BHIC 108 (English)

BHIC-108
RISE OF THE MODERN WEST-II
School of Social Sciences

Indira Gandhi National Open University
Prof. S.B. Upadhyay
SOSS, IGNOU, New Delhi
July, 2021
© Indira Gandhi National Open University, 2021
ISBN: 978-93-91229-93-1
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Contents
Page No.
COURSE INTRODUCTION 5
UNIT 1 Seventeenth Century ‘European Crisis’ 7
UNIT 2 European Colonial Expansion and Mercantilism 25
UNIT 3 Religion, Diversity and Dissent 37
UNIT 4 Intellectual Currents in Seventeenth-Century Europe 51
UNIT 5 Art, Culture and Society 63
UNIT 6 The English Revolution 77
UNIT 7 The Modern Science 91
UNIT 8 European Politics in the Eighteenth Century 104
UNIT 9 Enlightenment 117
UNIT 10 Political and Economic Issues in the American Revolution 130
UNIT 11 Agricultural and Demographic Changes in Europe 144
UNIT 12 The Patterns of Consumption and Production 160
UNIT 13 Patterns of Trade, Colonialism and Divergence in the 172
Eighteenth Century
COURSE INTRODUCTION
This course is concerned about the economic and political rise of Europe during
the modern period. Although the Renaissance may be termed as the beginning of
European modernity at the intellectual level, it was during the seventeenth century
that modern Europe was shaped more comprehensively. It is for this reason that
scholars have termed the period from the Renaissance up to about the beginning
of the seventeenth century as ‘early modern’, while the period since the
seventeenth century has been normally referred to as the ‘modern period’. It was
during this later period that the ideological, economic, social, and even cultural
foundations of modern Europe were laid down. This period witnessed the rise of
modern science to the pinnacle of success, the development of new ideologies
which sought validation in terms of science, and gradual decline in the hold of
religion on social and individual life. In the period covered by this course – from
seventeenth to the early eighteenth century – we will find the firm beginning of
such trends.
The course begins with the ‘seventeenth-century crisis’ which has been considered
as a general crisis affecting the European economy, polity and society. It quite
thoroughly set off the processes which radically altered Europe. In Unit 1, we
will discuss these issues in detail. In Unit 2, we will take up the topic of massive
European expansion throughout the globe in search of wealth, for trade, for
settlement, and even for knowledge and to satisfy curiosity. The fact that the
world-wide European migrations also influenced European economies and ideas
at various levels has also been touched upon in this Unit.
The great religious divide between Catholicism and Protestantism, which had
originated in the sixteenth century, sharply divided European state and society in
this period. The unity of apparently monolithic European religions was shattered
giving rise to innumerable sects which experimented with a great variety of ideas
in the modern context. This process and some of important religious sects have
been discussed in Unit 3. Another development was the rise of new philosophies
which, in many ways, represented a sharp break from the medieval mentality.
Rationalism and empiricism were the two most important philosophies of this
period which have been discussed in Unit 4. It is to be expected that in such a
volatile period witnessing massive changes at economic, ideological, scientific,
and social levels, there would be development of new art forms as well as changes
in cultural and social norms. Unit 5 discusses these new developments.
Unit 6 discusses the English Revolution which was a relatively more violent
expression of the changes occurring during this period. In England, the new
emerging economic and ideological forces clashed sharply with the old forces of
tradition and order giving rise to a series of violent events during the 1640s and
1650s which briefly resulted in upturning the established order and led to
execution of the reigning king. Although monarchy was restored in 1660, the
new forces unleashed by the revolution remained active ultimately leading to a
compromise solution known as the ‘glorious revolution’ in 1688.
One of the greatest developments during the seventeenth century related to the
rise of modern science which completely changed the ways of thinking over a
period of time. Modern science has been in the centre of European modernity
Rise of the Modern West-II serving as the justification and validation for all other developments in thought.
This has been dealt with in Unit 7.
Unit 8 discusses the nature of European politics in the seventeenth century. Here
also we see a change in political structure in many European countries. The rise
of absolutist monarchs in many European countries such as France, Prussia, and
Russia was one important trend. Another trend was the existence of empires
such as the Austrian and Ottoman empires. The third trend was that of aristocracies
as in Poland. However, Absolutism and Constitutional Monarchy were two most
important political forms which were consolidated in this period
Unit 9 deals with Enlightenment – the greatest collective intellectual movement

in this period. A range of great intellectuals such as Pierre Bayle, Montesquieu,
Voltaire, Kant, Adam Smith, and many others in several European countries clearly
attested that European modernity had arrived. Their writings represented a sharp
break from the entire medieval intellectual legacy which had continued to linger
on until early eighteenth century. These intellectuals revolutionized the modes
of thought in the modern period.
One of the most important developments in the eighteenth century was American
war of independence which freed one of the most important European colonial
possessions. Unit 10 discusses this phenomenon, also known as ‘American
Revolution’, which inspired a large number of countries in the world with the
ideas of constitutionalism and democracy. In Unit 11, we will discuss changes in
agricultural production and demographic profiles of European countries in this
period. In the eighteenth century, a dramatic transformation in agriculture occurred
in Britain leading to concentration of landholdings and dispossession of a large
number of people. In many other European countries also important agricultural
changes were taking place which would ultimately pave the way for industrial
transformation. The increase in population in various countries also played a
significant role in this process.
Unit 12 further explores this process of preparing the grounds for the industrial
transformation in Europe. It discusses the concepts of ‘industrious revolution’
and ‘proto-industrialization’ as referring to important changes in manufacturing
practices and mentalities which proved crucial for later developments. Unit 13
is concerned with the processes whereby Britain and other European economies,
which had taken some steps towards modern industrialization, sought to reorient
the colonial expansion and trade patterns establishing new colonies in the Indian
Ocean, the Caribbean and elsewhere. Here, we will also discuss the impact of
these processes in creating a divergence in the later developments of Europe and
the rest of the world. Taken together, this course aims to provide you a broad
picture of various economic, intellectual, religious, and social phenomena in
Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
6
Seventeenth Century
UNIT 1 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ‘European Crisis’
‘EUROPEAN CRISIS’*
Structure
1.0 Objectives
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Historical Debate on the Nature of Crisis
1.3 Origins of the Crisis
1.4 Extent of the Crisis
1.4.1 Demographic Crisis
1.4.2 Agrarian Crisis
1.4.3 Monetary Crisis
1.4.4 Climatic Factors
1.4.5 Economic Crisis
1.5 The Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) and the Crisis
1.6 Mediterranean Countries and the Seventeenth Century Crisis
1.6.1 Decline of Spain
1.6.2 Decline of the Italian States
1.7 Impact of the Seventeenth Century Crisis
1.8 Let Us Sum up
1.9 Answers to Check Your Progress Exercises
1.0 OBJECTIVES
Seventeenth century marks a watershed in the history of Europe. It led to the end
of feudal age in Western Europe while in the Central and Eastern Europe; it
resulted in the strengthening of feudalism. It also completed the shift of the
commercial and economic activities from the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic
Coast on Western Europe. It meant the decline of the Mediterranean states and
the rise of England, Holland and northern France.
In this Unit, you will study why the Seventeenth century crisis is considered
the ‘General Crisis’ and how it affected the economy, polity, social life and
geographical contours of the European map,
you will get familiar with the debate that has taken place among historians
on the nature and dimension of the crisis,
you will be able to explain the importance of ‘The Thirty Years War’ and
how it contributed to the crisis in central Europe, and
you will be able to trace the impact of the general crisis on political, economic
and social life of Europe.
* Resource Person : Prof. Arvind Sinha 7

Rise of the Modern West-II
1.1 INTRODUCTION
Medieval Europe experienced alternate phases of growth and contraction and
this trend continued till the seventeenth century. There was a long period of
steady economic growth, expansion of agriculture and demographic upsurge
beginning from the tenth century. Black Deaths in the early fourteenth century
reversed the process with heavy population losses that affected agriculture, trade
and manufacturing sectors adversely. The revival of the European economy began
from the last quarter of the fifteenth century. The sixteenth century is seen as a
phase of prosperity, demographic increase, significant expansion of agriculture,
introduction of proto-industrialization in some parts of Europe and the formation
of new trade organizations. The total volume of trade gained new heights. Social
attitudes changed with the spread of Renaissance and Reformation and the
emergence of colonial empires across the globe transformed the structure of trade.
New business activities and commercial institutions were formed to handle the
increasing volume of trade. The colonial empires brought numerous new products
to the European markets such as silver, cotton, cochineal, sugar, potatoes,
tomatoes, spices, indigo and many other items. It contributed to the rise of
monetization of economy in several regions of Europe.
However, this vast expansion of economy came to an end between 1600 and
1620 in many parts of the continent. What led to the decline, what was the nature
of the crisis and how it affected Europe have been explained differently by
historians and scholars. This has become a prolonged historical debate. In the
subsequent sections, we are going to study these aspects in detail.
1.2 HISTORICAL DEBATE ON THE NATURE OF

CRISIS
It was Voltaire, the famous French philosopher of Enlightenment, who brought
out the concept of general crisis in his Essai sur les moeurs et l’ésprit des nations
in 1756. An interesting debate began from 1950s among the historians of early
modern Europe that lasted for almost two decades. This lively debate was mainly
centred on the question whether the experience of each country followed a pattern
of change that was a part of the entire European experience of pre-modern period
or whether each country followed a separate path of transformation. Many
historians developed their own theoretical explanations that resulted in a broad
agreement on the idea of ‘general crisis of the seventeenth century’. The major
works on this theme included the names of Roland Mousnier, Eric Hobsbawm,
H.R. Trevor-Roper, Theodore K. Rabb, R.B. Merriman, Niels Steensgaard, J.V.
Polisensky, etc.
The intense debate on the subject of general crisis can be seen in the three broad
approaches: The first view argues that the crisis was economic in origin. We may
divide the economic interpretation into; a) those arguments based on theoretical
classical Marxist interpretation, b) arguments based on economic data — issues
like money and prices, c) those arguments which focus on demographic factors.
The Marxist writings (on the general crises) present this period as a critical phase
in the transition from feudalism to capitalism. The debate was initiated by Eric
Hobsbawm in 1954 and was followed by Boris Porchnev. The crisis was seen as
a class conflict that took place at two levels. In the eastern region of Europe, the
8
struggle was between the peasants and feudal nobility in which the latter won. In Seventeenth Century
‘European Crisis’
the Western Europe, the struggle to control the state was between bourgeoisie
and feudal nobility and was decided in favour of the bourgeoisie. Eric Hobsbawm,
a leading Marxist historian, considered it as a major crisis of European economy.
In his initial essay, Hobsbawm observed that the seventeenth century was not
only an era of economic crisis but also a period of social revolt. Later, Hobsawm
integrated the seventeenth century crisis as a part of much wider transition from
feudalism to capitalism. Ruggiero Romano provided massive data from various
sources to pinpoint the precise moment of the crises. According to him, the exact
time of the crisis was 1619-1622, when the economic growth of the sixteenth
century ended and marked the beginning of stagnation or decline. He also presents
it as an economic and political crisis. But his thesis provided factual basis to
Hobsbawm’s interpretation. Thus, the Marxist writers saw the seventeenth century
crisis a crisis of production and the major force behind at least some of the
revolutions was the force of the producing bourgeoisie, restricted in their economic
activities by the obsolete, restrictive and wasteful productive system of feudal
society. The crisis of production was general in Europe, but it was only in England
where the feudal monarchical absolutism was overthrown by the rising landed
gentry and urban bourgeoisie (1642-1660) paving the way for the triumph of
capitalism. The second approach concentrates on political issues, particularly
the mid-century revolts and rebellions. H.R. Trevor-Roper was one of the earliest
writers to suggest the thesis of ‘The General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century.
He picked up the theme that it was not the crisis of the European economy but a
crisis in relations between society and the state, a result of the expansion of
Renaissance Monarchies and whose financial burden the society could not bear.
He sees the major events of this period as political revolution. R.B. Merriman
(in his Six Contemporaneous Revolutions) sees them as a social and political
manifestation of the crisis that had been affecting the entire Europe. In his work,
he compares various mid-century revolts which took place in England, France,
Catalonia, Naples and Holland.
The third major interpretation of the crisis takes a sceptical view towards the
very concept of general crisis. There are historians who oppose the theory of
general crisis of the seventeenth century. J.H. Elliott had doubts whether the
instability caused by widespread revolts was in any way exceptional. For him,
similar clusters of revolts could be seen between 1560s and 1590s. He tried to
draw attention of the historians to a series of tensions within early modern political
structures that caused frequent revolts and rebellions. Elliott was rather sceptic
of Trevor-Roper’s focus and explanation of the mid-seventeenth century revolts.
In 1975, Theodore K. Rabb published his famous work on this subject titled The
Struggle for Stability in Early Modern Europe. It synthesized the discussion on
the crisis debate of the last twenty five years and sought to rescue the idea of
crisis with a more precise definition of the term. At the same time, he broadened
the scope of the European history between 1500 and 1700 piecing together new
information from political, economic, social and cultural history into the crisis
debate. Rabb made historians to employ the word ‘crisis’ with greater precision
and brought cultural dimension of change into the discussion on general crisis.
In between the above mentioned approaches, we find some other interpretations

who try to synthesise various viewpoints. Roland Mousnier in his work, Les
XVIe et XVIIe Siécle suggested that the period between 1598 and 1715 was one
of crisis that could be seen in the fields of demography, economy, administration
9
Rise of the Modern West-II but also in intellectual sphere. This crisis marked a decisive shift towards a
capitalist order.
The 1960s and 70s witnessed coming together of many historians to support or
reject the idea of the ‘general crisis’. An interesting explanation was provided by
J.V. Polisensky, who tried to establish connection between the Thirty Years’ War
(1618-1648) and the seventeenth century crisis and saw them both as the conflict
of opposite political and cultural societies — one Protestant that was liberal, and
the other Catholic that was absolutist in character.
Another important contributor to the debate on the seventeenth century crisis

came from Niels Steensgaard. He provided an alternative thesis that connected
the economic and political by highlighting the impact of increasing taxation and
expanding state structure. This impoverished the population and pushed the people
to the margins of subsistence. It created an economic crisis that was as much a
crisis of production as distribution. He suggested that the period from 1500 to
1700 experienced extended instability beginning with early sixteenth century.
In recent years, the thesis of the seventeenth century crisis is generally accepted
by the scholars of early modern Europe but its scope has been broadened.
1.3 ORIGINS OF THE CRISIS

Each historian has different opinion regarding the date and intensity of the crisis
as it varied from one region to another. The general view on the subject is that
European crisis actually developed during the first half of the seventeenth century.
Some contemporary scholars provide long list of revolts and upheavals that caused
a crisis of urban economy and trade and led to economic depression, loss of
population, social unrest and large-scale wars. The period of the Eighty Years’
War [1582 -1662] experienced widespread uprisings throughout the Netherlands
against the Spanish rule. It had impact on other parts of Europe. The Thirty
Years’ War (1618-1648) had caused havoc in several states of Central Europe as
well as in France and Spain. France also witnessed a series of revolts and uprisings
beginning in the Aquitaine province against the rise of gabelle (salt) tax. The
widespread peasant uprisings between 1590s and 1620s, Nu Pieds (1637), and
the intermittent Croquant peasant revolts throughout the seventeenth century
created serious problems for the French rulers. Nu-pied revolt was an anti-fiscal
rebellion in Normandy and another one in Périgueux where over 30,000 armed
peasants revolted not against the ruler of France but mostly against the tax officials.
Frondes (1647-1652) was a major socio-political movement that clearly revealed
the prevalence of deep social crisis in France. The Fronde rebels were opposed
to the growing powers of the absolute rulers of France by strengthening the powers
of the Parléments and make it a sovereign body. However, the revolt failed and
subsequently, the Bourbon dynasty not only recovered their ground but the royal
absolutism under Louis XIV was further strengthened. It was around the same
time, England was involved in a civil War (1642-49) where the Stuart ruler,
Charles I was executed by the supporters of Parliament. The political experiments
continued till 1660 but the political issues could not be resolved till the Revolution
of 1688-89. Boris Porchnev describes the Fronde revolt of France as a variant of
the English bourgeois revolution of 1640s and a prologue of the French Revolution
of 1789.
10
There were more revolts in the Mediterranean region at the same time. These Seventeenth Century
included the revolts of Catalonia, Naples and Portugal which created crisis in
the Spanish empire. The peasant revolt in 1640s spread across Barcelona in Spain,
driving out the Castilians and killing the Viceroy. The revolt in Naples in Italy
(in July, 1647) was the direct outcome of food shortage, heavy taxation and
administrative inefficiency. For a brief period, Naples had become a republic
under the leadership of Masaniello and enjoying French protection. However,
the Spanish ruler re-conquered it. Some other parts of Europe too faced scattered
uprisings like Swiss peasant uprising (1653), Ukranian revolts (1648-54), Russian
revolts (1672), Kuruez movements in Hungary, Irish Revolts (1641 and 1689)
and the Palace revolution in the United Provinces of the Netherlands. A cluster
of these revolutionary upheavals, political and social protests make several writers
believe that there was some widespread crisis in Europe that had different time
of their origins but they also reflect some commonness.
Check Your Progress 1

1) Explain why the crisis of the seventeenth century is called the general crises?
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2) Discuss the origins of the crisis.
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1.4 EXTENT OF THE CRISIS

The crisis had different dimensions, some of which we will discuss in the following
sub-sections.
1.4.1 Demographic Crisis

The population of Europe had an impressive growth by the end of the sixteenth
century; the growth was checked in many parts. While some regions experienced
stagnation, in others places, the growth rate slowed down. It is true, the population
figures are not accurate and are impressionistic depending on each historian’s
calculation, the available data on population indicates a downward trend in many
parts of Europe, except for a few regions in northern Europe such as the
Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. The Thirty Years’ War had disastrous impact
on the German population, where the losses were as much as 35 to 40 per cent.
The densely populated states like Saxony, Brandenburg and Bavaria lost almost
11
Rise of the Modern West-II half their population. Poland too, witnessed a similar trend. The Spanish
population fell from 70,68,000 to 50,25,000 between 1587 to 1650.
The population of southern Europe declined quite sharply during the seventeenth
century. In 1700, it was less than that of 1600. On the other hand, situation was
different in some other parts of Europe where the population increased swiftly in
northern Europe including the Low Countries and England. Even here, the rate
of growth slowed down during the second half of the seventeenth century.
What led to the decline of population in the seventeenth century is explained

differently by the historians. Peter Kriedte suggests that the demographic decline
was the result of Malthusian and social crisis. Thomas R. Malthus, a British
economist of the eighteenth century had explained that in a natural economy
(that Europe had in most parts except northern Europe) population grows at
geometrical rate while the production of the natural economy increases by
arithmetic proportion. This creates periodic crisis which is resolved after the
loss of population when production and population ratio is restored.
The demographic crisis had long-term consequences, including on family life,

birth patterns, on food habits and on the age of marriage. At the same time, one
should remember that since the extent of demographic changes was not uniform,
its impact varied according to the rise or decrease of population.
1.4.2 Agrarian Crisis

Agricultural condition depended to a large extent on population and technological
factors. European agriculture showed signs of contraction and growth alternatively
for the past centuries. It is difficult to present an accurate picture of the European
agriculture in i the absence of reliable data. We know more about the French
agriculture of the medieval times, thanks to the in-depth studies of the French
Annales writings of Pierre Goubert, Immanuel le Roy Ladurie, Jaque le Goff,
etc. A noteworthy contribution on feudalism came from the pen of Mare Bloch
in two volumes on ‘Feudalism’. Fernand Braudel’s classical work brings out the
agrarian weaknesses of the Mediterranean region. Poor land, soil deficiency,
and hilly tracts prevented cultivation of food crops. This region produced citrus
fruits and encouraged sheep farming. The growing population during the sixteenth
century at many places resulted in fragmentation of land holdings. Absence of
technological innovation meant increasing food production through land
reclamation and deforestation. During the seventeenth century, European
agriculture at many place showed signs of exhaustion. In central, eastern and
southern Europe feudal system dominated. In the case of France, agrarian decline
was not pronounced but there was growing pressure on agriculture imposed by
state authorities. To ensure its fiscal interests, the French monarchs protected the
small peasants of their tiny landholdings against feudal landlords but this policy
resulted in long-term agrarian stagnation. State exploited the peasants by raising
taxes like taille to meet the vast administrative structure and bear the financial
burden of continental wars. The nobility too compelled the peasants to pay heavy
taxes that impoverished peasantry and checked agriculture investment or
improved technology. France faced a crisis of productivity and consequently,
the French agriculture could not transform itself on the capitalist line as had
happened in England.
12
The index of grain prices in France declined from 100 in 1625 -50 to 1681-90 , Seventeenth Century
while in Poland, the grain prices declined from 100 index points in 1580 to about
87 in 1650 [Peter Kriede] . The Swedish- Polish War resulted in further destruction
of agriculture. In Germany and Austria, declining trend in agriculture was visible.
The declining ground rents brought down the prices of property and there was
no incentive to invest in agricultural property. On the other hand, the prices
continued to rise from 1601-10 level in England (1147), Belgium (150) and Austria
(118) per cent. The cereal price in western and central Europe remained high till
the middle of the seventeenth century, but in western and northern parts of Europe,
the boom continued but in Germany, agriculture collapsed due to the thirty years’
war. In certain areas like Brabant, Flanders, Zealand etc, grain prices fell and
grain was replaced by crops like flax, hops and rape seed. The seventeenth century
crisis widened the gap between the eastern and western and northern and southern
zones of Europe. While eastern and central-eastern Europe witnessed an extension
and tightening of serfdom, England and the Netherlands saw the breakdown of
capitalism and agriculture began to move in the capitalism direction. Forage
crops like cloves and Turnip were popularized. Crop rotation was introduced on
a large scale and alternative crops were grown to increase soil fertility. Thus, we
find partial dislocation of the old types of communed holdings in the north-
western regions of Europe.
1.4.3 Monetary Crisis

Some scholars, less theoretically motivated than the Marxists, concentrate on
the data of price trend to explain the seventeenth century crisis. Earl J. Hamilton
and Pierre Channu bring out the role of Seville (the famous Spanish port) and the
Atlantic trade leading to financial crisis. According to this view, declining supply
of money and the failure to finance the Atlantic trade caused the crisis. The
frequent debasement of coinage throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries indicate an acute scarcity of currency. It was temporarily solved by the
bullion imports from the ‘New World’. The economic growth of the sixteenth
century began to slow down once the quantity of silver imports to Europe was
reduced. Hamilton considers monetary factors related to the bullion imports the
main reason for the crisis. He worked out a detailed table of silver imports that
reached peak in 1620 and then declined sharply. This caused decline in the money
in circulation. Hamilton argues that an upward movement of prices would result
in surplus profit and greater investment in business and industry, while the
declining circulation of money results in reduced profit margin and dis-investment
from manufacturing and commercial fields. Hamilton believes that the latter
condition prevailed in the seventeenth century. Ruggiero Romano argues that
the first forty years of the century experienced constant and at times sharp
contraction in the issue of money. For him, the crucial years were between 1619
and 1622. Romano contends that the minting of coins suffered contraction causing
shortage of monetary stock. Despite falling prices, there was considerable
expansion in credit. He argues that the prices should not be seen in isolation
because money, prices, exchange and banking were essential facts of production
and distribution. Prices should not be seen in isolation. They act like thermometer
to gauge trends in trade, revenue and production. Prices alone can hardly explain
the intricate economic situation because the economic reality was too complicated.
While discussing the nature of the crisis, Jan de Vries does not subscribe to the
view that the European economy grew or fell along the flow of precious metals
13
Rise of the Modern West-II from the ‘New World’. Yet, he concedes that the monetary instability played a
definite role in short-term cycles, particularly the one in 1619-22. There are several
other writers who reject Hamilton’s arguments. They provide counter argument
that the American silver did not stay in Europe and was re-exported via Levant
to India and China. So the silver import to Europe had virtually no role in the
creation of crisis.
1.4.4 Climatic Factors

Annales writers present the seventeenth century crisis in an interesting way. The
crisis is seen by them as a ‘subsistence’ crisis forming a part of conjuncture (a
crisis located not in the structure but caused by coming together of many short
and long-term factors) broadly forming a part of economic domain. To the Annales
writers, the crisis of the seventeenth century involved joining together of
conjunctural factors like crop failure, grain prices, heavy taxation, epidemics
and climatic factors along with population, land tenures, etc. These resulted in
widespread peasant uprisings, agrarian crisis, shrinking trade and decline in capital
investments. The impact was more devastating since the production was based
on limited technology. Annales writings highlight the role of climatic factors.
Not only historians but even solar physicists, geologists, meteorologists — they
all carried out an inter-disciplinary study to understand the nature and extent of
the seventeenth century crisis. Geoffrey Parker explains the contribution of
astronomical studies in locating the non-human factors in this crisis. Some
scientists describe this period as ‘the Little Ice Age’. A. E. Douglass, a leading
European astronomer, in his diary noted a sharp decline of sun spots between
1645 and 1715 with intermittent spells of normal phases. G. D. Cassini, the
Director of Paris Observatory, also observed in 1676 with regard to aurora borealis
(The Northern Lights caused by particles from the sun entering earth’s
atmosphere). Similar observations were made by the scientists of Scandinavia
and Scotland. Declining solar energy causes an increase of carbon-14 in
atmosphere. It is a condition most harmful for living organisms.
A study of dendrochronological evidence (study of tree rings inside the tree trunk)
was corroborated with the records of vineyards, particularly in France. It found
that the tree lines were deeper and thick during these years- phenomena associated
with wet weather conditions in summer an acute winters. Another significant
change was about the lowering of snow line that resulted in the decrease of
cultivable area. This also had bearing on the decreasing volume of river water
and the ripening of food grains. All these factors played a cumulative role in the
making of general crisis.
1.4.5 Economic Crisis

Europe had a wide range of economy that was uneven and functioned at different
levels during the sixteenth century — a period of growth and expansion in
agriculture, manufacturing and trade. On the nature and extent of the crisis,
historians have come out with different explanations. Fernand Braudel, J.I. Israel,
Domeico Sella, etc. support the view of Hobsbawm who argues that the crisis
was basically a complete economic regression but its outcome varied according
to regional variations. Like other Marxists writers, he calls it the crisis of
production that affected trade, commerce and manufacturing.
14
There are scholars who suggest that the economic setbacks were not of uniform Seventeenth Century
pattern. During the crisis, a few industrial centres witnessed fundamental
transformation. While some centres lost their earlier dominance like Venice,
Florence, Antwerp, some others rapidly progressed towards capitalist
organization. Most of the regions in Germany, Mediterranean state and southern
France experienced sharp decline. Within each region, a few alternative centres
of production emerged-decline of Florence in Italy was followed by the rise of
textile industry in Prato and Sienna. In the north-western Europe, decline of
Antwerp was followed by the rise of Amsterdam. Cloth manufacturing in Europe
underwent significant changes, Textile industry functioned within the artisan
form of production. Most historians agree that the Italian cloth virtually
disappeared from the world of international trade. The Flemish wool industry
went into long-term contraction. Many textile centres of France such as Rouen,
Amiens also declined or stagnated. However, the textile sector in England and
Holland experienced distinct growth in the sixteenth century and continued even
in the seventeenth century. Leiden emerged as one of the leading centres of
industry where the population grew from about 12,00 in 1582 to almost 70,000
by mid-seventeenth century. The rise of new draperies led to the English
domination of the markets of Iberian Peninsula and the Mediterranean. The other
regions could not compete with the English products because of price advantage.
The destruction of the traditional textile centres caused socio-economic dislocation
and unemployment of artisans. It is estimated that the number of weavers in
woolen textiles had come down by 1700 to hardly 10 per cent of what was a
century back. The Spanish shipbuilding industry had started declining from the
last decade of the sixteenth century. During this period, the Dutch (Holland)
shipping industry developed very fast and became the carrier of international
cargo. The emergence of the colonial empire encouraged the growth of the
commercial fleet, which increased thrice between 1629 and 1686. Holland also
became the hub of commercial activities including banking, insurance and stock
exchange. Romano points out that the sixteenth century industrial and commercial
expansion in Europe was supported by agricultural prosperity. The setback in
the seventeenth century was largely linked to the agricultural crisis. Two important
trading zones of pre-sixteenth century were the Mediterranean and the Levant.
During the seventeenth century, the former no longer supplied bulk manufactured
items while the Levant trade suffered with the opening of new routes to Asia.
During the sixteenth century, European economy tried to break the medieval
traditional structure to reach the capitalist mode of production. In most parts of
Europe, the feudal social framework resisted that change. The seventeenth century
crisis is seen by the Marxist historians, including Hobsbawm as the manifestation
of the feudal crisis existing in the mode of production spreading across the
European economy. The old structure did not allow sustained growth beyond a
point. According to Hobsbawm, the crisis demonstrated Europe’s failure to
overcome the obstacles created by the feudal structure to reach the stage of
capitalism. The crisis was resolved in different ways by different societies. The
solution to the crisis could be found only in the English bourgeois revolution of
1640s. It was only in England where the forces of capitalism could triumph and
the old structure was destroyed and a new economic order was created.
15
Rise of the Modern West-II Check Your Progress 2
1) How do the population figures suggest the magnitude of crisis?
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2) What was the significance of agrarian trouble in creating the crisis of the
seventeenth century?
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3) What was the extent of economic crisis?
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1.5 THE THIRTY YEARS WAR (1618-1648) AND

THE CRISIS
Josej Polisensky suggests that the Thirty Years War was an integral part of the
crisis, at least of Central Europe, and showed the culmination of internal
contradiction in the structure of the society that violently impacted the economic,
social and cultural relations.
Causes: Historians initially viewed it as the last religious war between the
Catholics and the Protestants originating in Germany. Now it is accepted that the
trouble started in the German Kingdom of Bohemia which was a part of the Holy
Roman Empire. It held an important place in the Empire as it contributed heavy
material and manpower. It had a large number of textile and glassware industries
besides iron, silver and copper mines. Bohemia was one of the centres of Religious
conflicts even before Martin Luther. The religious conflict assumed political
colour when outside states fought for the cause of the Catholics and the Protestant
states supported the Protestants. This turned into a dynastic and religious war led
by Spain and France and Netherlands. This shows that it was not a war between
the catholics (both Spain and France were Catholic powers fighting against each
other) and the Protestants.
16
An alternative explanation sees the war as a war between the two major empires Seventeenth Century
(Spain and France) to control Europe. Many historians see the war as a struggle
between two powerful dynasties of Europe-the Habsburg of spain and the Valois
of France for the hegemony of Europe.
A few historians like C.V. Wedgewood provide a German approach. For them,
the war was sparked off by a number of revolts against the Habsbueg rule of the
Holy Roman Empire in various parts of Europe. Over half a century of religious
and constitutional disputes led to the formation of two rival groups in Germany.
J. V. Polisensky focuses on internal forces in an excessively German approach

on Bohemia. According to him, the conflict was a political one and emerged
from the policies of the old ruling classes in various regions of Europe but the
crisis had deep economic roots.
The Thirty Years War ended with the Treaty of Westphalia which formed an
extremely important document. It altered the political map of central Europe.
This was the most destructive war that shifted its terrain at short intervals. The
war marked a new form of territorial wars- a transition from men-based offensive
to dependence on firepower including artillery and volley strikes. Thus, the
subsequent wars became more offensive in nature.
The war led to a long-term peace between the Catholics and the Protestants. The
latter were given back church properties that were seized and the supporters of
Calvin were given religious toleration. The Protestant leadership in Germany
passed from the hands of Saxony to Prussia-Brandenburg.
The most important result of the war was the disintegration of the Holy Roman
Empire. The weakening of the Empire implied the consolidation of the larger
German states like Palatine, Bavaria, Saxony and Brandenburg. It led to the rise
of northern Germany as a major military power to counter-balance the traditional
power of Austria in the southern Germany.
Historians have divided opinion about the socio-economic impact of the war.
One set of historians (called the ‘Disastrous war school) argue that the war had
disastrous consequences and marked the decline of Germany, while the set of
writers (called the Revisionist School) suggest that the impact has been highly
exaggerated and the decline og Germany was not caused by war alone and had
started much earlier.
1.6 MEDITERRANEAN COUNTRIES AND THE

SEVENTEENTH CENTURY CRISIS
Spain and Italy, according to Fernand Braudel, constituted a common economic
and geographical zone that dominated the European trade till the sixteenth century
when most of Europe was still feudal.
1.6.1 Decline of Spain

Spain possessed a vast and most powerful empire in and outside Europe. The
extensive colonial possessions across the Atlantic Ocean provided enormous
wealth, including silver and gold. The long distance trade across the ocean
promoted the Spanish navy and shipping industry. The Spanish possessions under
17
Rise of the Modern West-II the Habsburg dynasty in Europe included the Netherlands, Austria and some
German and Italian states. Spain appeared to be at the pinnacle of glory during
the sixteenth century but in the seventeenth century it had become a second-rate
power. The decline of Spain constitutes an interesting debate among the scholars
and focused on the internal versus the external factors that were responsible for
the decline.
A group of seventeenth century writers in Spain called Arbitristas were the first
to present a picture of Spanish decline. They were warning the Spanish rulers of
the impeding troubles and suggested a drastic change of state policies. Historians
of the twentieth century more or less agree on the Spanish decline during the
seventeenth century but there is no unanimity on various questions regarding the
actual reasons of decline.
As to the precise period of decline, we find no unanimous answer. Each historian

has a different view on it. According to one view, the period of expansion lasted
till about 1550s and thereafter the decline set in. It reached culmination point in
1640s. Another view suggests that the decline started in the 1620s but certainly
not earlier than 1598.
On the issue of the nature of decline, again there is no unanimity of opinion.

