Western Civilization_ Volume B_ 1300 to 1815 - Jackson J. Spielvogel [170]
IMPACT OF EXPANSION The impact of expansion on European consciousness is explored in A. Pagden, European Encounters with the New World: From Renaissance to Romanticism (New Haven, Conn., 1993). On the impact of disease, see N. D. Cook, Born to Die: Disease and the New World (New York, 1998). The human and ecological effects of the interaction of New World and Old World cultures are examined thoughtfully in A. W. Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Westport, Conn., 1972) and Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe (New York, 1986). The native American female experience with the European encounter is presented in R. Gutierrez, When Jesus Came the Corn Mother Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in New Mexico, 1500–1846 (Stanford, Calif., 1991).
ECONOMIC DIMENSIONS OF EXPANSION On mercantilism, see L. Magnusson, Mercantilism: The Shaping of an Economic Language (New York, 1994). On the concept of a world economy, see A. K. Smith, Creating a World Economy: Merchant Capital, Colonialism, and World Trade, 1400–1825 (Boulder, Colo., 1991).
Visit the CourseMate website at www.cengagebrain.com for additional study tools and review materials for this chapter.
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CHAPTER 15
State Building and the Search for Order in the Seventeenth Century
Nicolas-Ren e Jollain the Elder’s portrait of Louis XIV captures the king’s sense of royal grandeur.
Chateaux de Versailles et de Trianon//_c R_eunion des Mus_ees Nationaux/Art Resource, NY
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CHAPTER OUTLINE AND FOCUS QUESTIONS
Social Crises, War, and Rebellions
What economic, social, and political crises did Europe experience in the first half of the seventeenth century?
The Practice of Absolutism: Western Europe
What was absolutism in theory, and how did its actual practice in France reflect or differ from the theory?
Absolutism in Central, Eastern, and Northern Europe
What developments enabled Brandenburg-Prussia, Austria, and Russia to emerge as major powers in the seventeenth century?
Limited Monarchy and Republics
What were the main issues in the struggle between king and Parliament in seventeenth-century England, and how were they resolved?
The Flourishing of European Culture
How did the artistic and literary achievements of this era reflect the political and economic developments of the period?
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CRITICAL THINKING
What theories of government were proposed by Jacques Bossuet, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke, and how did their respective theories reflect concerns and problems of the seventeenth century?
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BY THE END of the sixteenth century, Europe was beginning to experience a decline in religious passions and a growing secularization that affected both the political and intellectual worlds (on the intellectual effect, see Chapter 16). Some historians like to speak of the seventeenth century as a turning point in the evolution of a modern state system in Europe. The ideal of a united Christian Europe gave way to the practical realities of a system of secular states in which matters of state took precedence over the salvation of subjects’ souls. By the seventeenth century, the credibility of Christianity had been so weakened through religious wars that more and more Europeans came to think of politics in secular terms.
One of the responses to the religious wars and other crises of the time was a yearning for order. As the internal social and political rebellions