes a case history of how many individual advances contribute to an end result. The revolution in book production began in the twelfth century, when Muslims in Spain introduced a technique first developed by the Chinese in the second century and began to make paper by shredding old rags, processing them with water, and then pressing the liquid out of the finished sheets.
- [Science and Religion | The Renaissance](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/science-and-religion-the-renaissance/) - Humanism both aided and impeded the advance of science. The Renaissance was less a dramatic rebirth of science than an age of preparation for the scientific revolution that was to come in the seventeenth century. The major contribution of the humanists was increased availability of ancient scientific authorities, as works by Galen, Ptolemy, Archimedes, and others were for the first time translated from Greek to Latin.
- [Classical Scholarship | The Renaissance](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/classical-scholarship-the-renaissance/) - The men of letters of this period may be divided into three groups: First were the conservers of classical culture, heirs of Petrarch's humanistic enthusiasm for the classical past; second were the vernacular writers who took the path marked out by the Decameron, from Chaucer at the close of the fourteenth century down to Rabelais and Cervantes in the sixteenth; and third were the synthesizers—philosophical humanists who tried to fuse Christianity, classicism, and other elements into a universal human philosophy.
- [Writers of the Early Italian Renaissance | The Renaissance](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/writers-of-the-early-italian-renaissance-the-renaissance/) - Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) was the first major Italian writer to embody some of the qualities that were to characterize Renaissance literature. Much of Dante's writing and outlook bore the stamp of the Middle Ages, and the grand theme of the Divine Comedy was medieval, the chivalric concept of disembodied love inspiring his devotion to Beatrice, whom he seldom saw.
- [The Vernaculars and Latin | The Renaissance](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-vernaculars-and-latin-the-renaissance/) - The vernaculars of the western European countries emerged gradually, first as the spoken languages of the people, then as vehicles for popular writing, finally achieving official recognition. Many vernaculars—Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and French—developed from Latin; these were the Romance (Roman) languages. Castilian, the core of modern literary Spanish, attained official status in the thirteenth century when the king of Castile ordered that it be used for government records.
- [Printing, Thought, and Literature | The Renaissance](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/printing-thought-and-literature-the-renaissance/) - The communications revolution brought on by the printing press, the enormous significance of the book as a force for change, the simple fact that printing preceded the Protestant revolt on which the Reformation fed are all aspects of a profound shift in perspective that, perhaps more than any other change, defines the transition between medieval and modern.
- [Town and Countryside | The Renaissance](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/town-and-countryside-the-renaissance/) - Augsburg's total population at the height of Fugger power probably never exceeded 20,000. One set of estimates for the fourteenth century puts the population of Venice, Florence, and Paris in the vicinity of 100,000 each; that of Genoa, Milan, Barcelona, and London at about 50,000; and that of the biggest Hanseatic and Flemish towns between 20,000 and 40,000. Most Europeans still lived in the countryside.
- [Banking | The Renaissance](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/banking-the-renaissance/) - The expansion of trade and industry promoted the rise of banking. The risks of lending were great, but so, too, were the potential profits. In 1420 the Florentine government vainly tried to put a ceiling of 20 percent on interest rates. Bankers were money changers, for only experts could establish the relative value of the hundreds of coins in circulation.
- [Industry | The Renaissance](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/industry-the-renaissance/) - The expansion of trade stimulated industry. The towns of Flanders had developed the weaving of woolen cloth in the thirteenth century, with many workers and high profits. In the early fourteenth century perhaps two hundred masters controlled the wool guild of Florence, which produced nearly 100,000 pieces of cloth annually and employed 30,000 men.
- [Trade | The Renaissance](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/trade-the-renaissance/) - The areas of Europe to the west of the Adriatic Sea and the Elbe River were changing from the more subsistence- oriented economy of the early Middle Ages to a money economy, from an economy based in good measure on home-grown produce paid for in kind to one relying heavily on imports paid for in money or letters of credit.
- [The Renaissance](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-renaissance/) - Renaissance rebirth is the name traditionally bestowed upon the remarkable outpouring of intellectual and artistic energy and talent that accompanied the passage of Europe from the Middle Ages to the modern epoch. Yet "Renaissance" to a large extent was the creation of nineteenth century scholars who, looking back on the intense flowering of culture, sought a name by which to designate it. The term is also often extended to politics and economics.
- [Summary | The Rise of the Nation](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/summary-the-rise-of-the-nation/) - The transition from medieval to modern times was marked by the consolidation of royal power, the decline of serfdom, the revolt against the medieval church, and the increasing importance of a money economy. These changes were hastened by the calamity and hardships of the late Middle Ages, including the Hundred Years' War, the Black Death, the Great Schism in the church, and the threat of Turkish invasion.
- [Machiavelli on the Church](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/machiavelli-on-the-church/) - Machiavelli blamed the Italians' loss of civic spirit on the church, attacked the temporal interests of the papacy for preventing Italian unity, and questioned the values of Christianity itself. Machiavelli evidently believed that the purpose of government was less to prepare people for the City of God than to make them upstanding citizens of this world—ready to fight, work, and die for their earthly country.
- ["The School of Europe" | The Rise of the Nation](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-school-of-europe-the-rise-of-the-nation/) - The Italian states of the fifteenth century have been called "the school of Europe," instructing the rest of the Continent in the new realistic ways of power politics. Despots like Il Moro, Cesare Borgia, Lorenzo the Magnificent, and the oligarchs of Venice might well have given lessons in statecraft to Henry VII of England or Louis XI of France.
- [Venice in the Fifteenth Century | The Rise of the Nation](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/venice-in-the-fifteenth-century-the-rise-of-the-nation/) - The third great north Italian state, Venice, enjoyed a political stability that contrasted with the turbulence of Milan and Florence. By the fifteenth century the Republic of Saint Mark, as it was called, was in fact an empire that controlled the lower Po valley on the Italian mainland, the Dalmatian coast of the Adriatic, the Ionian islands, and part of mainland Greece. The Po territories had been annexed to secure the defenses and food supply of the island capital, and the others were the legacy of its aggressive role in the Crusades.
- [Florence, to 1569 | The Rise of the Nation](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/florence-to-1569-the-rise-of-the-nation/) - The Republic of Florence, like that of Milan, was a fragile combination of aristocratic and democratic elements. It was badly shaken by Guelf-Ghibelline rivalries and by the emergence of an ambitious wealthy class of bankers and merchants. In the twelfth century the commune had acquired a dominant position.
- [Milan, 1277-1535 | The Rise of the Nation](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/milan-1277-1535-the-rise-of-the-nation/) - Milan lay in the midst of the fertile plain of Lombardy. It was the terminus of trade routes from northern Europe and was also a textile and metalworking center.
- [The Princes and the Empire, 1254-1493 | The Rise of the Nation](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-princes-and-the-empire-1254-1493-the-rise-of-the-nation/) - The imperial title survived. It went to Rudolf of Habsburg (r. 1273-1291), whose estates lay mostly in Switzerland. Rudolf wanted to establish a hereditary monarchy for his family and make this monarchy as rich and as powerful as possible. He added Austria to the family holdings, and his descendants ruled at Vienna until 1918. Rudolf made concessions to the French in the west to get their support for the new Habsburg monarchy.
- [Particularism and Germany and Italy | The Rise of the Nation](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/particularism-and-germany-and-italy-the-rise-of-the-nation/) - Power in Germany shifted steadily from the emperor to the princes of the particular states. For almost two decades, there was no emperor at all. This was the Great Interregnum (1254-1273), following the death of the last Hohenstaufen king, Conrad IV. During this time the princes grew even stronger at the expense of the monarchy, and the old links between Germany and Italy were cut.
- [Spain, to 1492 | The Rise of the Nation](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/spain-to-1492-the-rise-of-the-nation/) - The decisive event in the early medieval history of the Iberian peninsula was the conquest by the Muslims, who brought almost the whole of the peninsula under their control. In the eighth and ninth centuries, Christian communities free of Muslim domination survived only in the extreme north.
- [Henry VII, 1485-1509 | The Rise of the Nation](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/henry-vii-1485-1509-the-rise-of-the-nation/) - Henry VII (r. 1485-1509) was descended from a bastard branch of the Lancastrian family. His right to be king, however, derived not from this tenuous hereditary claim but from his victory at Bosworth and a subsequent act of Parliament. The new monarch had excellent qualifications for the job of tidying up after the divisiveness of civil war.
- [Lancaster and York, 1399-1485 | The Rise of the Nation](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/lancaster-and-york-1399-1485-the-rise-of-the-nation/) - Henry IV owed his position in part to confirmation by Parliament was sensitive about allowing any assertion of royal authority. Moreover, Henry faced a series of revolts. The last years of his reign were troubled by poor health and by the hostility of his son, Henry V (r. 1413-1422). Henry V renewed the Hundred Years' War with spectacular victories and reasserted royal power at home, tempered by his need to secure parliamentary support to finance his French campaigns. He also vigorously persecuted the Lollards.
- [Richard II and Bastard Feudalism, 1377-1399 | The Rise of the Nation](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/richard-ii-and-bastard-feudalism-1377-1399-the-rise-of-the-nation/) - When Edward III died, his ten-year-old grandson succeeded as Richard II (r. 1377-1399). Richard's reign was marked by mounting factionalism and peasant discontent. Both conflicts strongly resembled their French counterparts—the strife between Burgundy and Armagnac, and the Jacquerie of 1358. Just as the Jacquerie opposed attempts to regulate life in ways ultimately bound to benefit the nobility and the entrepreneur, so did the Peasants' Revolt of 1381.
- [Piers the Plowman](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/piers-the-plowman/) - The author of Piers Plowman was a popular writer roughly contemporary with Chaucer. The poem is a series of allegorical dreams that show the relationship of the individual to society in the fourteenth century. Piers, a simple plowman who works because he finds it good to do so, encounters lust, sloth, and greed around him. The poem is traditionally ascribed to William Langland (c. 1332–c. 1400). Askers and beggars fast about flitted Till their bags and their bellies brimful were crammed; Feigned for their food, fought at the ale-house; In gluttony, God wot, go they to bed.
- [England: Edward II and Edward III, 1307-1377 | The Rise of the Nation](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/england-edward-ii-and-edward-iii-1307-1377-the-rise-of-the-nation/) - England was also emerging as a national monarchy. Bastard feudalism flourished until Edward IV and Henry VII reasserted royal power in the later fifteenth century, much as Louis XI did in France. But however close the parallels between the two countries, there was also an all- important difference. Whereas the French Estates General was becoming the servant of the monarchy, the English Parliament was slowly acquiring powers that would one day make it the master of the Crown.
- [King Louis XI](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/king-louis-xi/) - A Fleming, Philippe de Commynes (c. 1445-1511), drew a portrait of Louis XI in his Memoires, a notable work of contemporaneous history.
- [The Burgundian Threat and King Louis XI, 1419-1483 | The Rise of the Nation](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-burgundian-threat-and-king-louis-xi-1419-1483-the-rise-of-the-nation/) - Against one set of enemies, however, Charles VII was not successful—his rebellious vassals, many of them beneficiaries of the new bastard feudalism, who still controlled nearly half of the kingdom. The most powerful of these vassals was the duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good (r. 1419-1467), whose authority extended to Flanders and other major portions of the Low Countries. This sprawling Burgundian realm was almost an emerging national state.
- [Bias in Place Names](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/bias-in-place-names/) - Not only do historic place names change, but places often simultaneously have two or more names and pronunciations. For example, Biscay Bay, referred to in the text, is the English form for Viscaya, its Spanish name; Napoli is the Italian form for Naples. Were this book written in a language other than English, these other forms would be used. One is not more "correct" than the other. The choice simply reflects the bias of language.
- [Burgundians and Armagnacs, 1380-1467 | The Rise of the Nation](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/burgundians-and-armagnacs-1380-1467-the-rise-of-the-nation/) - The new king, Charles VI (1380-1422), was intermittently insane. During his reign the monarchy was threatened by the disastrous results of the earlier royal policy of assigning provinces called apanages to the male members of the royal family. Such a relative might himself be loyal, but within a generation or two his heirs would be remote enough from the royal family to become its rivals. In 1363 King John II made Burgundy the apanage of his youngest son, Philip. Charles the Wise gave Orleans as an apanage to his younger son, Louis.
- [The Estates General | The Rise of the Nation](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-estates-general-the-rise-of-the-nation/) - In these years the French monarchy faced increasingly hostile criticism at home. When summoned in 1355 to consent to a tax, the Estates General insisted on determining its form—a general levy on sales and a special levy on salt—and demanded also that their representatives rather than those of the Crown act as collectors.
- [The Outbreak of the Hundred Years' War, 1337 | The Rise of the Nation](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-outbreak-of-the-hundred-years-war-1337-the-rise-of-the-nation/) - The nominal cause of the war was a dispute over the succession to the French throne. For more than three hundred years son had followed father as king of France. This remarkable succession ended with the three sons of Philip the Fair, none of whom fathered a son who survived infancy. The crown then passed to Philip of Valois, Philip VI (1328-1350), a nephew of Philip the Fair. But the king of England, Edward III (r. 1327-1377), claimed that as the nephew of the last Capetian king he had a better right to succeed than Philip of Valois.
- [The Emerging National Monarchies | The Rise of the Nation](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-emerging-national-monarchies-the-rise-of-the-nation/) - At the death of Philip the Fair in 1314, the Capetian monarchy of France seemed to be evolving into a new professional institution staffed by efficient and loyal bureaucrats. Philip Augustus, Louis IX, and Philip the Fair had all consolidated royal power at the expense of their feudal vassals, who included the kings of England. Soon, however, France became embroiled in a long conflict with England—the so-called Hundred Years' War of 1337-1453—that crippled the monarchy for well over a century.
- [A World Turned Upside Down | The Rise of the Nation](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/a-world-turned-upside-down-the-rise-of-the-nation/) - During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries old forms and attitudes persisted in Western politics but became less flexible and less creative. The Holy Roman emperor Henry VII in the early 1300s sought to straighten out the affairs of Italy in the old Ghibelline tradition, even though he had few of the resources that had been at the command of Frederick Barbarossa. The nobles of France and England, exploiting the confusion of the Hundred Years' War, built private armies and great castles and attempted to transfer power back from the monarch to themselves.
- [The Rise of the Nation](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-rise-of-the-nation/) - In eastern Europe Medieval institutions continued to flourish long after the Turks captured Byzantium in 1453. Indeed, in Russia the Middle Ages ended comparatively recently, with the emancipation of serfs in 1861. In western Europe, by contrast, the Middle Ages ended about five centuries ago.
- [Summary | The Late Middle Ages in Eastern Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/summary-the-late-middle-ages-in-eastern-europe/) - By the late eleventh century, instability in the Muslim and Byzantine empires and the expansion of the Seljuk Turks had made pilgrimages to Palestine unsafe for Christians. When Byzantine envoys asked Pope Urban II for military aid against the Seljuks, the pope responded by calling for a Crusade. Crusades, or holy wars supported by the papacy against the infidel, had been waged in Spain since the Muslim invasions of the eighth century.