According to J. H. Elliott, the Spanish decline should not be seen in isolation.
Most of the seventeenth century in Europe experienced a period of commercial
contraction and demographic fall or stagnation varying according to regions.
For him, certain features of decline were universal and not confined to Spain. He
also argues that the decline was not as dramatic as presented by earlier writers
because even in the seventeenth century, Spain was still the largest military power.
Henry Kamen and Carlo M. Cipolla refute the decline thesis because for them
Spain never developed to begin with. Spain’s economic development was hindered
over centuries by fundamental weaknesses.
Another question that has been raised by scholars is whether the decline was of
entire Spain or was it confined to some specific regions like that of Castile.
Many historians suggest that the decline was of only a few states of Spain. For J.
I. Israel, in the state of Valencia, there were distinct signs of growth and expansion
in the sixteenth century followed by stagnation and decline as was the case of
Castile, the biggest state of Spain. Henry Kamen points out that Catalonia
witnessed distinct developments during the same period. For Kamen, it was the
decline of Castile and not of entire Spain.
Reasons for the decline have been explained differently by the historians on the
subject. Among the earliest explanations on the Spanish Crisis during the
seventeenth century was provided by Earl J. Hamilton. He argued that the major
role in the crisis was silver import from the New World. So long as the silver
supply to Spain was increasing, the Spanish economy was well-off but from
1620s, the supply witnessed a downward graph and the decline set in. According
to Hamilton, huge quantity of gold and silver from Central America created an
illusion of prosperity in Spain. It provided fund for waging foreign wars, massive
army, lavish spending by the court, elaborate bureaucracy, wasteful expenditure
and an attitude of aversion to manual work in the society. All this led to all-
pervasive crisis in Spain when the silver supply decreased. Another historian,
Dennis O. Flynn argues that mining profits rather than the volume of silver trade
financed the Spanish empire. However, the cost of running the mines continued
18
to increase leading to a recession in mining by 1620s. Over-dependence of the Seventeenth Century
Spanish state and society on influx of American treasure created a crisis situation
but the role of silver was only one factor among many.
Some scholars hold the Spanish society responsible for the decline of Spain. It is
suggested that the Spanish society lacked a strong middle class despite a vast
colonial empire. The huge influx of precious metals could have led to vast
economic expansion of Spain but the opportunity was squandered. Neither the
bullion was utilised for industrial development nor was there a rise of powerful
class of merchants and businessmen. Unlike the English gentry which showed
keen interest in higher agrarian productivity and participated in market operations,
the Spanish society revealed contempt for trade and industry.
Most historians suggest that the Spanish decline was mainly caused by economic
factors and hastened by politico-social factors. The decline becomes apparent in
demographic figures. Though this was not confined to Spain alone and can be
found in many parts, particularly in southern and east-central parts of the continent.
Equally significant contributory factor in the Spanish decline was the state policy
towards agriculture. Several scholars have blamed the state policies for the neglect
of agriculture. Fernand Braudel and some other historians point out the
shortcomings in the Spanish policy towards agriculture. The state policy favoured
sheep farmers by giving them subsidies and monopolies instead of promoting
land cultivation which created shortage of corn. The Spanish rulers neither
pursued consistent policy towards agriculture nor did they offer anything to the
rural farmers.
Historians have divergent views on the industrial condition in Spain. Spain often
experienced labour shortages but it is not certain whether it caused industrial
decline or de-industrialization. The Spanish woollen industry had grown due to
the state policy towards sheep farmers. After 1580, the woollen industry showed
declining trend at several manufacturing centres like Segovia, Toledo. In Segovia,
cloth manufacturing declined from about 13,000 pieces annually during the last
quarter of the sixteenth century to about 3,000 pieces by mid-seventeenth century.
The Spanish wool was used for the coarser variety but was gradually manufactured
by the Dutch and the English. Ship-building industry of Spain at Basque had
grown during the sixteenth century mainly due to the Latin American demand
but the Spanish ships could not meet the growing American demand. The
destruction of the Spanish armada in 1588 caused rapid decline including the
one at Basque. Even the iron manufacturing faced stiff challenge from Sweden.
However, those industries such as paper, leather ware experienced modest
prosperity. The huge volume of bullion from America failed to revive the Spanish
industries. The economy fell into debt trap that became worse with unrealistic
expansion of the bureaucratic structure and heavy army expenditure.
Reasons for the decline have been explained differently by the historians on the
subject. Among the earliest explanations on the Spanish Crisis during the
seventeenth century was provided by Earl J. Hamilton. He argued that the major
role in the crisis was silver import from the New World. So long as the silver
supply to Spain was increasing, the Spanish economy was well-off but from
1620s, the supply witnessed a downward graph, the decline set in. Dennis O.Flynn
argues that mining profits rather than the volume of silver trade financed the
Spanish empire. However, the cost of running the mines continued to increase
leading to a recession in mining by 1620s. Over-dependence of the Spanish state 19
Rise of the Modern West-II and society on influx of American treasure created a crisis situation but the role
of silver was only one factor among many.
1.6.2 Decline of Italian States

Italian economy with its woollen and silk textiles, large concentration of
population involved in manufacturing, brisk trade and urban centres created
contrasts in income distribution. The economic prosperity of this region began
to show signs of decline in the sixteenth century itself.
The decline of the Italian region is evident from the demographic trends. The
population began to shrink till the late seventeenth century. This trend was not
the same in every region but the overall picture was of demographic fall. On the
other hand, states like Sardinia and Genoa experienced population growth in the
first half of the seventeenth century. Many factors were responsible for the
demographic decline such as famines, plague and epidemics and wars across the
region. These had disastrous effect on the urban centres. Higher density of
population in the urban regions made them susceptible to epidemics. Although
these were short-term factors, they affected economic sphere of the Italian states
by restricting markets, production and trade and had serious bearing on the
neighbouring states. It led to a major crisis of urban economy and pushed Italian
states towards feudalism. Merchant bankers started shifting their capital to safer
places outside Italy.
The case of Italian decline is more complicated than that of Spain for a number
of reasons. Spain was a vast political empire ruled by an Emperor with a distinct
boundary but was economically not so strong as Italy despite possessing rich
colonies. Italy was not a single state, rather a geographical region with several
independent states with their own rulers (like Florence, Venetia, Piedmont, Milan,
Naples, Sicily Papal states, etc). Some of the city-states of northern Italy such as
Venice and Florence were prosperous economies and had flourishing network of
trade, large fleet of ships and shipyards, countless manufacturing units and
concentration of population associated with trading and manufacturing activities.
Trade and industry was organized on a pre-capitalist structure when most of
Europe had sunk into feudal mode. Italian states had reached an advanced level
of economic structure and they had been handing exchange and production
through commercial instruments – trading companies like commendas, societas,
which were in the nature of partnerships, banks and commercial instruments like
promissory notes, bills of exchange and insurance. In the sixteenth century, Italian
states constituted an urban region with heavy concentration of population in
towns and cities, unlike Spain which had a large rural population with a few
scattered towns and cities.
Venice was a major mercantile power for most part of the sixteenth century and
controlled the trade of Mediterranean Sea. When the neighbouring states were
experiencing industrial decline, the Venetian silk and woollen industries showed
expansion. The spread of plague of 1575-77 hit the industries sharply. It is
estimated that nearly one-third of the population perished. Milan’s population
was reduced by almost half due to plague of 1630-31. But it would be wrong to
put the entire blame of decline only on natural calamities. The economic decline
had set in from the sixteenth century itself when the Italian city-states were losing
their control on international markets. Italy lacked rich natural resources and the
20 prosperity of the states was dependent on manufacturing industries and foreign
trade. The recovery after each natural calamity or war could not be complete and Seventeenth Century
the loss of exports affected the Italian fortunes. The Italian textiles were
undermined by the English, the Dutch and to a lesser extent, by the French, who
offered their textiles at much lower rates. According to Braudel, the most dramatic
problem between 1590 and 1630 Italian industry faced was competition from
the low-priced industrial goods from the northern countries.
In the absence of political and geographical unity and varied geographical features,
it is difficult to present a uniform picture of the Italian agriculture. The urban
centres of the north were generally importers of food grains due to limited arable
land, low yields in the absence of technology and heavy density of population
who were putting heavy pressure on agriculture. The northern were states usually
heavy importers of food grain while the southern states produced agrarian
products, the surplus of which was exported to the neighbouring states. There
were mountainous region too that received scanty rainfall. There was hardly any
improvement of technology in such regions. The main centres of intensive
agriculture in northern plains included Venetia, Lombardy, Piedmont, etc. during
the sixteenth century were known for producing foodstuff, raw silk, dyestuff and
fruits. Agriculture in this region prospered on high urban demand. Natural
calamities like the spread of plague, famine, wars and population losses affected
industries which in turn reduced demand for agrarian products. The southern
states experienced a similar trend and the deterioration of agriculture was apparent
by the seventeenth century. Thus, Italy was on the path of decline that lasted
more than three centuries.
1.7 IMPACT OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

CRISIS
The seventeenth century crisis had far-reaching consequences on Europe, though
the impact was far from uniform. On the one side the crisis created conditions
for expansion by clearing away tensions within the productive sectors by restoring
balance between population and food supplies. On the other side, it re-enforced
feudal grip over a large European population.
From the demographic point of view, the crisis resulted in heavy mortality in
some parts of the continent. Military conflicts were one of the chief factors in
population decline. Constant wars were accompanied by natural disasters like
plague, epidemics and famines which disrupted social life in many regions. The
most catastrophic demographical reversal could be seen in Central Europe as
most of the battles of Thirty Years War were fought there. These losses varied
from 25 to 40%. Poland suffered the same fate. Even Denmark lost about 20% of
the total population in the Danish-Sweden War (1658-1669). Italian urban
population was lost for various reasons. Demographic losses were more in the
urban centres and caused widespread dislocation of trade and industry. It took
almost half a century to overcome these losses.
An important post-crisis development was the shifting of economically active

region from the continental states towards north-west countries along the Atlantic.
The gap between the eastern and western regions had already developed during
the sixteenth century but it widened further in the seventeenth century. The rich
trans-Atlantic trade contributed to the industrial and commercial prosperity of
Western Europe. The two countries-the Netherlands and England gained
21
Rise of the Modern West-II immensely from the influx of skilled artisans from Flanders. The French
Huguenots (Protestants) also contributed to the paper and glass industry of
England. The role of merchants expanded enormously and they organized
extensive network of production and procurement for distant markets.
The rise of rural cottage industry had already started in England and the
Netherlands. This displacement of urban manufacturing, also called proto-
industrialization, gained popularity in western and some parts of central Europe.
This marked the first phase of industrialization. The merchants and entrepreneurs
dealt with the crisis in a variety of ways. The falling prices and the rising labour
costs under the guild system in urban manufacturing centres turned them to
cheaper rural labour by larger turnovers. This resulted in the manufacturing of
inexpensive draperies in place of expensive cloth. Another method of increasing
profits by the merchants and entrepreneurs was to increase the volume of trade
with the newly created colonies through the chartered companies to compensate
for the reducing colonial demand. By the end of the seventeenth century, woollen,
linen, cotton and blended cloth was being produced in the rural regions of England,
Low Countries, France, and Switzerland and even in Germany. As a result, the
urban manufacturing units and guilds were losing out to rural cottage industry.
The crisis of the seventeenth century led to the strengthening of serfdom as it

could not break the feudal structure. The weak bourgeoisie could not challenge
the feudal nobility and replace it. The political disunity and breakdown of political
states strengthened the powers of rural nobility. The feudal lords were able to
enserf the peasants and also controlled the trade of their respective regions. It
was from them that Junker class of the nineteenth century was formed. As T. K.
Rabb says, the period from about 1660s to 1789 was the age of aristocracy. They
became the landowners and courtiers and enjoyed powers and privileges.
From political perspective, economic disruptions, military operations and

population losses caused severe strain on the governmental resources. Common
people were put under heavy burden of taxation. The French crown became very
strong with additional financial resources by way of fresh taxation. During the
Thirty years War, the taille (tax on peasants’ produce) increased six times. The
failure of the Fronde revolt strengthened royal powers at the cost of nobility. In
England, the overthrow of the feudal monarchy by the rising bourgeoisie and the
new landed gentry paved the way for the establishment of constitutional monarchy
and representative parliament. It facilitated the route to capitalism in England
along with the Dutch republic.

1) Discuss the decline of Spain in this period.
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22
2) What was the overall impact of this crisis on Europe? Seventeenth Century
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1.8 LET US SUM UP

In this Unit, we have taken a comparative view of the sixteenth and the seventeenth
centuries to understand how and why the seventeenth century took a different
turn to move away from the period of overall growth and prosperity to economic
contraction, political and social dislocation and demographic decline in many
parts of Europe. We have tried to analyse why the seventeenth century is termed
as the period of ‘general crisis’. An interesting debate has taken place since 1950s
among the historians in support or against the use of this term. This is considered
one of the most debated subjects of the European history. We have explored the
theme whether the experience of each country followed a separate and distinct
pattern of change or was it a part of general experience of Europe. We have also
looked into whether it was a political or an economic crisis.
While studying the origins of the crisis, we have noticed that during the same
chronological time span, widespread conflicts, political revolts, demographic
catastrophe, economic and monetary difficulties were felt to make this century a
period a general crisis.
The extent of the crisis provide a wide range of fields like demography, monetary,
agrarian, economic and climatic factors which shaped the historical passage of
Europe in opposite directions. We have also tried to show how the Thirty Years’
War contributed to the crisis situation, though its geographical terrain was confined
to central and Eastern Europe. The progress and historical progress of the
Mediterranean zone had received a jolt. The crisis ended the commercial and
mercantile domination of Spain and Italy. This trend already prevailed in the
sixteenth century but by the seventeenth century, the Atlantic countries like
Holland and England and western coast of France became the core commercial
zone.
The last segment of the Unit brings out the impact of the crisis. The same crisis
resulted in the triumph of capitalism in north-western region but in Eastern Europe
the feudal structure defeated the capitalist forces. It led to re-feudalization of the
social relations of production in central and Eastern Europe. The crisis widened
the economic contrast between the western and eastern as well as north and
south Europe.
23
1.9 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS
EXERCISES
1) See Section 1.2
2) See Section 1.3
1) See Sub-section 1.4.1
2) See Section 1.7
24
Seventeenth Century
UNIT 2 EUROPEAN COLONIAL EXPANSION ‘European Crisis’
AND MERCANTILISM*
Structure
2.0 Objectives
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Mercantilism: Definition and Features
2.2.1 Mercantilist Ideas
2.2.2 Mercantilist Policies and Changes in the Nature and Organization of Trade
2.3 Mercantilism in European Countries
2.3.1 The Dutch Republic
2.3.2 England
2.3.3 France
2.3.4 Other Countries
2.4 The Nature of European Expansion
2.5 Migrations, Settlements, and Mercantilism
2.6 Plantation Economies
2.7 Slavery and Slave Economies
2.8 Banking and Finance
2.9 Merchant Capitalism
2.10 Let Us Sum Up
2.0 OBJECTIVES
After reading this Unit, you should be able to:
understand the concept of mercantilism, as policy and as stage in the
development of capitalism,
identify the main features of mercantilist policies followed by the different
states of Europe and the distinctions between the different states as regards
policy and areas of implementation,
see the linkages between the national monarchies of the 17th and first half
of the 18th century and the internal social and political dynamics within
their kingdoms,
realize that these mercantilist policies had some consequences for the non-
European world and for the colonies, and how these were distinct from the
16th century; and
identify the new social classes that mercantile policies brought to the fore,
the role of what has often been characterized as merchant capital or merchant
capitalism, and the nature of expansion of commercial capital.
* Resource Person : Dr. Nalini Taneja

25
2.1 INTRODUCTION
In your earlier course you have read about the explorations of the sixteenth century
and the discovery by Europeans of many parts of the world they did not earlier
know about. You would have understood that while this was called the age of
exploration and discovery, it involved much more: it also meant an increase in
international trade and commerce and the subjugation of peoples of the continents
of America, both north and south, and beginnings of change in the dynamics of
relationships with Asia. By the end of the sixteenth century, the expansion of
Europe had already resulted in established Spanish and Portuguese empires in
South America, the beginnings of slavery in production, a flourishing slave trade,
and a system of unequal ‘exchange’ in which the Europeans benefited.
History of modern Europe cannot be understood without these associated and

interconnected developments. The 16th and 17th centuries involved the conquest
of new territories for settlement, mostly in the Americas, Siberia, Africa, and
Australasia. There was also the aggressive extermination of the populations of
the Americas and Siberia, the forced transportation as slaves of 12 million Africans
to the Americas and later to the plantations of the Caribbean (between 1500 and
1860) and the consequent domination of the world by the various European
powers. It must be noted that the expansion was accompanied by increasing
inequalities across the world, between Europe and the rest of the world.
Colonialism became a political reality.
The seventeenth century marked the acceleration of the pace of these changes
that characterized the sixteenth century and also introduced new elements, both
in Europe that is said to have expanded and in the areas where these European
powers saw expansion. The expansion of Europe was, thus, an expansion of a
world system of economy as well as changes in the nature of the economies the
world over. Much of these developments were visible in changes in the nature of
trade and commerce and associated production spheres. They also involved
encounters between the Europeans and the rest of the world, which had long-
term consequences for the history of humanity.
The features that were pervasive during this period have been characterized as
mercantilism or merchant capitalism by various historians. There is a debate on
whether mercantilism was the precursor, and a stage before capitalism, or whether
it was the initial stage of capitalism. The term itself denotes the predominance of
trade and commerce in the sphere of economy and the growing significance of
the merchants in the social and political life of the different European nations,
though not to an equal degree. It also refers to a certain set of policies followed
by the different nation states of Europe. It led, from the mid 18th century onwards,
to the development of industrial capitalism in Europe and later in North America,
and to a well developed system of colonialism in the rest of the world.
2.2 MERCANTILISM: DEFINITION AND

FEATURES
There was a link between expansion of Europe and mercantilism. If one looks at
the history of economic thought it is possible to trace the parallels between
economic ideas of the time and the policies. Just as there were some distinctions
26
between policies in the different States but also certain commonalities that allow European Colonial Expansion
and Mercantilism
us to characterize those policies as mercantilist and to link them with a certain
body of thought, so also despite differences in emphasis and advocacy of policies
there are certain commonalities in the economic thought of the period under
study that allow us to characterise these ideas as mercantilist. The criticism and
theoretical critique of these ideas and polices emerged towards the middle of the
eighteenth century and came to be known as laissez faire thought and policies.
The contrast in policies between the two can be broadly characterized as that
between monopoly and control of trade and free trade. Both are reflections of
different phases of the merging and grown capitalism, from distinct perspectives
within the broad interests of capital accumulation.
Capitalism required that what is produced should be transformed into

commodities: that is, products that can be sold in the market and even labour
itself, so that product can be sold at a price higher than it cost to produce it. This
required a change in the system of production and organisation of the production
process. This did not happen all of a sudden, it was a gradual historical process,
as we can now see, although the pace of change at that time in history was faster
than it had ever been before.
Not all of the changes involved in the process could emerge from within the
existing stage of economy, although a large number of them did. But the more
enormous impact at that stage was that which came from the external stimuli, i.
e., from trade and commerce, which then became part of the production process.
It is this stage that we are focussing on in this Unit, which can be called
mercantilism.
2.2.1 Mercantilist Ideas

Because the large influx of gold and silver from the “New World” (South America)
and the trade in luxury goods from the East (that incrementally became “unequal
exchange” began to change the fortunes of the European Nation States, and to
some extent their populations (for better, worse or just different), this became a
noticed phenomenon. The thinkers and commentators of the time attributed this,
correctly, to the increasing and widespread operation of the merchants and the
manufacturers. The merchants were also now investing in the production process
as well. These economic thinkers then began to advise the existing kings and
governments and to influence legislative actions that might promote the interests
of their nation, as they saw it. They were, of course, more concerned with the
growth of economies and government’s revenues rather than the economic health
and the prosperity of the population, arguing that general wealth in the region
will percolate and contribute to the prosperity of all.
Their basic assumption, therefore, was to identify economic health of their nation
with wealth, and to identify wealth with money or circulating capital that can be
used to further increase wealth. They also, in general, believed that this can be
brought about only by the might of the State, that is the king acting in favor of
regulating the economy with this aim as purpose. Hence, their almost universal
reliance on state legislation and creation of the enabling laws. The motivating
idea, then, was that more wealth should flow into the country than out of it.
Exports must exceed imports and colonial conquests must be made to serve these
interests. The balance of trade must ensure this, and the politics or government
policy must be directed towards this end. 27
Rise of the Modern West-II What did the governments need to do? According to these thinkers, they needed
to protect the economy, stimulate demand and supervise production. They also
needed to regulate commerce, devise and implement taxation policies and other
regulations on a scale throughout the State. They needed to protect the interests
of merchants and manufacturers against competition from other countries.
While these were the basic ideas, there were distinctions among writers, and in
the differing emphases within different countries. There were also distinctions
between early mercantilist ideas that influenced policies in fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries, and the seventeenth century mercantilism, leading to more sophisticated
ideas in early 18th century when these ideas began to be questioned and critiqued
in favor of advocacy of free trade and different indices of measuring wealth.
2.2.2 Mercantilist Policies and Changes in the Nature and

Organization of Trade
During the years from late sixteenth century to the first half of the eighteenth
century, most of the European monarchs were successful in abolishing the local
tolls and taxes of the town or village level, to replace them with a taxation policy
that brought revenues to the kings. They also created custom barriers for goods
to be brought into their kingdoms by foreign merchants or those manufactured
outside their kingdoms. The taxes to be paid in these cases not only increased the
taxation base of the monarchs and the central administration, but also enabled
the products of one’s own country to compete on more favorable terms than
those from other countries. Ships, ports, roads and bridges were built across the
length and breadth of these kingdoms with the main purpose of encouraging
trade.
There were changes in the organization of trade. Long distance trade meant greater
risks and investments, which were met by the formation of trading companies,
investments in them by merchants and encouragement and protection by the
states. Separate trading companies were formed by nations and granted monopoly
of trade over areas of political control, thus creating the basic organizational
structures for establishing direct linkages between politics, colonization and trade
expansion. These companies were to take on important administrative functions
as the eighteenth century dawned, and played a transitional role in the eventual
direct rule over other continents by the European powers.
This resulted in a shift in the balance towards international trade which increased
in volume from the first decade of the eighteenth century, although in the
seventeenth century it was still the local and regional trade within European
continent that was the most important. But as Koenigsberger has pointed out,
this refers to the volume of the trade: in terms of value, it was the transoceanic
trade that brought more revenues or involved larger investments. Spectacular
fortunes were made on the basis of a trade ‘dependent on a huge and growing
European demand for tropical and sub tropical goods’ (Koenigsberger, p. 174),
as well as through the luxury items and fine cloth and artifacts of the Eastern
world.
The items for trade consequently expanded in the seventeenth century, being
taken over by these companies. From the fabled spice trade the products now
included coffee, tea, potatoes, maize, tomatoes, tobacco, and then sugar. Slaves
became an important commodity in the 17th century. Coffee and tea houses began
28
to be part of the urban scene in Europe. Tea was imported directly from China. European Colonial Expansion
and Mercantilism
Sugar was now used by others not just the elite. In fact these commodities,
including slaves, became linked with plantation economies in different parts of
the world, managed and profited from by the colonial western powers, and brought
about significant changes in the production system, making merchant capital
integral to capitalist production (quite distinct from the slave economies of the
ancient world). Cotton cloth from the Indian subcontinent was already significant
item of trade. It was only the mill-made cloth after mid-18th century that was to
reverse the trade in this item.
Also, already through the 17th century, the Europeans in the East began to take
over a significant volume of the local trade through the Indian Ocean and China
Sea, and “with profits made in this trade they paid for the exports of the of Asian
goods to Europe.” Later, from mid-18th century, they were, through the
companies, able to derive the right of revenues, and buy the goods from this for
export and profit. The systematic ‘drain of wealth’ from other continents to Europe
and for the benefit of the European states and of the emerging bourgeoisies in
these states was pervasive in the seventeenth century and integral to the
mercantilist policies. Some state-owned manufactures were also set up in these
countries, and ship-building grew in this period. Monopolies were granted in
several states even in the sphere of mining and manufacture.
2.3 MERCANTILISM IN EUROPEAN COUNTRIES

The seventeenth century was mainly the era of The Dutch Republic, England
and France. Amsterdam was the nerve centre of the now well established world
economy. In this section we will discuss the development of mercantilism in
some important European countries of this period.
2.3.1 The Dutch Republic

The seventeenth century was the golden age for the Dutch economy, based
primarily on its preeminence in trade, with Amsterdam as the major port in Europe.
Its merchant fleet tripled during the seventeenth century, accounting for about
half of Europe’s shipping. Grain and fish from Amsterdam, rye and wheat from
Poland and East Prussia, iron produced in Sweden, salt, wine and other
commodities, the Dutch brought into their ambit a range of commodities and
nations, including the West indies, brazil, Japan, South-East Asia and West
European coast, apart from France, Spain and the mediterranean. They also
established the trading company settlements in India, Ceylon and Indonesia.
Amsterdam also became home to well-established bills of exchange, banking
and credit system, and a canal system that allowed boats to reach almost the
warehouses of merchants.
As compared with France, there was no obsession with bullion or increasing the
quantity of gold and silver gain through trade. Wealth was measured in terms of
the quantum of actual goods traded, in advances in ship building and evolving
financial institutions required for the increased commercial activity of the 17th
century. Commercial revolution, i.e., gain through buying and selling was more
significant than regulating industry, although the Netherlands region was among
the first to build industry after the Italian states in the sixteenth century. Despite
less emphasis on protectionism, however, in the colonies the Dutch did institute
29
Rise of the Modern West-II monopolies. The Interests of Holland, a treatise penned by John de Witt in 1662
reflected their mercantilist stance. Because of the greater dependence on
international trade, regulation of industry was considered a hindrance by them.
Since the Dutch followed and were the first to ride over Spanish and Portuguese
monopolies in trade, they preferred freedom for a time until the end of the 17th
century when England and France posed serious challenge. Their preeminence
remained until subjugated by naval warfare by France and England.
2.3.2 England
In England the conflict between King and Parliament also involved control over
resources, but did not have a detrimental impact on economy. In fact England
forged ahead of other nations towards the second half of the seventeenth century
and the first half of the eighteenth century. She was among the first nations to
enact mercantilist legislation. The forms differed over this period, from regulation
of domestic industries and manufacturing activities and a concern with balance
of trade and commerce till the first half of the 17th century to navigation laws
and colonial regulation in the second half.
There was a consistent policy of reducing imports and increasing exports. In

1581 itself the Parliament forbade the export of bullion, and the Tudor laws
made it mandatory for English goods to be shipped in English vessels, while
those brought by foreign ships had to pay higher duties. Through such laws trade
was made more favorable for England within English territory and in the goods
that England traded. In 1600 Queen Elizabeth issued a charter creating the East
India Company, leading to subsequent acquisition of trading posts in India, in
the Indian Ocean in general and in Persia. Thomas Mun wrote several treatises
arguing in favor of mercantilist policies, and the significance of a favorable foreign
trade for the general wellbeing of the nation. These were titled Discourse on
English Trade with the East Indies and England’s Treasure by Foreign Trade.
The first of several Navigation Acts was passed in 1651 that enabled England to
dominate trade in the neighboring regions and soon this became a standard
mercantilist practice by all European nations in and around areas of their control.
This was accompanied by imposition of tariffs on imports which also became a
standard practice, leading to numerous what came to be known as tariff wars
through centuries. And as the 18th century advanced there were increasing
regulations in the colonies too, which led to wars among the European powers in
the colonies as well, for example in India, and expansion of navies and building
of naval ships for warfare.
2.3.3 France
It is widely acknowledged that ‘mercantilism provided the financial basis for
absolutist France.’ (Merriman, p.275) The chief Minister of Louis XIII, Richelieu,
inaugurated mercantilist policies in a systematic manner in France, preferring to
stimulate economic growth through royal edicts. He emphasized commerce in
comparison with agriculture and stressed the importance of naval power. The
main architect of the French mercantilist policies was, however, Jean Baptiste
Colbert, the Minister for Finance and Economic matters under King Louis XIV.
He persuaded the King that the main contenders for the markets of the world,
that comprised of trade in about 20,000 ships owned mainly by the Dutch, were
obviously the Dutch, but also the English and the French. A Code for Commerce
30
was drawn up, he was determined that France should outgain Spain as the gainer European Colonial Expansion
and Mercantilism
of gold and silver, considered the main index of wealth by mercantilists, and
insisted on protectionist measures for French industry. As compared to England,
regulation of industry was much greater in France, encompassing a whole range
of commercial items and manufacture. For the French to emerge as the strongest,
it was necessary to take some significant steps, among which the most important
was national tariffs. These tariffs were implemented by Colbert in 1664 and
1667, the first set directed mainly against the Dutch and the second against the
English trade. It also led to wars against these countries, in Europe and
subsequently other areas of the world.
This was accompanied by the formation of French trading companies for the
countries of Europe, and in the Baltic and the Levant regions, but the earliest and
the most significant were the East India and West India companies established in
1664, and for Africa and parts of North America. These were granted monopolies
for colonial trade in the respective areas that that they operated in.
Tolls were abolished within France and collections by the Centre thereby
increased. It is estimated that as compared to the one fourth earlier, four fifths of
the collections came into the royal treasury, which, apart from other things, enabled
the state to pursue an active economic and colonial interests. Some state-owned
manufactures were also established.
In this period initiative was also taken to build four new naval ports and a waterway
between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.
2.3.4 Other Countries

Spain and Portugal that had been the first to initiate control over commerce and
silver and gold and the first also to take over land in South America, continued
with these policies through the 17th century, although they were left behind in
competition with other European powers, in terms of volume, scale and value as
the seventeenth century advanced.
Since there was an intrinsic link between mercantilism and absolutism, Prussia,
Austria and Russia had evolved policies that ensured control over economy. In
Prussia, it was necessitated by the devastation of the Thirty Years War
(1618-48), after which the State had to play a major role in economic development.
In both Prussia and within the Austrian region that comprised the German states,
it was the state that conducted the mercantilist policies, although given their lack
of access to the sea and general late decline of feudalism, there was a chronological
time lag between western and eastern Europe, and the institution of serfdom
continued to hamper growth of a bourgeois society and merchant capital in the
17th and early 18th centuries. In Russia, it was under Peter that the State, in a
policy of westernization, took over promotion and organization of manufacture,
including ship building. But here what were similar to mercantilist policies were
based on the institution of serfdom and a firm alliance with the landed aristocracy.
Merchant capital and the bourgeoisie remained weaker than in Western Europe.
Although Russia became a powerful absolutist State, it remained an Autocracy
in an age when new social forces were gaining in strength in Western Europe
and the role of merchant capital had brought sweeping changes in economy.
Sweden also attempted mercantilist policies during this era.
31
1) Give a definition of mercantilism. Write a brief note on the development of
mercantilist ideas.
.......................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................
2) Give an account of the development of mercantilism in the Dutch Republic
and France.
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.......................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................
2.4 THE NATURE OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION

The nature of what has been termed as ‘European expansion’ was deeply
influenced by the interests of the monarchical states and their economic policies.
Mercantilism, because it entailed protection of economic interests, brought the
European powers not only in conflict and competition with each other, but also
necessitated control and hegemony over areas that were being traded with and
the resources that promoted and created profit for the states or for the merchant
companies which ultimately contributed to the benefit of state revenues.
European expansion was, first and foremost, an expansion in the areas and items
of trade, as mentioned above. It is not that the 16th century explorations had not
brought new areas within the fold of European trade. In the 17th century, new
European national states challenged the supremacy of the older empires of
Portugal and Spain, new areas were opened up for trade and exploitation of their
resources, and transoceanic trade assumed a transformation, whereby goods could
be bought and sold in a second country from where new items could be bought
and sold in a third country. Thus, we see beginnings of circular trade patterns
involving the areas that ultimately became colonies in later times. To give an
example of India, monopoly of trade enabled the East India Company to buy
cheap in India, while competitors were kept out, and conquests prevented Indian
traders from participating in the same trade as well. Opium from India was taken
to be pushed on the Chinese, and tea taken from China to be promoted and sold
in India, in Europe and in North America, also a colony. Ultimately, the pattern
of agriculture itself was made to change, forcing people in the controlled areas
in the non European world to produce items that were lucrative to trade and
benefited the western power that controlled the trade in a particular area. By the
latter half of the 18th century even revenue rights were snatched and the goods
to be traded were brought not from their own resources but from the economies
that were becoming colonized.
32
In the 17th century, more so than in the 16th, trade became synonymous with European Colonial Expansion
and Mercantilism
plunder. Vast areas were destroyed across the world for profits of the powerful
European nations and the merchants and the nascent bourgeoisie involved in
manufacture. West Indies, East Indies, the continents of Africa, South America,
North America, and Asia were subjugated to this plunder that took shape under
mercantilism. Huge extraction of surplus and drain of wealth were systematized
during what has been euphemistically called the ‘commercial revolution’.
Colonies and the flow of wealth from colonies to the European country concerned
held a foundational place within mercantilist thought. The 17th century is
significant for the creation of legislation that transformed newly acquired
conquests into colonies. They were sources of raw materials that could be traded
and in the later century used for their own manufactures, colonies were also
markets for goods, not necessarily from their own country, but could be from
another territory under their control, these territories were also important transit
points.
2.5 MIGRATIONS, SETTLEMENTS, AND

