A History Of The Modern World 10th Edition Pdf Free

[Nayra Waddles]

TheBohemian Phase (1618-1625): the Bohemians wanted to keep their Protestant liberties, so they got rid of the Holy Roman Emperor, Matthias. Frederick V got elected by the Bohemian people, but the new Emperor Ferdinand crushed the Bohemians in the Battle of the White Mountains. Result: victory for the Catholics, Protestantism crushed away in Bohemia and Spain gained control over the Rhineland.

There were a lot of outcomes of the Peace of Westphalia. The Peace of Augsburg was revised with the addition of Calvinism; the Dutch Republic and Switzerland got recognized as independent states; all the 300 German states became sovereign; Germany lost a third of its population. This meant the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire.

The Peace of Westphalia was the first modern diplomatic congress, thereby indicating a new political order in central Europe. This new political order was based upon the concept of a sovereign state. Europe was understood as a continent with a large number of sovereignties with their own laws, rules, interests, shifting balance of power, etc.

At the beginning of the 17th century England pulled back from the continent. It had no role in the Thirty Years War nor in the Treaty of Westphalia. Simply because England was involved in religious and civil war, fought between the Puritans and the Anglicans and between the Parliament forces and the forces of the king. The wars were relatively calm, but the conflicts between England and Catholic Ireland were fierce and savage.

England made great achievements in the 17th century. It had about 5 million English-speaking inhabitants. Furthermore groups had emigrated to the American colonies, the West Indies and Northern Ireland. Big names of that time were Shakespeare, Milton and Francis Bacon. Although England was inferior to Holland in shipping, it had a larger and more versatile economy and a more productive homeland.

The English Parliament was unified without any provincial units such as in the Netherlands. The House of Lords was dominated by aristocratic landowners, the House of Commons by nobility plus representatives of the merchants and the cities. Still the Parliament was generally unanimous in social interest and wealth.

The same persons were elected and they became rebellious against the king under the lead of John Hampden, John Pym, Oliver Cromwell and Puritans who were supported by merchants. This Parliament would be active till after the civil war and was therefore called the Long Parliament. They fought an open war with the Royalists.

Not only the monarchy, but also the Church of England and the Parliament were restored. Charles II was careful not to provoke the Parliament and vice versa the Parliament made a new legislation, including the abolishment of feudal payments to the king and sharing the governing of England. Puritans and other dissenters were disenfranchised.

A large group of the Parliament, the Whigs, sought to prevent James Stuart from becoming King since he was a Catholic. The Whigs were mainly the higher nobles and the middle class of London. The Parliamentary allies of the king, the Tories, were loyal to king and Church.

However, James II becomes King of England in 1685. He ignores the Test Act and gave the good positions back to the Catholics and dissenters. Even the Tories lost their confidence in the monarchy. The situation is getting worse as James II baptize his first son Catholic. The English felt the threat of a Catholic throne again. Both Whigs and Tories chose the Protestant Mary, daughter of James I, as the new queen.

She was married to the Dutch William of Orange, a thoroughly Protestant and opponent to Louis XIV. William invaded England, James fled, and was defeat at the Battle of the Boyne in Ireland, 1690. James II fled to Louis XIV, who continued to support the Stuarts as rulers of France. The results were the following:

The French had a dominant culture. French paintings and architecture were an example for the rest of Europe, as well as their military defenses and mechanical engineering. Even more famous was the French literature, philosophy and science: Moliere (satirical comedies), La Fointaine (fables), and Descartes (mathematics and philosophy).

Louis XIV realized the importance of the cultural dominance in the international community, so he supported artists and writers. The official movement was called classicism that emphasized order, harmony, and the ancient times.

Traditionally, France had a tradition of political freedom in the feudal sense: the Estates General and the Provincial States with control over taxation. In addition, there were different courts around the country with together some 300 different legal systems. A patchwork quilt as Germany, you could say. In France, the medieval local freedom was identified with disorder.