- [Russia and the West | The Late Middle Ages in Eastern Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/russia-and-the-west-the-late-middle-ages-in-eastern-europe/) - A final development of these two centuries was to prove of the utmost importance for the future Russia. This was the slow and gradual penetration of foreigners and foreign ideas, a process welcomed with mixed feelings by those who prized the technical and mechanical learning they could derive from the West while fearing Western influence on society and manners. This ambivalent attitude toward Westerners and Western ideas became characteristic of later Russians.
- [The Expansion of Russia, to 1682 | The Late Middle Ages in Eastern Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-expansion-of-russia-to-1682-the-late-middle-ages-in-eastern-europe/) - The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw tremendous expansion of the Russian domain. Russian pioneers, in search of furs to sell and new land to settle, led the way, and the government followed. Frontiersmen in Russia were known as Cossacks. Cossack communities gradually became more settled, and two Cossack republics, one on the Dnieper River, the other on the Don, were set up. As time passed, more Cossack groups formed along the Volga River, in the Ural Mountains and elsewhere.
- [The Role of the Church | The Late Middle Ages in Eastern Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-role-of-the-church-the-late-middle-ages-in-eastern-europe/) - The church remained the partner of the autocracy. The czar controlled the election of the patriarch of Moscow, a rank to which the archbishop was elevated in 1589. In the seventeenth century there were two striking instances when a patriarch actually shared power with the czar. In 1619 the father of Czar Michael Romanov, Filaret, who had become a monk, became patriarch and was granted the additional title of "Great Sovereign."
- [The Role of the Zemski Sobor, 1613-1653 | The Late Middle Ages in Eastern Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-role-of-the-zemski-sobor-1613-1653-the-late-middle-ages-in-eastern-europe/) - The zemski sobor now elected as czar Michael Romanov, grand-nephew of Ivan IV. Michael succeeded with no limitations placed upon his power by the zemski sobor or by any other body; he was an elected autocrat. For the first ten years of his reign, the zemski sobor stayed in continual session. It assisted the uncertain new dynasty to get underway by endorsing the policies of the czar and his advisers, thus lending them the semblance of popular support.
- [The Time of Troubles, 1598-1613 | The Late Middle Ages in Eastern Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-time-of-troubles-1598-1613-the-late-middle-ages-in-eastern-europe/) - Though the territory was wide and the imperial rule absolute, ignorance, illiteracy, and inefficiency weakened Russian society. Though the old nobility had been weakened, the new gentry was not firmly in control of the machinery of government. Ivan's son and heir, Feauedor (r. 1584-1598), was an imbecile, and with his death the Moscow dynasty, descended from the rulers of Kiev, died out. Cliques of rival nobles intrigued for power. Feauedor's brother-in-law, Boris Godunov (r. 15981605), emerged as the dominant figure.
- [The Reign of Ivan the Terrible, 1533-1584 | The Late Middle Ages in Eastern Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-reign-of-ivan-the-terrible-1533-1584-the-late-middle-ages-in-eastern-europe/) - Many of the disorders that characterized Russian history in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries began in the long reign of Ivan IV, the Terrible. Pathologically unbalanced, Ivan succeeded to the throne as a small child. In 1547 he threw off the tutelage of the nobles, and embarked upon a period of sound government and institutional reform.
- [Nobles and Serfs | The Late Middle Ages in Eastern Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/nobles-and-serfs-the-late-middle-ages-in-eastern-europe/) - Between the accessions of Ivan III in 1462 and Peter the Great in 1689, the autocracy overcame the opposition of the old nobility. The estates of the old nobility, which had always been hereditary, became service estates. By the end of the period the two types of nobles and the two types of estates had by a gradual process become almost identical: the hereditary nobles often owed service; the military service nobles often had hereditary land.
- [The Development of the Muscovite State | The Late Middle Ages in Eastern Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-development-of-the-muscovite-state-the-late-middle-ages-in-eastern-europe/) - Moscow lay near the great watershed from which the Russian rivers flow north into the Baltic or south into the Black Sea. It was richer than the north, could provide enough food for its people, and had flourishing forest industries. Thus, when the Tatar grip relaxed and trade could begin again, Moscow was advantageously located. Moreover, Moscow was blessed with a line of remarkably able princes.
- [The Tatars, 1223-1400 | The Late Middle Ages in Eastern Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-tatars-1223-1400-the-late-middle-ages-in-eastern-europe/) - By the early thirteenth century Genghis Khan had consolidated under his command the Mongolian nomads of central Asia—Huns, Avars, and Polovtsky—who had repeatedly erupted into Europe.
- [Western and Northern Lands, 1386-1478 | The Late Middle Ages in Eastern Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/western-and-northern-lands-1386-1478-the-late-middle-ages-in-eastern-europe/) - The collapse of Kievan Russia about the year 1200 led to the formation of a series of virtually independent petty principalities. These states were too weak and disunited to resist the constant pressure from Poland and Lithuania. By the early fourteenth century, the grand duke of Lithuania, with his capital at Vilna, ruled nominally over most of western Russia.
- [Russia from the Thirteenth to the End of the Seventeenth Centuries | The Late Middle Ages in Eastern Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/russia-from-the-thirteenth-to-the-end-of-the-seventeenth-centuries-the-late-middle-ages-in-eastern-europe/) - Scholars refer to "the Russian question" as a means in invoking several historical concerns. What forces were at work to generate a Russian expansionism and consolidation of outlying territories? For how long would an enlarged or enlarging Russia remain stable? Would individual nationalities and languages reassert themselves despite Russian conquest?
- [Ottoman Expansion and Retraction, to 1699 | The Late Middle Ages in Eastern Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/ottoman-expansion-and-retraction-to-1699-the-late-middle-ages-in-eastern-europe/) - By the end of the 1460s most of the Balkan peninsula was under Turkish rule. Thus the core of the new Ottoman state was Asia Minor and the Balkans. From this core, before the death of Muhammad II in 1481, the Turks expanded across the Danube into modern Romania and seized the Genoese outposts in the Crimea. They also fought the Venetians and landed forces in Italy. The limits of their expansion were marked by the great Hungarian fortress of Belgrade and the island fortress of Rhodes in the Aegean, stronghold of the Hospitalers.
- [The Ottoman System | The Late Middle Ages in Eastern Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-ottoman-system-the-late-middle-ages-in-eastern-europe/) - Until the sixteenth century, the Ottomans showed tolerance to their infidel subjects, permitting Christians and Jews to serve the state and allowing the patriarch of Constantinople and the Grand Rabbi to act as leaders of their own religious communities, or millets. The religious leader not only represented his people in their dealings with the Ottoman state but also had civil authority over them in matters that affected them alone. Non-Muslims paid a head tax and lived in comparative peace.
- [The Ottoman Empire, 1453-1699 | The Late Middle Ages in Eastern Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-ottoman-empire-1453-1699-the-late-middle-ages-in-eastern-europe/) - Part of the Ottomans' inheritance no doubt came from their far-distant past in central Asia, when they had almost surely come under the influence of China and had lived like other nomads of the region. Their language, their capacity for war, and their rigid adherence to custom may go back to this early period.
- [The Sack of Constantinople](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-sack-of-constantinople/) - A contemporary Greek historian who was an eyewitness to the sack of Constantinople in 1204 described atrocities of which he had thought human beings incapable: How shall I begin to tell of the deeds done by these wicked men? They trampled the images underfoot instead of adoring them. They threw the relics of the martyrs into filth. They spilt the body and blood of Christ on the ground, and threw it about... They broke into bits the sacred altar of Santa Sophia, and distributed it among the soldiers. When the sacred vessels and the silver and gold ornaments were to be
- [The Advance of the Ottoman Turks, 1354-1453 | The Late Middle Ages in Eastern Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-advance-of-the-ottoman-turks-1354-1453-the-late-middle-ages-in-eastern-europe/) - By the fourteenth century the Ottoman Turks had begun to press against the borders of Byzantine Asia Minor. Economic and political unrest led the discontented population of this region to prefer the Ottomans to the harsh and ineffectual Byzantine officials. Farmers willingly paid tribute to the Turks, and as time went on many of them were converted to Islam to avoid payment. They learned Turkish and taught the nomadic Turkish conquerors the arts of a settled agricultural life.
- [Pope Urban at Clermont](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/pope-urban-at-clermont/) - Pope Urban proclaimed the First Crusade with these words: The Turks, a race of Persians, who have penetrated within the boundaries of Romania even to the Mediterranean to that point which they call the Arm of Saint George, in occupying more and more of the lands of the Christians, have overcome them, have overthrown churches, and have laid waste God's kingdom. If you permit this supinely for very long, God's faithful ones will be still further subjected...
- [Byzantium after 1261 | The Late Middle Ages in Eastern Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/byzantium-after-1261-the-late-middle-ages-in-eastern-europe/) - When the Greeks of Nicaea under Michael VIII Palaeologus (r. 1259-1282) recaptured Constantinople, they found it depopulated and badly damaged and the old territory of the Empire mostly in Latin hands. It was impossible for Michael to reconquer all of Greece or the islands, to push the frontier in Asia Minor east of the Seljuk capital of Konia, or to deal effectively with the Serbians in the Balkans.
- [The Latin Empire, 1204-1261 | The Late Middle Ages in Eastern Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-latin-empire-1204-1261-the-late-middle-ages-in-eastern-europe/) - After the sack of Constantinople, the Latins elected Baldwin of Flanders as the first Latin emperor (12041205), and the title continued in his family during the fifty-seven years of Latin occupation. The Venetians chose the first Latin patriarch and kept a monopoly on that rich office. The territories of the Empire were divided on paper, since most of them had not yet been conquered.
- [Byzantine Decline, 1081-1204 | The Late Middle Ages in Eastern Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/byzantine-decline-1081-1204-the-late-middle-ages-in-eastern-europe/) - The drama of Byzantium's last centuries was played out to the accompaniment of internal decay. Alexius I Comnenus had captured the throne in 1081. Thereafter the imperial accumulation of land seems to have gone unchecked.
- [The Fall of Byzantium, 1081-1453 | The Late Middle Ages in Eastern Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-fall-of-byzantium-1081-1453-the-late-middle-ages-in-eastern-europe/) - During its last 372 years, the fate of the Byzantine Empire increasingly depended upon western Europe. The flood of crusaders first made the Byzantines uneasy and ultimately destroyed them. From 1204 to 1261, while the Byzantine government was in exile from its own capital, its chief aim was to drive out the hated Latins. But even after the Byzantine leaders had recaptured Constantinople in 1261, they still could not shake off the West. The Western attitude is revealed in the crisp words of the great fourteenth-century Italian poet Petrarch:
- [The Impact of the Crusades on the West | The Late Middle Ages in Eastern Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-impact-of-the-crusades-on-the-west-the-late-middle-ages-in-eastern-europe/) - The number of crusaders and pilgrims who went to the East and returned home was large. From Marseilles alone the ships of the Hospitalers and the Templars carried six thousand pilgrims a year. Ideas flowed back and forth with the people.
- [The Muslim Reconquest and the Later Crusades, 1144-1291 | The Late Middle Ages in Eastern Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-muslim-reconquest-and-the-later-crusades-1144-1291-the-late-middle-ages-in-eastern-europe/) - It is a wonder that the crusader states lasted so long. It was not the castles or the military orders that preserved them so much as the disunion of their Muslim enemies. When the Muslims did achieve unity under a single powerful leader, the Christians suffered grave losses. Beginning in the late 1120s, Zangi, governor of Mosul on the Tigris, succeeded in unifying the local Muslim rulers of the region. In 1144 he took Edessa, first of the crusader cities to fall.
- [The Military Orders, 1119-1798 | The Late Middle Ages in Eastern Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-military-orders-1119-1798-the-late-middle-ages-in-eastern-europe/) - Early in their occupation of the eastern Mediterranean, the Westerners founded the military orders of knighthood. The first of these were the Templars, started about 1119 by a Burgundian knight who sympathized with the hardships of the Christian pilgrims. These knights took vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, and were given headquarters near the ruins of the Temple of Solomon—hence the name Templars. St. Bernard himself inspired their rule, based on the rules for his own Cistercians.
- [The Crusader States, 1098-1109 | The Late Middle Ages in Eastern Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-crusader-states-1098-1109-the-late-middle-ages-in-eastern-europe/) - Meanwhile, the main body of the army was besieging the great fortress city of Antioch, which finally was conquered by treachery after more than seven months. Antioch became the center of the second crusader state under the Norman Bohemond. The other crusaders then took Jerusalem by assault in July 1099. Godfrey of Bouillon was chosen "defender of the Holy Sepulcher." The third crusader state had been founded.
- [The First Crusade, 1095 | The Late Middle Ages in Eastern Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-first-crusade-1095-the-late-middle-ages-in-eastern-europe/) - Pope Urban II (r. 1088-1099) carried on the tradition of Gregory VII. To his Council of Piacenza in 1095 came envoys from Alexius, who asked for military help against the Turks. The Byzantine envoys also seem to have stressed the sufferings of the Christians in the East. Eight months later, at the Council of Clermont, Urban preached to a throng of the faithful.
- [The Crusades](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-crusades/) - The term crusade is used to sanctify a wide variety of single-minded efforts to bring about change. At times the term refers to attempts, as with the Crusades described here, to take back lost lands and reabsorb them into some dominant culture, or to impose the will of one group upon another. While the original intent may have been religious, often the result is far more secular.
- [Origins of the Crusades | The Late Middle Ages in Eastern Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/origins-of-the-crusades-the-late-middle-ages-in-eastern-europe/) - From the third century on, Christians had visited the scenes of Christ's life. Before the Muslim conquest in the seventh century, pilgrims came from Byzantium and the West, often seeking sacred relics for their churches at home. For a while after the Muslim conquest, pilgrimages were very dangerous and could be undertaken only by the hardiest pilgrims. During the reign of Charlemagne, conditions had improved for Western pilgrims, largely because of the excellent relations between Charlemagne and Caliph Harun al-Rashid.
- [The Late Middle Ages in Eastern Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-late-middle-ages-in-eastern-europe/) - In Spain the fighting of Christian against Muslim had been virtually continuous since the Muslim conquest in the eighth century. Just after the year 1000 the Cordovan caliphate weakened, and the Spanish Christian princes of the north won the support of the powerful French abbey at Cluny. Under prodding from Cluny, French nobles joined the Spaniards in warring on the Muslims.
- [Summary | The Beginnings of the Secular State](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/summary-the-beginnings-of-the-secular-state/) - Between 987 and 1314 the French monarchy grew in power and prestige until it dominated the machinery of government. France became the first large, unified state in the medieval West.
- [Literature in the West | The Beginnings of the Secular State](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/literature-in-the-west-the-beginnings-of-the-secular-state/) - In literature, as in science and in social and economic life, Latin continued to be the language of the church and of learned communication everywhere in western Europe. All the churchmen—John of Salisbury, Abelard, Bernard, Aquinas, and the rest—wrote Latin even when corresponding informally with their friends. Children began their schooling by learning it. It was also the language of the law and of politics; all documents were written in Latin. Sermons were delivered in Latin, and church hymns and popular songs were written and sung in it.
