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The Age of European Expansion and Religious Wars
1. Discovery, Reconnaissance, and Expansion
1. Introduction
1. Period from 1450, to 1650 called “Age of Discovery, Reconnaissance,
Expansion”
2. Age of Discovery refers to the era’s phenomenal advances in geographical
knowledge and technology (often trial and error)
3. Age of Reconnaissance refers to the fact that much of the geographical
information they had gathered was tentative and not fully understood
4. Age of Expansion refers to the migration of Europeans to other parts of
the world
2. Overseas Exploration and Conquest
1. Outward expansion of Europe began with Viking voyages across the
Atlantic and under Eric the Red and Leif Erickson, the Vikings discovered
Greenland and North America and had settlements in Iceland, Ireland,
England, Normandy, and Sicily
2. Crusades of seventh through thirteenth centuries also explored continent
3. By 1450, a new threat appeared in the East—the Ottoman Turks
1. Combining excellent military strategy with efficient administration
of their conquered territories the Turks controlled most of Asia
Minor
2. The Muslim Ottoman Turks under Sultan Mohammed II captured
Constantinople in 1453, and by the early sixteenth century
controlled the eastern Mediterranean
4. Political centralization in Spain, France, and England explained the
expansion and with the more united Spain, the Spanish monarchy was in a
position to support foreign ventures; it could bear the costs and dangers of
exploration
5. Portugal, on the southwestern edge of the continent, started European
expansion
1. The objectives of Portuguese policy included the historic Iberian
crusade to Christianize Muslims and to find gold, an overseas route
to the spice markets of India, and the mythical Christian ruler of
Ethiopia, Prester John
2. Prince Henry (“the Navigator” because of the annual expeditions
he sent down the western coast of Africa) reached Guinea and
established trading posts and forts reaching all the way to
Timbuktu (gold used to come from West Africa)
3. Portuguese pushed to sail around Africa and Vasco da Gama
reached India in his 1497-1499 expedition and returned to Lisbon
loaded with Indian wears
4. King Manuel dispatched Pedro Alvares Cabral with Diaz claiming
the coast of Brazil in South American in 1500 and then proceeded
around the Cape of Good Hope and returned with six spice-laded
vessels (entrance port of Asian Goods)
5. Muslims had controlled the rich spice trade of the Indian Ocean,
but Portuguese commercial activities were accompanied by the
destruction or seizure of strategic Muslim coastal forts (Alfonso de
Albuquerque governor of India)
6. Christopher Columbus had secured Spanish support for an expedition to
the East and landing in October 1492, he landed on an island he named
“San Salvador”
3. Technological Stimuli to Exploration
1. The development of the large cannon made of iron and bronze and placing
them on heavy hulling sailing vessels gave power to the European
expansion
2. Improved techniques of shipbuilding and instrumental development for
exploration
1. Galleys: narrow, open boats propelled largely by manpower
2. Caravel: small, light, three-mast sailing ship (wind power for
manpower)
3. The magnetic compass enabled sailors to determine their
direction/position at sea
4. Astrolobe: instrument used to determine the altitude of the sun and
other celestial bodies permitted mariners to plot their latitude and
improved maps and sea charts
4. The Explorer’s Motives
1. The expansion of Europe was not motivated by overpopulation (Black
Death)
2. The desire to Christianize Muslims and pagans played a central role in
expansion
3. After the reconsquista, enterprising young men of the Spanish upper
classes (nobles and merchants) found their economic and political
opportunities severely limited
4. Government sponsorship and encouragement of exploration accounted for
voyages because mariners and explorers could not as private individuals
afford the sum
1. Strong financial support of Prince Henry the Navigator led to
Portugal’s success
2. The Dutch in the seventeenth century through such governmentsponsored trading companies as the Dutch East India Company
reaped enormous wealth
3. Henry VII’s lack of interest in exploration delayed English
expansion
5. Renaissance curiosity about the physical universe, the desire to know
more about the geography and people of the world
6. The basic reason for European exploration and expansion was the quest
for material profit and spices (nutmeg, mace, ginger, cinnamon, and
pepper added flavor and variety) were another important incentive to