MERCANTILISM
Within this one-sided relationship between the European powers and the non-
European world there was considerable diversity in the way Europe interacted
with this world. This is apparent most visibly in the patterns of migrations and
settlements that took place during this period.
There was more wealth in the tropical regions, which were also more densely
populated and capable of resistance. In the more temperate regions the population
was sparse and riches more in the form of raw resources and land than production.
The expansion of Europe manifested itself differently in these two kinds of

regions. The nature of colonization of these areas was distinct, although
exploitation was equally intense. For example, Europeans, particular the English
went as opportunity seekers for gold, land and new occupations to North America,
in the process decimating and subjugating the original inhabitants. Similar was
the case in Australia and parts of South America. These became controlled by
the new migrants and settlers, their settlements becoming the focus of development
and economic initiatives. There was a steady change in demography. In these
areas the European emigrants far out numbered those in Asia and Africa, for
example, while the native populations in these areas declined or was decimated.
Moreover, from 17th century onwards, most expansion of European population
was within their own imperial systems, i.e., English and the French in their
respective areas of control in North America, the Portuguese in Brazil, and so
on.
In Asia and Africa, emphasis was on obtaining trading outposts, control of local
trade, rights of revenue, financing and taking control of production, and creating
local allies. In China, a number of powers ventured and wrested specific areas of
control. In India, the Dutch, Portuguese, the French and the English established
their bases, and eventually the British succeeded in gaining control. Direct rule,
however, came much later. African continent was a similar case of competition
and control by the various European powers, the English, the Dutch, and the
French. The Russians found their way to the Pacific and across Central Asia.
33
Rise of the Modern West-II In the Americas, apart from the white settlers in all these lands, a very huge
chunk of emigrants consisted of Africans, transported as slaves, changing the
demography of many of these regions through the 18th century and later.
2.6 PLANTATION ECONOMIES

Cutting across these regions was the problem of labour where the new settlers in
the Americas or the agents of the companies or the traders in other parts of the
world invested in direct production. Plantations were formed, directly owned
and supervised by them, generally for the production of one crop, which was a
commercial item for sale. It developed first in the Southern states of North
America, the settlements in what came to be known as colonies where the shortage
of labour was met by utilizing slave labour. These plantations were the foundation
of the economies of these colonies.
By the late 16th and 17th centuries, they were already visible in Brazil, the
Caribbean region, North and South America, and towards the beginning of the
18th century in other parts of the world, including India (tea, for example),
although they became a major feature only since the 18th century, apart from
North America where tobacco, cotton and other such items were already grown.
This gives an idea of the tremendous growth of such ventures. Plantations were
started also in Ireland, after the Irish rebellions of the 16th and 17th centuries.
These plantations were run either through indentured labour or slave labour,
usually slave labour where indentured labour was costlier to procure. In North
America and the western hemisphere slave labour was introduced quite early in
the history of plantations. Indentured labour continued to be profitable in many
colonies of the eastern hemisphere.
2.7 SLAVERY AND SLAVE ECONOMIES

Slavery and slave labour were integral to the expansion of Europe and the growth
of a world economy. Both European and African traders participated in an
enterprise that made humans into slaves and into commodities, i.e., items for
sale. Slaves contributed to this expanding commercialization of economy by
both being commodities and creators of surplus through expropriation of their
labour, in the plantations, as domestic labour and in many other ways. Their
conditions of work were inhuman, a fact that is well known, but the immense
scale of the profits earned through them has been investigated and assessed only
by the research of the last few decades.
From the 16th century itself the Spaniards had begun to import African slaves to
substitute for the American Indians, the slave trade increasing by bounds after
sugar, tobacco, and later cotton assuming importance as items of trade. And most
European powers, traders and ports were involved in this: Spaniards, Portuguese,
Danes, the Dutch, and the English. The earliest slaves were also convicts
transported for labour to far off lands.
The first shipment of slaves from Africa was as early as 1503 to the West Indies
sugar plantations. Both England and France competed here and West Indies was
significant for the trade of both these countries. Total import of slaves into all
British colonies between 1680 and 1786 is estimated to be over 2 million.
34
European Colonial Expansion
2.8 BANKING AND FINANCE and Mercantilism
Although the practice of credit was prevalent in international trade from the late
medieval period and deposit banks were also prevalent in the 16th century, it
was in the 17th century that banking and finance became a well developed
business. Netherlands led the way. The Exchange Bank of Amsterdam was
founded in 1609 and ‘became the centre of a vast network of credit transactions
by merchants trading in the Baltic, the Mediterranean, or the Indian Ocean and
the China Sea.’ Other cities and countries also set up banks, including England.
The Bank of England founded in 1694 was able to rival the Bank of Amsterdam
during the 18th century. These were the most important government-backed banks,
although a number of commercial private banks were also established. (See
Koenigsberger, p.179-180). The joint-stock company became the most acceptable
form of company organization. Speculation and buying of company shares began.
Thus, the 17th century was crucial in developing the structural instruments that
were to become the hallmark of capital management.
2.9 MERCHANT CAPITALISM

While most historians are agreed on the general impact of the era of mercantilism
and its policies in accelerating the end of feudalism, there are disagreements on
the extent and ways in which merchants and transoceanic trade might have
constituted the transition to industrial capitalism. The major debates are between
those who emphasize the role of markets and others who argue that the crucial
factor in the transition was the transformation of economic and social relations
within the economies of the European powers.
In general, this period contributed to the creation of accumulation of capital in

the hands of the merchants and revenues in the state exchequers. A major portion
of this accumulated capital was reinvested in further increasing profits from trade
and commerce. In other words, it remained circulating capital and still outside
the realm of the manufacturing economy.
But there is a distinction between the beginning and the end of this span poised
for the first industrial revolution. We have already spoken of investments in
plantations that changed the structure of the economies and mode of producing
the crops for market. Quite a substantial part of the drain of wealth from the
colonized economies went into changing the face of economies in Europe. This
was a form of primary accumulation that injected huge investments in the growing
manufactures in Europe, or in mining or even in transforming the small putting-
out system where the intervention by merchants in the form of providing raw
material or taking over the finished products changed the equations of this small
economy with the larger national or international economy. In some European
countries there was a wider gap in terms of time between what can be termed
merchant capitalism and industrial capitalism. In other countries the gap was
much shorter, and in all these countries there were other avenues from within the
manufacturing process that surplus for further investment came. In all cases the
problem of markets, of labour and dispossession of the small producers had to
take place before full-fledged capitalist system could emerge. Mercantilism or
merchant capitalism was one significant factor, particularly in the centrality of
the emphasis on favorable balance of trade and colonization of non European
35
Rise of the Modern West-II economies. The super profits make that obvious. This is irrespective of whether
it is given the independent status of merchant capitalism or a transitional period
that eventually needed to be dismantled in favour of policies that did away with
monopolies that became a hindrance to free trade and more super profits and a
new stage in world economy and its structures within nations.

1) Discuss the nature of European expansion in the late seventeenth and early
eighteenth centuries.
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.......................................................................................................................
2) Write a note on the varying pattern of migration and settlement from Europe
to other parts of the world.
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2.10 LET US SUM UP

In economy, as in polity, the 17th and first half of the 18th century, constitutes a
distinct period. It was a period when trade helped restructure the European
economy. The fast development of the world economy was as much based on the
unity of its parts as competition, a hallmark of developing capitalism. This period
saw the dismantling of the tolls and local taxes that characterized the late medieval
economies and survived through the 16th century, to be replaced with systems
that ensured unification within nations through systems that ensured revenues
for the Kings. It was characterized by monopolies and competition, with state
regulation and freedom to pillage. It saw the birth of the modern colonialism and
its instruments. It paved the way for industrial capitalism and changed the balance
between the European and the non European world.

EXERCISES
1) Base Your Answer on Section 2.2 and Sub-section 2.2.1
2) See Sub-sections 2.3.1 and 2.3.3
1) See Section 2.4
2) See Section 2.5
36
European Colonial Expansion
UNIT 3 RELIGION, DIVERSITY AND and Mercantilism
DISSENT*
Structure
3.0 Objective
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Reformation and Counter-Reformation
3.2.1 Protestant Reformation
3.2.2 Counter-Reformation
3.3 Dissenters and Non-Conformists on European Continent
3.4 Radical Reformation in England
3.5 Religious Diversity and Religious Tolerance
3.6 Let Us Sum Up
3.0 OBJECTIVES
After reading this Unit, you will be able to learn about :
the religious situation in Europe in the wake of the Protestant Reformation
in the sixteenth century,
the proliferation of numerous religious sects which gave rise to new meanings
about religion, society, and politics; and
the contribution of these sects towards development of some modern ideas
about religion and its role in society.
3.1 INTRODUCTION
From the early-sixteenth to mid-seventeenth century, Europe was engulfed in a
series of religious strife with both Protestants and Catholics of various kinds
trying to prove their religious legitimacy, culminating in the long-drawn and
devastating Thirty-year War (1618-48) involving most of European countries on
either side of religious divide. However, this period was also innovative in
religious sense. A large number of religious sects emerged throughout Europe
putting forward ideas which could not be accommodated within established
religions. This amazing religious fermentation has been termed as ‘radical
Reformation’ as most of these sects derived their initial inspiration from the
Protestant Reformation. It is about these ideas and movements that we are going
to deliberate in this Unit.
3.2 REFORMATION AND COUNTER-

REFORMATION
The evolutionary graph of religion in Europe was rudely disrupted in the sixteenth
century owing to the Protestant revolt against the established orthodoxy of Roman
Catholic Church. Both at the levels of doctrines and daily rituals, the Protestant
* Resource Person : Prof. S. B. Upadhyay 37
Rise of the Modern West-II Reformation sought to make radical changes. On its part, Catholicism responded
by initiating a reform process which was internal and relatively controlled. The
content and sources of Catholic teaching were sought to be purified on the
initiative of Catholic religious leaders themselves.
3.2.1 Protestant Reformation

The greatest religious dissent in early modern Europe was initiated by Martin
Luther on 31 October 1517 when he questioned the Catholic Church on the issue
of the ecclesiastical sale of indulgences by pasting his ‘Ninety-five Theses or
Disputations on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences’ on the wall of the church
in Wittenberg in Germany. He refused to recant his ideas and stood up to the
Pope in Rome. In 1520, Luther published three treatises putting forward even
more radical ideas about reform. In opposition to the Catholic Church, he asserted
that the faith was the most important, if not the only, thing which could save the
soul. Out of the seven sacraments recommended by the Roman Catholic Church,
Luther retained only two – baptism and Holy communion. He rejected penance,
monastic life, celibacy, poverty, and obedience as preached by Rome for
attainment of salvation. Instead, he focused solely on faith which he believed
was sufficient to save a sinner. This new reform movement permitted even the
clergy to marry and lead a family life besides attending to priestly duties. By this
move the distinction between the priest and the common people was eliminated
paving the way for the ‘priesthood of all believers’. The challenge to the papal
authority, rejection of priestly mediation, and handing over of interpretive
authority to the common believers were the forms of radical dissent which the
Reformation initiated.
Luther appealed to the German princes and the people to support him in his
quest for freedom from the Papal control from Rome and exhorted them to reform
the churches in their territories. He found many adherents for his ideas among
the clergy, common people, and princes in Central Europe. Protestant Reformation
now began spreading to many non-German areas threatening the religious and
political establishments. A significant number of people in many regions of Europe
began adopting these ideas and some princes also were converted to Protestantism.
In 1524, the first Protestant leagues were formed between some states. The
governments in these states moved against Catholicism, abolished convents and
monasteries, and turned them into schools and hospitals.
In Switzerland, Protestantism was preached initially by Huldrych Zwingli (1484-

1531) who, in line with Luther, preached salvation through faith alone. He also
emphasized that only the scriptures should form the basis of religious activities.
In some respects, Zwingli went beyond Luther by his aggressive iconoclasm and
in his belief that the poor were the real image of God, as well as in his views on
Holy communion. This was the second most important trend within Protestantism.
The third most important stream of thought within Protestant Reformation was
Calvinism which emerged in the 1540s. Jean Calvin (1509-1564) became active
in France as the leader of Reformation. He later moved to Geneva to avoid
persecution at home. Calvin, like Luther, severely criticised the sacrament of
penance, but, unlike Luther, he did not emphasize on faith but rather on obedience
to God’s will as a way to salvation. In his treatise, Institutes of the Christian
Religion, Calvin put forward his famous doctrine of predestination. According
38 to him, some persons were chosen by God for salvation, while the majority were
damned. Calvin also rejected many of the deeply-held Christian beliefs about Religion, Diversity and
Dissent
poverty. He asserted that accumulation of wealth for the good of the community
was not bad. However, wealth should be accompanied by sober life. With such
views, Calvinism represented a new strand in Protestantism which later became
known as the ‘Protestant ethic’. Calvinism spread to many areas in Europe and
became quite influential, particularly in Switzerland, France, the Netherlands,
Scotland, and England. Owing to its importance in terms of ideas and influence,
Calvinism has also been called as the ‘Second Reformation’.
3.2.2 Counter-Reformation
Faced with a serious threat to its authority, the Catholic Church tried to prepare
its response to Protestantism as well as to reform itself from within. The Council
of Trent, convened in 1545, eliminated the possibility of reconciliation by
completely rejecting the Protestant ideas as heresies and anathema, and rejected
the idea of marriage of clerics. It reaffirmed faith in the seven sacraments, the
Eucharist, and in the authority of the Pope and the bishops, in the purgatory and
power of indulgences.
The most aggressive response to Protestant Reformation was offered by the

formation of the Jesuits. The founder of this group was Ignatius of Loyola (1491-
1556), a Spanish nobleman, who wanted to re-establish Catholic orthodoxy
throughout Europe through ‘spiritual conversion’. He founded the Society of
Jesus which was given official sanction by the Pope in 1540. The Jesuits
underwent rigorous training and became aggressive crusaders for Counter-
Reformation and they grew in number. They had contributed enormously in
successful re-conversion of Poland to Catholicism, and in the success of the
Catholic Reformation in Austria and German-speaking areas. They also went for
preaching to various parts in the world.
The increasing tension between the states owing allegiance to Catholicism and
Protestantism respectively was brought down by the Peace of Augsburg in 1555
which put forward the compromise that the religion of the ruler in respective
states of the Holy Roman Empire would be the religion of the people and those
not willing to adhere to it might migrate to other areas. In 1600, in Europe there
were about 42 million people in regions identified as Catholic, about 28 million
people under some form of Protestantism and about 28 million in the areas of
Orthodox churches. During this period, loyalty to a particular Church signified
loyalty to the reigning monarch.
Although some peace was achieved in 1555, the tension between the two broad
Christian religions continued to simmer. The respective push for influence on
the people and princes often brought them into conflict. Many small-scale
conflicts, sometimes accompanied by a lot of brutality, kept occurring
intermittently. The ambitions of political authorities also played a role in
exacerbating the tension. In 1618, this long-drawn tension flared up into a long
war – the Thirty-year War (1618-48) – which involved most of Europe and proved
to be very devastating. Finally, the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) established a
settlement whereby religious and political influences were territorially demarcated
until the French Revolution.
By the late seventeenth century, the broad pattern of association between religion,
state and the population had become marked. Italy, Spain, Portugal, France,
39
Rise of the Modern West-II Ireland, Belgium and much of Eastern Europe were strongly Catholic. England,
Scotland, Holland, Germany, and Scandinavian countries were largely Protestant
of various denominations. Russia, parts of Eastern Europe and parts of the Balkan
countries belonged to the Orthodox Churches.
By the mid-seventeenth century, institutional Protestantism manifested as much

doctrinal rigidity as Catholicism. Lutheranism now became closely identified
with particular political powers. It became quite narrow in its outlook and
discriminated against other Protestant sects such as Calvinism. Even Calvinism
displayed equally strong predilection for absolutism and tyrannical orthodoxy.
The Calvinist Geneva was an example for growing religious rigidity and
submission to political authority.
This period also saw a concentrated attempt by both the Protestants and Catholics
to wean people away from what they described as superstitions. In fact, efforts
were made by the religious and intellectual elite to distinguish between the
orthodox Christianity and the popular ‘superstitious’ versions of it, accompanied
by intense efforts to convince the people about the supposed sinfulness of their
religious belief-systems. Both these major forms of Christianity in Europe
launched massive educational ventures to teach people about their uniform
systems of beliefs and practices. Thus, so far as the popular religious culture,
particularly related to magic, was concerned, the Catholics and Protestants
presented a common front despite their otherwise sharp doctrinal differences.
Although the multiplicity of ideas and affiliations emerged even among the
Catholics in the post-Reformation period, it was among the Protestants that the
variety of ideas and organizations was staggering. There were numerous sects
which emerged within a century of Reformation, all having their own ideas about
Christianity and modes of salvation. It is these reformist sects that we are going
to discuss in the next sections.
3.3 DISSENTERS AND NON-CONFORMISTS ON

EUROPEAN CONTINENT
Although overwhelming majority of Europeans were associated with mainstream
churches, such as Catholic, Lutheran, or Calvinist, there emerged many radical
reformist groups on the margins. Inspired by Protestant revolt, but aware of the
limitations of Protestantism, these marginal groups attempted to put forward
their own ideology and establish their own churches. These religious movements
differed from medieval heterodox sects in their emphasis on individual choice
and voluntary association with the church. They rejected infant baptism, and
believed in adult baptism and self-selection into the religious fold as radically
different from hereditary or imposed religious affiliation. But these movements
were also different from the post-Enlightenment self-selecting liberal churches
in terms of their beliefs in some form of millenarianism and the willingness to
sacrifice one’s life for religious beliefs. Many of these radical sect held apocalyptic
beliefs which implied that the end of the world was near and in which there
would be a victory of the forces of God over the forces of evil.
These small or relatively large groups who professed Christian faith in general
but dissociated from any big established Christian Church may be called as
‘dissenters and non-conformists’. Dissent means doctrinal conflict with orthodoxy,
40
while non-conformism implies deviation from orthodox practice. Such groups Religion, Diversity and
Dissent
were also castigated by the established churches as religious deviants. Clearly,
such terms are relative because it was the norm set by the state churches which
decided the issue of deviance. However, continued and intense religious activities
by these groups resulted in the founding of ‘free churches’ of various sizes in
Europe.
One of the first radical reformist movements to emerge in the wake of Luther’s
revolt in 1517 was ‘Anabaptism’ which endeavoured to thoroughly reconstruct
the Christian community. Anabaptism means ‘rebaptism’ in Greek. Its followers
believed that only those persons could follow the true Christian religion who
knew what it meant in moral and ethical terms and were willing to accept their
duties and obligations. Since it was not possible for the infants to comprehend
the implications of religion, only willing adults should be allowed for baptism. It
was noticed quite early in Germany, Switzerland, and Holland since the early
1520s onwards, in Italy from about 1540, and in Poland since 1565. In 1524, the
Anabaptists rejected the practice of infant baptism and insisted on adult baptism.
By 1525, they had broken from the mainstream Protestant Church. Its idea of an
independent and voluntary church went against the Catholic order as well as
against Protestant conceptualization of a national church. The role of the
Anabaptists in the development of religious dissent in Europe was considerable.
There were many Anabaptist groups which were not uniform in ideology and
organization. However, they advocated a form of congregational organization
because they believed in voluntary membership rather than according to birth or
territory. Propelled by religious thinkers in some parts of Germany and
Switzerland, this sect rejected the emphasis given by both Catholicism and
Protestantism to the community as a whole rather than to individuals. The
Anabaptists believed that the real religious experiences could only belong to the
already saved individuals. Thus, only those who were fully regenerate could
form part of the reformed community through the ritual of the baptism of adult
believers. Because of their subversive views, the Anabaptists faced oppression
both by the established Protestant church and the state. There were many strands
within the broader Anabaptist movement, but two groups became prominent.
The first group were the ‘Mennonites’ who were followers of Menno Simons
and who believed in pacifism and were gathered in reclusive communities in
remote parts of the Netherlands. The second group were the ‘Hutterites’ who
practiced community living on the basis of absolute sharing of all property.
In 1534, an Anabaptist group won in the elections in the town of Munster in

Germany and formed the town government. Thousands of Anabaptists from
various parts of Europe arrived there under the belief that it was the ‘New
Jerusalem’. In Munster, the Anabaptist government confiscated all the property
of Catholic Church, abolished private property, prohibited the use of money and
established a system of barter. Both the Lutheran and Catholic princes in Germany
combined against them, invaded Munster in June 1535, and crushed the
government.
In 1524, a fierce peasant revolt occurred in many German-speaking areas

involving a large number of peasants, supported by many Anabaptists. The leader
of the revolt was Thomas Munzer (c. 1491-1525) who was a priest and who
combined religious reform with social revolution. He strongly spoke against the
Catholic Church as well as against Luther because he believed that both bowed 41
Rise of the Modern West-II their heads before the lay authorities. Luther, in his turn, denounced the peasant
rebels in the strongest possible terms and asked the German princes to take strong
action against them. Both the Catholic and Protestant priests joined together and
with the political authorities to crush the revolt in 1525 when more than 100,000
peasants were killed. Munzer was also captured and brutally killed.
Another sect which radically questioned the established Christian belief was
‘Anti-trinitarianism’ (similar to the later ‘Unitarianism’) which rejected the
mainstream doctrine of the established Churches about the trinity and emphasised
on the sole majesty of God. According to it, the Godhead was a unity and did not
consist of a trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Anti-trinitarian belief
initially arose in Italy, but later shifted to Eastern Europe due to repression. During
the 1560s, they established an Anti-trinitarian church in Poland. It reached to
North America in the seventeenth century. In Transylvania, an Ottoman
protectorate, there developed a full-blown form of Anti-trinitarianism.
On the European continent, the Netherlands served as the hub for radical Protestant
and dissenting groups. A lot of ‘heterodox’ literature, which influenced many
people and sects in various parts of Europe and America, was also published
there. One of the important dissenting movements which was influenced by such
writings was ‘Pietism’ in Germany which was opposed to both Lutheranism and
Calvinism. The Pietists were not interested in theological intricacies and aimed
for a simple creed with devotional dedication. It had strong mystical tendency. It
flourished in Brandenburg (Germany) towards the end of the seventeenth century
with their own university, orphanage, schools, and printing presses.
The origins of Pietism in Germany has been traced to the time between 1604 and
1610 when Johann Arndt (1555-1621) published his ‘Four Books of True
Christianity’. It provided a broad outline of ideological orientation of Pietism.
However, generally the active phase of Pietism is associated with the activities
of a preacher in Frankfurt, Philipp Jakob Spener (1635-1705), when he founded
the ‘Circle of the Pious’ in 1670 and published his tract ‘Pia Desideria’ in 1675.
This tract severely criticised what the Pietists considered as wrong tendencies in
Lutheranism, particularly the absence of practical and active piety. It was during
this time that Pietism was organized as a ‘socially discernible movement that
placed itself in opposition to orthodoxy and brought forth new forms of
ecclesiastical and religious communal life’. To demonstrate their idea of practical
piety, the Pietists actively initiated work in the field of education and schooling.
They sought to create perfect individuals through active inculcation of practical
piety. Their emphasis on ascetic life, promotion of thrift and hard work, opposition
to luxurious life, and anti-state attitudes marked them away from the official
Lutheran Protestantism. The Lutherans resented the preaching of this sect and
open conflict began between Lutheran orthodoxy and Pietism around 1789-90.
‘Quietism’, like Pietism, was an individualist form of religion which was strongly
anti-clerical and with mystical orientation. Its enunciator was the Spanish priest
Miguel Molinos who became known also in Rome and Paris. He was finally
persecuted by Inquisition. Quietism preached ‘annihilation of all individual
activity in the love of God’. Another dissenting sect which had presence in France,
northern Germany and the Netherlands was ‘Labadism’, founded by Jean de
Labadie (1610-1674). The Labadists held the common Protestant views, but they
also believed in equality of sexes and the idea of shared property.
42
Another important heterodox sect, Jansenism flourished in France during the Religion, Diversity and
Dissent
seventeenth century. It was named after its originator Cornelius Jansen (1585-
1638), who was a theologian. Jansenism had combined elements from both
Calvinism and mysticism. It emerged in the context of Counter-Reformation in
France. It was pitched against the Jesuits in France and Spain. The Jesuits, in
turn, attacked it and Jansenism was condemned by the Roman Catholic Church
in 1642. But the Jansenists persisted and received support from important
theologians in France. Although the Jansenists kept seeking legitimacy from the
Catholic Church, many of their tenets were closer to Protestantism, and they
were quite often condemned as Protestants in disguise by their enemies. It is true
that their veneration of the Bible, their theology of justification, and their
indifference towards the Baroque cult of the saints were some of important ideas
resembling Protestantism. Jansenist ideas also had influence on Methodism in
England. Italy, Austria, and the Netherlands also had important pockets with
Jansenist influences.
The non-conformists and dissenters were divided in many sects and groups, but
all these together constituted a minority in European population. Nevertheless,
they made a great impact on the process of modernity. Despite their origins in
Europe, these dissenting Christian sects were influential in various parts of the
world. Individual choice, adult baptism, voluntary membership of a church, mutual
obligation, democratic decision-making, and pluralism were important attributes
cultivated by these dissenters in the process of their struggle against the established
churches.
In the eighteenth century, there was generally a decline in the radicalism displayed
by many sects in the previous centuries. The Enlightenment and finally the French
Revolution made the sects more religiously defensive turning to relatively
traditional forms. During the eighteenth century, there was also a trend towards
secularization and ‘privatization of piety’. The number of people attending the
churches declined and there also occurred a noticeable decline in the number of
wills dedicated to the churches in case of deaths. There was a growing indifference
towards theological issues. By the late eighteenth century, there was a significant
decline in the number of books discussing religious issues. Several European
states now also began to distance from religious establishments and promoted
secularization of polity.

1) What do you understand by Reformation? Discuss the major trends within
it.
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43
Rise of the Modern West-II 2) Write a note on dissenting and non-conformist trends on the European
continent.
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3.4 RADICAL REFORMATION IN ENGLAND

HenryVIII of England broke away from the Roman Catholic Church and
established a separate Church of England in 1534 after Pope Clement VII refused
to grant him permission to divorce his wife. The Church of England followed
Lutheran principles but in practice it was quite conservative compared to the
reformed churches on the European continent. It was very harsh on heresies and
burned several dozen persons at the stakes during the 1530s. At the same time,
however, there was a large-scale dissolution of Catholic monasteries and the
sale of their land.
During the seventeenth century, England emerged as the hotbed of divergent

metaphysical thoughts of reformist kind. Over this century, religious culture of
England was completely transformed. In words of Christopher Hill:
‘In 1603 all English men and women were deemed to be members of the state
Church, dissent from which was a punishable offence. Heretics were still burnt
at the stake, just as suspected traitors were tortured. By 1714 Protestant dissent
was legally tolerated: the Church could no longer burn, the state no longer tortured.
Church courts, powerful in all spheres of life since the Middle Ages, lost almost
all their functions in this century. Under Charles I Archbishop Laud ruled the
country; under Anne it caused a sensation when, for the last time, a Bishop was
appointed to government office’ [Hill 1980: 3]
The prevailing doctrine and practices of the Anglican Church were challenged
by the Puritans who were deeply influenced by Calvinism, particularly its doctrine
of individual predestination. Puritanism aimed at purifying the Church of England
from the remaining Catholic influences. They laid enormous emphasis on
individual’s own comprehension of the scriptures, spiritual devotion, discipline
and sacrifice. Puritanism called for an administrative revolution in the working
of the English Church by completely severing its relationship with the state. It
demanded the abolition of the post of Bishops, their removal from the House of
Lords, and the abolition of Deans and Chapters and Church Courts. Puritanism
preached integrity of the individual, service to the community, and spiritual
equality of all. They repudiated the elaborate church hierarchy and rituals, and
believed that honest study of Bible and integrity of individual’s conscience were
the most important ways to implement God’s will. They also emphasised on
hard productive work in one’s own occupation for the welfare of the broader
community. Moreover, they called for the abolition of tradition of holidays on
saints’ days so that more time was available for people to pursue their productive
work.
44
In the 1570s, several Puritans pushed for separation from the Church of England Religion, Diversity and
Dissent
and established their independent congregations in many places. Repression was
launched against them and they migrated to the Netherlands in 1582. Some of
their leaders, such as Robert Browne (ca. 1550-1633) and Robert Harrison (ca.
1545-1585) believed that instead of being hereditary, the true church should be a
voluntary community of believers who followed God’s commandments, upheld
high moral values, and believed in brotherhood.
However, the majority of the Puritans still remained inside the Church of England
trying to reform it from within. Yet, they were described as ‘non-conformists’
because they did not follow certain accepted practices of the Church. There were
also the radicals within them who eschewed the established churches altogether
and organized ‘gathered churches’ for the believers who were supposed to be
chosen. Fragmentation frequently occurred with more and more radical sects
being formed with lesser number of adherents. Most of them tried to maintain
distance from the temporal authorities. The mid-seventeenth century provided
them opportunity as the state seemed to be disintegrating giving these sects a lot
of freedom of operation. The growth of Puritan sects during the English Civil
War (1642-51) was enormous.
On the whole, Puritanism can be described as a movement of reform and renewal

within the state church in England. The Puritans more rigorously believed in
‘Biblical piety’ and a return to the original Christianity. They also more sharply
distinguished themselves from Catholicism than the adherents of the state church.
In fact, they did not even regard Catholicism as a religion but as a form of priestly
despotism. Puritanism has also been regarded by Max Weber and others as
believing in a special occupational ethic with strong emphasis on manual work
and ascetic and thrifty life which generated a ‘spirit of capitalism’.
There developed another dissenting sect among the English. John Smyth
(1555-1612) formed an independent congregation in 1606 which asserted its
separatism from the established churches. After repression, the members of this
sect shifted to the Netherlands in 1608. They were the Baptists who believed in
voluntary baptism and they formally declared themselves as such in 1609 in
Amsterdam. The theological principles of the Baptism were subversive of the
state church of England. Moreover, if people were free to choose their own church,
the payment of compulsory tithe to the state church (which was 10 per cent of
income) was completely illogical. So, the Baptists as well as others rejected the
demand for tithe and during the Civil War many of them refused to pay.
Now the principle of productive work and the priesthood of all believers were
extended to the clergy in the state church, particularly during the 1640s. It was
argued that the clergy should subsist not on compulsory tithes but on voluntary
contribution of the believers. If this was not enough the priests should do
productive manual work like others. Many sects believed that the priests should
be elected by the congregation and should be paid by voluntary contributions.
Some of them denied the very need for a separate class of priests and claimed
that even layman could preach. They favoured tolerance for all radical protestant
sects.
Another important religious movement, in terms of the number of followers,

was Quakerism. It was founded by George Fox (1624-1691) who was an itinerant
preacher and who had earlier come under the influence of Baptism. He covered
45
Rise of the Modern West-II the whole of England several times in the course of his preaching during which
he was imprisoned many times and even attacked by the hostile mobs. He was
quite successful in uniting a large number of individuals in North England who
were not satisfied with existing churches. Quakers’ main influence in the early
phase was among the agricultural population many of whom had fought against
the landlords during the Civil War. Thus, besides being a radical religious
movement, Quakerism was also a movement of political and social protests.
From the mid-1650s, the Quaker movement spread in other part of England and
it soon surpassed the Baptists in terms of the number of followers.
So far as their ideology was concerned, the Quakers were in line with many
other radical sects existing at that time. They condemned the clergy of the
established churches, rejected the conventional churches as meeting places for
true Christians, and firmly believed in the doctrine of inner light which meant
that the pure and the holy persons could directly receive the inspiration from
God. They also believed that the true believers had the possibility of becoming
Christ-like by the true inner divine inspiration.
The Quakers eschewed the conventional forms of symbolism and behaviour

current in the English society of the day. They refused to take off their hats to
anyone, rejected the usual names for days and months, and refused to swear
oaths. The fear of the Quakers to establish the rule of the pious through violent
means was a factor in motivating the leading classes to bring about the restoration
of the monarchy.
Another group, the ‘Levellers’, emerged as one of the most radical groups
demanding equality based on natural rights. They declared that reason was the
fountainhead of all demands of justice. Later, another group emerged under the
leadership of Gerrard Winstanley calling itself as ‘true levellers’. Later, its
followers were termed as ‘Diggers’ because they believed in economic equality
and engaged in the practice of digging common land. Winstanley completely
rejected traditional religion and wrote against clergy with more vehemence than
any other writer during the Civil War. He very strongly rooted for human freedom
from bondage of all kinds. He wrote that it was the inner conscience of human
beings which would free them from bondage. There was no outside God and,
according to Hill, Winstanley ‘came to use the word Reason in preference to
God’ [Hill 1975: 141].
Another sect was termed as ‘Familists, members of the Family of Love’. Their
leader was Henry Niclaes, born in Munster (Germany) in 1502. The Familists
believed that heaven and hell were to be found in this world and that human
beings could again inhabit this earth in a state of innocence that had existed
before the Fall. They also believed in common property as it was nature which
produced everything. They believed that God was in every man and thus all men
were equal. In England, Familism was spread by Christopher Vittels and it became
a significant sect during the English Civil War. However, it rapidly declined
soon after the Restoration and some of its members joined the Quakers.
Many dissenting sects emerged or derived inspiration from Anabaptism. One

sect named ‘Pilgrim Fathers’ emerged from an alliance between the Dutch and
English Anabaptists. Another sect was called the ‘Fifth Monarchists’ who believed
that rebellion against the existing regime was necessary to establish the rule of
God on earth. Some of the groups such as ‘Ranters’ and the ‘Family of Love’
46
considered orgies as the path towards salvation. In many cases, therefore, these Religion, Diversity and
Dissent
radical sects displayed defiance of political and social norms. Resistance appeared
in many forms. Quite often the followers of these sects refused to pay tithes to
the mainstream churches. Thus, social and political radicalism often accompanied
religious radicalism. The religious freedom available during the Civil War and
under Cromwell was unparalleled in Europe of this period. So, many sects,
particularly the Baptists and the Quakers took advantage of this and expanded
their membership enormously. The Quakers were even perceived as a threat to
the state in their steadfast refusal to conform to religious and social traditions,
and their radical rejection of the clergy, conventional sacraments, and even the
church buildings (which they pejoratively called as ‘steeple houses’). The idea
of the end of the world and the coming of the new world with Jesus Christ as
king was quite popular among many sects.
In England, the restoration under Charles II (1630-1685) did away with the
liberties and rights granted earlier to the religious non-conformists. Several laws
enacted between 1661 and 1665 were instrumental in the persecution of the
Puritans and many other sects. Many groups faced active social and political
exclusion by the state and the parliament forcing many of their adherents to
migrate to the Netherlands and other places in Europe, as well as to North America.
In particular, the Quakers, who had developed enormously during the 1650s,
were vigorously persecuted. In 1662, the Quaker Act was passed which
discriminated against the dissenters in a comprehensive manner.
Christopher Hill summarises this period of retreat as follows:
‘The great period of freedom of movement and freedom of thought was over.
For 20 years men had trudged backwards and forwards across Great Britain, in
the Army, in search of work, in the service of God…. Preaching tinkers returned
to their villages, or like Bunyan went to gaol. Levellers, Diggers, Ranters and
Fifth Monarchists disappeared, leaving hardly a trace…. Fox disciplined the
Quakers: they succumbed to the protestant ethic. Property triumphed. Bishops
returned to a state church, the universities and tithes survived. Women were put
back into their place. The island of Great Bedlam became the island of Great
Britain, God’s confusion yielding place to man’s order’ [Hill 1975: 378-79].
The militancy and millenarianism of the revolutionary years gradually gave way
to introspection among the adherents of these radical sects. The division among
them, then defeat and more divisions led to the realisation that the expected
God’s kingdom did not belong to this world. So, after Restoration quietist and
pacifist tendencies came to the fore among these sects. One revealing example
were the Quakers who turned complete pacifists after an early phase of militant
millenarianism. Facing persecution by the established churches and the allied
governments, many sect members fled to Americas where they found more
suitable atmosphere to spread their message.
The persecution faced by non-conformist sects after Restoration came to an end
after the Glorious Revolution which gave rise to a spirit of tolerance. The
Toleration Act of 1689 ensured, at least in theory, that freedom of religious practice
was granted to the dissenters even though they continued to be excluded from
holding public office and from educational institutions. In the beginning of the
eighteenth century, the number of the followers of the dissenting sects stood at
about six per cent of the population. In this period, there emerged a powerful
religious movement known as ‘Methodism’.
47
Rise of the Modern West-II Methodist movement was founded by John Wesley (1703-1791). It emerged as
an independent movement particularly because of Wesley’s zeal of preaching.
Methodism preached piety, hard work, and thrift. However, its popular appeal
might also have consisted in its openness towards supernatural phenomenon like
magic as well as towards religiously motivated emotionalism. Among its members
the skilled workers predominated forming about half of the number. Initially,
Methodism existed as a reform movement within the established church in
England, but it finally was able to found its own separate church.
Since Methodism was a large mass movement, its role in preventing a

radicalisation of English working classes and people in general was quite
significant. The influence of the French Revolution, which was felt all over
Europe, was not discernible in England due to the conservative influence wielded
by Methodist preachers. In fact, historians have noted the gradual integration of
the dissenters, such as the Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists, Quakers, and
Methodists into the conservative social and political structures in England.
Despite the repression on religious freedom unleashed during the period of