- [The Song of Roland](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-song-of-roland/) - Roland has died on the field of battle, and Charlemagne believes that he was betrayed by Ganelon, who with his men deserted the field at a crucial moment. Ganelon is found guilty by trial, but before he can be executed one of his followers, Pinabel, challenges one of the emperor's most devoted liege men to battle. The following passage describes that battle. In a broad meadow below Aix la Chapelle, The barons meet; their battle has begun. Both are courageous, both of them valiant lords, And their war-horses are spirited and swift They spur them hard, and loosening the reins,
- [Science in the West | The Beginnings of the Secular State](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/science-in-the-west-the-beginnings-of-the-secular-state/) - The Middle Ages saw considerable achievement in natural science. Modern scholars have revised downward the reputation of the Oxford Franciscan Roger Bacon (c. 1214-1294) as a lone, heroic devotee of "true" experimental methods; but they have revised upward such reputations as those of Adelard of Bath (twelfth century), who was a pioneer in the study of Arab science; William of Conches (twelfth century), whose greatly improved cosmology was cited for its particularly elegant clarity; and Robert Grossteste (c. 1175-1253) at Oxford, who clearly did employ experimental methods.
- [Science and Literature in the West | The Beginnings of the Secular State](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/science-and-literature-in-the-west-the-beginnings-of-the-secular-state/) - There was throughout the West a growing interest in scientific inquiry that served to unite peoples. Science had always been international, since ideas cannot be restrained within the borders of a state, but technology—that is, the application of science to practical ends—may for a time be held within the confines of a single nation through legislation or restrictions on immigration. Thus England, France, and the German states were cautiously setting themselves apart from the ready acceptance of all logic as deriving from churchly authority.
- [Edward I, 1272-1307 | The Beginnings of the Secular State](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/edward-i-1272-1307-the-beginnings-of-the-secular-state/) - By the late thirteenth century the earlier medieval belief that law is custom and that it cannot be made was fading, and Edward I enacted a great series of systematizing statutes. Edward's statutes were framed by the experts of the small council, who elaborated and expanded the machinery of government. Each of the statutes was really a large bundle of different enactments.
- [The Origins of Parliament, 1258-1265 | The Beginnings of the Secular State](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-origins-of-parliament-1258-1265-the-beginnings-of-the-secular-state/) - It is to these years under Henry III that historians turn for the earliest signs of the major contribution of the English Middle Ages to the West—the development of Parliament. The word parliament comes from French and simply means a "talk" or "parley"—a conference of any kind. The word was applied in France to that part of the curia regis which acted as a court of justice.
- [Magna Carta](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/magna-carta/) - The Magna Carta reaffirmed traditional rights and personal liberties against royal authority. Many of its provisions became the basis for specific civil rights enjoyed in Western democracies today. Following are a few excerpts from that document.
- [Magna Carta, 1215 | The Beginnings of the Secular State](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/magna-carta-1215-the-beginnings-of-the-secular-state/) - A quarrel with perhaps a third of the English barons arose from John's ruthlessness in raising money for the campaign in France and from his practice of punishing vassals without trial. The barons hostile to John renounced their homage to him and drew up a list of demands, most of which they forced him to accept on June 15, 1215, at a meadow called Runnymede on the banks of the Thames. The document that he agreed to send out under the royal seal to all the shires in England had sixty-three chapters, in the legal form of a feudal grant or conveyance, known as Magna Carta, the "Great Charter."
- [Richard I and John, 1189-1216 | The Beginnings of the Secular State](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/richard-i-and-john-1189-1216-the-beginnings-of-the-secular-state/) - Henry Ifs son, Richard the Lionhearted (r. 1189-1199), spent less than six months of his ten-year reign in England, but thanks to Henry II, the bureaucracy functioned without the presence of the king. Indeed, it functioned all too well for the liking of the population, since Richard needed more money than had ever been needed before to pay for his Crusade, for his ransom from captivity, and for his wars against Philip Augustus of France.
- [Henry I and Henry II, 1100-1189 | The Beginnings of the Secular State](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/henry-i-and-henry-ii-1100-1189-the-beginnings-of-the-secular-state/) - William's immediate successors extended his system. They made their administrators depend on the king alone by paying them fixed salaries. Household and curia regis grew in size, and special functions began to develop. Within the curia regis the king's immediate advisers became a "small council" and the full body met less often. The royal chancery (secretariat), also grew.
- [The Norman Conquest, 1066 | The Beginnings of the Secular State](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-norman-conquest-1066-the-beginnings-of-the-secular-state/) - William successfully asserted his rights over the vigorous and tough Norman nobility. He allowed no castle to be built without his license, and insisted that, once built, each castle be put at his disposal on demand. The Norman cavalry was formidable and early perfected the technique of charging with the lance held couched, so that all the force of horse and rider was concentrated in the point of the weapon at the moment of shock.
- [The Development of England | The Beginnings of the Secular State](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-development-of-england-the-beginnings-of-the-secular-state/) - England became a major power as the result of the Norman Conquest of 1066. In that year William, duke of Normandy (c. 1027-1087), defeated the Anglo-Saxon forces at Hastings on the south coast of England. The Anglo-Saxon monarchy had, since the death of Canute in 1035, fallen prey to factions. Upon the death of Edward the Confessor (r. 1042-1066), a pious but ineffectual monarch, his brother-in-law Harold had succeeded to the throne. But William of Normandy had an excellent competing claim to the English Crown.
- [Sources of Error](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/sources-of-error/) - The great Arab philosopher of history Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) was the first to work out a substantial methodology for historical knowledge. In the Prolegomena to his work he analyzed the "sources of error in historical writing":
- [Philip the Fair, 1285-1314 | The Beginnings of the Secular State](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/philip-the-fair-1285-1314-the-beginnings-of-the-secular-state/) - After the death of St. Louis, the French monarchy experienced a trend toward centralization and consolidation of administrative functions. This tendency began with the reign of St. Louis's grandson, Philip IV (r. 1285-1314). Called "the Fair," Philip ruthlessly pushed the royal power; the towns, the nobles, and the church suffered further invasions of their rights by his agents. Against the excesses of Philip the Fair, the medieval checks against tyranny failed to operate.
- [St. Louis, 1226-1270 | The Beginnings of the Secular State](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/st-louis-1226-1270-the-beginnings-of-the-secular-state/) - Further advances in royal power came with Louis IX. Deeply pious, Louis carried his high standards over into his role as king. He wore simple clothes, gave alms to beggars, washed the feet of lepers, built hospitals, and created in Paris the Sainte-Chapelle (Holy Chapel) to hold a reliquary containing Christ's Crown of Thorns. The church made Louis a saint in 1297 for personally leading two Crusades against the Muslims.
- [Royal Administration | The Beginnings of the Secular State](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/royal-administration-the-beginnings-of-the-secular-state/) - Administrative advances kept pace with territorial gains. Philip Augustus systematically collected detailed information on precisely what was owed to him from the different royal fiefs. He increased the number of his own vassals, and exacted stringent guarantees—such as a promise that if a vassal did not perform his duties within a month, he would surrender his person as a prisoner until the situation was resolved.
- [The Winning of the South | The Beginnings of the Secular State](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-winning-of-the-south-the-beginnings-of-the-secular-state/) - The Capetians next moved to take over the rich Mediterranean south. Its people belonged to the heretical church of the Cathars, with its center at the town of Albi. Hence, they were called Albigensians. They believed that the history of the universe was one long struggle between the forces of light (good) and the forces of darkness (evil).
- [The Capetians, 987-1226 | The Beginnings of the Secular State](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-capetians-987-1226-the-beginnings-of-the-secular-state/) - When Hugh Capet (c. 938-996) came to the throne of France in 987, he was the first of a male line that was to continue uninterrupted for almost 350 years. Like the Byzantine emperors, but with better luck, the Capetians had procured the election and coronation of the king's eldest son during his father's lifetime. When the father died, the son would already be king.
- [The Development of France: From Hugh Capet to Philip the Fair | The Beginnings of the Secular State](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-development-of-france-from-hugh-capet-to-philip-the-fair-the-beginnings-of-the-secular-state/) - Between 987 and 1314 the French monarchy grew in power and prestige until it dominated the machinery of government. France became the first large and unified state in the medieval West, a state built largely by the monarchy.
- [The Beginnings of the Secular State](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-beginnings-of-the-secular-state/) - In those lands that became France and England, a series of strong monarchs emerged to provide the state with a center of authority that could contest with the church for the loyalties of the people. While open conflict with the papacy was not yet contemplated, and no state in western Europe was secular in the sense of placing the monarch above the papacy, both France and England were experiencing a rise of collective identity that would lead to a succession of royal triumphs.
- [Summary | Church and Society in the Medieval West](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/summary-church-and-society-in-the-medieval-west/) - Medieval Europe was in its most distinctive phase as a distinctively Western civilization, with many shared values that gave it some temporary intellectual unity and separated it from other civilizations. The European economy and population began to expand in the eleventh century. New technology such as the windmill and the heavy plow led to increased food production. Towns grew with increased trade and the growth of a money economy. The role of women improved, as more women came to be educated and to control property.
- [The Church and The Arts | Church and Society in the Medieval West](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-church-and-the-arts-church-and-society-in-the-medieval-west/) - The Romanesque style dominated church building in the eleventh and most of the twelfth centuries. The Gothic style, following it and developing from it, began in the late twelfth century and prevailed down to the fifteenth. Among the great Romanesque churches were those built at Mainz, Worms, and Speyer in western Germany.
- [Knowledge that is Lost](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/knowledge-that-is-lost/) - Societies once possessed knowledge that was later lost: Greek science, Muslim scholarship, the wheel and the cart that disappeared from the region of their invention, the Middle East. Thus phases do not always represent a steady progression from a lower to a higher complexity, for complex knowledge and practice can be forgotten. This awareness may lead other scholars into the trap of a cyclical theory that assumes that history repeats itself.
- [The Church and Mysticism | Church and Society in the Medieval West](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-church-and-mysticism-church-and-society-in-the-medieval-west/) - There were many mystics in the Middle Ages. Bernard, mystic and activist, denounced Abelard, thinker and rationalist teacher. St. Francis also distrusted formal intellectual activity. For him, Christ was no philosopher; Christ's way was the way of submission, of subduing the mind as well as the flesh. The quality of Francis's piety comes out in this fragment of the Canticle of the Brother Sun: Praised be thou, my Lord, with all thy creatures, especially milord Brother Sun that dawns and lightens us.
- [The Church and Political Thought | Church and Society in the Medieval West](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-church-and-political-thought-church-and-society-in-the-medieval-west/) - In dealing with problems of human relations, medieval thinkers came fairly close to modern democratic thinking. Except for extreme realism, medieval political thought was emphatically not autocratic. To the medieval thinker the perfection of the kingdom of heaven could not possibly exist on earth, where compromise and imperfection were inescapable.
- [Thomas Aquinas | Church and Society in the Medieval West](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/thomas-aquinas-church-and-society-in-the-medieval-west/) - By the time of Abelard's death, the Greek scientific writings of antiquity were starting to be recovered, often through translations from Arabic into Latin. In the second half of the century came the recovery of Aristotle's lost treatises on logic, which dealt with such subjects as how to build a syllogism (an expression of deductive reasoning),how to prove a point, and how to refute false conclusions.
- [The Question of Universals | Church and Society in the Medieval West](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-question-of-universals-church-and-society-in-the-medieval-west/) - Much of the study at that time consisted of mere memorizing by rote, since in the days before printing ready reference works were scarce. Though the formal rules of scholarly debate were fixed, there was, nonetheless, lively discussion. Discussion and teaching were particularly preoccupied with defining systems by which people could live faithfully within the expectations of Christendom.
- [Education and The Church| Church and Society in the Medieval West](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/education-and-the-church-church-and-society-in-the-medieval-west/) - The church alone directed and conducted education in medieval Europe. Unless destined for the priesthood, young men of the upper classes had little formal schooling, though the family chaplain often taught them to read and write. Young women usually had less education. But the monastic schools educated future monks and priests, and the Cluniac reform, stimulated study and the copying of manuscripts.
- [Friars: Dominicans and Franciscans | Church and Society in the Medieval West](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/friars-dominicans-and-franciscans-church-and-society-in-the-medieval-west/) - In the early thirteenth century, the reforming movement within the church took on new aspects. As town populations grew, the new urban masses were sometimes subject to waves of mass and unthinking emotional enthusiasms which could lead to heresy. These outbreaks and the fears that led to them were a cry for spiritual help. The mendicant orders, or begging orders, were, therefore, also meant to be a response to heresy. Two famous new orders of friars—Dominican and Franciscan—thus arose.
- [Augustinians and Cistercians | Church and Society in the Medieval West](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/augustinians-and-cistercians-church-and-society-in-the-medieval-west/) - One newly founded order broke with the rule of Benedict, finding its inspiration in a letter of Augustine is that prescribed simply that monks share all their property, pray together at regular intervals, dress alike, and obey a superior. Some of the "Augustinians," as they called themselves, interpreted these general rules severely, living in silence, performing manual labor, eating and drinking sparingly, and singing psalms; others ate meat, conversed among themselves, and did not insist on manual labor.
- [The Church in Society | Church and Society in the Medieval West](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-church-in-society-church-and-society-in-the-medieval-west/) - Frederick II was right in believing that the church needed reform. For example, Innocent IV, in fighting Frederick, had approved the appointment to a bishopric in German territory of an illiterate and dissolute young man of nineteen just because he was a member of a powerful anti- Hohenstaufen noble family; this bishop was forced to resign after twenty-five years, but only because his public boasting about his fourteen bastards had become a scandal.
- [Frederick II, 1212-1250 | Church and Society in the Medieval West](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/frederick-ii-1212-1250-church-and-society-in-the-medieval-west/) - Frederick II is perhaps the most interesting medieval monarch. Intelligent and cultivated, he took a deep interest in scientific experiment, wrote poetry in Italian, wrote on the sport of falconry, and was a superb politician. He was cynical, tough, a sound diplomat, an able administrator, and a statesman. Furthermore, he felt at home in Sicily—the sophisticated society in which his mother had grown up—and greatly preferred it to Germany.
- [Innocent III, 1198-1216 | Church and Society in the Medieval West](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/innocent-iii-1198-1216-church-and-society-in-the-medieval-west/) - Three months after the death of Henry VI, when his son and heir, Frederick II, was only four years old, there came to the papal throne Innocent III (r. 1198-1216), the greatest of all the medieval popes. Innocent played a major part in the politics of France, England, and the Byzantine Empire. He said that papal power was like the sun, and kingly power like the moon, which derives its light from the sun. While he granted that his own position was "lower than God," he maintained that it was loftier than that of any other man.
- [Frederick Barbarossa and Henry VI, 1152-1192 | Church and Society in the Medieval West](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/frederick-barbarossa-and-henry-vi-1152-1192-church-and-society-in-the-medieval-west/) - In 1156 Frederick married the heiress to Burgundy, which had slipped out of imperial control during the Investiture Controversy. He made Switzerland the strategic center of his policy, for it controlled the Alpine passes into Italy. In Swabia he tried to build a compact, well-run royal domain, but he needed the loyalty of cooperative great vassals. And in Lombardy he also needed an alliance with the communes in the towns.