voyages of discovery
5. The Problem of Christopher Columbus
1. Columbus enslaved and killed the Indians he encountered, he was an
ineffective governor of Spain’s Caribbean colony, and he did not discover
the continent
2. The central feature of Christopher Columbus is that he was a deeply
religious man and likely witnessed the Spanish reconquest of Granada
(believed voyage was linked)
3. Columbus was knowledgeable about the sea
1. Columbus’s successful thirty-three-day voyage to the Caribbean
2. Columbus aimed to find a direct sea route to Asia and India
3. Described the Caribbean as a peaceful garden of Eden but returned
in 1496, forcibly subjugated the island of Hispaniola, enslaving the
Indians, and laid the basis for a system of land grants tied to the
Indian’s labor service
2. Later Explorers
1. Introduction
1. News of Columbus’s first voyage rapidly spread across Europe and his
letter, titled Mundus Novus, was the first document to describe America as
a separate continent
2. The Caribbean islands—the West Indies—represented to missionaries as
millions of Indian natives for conversion to Christianity (forced labor and
diseases brought by Europeans killed off huge populations of native
people)
3. Search for precious metals determined the direction of Spanish exploration
and expansion into South America
4. Under Spanish ruler Charles V, Ferdinand Magellan sailed around the
Cape Horn, entered the Pacific Ocean, and although he died, his crew
eventually circumnavigated
5. Hernando Cortez sailed to Mexico from Hispaniola conquering the Aztec
Empire of Central Mexico by taking captive emperor Montezuma then
founding Mexico city as the new capital (1522) and Francisco conquered
Inca Empire of the Andes (1536)
6. Between 1525 and 1575, wealth of Americas poured into Spanish port of
Seville and the Portuguese capital Lisbon but Flemish city of Antwerp,
controlled by the Spanish Habsburgs, served as commercial and financial
capital of the entire European world
7. The Dutch East India Company became the cornerstone of Dutch
imperialism by expelling the Portuguese from the East Indian islands and
had successfully intruded on the Spanish possessions in the Americas
8. In 1497, John Cabot of England explored the northeast coast of Americas
founding Newfoundland and in mid 1530s, Frenchman Jacques Cartier
explored Saint Lawrence region of Canada
2. The Economic Effects of Spain’s Discoveries in the New World
1. The sixteenth century has often been called the “Golden Century” of Spain
as influ-ence of Spain rested largely on the influx of precious metals from
the New World
2. Spain was experiencing a steady population increase creating a sharp rise
in demand for foods/goods but economy could not meet the new demands
and inflation occurred
3. No direct correlation between silver imports and inflation rates but the
government declared bankruptcy several times and by the 17th century the
economy had failed
3. Colonial Administration
1. According to the Spanish theory of absolutism, the Crown was entitled to
exercise full authority over all imperial lands and the Crown divided its
New World territories into four viceroyalties (administrative divisions of
New Spain, Peru, New Granada)
2. Crown claimed the quinto, one-fifth of all precious metals mined in South
America
3. Portuguese governed their colony of Brazil in a similar manner (Local
officials called corregidores held judicial and military powers)
3. Politics, Religion, and War
1. Introduction
1. In 1559, France and Spain signed the Treaty of Cateau-Cambresis, which
ended the Habsburg-Valois Wars and France had to acknowledge Spanish
dominancy in Italy
2. Before 1559, Spain and France had fought for control of Italy and after
1559, the two Catholic powers aimed their guns at Protestantism
3. Warfare of the 16th and 17th centuries was different from earlier wars
1. Armies were larger and more expensive (government reorganized
administration)
2. Use of gunpowder altered the nature of war (killing and wounding
from a distance) and popular attitudes toward war (not an
ennobling process)
4. Late-sixteenth-century conflicts fundamentally tested the medieval ideal
of a unified Christian society governed by one political ruler, the emperor,
to whom all rules were theoretically subordinate, and one church, to which
all people belonged
2. The Origins of Difficulties in France (1515-1559)
1. The population losses caused by the plague and the disorders
accompanying the Hundred Years’ War created such a labor shortage that
serfdom had disappeared
2. Francis I and his son Henry II governed through small but effective
councils