Restoration, many of the radical religious ideas survived. In some form or the
other, these radical sects managed sufficient following to ensure that non-
conformity remained an important aspect of religious, social, and political life of
England. Increasingly asserting their independence, such non-conformist sects
were able to increase their membership in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries because of their flexible institutional structure and their ideology of
voluntary membership and free entrepreneurship. It has been estimated that, in
1711, one out of six persons in London was a dissenter. By mid-nineteenth century,
the number of people attending the non-established or ‘Free Churches’ stood at
20 per cent of the total population in Great Britain. It meant that the number of
people adhering to the non-conformist churches was about one half of the total
church-going population. In Britain, the term non-conformism slowly replaced
the term dissent, and the rising middle classes showed preference towards the
non-conformist sects.
3.5 RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY AND RELIGIOUS

TOLERANCE
The Protestant Reformation was a very comprehensive phenomenon seriously
influencing political, social, and intellectual situation of Europe. Thus, while in
the beginning of sixteenth century, Europe generally appeared to present a uniform
religious picture, by 1600 it stood as thoroughly divided not only between
Catholics and Protestants, but also between various sects, each trying to assert
its independence from the others. Even among the Catholics there occurred certain
rethinking and change in institutional structure. Such sentiments did not remain
confined to the elite but reached down to the popular levels. This gave rise to
diversity in European religious culture at an unprecedented level. A large number
of small and large groups existed openly professing their ideologies through oral
and print mediums. Within Protestant Reformation, diversity was quite common,
but even within Catholicism new forms of diversity emerged. Both Catholicism
and Protestantism at the official levels tried to put down doctrinal diversity through
persecution and repression in collaboration with the political authorities. Yet,
religious diversity continued to flourish in many ways, finally winning by the
48 late seventeenth century. Dissent and non-conformism in seventeenth-century
Europe was characterised by a wide network and it also witnessed a lot of Religion, Diversity and
Dissent
pluralism and fragmentation.
There existed a lot of differences among the reformist sects resulting in some
amount of friction among them. Their opposition to officially supported religions
was quite obviously marked. However, there also existed a great amount of
openness and tolerance in these sects about doctrinal questions than was possible
for the established, state-supported orthodox religions. The atmosphere of
religious toleration consciously or unconsciously created by a large variety of
radical reformist sects provided the opportunity for the Enlightenment to
successfully appeal for religious toleration in general, even tolerance for non-
religious ideas and people.
In England, during the Civil War and soon after, according to Chirstopher Hill,
‘the representatives of the New Model Army, London Levellers and radical
divines, all show a degree of tolerance astonishing for the age’ [Hill 1975: 364].
Some of the groups such as the Levellers had a democratic vision which contained
religious tolerance as a central element. The religious radicals during this period
also believed in the holy spirit existing within each individual and they emphasized
on ‘one’s own experienced truth as against traditional truth handed down by
others’ [Hill 1975: 368].
A great amount of religious conflict took place in Europe resulting in huge loss
of life. But, by the mid seventeenth century, it was commonly decided that
tolerance was the best way of decent survival. It is also possible to find a pattern
of secularisation in the strict dissociation of most of these sects from the state.
They considered religion to be an individual matter which should be kept apart
from the interference from the state.

1) Discuss some of the important radical reformist sects in England.
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2) What is the contribution of the radical religious sects to European modernity?
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49
3.6 LET US SUM UP
European religious life was torn apart by the Protestant Reformation in early
sixteenth century. This resulted in almost continuous religious conflict for more
than a century at various levels. Protestantism was marked by multiple divisions
and was challenged by more radical currents collectively designated as ‘Radical
Reformation’. These radical groups proliferated and were found all over Europe,
many of its members migrating to other parts of the world, particularly to North
America. The dissent and non-conformism of these radical groups continued
until the late eighteenth century when, faced with Enlightenment secularisation
and French revolutionary upheavals, most of them retreated to conservative
positions.
However, radicalism in the religious culture of Europe signified not only

challenges to religious hierarchy but also challenges to social and political
hierarchies. Due to various factors, but also owing to the variety of radical religious
sects, the European religious life became quite diverse and accepted tolerance as
a policy by the late seventeenth century. The diversity and radicalism of these
religious sects also fed into many later secular and egalitarian ideologies.

EXERCISES
1) See Section 3.2
2) See Section 3.3

1) See Section 3.4
2) See Section 3.5
50
Religion, Diversity and
UNIT 4 INTELLECTUAL CURRENTS IN Dissent
SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY
EUROPE*
Structure
4.0 Objectives
4.1 Introduction
4.2 The Intellectual Background
4.3 Scepticism
4.4 Rationalism
4.5 Empiricism
4.6 Political Theories
4.7 Let Us Sum Up
4.0 OBJECTIVES
After reading this Unit, you:
will be able to broadly comprehend the background which resulted in intense
intellectual activities in the seventeenth century;
can understand the important intellectual trends during seventeenth century;
and
will be able to explain the views held by various thinkers in this period.
4.1 INTRODUCTION
The seventeenth century was the period when the intellectual roots of Western
modernity were laid down. It was a time full of intense activities at all levels –
religious, social, political and intellectual. Widespread religious wars devastated
Europe leading to a lot of misery. At the same time, it also resulted in the
reorganisation of socio-religious life and polities. It was also a century full of
intellectual activities. Political, social and philosophical thoughts of various kinds
emerged and spread. In a certain sense, the seventeenth century can be said to be
the herald of European modernity in thought. It is, therefore, important to explore
the variety of intellectual currents in this period.
The three main trends which broadly encompassed the intellectual life of
seventeenth-century Europe were scepticism, rationalism, and empiricism.
Conventionally, there are certain thinkers associated with each of them, but it is
possible to find that the trends were more important than the thinkers. Some
elements of each trend may be discerned in each of the major thinkers of that
period. Here, however, we will study the trend along with the major thinkers
generally associated with them because those particular ideas found better
expression in these individuals.
*Resource Person : Prof. S. B. Upadhyay 51

Rise of the Modern West-II Although here we will discuss the seventeenth-century intellectual history in
terms of certain important trends and some important individuals, it is necessary
to understand that they were not working in vacuum. There existed vast networks
of cooperative thinking stretching all over Europe but also to Americas and certain
parts of Asia. It became a normal practice for intellectuals in seventeenth-century
Europe to participate in networks of correspondence of various dimensions. So,
the ideas generated out of or tested within such networks pointed to their collective
origins rather than the product of a few original minds.
4.2 THE INTELLECTUAL BACKGROUND

The Renaissance, Reformation and the rise of modern science provided the
intellectual background for the emergence of a vigorous and widespread
intellectual culture in seventeenth-century Europe. Whereas the earlier intellectual
movements remained largely confined to the intellectual elites or religious sects,
the seventeenth century witnessed the participation of relatively larger section
of the European population in secular intellectual activities.
The Renaissance was an intellectual movement which began in Italy in the

fourteenth century and from there it spread to almost all regions of Europe. It
continued in various forms for over two centuries leading to enormous changes
in the intellectual culture of Europe. In contrast to the medieval European thought
which had considered God as the centre of the universe, Renaissance thinkers
put ‘Man’ in the centre of the world. This philosophical shift is known as
‘humanism’. This was the most important philosophical contribution of the
Renaissance to human thought. Some other significant developments in
intellectual sphere which were initiated during this period were secularism,
individualism, and realism. All these developments in literature, painting,
sculpture, architecture, philosophy, and political thinking were to have great
influence on the making of the modern West.
Another important development, though in religious sphere, was the Reformation

which reoriented the religious thinking and culture as established by the Catholic
Church. Martin Luther (1483-1546) radically questioned the thought and practices
of the Catholic Church and criticised it for not adhering to the original Christian
doctrines. Luther, Martin Bucer (1491-1551), Jean Calvin (1509-64), John Foxe
(1516-87), and other leaders established what became known as Protestantism.
The scholars associated with the Catholic Church responded to the intellectual
and religious challenges posed by Protestantism. This clash between the two
main Christian sects produced a lot of intellectual ferment which ultimately
influenced even non-religious thought in Europe.
Another very important development during the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries was the rise of modern science which had a much deeper influence.
Modern science began with a quiet reformulation of cosmology. In 1543,
Copernicus published his book on the movement of the stars. His idea of the
earth orbiting around the sun overturned the entire traditional wisdom about the
relationship between the earth and the rest of the solar system. Kepler, Galileo,
and Newton were some of the towering figures within the movement also known
as the scientific revolution. Their ideas about the universe completely unsettled
the received wisdom for a very long time in the West. The rise of modern science
slowly spread the idea that it was the sun, and not the earth, which was the centre
52
of our solar system. Moreover, the universe, of which the solar system was a Intellectual Currents in
Seventeenth-century Europe
part, was infinite in space. Then laws of motion were discovered which conveyed
the idea that movement of the objects in the universe, including that of humans,
was not due to divine will or intervention. Rather such movements had their own
laws which were common to all. The role of divine principles in the working of
the universe was replaced by the ideas of cause and effect which were physical
in nature. These laws could be understood by observation and analysis rather
than by divine revelation. Thus, the new range of scientific discoveries brought
out a huge universe with innumerable patterns which raised severe doubts on
traditional Christian world-view which no longer appeared to tally either with
the newly discovered facts or with the logical reasoning. Truth was no longer
conceived as finite or narrow. All these developments had a lot of impact on the
intellectual culture of modern Europe.
4.3 SCEPTICISM
The seventeenth century began with a deep sense of scepticism towards
traditionally received wisdom. Questions were raised not only towards the broadly
religious (Christian) medieval period, but also towards the Renaissance’s
glorification of the ancients. The second theme acquired greater poignancy during
the late sixteenth century with many intellectuals raising doubts about the
continuing validity of teachings received from the ancient Greeks and Romans.
Jean Bodin and Michel de Montaigne were two important intellectuals who
radically questioned the primacy of the ancients.
In a general sense, scepticism means a doubt or disbelief which is manifested in

our daily interaction. However, as a system of thought it connotes a systematic
expression of uncertainty, suspicion, and disbelief towards any organized
understanding of the world. Scepticism is generally understood as an attitude
which is opposed to dogmatism which follows a certain creed with a claim to
fully know and explain the reality. Elements of scepticism can be found in all
philosophical systems as they doubt the validity of the preceding or rival
philosophies. But at a larger and far-reaching level, scepticism raises doubts
over everything and believes that no final version of reality and truth can be
available in any matter.
Historically, scepticism may be said to have originated in ancient Greek

philosophy. Socrates and later Pyrrho of Ellis (c. 355-275 BCE) have been
considered as the founders of two different versions of scepticism – academic
scepticism and Pyrrhonism. Socrates only asked questions and interrogated
existing thoughts and beliefs. He never provided a system of thought of his own.
Later Arcesilaus and Carneades reinforced what has been called ‘academic
scepticism’. It did not reject all knowledge and tended to rely on probable
knowledge as the whole truth could never be available.
Pyrrhonism in a systematic form can be traced to the works of Sextus Empiricus

(second century CE). His books such as Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Against the
Dogmatists, and Against the Mathematicians set the tone for its later development.
According to Sextus, ‘skepticism was not a philosophy but rather a way of life in
which one opposed all claims to truth with equal opposite claims’ [Laursen: p.
2211]. Sextus argued that the same thing or phenomenon appeared differently
‘(1) to different animals, (2) to different individuals, (3) to different senses, (4)
53
Rise of the Modern West-II to the same sense in different conditions, (5) in different positions or places, (6)
in company with different things, (7) in different quantities, (8) in different
relations, (9) if common or if rare, and (10) to people with different customs or
ways of life’ [Laursen: p. 2211]. Thus, any claim could be countered by equally
valid counter-claim. This situation could lead to suspension of judgement or
decision. He suggested that one could live without taking a stand on the reality
of a phenomenon and could follow one’s own customs and rules.
Modern scepticism originated in the sixteenth century. It came into being due to
big economic and cultural changes. The coming into prominence of ancient Geek
texts in the course of the Renaissance and the exploration of the world by the
Europeans resulting in the gathering of various forms of knowledge led to serious
questioning of European medieval ideologies about universe and society. The
modern science and modern philosophy could emerge only through the process
of scepticism towards all forms of received knowledge. Even further, some of
them questioned the possibility of any certain form of knowledge whatsoever.
By the early seventeenth century, Christian scepticism had acquired a respectable
position, particularly among the Catholic theologians. In general, scepticism had
become so widespread in France that it began to invite fierce attacks from those
who believed that it was undermining faith, and from those who viewed it as
dangerous for knowledge.
During this period, scepticism usefully served to profess a variety of political

positions from radicalism to conservatism. Montaigne and Hobbes both made
use of scepticism for contrary arguments. Thus, while Montaigne’s writings were
at times quite subversive to rulers, Hobbes argued that since it was difficult to
arrive at the truth, it was not possible to agree to a common action by people, and
therefore the ruler should be given powers to define and decide about the truth
and punish those who deviate from his version of the truth.
Descartes began as a total sceptic denying all received knowledge either through
tradition or sense-experiences. The only trustworthy entity was the thinking mind
which was capable of producing confirmed knowledge through a deductive
process. Ultimately, Descartes proposed to achieve the truth. However, if one
were to include the existence of God, thinking mind, and the possibility of
deduction within his thoroughly sceptical methodology, it could inexorably lead
absolute scepticism.
Pierre-Daniel Huet (1630-1721) and Pierre Bayle (1647-1706) were considered

as sceptics. Huet questioned Descartes’ attempt to establish his own system
claiming to know the truth. Pierre Bayle, on his part, criticised all philosophies,
systems of thought, and historical scholarship in his massive work Historical
and Critical Dictionary (1697-1702). Bayle’s works and that of La Mothe Le
Vayer’s On the Small Amount of Certainty in History (1668) reinforced scepticism
in historical field by bringing out a lot of mistakes in historical works. They
argued that a probable reality should be accepted instead of claiming absolute
certainty. Bayle’s Dictionary was one of the crowning achievements of scepticism
drawing on all its strands to elaborately question historical, religious, and
metaphysical knowledge. His scepticism brought to the surface the underlying
defects of these knowledge-forms making certainty almost impossible. Bayle
provided intellectual weapons to the Enlightenment thinkers for their attacks on
received wisdom.
54
Scepticism made significant inroads in the field of religion as well. Spinoza Intellectual Currents in
(1596-1676) and Richard Simon (1638-1712) raised questions about the Bible.
The religious people, in their turn, accused the sceptics of atheism, libertinism,
and immorality. However, scepticism was quite frequently used by religious
leaders and writers to discredit their opponents. Thus, Christians raised doubts
about pagan creeds, the Protestants about Catholics and vice versa, and even
within Protestantism the Lutherans questioned the Calvinists, and so on. The
sceptics pointed out the weak foundation of the knowledge of the rival sects. In
fact, during the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the radical questioning
of rival sects in the Christian world was quite common. Scepticism towards rival
religions and sects suited the religious persons quite well and Blaise Pascal
(1623-1662) in France went so far as to Christianize scepticism by arguing that
it might strongly support Christianity if it was properly understood.
So, it is interesting that scepticism was used by rationalists, empiricists, and

even theologians to question others who were opposed to their own theories.
4.4 RATIONALISM
Rationalism is generally considered as the mode of thinking which emphasizes
that pure reason can function as a source of our knowledge without being restricted
by our concrete experiences. Rationalism conceives of ‘the human cognitive
faculties as distinguished into the pure intellect, the senses, and the imagination.
The pure intellect was the faculty that enabled human beings to gain knowledge.
Rationalism may be defined as the view that substantive truths about the nature
of reality may be derived from the pure intellect alone, operating independently
of the imagination and the senses’ [New Dictionary of Ideas: p. 2009]. Rationalism
explicitly or implicitly maintained it was possible to comprehend the nature of
truth and reality by means of a priori reasoning. This reasoning was independent
of the sense-experiences.
The great Greek philosopher Plato is regarded as the originator of rationalism.

Later, the Christian philosopher St. Augustine synthesized Plato with Christian
thinking. Rationalism emerged as one of the most powerful currents of thought
during the seventeenth century. It was Rene Descartes (1596-1650), a French
philosopher, who formulated the main ideas of rationalism in modern times.
Although rationalism existed since long back and continued later, the period of
the rationalist movement in philosophy is generally considered to be from 1637
(the year of publication of Descartes’ Discourse on Method) to 1716 (when Leibniz
died).
Descartes is widely regarded as first modern philosopher as well as the initiator

of philosophical idealism by giving supreme importance to human mind and
implying that human mind was known prior to any physical object. Starting with
the expression of thorough scepticism towards all existing knowledge, Descartes
systematically criticised the traditional conceptions of the nature and world. After
this radical rejection, he looked for something which was indubitably certain,
which could not be doubted. This he found in the statement ‘I think, therefore I
am’ which he regarded as unquestionable. Beginning with this irrefutable
foundation, and relying on mathematical certainties, Descartes sought to re-
establish the basis of an objective and rational world in philosophy. He proposed
that one should begin with the first principle whose truth is beyond doubt and
55
Rise of the Modern West-II then through deductive method the entire system of knowledge should be
constructed. In his theory of knowledge, experience, induction, experiment etc.
were all redundant. Knowledge could be produced by the deductive reasoning of
the mind.
Descartes’ philosophy is materialist because it endeavours to explain all

phenomena in terms of matter in motion. He thought that all objects, including
human bodies, were made of invisibly tiny particles which were combined and
arranged in various ways. All changes in nature and society occurred due to
motion and consequent re-arrangement among these particles. However, these
changes were not arbitrary but happened according to certain natural laws. The
collision of particles transferred motion from one particle to another and so on.
Descartes’ system is so materialist that he did not even allow for space between
the particles. Thus, the entire Cartesian universe is full of particles without any
empty space.
According to Descartes, all objects possessed two qualities: extension (which

meant their dimensions of length, height and breadth) and motion. Moreover, it
was possible to reduce the world to two essential substances – mind or ‘thinking
substance’ and matter or ‘extended substance’. All objects were made of particles
which were infinitely divisible and there was no vacuum anywhere as the ‘subtle
matter’ filled all spaces. Due the movement of the particles, gaps were created
which allowed the light and heat. Descartes also proposed his laws of motion.
The first law stipulated that the things maintained their present state of rest or
motion until something made them change it. The second law of motion was that
every object moved in a straight line until its course was changed due to encounter
with other objects.
Descartes believed in mechanistic philosophy which proposed a dualism between

nature and God. It presented nature as a mechanical model whose main elements
were matter and motion. The conception of nature as completely inert and of
God as completely above and distinct from nature, and a radical separation of
mind and body were the hallmarks of his philosophy. He believed that his
explanatory system would be able to explain every ‘visible or perceptible’
phenomenon in the universe. However, to many it appeared as speculative because
all explanation was based on the imperceptible movements of invisible particles
which could not be tested.
Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), a Dutch philosopher and follower of Descartes,

developed a system of philosophy that can be said to be the purest example of
rationalism. While his contemporary and preceding rationalists kept believing in
God and religion, Spinoza was accused of being atheist, who thought that it was
not God but human beings whose actions were relevant for society. Like other
rationalists, Spinoza rejected all sensory data of experience as random and
irrelevant for an understanding of the nature of universe. According to him, there
existed just one substance which one might call ‘God or nature’. This was the
substance which then formed essential part of all the things existing in the world.
He also held a determinist view of the world. According to him, the occurrence
of all events and making of all things were pre-determined by God. In fact, even
God as the creator had no independent volition and had to act as per His own
nature to produce the existing things in the world.
56
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716) was a German philosopher and Intellectual Currents in
mathematician. According to Leibniz, the universe possessed a rational order
which was possible to grasp by human minds. In other words, the whole of the
universe was intelligible to human intellect. He developed a theory about an
original substance he termed as ‘monads’ in his book Monadology. He thought
that monads were the only genuine substances in the world. Leibniz disagreed
with Newton’s idea that God occasionally intervened in the process of running
the universe. He believed that universe was also infinite in space and time. Once
set in motion by God, the universe as well as the bodies of the animals and
humans ran like clocks and according to mathematical laws. No further divine
intervention was required for the universe and earth to function.
The rationalist tradition from Descartes to Leibniz suggested, explicitly or

implicitly, that although God existed, the humanity could function without God.

1) Why was scepticism so widespread during the seventeenth century?
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2) Discuss the rationalist philosophy of Descartes.
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4.5 EMPIRICISM
The speculative nature of the rationalist philosophies of Descartes and his
successors received sharp challenge from the empiricist and experimental
philosophy, particularly concentrated in seventeenth-century England. In Europe,
there had been a traditional separation between rationalism and empiricism. While
the rationalism flourished mostly in France, empiricism took roots largely in
Britain.
Empiricism, in its basic form, claims that all knowledge about world derived
from sense perceptions. In other words, our experiences of our surroundings
through five sense organs form the basis for all forms of knowledge. Experiences
form the boundaries beyond which our knowledge cannot reach. Experience alone
is the originator and justification of all knowledge in the world. The knowledge
derived from custom, tradition, revelation, and metaphysical speculations cannot
form the basis of true knowledge. The empiricists reject the knowledge which is
not derived from human sense-experiences and which is not verifiable. 57
Rise of the Modern West-II In Western philosophy, the Greek sophists are considered as the earliest
empiricists. Aristotle is also considered to be the founder of empiricism at a
higher philosophical level. In medieval Europe, Thomas Aquinas is regarded as
an empiricist because he believed in the primacy of senses as the source of
knowledge and who stated that ‘there is nothing in the intellect that is not first in
the senses’. Francis Bacon is considered to be a precursor of empiricism in modern
times. However, John Locke (1632-1704), George Berkeley (1685-1753), David
Hume (1711-1776) in Britain are generally regarded as the most important
empiricist philosophers. In this section, we will consider only Bacon, Gassendi,
and Locke.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
Bacon was among those philosophers in modern times who first propounded a
new experimental philosophy by combining experience and reason. Bacon
rejected arguments based on traditional metaphysics, philosophy and science,
and called for ‘a total reconstruction of sciences, arts and all human knowledge’.
He emphasized on the inductive method which meant proceeding from sense-
experiences and experiments to generalizations. Although he believed in religion,
yet he thought that the real knowledge of the universe would be gathered by
scientific experiments and not by religious revelations. He believed that the realm
of science was different from that of religion.
According to Bacon, all human knowledge derived from the experiences of human
senses. He divided the human knowledge into three categories: knowledge of
God, of nature, of human beings. He believed that without experiences it was
not possible to obtain knowledge and that knowledge could not be produced
solely by the power of mind. However, Bacon gave due weight and authority to
the human reasoning. Without a reasoning mind, the sense-experiences would
not make any coherent knowledge. Thus, a rational mind was important for turning
experiences into various forms of knowledge. Yet, generalization and
systematization on the basis of inadequate data of experience would not be
successful and would remain speculative.
Bacon had an ambitious scheme to devise a new method for the natural sciences.
He presented this in his book New Organon. This method had two parts: one is to
lay the foundation by systematically collecting facts, and the second is that of
construction of knowledge through inductive method. The inductive method was
one of Bacon’s major contributions to scientific understanding of nature. His
method was also supposed to be applicable to the study of human society.
However, he distinguished between the study of God-made universe which was
accessible only through divine revelation and knowledge received from sense
experiences. Nevertheless, he thought that the study of nature (God’s creation)
was not against religion as it was not actually worshipping nature, nor was it for
power or profit. The study of nature and the pursuit of science were basically for
the service of humanity.
Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655)
Gassendi, a French thinker, was known for his bitter controversy with Descartes
over the tenets of rationalism from the standpoint of theoretical empiricism. His
Objections (1644) to Descartes’ Meditations is regarded as his statement on
empiricism. Although Gassendi did not reject the role of mind, he considered
58
sense-experiences as the measure of truth, even if they could not fully explain Intellectual Currents in
the causes of phenomena or nature of objects. The knowledge gathered from
sense-experiences were important in understanding a lot of things in everyday
life. This might not enable us to reach the inner core of nature or things, but it
could certainly give us some glimpse of the truth. Truth is generally hidden behind
appearances, but one could get to it through certain signs which one could perceive
outwardly. For example, the pores in the body are hard to see, but sweat indicates
their presence in our skin. Another example is that the heat of the sun melts wax,
while it hardens clay because the real nature of these two are different. Our
sense-experiences perceive these indicative signs and on the basis of these that
we can reach the truth.
John Locke (1632-1704)
John Locke is generally regarded as the first important empiricist philosopher in

modern times. He was one of the greatest British philosophers and among the
best in the world. During his time, the question about the validity of our knowledge
about society and universe was frequently asked. The sceptics of various kinds
were raising doubts over all forms of knowledge. Even religion was not spared
and it was asked whether one could trust revelation as a source of knowledge,
religion and morality. It became a matter of pressing concern how knowledge
was acquired. Locke also referred to the prevailing intellectual pessimism and
the widespread feeling that certainty of knowledge of any sort was difficult, if
not impossible. Although Locke was not as assertive as Bacon about the possibility
of overcoming sceptical doubts about knowledge through a search for method,
he was definite that knowledge about the world was possible to achieve. At the
same time, he also thought that there were limitations to our knowledge. So,
although there were many things which could be known, there were many others
about which our knowledge could never be complete or reliable.
Locke’s Essay concerning Human Understanding (1690) is regarded as a seminal

text of empiricism which argued in favour of the role of sense-experience and
intuition in the formation of human knowledge. According to him, it was on
experience that ‘all our knowledge is founded; and from that it ultimately derives
itself’. Locke conceded that all levels of knowledge could not be derived directly
from experiences. But he insisted that the beginning of all knowledge is located
in experiences which provide the ‘materials of knowledge’. Then the human
reason works on them and transforms them into finished forms. Thus, what
experiences supply are not knowledge itself but materials of knowledge. Locke
worked out his empiricist theory as follows:
1) All things in the world are concrete and specific.
2) The human sense organs form the basis of all experiences. It is from these
experiences of things that all simple ideas were derived.
3) The human mind is as a blank slate at birth.
4) He differentiated between two types of sense experiences: primary and
secondary. Primary sense experiences related closely to the real world such
as ideas of number, space, place, speed, solidity, etc. The secondary type
was concerned with relatively qualitative things such as speech or sound,
taste, colour, strength, etc. These were not directly and exactly matched to
the reality but were dependent on mind to evaluate and then fix them.
59
Rise of the Modern West-II 5) Simple ideas were joined together by human mind in various combinations
to form complex ideas. Finally, thoughts and theories were dependent on
these ideas which were, in turn, dependent on experiences.
6) However, all knowledge was ultimately confined within the boundaries of

human experiences. Even communicable language could not go beyond
experiences which were responsible for generating ideas in the mind.
4.6 POLITICAL THEORIES

During the seventeenth century, new theories of state and society were formulated
which significantly differed from the earlier ones. There were several philosophers
all over Europe who propounded such political theories. However, here we will
discuss only two main such political theorists – Hobbes and Locke.
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) became famous with the publication of De Cive

(On the Citizen, 1842), Elements of Law (1850), and Leviathan (1851). He is
considered as a hard-core political realist. He sharply differed from the moralists
in regarding the human beings as basically inclined to violence and theft. His
most renowned argument is that the human beings moved from the state of nature
to a developed form of social organization which was controlled by a sovereign
with supreme power over the citizens. The state of nature was a primitive state
where life was ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short’. Quarrel and warfare
were the natural state of things. There was no sovereign power to keep the
competitive ambitions of humans in check, and there were constant fights among
them. There was no idea of justice and the justice of the jungle prevailed among
the humans. In such a state of war against each other, the humans would be
unable to develop materially or culturally. To escape from this constant state of
tension and war, the human beings, in Hobbes’ opinion, made a contract to install
a sovereign who would stop or minimize the wars. Once there was a ruler, there
would be a semblance of order in society.
However, it did not mean that the state was good. In fact, Hobbes thought that all
governments were bad. The sovereigns would also seek more and more power.
Since all persons pursued their individual self-interest and sought power for
themselves, the rule of one person was better than rule of the large number.
Thus, according to Hobbes, monarchy would be better than democracy because
in the former it was one person’s greed and power that society would have to
cope with while in case of democracy, the society would have to pay for a large
number of greedy persons. Even the subjects were no better than the rulers and
they would cheat and break the laws whenever they could. Hobbes stated that
such a behaviour on the part of the subjects was very bad because they should
realize that any kind of sovereign was better than the state of anarchy which was
inevitable if there were no rulers. Hobbes stipulated that only in two conditions
the rulers could be resisted: one when they subjected the ruled persons to death,
and second was when they failed to offer protection to their subjects. In such
situation, the governed should opt for some other sovereign who would work in
accordance with the contract involved in allegiance for protection. The mutual
obligation between the ruler and the ruled was, Hobbes argued, a ‘law of nature’,
and it was the ‘obligation’ of the people to respect the covenant through which
their natural rights were surrendered in exchange for protection. On the other
60
hand, the rulers were also bound by certain duties, the most important being to Intellectual Currents in
protect their subjects.
On the political level, he completely demystified the political system or the state
which he conceived as a human creation with nothing divine in it. The state was
purely a humanly created and operated working machine. He also demystified
human personality. According to him, the human beings were to be considered
in terms of raw passion and desires, which might sometimes be moderated by
the reason and instincts of self-preservation. At no point, however, the humans
were to be regarded as moral or spiritual creatures, but purely utilitarian beings
driven by self-interest and self-preservation. Thus, if left to themselves, as in the
state of nature, the human beings would constantly fight each other. Therefore, a
strong state was needed to avoid or minimize this natural state of war of all
against all. The reigning sovereign should be at the top and it would be he who
should be the ultimate arbiter in social, political, legal or religious disputes.
Spiritual, moral and ethical considerations would play no role in determining the
powers of the ruler. The ruler of Hobbes’ conception was above the laws governing
society. Hobbes’ main thrust was to warn the scholars and the people in general
about the inherent dangers in challenging the existing ruler of whatever sort.
Hobbes’ biggest problem was to explain how people, who were completely self-
interested, would be able to maintain the sanctity of the supposed contract by
which they vowed to set up the state and continue with it. He got around it by
asserting that it was the ‘law of nature’.
John Locke
Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (1690) was a discourse on the relationship

of people with the ruler. Locke also believed that sovereignty emerged as a result
of social contract by the people in order to get rid of the state of nature in which
they were living. But, unlike Hobbes, Locke thought that the primitive people
were not bloodthirsty savages but persons who believed that no harm should be
done to other persons’ life, property, and freedom. Locke’s primitive people also
entered into a contract to set up the state, but they conceived of a government
which would not enslave them but would work for the preservation and regulation
of their property and liberty. So, unlike Hobbes, Locke’s primitive humans were
rational and moral and the state which emerged through their contract was not
repressive but representative. Such a government is based on popular consent
and was not arbitrary. To maintain justice, however, Locke suggested a separation
of the legislative and executive functions and powers. In this arrangement, the
executive would be completely under the legislative organ of the government.
Locke believed that the government should not be arbitrary and authoritarian
and that excessive power and authority of the government was immoral. He also
believed that freedom of speech should not be interfered with. The rulers should
exercise legitimate authority and should not exceed their rightful authority. In
case of excess on the part of the ruler the people would be right to rebel. Locke
rejected the divine-right monarchy and supported a constitutional government,
similar to what was then prevailing in England. His gave rise to the liberal thought
with emphasis on the rights of the individual and restrictions on the power of the
government.
61
1) Discuss the main principles of empiricism.
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2) Write a short note on political theory of Thomas Hobbes.
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4.7 LET US SUM UP

The seventeenth century was an age of scepticism. Almost all thinkers expressed
or used scepticism in one form or another. However, it was also a period by the
end of which scepticism was banished to a large extent and certainty was
enthroned as a matter of principle. Universal metanarratives, self-evident
foundational truths, scientificity, and objectivity became deeply cherished
intellectual values. During this period, modernity was also established, at least
at intellectual level. Its origins can be said to lie in Descartes’ philosophy, Hobbes’
theory of state, and Newton’s summation of modern science.
Although some intellectual ferment was discernible among the common people,
it was mostly among the educated that the new intellectual currents could be
found. These intellectual trends involved clear changes in the perception of society
and universe. The traditional knowledge, including knowledge derived from the
ancient Greek and Roman philosophers, was questioned and in many cases
rejected. There was also an increasing tendency to disregard the Church’s right
to interpret and explain the universe. And although most of these intellectuals
appeared to believe in religion and God, their interpretation of these clearly
differed from the traditional religious beliefs. It was during this period that new
ways of thinking about nature, humanity, society, and government emerged which
differed sharply from traditional and religious notions.