- [Papacy and Empire, 1152-1273 | Church and Society in the Medieval West](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/papacy-and-empire-1152-1273-church-and-society-in-the-medieval-west/) - With the revival of the study of Roman law during the twelfth century went a corresponding interest among churchmen in the systematization of canonical law. As the texts of Justinian's civil law became familiar to the students in the law schools—of which Bologna in Italy was the most important—the Bolognese monk Gratian about 1140 published the Decretum, a similar effort to codify for the first time past decrees of popes, enactments of church councils, and decisions of church fathers dating back a millennium.
- [The Investiture Controversy, 1046-1122 | Church and Society in the Medieval West](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-investiture-controversy-1046-1122-church-and-society-in-the-medieval-west/) - The struggle originated in 1046, when the emperor Henry III found three rival popes simultaneously in office while mobs of their supporters rioted in the streets of Rome. He deposed all three. After two successive German appointees had died—perhaps by poison—Henry named a third German, Bishop Bruno of Toul, who became pope as Leo IX (r. 1049-1054). Leo was committed to the Cluniac program of monastic reform; the whole church hierarchy, he insisted, must be purged of secular influences, and over it all the pope must reign supreme.
- [The Empire, 962-1075 | Church and Society in the Medieval West](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-empire-962-1075-church-and-society-in-the-medieval-west/) - When King Otto took the title of emperor in 962, he created for his successors a set of problems that far transcended the local problems of Germany. In the Carolingian West, emperor had come to mean a ruler who controlled two or more kingdoms but who did not necessarily claim supremacy over the whole world, as had Rome.
- [Saxon Administration and the German Church, 911-955 | Church and Society in the Medieval West](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/saxon-administration-and-the-german-church-911-955-church-and-society-in-the-medieval-west/) - Conrad's successor, the duke of Saxony, became King Henry I (r. 919-936). He and his descendants, notably Otto the Great (r. 936-973) and Otto III (r. 983-1002)— successfully combated the ducal tendency to dominate the counts and to control the church. In 939 the Crown obtained the duchy of Franconia; thenceforth, the German kings, no matter what duchy they came from, would also have Franconia as the royal domain.
- [The Investiture Controversy | Church and Society in the Medieval West](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-investiture-controversy-church-and-society-in-the-medieval-west/) - As the Carolingian Empire gradually disintegrated in the late ninth and early tenth centuries, four duchies— Franconia, Saxony (of which Thuringia was a part), Swabia, and Bavaria—arose in the eastern Frankish lands of Germany. They were military units organized by the local Carolingians, who took the title of Duke (army commander).
- [The Good Wife](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-good-wife/) - In the fourteenth century a source known to us as The Goodman of Paris recorded what was expected of the good wife among the well-to-do burgher class:
- [Theories of the Papal Monarchy | Church and Society in the Medieval West](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/theories-of-the-papal-monarchy-church-and-society-in-the-medieval-west/) - These centuries saw a sustained effort to build what has often been called a papal monarchy, to develop a system of ecclesiastical (canon) law, and to think through an overarching theological system. They also saw the expansion and proliferation of the monasteries as new orders of monks came into being, often with reform as their aim.
- [The Church Universal | Church and Society in the Medieval West](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-church-universal-church-and-society-in-the-medieval-west/) - The medieval church had many of the attributes of the modern state. Once baptized, everyone was subject to its laws, paid its taxes, and lived at its mercy. Yet while the rulers of the church often strove to create the machinery that would make this absolutism work, they never fully succeeded. The story of their efforts, the degree of their success, the measure of their failure, the nature of the opposition to them are in some degree the political history of the Middle Ages in the West.
- [The Medieval Church as Institution | Church and Society in the Medieval West](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-medieval-church-as-institution-church-and-society-in-the-medieval-west/) - Down to 1500 society—both in western Europe and in Byzantium—was identical with the church. Everyone except the Jews belonged to the church. But the Jews were the only exception; any others who sought to leave the church or departed from its teachings were outside the law, and it was the duty of society to exterminate them.
- [The Changing Status of Women | Church and Society in the Medieval West](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-changing-status-of-women-church-and-society-in-the-medieval-west/) - Ideas of courtly love emphasized feminine nobility, while the cult of the Virgin Mary emphasized the role of the mother or glorified virginity. But the role of women was changing. The peasant's wife worked as a partner to her husband in the fields, while the lady of the castle did not. The wife of the peasant was recognized as rendering service, and daughters could inherit land.
- [Women of the Gentle Class](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/women-of-the-gentle-class/) - Robert of Blois, a thirteenth-century poet, wrote of the correct behavior for women "of the gentle class". En route to church or elsewhere, a lady must walk straight and not trot or run, or idle either. She must salute even the poor. She must let no one touch her on the breast except her husband. For that reason, she must not let anyone put a pin or a brooch on her bosom. No one should kiss her on the mouth except her husband. If she disobeys this injunction, neither loyalty, faith nor noble birth will avert the consequences.
- [Town and Countryside | Church and Society in the Medieval West](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/town-and-countryside-church-and-society-in-the-medieval-west/) - In turn, the towns greatly affected the overwhelming mass of the population who remained in the countryside, who now had a place to sell their surplus and an incentive to produce it. Some peasants saved enough cash to buy their freedom. The very word cash suggests a most important development—the flourishing of a money economy instead of an economy of barter.
- [Trade and Town | Church and Society in the Medieval West](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/trade-and-town-church-and-society-in-the-medieval-west/) - Trade began slowly to revive during the eleventh century. A bad harvest year left medieval farmers helpless, and it seemed natural to bring surpluses into areas of famine and sell them at high prices to the hungry. The first new commercial centers arose in places such as Venice and the Low Countries. Even in the earlier Middle Ages such trade had never disappeared altogether, but now the incentives to increase its scale were pressing.
- [The Society and its Economy | Church and Society in the Medieval West](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-society-and-its-economy-church-and-society-in-the-medieval-west/) - In Christian Europe at the beginning of the tenth century, society was made up of those who prayed (the clergy), those who fought (the nobility), and those who worked (everyone else). These three orders of society were a reflection of economic and social reality through the tenth century, but the idea of these three orders continued long after society could be accurately described in such a way.
- [Church and Society in the Medieval West](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/church-and-society-in-the-medieval-west/) - Our knowledge of all periods of history is changing rapidly, though not equally so.
- [Summary | Byzantium and Islam](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/summary-byzantium-and-islam/) - The Byzantine Empire survived in the East with its capital at Constantinople until 1453. The emperors were absolute rulers chosen in theory by God and were responsible for preserving the traditions of Roman justice. Byzantium was the buffer that cushioned Europe against frequent invasions from the north and east. The Byzantine armies and navies were well organized and led. The Byzantines also developed great diplomatic skill.
- [Arabic Philosophy, Literature, and the Arts | Byzantium and Islam](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/arabic-philosophy-literature-and-the-arts-byzantium-and-islam/) - In philosophy, the Muslims eagerly studied Plato, Aristotle, and the Neoplatonists. Like the Byzantines and the western Europeans, they used what they learned to enable them to solve theological problems.
- [Islamic Science | Byzantium and Islam](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/islamic-science-byzantium-and-islam/) - The reign of Mamun the Great (r. 813-833) is often said to mark the high point in the development of Arabic science and letters. In Baghdad he built an observatory, founded a university, and ordered the great works of Greek and Indian scientists and philosophers translated into Arabic.
- [Islamic Civilization | Byzantium and Islam](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/islamic-civilization-byzantium-and-islam/) - The Arabs brought their new religion and their language to the peoples they conquered. The religion often stimulated new artistic and literary development, and by requiring a pilgrimage to Mecca, it fostered mobility among the Muslims and encouraged the exchange of ideas with fellow Muslims from other parts of the Muslim world. Since Arabic had to be learned by everyone who wished to read the Koran, it became the standard written language of the whole Islamic world.
- [Disunity in Islam, 634-1055 | Byzantium and Islam](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/disunity-in-islam-634-1055-byzantium-and-islam/) - The Arabs had overrun a vast collection of diverse peoples with diverse customs. Moreover, internal dissensions among the Arabs themselves prevented the establishment of a permanent unified state to govern the whole of the conquered territory. After Muhammad's death, there was disagreement over the succession. Finally, Muhammad's eldest companion, Abu Bekr, was chosen khalifa (caliph, the representative of Muhammad). Abu Bekr died in 634, and the next two caliphs, Omar (r. 634-644) and Othman (r. 644-656), were also chosen from outside Muhammad's family.
- [Expansion of Islam, 633-725 | Byzantium and Islam](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/expansion-of-islam-633-725-byzantium-and-islam/) - Scholars used to believe that the startling expansion of Islam was due to the zeal of converts to the new faith. Now students of early Islam often argue that overpopulation of the Arabian peninsula set off the expansion. The first stages of the advance into lands already infiltrated by Arabs. The movement quickly gathered momentum; Islam was its battle cry, but its motives included the age- old ones of conquest for living space and booty.
- [Muhammad, c. 570-632 | Byzantium and Islam](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/muhammad-c-570-632-byzantium-and-islam/) - What we know of Muhammad is derived from Muslim authors who lived sometime after his death. The Arabia into which he was born about A.D. 570 was inhabited largely by nomadic tribes, each under its own chief. These nomads lived on the meat and milk of their animals and on dates from palm trees. They raided each other's flocks of camels and sheep and often feuded among themselves.
- [Islam Before the Crusades | Byzantium and Islam](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/islam-before-the-crusades-byzantium-and-islam/) - Islam (the Arabic word means "submission to God") is the most recent of the world's great religions. Its adherents (Muslims, "those who submit" to God) today inhabit the entire North African coast, much of central and west Africa, part of Yugoslavia, and Albania, Egypt, Turkey, the entire Near and Middle East, Pakistan, parts of India, the Malay peninsula, Indonesia, and the Philippine Islands, as well as central Asia and portions of China. Relations with the Muslim world have been crucial to Western civilization since Muhammad founded Islam in the early seventh century.
- [The Story of Ioasaph](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-story-of-ioasaph/) - Unique among the stories of saints' lives is an extraordinary document of the tenth century, a highly polished tale of an Indian king who shuts away his only son, Ioasaph, in a remote palace to protect him from the knowledge of the world, and especially to prevent his being converted to Christianity. But the prince cannot be protected; he sees a sick man, a blind man, and a dead man. And when he is in despair at life's cruelties, a wise monk in disguise, named Barlaam, succeeds in reaching him by pretending to have a precious jewel that he wishes to show.
- [The Arts | Byzantium and Islam](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-arts-byzantium-and-islam/) - The Church of Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom) in Constantinople, built in the sixth century, was designed to be "a church the like of which has never been seen since Adam nor ever will be." The dome, says a contemporary, "seems rather to hang by a golden chain from heaven than to be supported by solid masonry."
- [Byzantine Learning and Literature | Byzantium and Islam](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/byzantine-learning-and-literature-byzantium-and-islam/) - Byzantine achievement was varied, distinguished, and of major importance to the West. Byzantine literature may suffer by comparison with the classics, but the appropriate society with which to compare medieval Byzantium is the Europe of the Middle Ages. Both were Christian and both the direct heirs of Rome and Greece. The Byzantines maintained learning on a level much more advanced than did the West, which, indeed, owes a substantial cultural debt to Byzantium.
- [Kievan Russia | Byzantium and Islam](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/kievan-russia-byzantium-and-islam/) - Scholars have disputed whether agriculture or commerce was economically more important in Kievan Russia; the answer appears to be commerce. In trade, with Byzantium in particular, the Russians sold mostly furs, honey, and wax—products not of agriculture but of hunting and beekeeping. Since the Byzantines paid in cash, Kiev had much more of a money economy than did western Europe. From the economic and social point of view, Kievan Russia in the eleventh century was in some ways more advanced than manorial western Europe.
- [Conversion of the Russians | Byzantium and Islam](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/conversion-of-the-russians-byzantium-and-islam/) - Beginning in the eighth century, the Scandinavians expanded into Russia. First taking control of the Baltic shore, they moved south along the rivers to the Sea of Azov and the northern Caucasus. Their name was Rus, which has survived in the modern term Russian. Gradually they overcame many of the Slavic, Lithuanian, Finnish, and Magyar peoples who were then living on the steppe. The story told in the Old Russian Primary Chronicle, compiled during the eleventh century, is suggestive of what may have happened among the inhabitants of Russia sometime in the 850s:
- [Conversion of the Bulgarians | Byzantium and Islam](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/conversion-of-the-bulgarians-byzantium-and-islam/) - The first Slavic people to fall under Byzantine influence were the Bulgarians. From the time these barbarians crossed the Danube in the late seventh century, they engaged in intermittent warfare against the Byzantine Empire. At the same time, a Slavic people called the Moravians had established a state of their own. Their rulers associated Christianity with their powerful neighbors, the Germans, and feared both German and papal encroachment.
- [Byzantium and the Slavs | Byzantium and Islam](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/byzantium-and-the-slavs-byzantium-and-islam/) - Perhaps the major Byzantine cultural achievement was the transmission of their civilization to the Slays. Much as Rome Christianized large groups of "barbarians" in western Europe, so Constantinople, the new Rome, Christianized in eastern Europe.
- [Basil I through the "Time of Troubles," 867-1081 | Byzantium and Islam](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/basil-i-through-the-time-of-troubles-867-1081-byzantium-and-islam/) - Although intrigue and the violent overthrow of sovereigns remained a feature of Byzantine politics, the people developed a deep loyalty to the new ruling house that was established in 867 by the Armenian Basil I (r. 867-886) and called the Macedonian dynasty because of his birth there. As political disintegration began to weaken the opposing Muslim world, the Byzantines counterattacked in the tenth century. They captured Crete in 961 and Antioch and much of northern Syria in 962.
- [Leo III to Basil I, 717-867 | Byzantium and Islam](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/leo-iii-to-basil-i-717-867-byzantium-and-islam/) - In 717-718 Leo III, who had come to the throne as a successful general, defeated the Arabs who were besieging Constantinople. Thereafter the Byzantine struggle against the Muslims gradually became stabilized along a fixed frontier in Asia Minor.
- [Constantine to Leo III, 330-717 | Byzantium and Islam](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/constantine-to-leo-iii-330-717-byzantium-and-islam/) - The emperors immediately following Constantine were Arians until Theodosius I (r. 379-395), who in 381 proclaimed orthodox Nicene Athanasian Christianity to be the sole permitted state religion. All those who did not accept the Nicene Creed were to be driven from the cities of the Empire. The Empire, East and West, was united under Theodosius, but his sons Arcadius (r. 395-408) and Honorius (r. 395-423) divided it, with Arcadius ruling at Constantinople.
- [The Fortunes of Empire, 330-1081 | Byzantium and Islam](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-fortunes-of-empire-330-1081-byzantium-and-islam/) - Despite their efforts, the emperors at Constantinople could not reconquer the West and thus reconstitute the Roman Empire of Augustus. Indeed, theological controversy, reflecting internal political strain, and combined with Persian and Arab aggression, cost the Empire Syria and Egypt. The internal structure was modified to meet the new situation.