After the Peace of Westphalia, a rebellion broke out among the nobles (the Fronde). The rebellion was against the power of Cardinal Mazarin, regent for the young Louis XIV. The nobles demanded an assembly of the Estates General. Meanwhile, unemployed soldiers made the countryside unsafe, and the nobles ask Spain for help. Remember that France was at war with Spain at that time, so the nobles lost all the support of the bourgeoisie. And their hope of victory.

army: the most important step that Louis XIV took, was that he secured his control over the army. Until then, armies had been private armies under independence colonels with their own interests. Under Louis XIV all armed men fought for him alone. This brought peace and order in France and increased the combat power against other states. It created the first organized war ministry.

On both financial and economic fields there was the famous minister Colbert, who tried to make France completely self-sufficient by the strict application of mercantilism. He succeeded to create a great free trade area, called the Five Great Farms. For the purpose of trade he created the Commercial Code, replacing local customary law with business practices and regulation. He provided road and canals, worked on standardization of units and quality, helped establishing colonies (French East India Company) and helped building up the navy. Everything to increase the revenue of the state.

Louis XIV started with religious tolerance. Little by little he began to hate heretics. He saw religious unity as a necessary given for the strength and dignity of France. He suppressed Jansenism, a left-wing Catholic off-shoot, he began with the systematic conversion of Huguenots, and revoked the Edict of Nantes: the prosecution of heretics started. Hundreds of thousands Huguenots fled the country. Their loss hurt the commercial and industrial classes.

Mid 17th century, three old empires are in decline in Eastern Europe: the Holy Roman Empire, the Republic of Poland, and the Ottoman Empire. Newer, stronger powers are rising to replace them: Prussia, Austria, and Russia.

After the Peace of Westphalia, the Holy Roman Empire had no income, no army, and not longer a functioning administration. It covered roughly all German speaking areas, except the Baltic coast, the Dutch Republic and Swiss.

Poland had a huge area, stretching from present-day Poland to Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine. They had a chosen king and was therefore called a republic. This gave also expression to the constitutional freedoms that the states had acquired. The population of Poland was heterogeneous: peasants in the east, ruled by Polish and Lithuanian gentry, Germans and Jews (gradually forced to live in the ghettos) in the cities and the Polish themselves in the countryside. There was a huge difference between the peoples. There was no middle class, so there was gentry and the peasants were almost serfs.

Aristocrats, 8% of the population, held sufficient power to prevent either absolutism or a parliamentary government. Royal elections were centers of foreign interference and bribery. Under most conditions the people were too split up to accept a Polish king. Therefore almost always a foreigner as king, who had no army, no law courts, no officials, and no income. The nobles were highly cultured and cosmopolitan. Some aristocrats had their own army and foreign policy. The push against the Polish border became stronger and stronger. Talks about the partitioning of Poland started.

The Ottoman Empire was larger, stronger, and better organized than the other two empires. The empire was based on a high degree of military knowledge. Long before the Europeans had a standing state army, the Turks had already their army with janissaries. Within the empire were many subject peoples, but there was no assimilation (only in Albania). The law was religious, but only applied to Muslims. Non-Muslims were left to solve their problems in their own religious groups, thus tolerance of non-Muslims subjects. Around 1663, Turkey began to modernize and the janissaries went on the warpath. The Ottoman threat was felt all over Europe, especially for Austria.

In the first half of the 16th century, Hungary was the scene of constant fighting between Turks and Habsburgs. The struggle flared up again in 1663, but the large Christian army made the Sultan accept a twenty-year truce. At the end of that twenty-year period, Louis XIV of France incited the Turks to continue their attacks.

Despite the Belgian and Italian possessions, the Austrian Monarchy still had a strong German influence. Italians, Czechs, Hungarians and Croatians were commonly seen at the Viennese court. An international, cosmopolitan aristocracy of landowners, who felt more connected that the peasantry in the empire.

The landowners had complete control. There were just a few cities that could provide resistance, the peasant population was enslaved. Thus the Austrian monarchy stayed a collection of territories, only held together by name. Each country kept its own laws, Diet and political affairs.

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