EXERCISES
1) See Section 4.3
2) See Section 4.4
Check your Progress 2

1) See Section 4.5
2) See Section 4.6
62
Intellectual Currents in
UNIT 5 ART, CULTURE AND SOCIETY* Seventeenth-century Europe
Structure
5.0 Objectives
5.1 Introduction
5.2 The Historical Context and Conditions of Diversity
5.3 Court Society and the Bourgeoisie: Aspects of Culture
5.4 Visual Arts: Architecture, Painting and Sculpture
5.4.1 Artistic Styles
5.4.2 Architecture
5.4.3 Painting
5.5 Music
5.6 Literature
5.7 Social Life and Leisure
5.8 Popular Culture
5.9 Let Us Sum Up
5.0 OBJECTIVES
After reading this Unit, you should be able to:
identify the main elements in cultural production during the period under
study,
relate this cultural production to the social and political changes during this
period,
see the continuities and changes between the earlier cultural trends; and
how these paved the way for later developments,
know the important names in art, architecture, music and literature during
this period,
be appreciative of the diversities in cultural trends across Europe,
have a broad idea of the intellectual and social milieu of the period, and
have some idea of society and its gradations and to understand why some of
the advances in intellectual and cultural production expanded, yet excluded
vast sections of people, and varied across classes.
5.1 INTRODUCTION
All aspects of life in any particular period of history are linked with each other.
In relation to art, culture and society, the Renaissance art and other forms of
cultural expression were rooted in the changes taking place in society during the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In this Unit, we will carry forward this
understanding to study the linkages between the general historical developments
of the seventeenth and early eighteenth century and the kind of art, literature,
* Resource Person : Dr. Nalini Taneja 63

Rise of the Modern West-II music and the society that prevailed during this period. When you read this Unit,
you will also see that when we talk of the prevailing dominant trends in art and
culture, these mostly pertained to the trends in elite culture, which has been the
focus of art history and the study of culture in general. We will take care to point
out the limitations of its prevalence and also have something to say about what
was happening in the field of popular culture.
By the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there was also a wide divergence
between social and political developments in western and Eastern Europe, and
features of Central Europe too were not the same in, for example, Austria and
Hungary and Turkey. These had some bearing on the art, culture and society in
these regions. England and the Continent too were not identical in the kind of
literature and art produced, although there were some commonalities, and we
will refer to some of these common aspects and differences.
Although the study of continents other than Europe is outside the scope of this
Unit, we will at least point out to you that other parts of the world were not bereft
of art, culture and societal changes. There has been a tendency in historiography
to view the West as pointing the way towards advance of humankind, with other
continents trailing behind; not just in economy but all elements of civilization.
Although the idea of the West ‘civilizing’ the countries they conquered has now
been discredited, there is still a bias in considering the West as leading the way –
in the forms of cultural expression that we are going to talk about here. We will
try to disabuse you of some of these stereotypes and prejudices.
Moreover, changes in society and culture do not occur overnight. Some of the
trends that were introduced and flourished during the Renaissance continued
into the seventeenth century, while many new aspects that became the hallmark
of the culture in the era of the French and Industrial Revolutions of late eighteenth
century can be traced to artistic expressions during the late seventeenth and early
eighteenth century.
In other words, culture and social expressions during this period were as complex
and varied as real life was. The period covered forms a transition between the
Renaissance and the Modern world created by the French and Industrial
Revolutions, but is also significant in its own right. We have read something
about this in our Units on the English Revolution and the Scientific Revolutions
of the seventeenth century: you would note that they have been termed revolutions
despite the continuities they represented or restored.
Since there are separate Units dealing with intellectual and political thought and
with the Scientific Revolution and also the demographic changes and family and
class relations, here we would speak only of the formal aspects of cultural
expression: the arts, literature, music and architecture. Among these too we would
be selective, discussing trends and mentioning only some important names and
works to underline these trends. We will focus on one or two art forms in one or
another region to illustrate our arguments rather than all aspects of cultural
production in each country, the purpose being to familiarize you with the broad
significant trends.
64
Art, Culture and Society
5.2 THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT AND
CONDITIONS OF DIVERSITY
The developments in art and culture during the seventeenth and first half of the
eighteenth century derived from the cultural arts forms of the Renaissance in
Europe and from the social and political changes of the period we are looking at.
In England, the turbulence and contestations of the English Revolution and the
Civil War ended with the Restoration, which, as we saw restored some things
and replaced or changed others: a new stable ‘order’ was created, with Parliament
as the major location of power and an ascendant new gentry and bourgeoisie at
the helm of affairs. The literature of the period can be seen to reflect this, with
Shakespeare, for example, straddling like a colossus across this marker and
reflecting the shifts in English drama and poetry, along with many others. The
decline in Crown patronage, the growth of private enterprise and the Reformation,
irrevocably changed the conditions of cultural production.
In France, the triumph of Absolutism and the Court culture under Louis XIV and
XV and its mercantilist policies were decisive conditions under which artists
worked and survived. France, particularly Paris and Versailles, became in many
ways the cultural capital of Europe, and its cultural influence was felt across
Europe, among the artists and intellectuals and also in the Courts of other rulers.
The decline of Spain and Italian states after the sixteenth century, and shift of
economic activity from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic affected patronage of
literature and art in these countries in a major way. Italy, for example, no longer
remained as lively as it did during the fifteenth and early sixteenth century, and
the different states of Venice and Rome show different cultural influences, based
on the political and economic of the seventeenth century in these States.
The prosperity of the Dutch trade, growth of textile production and the flow of
wealth into Holland, and migrations of the persecuted Huguenots from France,
were major factors in the emergence of the Dutch school of painting, considered
the most significant in Europe during the seventeenth century.
The area we know as Germany today had not yet become a nation state. It remained
divided into small states ruled by princes, was far from the seaports, and the
middle classes, even as they began to develop in this period were small petty
bureaucrats in the service of princes or shopkeepers, school teachers. Aristocratic
culture was, therefore, still dominant, and the influence of French Court and
French universities was prevalent among the higher landed aristocracy, based on
land or officialdom. The earlier impulse of the German Renaissance, very
significant in the German states during the sixteenth century, was lost through
the Thirty Years War and its consequences, which involved almost every European
country in the region.
The Austrian Empire was multinational, serfdom had still not been abolished in
Central Europe and in the entire region the culture continued to be aristocratic,
with huge gaps between the elite and popular culture. In the Russian Empire,
such “Westernization” as was encouraged was in the fields of science and
technology rather than ideas. Serfdom was the basic feature of the social structure
and the Tsar had more absolute powers than anywhere in Europe. Turkey was
another such region. In short the economic and political changes that came with
65
Rise of the Modern West-II the decline of feudalism of feudalism and the entire Renaissance had still to be
experienced or its impact felt in these societies. Therefore, the changes in culture
that emerging capitalism and bourgeois middle class development saw in Western
Europe did not extend to Central and Eastern Europe, where culture remained
far more elitist, confined mostly to the aristocracy, influenced and educated in
the cultural centres of Western Europe. Germany too became an influence here,
but that was only from the nineteenth century. The cultural resources of Central
and Eastern Europe were therefore partly indigenous and autonomous, and partly
received from Western Europe. But in the period we are looking at, the seventeenth
and first half of the eighteenth century, before the French and the Industrial
Revolution, the influence of Western Europe was minimal, even among the high
landed aristocracy.
Given all this, there was huge divergence between the culture and thinking of
the ruling classes or the educated, and the predominantly rural popular culture.
The gap was least in England and most perhaps in parts of the Russian Empire.
There are also new developments in styles and content of cultural production
from the beginning of the period under discussion until the decade before the
French Revolution, which we will mark as we go along: just as it was in politics
and in society in general. Court societies remained, yet the new social classes
like the bourgeoisie made their presence felt, in art and culture as much as in
politics.
5.3 COURT SOCIETY AND THE BOURGEOISIE:

ASPECTS OF CULTURE
European court society had always been geographically and socially multi-
centred, but from the mid seventeenth century the cultural dominance of the
French Court at Versailles was obvious: fashions, the French language and painting
and architectural styles began to be imitated or adapted in all courts across Europe.
It was a life style that shed many of the patterns of cultural expressions of the
traditional nobility and in the process adopted many new elements that came as
a result to trade and commerce and knowledge of other regions of the world, as
well as of the wealthy bourgeoisie. Although it was the bourgeoisie that aimed at
adopting the life styles of the aristocracy, but in the process the cultural ambience
and aspirations of the entire privileged sections underwent a change. The late
seventeenth and the eighteenth century were crucial in this transformation of
elite culture: family heritage and title, wealth and patronage constituted its building
blocks. Court manners and etiquette, wigs and their styles for men, wire supported
dresses for women to give these a flare, private salons of patronage became
models.
But the 18th century was an age of secularization of arts in a much deeper sense
than the 17th century, when art broke away from the realms of the Church and
the Court to clearly secular moorings and a modern cultural space in many of the
cities of Europe. The flourishing Universities and expansion of education, outside
the dominance of the Church, was an important factor. It was an age of great
social churning. Rude points out that although the “eighteenth century was not a
‘golden age’ of the arts or an age of literary giants like the century before”, yet
“it was an age of extraordinarily fertile artistic and literary activity of which the
second half is perhaps more remarkable than the first” (Rude, p. 139). The late
66 seventeenth century had the dominant cultural influence of the Versailles Court,
while the eighteenth century brought the bourgeois world into greater focus. By Art, Culture and Society
the end of the 18th century the general populace began to have presence in the
art and literature of the period. Popular culture felt the influences of the time, as
communication channels opened through market, trade and commerce, and growth
of towns.
5.4 VISUAL ARTS: ARCHITECTURE, PAINTING

AND SCULPTURE
Louis XIV set the scale for art patronage and purpose, and therefore, size. All the
arts were used “for the purpose of glorifying the French monarchy”. The capital
was built at Versailles, with a grand palace and from 1664 onwards festivals of
music, drama and ballet were organized there. The palace architecture itself set a
style, as did painting, especially portraiture, which other courts imitated. This
overarching influence began to have other inspirations towards the mid eighteenth
century. Both art and music were sponsored and patronized largely by courts and
by the Church. Towards the 18th century the ideas of the philosphes began to
permeate the world of culture. Freedom for artists, as for ideas, began to be
championed by some and there developed a culture of art and literary criticism
that helped shape public tastes in the arts and letters. There was a trend towards
secularization of culture, even as the Church continued to be a major patron.
5.4.1 Artistic Styles

There were many artistic styles during this long period, from mid-17th to the
mid-18th century, that got reflected in the various visual arts: Mannerism, Baroque-
Classical, Rococo and Romanticism. They are reflected somewhat in literary
styles too.
As Arnold Hauser tells us, “Mannerism is the artistic expression of the crisis
which convulses the whole of Western Europe in the sixteenth century”. After
the invasions of Italy, and whose effects continue to be felt till the 17th century,
the Renaissance art was transformed and many of the Renaissance artists
themselves reflected this crisis and change in art forms towards the end of their
work life: for example, the later works of Michelangelo and Rafael. Renaissance
art had been characterized by a sense of proportion and space: mannerism, derived
from the word style in Italian, reflected an exaggeration and distortion of these
elements, sometimes in a sophisticated way as to produce beautiful works,
especially by the masters. But nevertheless, proportion as adherence to natural
surroundings (a characteristic of Renaissance art and architecture) was disturbed.
What followed, particularly under the patronage of 17th century courts, was the
courtly Baroque style, characterized, by grandeur, scale, drama, vitality and
movement and exaggerated emotional exuberance, reflected in all the arts of the
time. The settings are extravagant; there is dramatic use of colour, and high
contrasts of light and shadow, light and darkness. There is also a tendency to blur
the distinctions between different art forms and to create harmony in the arts and
music after the end of religious and social discord and wars of mid sixteenth to
mid seventeenth century. The inspiration for baroque art was the influence of the
Roman Catholic Church and its patronage in order to combat Protestantism, and
the Spanish and French kingdoms also Roman Catholic states.
67
Rise of the Modern West-II The Rococo style that developed out of the baroque, further elaborated on the
design elements, particularly emphasis on excessive decorativeness and
ornamentation of the interiors, use of pastel colours, and a return to asymmetrical
patterns. It mainly differed from the baroque in being “light, airy and decorative”,
reflected a degree of secularization in the arts and preferred smaller scales than
the grandeur of baroque.
Romanticism was characterized by its emphasis on return of naturalism in the

arts, and is a development of the 18th century. It marks the beginnings of
industrialization and urbanism, emphasis on reason and science and the new
social contradictions, which evoked in certain sections of the intellectuals of the
period a nostalgia or love for what had been lost and an advocacy for emotion
and passion as drivers of human endeavour.
5.4.2 Architecture
The baroque first appeared in Rome during last quarter of the 16th century, from
where it spread to Germany, Sweden, Poland, Spain, Portugal and Latin America
under Spanish domination. The idea behind it was harmony and reconciliation
of conflicts and therefore grand presentation to the people of the power that
engulfed the populace. It became immensely popular and evoked wonder and
awe. Its buildings consisted of churches, palaces, squares and fountains, all of
which are central to courtly culture. There were also ornate opera houses
constructed all over Europe.
Absolutism gave further impetus to monumentalism in architecture and in the

arts. The capitals were designed to reflect monarchical authority, symbolizing
power of the State, and on which royal armies could parade and on which stood
government buildings and royal residences, and barracks for the royal armies.
In terms of style, the baroque was combined with a restrained classicism,

signifying sophistication along with grandeur. Royal Academies of Art were
established, following that in France, that influenced and commanded the classical
rulers that sculptors and painters were to be guided by. Le Brun, an artist of the
time, was made in charge and soon instructions were given regarding what was
to be taught in the academies and the styles that must be encouraged. The Germans
and Austrians added their own original features. St. Petersburg was a blend of
Italian classicism and Russian decorative motifs.
In this combination of baroque and classicism, the “sculptor-artists conceived of

their buildings as ‘total’ works of art in which sculpted figures and elaborate
wall and ceiling paintings were not so much decorations as integral parts of a
highly complex artistic concept”. The Church of St. Charles Borromeo in Vienna,
built by architect JB Fischer von Erlach (1656-1723) in the first half of the 18th
century is a prime example. The architects and painters collaborated with each
other in such buildings. Many architects were sculptors too. Bernini was a
significant name in architecture.
The rococo style too originated in France, during the reign of Louis XV and
spread to the German and Italian states, particularly in the rebuilding of the
German monasteries, abbeys and churches. The richness of design in these was
in keeping with the rococo and became widespread as a church building style
across Europe. England was an exception, where the country houses were modeled
68
on the building styles of Venice rather than Rome or France, being far more Art, Culture and Society
modest. Their town squares were likewise not so large and grand.
5.4.3 Painting
In painting and sculpture too, the artists during the course of the 17th century
were largely dependent on Court, nobility and the Church. Absolutism in painting
is most starkly reflected in paintings depicting the figures of monarchs in glory,
again following the pattern set by Louis XIV in France. Much of the painting in
the baroque buildings was done as decorations on walls and ceilings of palaces
and churches. The 18th century changed the scope and types of use of painting.
The artist became known through his canvas, not as part of the architectural
scenario.
Towards the early 18th century, Greek and religious themes began to be combined
with and then gave way to new motifs deriving from everyday life and portraits
of the nobility and other wealthy persons. Life styles of court society and nobility,
as different from a focus on the grandeur of monarchs became new subject matters
of painting. The visual arts became more social in character, even as individuals
and portraits began to be painted or sketched, and also smaller in size. Dresses,
cultural artefacts and settings depicted today tell us a great deal of the 18th century
society. The paintings were now installed in galleries or on walls of houses, and
were done with more freedom in terms of colour and individual choice of the
artist rather than conventional patterns. Portraits were popular, and almost all
the significant artists did portraits. The subject matter of paintings was quite
varied. In styles, the artists wavered between tradition and freedom. Reproductions
became popular and many artists were involved in doing them.
The first public art exhibition was organized in Paris in 1737. The French painter
Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) was the first to reflect this trend in his works,
not only as regards the subject matter but also the decorative and small scale
representative of the rococo style. Francois Boucher made some erotic paintings,
Honore Fragonard did portraits and pastoral scenes, J.B. Greuze was influenced
by Dutch painters and depicted domestic life, Joseph Vernet did seascapes and
harbors and scenes of nature. David (1748-1825), a significant painter represented
republican values and self-sacrifice. Hogarth (1697-1764) in England portrayed
the everyday life in England, also adding humour and satire in his depictions.
Goya was an important painter in Spain, also displaying conflicts and social life
with some satire. The Venetian artists were wonderful with colour and shade and
give us a good picture of the lagoons of Venice. In the German states, after an
initial period, the artists were influenced by the romantic wave. In Russia there
was influence mainly of the French styles, combined with depictions of Russian
landscapes and peasant life. In general, the artists wavered between tradition
and freedom.
In Netherlands (Holland), the trajectory was somewhat different. Dutch prosperity

of the seventeenth century, deriving from its trade and commerce, saw the
emergence of a ‘Dutch School of painting’ that reflected the lifestyles and tastes
of the Dutch middle classes. There emerged a market in art dominated by the
port of Amsterdam and its wealthy merchants. The painters depicted urban and
rural landscapes, and everyday Dutch life, human emotions and domestic scenes
within homes, and excelled in the blend of light, shadow and colour. Portraits
and still life were also significant. The important Dutch painter was Rembrandt 69
Rise of the Modern West-II (1606-69), who in addition to these also painted religious and mythological
subjects. He was son of a miller and grandson of a baker, and became famous
only posthumously. He also did several self-portraits.
5.5 MUSIC
Throughout the 17th century the opera was the predominant form of music and
Italian musicians were the most celebrated in Europe. The first public opera
house was also built in the Italian city of Venice, and thereafter flourished in all
capital cities. Claudio Monterverdi (1567-1643) was the greatest composer of
this century. The opera, because it verbalized music, was akin to poetry and
drama and directly appealed to emotions and therefore had audiences from both
the elite and common people, with separate seating arrangements. It was extremely
popular in Italy with huge audiences, but apart from a few other countries it
remained an entertainment attended only by the elite. It coincided with the baroque
style of art and music and continued well into the 18th century.
However, towards the 18th century, “the taste for music also moved beyond the
constraints of court, ecclesiastical, and noble patronage.” (Merriman, p. 356).
Operas were the main forms in the 17th century, and were performed in the opera
houses constructed by the monarchs around their palaces or the churches. A second
form was chamber music performed in the salons of the wealthy, and had small
number of performers. It was music for intimate private listening, patronized by
the wealthy. To begin with all composers were Court composers. The music
compositions were called quartets and concertos. Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-
1750), a German composer and musician of the Baroque period, was a towering
figure remembered for his Brandenburg Concertos and the Goldberg Variations,
and also his vocal music. Antonio Lucio Vivaldi, the Italian Baroque musical
composer, was best known for his ‘The Four Seasons’ and his sonatas and
concertos for the violin.
The 18th century in general was a century of giants: Bach, Handel, Mozart, Hayden
and Gluck. In the first half of the century there were two main forms, the Opera
continuing from the seventeenth century, and religious music that consisted of
cantatas and oratorios. New musical instruments too were evolved and became
widespread: the piano from the harpsichord in 1711, the flute in 1750 and then
the clarinet. Small concertos continued to be played, but increasingly there were
larger professional orchestras with symphonies and more instruments, and
concerts attended by larger audiences from the upper and middle classes. Music
came out of the chambers to music halls. These changes occurred during the
lifetime of the above-mentioned composers, whose work was quite varied through
their musical careers: they all composed operas, quartets, concertos and
symphonies for big orchestras.

1) How the changes in art were related to socio-economic conditions in the
Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries?
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70
2) Describe the main artistic styles that emerged between mid-seventeenth and Art, Culture and Society
mid-eighteenth century.
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5.6 LITERATURE
An audience for literature grew with the growth and expansion of literacy and
printing presses across Europe. While written literature remained confined to
the literate, drama performances of plays transcended these barriers, and within
written literature there was considerable variety to suit the varied tastes and
intellectual and societal gradations. Existing forms of literature were transformed
in both style and content in the second half of the 17th and 18th century, as society
and cultural tastes evolved in keeping with the expansion of Europe and the
enlightenment ideas and the scientific revolution, which had important historical
consequences even for those not directly connected with them. The sheer
availability of the printed material and translations on a larger scale had
revolutionary consequences, whose impact could be experienced in the world
during and after the French revolution. Most major writers straddled more than
one form of writing. And common features were found across Europe, with
specific national context and distinctions. There were several variants of pastoral
poetry and novels of chivalry, depictions of the conflict between town and country,
a feeling of discomfort expressed through literature.
England produced an outburst of writing that reflected the changed spirit.

Shakespeare continued to be performed and was looked at differently; his later
plays were already reflecting the changed climate of the 17th century. John Milton,
John Bunyan and John Dryden were the big names of the 17th century baroque
literature of grandeur. John Bunyan’s The Pilgrims Progress, a religious allegory,
published in two parts in 1678 and 1684, is a “symbolic vision of the good man’s
pilgrimage through life”. At one time it was second only to the Bible in popularity.
Bunyan was imprisoned by the State for his views. In poetry, Milton’s On His
Blindness and The Paradise Lost were kind of modern epics that depicted the
experience of those caught in the politics and religious wars of the 17th century.
The ironies of the time are expressed in La Fontaine’s (1621-95) Fables and in
the devastating sketches of the public personalities in John Dryden’s (1631-1700)
work, followed by Alexander Pope whose poems An Essay on Criticism (1711),
The Rape of the Lock (1712-14), The Dunciad (1728), and An Essay on Man
(1733-34), made him a major voice in England.
As the 18th century progressed, there was much that thinking minds perceived as
requiring questioning and critique, of both institutions and ways of thinking.
This became reflected in an outburst of satire and in the novels written. Jonathan
Swift’s satirical novel Gulliver’s Travels critiqued contemporary European
prejudices in an emerging age of science and technology, as did Voltaire’s Candide.
Swift, of Anglo-Irish origin was satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer and poet.
71
Rise of the Modern West-II Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) was another towering presence of many talents:
poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor, and
lexicographer. Diaries became another popular literary form. Evelyn Jones and
Samuel Pepys’ diaries became famous. Edward Gibbon’s Rise and Fall of the
Roman Empire in several volumes was a landmark. The Scottish Enlightenment
led to a flowering of literature.
France produced two contradictory yet related trends, reflected in the

Enlightenment and Romanticism, which gave rise to a lot of political and
philosophical writings that could be characterized as literature of ideas, and
involved a variety of genres. The Encyclopedia of Diderot was the most celebrated
of these, as were the writings of Voltaire and Rousseau. For example, The Spirit
of the Laws by Montesquieu in 1748, An Essay on Tolerance by Voltaire in 1763,
The Social Contract by Rousseau 1762; The Supplement to a voyage of
Bougainville by Diderot, or The History of the Two Indias by the Abbé Guillaume-
Thomas Raynal were important essays. Montesquieu also wrote a satire on French
life in the form of letters, presumably from another country. The important works
of the philosophes belonged to a variety of different genres, such as the tale
illustrating a particular philosophical point; Zadig (1747) or Candide (1759),
both by Voltaire in 1759; or essays. The comedies of Marivaux and of
Beaumarchais also played a part in this debate about and diffusion of great ideas.
History writing and journalism became important forms of cultural expression,
identity formation and quest for knowledge all across Europe. Many of the
philosophies wrote art criticism and on the philosophy of aesthetics and beauty.
The novel was a more flexible form in terms of the variety of experiences it
could express and the social settings it could be placed in. It underwent
transformations in content to reflect the more immediate circumstances and milieu,
particularly with the expansion also of many women readers. Many women writers
too emerged. There was emphasis on characters and personal relationships, an
example being Madame Lafayyete’s The Duchess of Cleves (1678). She was
hostess of one of the famous Parisian salons of the time. There were also novels
of adventures and fantasy, the most well-known among them being Daniel Defoe’s
Robinson Crusoe. There were others that reflected the great moral dilemmas and
conflicts of the time, for example the works of Henry Fielding, Samuel
Richardson, Laurence Stern, Tobias Smolding. The 18th century marks the age
of realism and the birth of the modern novel, and there was a “deheroising and
humanizing of heroes” (Hauser, p. 25), and a middle class morality and some
realism.
The French novelists showed great versatility, although the influence of the
English novel was there: there were the philosophical tales by people like Voltaire,
a romantic sentimental one by Rousseau, novels of social realism and love by
Marivoux, psychological explorations and imagined scenarios by various authors,
and autobiographies which became models for discovering and exploring the
self.
German literature was influenced by English and French works, but later
developed its own stream of romanticism, with emphasis on feelings and
emotional grandeur, referred to in literature as “Storm and Stress”. The greatest
names of 18th century German literature were Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe, Herder and Friedrich Schiller. Their works encompassed
72 folk songs, poetry, dramas and literary criticism. In fact growth of art criticism
and literary criticism emerged as significant during this period across Europe. Art, Culture and Society
Translation was widespread, and readership of important works were read
throughout Europe.
Westernisation by Peter the Great brought the Russian intelligentsia into regular
contact with Western Europe and many of the works read in the 18th century
were mainly translations. The first modern writing in Russian is said to be a
novel by Radishchev, A Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow, which is a vivid
critique of Russian society and political system. A pioneering national poet and
playwright was Lomonosov. In Hungary and Poland literature was tied to
independence and self-expression as search for identity and nationality. In the
Ottoman Empire literature, influences by Persian forms, was much more varied,
with Sufi poetry and ghazals and stories linked with folk memories. Sweden and
Denmark produced many works of drama and history and literary criticism.
The life of literature, in its relationship with society, was most directly reflected
in theatre, both in the plays written and their performance. Here, the educated
who wrote the plays and the many not so literate who formed the audience, came
together to add a new dimension to literary production. Theatre was popular
across Europe, despite the past censorship or restrictions imposed during the
religious wars by the churches. In England there merged a trend in drama that is
collectively known as “Restoration drama”, that emerged after the post
Renaissance productions of Shakespeare and overcoming the setbacks and censure
on theatre during the Cromwellian regime. As in the case of the arts and
architecture, in France during the 17th century, the French Court used theatre as
part of enhancing its glories. The great writers of drama, Jean Baptiste Moliere
(1622-73) and Jean Racine (1639-99) enjoyed court patronage, but also broke
free to write for varied audiences. Of the two, Moliere plays were bolder, and
contained social and religious satire, while Racine continued to rely on traditional
classical themes to depict modern psychological sensibility, was more poetic,
and accepted a Court position towards the end of his life. In the 18th century,
with the liveliness in French politics and the life of the salons, theatre began to
express the ideas of the time, breaking away from its moorings in court culture.
We have referred to the comedies of Marivaux and of Beaumarchais which became
significant expressions of the debates and ferment of ideas of the period. In
Germany, Lessing was the most important name, writing both comedies and
plays with social themes a new original sensibility. In Bohemia, the Czech national
theatre was opened in 1737, Poland in 1765.
5.7 SOCIAL LIFE AND LEISURE

Social life was very much shaped by material conditions of the late 17th and
18th century. In general people had more household items in their homes with,
however, only the real elite getting introduced to what we can call a consumer
culture, with big houses and large spaces at their disposal. It is from them that
resources for culture and leisure came from. The entertainment, the fashions of
the time and celebrations of festivals of the elite pertain to these sections of
society across Europe, the landed classes and the bourgeoisie. Therefore, the
distinctions in culture and entertainment were along class lines rather than between
town and countryside. Yet, there were differences between how the aristocracy
clad themselves and the middle classes during these occasions, with velvets and
jewellery signifying power as much as wealth.
73
Rise of the Modern West-II Improvement in communications and transport, as well as travel and literacy
and education brought about some convergence of elite culture by the end of the
18th century. Salons were the centres of cultural life in the 18th century and this
marked a real break with the courtly culture. The cities were no longer subsidiaries
or adjuncts of the Courts and the impulse for cultural expression in these salons
came from the bourgeoisie, even if the aristocracy participated in them. They
facilitated both convergence and debate of ideas. Hauser calls these salons “the
cultural heirs of the Court”, with the major gap now being between the common
people and those who stood above.
Literacy and the expansion of the reading public had similar impact. In the French
towns, by the middle of the 18th century, “up to 90 per cent of the lower middle
class could read and write, and about 50 per cent of the better working class,
with some 20 per cent of the poorest sections of society.” For women the rates
were much lower, but literacy was spreading. Other countries of western Europe
can be more or less comparable, with literacy being more restricted to the upper
echelons in eastern and central Europe in the 18th century. In protestant countries,
the houses of clergymen were important centres of literacy still. Attitudes to
children’s education began to be positive. Given the variations in terms of class,
gender, region and between town and country, in access to education, the
generalization holds true regarding the impact of expanding literacy on culture
and politics.
Newspapers and broadsheets began to proliferate throughout Europe. The English

revolution had seen a mass upsurge in printed material, and “the first daily
newspaper was published in London in 1702, and there were provincial ones
too.” There were private circulating libraries. The two decades before the French
revolution saw a similar upsurge in France and across Europe. And then there
were chapbooks, or illustrated and abridged editions of classic and well known
novels that were read by mass of the reading public. Women constituted a big
portion of this readership. The old classes like the landed aristocracy and the
peasantry were becoming transformed during this period, while new classes like
the bourgeoisie and the urban working classes emerged to create modern society.
5.8 POPULAR CULTURE

The popular culture of the 17th and the 18th century was in one sense far removed
from that of the privileged world of the elite and the educated. A large component
of it was peasant culture, its songs, stories and folk lore centred around the world
of the peasant and his/her agricultural cycle. As Rude points out, “some of this
was traditional and by no means peculiar to the eighteenth century, like the
folksongs and folklore, which had deep roots in the past and were carried by
word of mouth and only appeared as literature when recorded by professionals”
and the educated.
While the rootedness in peasant life and its continuity through centuries made
peasant popular culture diverse and regional and to a degree autonomous, the
very fact of its transmission in time added elements that were contemporary to
the times it was continuously manifested in. Changes occurred simply because
life changed and minds and knowledge changed. Further, connectedness of the
modern world in the 16th and 17th centuries broke its autonomy, if not the
diversity. Between 1500 and 1800 the popular traditions were subject to change
74
in all sorts of ways, as a result of social stratification and also participation of the Art, Culture and Society
elite in popular festivals, for example the carnivals, feasts of saints and May Day
celebrations in their areas, and on the other hand the access of craftspeople and
peasants to printed books, for example ballads committed to writing by the
scholars or other educated elite. And, as Burke again points out, clowns were
popular at courts as well as taverns, often the same clowns. (Burke, pp. 24-25)
The arias of the Italian opera were sung by Neapolitan boatmen and venetian
gondoliers, and Parisian people in the streets. (Rude, p.151)
The various contradictory elements in combination meant that “there were

varieties of popular culture” and by 1800, “craftsmen and peasants usually had a
regional rather than a national consciousness”, or a cosmopolitan one like the
elite. This is because while “the elite participated in the little tradition, but the
common people did not participate in the great tradition” (of the elite). They still
retained a common world linked with their social situation. The city and the
urban poor and working people added a new dimension to popular culture. There
were harvest festivals of course, but also spinning songs, weavers’ songs, sailors’
songs, women’s songs and so on, and traditions that members of different guilds
followed. Tastes, artefacts, ways of building houses, articles of consumption,
household items etc., all underwent some change with urbanization, change in
working patterns of production and the commercial revolution, including
production for a market. Peasants were also influenced by the baroque and rococo
forms which they adapted to their own styles and subject matters in their paintings.
Literacy and reading was an important factor in ways time was spent, and horse
racing, discussions in taverns and the village square were new elements of time
pass and entertainment. Hundreds of written materials were brought out especially
for popular consumption. The content of the chapbooks above mentioned points
to changing preferences for reading. Politics after the English revolution and on
the Continent in the two decades before the French Revolution led to politicization
of culture and political consciousness and participation in meetings.
While all this brought a convergence in culture, the scientific revolution and
enlightenment thought, pervasive among the educated elite, all increased the
gap in many ways between elite and popular culture and ways of thinking. The
culture of the taverns of the common people was distinct from that of the salons
of the 18th century, even when politics pervaded them.