- [Quarrels and Schism with the West, 1054 | Byzantium and Islam](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/quarrels-and-schism-with-the-west-1054-byzantium-and-islam/) - A difference in the wording of the liturgy, it is sometimes argued, caused the schism, or split between the Eastern and Western churches in 1054. The Greek creed states that the Holy Ghost "proceeds" from the Father; the Latin adds the word filoque, meaning "and from the son." But this and other differences might never have led to a schism had it not been for increasing divergences between the two civilizations.
- [Contrast with the West | Byzantium and Islam](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/contrast-with-the-west-byzantium-and-islam/) - Yet much of this was also true in the medieval West. The real contrast is most apparent when we compare the relationship between church and state in the West with that in the East. In the West, the departure of the emperors from Rome permitted local bishops to create a papal monarchy and challenge kings and emperors. In Constantinople, however, the emperor remained in residence, and no papacy developed.
- [Byzantine Christianity and Relations with the West | Byzantium and Islam](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/byzantine-christianity-and-relations-with-the-west-byzantium-and-islam/) - Religion governed Byzantine life from birth to death. The church governed marriage and family relations and filled leisure time. Religion also dominated the arts and literature, economics and politics, and intellectual life.
- [Dazzling the Barbarian](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/dazzling-the-barbarian/) - A solemn formal reception at the imperial court usually dazzled a foreign ruler or envoy, even a sophisticated Western bishop like Liudprand of Cremona (d. 972), ambassador of the king in Italy, who has left us his account from the year 948:
- [The Economy | Byzantium and Islam](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-economy-byzantium-and-islam/) - Byzantium was a great center of trade, to which vessels came from every quarter of the compass. From the countries around the Black Sea came furs and hides, grain, salt, wine, and slaves from the Caucasus. From India, Ceylon, Syria, and Arabia came spices, precious stones, and silk; from Africa, slaves and ivory; from the West, especially Italy, came merchants eager to buy the goods sold in Constantinople, including the products of the imperial industries.
- [Diplomacy | Byzantium and Islam](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/diplomacy-byzantium-and-islam/) - The Byzantines, however, preferred negotiating to fighting, and they brought diplomacy to a high level. The subtlety of the instructions given their envoys has made "Byzantine" a lasting word for complexity and intrigue. First Persia and then to some extent the Muslim caliphate were the only states whose rulers the Byzantine emperors regarded as equals. All others were "barbarians." In their endless effort to protect their frontiers the
- [War | Byzantium and Islam](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/war-byzantium-and-islam/) - As defenders of the faith against hostile invaders, the Byzantine emperors fought one war after another for eleven hundred years. Sometimes the invaders were moving north and west from Asia: Persians in the seventh century; Arabs from the seventh century on; and Turks beginning in the eleventh century. Byzantium thus absorbed the heaviest shock of Eastern invasions and cushioned the West against them.
- [Theophilus on Justice](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/theophilus-on-justice/) - The emperor Theophilus (r. 829-842) appeared every week on horseback at a given church and handed down judgments so fair and equitable that they have passed into legend:
- [The Law | Byzantium and Islam](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-law-byzantium-and-islam/) - As the direct agent of God, the emperor was responsible for preserving the tradition of Roman law. Only the emperor could modify the laws already in effect or proclaim new ones. Thus he had on hand an immensely powerful instrument for preserving and enhancing power.
- [Slavery in the Early Middle Ages](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/slavery-in-the-early-middle-ages/) - A Christian prelate, Theodore, drafted a set of rules pertaining to male and female slaves in seventh-century England. The following is from the second penitential book—that is, a book on penances arising from the failure to adhere to discipline—of Theodore at Canterbury, section XIII: 1. If he is compelled by necessity, a father has the power to sell his son of seven years of age into slavery; after that, he had not the right to sell him without his consent. 2. A person of fourteen [years] can make himself a slave.
- [The Emperor | Byzantium and Islam](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-emperor-byzantium-and-islam/) - After Constantine, Byzantium called itself New Rome. Its emperors ruled in direct succession from Augustus. Yet many non-Roman elements became increasingly important in Byzantine society. A Roman of the time of Augustus would have been ill at ease in Byzantium. After Constantine had become a Christian, the emperor was no longer a god; but his power remained sacred.
- [Byzantium and Islam](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/byzantium-and-islam/) - At the far southeastern corner of Europe, on a little tongue of land still defended by a long line of massive walls and towers, there stands a splendid city, Istanbul. After 330, when the first Christian Roman emperor Constantine the Great made it his capital, it was often called Constantinople, but it also retained its ancient name Byzantium. For more than eleven hundred years thereafter it remained the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire.
- [Beowulf](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/beowulf/) - Beowulf begins in Denmark, where it tells of the founding of the Danish royal line and the building of a great hall by King Hrothgar. The hall is repeatedly raided by a savage monster, Grendel, who seizes and eats the Danish warriors as they lie asleep after dinner, until from over the sea in southern Sweden comes a hero, Beowulf.
- [Summary | The Early Middle Ages in Western Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/summary-the-early-middle-ages-in-western-europe/) - In the fifth century the structure of Roman government in the West collapsed under the pressure of invasion and migration by Germanic tribes. Much of the Roman heritage, however, was preserved by the church and the barbarians' own reverence for Roman civilization. The Franks founded the most lasting political entity to arise from the ruins of Roman power. In alliance with the papacy, the Frankish king Charles the Great (Charlemagne) sought to revive the Roman Empire in the West.
- [The Arts | The Early Middle Ages in Western Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-arts-the-early-middle-ages-in-western-europe/) - Like literature, the arts also gradually moved away from the standardized Roman forms toward newer achievements that introduced as the barbarians merged their arts with of the lands they settled. The early great churches of important imperial cities as Milan or Trier were still secular structures taken over from the secular of the Romans, but innovations were tried former Christian structures, especially baptisteries, detached from the main church. Some were square, others many-sided; rich mosaic decoration became common.
- [Vernacular Literature: Beowulf | The Early Middle Ages in Western Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/vernacular-literature-beowulf-the-early-middle-ages-in-western-europe/) - Britain's distance from Rome and its failure to become completely Latinized during antiquity allowed it to profit greatly from the double wave of Latin Christian missionaries—Celtic and papal—and so provide the needed stimulus for the Carolingian Latin literary revival.
- [Latin Literature | The Early Middle Ages in Western Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/latin-literature-the-early-middle-ages-in-western-europe/) - It was in Italy that the fight against the loss of the classical heritage was waged most vigorously and most successfully. Under Theodoric (r. 493-526), two distinguished intellectuals combated the general decline: Boethius and Cassiodorus.
- [The Civilization of the Early Middle Ages in the West | The Early Middle Ages in Western Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-civilization-of-the-early-middle-ages-in-the-west-the-early-middle-ages-in-western-europe/) - Judged by comparison with the achievements of Greek, Hellenistic, or Roman civilizations, or by those of the Byzantine and Muslim East, those of western Europe in these centuries may sometimes seem feeble or primitive. But this is what one would expect in a world where life was often too turbulent to allow much leisure for the exercise of creative skills.
- [Manorialism | The Early Middle Ages in Western Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/manorialism-the-early-middle-ages-in-western-europe/) - These complex arrangements directly involved only the governing class who fought on horseback as mounted knights and whose fiefs consisted of landed property known as manors or estates. Even if we include their dependents, the total would hardly reach 10 percent of the population of Europe. Most of the other 90 percent of the people worked the land.
- [Vassals and Lords | The Early Middle Ages in Western Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/vassals-and-lords-the-early-middle-ages-in-western-europe/) - Feudal practices varied from place to place and developed and altered with the passage of time. Nonetheless, certain general conceptions were accepted almost everywhere. One of the most significant was that of a feudal contract. The lord owed something to the vassal, just as the vassal owed something to the lord. When they entered into their relationship, the vassal rendered formal homage to his lord; that is, he became the lord's "man." He also promised him aid and counsel.
- [Feudalism: The Rulers | The Early Middle Ages in Western Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/feudalism-the-rulers-the-early-middle-ages-in-western-europe/) - To these widely varying social and political combinations scholars give the name feudalism. Feudal institutions were the arrangements that made survival possible during the early Middle Ages. The arrangements were made between important people who were concerned with maintaining order, though the customs that evolved also applied to the masses of population. One of the most influential arrangements was the war-band (or Gefolge) of the early Germans (or the comitatus, as Tacitus called it in Latin).
- [Feudal Europe | The Early Middle Ages in Western Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/feudal-europe-the-early-middle-ages-in-western-europe/) - It is all very well to speak of relative anarchy before and after Charlemagne, but what was anarchy like and how were human relations governed? Did everyone just slaughter everyone else indiscriminately? What were the rules that enabled life to go on, however harshly?
- [Europe about 1000 | The Early Middle Ages in Western Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/europe-about-1000-the-early-middle-ages-in-western-europe/) - By about the year 1000 England was a centralized monarchy; France was nominally ruled by an elected king who was feebler than his great supporters; Germany was divided into duchies, one of which, Saxony, had asserted its supremacy and claimed the old imperial title; and Italy still remained anarchic, although the papacy had begun to revive.
- [The Saxon Empire, 911-996 | The Early Middle Ages in Western Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-saxon-empire-911-996-the-early-middle-ages-in-western-europe/) - By the end of the ninth century, Carolingian power in the German territories had almost disappeared in the face of challenges by ambitious local magnates and threats from Norsemen, Slays, and the Magyars. Their predecessors, the Huns and Avars, had vanished, but the Magyars stayed, forming the nucleus of a Hungarian state. The Hungarian language thus remains the only non-Indo-European tongue in Europe except for Finnish and Basque.
- [The Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms and the Danes, 871-1035 | The Early Middle Ages in Western Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-anglo-saxon-kingdoms-and-the-danes-871-1035-the-early-middle-ages-in-western-europe/) - In England, savage Danish attacks on the northern and eastern shores soon led to settlement. The chief barrier to the Danes was the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex under Alfred the Great (r. 871-899). Although Alfred defeated the Danes, he had to concede the whole northeast of England to them, a region thereafter called the Danelaw. By the mid-tenth century, Alfred's successors had reunited the Danelaw to Wessex, whose royal family ruled over all England.
- [After Charlemagne: The Northmen | The Early Middle Ages in Western Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/after-charlemagne-the-northmen-the-early-middle-ages-in-western-europe/) - Charlemagne's conquests in Germany had for the first time brought the home ground of many of the barbarians into Christendom. Still outside lay Scandinavia, from whose shores there began in the ninth century a new wave of invasions that hit Britain and the western parts of the Frankish lands with savage force. The Northmen conducted their raids from small ships that could easily sail up the Thames, the Seine, or the Loire.
- [Charlemagne and the Revival of Empire, 768-814 | The Early Middle Ages in Western Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/charlemagne-and-the-revival-of-empire-768-814-the-early-middle-ages-in-western-europe/) - Charlemagne (r. 768-814) was a vigorous, lusty, intelligent man who loved hunting, women, and war. All his life he wore Frankish costume and thought of himself as a Frankish chieftain. Although he could read, he could never teach himself how to write; he spoke Latin, however, and understood some Greek. A great conqueror, Charlemagne crossed the Rhine and in campaigns lasting more than thirty years conquered the heathen Saxons, who lived south of Denmark, and converted them at sword's point to Christianity.
- [Italy from Theodoric to Pepin, 527-768 | The Early Middle Ages in Western Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/italy-from-theodoric-to-pepin-527-768-the-early-middle-ages-in-western-europe/) - Soon after the death of Theodoric, the great Eastern emperor Justinian (r. 527-565) launched from Constantinople an ambitious effort to reconquer the major areas of the West that had been lost to the barbarians. The imperial forces tackled the Vandals in North Africa in 533, and then invaded Italy from Carthage via Sicily. For almost twenty years, savage and destructive warfare ravaged the peninsula, and Rome changed hands several times. The towns and countryside were devastated and the survivors reduced to misery.
- [The Franks: The Building of an Empire | The Early Middle Ages in Western Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-franks-the-building-of-an-empire-the-early-middle-ages-in-western-europe/) - The Franks engaged in no long migrations, expanding gradually west and south from their territory along the lower Rhine until eventually they were to create an empire that would include most of western Europe except for the Iberian peninsula and the British isles. Clovis (r. 481-511), a descendant of the house of Merevig or Merovech (called Merovingian), was the primary founder of Frankish power. Moving into Gaul, he successively defeated the last Roman governor (486), the Alamanni (496), and the Visigoths of Aquitaine (507).
- [Huns, Ostrogoths, 451-526 | The Early Middle Ages in Western Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/huns-ostrogoths-451-526-the-early-middle-ages-in-western-europe/) - Not only the Germanic peoples but also the central Asian Huns participated in the onslaught on Roman territories. Early in the fifth century the Huns conquered much of central and eastern Europe. Under their domination lived a large collection of German tribes. The Hunnic rulers also extracted tribute money from the Roman emperors of the East at Constantinople. Under their ruler, Attila, the Huns pressed westward, crossed the Rhine, and were defeated in 451 at Chalons in northeastern France by a Roman general.
- [Visigoths, Vandals, Anglo-Saxons, 410-455 | The Early Middle Ages in Western Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/visigoths-vandals-anglo-saxons-410-455-the-early-middle-ages-in-western-europe/) - In the year 378 at Adrianople, the Visigoths defeated the Roman legions of the Eastern emperor Valens, who was killed in battle. More and more Goths now freely entered the Empire. Unable to take Constantinople or other fortified towns, they proceeded south through the Balkans, under their chieftain Alaric, ravaging Greece and then marching around the Adriatic into Italy. In 410 they sacked Rome itself. Marie died soon afterward, and his successors led the Visigoths across Gaul and into Spain.
- [The Breakdown of Roman Civilization | The Early Middle Ages in Western Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-breakdown-of-roman-civilization-the-early-middle-ages-in-western-europe/) - During the period from the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West and about A.D. 1000, much of Roman civilization was lost, but much was retained and developed, and many new ways of life were adopted. New kinds of social relationships arose, combining Roman and barbarian practices.
- [The Early Middle Ages in Western Europe](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-early-middle-ages-in-western-europe/) - Between historians used to call the centuries from 500 to 1000 by the name still generally used for the centuries between 1100 and 800 B.C.: the Dark Ages. This suggests a gloomy barbarian interruption between a bright classical flowering and a later bright recovery or rebirth (Renaissance). But today historians prefer the more neutral term early Middle Ages, for they have come to believe that "dark" is a misleading exaggeration.
- [Summary | Judaism and Christianity](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/summary-judaism-and-christianity/) - The Romans relied on religion, not science, to explain their world. The increasing pessimism of the late Roman Empire fostered the growth of astrology, religious cults promising personal salvation, and mystical philosophy. The Jews under Roman rule were hard to control and divided among various political and religious factions. Many Jews believed in the imminent coming of some sort of deliverer, or Messiah. Christianity began as a Jewish movement. Paul separated Christianity from Judaism and spread its beliefs throughout much of the Empire.