3. In 1539, Francis issued an ordinance that placed the whole of France
under the juris-diction of the royal courts and taille, a tax on land,
provided strength to monarchy
4. The Habsburg-Valois Wars, waged through the first half of the sixteenth
century, were financed by Francis I selling public offices (tax exempt class
called the “nobility of the robe” -- beyond jurisdiction of crown)
5. Francis I worked out a treaty with the papacy called the Concordat of
Bologna in which Francis gained the power to appoint bishops and abbots
in France giving the monarchy money in return, Francis agreed to
recognize the supremacy of the papacy over a universal council -- main
reason why France did not later become Protestant
6. Calvinism spread across France even under government bans and massive
burnings
3. Religious Riots and Civil War in France (1559-1589)
1. French monarchs were unstable under the sons of Henry II and almost half
of the French nobility became Calvinist (demonstrating independence
from central power)
2. Among the upper classes the Catholic-Calvinist conflict, the main struggle
was for power but among the lower classes, the issue was more about
religion
3. On August 24, 1572, which would later become known as Saint
Bartholomew’s Day, Catholics slaughtered thousands of Huguenots,
French Calvinists
4. The Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre launched the War of the Three
Henrys, a civil conflict between Catholic Henry of Guise (wanted “Holy
League,” destroy Calvinism, and replacement of Henry III), King Henry
III, and the Protestant Henry of Navarre, a politique who became Henry
IV
1. Politiques: small group of Catholic moderates who believed that
only the restoration of strong monarchy could reverse the trend
toward collapse
2. Henry IV issued the Edict of Nantes, protecting the Huguenots
4. The Netherlands Under Charles V
1. The Netherlands—pivot around which European money, diplomacy and
war revolved
2. Emperor Charles V had inherited the seventeen provinces that compose
present-day Belgium and Holland and was a center of commerce
(Antwerp—greatest $ market)
3. As in the Low Countries, corruption in the Roman church and the critical
spirit of the Renaissance provoked pressure for reform
4. In 1556, Charles V abdicated, dividing his territories between his brother,
Ferdinand, who received Austria and the Holy Roman Empire, and his son
Philip (Spain, Low Countries, Milan, kingdom of Sicily, and the Spanish
possessions in the Americas)
5. The Revolt of the Netherlands (1566-1587)
1. By 1560s, Calvinism spread and appealed to the middle classes because of
its intellectual seriousness, moral gravity, and emphasis on any form of
labor well done
2. Calvinism took deep root among the merchants and financiers in the
northern provinces and working-class people also converted partly to
please their employers
3. In 1559, Philip II appointed his half-sister Margaret as regent of the
Netherlands who introduced the Inquisition to combat Calvinism and
raised taxes
4. In August 1566, Calvinists rampaged through the Low Countries aimed
attacks at religious images and destroyed churches as well as burning
irreplaceable libraries
5. Philip II sent twenty thousand Spanish troops under the duke of Alva,
opened his own tribunal (“Council of Blood”), Alva resolved the financial
crisis by levying a 10 % sales tax on every transaction, and civil war raged
between 1568 and 1578
6. In 1576, the seventeen provinces united under the leadership of Prince
William of Orange (“the Silent”) and in 1578 Philip II sent his nephew
Alexander Farnese
7. The ten southern provinces the Spanish were able to control became
Belgium and the seven northern provinces, led by Holland, formed the
Union of Utrecht and in 1581, declared their independence from Spain
(United Provinces of the Netherlands)
8. Spain repeatedly invaded the United Provinces who repeatedly asked the
Protestant queen of England, Elizabeth, for assistance and three
developments forced her hand
1. Wars in the Low Countries badly hurt the English economy
(English wool)
2. The murder of William the silent in July 1584 eliminated a great
Protestant leader but the chief military check on the Farnese
advance
3. Collapse of Antwerp appeared to signal a Catholic sweep through
the Netherlands
6. Philip II and the Spanish Armada
1. Philip II considered himself the international defender of Catholicism and
the heir to the medieval imperial power and hoping to keep England with
the Catholic church when his wife, Mary Tudor, died, Philip asked
Elizabeth to marry him but she refused
2. Pope Sixtus V promised to pay Philip one million gold ducats the moment