1) Describe the main features of growth of literature in the Seventeenth and
Eighteenth Centuries in Europe with examples.
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75
Rise of the Modern West-II 2) Write a brief note on Popular Culture during this period.
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5.9 LET US SUM UP

We have seen in this Unit that the late 17th and 18th century till the Industrial
and the French revolutions was significant in its own right and the developments
in culture and society cannot simply be passed through simply as a bridge between
the great Renaissance and the modern world ushered in by the two revolutions.
The cultural ambience and cultural production of this period, including lifestyles
and everyday patterns of living, were shaped by the changes in material conditions,
particularly production for market and the commercial revolution. The social
classes were taking the shape of what we see in our modern societies. The scientific
revolution and the spread of enlightenment thought was significant in the evolution
of new ways of thinking and looking at their own societies.
There was diversity and distinction not only over this long chronological period,
but also between the different regions of Europe during the same years. There
were points of convergence and conflict between elite culture and popular culture.
The cultural developments of this period laid the foundations for the two
revolutions that shaped the world we live in and the way we experience modernity,
the human advances and the increase in inequalities that are around us.

EXERCISES
1) See Section 5.2

1) See Section 5.6
2) See Section 5.8
76
Art, Culture and Society
UNIT 6 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION*
Structure
6.0 Objectives
6.1 Introduction
6.2 An Overview
6.3 The Main Issues of the English Revolution
6.4 Conflict Between King and Parliament, till 1649
6.5 Oliver Cromwell and the Republic, 1649-53
6.6 Restoration (1660) and Glorious Revolution (1688)
6.7 Religious Conflicts and Politics
6.8 Intellectual Traditions
6.9 Questions of Revolution and Civil War
6.10 Let Us Sum Up
6.0 OBJECTIVES
After reading this Unit, you should
be familiar with the main events or timeline of the English Revolution;
be able to link its events with the general developments during the 17th
century;
be able to establish some linkages between its political, economic and social
aspects;
discern the different themes and trends that constituted the English revolution;
have some idea of the historiography and debates about it;
be able to explain the distinction between what has been called the English
Revolution and the Glorious Revolution;
be able to discuss the nomenclature of Civil War to describe its main conflicts,
and what is meant by the term in the context of the English Revolution, and
be able to understand the significance of the English Revolution and its
place in modern European history.
6.1 INTRODUCTION
The English Revolution is among the most important developments of the 17th
century and had far reaching consequences. It can be understood well only in the
context of the social, economic and intellectual developments of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, and its specific events also have their roots in the
crisis of the 17th century. Here we will focus on the main events and trends of the
English Revolution, including their social and economic dimensions. Economic
interests and social aspirations were often linked with the political conflicts and
* Resource Person : Dr. Nalini Taneja 77

Rise of the Modern West-II arguments put forward by the main political actors in the events. The political
dimension of the Revolution took primarily the form of a struggle for power
between the King and the Parliament.
The English revolution could not have taken place without the decline of the
feudal system, the backdrop of the explorations of the 16th century and the
discovery of ‘new’ lands, the interactions with other societies, the questioning of
the Church and the Reformation, and the contributions of geographers, and
philosopher-scientists like Leonardo da Vinci, Copernicus and Galileo about the
human body and the Universe, not to speak of the whole experience of the
Renaissance and Humanism, and the political thought linked with it. We will,
therefore, briefly consider these aspects also.
6.2 AN OVERVIEW
The period between 1642 and 1660, characterized by armed conflict and political
turmoil in England, is known variously as the English Revolution or the Civil
War, depending on the features that are emphasized by different historians to
describe this turmoil and conflict. The events included a series of engagements
between the King i.e., the Crown and Parliament, during which the high points
were the trial and execution of King Charles I, the establishment of what came to
be known as the Commonwealth of England for a few years (1649-1653), and
the rise of Oliver Cromwell who became almost a dictator representing specific
social interests. It is said to have ended with the restoration of the Monarchy,
which also is variously known as Restoration or the Glorious Revolution,
depending on the features emphasized by different historians.
This period was also important for the expression within the political mainstream,
and outside it, of certain ideas that became the hallmark of thinking in a modern
society: liberty, equality and the modernity that we encounter in the later
revolutions were articulated here in England for the first time in attempts to
reform the political structure in the larger context of the nation-state.
The English Revolution began as a conflict between the King and Parliament,
regarding where the real political authority lay. The origins of the parliament lay
in a Council created by Henry I during the 11th century, but it came to be known
as parliament only in the 13th century, and was dominated by the higher nobility
and high church functionaries. In 1215, the parliament won for itself a charter of
demands safeguarding the interests of these classes, known as the Magna Carta,
which set the precedent for the conflict whereby the ruling classes of England
asserted their rights and privileges from the existing national monarchy. As
England underwent social and economic changes, the merchants and the emerging
middle classes began to lay their claims. During the Tudor regime, the merchants
interested in the explorations and the consequent trade with colonies encouraged
by the King, found it in their interest to support the King. By the time of the
Stuarts in the 17th century, these developments contributed to land becoming
integral to the exchange economy, the growth of market in land and in the products
of the land. Even those not traditionally based in land wanted to buy land. The
confiscation and sale of church lands had also contributed to the land market.
With land becoming an important factor in the emerging capitalism, there was a
change in the composition of those aspiring to hold land and an expansion of the
78
land market. The ruling classes linked with land also expanded as a consequence, The English Revolution
and began to hold broader interests than the landed classes earlier. These new
landed gentry added new dimensions to the conflict between King and Parliament,
which took the form of religious conflict and Civil War. Variously, these
dimensions involved taxation, foreign policy and wars, property rights and
religious rights, and above all, a questioning of the theory of ‘Divine Right of
Kings’.
Religion also became a dividing factor. For reasons that we will explore, most of
the Catholics, and many conservative Protestants, continued to support the Crown,
while those who came to be called Puritans sided with the Parliament. Thus the
political conflict assumed a religious dimension, or as some would say, the
religious divide resulted in political opposition.
The stakes of the Monarchy in areas of Scotland and Ireland meant that the
conflict raged not only within England proper, but also in all the areas ruled by
and in which the Stuart monarchy claimed stakes, Scotland and Ireland included.
6.3 THE MAIN ISSUES OF THE ENGLISH

REVOLUTION
We will now go on to the main issues that emerged in this multi-dimensional
conflict within English society and in British politics. How and why did these
issues of conflict arise, and when they did?
The Tudor monarchy had achieved a kind of equilibrium of social forces that
also became represented in the political system. Therefore, the birth of the nation-
state in England was synonymous with the rise of absolutism that had a degree
of consent or sanction by the major sections of the nobility who constituted the
ruling classes. The nation state was only just beginning to acquire a centralized
standing army and bureaucracy and the powers of the feudal nobility had been
curbed. On the social and economic front, the decline of the feudal nobility resulted
in the growth and expansion of a new class of landed gentry that had a stake in
both land ownership and market in agricultural production, the two being part of
the same process that stood between decline of feudal economy and the emergence
of capitalism. A monarchy that supported the voyages of discovery and long
distance commerce had the support of both the merchants and the new landed
gentry because it undermined the power of the old feudal nobility. Merchants
too began to invest in land. These classes needed the new monarchy as much as
the monarchy needed their support. In subduing the feudal potentates the
Monarchy made the social terrain safe for commercial interests and landed
property against brigandage and the arbitrariness of feudal law that privileged
hierarchy at every level of society.
This changed by the beginning of the seventeenth century as these new social
and economic forces became wealthier, stronger and more independent and now
wanted more autonomy and say in political matters. The acquisition of private
property through sale required laws that cemented the right to private property,
which could not be encroached upon by feudal privilege or by the Crown. They
wanted more changes in their favour than the successive kings were prepared to
concede: the monarchy now seemed an obstacle rather than a promoter of their
further advancement. This conflict was inherent in the very logic of development
79
Rise of the Modern West-II of social and economic forces in the seventeenth century, though it may not have
been quite apparent to them as they fought the power of the king on various
issues that seemed to confront them.
Confronting these issues resulted, ultimately, in what can be called the reform or
new adjustments or creation of a constitutional monarchy – a system unique to
England, and different from the Continent, in the working of its political
institutions, if not in the content of the social classes it empowered and represented.
In France, the real challenge to the feudal landed aristocracy came only with the
French Revolution in the eighteenth century, as an absolutist monarchy presiding
over trade and commerce, the growth of middle classes, the first enclosures of
land and emergence of capitalistic features, continued to hold power and protect
the interests of the feudal landed aristocracy.
So, while the kings in England might have wanted to enjoy the power of their
counterparts on the Continent, the development of English society and economy
favoured changes that enabled a curbing of their powers: you would learn later
that the first industrial revolution occurred in Britain rather than on the Continent,
and is not unrelated to these developments that allowed a growth of what are
now called the “pre-requisites of the industrial revolution”.
The Parliament became the vehicle or instrument of these changes in the realm
of politics, while the Monarchy now relied on those entrenched within the political
system in the sixteenth century, the feudal barons that it had brought under control,
who had lost their economic dominance and were now dependent on Court
positions and therefore willing to safeguard their pre-eminence in the political
system by supporting the Monarchy. They were opposed to the erosion of the
entire complex of power that formed this pact. On the other hand, the commercial
interests now required the whole national market, the destruction of guilds that
restricted non agricultural activity within specific towns, as did the landed gentry
that had built its stakes in woolen textile production and pastoral farming, for
which there was a growing market. The clash of interests with the yeomen and
tenantry on land was still in the future, as was the contradiction between those
involved in non agricultural production, the nascent capitalists and the nascent
workmen who already depended on work on the orders from those in touch with
the market and could provide them the raw materials. The separation between
town and country had emerged, as had the division of labour, but not sufficient
for the down trodden to challenge the new emerging dominant classes.
The English Revolution, therefore, occurred during the rule of the Stuarts in the
mid seventeenth century, and was a product of the transformation in the structure
of English rural society: the pacts and contradictions specific to this fluid but
critical juncture in English social and political development.
The Revolution also presented itself as a Civil War and has been referred to as
such by some contemporaries and later historians: this is due to the bitterness of
the struggle obviously and because it seemed to tear the existing social fabric
apart. It was the first major churning that challenged the existing political and
social order throughout the nation-state. Because, unlike Europe, England never
again experienced a revolution, say a 1789, 1830 or 1848, later historians have
stressed on the continuities, the capacity for absorption of dissent, the willingness
of accommodation within its institutions and the initiative for reforms that made
80
it unique and somewhat immune to the revolutionary tendencies of the 19th and The English Revolution
20th century Europe. Some historians have, in fact, questioned whether even the
English was a revolution at all.
The English revolution was, on the other hand, followed by a Restoration, also
called the Glorious Revolution, which has rendered the question of this
nomenclature complex for England, particularly as both King and Parliament
continued to play a significant role in British history right into and through the
twentieth century, and the struggle/conflict between the Monarchy and the
Parliament continued in various forms, representing adjustments within ruling
classes and involving shifts of balance of power within institutions, as well as
preservation of power of the ruling classes.
6.4 CONFLICT BETWEEN KING AND

PARLIAMENT, TILL 1649
The English Revolution is said to have been provoked by Charles I when, in
August 1642, he decided to raise an army for dealing with rebellion in Scotland,
without putting this measure through the Parliament. Many members of the
Parliament saw this as usurping the prerogatives hard won by “British society”
in their struggle against absolutist rule of the King.
The seeds of the conflict between the Monarchy and the Parliament had, however,
been sown earlier during the reign of James I (1603-1625), as the co-operation
that the Tudors had managed to obtain from the Parliament began to be
systematically eroded. To begin with, he was a strong advocate of the Divine
Right of kings, and sought to rule accordingly, besides being of Scottish origin.
Differences on the major issues of rights of Parliament, of different religious
groups, and over matters of taxation and foreign policy had already emerged
strong during his reign, and resulted in a considerable debt for the monarchy and
a growing political crisis within the English political system. The monarchy felt
constrained to order taxes in order to meet the growing costs of administration,
army and needs of foreign policy, without obtaining sanction of Parliament, which
was adamant in not giving these sanctions. The conflict came to a head over this.
During his reign Charles I (1625-1649), who succeeded James I, called the session
of Parliament three times in four years, but dissolved it each time when matters
came to a head over matter of finances. In 1628, he was forced to accept the
Petition of Right, whereby he had to agree that in future he would not impose
“loans” or taxes without parliamentary consent, and would not attempt to punish
anyone who refused such loans. There was also condemnation of arbitrary arrest,
martial law and other such aggressive measures by the King. Charles responded
by dismissing the Parliament in 1629. For eleven years he ruled thereafter in a
high-handed fashion, without calling the Parliament, until the fateful year 1640,
when he was compelled to do so in order to pay for the war necessary to defeat
the Scots. The Parliament hardly managed to complete two months and ended in
deadlock once again.
This was also the turning point in his reign and in the constitutional history of
England, for the Parliament demanded substantial concessions in terms of
regulating the prerogatives of the Crown and the powers of the Parliament: it
was now a tussle over how England was to be governed. Henceforth the Parliament
81
Rise of the Modern West-II insisted on the reversal to the rights granted to the Council under the Magna
Carta in 1415, that had been extracted by the barons who constituted the highest
nobility and exercised great power. It insisted on final authority in all matters of
finances, taxation and foreign policy decisions. They asked for religious reform.
The tussle spilled over into matters of governance, with the Parliament calling
for greater say and authority of local structures and officials at county level against
the royal courts established by the Crown and dominated by the nobility
representing royal interests and loyal to the King. The king was forced to call the
Parliament again in 1640, known in history as the Long Parliament. Its members
insisted on a redefinition of the powers of King and Parliament, with Parliament
as supreme authority. It decided to abolish all the Courts and institutions that
ensured royal authority: the Court of Star Chamber, the Court of High
Commission, Council of the North and the Council of Wales. It decided to punish
with imprisonment the significant officials responsible for asserting the power
of the Crown and seen as undermining the legitimate rights of Parliament, among
them William Laud and Wentworth. William Laud had been made the Primate of
England in 1633 and was seen as exercising undue power on behalf of the King.
It abolished knighthood and payment of what was known as ship money, and
decreed the approval of Parliament necessary for all other taxes. By the Triennial
Act, it sought to ensure that Parliament would have to be called at least once
every three years.
In the meantime, the Irish revolt broken out in 1641, with the Irish rebels being
seen as forces on the side of the King. Soon this had repercussions in the
Parliament and resulted in the formation of a King’s Party in Parliament. On its
part, the Parliament produced a document called The Grand Remonstrance
authored by Pym, leader of Parliament that tilted the balance of power firmly on
the side of the Parliament, which was not acceptable to Charles I. It could be
passed only by a majority of eleven votes, testifying to the deep cleavage in
English society and politics.
At this critical juncture, on January 4, 1642, the King decided to respond with an
attack on Parliament with his own armed force of 400 soldiers, hoping to arrest
the main leaders of the opposition in Parliament. Now started the armed conflicts
that have given to the English Revolution the nomenclature also of Civil War
which ended in 1649, with the execution of Charles I and formation of a Republic
headed by Oliver Cromwell. It meant victory for the Parliament.
Those who supported and fought on the side of the King, the Royalists, came to
be called Cavaliers as they represented the old tradition of feudal fighting forces.
Those on the side of the Parliament were called Roundheads because of the kind
of caps they wore. The Cavaliers claimed to be fighting for not just King but
God and against the disturbers of social harmony, the ones who sought to make
“subjects princes and princes slaves”. The allegiances were, however, complex:
what was involved was not just issues of class, although they were paramount.
As pointed out earlier, religion and foreign policy and the nature of rebellions,
which brought Scotland and Ireland into the picture, also determined these
allegiances. And life was disrupted in much larger areas than the sites of armed
combat, because of requisitions, plunder and hardship due to strife.
Within the Parliamentary opposition forces too there were groupings and
distinctions regarding methods of opposition to King and how far they may go in
82 initiating change. Mainly there were two, the Presbyterians and Independents,
both Puritans in religious affiliation, the former among them more moderate and The English Revolution
the latter insisting on more radical outcomes. Oliver Cromwell, an Independent,
formed a Model Army to fight the battle against the Crown, in the process also
changing the character of the militia by purging it of the moderate elements.
This new Model Army was the force that finally defeated the King’s forces in
June 1645 when the Scots, on whom Charles was hoping to rely, left him to his
devices to face this army owing allegiance to the Parliament. 1644-45 were the
years of the biggest battles of the Civil War.
At this stage a “Rump Parliament” of members loyal to Cromwell was convened

and decided on the King’s execution and a Republic to replace the Monarchy,
but not before many of the Independents themselves, considered too radical,
were disbanded by a majority in the Parliament. The radical influence was that
of the Levellers and Diggers, whom we will talk about subsequently, after we
have outlined those who led the Republic. The “Rump Parliament” was so called
because it was a continuation of the Long Parliament that had been in session
before the Civil war and was never officially disbanded by the Parliament, which
had assumed the right of dissolving the parliament, as opposed to its being the
King’s prerogative. Now, with the differences mentioned above within the
Parliament, only 150 members called for the session passed the fateful decision
of execution and Republic. The execution took place on January 30, 1649.
Throughout this period the English Parliament continued to consist of two houses,
the House of Lords and House of Commons, both dominated by the representatives
of the landed gentry, although the Upper House was predominantly of titled
nobility and the Commons had members of those who had expanded the ranks of
the gentry due to acquisition of land during the late 16th and early 17th century,
and merchants with high stake in both commerce and land. These were the ones
demanding restrictions on Absolutism and prerogatives of the Monarchy. They
had support of those called the “middle sort of people” and yeoman and artisans,
some of whom exhibited radical tendencies. It was also a period of intense activity
and experimentation, including attempts at constitutionalism.

1) Discuss the nature of conflict between different social groups during the
English Revolution.
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2) Briefly describe the nature of conflict betweern the King and the Parliament
in England till 1649.
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6.5 OLIVER CROMWELL AND THE REPUBLIC,
1649-53
For all practical purposes, the Civil War did not end with the formation of the
Commonwealth. Cromwell had to deal with all the continuing issues that preceded
him, and although the King had been removed, it cannot be said that the Royalist
challenge was over, as events were to show. His personality, of course towered
over the period, as much as did that of the King in the earlier phase. Of commoner,
yeoman origins, his sympathies did lie with the goals that the Parliament had set
for itself. The compromises he made were those dictated by the balance of forces,
rather than his own predilections. In that sense, he was not an advocate of absolute
power for himself, as the kings before him had been. Even though he ruled like
a dictator, he refrained from using divine sanction for his rule, or the rituals and
titles that went with it.
Oliver Cromwell ruled without care for parliamentary sanction, but he reversed
many of the policies of the Monarchy and considered the interests of the new
gentry and the middle classes. In 1649 he put down the Irish rebellion and
conquered Scotland in 1650-51, thus defeating forces considered supportive of
the Monarchy, followed by wars with the Dutch Republic and with Spain.
Cromwell dissolved the Rump Parliament in 1653, over differences on religious

policy and finances during rebellions. He created a new Parliament with 140
people of his own choice, soon dissolved that too and took for himself the title of
“Lord Protector”, to distinguish from the title of King. The Protectorate had a
constitution called the Instrument of Government, and power was shared by the
Lord Protector and the Council of State. The Parliament created by it included
representatives from Scotland and Ireland besides England. They were elected,
but of course on a very restricted franchise, based on private property, that for its
time meant essentially that the representatives would be the landed aristocracy,
including new gentry. The Parliament could now constitutionally make laws and
impose taxes. It produced what is regarded as the first written constitution in
England. There was a lot of sale of land, particularly of the Church and Royalists
and the Crown officials, furthering the consolidation of the new gentry and the
privilege of private property. Navigation Acts of 1651 helped promote commercial
capital and colonial interests.
Civil War had not ended during the Commonwealth. The New Model Army and
its domination, despite its purges and changes in composition, made it an important
player during the Commonwealth. It had helped put down rebellions of the Irish
and the Scots, and it had fought the Royalist forces on the side of Parliament. In
terms of religion, Cromwell had favoured the Puritans, as opposed to Catholics,
seen as identified with Charles I and James I, or the Anglican Church, supportive
of the social and religious compact arrived at by the Tudors in their consolidation
of the monarchical nation state in the 16th century, with landholdings and important
positions in the Court well into the 17th century.
Cromwell himself died, succeeded by his son Richard, but lack of control on his
part facilitated an invitation to the son of former king Charles, who made
conciliatory overtures and came back to the throne as Charles II. Thus ended the
experiment of Commonwealth, with a Restoration.
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The English Revolution
6.6 RESTORATION (1660) AND GLORIOUS
REVOLUTION (1688)
If the Commonwealth had failed in creating stability and co-operation with the
Parliament, so did the Restoration of the monarchy that followed it, despite an
official end of the Civil War. The contradiction within the polity was inherent in
the fact that a Monarchy had now been restored by a victorious Parliament. The
House of Lords was also restored, where the nominated members of the king
held sway but House of Commons in which the elected component was significant,
also became important.
The result of this was that both those who favoured Monarchy and those who
favoured Parliament as the supreme authority had to carry their fight into the
Parliament, rather than resolve the matter through armed battles of militias on
this side or that. Those who favoured “Court”, (those dependent on Court
appointments and positions and belonging to the titled nobility, sympathetic to
the prerogatives of divine right of kings) came to be known as Tories. Those who
were critical (and had their social base in the gentry, the new landed aristocracy,
and favoured decentralization of authority) were called Whigs. They had their
base in the “country”, where ownership of land by them made them powerful
and prosperous, and among those who gained new wealth from commercial
capitalism following the Navigation Acts and expansion of legitimate trade and
commerce through monopolies in trade.
These social and political conflicts also impinged on religious differences. The
preferences of Charles II, and James II after him, for Catholicism were dubbed
unpatriotic and identified with Spain, apart from infringing upon opportunities
for other religious sects within the administrative set up. Although the Court of
Star Chamber and other such courts dissolved during the Commonwealth were
not restored along with the Monarchy, nevertheless the preferences for Catholics
and their appointments tended to put power in the hands of those who favoured
monarchy, and therefore central control in administration.
By the 1670s, Tories and Whigs were well defined political groups within the
Parliament, and in 1679 the Whigs pushed through the Habeas Corpus Act that
institutionalized the protection and rights of private property, guard against
arbitrary power of the king through set procedures for trial and punishment and
legal rights of those accused. In this context, when the powers of king and
parliament was a strongly contested constitutional issue and James II stubbornly
exercised his prerogatives, the parliament majority favouring Whigs, invited
William and Mary of Orange, in Holland, to accept the throne and restore
Protestantism. The Settlement hence arrived at came to be known as the “Glorious
Revolution”. It came to be termed as “Glorious Revolution” by historians linked
with the Whigs, because it put the rights of Parliament on a sound foundation,
making Parliament a structural component of the English polity. The Bill of Rights
passed in 1689 institutionalised this structure, by restating the rights of Parliament.
It marked the origin of the constitutional parliamentary representative system
with two Houses of Parliament that has become the blue print for many states in
the modern world.
In class terms it established the social and political domination of the landed
gentry that was to last through the eighteenth century: the elections to the
85
Rise of the Modern West-II Parliament, we must remember, were based on property qualifications, which
restricted franchise. These elections not only ensured the pervasive influence of
gentry in parliamentary legislation, but also guaranteed that the social composition
of the Parliament was such that most members belonged to this class. Anglicanism
continued to be State religion, and Puritanism that enjoyed adherence among
middle classes remained without clout in political affairs. Given the nature of
economic development here, the gentry was far more open to entry of newcomers
into their class, and far more accommodative of the commercial, and later
industrial, interests, which gave to the English polity a reformist constitutionalism,
as compared with Europe, where the eighteenth century saw a contestation
between absolutism and titled nobility on one side, and opposing forces that
took on a revolutionary form.
6.7 RELIGIOUS CONFLICTS AND POLITICS

Religious conflicts were intertwined with the politics of the time not only because
religious beliefs were all pervasive, but because the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries saw intense religious wars. The Tudor kings and the Stuart rulers had
their own personal predilections as well as bases of support for the Monarchy as
an institution, while those opposed to Absolutism did not necessarily subscribe
to the same religion.
In the sixteenth century, on the question of religious affiliation, the Parliament

had supported the Tudors against the Catholic Church and its international
jurisdiction. England became gradually independent of the declining Holy Roman
Empire, challenged the Catholic Spanish Empire in the seas and had its own
navigation plans and voyages. The Reformation and the confiscation of monastic
lands and their sale (1536-40) created a land market and made land a commodity
to be bought and sold in the market, which means it could be bought by non-
noble classes or those from the nobility who had not “held” land as feudal tenure
and been part of the vassalage system. Thus the conflict between Church and
State was intrinsic to the rise of new economy and the social classes that benefited
from it, and it was natural that the Parliament, by now dominated by these interests,
should support the New Monarchy in this religious conflict.
In the seventeenth century, religion continued to regulate and influence social

life. It was present at all stages of a person’s life from baptism to burial, was the
main agency of education and socialization at the level of the village and the
parish and in the towns. It defended the existing social and political order, just as
it had defended feudalism in the Middle Ages. Social conflicts therefore, even in
the seventeenth century, inevitably assumed a religious form and conflictual ideas
were invariably couched in religious terms. Religious pamphlets thus proliferated
and dominated much of the debate during the years of the English Revolution,
on both sides. The defense of Monarchy and the espousal of republicanism were
expressed through strong religious arguments by their proponents.
When James ascended the throne, the Calvinist and the Catholic clergy organized
to pull him in different directions and the Puritan clergy expected him to address
matters of Church abuses. Charles II favoured Catholics, as did James II after
him, which to many Parliamentarians seemed unpatriotic because Catholicism
was identified with Spain or the Dutch state, or plain and simple attack on religious
tolerance and a conspiracy to restore Catholicism in England, including reversal
86
Rise of the Modern West-II and opposed the very idea of private property and class distinctions altogether.
Given the upper class composition of the Parliament, they questioned the
Parliament authority to speak for all the people. They were inspired by thoughts
of egalitarianism and justice and freedom, although they had no concrete
programmes and later historians termed their vision as utopian and far ahead of
its times. Their main leader was Winstanley and they tried to set up a model
community, but were unsuccessful. The levellers and the Diggers were not
unacceptable even to the Republic.
6.9 QUESTIONS OF REVOLUTION AND CIVIL

WAR
There is a debate among historians on whether the period in question should be
termed as Revolution or Civil War, with those inclined towards class analysis or
social analysis of the events terming it as Revolution. England during this period,
both because of the social and economic changes noted above and for the evolution
towards a constitutional system, saw fundamental changes that are intrinsic to a
modern capitalist society. In that sense it has been termed a Revolution, despite
its not having many of the characteristics of the later revolutions in the modern
world, which brought about new political regimes and a qualitative change in
balance of class forces. This is the consensus, even though new studies of the
cataclysmic revolutions now tend towards studying the hitherto neglected
continuities.
On the other hand, other historians have tended to interpret these changes as not
so fundamental, especially since the short interval of the Commonwealth was
followed by Restoration of the Monarchy, which has continued to have a
significant presence, if not power in the English structure. The constitutional
monarchy is seen as absence of revolution, and simply as a struggle between two
political institutions that took on the character of essentially a Civil War, and
hence this nomenclature.
From our survey of events and the nature of conflict during these years we have
seen that armed conflicts occurred almost through this entire period, from the
succession of the Stuarts to the throne till the Restoration, finally coming to an
end only with the Settlement of 1688. However, we can say that far from simply
a Civil War, the larger epithet of Revolution, in the sense of attempts at social
and political advance (if not transformation), is more pertinent. These publications
also point towards issues that were to continue to concern modern society
henceforth: liberty, representation and sovereignty, individual religious freedom,
freedom of speech and association; and above all, the right to private property,
which is the hallmark of a bourgeois capitalist society. In a way, then, this struggle
between King and Parliament did signify a thrust towards the elimination of the
legacies of feudalism and a preparation for doing away with the obstacles to free
development of productive forces and production relations, including the religious
and intellectual fetters that impeded change.
On the other hand, it was obvious that kings could no longer continue in the old
ways, with aspirations akin to the absolutist monarchs of the Continent. There
was nothing to prevent individual kings from harbouring aspirations of power
and preference for particular religious sects or social groupings. In this lay the
seeds of future conflict that characterized the period of the Restoration,
88
transcended the settlement of the Glorious Revolution, and continued well into The English Revolution
the eighteenth century with its formations of political parties, in which the King
was a crucial factor.

1) Describe the role of Oliver Cromwell in the Commonwealth.
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2) Discuss the major intellectual trends during the English Revolution.
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6.10 LET US SUM UP

From our survey and analysis of the events and developments that constituted
the English Revolution, and the ensuing Restoration and ‘Glorious Revolution’,
you would have gained an idea that this was a very significant period in English
history. It created the basis for the future British political system characterized
as constitutional monarchy. It also laid the seeds for the similarities and differences
between Britain and the European Continent, which persist to this day.
We have tried to interpret the English Revolution in the light of the broader
context of 17 th century Europe. The social, economic and intellectual
developments of this period formed the basis for the political conflicts, particularly
the contest for power between the King and the Parliament, and subsequently for
power within the Parliament as it became an important institution in the English
political system. There were the seeds of the future accommodations and class
alliances between the upper classes that continued to characterize British history.
Although this period also involved armed conflicts between the opposing forces,
the fundamental issues of the English Revolution centred around the creation of
conditions, social and political, that would allow the growth of capitalism and of
modernity after the decline of feudal society. The form this took, that of a
Revolution, so different and constrained as compared to the later revolutions on
the Continent, was partly due to the specific call configuration of English society
and the social base of the Monarchy in England, and partly due to the fact that
feudalism declined and there was a long period between the decline of feudalism
and the development of capitalism, much longer than on the Continent which
allowed for political developments to be in the long-term more continuously
89
Rise of the Modern West-II reformative rather than cataclysmic. The English Revolution was the first evidence
of this, and Restoration was as much a part of the English Revolution as the
Republic was.