- [The Christian Triumph as a Historical Problem | Judaism and Christianity](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-christian-triumph-as-a-historical-problem-judaism-and-christianity/) - Why did Christianity triumph in the fourth century? It began as a despised sect in a rich, well-organized, sophisticated society, yet it took over that society. In general, we might postulate the need for a religion of peace in the savage and insecure world of Rome. Jesus' teachings gave Christianity certain advantages over the mystery cults. For example, the cult of Isis lacked a missionary priesthood and was chiefly for women. The complexity of its rites and the lack of a great leader or teacher to make clear the ideas associated with the cult gave it little sustained popular appeal.
- [Augustine: Free Will and Predestination | Judaism and Christianity](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/augustine-free-will-and-predestination-judaism-and-christianity/) - Later in life Augustine found himself engaged in a final philosophical controversy with Pelagius (c. 354-420), a Christian layman who had lived for many years in Rome and who believed that humans not only could, but must, perfect themselves. He denied original sin and believed in free will. Yet such an exaltation of human possibilities is in its essence non-Christian, since it diminishes God's majesty.
- [Augustine: The City of God | Judaism and Christianity](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/augustine-the-city-of-god-judaism-and-christianity/) - In a new work, The City of God, written between 413 and 425, Augustine combated the pagan argument that it was Christianity that had been responsible for the catastrophic sack of Rome. It was easy to show why many pagan empires had fallen in the past, and Augustine quickly moved beyond his original subject. He attacked traditional pagan worship and of pagan interpretations of Roman history, systematically demolishing pagan philosophy.
- [Augustine: Conversion and The Confessions | Judaism and Christianity](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/augustine-conversion-and-the-confessions-judaism-and-christianity/) - At Milan, Augustine abandoned the Manichaean faith and fell under the spell of Ambrose, the bishop of Milan. Better educated than Augustine, a superb preacher, indifferent to the demands of the flesh, Ambrose stimulated Augustine to reexamine all his ideas. And Augustine's mother, who had followed him to Milan, eagerly drank in Ambrose's words "as a fountain of water."
- [Augustine: Early Life | Judaism and Christianity](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/augustine-early-life-judaism-and-christianity/) - We know Augustine (354-430) intimately through his famous autobiography, The Confessions. He was born in a small market town in what is now Algeria, inland from Carthage, the administrative and cultural center of the African provinces. Here the population still spoke Punic (Phoenician), but the upper classes were Latin speaking, wholly Roman in their outlook, and deeply imbued with the classical traditions of Rome. Prosperous planters lived on their great estates, while peasants toiled in the fields and olive groves.
- [The Rise of Christian Literature | Judaism and Christianity](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-rise-of-christian-literature-judaism-and-christianity/) - In the West pagan literature declined and virtually disappeared, while in the East a few passionate devotees of the old gods still made their voices heard. Christian writings increasingly took the center of the stage. In the East, writers devoted much energy to polemical statements on doctrinal questions and disputes. In both East and West the best minds among Christians faced the problem of how to treat Greek and Roman literature. At first, a few thinkers, mostly in the West, advised against reading anything but Scripture.
- [Thought and Letters in the First Christian Centuries | Judaism and Christianity](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/thought-and-letters-in-the-first-christian-centuries-judaism-and-christianity/) - Though a good deal of dislike and misunderstanding had always characterized the attitudes of most Greeks and Romans toward each other, Roman admiration for Greek literature and art deeply influenced the work of Roman writers and artists. The triumph of Christianity tended to contribute new sources of misunderstanding and tension to the relationships between Easterners and Westerners.
- [The Debate over the Two Natures of Christ | Judaism and Christianity](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-debate-over-the-two-natures-of-christ-judaism-and-christianity/) - Long before Arianism disappeared, a new and related controversy had shaken the Eastern portion of the Empire to its foundations. Exactly what was the relationship of Christ the god and Christ the man? He was both man and god, but how was this possible? And was the Virgin Mary the mother only of his human aspect, or, if not, how could a human being be the mother of god?
- [The Nicene Creed](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-nicene-creed/) - The early centuries of Christianity saw a series of struggles to define the accepted doctrines of the religion—orthodoxy—and to protect them against the challenge of rival or unsound doctrinal ideas—heresy. The first heresies appeared almost as early as the first clergy. In fact, the issue between those who wished to admit gentiles and those who wished to confine the Gospel to the Jews foreshadowed the kind of issue that was to confront Christianity in the first few centuries.
- [The Rule of St. Benedict](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-rule-of-st-benedict/) - The Benedictine rule blended Roman law with the new Christian view to produce the most enduring form of monasticism in Western society. Consider the concepts of authority, rule, and equality contained in the following portions of the rule of St. Benedict:
- [The Development of Christian Thought | Judaism and Christianity](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-development-of-christian-thought-judaism-and-christianity/) - The Christian clergy could hardly have attained their great power had they not been essential intermediaries between this visible world of actuality and an invisible other world that, to the devout Christian, is as real as this one. In Christianity certain important ideas about the other world are embodied in ritual acts called sacraments. These sacraments, administered by the clergy, are central to an understanding of Christian doctrine.
- [Monasticism | Judaism and Christianity](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/monasticism-judaism-and-christianity/) - Deacons, priests, bishops, archbishops all serve the laity and are called secular clergy. Early in the history of the church, however, another kind of devotee to Christianity appeared in Syria and Egypt—the monk, a man who felt that he must become an ascetic. The New Testament extolled the merits of abstaining from sexual relations if possible, and from all other fleshly indulgence.
- [Bishops and Their Duties: Church and State | Judaism and Christianity](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/bishops-and-their-duties-church-and-state-judaism-and-christianity/) - Each bishop presided over several churches. Each church was under the care of a priest (Greek, presbyteros, or "elder") who had been qualified by special training and by a ceremony of ordination. The area served by each church and its priest came to be known as the parish. In the early church the office of deacon had much importance. Before long, then, a distinction between those who were merely faithful worshipers (the laity) and those who conducted the worship and administered the affairs of the church (the clergy) became well defined.
- [Nero and the Christians](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/nero-and-the-christians/) - The great Roman historian Tacitus said that the emperor Nero was using the Christians as a scapegoat for the great fire of A.D.. 64:
- [The Organization of the Church | Judaism and Christianity](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-organization-of-the-church-judaism-and-christianity/) - To maintain order, the Christian community needed some authority to discipline or even oust those who misbehaved. It had to organize to survive in the midst of an empire originally committed in principle to its suppression. Prophets, or teachers, appeared in the very first churches, the informal groups of Christians organized by the missionaries; soon elders, overseers, and presidents followed.
- [The Conversion of Constantine | Judaism and Christianity](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-conversion-of-constantine-judaism-and-christianity/) - In 312, the year before he associated himself with the edict of toleration, Constantine had a religious experience akin to that of Paul. Just before going into battle against his rival Maxentius, the emperor supposedly saw in the heavens the sign of a cross against the sun and the words, "Conquer in this sign." He put the sign on the battle standards of his army, won the battle, and attributed the victory to the Christian god.
- [The Period of Persecution | Judaism and Christianity](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-period-of-persecution-judaism-and-christianity/) - What to Christians was persecution, to the Roman authorities was simply the performance of their duty as defenders of public order against those who seemed to be traitors to the Empire or irresponsible madmen. The Christians ran afoul of Roman civil law not so much for their beliefs and practices as for their refusal to make concessions to paganism. To cultivated Greeks and Romans, Christians seemed wild enthusiasts; to the masses they were disturbers, cranks, revolutionaries.
- [Paul and Gentile Christianity | Judaism and Christianity](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/paul-and-gentile-christianity-judaism-and-christianity/) - Paul taught that "there is neither Jew nor Greek" (Galatians 3:28). The Jewish law had been a forerunner, a tutor: "For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free" (1 Corinthians 12:13). The Christian was to be saved, not by the letter of the Jewish law, but by the spirit of the Jewish faith in a righteous God.
- [The Early Christians: Judaeo-Christianity | Judaism and Christianity](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-early-christians-judaeo-christianity-judaism-and-christianity/) - There are no historical sources contemporary with Jesus himself from which to draw an account of his life and teaching. Paul's epistles to the Corinthians were written about A.D. 55, the Acts of the Apostles about 60-62, and the four Gospels between 70 and 100. Late in the second century or early in the third these texts were revised in Alexandria.
- [The Teaching of Jesus | Judaism and Christianity](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-teaching-of-jesus-judaism-and-christianity/) - It was thus in a troubled and divided land that Jesus came to preach to his fellow Jews. He preached the love of one God for all people. He preached to the poor, the weak, and the simple, rather than to the priests of the Temple. His "Blessed are the poor in spirit" has an Essene echo, though Jesus was not a revolutionary like the Essenes, nor an ascetic, since he preached the enjoyment of the good things of this world.
- [Parties among the Jews | Judaism and Christianity](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/parties-among-the-jews-judaism-and-christianity/) - The Romans put down the rebellion that erupted on Herod's death in 4 B.C. Ten years later they deposed Herod's son as king of Judea and installed the first Roman prefect. By this time, there were at least three parties distinguishable among the Jews of Judea: the Sadducees, the Pharisees, and the Essenes. The Romans took advantage of this divisiveness to maintain their rule over Palestine.
- [Under Roman Rule | Judaism and Christianity](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/under-roman-rule-judaism-and-christianity/) - As the Romans replaced the Seleucids as foreign overlords of the Jewish lands, Pompey liberated the areas the Hasmoneans had conquered and made the areas with Jewish majorities a client state (civitas stipendiaria) of Rome. In the mid-fifties the Roman governor of Syria divided Judea into five subareas (synhedria, or "councils").
- [The Roman Conquest | Judaism and Christianity](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-roman-conquest-judaism-and-christianity/) - Hellenism and the Hasmoneans. When, after a century of struggle for control of Palestine, the Seleucids won a permanent victory about 200 B.C., their monarch issued special tax privileges for the Jews. The high priest of the Temple of Judea represented the Jews in their dealings with their Seleucid overlord and was responsible for collecting the taxes for him. The upper classes among the Jews found themselves greatly attracted by Greek culture. Some Jews engaged in athletics naked in the Greek fashion; Greek artistic motifs and symbols appeared on Jewish monuments and coins.
- [Judea | Judaism and Christianity](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/judea-judaism-and-christianity/) - The earliest account of Jesus (by Mark) comes from about A.D. 70, and the account by John is from the end of the same century. These accounts are Gospels, that is, statements about the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, written so that those teachings would not be lost. They indicate that Jesus was born in Palestine sometime between the years we now call 8 and 4 B.C. and was crucified probably in A.D. 29 or 30 in the reign of Tiberius.
- [New Cults: Cybele, Isis, Mithra | Judaism and Christianity](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/new-cults-cybele-isis-mithra-judaism-and-christianity/) - The state religion of the Olympian gods and of the deified emperors still commanded the loyalty of many Romans, who regarded the proper observance of its rites as the equivalent of patriotism. But by the first century A.D. the old faith no longer allayed the fears of millions who believed in blind fate and inevitable fortune: people increasingly sought a religion that would hold out the hope of an afterlife better than the grim reality on earth. So, along with astrology and magic, mystery religions began to appear in Rome.
- [Astrology | Judaism and Christianity](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/astrology-judaism-and-christianity/) - Most Romans came to believe that the movements of the heavenly bodies influenced their fortunes and fates and governed their decisions. If one could do nothing to change one's destiny, one could at least try to find out what that destiny might be by consulting an expert astrologer. The astrologer would study the seven planets (Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury, the Moon), each of which had its own will, character, gender, plants, numbers, and attendant animals, and each of which was lord of a sphere.
- [The Failure of Reason | Judaism and Christianity](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-failure-of-reason-judaism-and-christianity/) - There are many arguments as to why civilization had to wait so long before scientific knowledge was given a systematic application. Whatever the answers, a tendency to see science as being in opposition to religion was developing. Perhaps the answer lay, in part, in the attitudes of the Roman ruling groups.
- [Summary | The Romans](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/summary-the-romans/) - Early Rome was a Latin city influenced by Greek colonies in the south of Italy and by the Etruscans to the north. Rome expelled its Etruscan kings in 509 B.C. and became a republic. Early Roman society was divided between the dominant aristocratic minority (the patricians) and the plebeians, who formed the mass of the population. The government was led by two elected consuls, who were advised by a Senate of ex-officials. At first most officials were patricians, but by the fourth century B.C. the plebeians had won the right to hold most offices, including consul.
- [A Final Appraisal | The Romans](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/a-final-appraisal-the-romans/) - Tacitus was right in thinking that Rome had lost some of its traditional virtues with its conquest of huge territories, its accumulation of wealth, and its assumption of imperial responsibilities. Nevertheless, the first two centuries of the Empire mark the most stable and, for many, the most prosperous era that had yet occurred in human history.
- [Roman Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting | The Romans](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/roman-architecture-sculpture-and-painting-the-romans/) - Roman architecture used the Greek column, usually Corinthian, and the round arch, originated by the Etruscans; from this developed the barrel vault, a continuous series of arches like the top of the tunnel that could be used to roof large areas. The Romans introduced the dome, and a splendid one surmounts the Pantheon at Rome. Roman structures emphasized bigness: the Colosseum seated forty-five thousand spectators; the Baths of the emperor Caracalla accommodated thousands of bathers.
- [Roman Law and Science | The Romans](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/roman-law-and-science-the-romans/) - The legal code published on the Twelve Tables in the fifth century B.C. reflected the needs of a small city-state, not those of a huge empire. As Rome became a world capital, thousands of foreigners flocked to live there, and of course they often got into disagreements with each other or with Romans. But Roman law developed the flexibility to adjust to changing conditions. The enactments of the Senate and assemblies, the decrees of each new emperor, and the decisions of the judges who were often called in as advisers— all contributed to a great body of legal materials.
- [The Satyricon](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-satyricon/) - In 1663 in Dalmatia portions of a manuscript known as The Satyricon were found. This bawdy satire is attributed to Petronius (d. A.D. 65), one of Nero's court officials. Though undoubtedly exaggerated, the work tells us much about contemporary attitudes and practices among the most wealthy and leisured. One of the longest sections is an account of a lavish banquet given by the newly rich and ultra-vulgar Trimalchio. __________________________________________________
- [Roman Literature | The Romans](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/roman-literature-the-romans/) - One of the great unifying forces of the Roman Empire was its language; Latin slowly became the lingua franca, the universal language of the Roman world. Latin became both the most widespread language of its time and the most influential language of all time, for it formed the basis of the great Romance languages of western Europe, Romania, and Latin America, and it was the language of universal scholarship until the nineteenth century. Until displaced by French, it was the language of diplomacy, and until displaced in the twentieth century by English, it was the language of technology.
- [Roman Religion | The Romans](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/roman-religion-the-romans/) - Before the first contacts with the Greeks, the Romans had already evolved their own religion—the worship of the household spirits, the lares and penates, that governed their everyday affairs, along with those spiritual beings that inhabited the local woods, springs, and fields. Like the Greek goddess Hestia, the Roman Vesta presided over the hearth and had in her service specially trained vestal virgins. From the Etruscans the Romans took the belief in omens which they never abandoned.