Spanish troops landed in England and Philip moved to attack England
3. On May 9, 1588, la felicissima armada “the most fortunate fleet,” sailed
from the Lisbon harbor with 130 vessels carrying over thirty thousand
men and were met by an English fleet of about 150 ships in the Channel
4. English fleet was composed of smaller, faster, more maneuverable ships,
many which had greater firing power, storms and squalls, spoiled food and
rank water, and inadequate Spanish ammunition, the English fleet defeated
this “Spanish Armada” thus preventing Philip from forcing England back
into the Catholic Church
7. The Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648)
1. The Augsburg settlement, in recognizing the independent power of the
German princes, further undermined any authority of the central
government
1. Lutherans, in violation of the Peace of Augsburg, were steadily
acquiring German bishoprics and because the Augsburg settlement
had only pertained to Lutheranism and Catholicism, Calvinists
ignored it and converted several princes
2. Lutheran princes formed the Protestant Union (1608) and the
Catholics formed the Catholic League (1609) (each alliance
determined to stop spread of the other)
2. Ferdinand I had inherited the imperial title and the Habsburg lands in
central Europe, including Austria and his Catholic cousin, Ferdinand of
Styria secured election as king of Bohemia, a title that gave him
jurisdiction over states such as Bohemia
1. When Ferdinand proceeded to close some Protestant churches, the
heavily Protestant Estates of Bohemia protested
2. On May 23, 1618, Protestants hurled two of Ferdinand’s officials
from a castle window in Prague, falling 70 feet, but surviving
(Catholics claimed that angels had caught them) and called the
“Defenestration of Prague”, this event marked the beginning of
the Thirty Year’s War (1618-1648)
3. Historians traditionally divide the war into four phases -1. The first, or Bohemian phase was characterized by civil war in
Bohemia between the Catholic League, led by Ferdinand, and the
Protestant Union, headed by Prince Frederick of the Palatinate
(held power until 1529 when defeated at Battle of the White
Mountains by Ferdinand, who had become Holy Roman emperor)
2. The second, or Danish, phase called so because of the participation
of King Christian IV of Denmark, the ineffective leader of the
Protestant cause and the Catholic imperial army led by Albert of
Wallenstein gained many victories
3. The Jesuits persuaded the emperor to issue the Edict of Restitution,
whereby all Catholic land lost to Protestantism since 1552 were to
be allowed to be restored and only Catholics and Lutherans (not
Calvinists) were allowed to practice
4. The third, or Swedish, phase of the war began with the arrival in
Germany of the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus intervening to
support the Protestants and victories ended Habsburg ambition of
uniting all the German states
5. The death of Adolphus and defeat of the Swedes at the Battle of
Nordlingen in 1634 prompted the French to enter the war on the
side of the Protestants bringing about the French, or international,
phase of the Thirty Years’ War
4. Finally in October 1648, peace was achieved and treaties signed called the
“Peace of Westphalia” making a turning point in European political,
religious and social history
1. Treaties recognized the sovereign, independent authority of the
German princes with complete power and the Holy Roman Empire
as a real state was destroyed
2. The independence of the United Provinces of the Netherlands,
France gained on eastern frontiers, denied the Pope the right to
intervene in German religious affairs, and divided up Germany
among Lutheran, Catholic and Calvinist princes
8. Germany After the Thirty Years’ War
1. The Thirty Years’ War was a disaster for the German economy and
society, probably the most destructive event in German history before the
twentieth century
2. Population losses due to military actions, disease, and leaving of refugees
3. Economy suffered and agricultural areas suffered catastrophically
4. Changing Attitudes
1. Introduction
1. The clash of traditional religious and geographical beliefs with the new
knowledge provided by explorers bred confusion, uncertainty, and
insecurity
2. The exploration of new continents reflected deep curiosity and broad
intelligence, yet Europeans believed in witches and burned thousands at
the stake
2. The Status of Women
1. Manuals on marriage described as the husband was obliged to provide for
the material welfare of his wife and children and to rule firmly but justly.