EXERCISES
1) See Section 6.3
2) See Section 6.4

1) See Section 6.5
2) See Section 6.8
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The English Revolution
UNIT 7 THE MODERN SCIENCE*
Structure
7.0 Objectives
7.1 Introduction
7.2 Nature of Modern Science and Knowledge System
7.3 Some Major Contributions in Development of Science in Seventeenth and
Eighteenth Centuries
7.3.1 Developments in Astronomy and Physics
7.3.2 Mathematics as a Tool
7.3.3 Development in Non-Quantitative Fields
7.3.4 From Alchemy to Chemistry
7.4 Interpreting Scientific Developments of Seventeenth and Eighteenth
Centuries
7.5 Women and Modern Science
7.6 Let Us Sum Up
7.0 OBJECTIVES
After reading this Unit, you will understand the following aspects about
development of science in seventeenth and eighteenth centuries:
nature of modern science especially its experimental nature,
major development in various fields of science,
different interpretations of scientific development by historians; and
the role of women in development of science.
7.1 INTRODUCTION
Science is often defined as the systematic study of the natural phenomenon. Its
basic human tools are observation and experiment. Science is the concerted human
effort to understand, or to understand better, the history of the natural world and
how the natural world works, with observable physical evidence as the basis of
that understanding. Defined in this manner, scientific progress, the driving force
for the rise of modernity, requires a critical mind, free of prejudice and opens to
new ways of thinking. Presently, science is used in a narrow technocratic social
world. This has led to an understanding that whatever is technically feasible and
achievable, we should attain that, regardless of human and environmental cost.
However, modern science itself emerged as a neutral and value-free discipline in
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in a slow and long process. It was only a
couple of centuries later that it was subjected to the control of the ruling oligarchies
who misused scientific knowledge to destroy mother earth’s environment or to
create weapons of mass-destruction which can wipe out the entire human
civilization. Sometimes in the initial phase of development, modern science was
* Resource Person : Prof. Shri Krishan

91
Rise of the Modern West-II a dangerous business as it came into conflict with the established authority of
Church in Europe. In 1600, the Italian monk Giordano Bruno was sentenced to
death and burned at the stake because he believed in free thinking in philosophy
and science. Famous Scientist Galileo Galilei narrowly avoided the same fate
but only by publicly renouncing his support of Copernicus’ heliocentric view
(the view that planets including earth revolves round the sun.) In this Unit, we
will discuss the story of main developments of modern science in Europe in
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the interpretations of these developments,
the causes for its development, the context of its development and its impact on
society and culture.
7.2 NATURE OF MODERN SCIENCE AND

KNOWLEDGE SYSTEM
Modern science tries to understand and explain how nature works and why things
look to us as they exist. “Natural” here refers to empirical or “sensible,” that is,
only that which we can detect — somehow — with our senses or with tools that
are extension of our senses. It involves explanations that are meticulous, accurate
and possess predictive power. In addition to being limited to studying the natural
world, scientific knowledge is limited by being inherently uncertain to varying
degrees. It does not claim absolute, eternal, fixed, infallible or permanent truth.
It is based on a realistic perception of the physical universe as existing apart
from our sensory perception of it. It is also assumed that humans have potential
to accurately perceive and understand the world and its working. Empirically-
accessible processes are enough to explain or account for natural phenomena or
events. Scientists also assume that nature function uniformly in both space and
time (unless we have evidence to the contrary). Since our scientific knowledge
is based only on human sensory experience of the natural world, it is subject to
the limitations. For example, we cannot see either infrared or ultraviolet light
and we cannot hear extremely high or low sounds. But there may be tools which
may enhance power of our observations through senses, there are still limits to
accuracy and range of instruments made by humans. Sometimes our previously
held notions of the world or some phenomenon in the world continue to influence
our perception as the saying goes that we see with our minds, and not with our
eyes. Scientific knowledge is, therefore, necessarily contingent or dependent
knowledge and therefore uncertain, rather than absolute like metaphysical
knowledge (which is 100% certain, fixed and infallible). Being based on available
data that are evaluated and assessed, scientific knowledge is subject to
modification in the light of new evidence and new ways of thinking. Nevertheless
It is extremely important to understand that science only offer tentative
clarification about the functioning of the universe, even then, scientific ideas are
still the most dependable account of the nature. In the absence of certainty
regarding the absolute truth of scientific explanations, scientists use comparative
critical thinking to determine which explanation is better in a number of
alternatives. Because it is equally faulty to assume that any and all explanations
are equally valid or worthy and that truth is merely a matter of opinion.
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The Modern Science
7.3 SOME MAJOR CONTRIBUTIONS IN
DEVELOPMENT OF SCIENCE IN
SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH
CENTURIES
In this section, we will discuss some important areas of modern science and how
they developed in the early modern period.
7.3.1 Developments in Astronomy and Physics

The views of Aristotle and Ptolemy were shattered by Nicholas Copernicus (1473-
1543). In his book On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres (published
posthumously in 1543 because of apprehension of the scorn of fellow
astronomers), Copernicus suggested that the sun was the centre of our planetary
system and that and planets including earth moved around it in spherical orbits.
This Heliocentric conception that the sun — and not the earth — was the centre
of the universe contradicted contemporary dominant thinking and challenged
the traditional teachings on the subject of hundreds of years. Copernicus’ book
had enormous scientific and religious consequences. By characterizing the earth
as just another planet, he destroyed the impression that the earthly world was
different from the heavenly world. Copernicus’ ideas influenced others in the
field of science. A Danish astronomer, Tycho Brahe (1546-1601), set the stage
for the study of modern astronomy by building an observatory and collecting
data for over twenty years on the location of the stars and planets. His greatest
contribution was collection of huge amount of data, yet his limited knowledge of
mathematics prevented Brahe from making much sense out of the data. Johannes
Kepler (1571-1630), a German astronomer and assistant to Brahe, used his data
to support Brahe’s data and Copernicus’ idea that the planets move around the
sun in elliptical, not circular, orbits. Kepler’s three laws of planetary motion
were based on mathematical calculations and accurately predicted the movements
of planets in a sun-centered universe. His work demolished the old systems of
Aristotle and Ptolemy.
The word scientist itself was coined in 1840 although the 17th century is revered
as an age of great scientific developments. This was the century of Galileo, Kepler,
Bacon, Pascal, Descartes, and Newton. They called themselves natural
philosophers. Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) lived in a time when astronomy and
astrology were conjoined. Johannes Kepler, born in Germany, was a devout
Christian (a passionate Lutheran) who was motivated to study science by his
belief that God had created the world according to an intelligible plan that is
accessible through the natural power of human reason that God had granted
human beings. Kepler believed that the world was created by a Creator who
used geometry to establish order and harmony, and that this harmony could be
explained through musical terms. He thought his Celestial Physics merely revealed
God’s geometrical plan for the universe. Similarly, Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
was also acquainted with several different fields of science. He did not choose
just one specific profession. He was good at playing the lute and the organ, he
could draw and paint well.. He studied medicine, explored mathematics and he
acclaimed geometry, too. He was also interested in theology too.
93
Rise of the Modern West-II In 1608, Europe already had low power telescopes known as spyglasses which is
credited to Hans Lippershey, a Dutchman. The magnifying power of these initial
telescopes was very limited. There was a captive market for these. Galileo knew
about this invention of a new optical instrument. He started designing his own
improved versions, with higher magnification. His first telescopes only improved
the view to eighth power, but his telescope steadily improved. Galileo’s telescope
was now capable of magnifying about ten times more than normal vision although
it had a rather narrow field of view. The observations with the help of this
instrument by Galileo resulted in the discovery of the mountains and craters of
the Moon and the moons of the Jupiter’s, the descriptions of the stages of the
Venus, the drawings of the sunspots which all proved the heliocentric view of
the world.
In Galileo’s time artillery used cannonballs which were indistinctively made of

lead, iron, or other materials and had the same caliber (i.e., diameter), but different
weight. Consequently, to standardize the range of the gunfire, the gunner had to
adjust the explosive charge in relation to the cannonball utilized. The quantity of
gunpowder had to be proportionally greater, in respect to the greater weight.
Galileo’s compass could be used as a gunner’s gauge, because it established the
relation between the weight and the volume of the different materials. Using
observation rather than speculation to help him formulate ideas — such as his
laws on the motion of falling bodies — Galileo established experimentation, the
cornerstone of modern science.
He applied experimental methods to astronomy by using the newly invented

telescope. His observations using this instrument of the four moons of Jupiter,
and a mountainous surface of the moon, destroyed an earlier notion that planets
were crystal spheres. It demolished the notion that the earth was the centre of the
universe and around it moved separate, transparent crystal spheres: the moon,
the sun, five planets, and fixed stars. Galileo’s evidence reinforced and confirmed
the views of Copernicus. Following the publication of his book, Dialogue
Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632), which openly criticized the
works of Aristotle and Ptolemy, Galileo was arrested, imprisoned, tried for heresy
(belief or view contrary to orthodox Christian beliefs) by the Papal Inquisition
(medieval Christian institution for suppressing the heresy), and forced to publicly
repudiate his views. In modern times, Galileo’s trial has come to symbolize the
conflict between religious beliefs and scientific knowledge.
There was societal and institutional support for scientific works like that of
Galileo. Galileo was a prominent member of the famous scientific circle known
as The Pinelli Circle. Many well-known people gathered in Giovanni Vincenzio
Pinelli’s house, where Galilei lived too. Pinelli himself was a humanist in Padua
who was interested in several fields of knowledge. In1603, Prince Federico
Cesi established the intellectual workshop of the Accademia dei Lincei (The
Academy of Lynxes). This demonstrates that patronage from rich and powerful
people helped spread of scientific enquiry and a culture supportive of it.
The greatest figure of the century was perhaps Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), an
Englishman. In his book Principia Mathematica (1687), he integrated the ideas
of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo into one system of mathematical laws to
explain the orderly manner the three laws of motion of bodies and his theory of
the law of universal gravitation. According to this law, everybody in the universe
94 attracts every other body in precise mathematical relationships and the precise
force of this attraction depends on the mass of bodies and distance between them. The Modern Science
Newton’s law mathematically proved that the sun, moon, earth, planets, and all
other bodies moved in accordance with the same basic force of gravitation. Such
proof showed that the universe operated by rules that could be explained in the
language of mathematics. It is common amongst interpreters of Newton to neglect
or even ignore completely Newton’s work in alchemy and theology-pretending
that it was either a deviation, or at best irrelevant to his most important work.
This view makes no senses as Newton’s writings shows that he had deep interest
in both subjects. This was related in crucial ways to his work in mechanics and
optics. Indeed, in his alchemical research he was partly looking for underlying
explanations and/or principles which might bear on his discoveries in optics and
mechanics. His theological work was part and parcel of his search for general
philosophical principles. So his interest in theological matters was not the
abnormality of a weird man, but followed naturally from his desire to get to the
bottom of things, and find out basic truths about the universe. This may been as
argued by some historians that his interest in these questions was precipitated by
the necessity for a fellow of Trinity college to be ordained into the Anglican
Church, and to affirm his orthodox religious beliefs. Was it simply the question
of immediate material benefit in Newton’s interest in theology? We should also
keep in mind that Newton was living under the influence of a thousand years of
Christian religion on the European society of his day.
7.3.2 Mathematics as a Tool

The invention of the logarithm in the early 17th Century by John Napier (and
later improved by Napier and Henry Briggs) contributed to the advance of science,
astronomy and mathematics by making some difficult calculations relatively easy.
It was one of the most significant mathematical developments of the age, and
17th Century physicists like Kepler and Newton could never have performed
the complex calculations needed for their works without it. The French astronomer
and mathematician Pierre Simon Laplace remarked, almost two centuries later,
that Napier, by halving the labours of astronomers, had doubled their lifetimes.
The Frenchman René Descartes (1596-1650) developed analytic geometry and
Cartesian coordinates in the mid-17th Century. The orbits of the planets to could
be plotted on a graph with the help of these. It also laid the foundations for the
later development of calculus. Newton and, independently, the German
philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716), completely
revolutionized mathematics by the development of infinitesimal calculus, with
its two main operations, differentiation and integration. There was a controversy
over the claim of its development. Newton probably developed his work
before Leibniz, but Leibniz published his first, leading to a long and bitter quarrel.
Whatever the truth behind the various claims, though, it is Leibniz’s calculus
notation that is the one still in use today. Calculus has applications in various
fields knowledge engineering, economics, medicine, and astronomy.
Both Newton and Leibniz also contributed greatly in other areas of mathematics,
including Newton’s contributions to a generalized binomial theorem, the theory
of finite differences and the use of infinite power series, and Leibniz’s
development of a mechanical forerunner to the computer and the use of matrices
to solve linear equations. In eighteenth century later the Bernoulli Brothers, Jacob
and Johann of Basel in Switzerland further developed Leibniz’s infinitesimal
calculus.
95
Rise of the Modern West-II 7.3.3 Development in Non-Quantitative Fields
William Gilbert (1544-1603) published a book in 1600,On the magnet, which
became a standard work on electrical and magnetic phenomena throughout
Europe. In it, Gilbert distinguished between magnetism and static (known as the
amber effect). He also compared the magnet’s polarity to the polarity of the
Earth, and developed an entire magnetic philosophy on this analogy. Gilbert’s
findings suggested that magnetism was the soul of the Earth, and that a perfectly
spherical lodestone, when aligned with the Earth’s poles, would spin on its axis,
just as the Earth spins on its axis over a period of 24 hours. Gilbert was in fact
debunking the traditional cosmologists’ belief that the Earth was fixed at the
centre of the universe, and he provided food for thought for Galileo, who
eventually came up with the proposition that the Earth revolves around the Sun.
He examined two strictly circumscribed phenomena hitherto immersed in heaps
of inaccuracies and folklore, namely, the enigmatic behaviors of pieces of
lodestone and of amber, into two distinct, budding branches of specialized inquiry–
those of magnetism and of electricity. Gilbert now pooled, checked, and orderly
recorded much practice-gained experience gathered by others; established by
means of firsthand experimentation numerous other empirical properties of
electric and magnetic substances.
William Harvey (1578-1657) was an English physician who had studied at the
University of Padua. Harvey’s research was furthered through the dissection of
animals. He first revealed his findings at the College of Physicians in 1616, and
in 1628 he published his theories in a book entitled An Anatomical Study of the
Motion of the Heart and of the Blood in Animals, where he explained how the
heart propelled the blood in a circular course through the body. Harvey was also
the first to suggest that humans and other mammals reproduced via the fertilisation
of an egg by sperm. It took a further two centuries before a mammalian egg was
finally observed, but nonetheless Harvey’s theory won credibility during his
lifetime.
7.3.4 From Alchemy to Chemistry

Historically, alchemy referred to both the exploration of nature and an early
philosophical and spiritual discipline that combined chemistry with metal work.
The goals of alchemy were manifold. The alchemists motive was to find the
“elixir of life” (a substance with magical properties that would bring wealth,
health, and immortality). They also wanted to find or make a substance called
the “philosopher’s stone,” which when heated and combined with “base” (non-
precious metals such as copper and iron) would turn it into gold by a process
called transmutation. They also wished to discover the relationship of humans to
the universe and use that knowledge to improve the human spirit. So, in Alchemy
scientific and mysticism merged. With the rise of modern science, alchemists
were often projected as charlatans and pretenders. But many alchemists were in
fact serious-minded practitioners whose work helped lay the groundwork for
modern chemistry and medicine. Alchemists contribution to chemical industries:
basic metallurgy, metalworking, the production of inks, dyes, paints, and
cosmetics, leather-tanning, and the preparation of extracts and liquors cannot be
denied. It was a seventeenth century German alchemist who isolated phosphorus,
and another German alchemist of the same period who developed a porcelain
material that broke China’s centuries-old monopoly on one of the world’s most
96
expensive commodities. In 1662, Robert Boyle (1627-1691) articulated Boyle’s The Modern Science
law, which states that the volume of a gas is correlated to the pressure on it. For
this and other important contributions to scientific inquiry, Boyle is sometimes
called the father of modern chemistry. Like others of his times he called himself
a natural philosopher. Boyle wrote two papers on the transmutation of the
elements, claiming to have changed gold into mercury by means of “quicksilver,”
the ingredients of which he did not reveal. He was in this way rooted in alchemy.
Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier was a pioneer who discovered a new chemistry based

on experimentation and observation and he made a systematic analysis of his
findings. Chemistry was still mired in the legacy of the alchemist as we have
seen from the example of Boyle. Even the simple process of combustion or
burning of any substance in air was not clear even at the beginning of eighteenth
century. German scientist Georg Ernst Stahl early in the 18th century believed
that everything that burned contained a common element of fire. He named this
element phlogiston, derived from a Greek word for ignitable material. Sthal’s
experiment found that charcoal lost weight when it burned. Stahl believed that
any material lost when burned and this was the proof of the fact a substance lost
weight when burnt because of the loss of its phlogiston element in the air. Since
there was no solid explanation in those days about the phenomenon of burning,
explanation, people accepted readily it. Lavoisier conducted experiments with
phosphorus and sulfur, both of which easy to burn and Lavoisier found that they
gained weight by burning in the air. This was contrary to Sthal’s hypothesis on
burning or combustion. Using lead calx for his experiments (a substance formed
from an ore or mineral when heated or oxide of a metal in modern language of
chemistry), he was able to show that it gained in weight when burned, probably
because it combined with air and same air was released when the calx or lead
oxide was heated. This made Lavoisier doubtful of the existence of phlogiston.
Although Lavoisier now realized that burning or combustion actually somehow
involved air, but since he was still ignorant about the exact composition of air, he
could not go any further. In August 1774, the famous English scientist Joseph
Priestley met with Lavoisier in Paris. He shared his experience about his
experiment of heating mercury calx in which a gas was obtained in which a
candle burned more easily. Priestley believed that this ‘new gas’ helped in burning
and caused candles to burn longer because it was free of phlogiston. For this
reason, he called the gas that he obtained by burning mercury calx
“dephlogisticated gas”.
In Paris, the inquisitive Lavoisier repeated Priestley’s experiment with mercury

and some other metal oxides. His conclusion was that the air was a compound of
many elements or gases. At least, he argued, there were two components: one
that reacted with the metal and helped the process of burning and the another
that obstruct burning process. By 1777, Lavoisier proposed a new theory of
burning or combustion that rejected the Sthal’s notion of existence of phlogiston.
Combustion or burning was explained as a chemical reaction of a combustible
metal or an organic substance with that part of common air that helped in the
process of burning. In 1779, he announced to the Royal Academy of Sciences in
Paris that he found in his experiments that most acids contained this type of air.
Lavoisier named it oxygène. So the Stahl’s phlogiston was imaginary. In new
theory of combustion oxygen now played the central role.
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Rise of the Modern West-II In 1766, Englishman Henry Cavendish obtained a gas that burned easily. Priestley
noted that when gas obtained by him and common air were burned with a spark
in a closed container, a small amount of dew-like substance was found on the
walls of glass container. When Cavendish repeated the experiment, he found
that this dew like substance was actually water. Cavendish still interpreted the
findings of his experiments in terms of phlogiston and thought the water was
present in each of the two airs before the process of burning. Lavoisier explained
that burning or combustion involve chemical reaction with oxygen; however,
until he could explain the combustion of new gas obtained by Cavendish, some
would still doubt his new chemistry. In June 1783, Lavoisier combined oxygen
with Cavendish ‘new gas’, and obtained water. His conclusion was that water
was not an element but a compound of oxygen and Cavendish’s ‘new air’ , which
we now know as hydrogen. To support his claim, Lavoisier decomposed water
into oxygen and hydrogen. Now that the chemical composition of water was
known, the last doubt to throwing away phlogiston hypothesis was removed.
Lavoisier adopted the long-neglected idea of an element as originally proposed
by Robert Boyle more than a century earlier. They retained the names from the
past of many simple substances, or elements. But when an element combined
with another element, the compound’s name now reflected something about its
chemical composition. Lavoisier’s new chemistry, expounded in his Elements of
Chemistry (1789) incorporated many new aspects like the impact of heating on
actual chemical reactions, the exact nature of gases, various chemical reactions
of acids and bases which combined to form salts, and the description of various
apparatuses used to perform chemical experiments in laboratories. Lavoisier
defined the Law of the Conservation of Mass in the following words “... in every
chemical reaction an equal quantity of matter exists both before and after the
chemical reaction. He also listed the then-known elements.

1) Describe the contributions of natural philosophers in the development of
astronomy and physics in seventeenth century.
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2) Discuss the development of science in non-quantitative fields in seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries.
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The Modern Science
7.4 INTERPRETING SCIENTIFIC
DEVELOPMENTS OF SEVENTEENTH AND
EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES
The scientific development of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have
been interpreted in many ways by scholars. In 1943 the French historian Alexandre
Koyré described the scientific advance of seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
as a quantum jump or qualitative break with the past pattern of human thinking.
For him, it was the most insightful development in human thinking, a real
revolution created by the human mind since Greek antiquity. It made fundamental
changes in human culture and way of life and left a permanent mark on the
human mind. Later, the English historian Herbert Butterfield also termed it as a
major revolution, something spectacular since the rise of Christianity. According
to him, compared to this great epoch making transformation, the Renaissance
and Reformation were simple episodes in the history of humankind. He
emphasised that this Scientific Revolution was the real origin of the modern
world. These early historians of science, thus, depicted it as a consistent,
pioneering revolution event that profoundly and without end altered human
perceptions of the universe and ways and means by which human beings interacted
with nature and environment. It was the singular moment for the entry of
modernity in our lives. at which the world was abruptly made modern. It was a
libertarian in the sense that it removed superstitious and irrational way of thinking
that had persisted for centuries.
We have mentioned earlier that although many seventeenth century practitioners

expressed their intention to bring about a radical intellectual change, they used
no term such as Science or Revolution to refer to what they were doing. They
called themselves natural philosophers and many of them were interested in issues
and problems of theology, some were immersed in practices of alchemy. So many
historians find the idea of a Scientific Revolution an uneasy one. Many historians
are now question and criticize that there was sudden and catastrophic change
that occurred in Western Europe, particularly in the fixed time period of
seventeenth or eighteenth century that can be marked as the Scientific Revolution.
There are also doubts about the cultural notion science manifested in a unique
manner in the seventeenth century. Now scholars argue science was involved in
cultural practices which found expression in a variety of ways and that there can
be a large number of ways and methods through which human beings can aim to
understand, explain, and control nature and environment. Every Method may
emerge in a particular cultural setting and can have its own features and may
herald a different kind of change in human thinking and perception. There cannot
be a unique and single method to obtain knowledge which is universal or eternal
of all times and all places. The so called scientific method— a consistent,
universal, and efficient manner of creating knowledge that can be traced in the
seventeenth is a cultural specific product, they argue. The seventeenth-century’s
knowledge systems was only a continuation of medieval knowledge systems. It
did not emerge in a vacuum. We cannot assert with certainty that medieval world
ceased to exist at this particular point or from this particular time period modern
way of thinking became the hallmark of human consciousness and perception.
The seventeenth century scientific practitioners often believed and practised in
certain cultural practices what we may perceive as ‘medieval’ or ‘modern’.
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Rise of the Modern West-II Some historians argue that the idea of scientific development must be situated in
the wider cultural and social context of seventeenth and eighteenth century. in
other words, they feel that the scientific changes of the seventeenth century must
be interoperated in the context of changes in socio-economic, political, and
cultural conditions or patterns of thinking. More importantly, some historians
now wish to understand the development of scientific endeavour in the concrete
historical circumstances of those times. What actually transpired and what was
the social cultural milieu of the period when a particular mode of science was
taking root? How did the institutions help in obtaining and creating scientific
knowledges and how this base expanded with the passage of time? These are
important consideration of historians of science. Some historians analyse the
actual stories of people who wrought such changes? We have seen that there
were prominent circles patronized by the rich and powerful people in the
seventeenth century and later institutionalization of scientific efforts in the form
of various academies etc. It is important to see that modern science emerges at a
time when the institutions of the Middle Ages, such as the Church, the universities
and the established professions of jurisprudence, theology and medicine, were
declining but when the social and political order of modern society had not yet
consolidated. It was in this period of transition and turmoil that modern science
emerges. However, by the late seventeenth century with the growth of powerful
monarchs in some countries of Europe, they tried to use it for their own purpose.
The Restoration government in England in 1660s purged the reformed universities
of the adherents of the new experimental natural philosophy and re-established
the authority of the Church and state. This period was also the period of the
institutionalization of science under the patronage of the absolute state. This was
marked by the foundation of the Royal Society in London in 1662 by Charles II,
the Academic des Sciences in Paris in 1666 by Louis XIV. and the Akademie des
Wissenschaften in Berlin in 1700. The political integration of science by royal
edicts into the state compromised its radical function.
The American sociologist, Robert K. Merton, is the main pioneer of the sociology
of science. His studies focused on sociological aspects of the scientific enterprise.
His thesis, “Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth-Century England”,
demonstrated how Puritanism unintentionally provided social and cultural support
for the science emerging in 17th -century England. He used massive amount of
statistical and historical data to support his cautiously drawn conclusions that
Puritanism provided a system of values and beliefs which fostered the
development of seventeenth-century English science. Edgar Zilsel, an Austrian
philosopher/scientist, adopted a more moderate economic-deterministic approach
in his researches. He propounds the idea that the early capitalistic society broke
down the ancient barriers separating the scholar from the craftsman, or what
George Basalla (1986) identified as the 'man of formal knowledge' from the
´man of practical knowledge'. From antiquity through the Middle Ages, the
philosopher and the priest were socially superior to the metallurgist, potter, ship-
builder, or other craftsman. On the different extremes the scholar excelled in
logic, speculative thinking, and mathematics while the craftsman has a special
knowledge of the material objects. Hence, theory and practice were separated
for centuries until the needs of an emerging capitalistic society joined them
together to produce modern science.
Sometimes the traditional account of the development of science in seventeenth

and eighteenth century read like the celebrations of the heroic achievements of
100
Great Men (not women!) making or creating Modernity. So what where are the The Modern Science
voices of lesser participants (and sometimes of the laity). What were their
reactions? Were they passive spectators? How did the forms of culture traditionally
considered peripheral to, or even outside the ‘science proper.’ react or adapt to
new mode of thinking prevalent in ‘scientific circles’? As a result of questioning
subjects and/or people previously left wholly or partly in the margins have come
to be included in the narrative. Examples are subjects that (at the time) were
nonmathematical and chiefly descriptive, like magnetism and illness; subjects
that are scarcely practiced anymore, like musical science, and/or are held under
grave suspicion, like alchemy; but also previously neglected contributors not of
the first or even quite the second rank (e.g., hosts of ably experimenting Jesuits).
Some people argue that the use of quantitative methods and mathematics was
really novel and important in the seventeenth century. This really destroyed the
centuries old Aristotelian notions of the universe and nature. If we agree with
this viewpoint then naturally individuals like Galileo, Descartes, Huygens, and
Newton extremely important. The traditional approach towards scientific
developments emphasizes mathematical physics and astronomy. It is true that
some significant developments did take place in the field of astronomy and physics
but that was not entirely which constituted the Scientific Revolution. However,
not all seventeenth century natural philosophy was mechanical or experimental.
Nevertheless, the role of Mechanics in knowing about the nature certainly
increased, and there were scientific disputes about the correctness of tools of
mechanical and experimental methods in acquiring knowledge. These to some
extent capture what is valuable in understanding about cultural change in this
period.
Science can be understood only its historical context and we can understand the
scientific works only in the cultural context in which they are created. Historians
have long argued about the role of historical and social contexts in knowing
about the process of development of a particular branch of science. Certainly, its
development cannot be visualized in isolation from such context. The Science in
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was a collectively practiced, historically
embedded phenomenon. So when sociological and historical context is accepted
by scholars, they draw less attention to intellectual history of ideas, concepts,
methods, evidences in themselves but emphasise more on the social factors like
institutional form of scientific works, the role of socio-economic factors in
development of science, and practical social uses or implication of scientific
development for overall societal development . There is room for contingency in
the story – not everything that happened was bound to happen, or was bound to
happen the way it did happen. Historians of science have further become aware
that there were more significant reasons for contemporary perceptions of modern-
science-in-the-making as innately strange and disturbing than sheer backwardness
and/or superstition. So we feel that multiple stories can be told about the scientific
development of seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
7.5 WOMEN AND MODERN SCIENCE

If we look for women in state sponsored Academies of Science, there was not a
single woman as member in them in seventeenth and eighteenth centuries but
they were not absent completely from scientific fields. We come across one
German astronomer Maria Winkelmann. Again Winkelmann was not the only
one. It has been estimated that out of all German astronomers working in the
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Rise of the Modern West-II early eighteenth-century, 14 percent were women. In 1710, Maria Winkelmann
petitioned the Berlin Academy for an appointment as assistant astronomer and
calendar-maker when her husband and Academy astronomer (Gottfried Kirch)
died. She was as a seasoned astronomer who had published astronomical
observations under her husband’s name while he was ill and dying. Although the
great Leibniz, then President of the Academy, supported her claim, her request
was denied. Then another interesting example is that of Laura Bassi (1711-
1778), first woman to become a professor of physics at the University of Bologna
in eighteenth century. It is amazing to note that she had twelve children. Did
they not interfere in her scientific productivity? She published her studies on
electricity and air pressure etc regularly. what made it possible? We know that in
Europe, the child rearing practices for the upper classes made this possible. Soon
after the birth of a child, it was handed over to a governess or wet nurse and
reared in the countryside. A upper class mother might not see her child again
until age of seven and about that age boys were sent to boarding schools. So
probably this prerogative of a upper class woman allowed an uneasy fix between
reproduction and her professional life. Yet the basic fact remains that modern
science and professional life was not meant to be for women in the prevailing
man-dominated society.

1) Critically evaluate the various interpretations of the scientific development
of seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
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2) Explain the role of Women in Science in seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
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7.6 LET US SUM UP

In this Unit, we have seen how the modern science as we know it germinated,
how it spread to various fields and how nature-knowledge of one field was not
entirely independent. The nature-knowledge of one kind was dependent on the
others and the cumulative impact of these interactions made it sustainable in
long-run. Although society and its culture was changing, the outlook and
temperament was of the key figures of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
was still immersed in the medieval ideology and theology. It was not a complete
break with the past. As was expected, women remained on the margin in this
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discovery of nature-knowledge. Various interpretations of these developments The Modern Science
has been offered but it appears a number of stories are possible.
7.7 ANSWER TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

EXERCISES

1) See Section 7.4
2) See Section 7.5
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UNIT 8 EUROPEAN POLITICS IN THE
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY*
Structure
8.0 Objectives
8.1 Introduction
8.2 An Overview of Trends
8.3 Politics and State: Monarchies and Privileged Classes
8.4 International Relations: The Continent and Empires
8.5 State and Church
8.6 Challenges to the Established Authority: 1760s and 70s
8.7 The Popular Challenge: Form, Nature and Content
8.8 Let Us Sum Up
8.0 OBJECTIVES
After reading this Unit, you should
have a broad idea of the political developments in Europe from the
seventeenth to the eighteenth century;
be able to understand the similarities and differences in the politics of the
countries constituting western, central and eastern Europe, and England;
understand that politics was conducted at various levels: international politics,
politics within nations or states, and the popular politics within nations as
distinct but related to the broader politics within states;
see that the forms of political activity varied in the different regions, and
various levels of society;
have an idea how the political developments of this period were linked to
social and economic changes in these regions; and
how these paved the way for French Revolution and the beginnings of the
Industrial Revolution, which were to have reverberations throughout the
world.
8.1 INTRODUCTION
In a previous Unit we discussed the English Revolution of the mid-seventeenth
century, also in the process noting some of the differences between political
developments in England and the Continent. In this Unit, we will carry forward
the story until the eve of the French Revolution in France and the beginnings of
the Industrial Revolution in England, both of which had great ramifications for
the rest of Europe and whose reverberations were felt throughout the world.
* Resource Person : Dr. Nalini Taneja

104
By politics during this period we mean all forms of activities that contributed to European Politics in the
Eighteenth Century
changes in political behaviour and to the emergence or consolidation of certain
types of political structures in the various regions of Europe. In the politics of
this era are also encompassed the international conflicts and attempts to resolve
them through war and diplomacy. Moreover, this is also the period when popular
politics began to impinge on the politics at the broader level, finding voices or
responses within Parliaments and state policies.
Although the period between the English Revolution and the outbreak of the
French Revolution is generally seen as a period of transition, we will learn in
this Unit that it has independent significance and saw crucial political
developments, without which it would not be possible to explain why the French
Revolution occurred in France and not in any other country at the end of the
eighteenth century. The developments in the seventeenth and first half of
eighteenth century also explain the later political trajectory of Central and Eastern
Europe, the multilingual Austrian Empire, the evolution of German states,
especially Prussia, and the Tsarist Empire, multilingual and almost colonial, with
its Autocracy different from the Absolutist states like France. The seventeenth
and first half of the eighteenth century was an important period for the political
evolution of these state structures and for politics in the different regions of
Europe.
8.2 AN OVERVIEW OF TRENDS