- [Greek Influences | The Romans](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/greek-influences-the-romans/) - Greek influence from Magna Graecia affected the Romans long before they conquered Greece itself. In the arts, the Romans found much of their inspiration in Greek models. In literature, the Greeks supplied the forms and often much of the spirit. In science and engineering, the Romans accomplished more than the Greeks, as they did in law and government.
- [Why Did the Empire Decline? | The Romans](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/why-did-the-empire-decline-the-romans/) - Few subjects have been more debated than the reasons for the long decline of the Roman Empire. The celebrated eighteenth-century historian Edward Gibbon blamed Christianity, charging that it destroyed the civic spirit of the Romans by turning their attention to the afterlife and away from their duties to the state. Michael Rostovtzeff, a Russian scholar who wrote in the 1920s and 1930s, attributed the decline in part to the constant pressure by the underprivileged masses to share in the wealth of their rulers, of which there was not enough to go around anyhow.
- [The Downward Slide: Commodus to Diocletian, A.D. 180-284 | The Romans](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-downward-slide-commodus-to-diocletian-ad-180-284-the-romans/) - Commodus (r. 180-192), the true son of Marcus Aurelius, proved to be a tyrant without talent. In the end, his closest advisers murdered him. After two other emperors had been installed and murdered by the Praetorian Guard within a year, Septimus Severus (r. 193-211), a North African who commanded the Roman troops in what is now Hungary, marched his army into Rome and disbanded the guard, replacing it by a new elite body chosen from his own officers.
- [Menu for a Roman Banquet](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/menu-for-a-roman-banquet/) - At its height, the Roman Empire put great emphasis on dining well—at least for the rich. A Roman chef, Apicius, produced the first surviving cookbook. Apicius's menu for one Roman banquet, which would begin in the late evening and run through the night to the accompaniment of musicians, dancers, acrobats, and poets, follows. The meals also tells us something about the extent of Roman trade, for the ostrich and flamingo came from Africa, the dates from Judea, and the spices from throughout the Empire. Appetizers Jellyfish and eggs
- [The Destruction of Pompeii](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-destruction-of-pompeii/) - Pliny the Elder (A.D.. 23-79) was a Roman naturalist who died of asphyxiation near Mount Vesuvius, having gone personally to investigate the eruption. In a letter to Tacitus, his nephew Pliny the Younger (A.D. c. 62—c. 113), described the eruption. His description humanized the death of an entire city, relating how the people of Pompeii fell in the streets where gas and molten lava overcame them. Pompeii disappeared under thirty feet of ash. ___________________________________________________
- [From Nero to Marcus Aurelius, A.D 68-180 | The Romans](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/from-nero-to-marcus-aurelius-ad-68-180-the-romans/) - Augustus's first four successors are called the Julio-Claudian emperors. Each had been a member of the family of Julius Caesar and Augustus. But now the line had run out. In 68-69, four emperors, each a general supported by his own troops, ruled in rapid succession. The first three died by violence. The fourth was Vespasian, Nero's commander in Palestine.
- [Augustus and His Immediate Successors, 27 B.C.—A.D. 68 | The Romans](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/augustus-and-his-immediate-successors-27-bc—ad-68-the-romans/) - Octavian was too shrewd to alienate the people of Rome by formally breaking with the past and proclaiming an empire. He sought to preserve republican forms, but also to remake the government along the lines suggested by Caesar. After sixty years of internal strife, the population welcomed a ruler who promised order.
- [The First Triumvirate, 60-43 B.C. | The Romans](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-first-triumvirate-60-43-bc-the-romans/) - Caesar became governor of the southern strip of Gaul (modern France), and other adjacent lands. Between 58 and 50 B.C. he defeated the Celtic Gauls, conquering a huge area corresponding to modern France and Belgium. Caesar also crossed the English Channel to punish the Celtic Britons for helping their fellow Celts in Gaul, though he made no effort to conquer Britain permanently.
- [Political Generals: Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Caesar, 107-59 B.C. | The Romans](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/political-generals-marius-sulla-pompey-caesar-107-59-bc-the-romans/) - The first of the generals to achieve power was Marius, leader of the populares, who had won victories against the Numidians (led by their king, Jugurtha) in what is now eastern Algeria, and against a group of largely Celtic peoples called the Cimbri and Teutones. Violating the custom that a consul had to wait ten years before serving a second term. Marius had himself elected five times in succession as the savior of Rome.
- [Crisis of The Republic | The Romans](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/crisis-of-the-republic-the-romans/) - As Roman territory increased, signs of trouble multiplied. The Republic allowed a few overseas cities to retain some self-government but usually organized its new territories as provinces under governors appointed by the Senate. Some of the governors proved oppressive and lined their own pockets; as long as they raised recruits for the army and collected taxes, they had a free hand. In Italy pressure mounted from Rome's allies, who demanded full citizenship and a share in the new wealth flowing into the capital.
- [Slavery as Enforced Servitude](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/slavery-as-enforced-servitude/) - Scholars argue over how fundamental slavery has been to different cultures. Perhaps half of all societies have owned legal slaves. But if we define a slave society as one in which slaves play a significant role in production and constitute, say, 20 percent of the total population, then there have been only five slave societies in known history: classical Athens, Roman Italy (though not the remainder of the Empire), the West Indies under the British and French, the southern portion of the United States before 1865, and Brazil. This does not, of course, include other forms of forced labor.
- [Roman Expansion, 264-133 B.C. | The Romans](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/roman-expansion-264-133-bc-the-romans/) - This regime was well designed to carry on the chief preoccupation of the emerging Roman state war. The Roman army at first had as its basic unit the phalanx- about 8,000 foot soldiers armed with helmet, shield, lance, and sword. But experience led to the substitution of the far more maneuverable legion, consisting of 5,000 men in groups of 60 or 120, called maniples, armed with an iron-tipped javelin, which could be hurled at the enemy from a distance. Almost all citizens of Rome had to serve.
- [The Republic | The Romans](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-republic-the-romans/) - When the Etruscans took over Rome, the people they conquered were apparently Latins, descendants of prehistoric inhabitants of the peninsula. Under its Etruscan kings, Rome prospered during the sixth century B.C. The Etruscans built new stone structures and drained and paved what eventually became the Forum. But the Roman population joined with other Latin tribes in a large-scale rebellion. The traditional date for the expulsion from Rome of the last Etruscan king, Tarquin the Proud, is 509 B.C.
- [Introduction | The Romans](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/introduction-the-romans/) - Compared with Greece, Italy enjoys certain natural advantages: The plains are larger and more fertile, the mountains less a barrier to communications. The plain of Latium, south of the site of Rome, could be farmed intensively after drainage and irrigation ditches had been dug; the nearby hills provided timber and good pasturage. The city of Rome lay only fifteen miles from the sea and could share in the trade of the Mediterranean; yet its seven hills overlooking the Tiber could be easily fortified and defended.
- [Summary | The Greeks](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/summary-the-greeks/) - The Greeks are the first ancient society with which modern society feels an immediate affinity. We can identify with Greek art, Greek politics, Greek curiosity, and the Greek sense of history. The polis, roughly translated as the city-state, was the prevailing social and political unit of ancient Greece. Athens and Sparta were the two most significant poleis. Sparta was a conservative military oligarchy ruled jointly by two kings and a council of elders. It had an excellent army, but its society was highly regimented. Sparta produced little of artistic or cultural importance.
- [Greek Art | The Greeks](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/greek-art-the-greeks/) - The incalculably rich legacy left by the Greeks in literature w-as well matched by their achievements in the public arts. In architecture their characteristic public building was a rectangle, with a roof supported by fluted columns. Over the centuries, the Greeks developed three principal types or orders of columns, still used today in "classical" buildings: the Doric, the Ionic, and the Corinthian. Fluting gave an impression of greater height than the simple cylindrical Egyptian columns.
- [Greek Science and Philosophy | The Greeks](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/greek-science-and-philosophy-the-greeks/) - Possessed of inquiring, speculative minds, and interested in their environment, the Greeks were keenly interested in science. Stimulated by their acquaintance with Egypt, they correctly attributed many of the workings of nature to natural rather than supernatural causes. They knew that the Nile flooded because annual spring rains caused its source in Ethiopia to overflow. They decided that the straits between Sicily and Italy and between Africa and Spain were the result of earthquakes. They understood what caused eclipses and knew that the moon shone by light reflected from the sun.
- [Greek History | The Greeks](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/greek-history-the-greeks/) - Much of what we know about the Greeks before and during the Persian Wars we owe to the industry and intelligence of Herodotus (c. 484-425 B.C.), who began to write his history as an account of the origins and course of the struggle between Greeks and Persians, and expanded it into an inquiry into the peoples of the whole world known to the Greeks.
- [Aristophanes on "Worthy Themes"](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/aristophanes-on-worthy-themes/) - Aristophanes' The Frogs was first produced in 405 B.C., the twenty-sixth year of the Second Peloponnesian War, shortly before the surrender of Athens to Sparta. Euripides had died in 406, and in The Frogs Aristophanes has Dionysus, the god of theater, go to Hades to bring Euripides back to Athens. The search for Euripides is comic and bawdy, and it features a contest between Euripides and Aeschylus, which the latter wins, so that he returns to Dionysus, since he is judged to be more able to remind Athenians of the principles by which they might yet achieve victory.
- [Greek Comedy | The Greeks](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/greek-comedy-the-greeks/) - Comedy, like tragedy, also began at the festivals of Dionysus. Aristophanes (c. 450-c. 385 B.c.) has left eleven complete plays and parts of a twelfth. By making his audience laugh, he hoped to teach them a lesson. A thorough-going conservative, he was suspicious of all innovation. In The Frogs, for instance, he brought onto the stage actors playing the parts of the two tragedians, Aeschylus and Euripides.
- [Greek Tragedy | The Greeks](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/greek-tragedy-the-greeks/) - From these and other songs Athens developed the art of tragedy. At first largely sung as choral hymns, the tragedies later began to deal with human problems, and individual actors' roles became more important. The first competition to choose the best tragedy was sponsored by Pisistratus in 534 B.C., and annual contests were held thereafter. Many hundreds of tragedies were written; comparatively few have survived in full, but we have fragments of others.
- [The Gods of the Greeks | The Greeks](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-gods-of-the-greeks-the-greeks/) - To the Greeks, religion was so embedded within society that it influenced every aspect of daily life. Religion was practical: it helped people in birth, at puberty, through marriage, and at death. It was also democratic, as aristocratic cults came to shape public calendars.
- [A Hellenized Civilization | The Greeks](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/a-hellenized-civilization-the-greeks/) - The Hellenistic period is usually said to be the three hundred years between the reign of Alexander the Great, who died in 323 B.C., and of Augustus, the first Roman emperor, who ruled from 31 B.C. until .A.D. 14. As soon as the news of Alexander's death became known, his generals began a fierce scramble for portions of his empire. The generals combined against each other in various shifting alliances and arranged many intermarriages and murders in a confusing period of political and military change. By c. 280-279 B.C.
- [Macedon and The Achievements of Alexander the Great | The Greeks](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/macedon-and-the-achievements-of-alexander-the-great-the-greeks/) - Philip's son, Alexander III (the Great), belongs to legend as much as to history. Only twenty when he came to the throne, he loved war, politics, athletics, alcohol, poetry, medicine, and science. Within a dozen years he led his armies on a series of triumphant marches that won for Macedon the largest empire yet created in the ancient world. He began by crushing a Greek revolt led by Thebes, whose entire population he sold into slavery. Next he crossed into Asia Minor. He defeated the Persians at the river Granicus in 334 B.C. and took over the coastal cities of Ionia.
- [Macedon and The Achievements of Philip II | The Greeks](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/macedon-and-the-achievements-of-philip-ii-the-greeks/) - In 359 B.C., a prince of the ruling house, Philip, became regent for his infant nephew. Having lived for three years as a hostage in Thebes, Philip understood Greek affairs. He applied Theban military principles to his army and led it in person. After defeating the Illyrians and other rivals for power within Macedon, Philip was made king in his own right.
- [Macedon | The Greeks](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/macedon-the-greeks/) - North of Thessaly and extending inland into what is today Yugoslavia and Albania lay the kingdom of Macedon, with a considerable coastline along the Aegean. The Macedonians were a mixture of peoples including some of Greek origin; they were organized into tribes, worshiped some of the Greek gods, and spoke a Greek dialect that other Greeks could not understand. Their kings had title to most of the land and ruled absolutely, though he might be deposed by the people for treason.
- [Thebes Rises to Leadership | The Greeks](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/thebes-rises-to-leadership-the-greeks/) - Raising money from their allies and hiring mercenaries to intimidate all resistance, the Spartans systematically disciplined and punished the cities that dared resist, seizing Thebes in 382 B.C. and breaking their promise to respect the autonomy of the Greek cities. A group of Theban democratic exiles conspired to overthrow the pro-Spartan regime there, and when the Spartans tried to punish them, a new war broke out in which Athens participated as the leading power in a new anti-Spartan league of many Greek cities.
- [Spartan Domination | The Greeks](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/spartan-domination-the-greeks/) - The Spartans found themselves dominant in a Greece where polis was suspicious of polis and where, within each polis, faction disputed with faction. From Ionia, the Persians loomed once more as a threat to the Greek world. By midcentury, the new state of Macedonia in the north menaced the Greeks. Perhaps wiser or more vigorous leaders would have been able to create some sort of federation that could have withstood the Persians and the Macedonians. But it seems likely that the polis was no longer thought to be the appropriate way for the Greek world to be organized.
- [Pericles' Oration](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/pericles-oration/) - From the hand of Thucydides, the historian of the Peloponnesian War, we have an account of Pericles' famous speech, delivered in the winter of 431 B.C., exhorting the Athenians to greater efforts by describing the ideal of an imperial democracy:
- [Alcibiades and Failure | The Greeks](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/alcibiades-and-failure-the-greeks/) - The peace officially lasted only five years (421-416 B.C.), years that saw the gradual rise to eminence in Athenian politics of Pericles' cousin, Alcibiades, a brilliant, ambitious, dissolute, and unstable youth, who initially succeeded the demagogic Cleon as leader of the lower-class war party against the restrained and unglamorous Nicias. During that time Athens underlined its ruthlessness by killing all the adult males of the island of Melos and enslaving the women and children as a punishment for Melos's insistence on staying neutral in the war (416).
- [The Second Peloponnesian War | The Greeks](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-second-peloponnesian-war-the-greeks/) - The First Fifteen Years, 431-416 B. C. A growing number of incidents in which Athenians ruthlessly asserted their power alarmed the Spartans; if they did not fight soon, they feared. they might not be able to win. They tried to force the Athenians to make concessions, but Pericles, with the support of the assembly, said only that Athens would consent CO have all disputed questions arbitrated.
- [From Alliance to Empire | The Greeks](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/from-alliance-to-empire-the-greeks/) - In fact, Pericles was gradually turning the Athenian alliance into an empire, with subject members providing the money for Athens, which would defend them all and would be able to challenge Sparta. In 454 the treasury of the alliance was moved from Delos to Athens. During a truce in the first Peloponnesian War with the Spartans (460-445), the Athenians, operating in the Aegean, increased the number of their allies (about 170 cities at the peak), and in 449 made peace with Persia, liberating the Ionian cities and binding the Persians not to come within three days' journey of the coast.