A wife was to be a household manager, mature, and faithful spouse;
rejected the double standard on adultery, believed marriage should be
based on respect and trust -- rejected arranged
2. Catholics viewed marriage as a sacramental union which could not be
dissolved and protestants held that women and men were spiritually equal
and marriage -- contract
3. Protestant and Catholic governments licensed house of prostitution (for
single men)
4. Single women worked in many occupations and professions (worked with
husband)
5. Protestants believed celibacy h ad no scriptural basis and favored
suppression of women’s religious houses and encouraged ex-nuns to
marry
3. The Great European Witch-Hunt
1. Witches were thought to be individuals who could mysteriously injure
other people or animals (old women who made travels on broomsticks to
sabbats or assemblies)
2. Since the pacts with the devil meant the renunciation of God, witchcraft
was considered heresy and persecution reached its peak in the late 16th and
17th centuries in where tens of thousands of witches were executed
3. Explanations for witch-hunts include explained random misfortunes,
people believed that witches worshipped the devil, persecuting the
nonconformists through charges of witchcraft, view on women by religion
4. Broad spread of women hatred stemmed from belief that women were
susceptible to the Devil’s evil, and the belief that women were sexually
unquenchable
4. European Slavery and the Origins of American Racism
1. The bubonic plague, famines, and other epidemics created a sever shortage
of agricultural and domestic workers throughout Europe, encouraging
Italian merchants to buy slaves from the West (early slaves were all white)
2. In 1453, the Ottoman capture of Constantinople halted the flow of white
slaves from the Black Sea region
3. History of slavery tied up with history of the demand for sugar with
Portuguese voyages to West Africa and the occupation of the Canary and
Madeira islands
4. European expansion across the Atlantic led to the economic exploitation
of the Americas and unaccustomed to any form of forced labor, the
Indians died
5. The Spaniards brought in enslaved Africans to work on the sugar crops
and which began the African slave trade in 1518
6. Settles’ beliefs and attitudes toward blacks derived from two basic
sources: Christian theological speculation (primarily), and medieval Arab
views of the peoples of Africa
5. Literature and Art
1. The Essay: Michel de Montaigne
1. Skepticism is a school of thought founded on doubt that total certainty or
definitive knowledge is ever attainable
2. A humanist, he believed that the object of life was to “know thyself,” for
self-knowledge teaches men and women how to live in accordance with
nature and God
3. Montaigne developed a new literary genre, the essay to express his
thoughts and ideas
4. As a skeptic, he rejected the notion that nay single human being knew the
absolute truth and rejected the notion that one culture was better than any
other culture
2. Elizabethan and Jacobean Literature
1. The terms Elizabethan and Jacobean are used to designate the English
music, poetry, prose, and drama of this period (named after rulers
Elizabeth I and her son, James I)
2. The dramas of William Shakespeare and the stately prose of the
Authorized, or King James, Bible marked the Elizabethan and Jacobean
periods as golden age
1. Shakespeare’s plays included Julius Caesar, Pericles, and Antony
and Cleopatra dealing with classical subjects and figures
2. The nine history plays, including Richard II, Richard III, and
Henry IV
3. Tragedies including Hamlet (individuality and moral problems
with revenge), Othello (flaw in character), and Macbeth (exorbitant
ambition) exploring an enormous range of human problems are
open to variety of interpretations
3. Baroque Art and Music
1. The term baroque (may have come from Portuguese for “odd-shaped,
imperfect pearl”) was commonly used by late-eighteenth-century art
2.
3.
4.
5.
critics as an expression of scorn for what they considered an overblown,
unbalanced style
In addition to this underlying religious emotionalism, the baroque drew its
sense of drama, motion, and ceaseless striving from the Catholic
Reformation
The baroque style spread partly because its tension and bombast spoke to
an agitated age, which was experiencing great violence and controversy in
politics and religion
Peter Paul Rubens, the most outstanding and representative of baroque
painters, developed his own rich, sensuous, colorful style, which was
characterized by animated figures, melodramatic contracts, and
monumental size
In music, the baroque style reached its culmination with Johann Sebastian
Bach, one of the greatest composers the Western world has ever produced
(organ music combined the baroque spirit of invention, tension, and
emotion in striving)