- [Postwar Reorganization | The Greeks](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/postwar-reorganization-the-greeks/) - It was Athens, after 478 the strongest naval power, that organized the new Greek alliance, designed to liberate the Ionian cities still subject to Persia and to maintain the defenses. Athens contributed most of the ships, while the other cities were assessed contributions in both ships and money. Since the treasury of the alliance was on the island of Delos, the alliance is called the Delian League. Under Cimon it scored a major victory over the Persians in Asia Minor in 469 B.C.
- [The Persian Wars | The Greeks](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-persian-wars-the-greeks/) - Darius now planned a much greater invasion, but an Egyptian uprising and then his death prevented it. His successor, Xerxes (r. 486-465), having subdued the Egyptians, resumed the elaborate preparations for war in 481.
- [The Persian Empire | The Greeks](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-persian-empire-the-greeks/) - It was under Cyrus (r.c. 559-530), who attacked the Medes and took their capital (Ecbatana, south of the Caspian Sea), that the Persians began a meteoric rise toward universal rule. Uniting his territory with that of the Medes and initially bypassing Babylon, Cyrus moved westward into Anatolia, absorbed the Lydian kingdom of the rich king Croesus, and conquered the Greek cities of Ionia along the Aegean coast. Next he moved east all the way to the borders of India, annexing as he went.
- [Pisistratus and Cleisthenes | Athens, from 632 B.C. | The Greeks](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/pisistratus-and-cleisthenes-athens-from-632-bc-the-greeks/) - By introducing these quasi-democratic innovations while retaining aristocratic election of the rich to magistracies and the oligarchic power of the few in the Council of the Areopagus, Solon had introduced a radical set of compromises "I stood holding my stout shield over both parties [the poor and the rich];" he wrote. "I did not allow either party to prevail unjustly. justice Solon meant what we might call social justice. However, factional strife soon began again. Athenians seem to have taken sides in accordance with both region and class.
- [Draco and Solon | Athens, from 632 B.C. | The Greeks](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/draco-and-solon-athens-from-632-bc-the-greeks/) - Athens-which had never undergone a Dorian occupation-did not become a polis as early as Sparta but lingered as an aristocratic tribal state. It was divided territorially into plains, hills, and coastal land, and politically into four tribes, each of which had brotherhoods (phratries) or territorial subdivisions (trittyes). Within each phratry a further distinction was drawn between those who owned and worked their farms (the clans) and the guildsmen, who belonged to an association of artisans or merchants. Each mature male was admitted into a phratry either as a clansman or as a guildsman.
- [The Polis and Colonization | The Greeks](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-polis-and-colonization-the-greeks/) - For the Greeks, the prevailing social and political unit gradually became the polis (plural, poleis), roughly translated as the "city-state," though many were too small to be cities. The "kings," or local chieftains, of Mycenaean times had disappeared, and the prominent men in each community had begun to form councils and other groups to manage public affairs. Usually the community centered upon a fortress built upon a hill, "the high city" or acropolis, and also possessed a public square or gathering place for assemblies, the agora.
- [Revival after the Dark Age, 850-650 B.C. | The Greeks](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/revival-after-the-dark-age-850-650-bc-the-greeks/) - For the Greeks the Dark Age began to dissipate about 850 B.C., with the renewal of contact between the main land and the Near East. Phoenicia, whose trade continued briskly, lay close to the Greek island of Cyprus, where Mycenaean culture had continued after the Dorians had destroyed it on most of the mainland. Objects from
- [The Greeks Before the Persian Wars | The Greeks](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-greeks-before-the-persian-wars-the-greeks/) - Modern students have often derived their picture of Greek politics in general from the superb speech that Pericles, the most celebrated of the leaders of Athens, made in 431 B.C. over the Athenian soldiers killed in the first year of a great war against Sparta-as reported in the history of the war by the historian Thucydides. Praising Athenian democracy. Pericles said that in Athens the law guaranteed equal justice to all, that talent and not wealth was the Athenian qualification for public service, that Athenians expected everyone to participate in public affairs.
- [The Greeks](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-greeks/) - The Greeks are the first ancient civilization with which modern society feels an immediate affinity. We like to believe that they thought much as we do-that is, that they were rationalists, intensely curious about their environment, eager to acquire new knowledge and to use it to alter their condition. We recognize them as a reflective people, questioning the human condition, interested in the new, but respectful of the old. Their literature, one of the richest the world has seen, shows a feeling for history.
- [Summary | The First Civilizations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/summary-the-first-civilizations/) - The period before humans left written records is called prehistory. Our knowledge of this period depends on archaeological findings. Although fossil remains of apelike human ancestors have been found that date back millions of years, the first generally accepted humans appeared in Europe and the Near East about thirty-seven thousand years ago and are called Homo sapiens, meaning the "one who thinks."
- [The Dark Age: Homer | The First Civilizations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-dark-age-homer-the-first-civilizations/) - The three centuries from 1100 to 800 B.C. are known as the Dark Age-dark because we have too little evidence to obtain a clear picture of Greek life, and dark also because civilization took dramatic steps backward. Literacy virtually vanished, and writing stopped. Poverty and primitive conditions prevailed, causing suffering, a loss of skills, a shrinkage of the communities, a great forgetting of the past, and a halt in progress.
- [Mycenae, 1400-1100 B.C. | The First Civilizations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/mycenae-1400-1100-bc-the-first-civilizations/) - We still know relatively little about Mycenaean politics and society. We can tell from excavated gold treasures that Mycenae itself was wealthy, which is not surprising considering that it had conquered Crete. But the Mycenaeans seem not to have been overseas empire builders, even in the sense that the Cretans had been; their occupation of Crete may well have been undertaken by an invading captain.
- [Mycenaeans and Minoans | The First Civilizations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/mycenaeans-and-minoans-the-first-civilizations/) - In Greece, too, Bronze Age civilization had taken root. Greece was a largely barren land divided into small valleys and plains separated from each other, with none far from the sea. From earliest times the inhabitants took advantage of the rugged coasts and islands with their many shelters and good harbors to sail from place to place, profiting by the exchange of olive oil and wine for grain and metal and slaves.
- [Minoans before Mycenae | The First Civilizations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/minoans-before-mycenae-the-first-civilizations/) - Among the notable finds in Ugarit was an ivory relief of a bare-breasted goddess, holding ears of wheat in each hand and seated between two goats standing on their hind legs. She greatly resembles the goddesses frequently found on the large Mediterranean island of Crete. Cretan civilization is often called Minoan, after Minos, the legendary founder of the local dynasty.
- [Hebrew Religion | The First Civilizations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/hebrew-religion-the-first-civilizations/) - Many of the most fundamental ideas of the Hebrew religion go back to the days when the Hebrews were still nomads, before they had adopted a settled life. From the nomadic period of Hebrew life come the feast of Passover, with its offering of a spring lamb and of unleavened bread; the keeping of a sabbath or holy day on the seventh day of the week; an annual day of expiation (Yom Kippur); and other holy days still honored by Jews in our own time.
- [History and the Hebrew Bible | The First Civilizations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/history-and-the-hebrew-bible-the-first-civilizations/) - The Hebrews were the first people to record their history in a series of books, providing a consecutive story over many centuries. Today this traditional history is contained in the Bible, especially in Genesis, Exodus, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings. But one also finds genealogy and ritual law (Numbers, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy), tales (Ruth and Job), proverbs (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes), prophetic utterances (Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the rest), and lyric poems (Psalms, The Song of Songs).
- [The Cursing Litany](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-cursing-litany/) - Mayest thou never exist, may thy body never exist. May thy limbs never exist. May thy bones never exist. May thy words of power never exist. May thy form never exist. May thy attributes never exist. May that which springs from thee never exist. May thy hair never exist. May thy possessions never exist. May thy emissions never exist. May the material of thy body never exist. May thy place never exist. May thy tomb never exist. May thy cavern never exist. May thy funeral chamber never exist. May thy paths never exist. May thy seasons never exist.
- [Hurrians, Canaanites, Philistines, Phoenicians | The First Civilizations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/hurrians-canaanites-philistines-phoenicians-the-first-civilizations/) - Far less well known than the Hittites and still posing many unsolved problems are the Hurrians of Mitanni and the upper Chabur River. Like the Hittites, the Hurrians had an Indo-European ruling class and worshiped some Indo-European deities. Their great importance was to act as intermediaries between the civilization of Mesopotamia and the less advanced peoples to the north and west, especially the Hittites.
- [Hittites | The First Civilizations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/hittites-the-first-civilizations/) - Until the early twentieth century, scholars knew the Hittites chiefly from references in non-Hittite sources. Uriah, for example, whom (the Bible tells us) King David arranged to have killed in battle in order to keep his wife Bathsheba, was a Hittite. And in Egypt a great inscription preserved the text in hieroglyphics of a treaty of 1280 B.C. between Ramses II and a Hittite king. In A.D.
- [Peoples Outside The Valleys | The First Civilizations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/peoples-outside-the-valleys-the-first-civilizations/) - By 1500 B.C. the Kassites in southern Mesopotamia, the Hurrians with their kingdom of Mitanni in northern Mesopotamia, smaller states in southeastern Anatolia (modern Turkey), and the Hittites in the remainder of Anatolia had emerged as rivals both to Babylon and to Egypt. All of them had strong Indo-Aryan ethnic elements. All were ruled by kings, but their kings were neither agents of god nor deified monarchs.
- [Egyptian Society | The First Civilizations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/egyptian-society-the-first-civilizations/) - The chief social unit was the monogamous family, and thus even a pharaoh, who was entitled to have a harem of wives and concubines, would have a chief wife. Women were not fully subordinate to men: They could own property and, under certain conditions, inherit it; they might also enter into business agreements. Most unusual in ancient societies, women could succeed to the throne. Though in theory all of the land was the property of the pharaoh, it was in fact generally held by individuals.
- [Egyptian Literature | The First Civilizations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/egyptian-literature-the-first-civilizations/) - The Egyptians used a form of picture writing (hieroglyphics, or sacred carvings), which was deciphered in the 1820s. Scholars had possessed the key only since 1799, when a large, inscribed stone was found near the town of Rosetta in the Nile Delta. This piece of black basalt has a long text chiseled into its surface in three scripts: Greek, hieroglyphics, and another (demotic) Egyptian script developed from hieroglyphics. Although the Greek version was imperfect, it could be read.
- [Egyptian Religion | The First Civilizations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/egyptian-religion-the-first-civilizations/) - Religion was the most powerful force animating Egyptian society. The Egyptian was ready to accept overlapping divinities and to add new ones whenever it seemed appropriate; if a new area was incorporated into the Egyptian state, its gods would be added to those already worshiped.
- [Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms in Egypt | The First Civilizations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/old-middle-and-new-kingdoms-in-egypt-the-first-civilizations/) - As each Egyptian king died, a great sepulchral monument, often in the form of a pyramid, told his subjects that he had gone to join his predecessors in the community of gods. The largest of the pyramids took several generations to build and involved the continual labor of thousands of men. A highly centralized bureaucracy carried out the commands of the king. A stratified society worked for him. His forces advanced at times westward into the Libyan desert, and at other times eastward and northward into Palestine.
- [Egypt | The First Civilizations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/egypt-the-first-civilizations/) - What the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers did for Mesopotamia, the Nile River did for Egypt. Over thousands of years the people along the Nile had slowly learned to take advantage of the annual summer flood by tilling their fields to receive the silt-laden river waters, and by regulating its flow. About 3000 B.C., at approximately the time that the Sumerian civilization emerged in Mesopotamia, the Egyptians had reached a comparable stage of development.
- [Code of Hammurabi](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/code-of-hammurabi/) - Set down about 1750 B.C., the Code of Hammurabi incorporated many earlier laws. While the code is, first and foremost, a legal statement about stern justice, it also reveals much about life at the time, since laws are a reflection of society and of the breaches against its decorum that are most common or most feared. 1 If a man weave a spell and bring a charge of murder against another man and has not justified himself, the accuser shall be put to death.
- [Akkadians: Babylonians and Assyrians | The First Civilizations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/akkadians-babylonians-and-assyrians-the-first-civilizations/) - The successors of the Sumerians as rulers of Mesopotamia were the Babylonians and their successors, the Assyrians, both originally descended from nomads of the Arabian desert. Power first passed to them with Sargon the Great (2300 B.C.) and returned to them after an interlude (about 2000 B.C.) with the invasion from the west of a people called the Amorites.
- [The Epic of Gilgamesh](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-epic-of-gilgamesh/) - Many similarities to the Biblical account of Noah's ark and the great flood are found in the epic of Gilgamesh, the king of Uruk. This epic predates the epics of Homer by 1500 years and is, in the eyes of many scholars, the first major contribution to world literature. Composed about 2000 B.C., the epic tells of the Great Flood in the following words:
- [Place Names in History](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/place-names-in-history/) - The mention of Uruk provides an opportunity to discuss a special problem in history, namely that places change their names. In the Bible the city called Uruk, its ancient Sumerian name, was referred to as Erech, one of the cities of Nimrod. Today the same location appears on the map as Warka. Geographically each of the three names designates the same place; historically the names indicate different times, just as the name of the czarist capital of St. Petersburg was changed to Leningrad, and then changed back to St. Petersburg in recent years.
- [The New Stone Age | The First Civilizations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-new-stone-age-the-first-civilizations/) - The advance from the Old Stone Age (Paleolithic) to the New (Neolithic) was marked by certain major changes, found first in the Near East. One of these was the domestication of animals for food. Humans had tamed dogs and used them in the hunt long before. But when they kept goats, pigs, sheep, and the ancestors of our cows in pens, they could eat them when their meat was young and tender. without having to hunt them down when they were fully grown. Parallel with this went the first domestication of plants for food—a kind of wheat and barley.
- [The Old Stone Age | The First Civilizations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-old-stone-age-the-first-civilizations/) - In the seventeenth century Archbishop James Ussher (1581-1656) of the Church of England carefully worked out from data given in the Bible what he believed to be the precise date of the creation of the world by God. It was, he said, 4004 B.C. Adding the sixteen hundred or so years since the birth of Christ, he concluded that the earth was then under six thousand years old. We smile at the generations that accepted Ussher's views because we now believe that the earth is billions of years old and that organic life may go back several billion years.
- [History and Prehistory | The First Civilizations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/history-and-prehistory-the-first-civilizations/) - It may seem strange that our concepts of the distant past are changing much faster than our concepts of the periods closer to us in time. But when we consider the means by which we know about the past, we can quickly see that this is entirely natural.
- [The First Civilizations](https://bigsiteofhistory.com/the-first-civilizations/) - Within the last fifty years, Archeology has revolutionized what we know about the remote past of our earth and the people who live on it. Discoveries continue at a rapid pace. In the 1950s and 1960s no one could have made many of the major statements in this page. Soon enough, our successors will have learned enough that is new to dispute what we say here. Archeology is, at the cutting edge of what we know about our past.

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