Despite the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution, not to speak of the English
revolution and the growth of international commerce, and the emergence of new
social classes, the Europe of second half of the seventeenth and a greater part of
the eighteenth century was still overwhelmingly a world of privilege, tempered
no doubt by protests that had far greater ramifications than medieval or early
modern protests in the different regions of Europe. This period saw the
transformation of privileges and also the challenge to these privileges.
In the realm of politics, this was manifested in the consolidation of monarchies

that claimed their status to be above politics, but were now forced to bow to
justifications of rule of law and obligations towards their subjects. The people,
including the nobility and religious clergy, were their subjects, rather than citizens.
And the idea of popular sovereignty and the principles of what constituted the
nation did not enter the world of popular politics until the end of the 18th century.
Again, despite the consolidation of national monarchies, the monarchs still

remained the primary identification of the seventeenth and eighteenth century
states, so much so that wars of successions and marriage alliances and the
agreements between the royal houses could, and did change the territorial
boundaries of the nation state (more realistically the kingdoms ruled by particular
dynasties).
The representative institutions across Europe were still mainly those of the
privileged, dominated essentially by the nobility, those who were nobility by
birth, but increasingly by those who gained nobility through service to the Crown
or through purchase of landed wealth. Following the pattern of some kind of
emergence of new landed nobility we spoke of in the context of the English
Revolution, in the rest of Europe too this new nobility asserted its privileges
105
Rise of the Modern West-II both against the monarchy and against the people and the middle classes. Thus
the arena of politics at the level of the country or nation-state lay chiefly in the
conflicts between the monarchies and the aristocracies, now broader in
composition and united against the monarchies. The monarchies, with the
development of trade and commerce, the requirements of centralized armies and
bureaucracy required funds at their disposal, while the stakes of the aristocracies
lay in preserving their privileges, most notably their privileges regarding
exemption from taxation and what they gained from their dominance over the
rural economy and the peasantry.
At an intermediate level, the commercial classes were gaining importance in

most of the European states, especially in Western Europe. It was in their interest
to end some of the privileges enjoyed by the landed aristocracies, particularly in
the matter of taxation and appointments in high services, and also that national
policies be directed in favour of commerce and trade.
Conflict and accommodation, initiating changes in the administration of the States

and in the composition of representative institutions, was thus an important aspect
of the politics of the period. Changes that took place in this arena were decisive
also for the majority of the people whom they impacted but who were unable to
participate at this level of politics. Franchise remained very restricted, based on
property qualifications, and women had no vote at any level, even those belonging
to the aristocracy.
People’s voices and concerns were expressed through actions outside the dominant
arenas of parliaments and provincial assembles. This period saw Luddite proto
class actions of an emerging proletariat towards the end of this period in England,
and almost everywhere food riots or peasant protests, or flight of the peasantry
in areas of serfdom. They lent a radical element to the politics of the 17th and 18th
centuries.
Religion still held an important place in the lives of people. This had some
implications regarding the nature of popular protests and their attitudes to the
monarchs. In the struggle between the monarchies and the Church, it was the
monarchies that had won out, but the Church everywhere, of whatever variety
supported by the Monarch, continued to enjoy privileges as an institution, and in
return it supported the monarchies against any substantial social and political
challenges.
Politics of this long period can be roughly divided into two phases – the mid
seventeenth to early eighteenth century and the rest of the eighteenth century
before the French Revolution – when many of the developments occurred that
explain the revolutionary impact of the French Revolution. The pace of change
is much greater in the second phase, mainly the 1750s and 1760s, the two decades
preceding the French revolution. The first phase is dominated by dynastic and
colonial wars, the second by political and social developments within States,
throughout Europe. However, till the end of this period, monarchy remained the
form of state structure throughout, a constitutional monarchy in England, stronger
monarchies on the Continent, and an autocracy in the Russian Empire.
The gap in economic and scientific developments between Europe and the rest
of the world emerged in a stark form during this period, especially during the
second phase. The development of capitalism in Western Europe led to
106
institutional changes linked with the structures of the States, and the nature of European Politics in the
Eighteenth Century
intellectual debates also influenced how these institutional changes were effected
in the different States.
International relations began to take a modern shape, in the sense that we know
it. The dominant powers in the first phase were England, Spain, France, Holland,
Portugal. By the second phase only England and France retained this position,
and to these were added Prussia, Russia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. There
were three aspects to international relations during this period: the consolidation
of the power of European countries over the rest of the world; competition amongst
themselves for the rest of the world, i.e., to establish and take control of colonies;
to aim for some kind of a balance of power in Europe.
8.3 POLITICS AND STATE: MONARCHIES AND

PRIVILEGED CLASSES
Throughout Europe, this period saw a further consolidation of the monarchies,
the strengthening of centralized bureaucracies and armies at the disposal of the
monarchs. These also became the arenas for the conflicts and accommodations
between the monarchies and the aristocracies throughout Europe, primarily
because they impinged on areas of control over resources and taxation and
privilege. As mentioned above, throughout this period, political power was the
preserve of the monarchies and the aristocracies, and to a large extent dominated
by the conflict between them.
Except for England, this was a period of absolute monarchies. Only some Italian
states, Netherlands, and the German states remained outside the ambit of powerful
monarchies, although they were also ruled in the same fashion in their smaller
territorial units. Power rather than welfare or concern for their subjects
characterized rule all over Europe. The institution of monarchy was rarely
questioned, the debates being mainly over the nature and distribution of power
between the king and society, society meaning in turn the privileged classes.
What gave power to the monarchies was their need and their success in building
centralized standing armies, and in order to sustain them, a reorganization of
finances, taxation, administration and judicial system.
Some historians have called this period as the century of France. The French
monarchy, during the 17th and 18th centuries, not only became a model for the
institution of monarchy in Europe, within France it reached a stage where Louis
XIV was able to rightfully claim “I am the State” and there was no challenge to
this assertion. He and the Ministers appointed by him “decided all the important
matters of government”, and the great nobles could no longer build their power
solely on basis of birth and were dependent on the King to bestow them their
positions. The King, however, claimed his position to be both God given and
rational, and said he was bound to rule for the good of his people. How he defined
this good was, of course, his prerogative, and these became the duties of the
monarch. Although control over administration, especially in the provinces, was
still exercised by provincial estates dominated by the aristocracy, and mayors
and town councils had extensive rights, the trend was towards centralization of
administration, strict economic regulation, a uniform legal system, with the King
as the final authority for nomination of mayors, appointment of royal officials
called intendants in the provinces and the army commanders. The Ministers in
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Rise of the Modern West-II succession, Richlieu, Mazarin and Colbert were instrumental in increasing royal
authority and making it the norm. The mercantilist policies created a financial
basis for the French monarchy that survived almost till the eve of the Revolution,
leading to bankruptcy only in the final decade prior to it during the reign of
Louis XVI. Four fifths of the taxes collected reached the royal treasury, and
although the nobility and the Church remained exempt, many taxes now fell on
the common people, including the bourgeoisie. Despite the tiers of administrative
and judicial institutions from the gubernias (provinces) to lower levels, there
was no single central parliament that checked or challenged royal authority.
Moreover, there was a system of patronage from top to bottom where ecclesiastical
positions, offices and titles were awarded by the King, a prerogative central to
18th century politics, which ensured loyalty to the dynasty rather than an abstract
nation.
On the other side, in practice, the parlements continued to assert their

independence, particularly the important Paris parlement. Also, the King had to
deal with the Fronde and other smaller revolts in the mid-17th century, and with
assertions based on local diversities across the country. And the King had to
accept limitations of some laws, rationality, propriety and wisdom in exercising
power, and with time to respect, more and more, the right to and sanctity of
private property.
Thus there was a conflict between the customary practice of offices that were
bought and inherited, and between those the King appointed. The King on his
part had to be careful, in the reorganization of finances and administration, and
not to impinge on these privileges to a point that would tear asunder the entire
fabric of privilege-based society. This contradiction grew and marked the decades
prior to the French Revolution. Especially as the bourgeoisie that grew with the
encouragement to manufacture, trade and monopolies, aimed for adequate
representation in a system that formally divided the social and political structure
into the Three Orders: the Nobility, the Church and Commoners, with the
bourgeoisie being held back due to the privileges to the other two Orders, even
though some financial reforms were attempted by the King. The King who had
not called the Estates General, the representative body of the Three Estates since
1614, was forced to reconvene it in 1788, with momentous consequences that
proved to be the proverbial starting point of the process that was to end in
Revolution.
In England, the highest aristocracy, of birth, was few in numbers, in proportion

to the population, than in other countries. But the landed aristocracy, known as
the new gentry had expanded due the commercialization of agriculture and this
section was very much entrenched in the parliament. After the Stuarts and the
Glorious Revolution, the Hanoverian dynasty that followed did not have strong
rulers in George I and George II. Therefore, England, unlike the Continent,
continued to have a constitutional monarchy. The King was still very much
important and he made the top appointments of Ministers, but these Ministers in
the Cabinet were responsible and accountable to the Parliament. The Ministers
chosen were also necessarily members of the Parliament, House of Lords or
House of Commons. So the conflict between the King and parliament continued
during the late 17th and first half of the 18th century, the members of Parliament
were already getting organized into defined political groups, and the Whigs,
who stood for limitations of the power of the King, dominated the political scene.
108
The franchise was still narrow, so it was the landed classes who still held sway, European Politics in the
Eighteenth Century
with the conflict between king and Parliament being a struggle between the King
and aristocracy essentially, but unlike the Continent not so much geared to
preserving privileges as of birth as right to property and dominance in the political
and administrative edifice, and in influencing state policy in the interests of
commercial agriculture and by mid-18th century the agrarian enclosures. The
House of Commons became an important forum of debate and influence. The
franchise even for the House of Commons was so restricted that in some boroughs
only a few thousand could vote, in some the numbers reached just double numbers.
However, the significance of the debates and tussles over policies was far greater
then the numbers involved, its stakes being obvious from the consolidation of
British rule in India and the dominance over the American colonies already being
challenged in the latter half of the 18th century.
For England the politics of the 18th century involved around a unity among all
privileged sections over empire building, which enriched the national exchequer,
and conflicts over the exercise of authority within the Parliament (in addition to
Parliament vs the King) regarding how these interests were best served.
When George III came to the throne in 1760, the aggressive trade policies and
the issues of free trade and the dissatisfactions in the American colonies became
new factors of conflict. George III, despite asserting authority, was subject to the
legislation in Parliament. The Parliament, on its part spoke more and more in the
name of the people and the nation, even as it in reality represented the interests
of the now emerging commercial and manufacturing bourgeoisie in addition to
the landed gentry. The voice for change was reflected in Parliament, as also the
defense of status quo, and by the eve of the French Revolution these voices
reflected new vocabulary if not radical change. The outbreak of the Revolution
set into momentum both a process of radicalism and conservatism, contrary to
the earlier studies that gave the impression of England being completely shielded
from the effects of the revolutionary ideas reverberating through Europe. This
gave a new dimension to politics in England, particularly as the bourgeoisie had
become important factor in advocating policies.
In Central and Eastern Europe, where the aristocracies acquired power late, not
through the long medieval period, the monarchies were absolute in nature. Among
these were Brandenberg-Prussia, the Austria-Habsburg Empire and Russia.
There is a strong link between the absolute rule and the emergence of serfdom.
Here, the landed aristocracy, in return for the state creation and safeguard of the
institution of serfdom on which they depended for their incomes, became much
more dependent on the monarchs than in Western Europe. They became the
officers of the army and the civil servants, working in the state structure while
their estates were run along feudal lines. Some of them carried out measures
such as centralization of administration, standardization of weights and measures,
subordination of the Church to the State, encouragement to technology and
manufacture, centralized armies etc, which had more to do with modernization
and efficiency and control over the feudal landed aristocracy, than enlightened
thought on the part of the rulers. They also brought some changes in law and
administration envisaged in enlightenment thought, but only those that served
their pragmatic cause of a strengthened centralized states.
Contrary to Western Europe, therefore, in these regions absolutism rose on the

basis of an economy based on serfdom, which tied the monarchies and the landed 109
Rise of the Modern West-II aristocracy in a bond in which the administrative system and military strength
and the existing social fabric of privilege was predicated on a strong monarchy.
It was only in the late 18th century in Prussia (under Frederick the Great) and
Austria (under Philip II), and mid-19th century in the Russian Empire (under
Alexander II), that serfdom was abolished and peasants emancipated: owing to
the fact that with changes in economy it no longer remained viable and
emancipation in these countries was effected in ways that the landed aristocracy
benefited, thus maintaining the pact between the monarchies and the aristocracy,
with the monarchies still retaining more power than in western Europe. The
reformed codes of law still reinforced and maintained a distinction between the
privileged and the commoner. We have to, therefore, understand how limited is
the applicability of the concept of ‘enlightened’ or ‘benevolent’ despotism with
regard to these rulers.
The kings of Prussia in fact acquired their royal title only in 1701, but came to
command a territory where the centralized military and administration controlled
by Frederick I and then Frederick the Great played the most decisive role.
Concerned about education at the lower levels and despite codification of law
and preparation of the Code of Civil Procedure in 1781, and some degree of
religious toleration, and some empathy for enlightenment ideas, 18th century
Prussian monarchy was geared towards creating a strong state rather than a just
one: the pact between the monarchy and the Junkers (landed aristocracy), reflected
in the increasing roles for them in the high appointments while soldiers were
recruited from the peasantry, ensured a strong militarized state, in which the
conflict between the landed ruling classes and monarchy was minimal because
both sides recognized the necessity of the pact.
It was primarily loyalty to the ruling Habsburg dynasty that held together the
multi-national Austrian Habsburg Empire, which during the 18th century had
enriched its territories in relation to the Ottoman Empire, Poland and Hungarian
region. The reigns of Maria Teresa and Joseph II, which encompass our period,
were in conformity with the general features of the reforming enlightenment
despotism we have referred to above. One can talk here too of the codification of
laws, administrative reform and abolition of some harsh punishments. But the
state and politics revolved around the privileges ensured to the landed aristocracy
through the intensification of serfdom.
In Russia, under Peter the Great and Catherine, the process of “westernization”
and technological borrowings coupled with intensification of serfdom, greatly
influenced the way Autocracy developed and also the forms that political
opposition took for the next three centuries. The consolidation of the Autocracy
was achieved through these processes whereby, in return for the privilege of
serfdom guaranteed by the Tsar, the landowners were transformed into service
nobility. Their status henceforth depended not so much on lineage as on the
rankings achieved in administration or the military. So, while there could be
some social mobility based on talent, the subservience of the aristocracy to the
Autocracy was a feature until well into the early 19th century.
Poland, on the other hand, remained an “aristocratic republic”, dominated by
the wealthiest noble families, ultimately divided and partitioned among Austria,
Russia and Prussia. Sweden, as a result of the vicissitudes of conflicts with the
aristocracy, was an absolute monarchy and sometimes tended towards a kind of
Parliament, still dominated by the aristocracy. It was the same with Netherlands,
110 particularly the urbanized areas of Holland.
Check Your Progress 1 European Politics in the
Eighteenth Century
1) Briefly discuss the nature of state and politics in England and France in the
eighteenth century.
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2) Analyse the relationship between State and aristocracies with reference to
Prussia and Russia in eighteenth century.
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8.4 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: THE

CONTINENT AND EMPIRES
Trade, strategic advantage and glory were primary motives for conflict between
the European powers. Armed conflicts, diplomacy and treaties were, therefore,
the chief elements of politics between the different European states during this
period.
The distinctive feature of the international relations was the fear of French
hegemony in the west and the rise of Russia in the east. The entry of Russia as a
power player in Europe since the reign of Peter the Great had enormous
consequences for Europe, as did Prussia among the German states. For the first
time there was a concern with maintaining some kind of a ‘balance of power’:
on the Continent and across the world among themselves. On the Continent,
France found its interests in conflict with the growing Austrian Habsburg Empire
and with the Dutch, and entered into wars with them. The Turks had still not
given up their ambitions for an Empire and they too came into conflict primarily
with the Austrian Empire, though by the end of the 18th century they lost out. By
the 18th century, through conquests of the Baltic provinces, Russia achieved her
aim of access to a coastline and the sea ports.
The important wars of the early 18th century were the Spanish Succession War,
the Hungarian War and the Northern War, followed by the Austrian Succession
War. As explained earlier, due to the prevalence of monarchies and alliances
through marriages, issues of succession often caused ripples in countries other
than where succession was to take place and had consequences for the balance
of power across countries. Many of the old settlements, arrived at by the end of
the Thirty Years War, were replaced with new treaties that took into account the
new balance of power and the later conquests and change of boundaries.
111
Rise of the Modern West-II By the beginning of the 18th century new treaties were being signed: the treaties
of Utrecht, Rastadt and baden (1713-14), which marked the new balance arrived
at in the west, in the process settling the conflicts and wars in the western region;
the treaties of Nystad, Stockholm and Frederiksborg (1719-21), that took care of
the new power equations in the north; and the treaties of Karlowitz (1699) and
Passarowitz that settled the equations between Austrian Empire and Turkey in
south-east Europe. Some territories changed hands through these, but they are
more significant for the new power relationships they occasioned. In addition,
the western European states essentially turned their attention to building overseas
empires (England, France, Spain, Portugal, and Holland). The Spanish Empire
by 1740 encompassed most of South America, some Caribbean islands and more.
The Portuguese had a few ports in India, bits in West and East Africa, parts of
Brazil and Uruguay. The Dutch had trading interests in India, but more control
in Ceylon and Malacca. The French in North America and bits in India, and
England of course in India, America and many other parts of the world.
England became the leading colonial and commercial power, Austria increased
both power and dominion in central Europe at the expense of Turkey. Spain
retained an empire but lost out in terms of influence in Europe, while Prussia
despite no colonial possessions became significant on the Continent, poised for
the future role it would play in German unification in the next century. Russia
consolidated its Central Asian territories, with almost a colonial relationship over
vast lands on the landmass. France alone retained its political supremacy over
the Continent and also its overseas possessions in this period.
8.5 STATE AND CHURCH

In a society where the world-view of the majority was shaped by religion, the
rulers, in keeping with their individual predilections, showed more or less religious
tolerance with regard to personal beliefs of people. The number of clergy, nuns
and monks, however, did not decline. But the end of the religious wars did not
imply neutrality or liberalism towards religious groups; and relations with the
Church and with minority religious groups were significant aspects of late 17th
and 18th century European politics.
There is no doubt that alliances with the established churches of their country
helped them maintain social status quo as well as royal authority. But in the
period we are speaking of here, the relationship was not of alliances among
equals: the monarchies had by the late 17th century considerably reduced the
ecclesiastical autonomy that the Church held, and its power in state affairs was
severely curtailed. However, it remained a significant force in the Absolutist
Catholic States because it enjoyed exemption from taxation, owned lands and
had serfs, or could levy its own taxes. But even in these states the higher
ecclesiastical offices were made and held at the pleasure of the kings, and the
papacy in Rome was forced to accept the reality of national churches across
Europe. The kings and princes themselves showed little regard for Papal authority.
The churches continued to exercise their traditional religious and social functions,
but as arms of the state.
In France, the Catholic Church held lands from which it derived income, and a
tax called tithe was levied on all commoners, which became a major grievance
to the peasantry. The Church was thus very much a pillar of the Old Regime in
112
France. In England the Protestant Church could not levy any taxes, but European Politics in the
Eighteenth Century
increasingly the Kings found it difficult to support other religious sects. In Spain,
the Inquisition and all that it entailed was put firmly in the past. In Russia the
Autocracy brought the Orthodox ancient church under its control and made it an
arm of Russification and Autocracy, and in Austria, the church held considerable
lands, though Joseph II and Catherine, confiscated monastic lands and brought
them under state control. The Church was everywhere also tied up socially with
the aristocracy: most of the higher positions were held by members of the
aristocracy, which further facilitated the political stance of the Church in favour
of the monarchies.
But within the Church, while the higher functionaries were from the aristocracy
and lived luxurious lives, the majority of the common priests and nuns were
commoners and even poor. This created a complexity that had great significance
for politics in the next century. Especially since so much of the educational
enterprise was in the hands of the Church. The poor, the teachers among them,
and the privileged behaved and exercised authority in different ways.
8.6 CHALLENGES TO THE ESTABLISHED

AUTHORITY: 1760s AND 70s
Challenges to the established authority in the different states of Europe were
bound to mount over this long period, given the social and economic changes
and the intellectual advances linked with Enlightenment thought. These challenges
were directed at the monarchies and the privileges of the landed aristocracies
embedded in the State structures across Europe. These challenges accelerated
the pace of politics and also added new dimensions, visible from the second
decade of the 18th century until the outbreak of the French Revolution.
England had already experienced intense political debates, growth of newspapers

and pamphlets during the English Revolution. The Enlightenment brought the
culture into the entire continent: salons, pamphlets, newspapers, books, literary
and philosophical societies, had transformed the intellectual ambience and climate
in which the educated sections moved. Lawyers, government functionaries, and
professionals were not unaffected by the debates engendered by the philosophes.
The monarchies could not continue as before, safeguarding the world of privilege
alone. In addition, the social and economic changes that came with trade and
colonial empires, also made it incumbent for the monarchies to accommodate
and balance larger interests.
Moreover, the State now directly impinged on the large masses of population:
taxation, recruitment in armies, burden of privileges of the landed aristocracy
now springing into consciousness, the bureaucracy and administrative machinery
at the local level, all created discontents that found expression in various forms
of popular protests. Therefore, at one level were the series of demands for political
reforms to break the stranglehold of privilege; at another level were a series of
popular uprisings throughout Europe.
In England, the thrust towards empire building and commercial profit defined
British interests far more broadly than the interests of the landowning aristocracy.
Its reflection in the political sphere were demands for this to get reflected in the
Parliament, through a redrawing of constituencies and reforms that would allow
113
Rise of the Modern West-II greater representation to towns and cities (particularly London), a larger electoral
base by bringing down the property qualification for franchise, doing away with
pocket boroughs and decreasing seats in the countryside with less population
but more seats controlled by the aristocracy. In the 1760s and 70s words like
liberty found their way into parliamentary speeches and with the unrest in the
American colonies there was talk of “no taxation without representation”, and a
society of Supporters of Bill of Rights was formed.
In France the layers of privilege that had built up due to Court patronage and
appointments clashed with those who had obtained wealth and education and
were professionals, but were debarred from the privileges of the nobility, due
simply to the fact that they did not belong to the First Order. On the other hand,
the efforts to broaden the social base for the Monarchy and to finance wars and
administration and the costs of extravagant Court expenditure, through initiating
financial reforms and extending taxation, were deeply resented by the Parlements
dominated by the landed aristocracy. This trend towards political isolation and
crisis of the Monarchy in France was the hallmark of the politics of the decades
preceding the French Revolution.
A movement for reform emerged in Denmark pressing for greater consultation

with the parliament and the Estates, forced reforms from Maria Theresa and
Joseph II in Bohemia and Moravia, in Sweden there was a tussle where the King
managed to impose a new Constitution in 1772 after reducing the power of the
Senate and the Diet, in the Dutch Republic there were demands for parliamentary
reforms and federalism taking into account the cities’ rights, within the Austrian
empire, especially the areas incorporated from Netherlands, there were demands
for transformation of the Estates general into a representative assembly. The
Greeks rose against Turkish domination, and there was unrest in some Italian
states and in the island of Corsica. The Austrian Empire, in particular, being
multinational and multilingual saw discontent in its various parts. The German
states and Prussia, being more authoritarian, too felt the pressures of reform in
their absolutist regimes. These were all demands for reforms that represented
the interests of the more liberal emerging forces in Europe that spoke in the
name of the people. Meanwhile challenges came from the people themselves
that were different in form and content.
8.7 THE POPULAR CHALLENGE: FORM,

NATURE AND CONTENT
There was a further type of conflict within the state, which also assumed a greater
momentum in the latter part of the century. While they were harnessed into some
of the movements mentioned above, notably Wilkes in London and the Parlements
in France, for the most part they were independent, local in character and focused
on their own discontents of livelihood.
They set a trend that made them a significant factor in the equations of power in
the following century. They also assumed a variety of forms, raising a variety of
demands that increasingly became difficult for the state to ignore. Eastern and
Central Europe, where the peasants were still bound by serfdom, and were
subservient to the landed aristocracy in specific relationships, saw continuous
and violent peasant uprisings. For example, in Russia, there were 73 uprisings in
1762-79 alone. Throughout this decade in this part of the world they were directed
114
mainly against the landlords or officials, over feudal obligations, labour services, European Politics in the
Eighteenth Century
taxes, recruitment for the army, against prices, poverty and hunger: often,
considering the Tsar or the King on their side, presuming he was their guardian
but did not know what was happening. Most well-known is the Pugachev
rebellion, which the state and the landed aristocracy could never forget, and the
memory of which terrified them well into the next century. Rebellions occurred
in Austria, Bohemia, and later in France and Germany with the outbreak of the
French Revolution, and in England against the Enclosure Acts, and in Sweden
and Norway in the 1780s.
Workers’ discontent was fuelled by low wages and introduction of machinery

creating unemployment: it took the form of strikes by artisans, destruction of
machinery (for example the Luddite strikes in England), often leading to riots
and violence with specific targets: tailors, miners, weavers, bookbinders, printers,
in various places in England and France. Another widespread occurrence was
food riots, in both urban and rural areas, caused by food shortages or high prices:
in England, between 1735 and 1800, there were about 175 such riots, in France
between 1724 and 1789, more than a hundred. In the urban riots it was possible
to discern some rudimentary political meanings.
In general, the popular challenge was more political in its consequences than in
its articulation: the riots and rebellions tended to be socially conservative, local
and linked to everyday life experiences, with little vision beyond the redressal of
immediate grievances. Their significance lay in the fact that established authority
could not take their allegiance for granted once demand for change engulfed
entire societies in Europe.

1) Discuss the relationship between State and Church in the Seventeenth century
and second half of eighteenth century.
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2) Describe the various forms of political challenge posed by people against
the ruling classes in the Seventeenth century and second half of eighteenth
century.
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115
8.8 LET US SUM UP
The late 17th and the 18th century was an important period in the history of Europe
and cannot just be regarded as a prelude to the Industrial and the French
Revolutions, although many of the elements that went into creating these two
momentous developments emerged and grew during this period. This period had
its own distinctive features, marked by the rule of monarchies and of privilege.
The monarchies and the landed aristocracies played the pivotal role in politics
throughout Europe. Centralized armies and bureaucracies were significant factors
in the governance and politics of the 18th century. A special characteristic of this
period was the symbiotic relationship between empire building and politics on
the Continent.
There were distinctions between Western Europe and Central and Eastern Europe,
although the major forces of governance belonged to the same classes. England
was the only country where parliament and constitutional norms enjoyed some
prerogatives. Serfdom provided the social basis of governance and politics only
in central and Eastern Europe, while Western Europe was an example of how the
landed aristocracy remained a significant player in politics despite the decline of
feudalism and the emergence of capitalistic features in economy and a rising
commercial bourgeoisie.
Enlightened despotism, as we discussed, did not give a better deal to the peasantry
and common people, although it led to reform in some laws. A new political
discourse emerged, with the spread of Enlightenment thought among the educated,
and popular revolts of the last decades created the conditions whereby “popular
allegiance could pass exclusively to the nation” – as opposed to the King. It took
the French Revolution to actually achieve this in practice.

EXERCISES
1) See Section 8.2
2) See Section 8.3

1) See Section 8.5
2) See Section 8.6 and 8.7
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European Politics in the
UNIT 9 ENLIGHTENMENT* Eighteenth Century
Structure
9.0 Objectives
9.1 Introduction
9.2 The Meaning of Enlightenment
9.3 The Background
9.4 Stages
9.5 Main Ideas of Enlightenment
9.6 Some Important Enlightenment Thinkers
9.6.1 Montesquieu (1689-1755)
9.6.2 Voltaire (1694-1778)
9.6.3 Diderot (1713-1784)
9.6.4 Rousseau (1712-1778)
9.6.5 Turgot (1727-81)
9.7 Legacies of Enlightenment
9.8 Let Us Sum Up
9.0 OBJECTIVES
After reading this Unit, you will be able to:
learn about what is known as the Enlightenment, particularly in European
context;
explain about its predecessors;
know about the various stages through which it evolved;
chart out its important ideas; and
learn about some of the important Enlightenment thinkers.
9.1 INTRODUCTION
Enlightenment was one of the greatest intellectual movements in human history.
Along with the Renaissance and the Reformation, it is considered to have provided
the intellectual foundations of modernity. In fact, it is supposed to have contributed
to the making of the modern world far more than any other movement that
preceded it. It still is regarded as the epoch since when the modern world began,
at least in terms of thought. It is generally considered that Enlightenment began
in Western Europe from where it spread to other parts of Europe, then to North
America and South America. Finally, during the nineteenth century, in the course
of European incursions in all parts of the world, Enlightenment ideas made their
mark throughout the world. In this Unit, we will discuss the Enlightenment only
in its European context.
* Resource Person : Prof. S. B. Upadhyay

117
9.2 THE MEANING OF ENLIGHTENMENT
To the question ‘What is Enlightenment?’ the German philosopher Immanuel
Kant (1724-1804) responded: ‘Dare to know! Have the courage to make use of
your own understanding’. This response put emphasis on the individual, on critical
thinking, and a rejection of the traditionally imposed way of thinking whether by
religion or any other overarching authority. Kant’s response was in keeping with
the strong intellectual current during his time which stressed intellectual freedom
and the use of Reason for seeking knowledge and progress. The Enlightenment
thinkers, including Kant, wanted their ideas to reach to a wider audience which
should consist of autonomous individuals with independent thinking. They,
therefore, emphasized on wider education moving beyond the confines of formal
schooling which, in many cases, was managed by religious institutions. In their
opinion, a wider and broadly secular education would make the people capable
of applying critical enquiry in their lives.
And yet the notion of the intellectual freedom was limited to educated and rational
persons, mostly belonging to the upper and middle classes. The democratic reach
of the Enlightenment did not encompass the masses, or even women. Many of
the Enlightenment thinkers believed that it was dangerous for masses to take
their own decisions. The same applied to most non-European peoples also.
However, the Enlightenment thinkers thought that the masses, women, and the
non-European people could benefit from the use of reason if they were properly
guided.
Peter Gay, one of the important historians of Enlightenment, characterised it as

the ‘rise of modern paganism’. This was in view of the anti-Church
pronouncements of many thinkers particularly during French Enlightenment.
However, many historians have now contended that such a characterisation cannot
be applied because Enlightenment cultures in most other countries, including
Italy, Germany, Austria, Scotland, America and England, were not anti-
Christianity. Even in France, only in limited cases could anti-Christian or anti-
religious stance could be discerned. It is true that there was a general thrust
against superstition and restrictive institutional forms of religion, and the wealth,
power and corruption of the clergy was denounced. But the religion as such was
not rejected, and there was a wide spectrum of attitudes towards religion. At the
same time, there was a more general insistence on separating the civil from the
sacred or the religion from the state. This attitude led in the direction of
secularization of politics where institutional religions were supposed to play no
role. Moreover, the material development was considered a more desirable goal
and a better arena for human activity than search for the divine.
On the basis of the writings in recent decades, it is difficult to offer a precise

definition of Enlightenment. The most we can attempt is to broadly describe it.
On this ground, we can say that the Enlightenment was an intellectual movement
in Europe during the eighteenth century. Its centre was France, but other European
countries were also significantly involved in evolving their own versions of
Enlightenment. The most common factor in all these different versions was the
rejection of traditional and religious dogma with an appeal to reason and emphasis
on the individual.
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Enlightenment
9.3 THE BACKGROUND
Enlightenment did not originate in intellectual vacuum. The development of
modern science since the sixteenth century and of the modern philosophy during
the seventeenth century had a lot of influence on the Enlightenment. The emphasis
on observation, experimentation, analysis, and reasoning – which were at the
root of the modern science – was picked up by Enlightenment thinkers in their
fight against traditional and religious modes of thinking. Rene Descartes
(rationalist philosophy), Isaac Newton (modern science), John Locke (liberal
philosophy), and Pierre Bayle (scepticism) were among the most important
influences. They were among the most important philosophers to have introduced
the new scientific method in thinking about society. Some historians even consider
Locke and Bayle as part of early Enlightenment.
Newton (1640-1726) had tried to combine the rationalist philosophy of Descartes
with the experimental method of Francis Bacon. Voltaire, who was among the
most important Enlightenment thinkers, particularly praised him for his scientific
and philosophical achievements. Apart from his famous scientific discovering
about gravitation and laws of motion, it was Newton’s philosophical thesis about
the nature of universe which most appealed to the Enlightenment thinkers. Newton
visualized universe as a self-propelling machine which did not need God’s
intervention for its day-to-day functioning. It was originally set in motion by the
God, who then withdrew and let the machine function on its own.
According to John Locke’s (1632-1704), the ‘scientific method’ could be usefully
employed for studying the society and humanity as much as it was applicable to
the study of nature. He believed that at birth the mind of every human individual
was a tabula rasa or blank slate on which it was possible to imprint any ideas.
On empiricist lines, Locke believed that all knowledge derived from sensory
perceptions and there were no inherited traits. This allowed for the possibility of
posing an innate equality in society. He also rejected the crucial idea held by the
Catholic Church that the humankind was burdened with the original sin. Locke
advocated individual liberty, religious tolerance, separation of political powers,
educational reforms and freedom of press.
Pierre Bayle (1647–1706) was a thorough-going sceptic who doubted almost all
religions and moral philosophies that prevailed since ancient time. His ideas
were quite suitable for Enlightenment which was grounded in doubt towards
traditional authority, including that of Church. Since all systems could be doubted,
Bayle advocated mutual tolerance, particularly in the field of religion.
Besides Scientific Revolution, the swift and momentous changes in the sphere
of religion since the sixteenth century also created an atmosphere of opinion in
which the established ideas were questioned, though still within religious garb.
The proliferation of dissenting religious sects questioning and criticizing other
religious ideas generated a spirit of enquiry. Scepticism emerged as a general
spirit in the seventeenth century. Numerous sects and their distinctive ideologies
and practices brought in the poor and labouring classes also within their ambits.
Continued questioning and scepticism gave rise to a situation in which the role
of organized religions in the lives of people increasingly became less. This laid
the ground for the acceptance of non-Church and generally secular stance of the
Enlightenment. People who were already losing interest in organized religions
were receptive to the ideas of Enlightenment thinkers.
119
Rise of the Modern West-II The foundations of the Enlightenment were laid not only in sphere of ideas but
also in economic and social changes. The spread of print culture, creation of a
new public sphere beyond the control of the Church and the government, and
growth in the number of merchant and commercial classes and the bourgeoisie
in general provided the basis for the spread of Enlightenment ideas. As institutions
of social and intellectual interaction, salons and coffee houses provided active
spaces. While the salons were operated mostly by upper-class ladies, the coffee
houses were truly public institutions. Since the late seventeenth century, the coffee
houses grew significantly in many European cities. As an institution of public
interaction, coffee houses were less high-brow than salons and less mass-oriented
than the taverns. They emerged and spread as truly middle-class institutions
providing spaces for polite and orderly socializing and intellectual discussion.
They acted as bases for creation and dissemination of ideas which were crucial
for Enlightenment culture.
One of the most important phenomena which shaped the contours of

Enlightenment was the colonization of non-European countries by the Europeans.
The load of knowledge gathered from the colonial countries weighed quite heavily
on Enlightenment thought. Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot, Raynal, Robertson
and many other Enlightenment thinkers derived heavily from colonial sources to
build their theories or develop their critique. Rousseau also famously modelled
his image of the ‘noble savage’ on the native American version. India and China
played important role in Voltaire’s critique of pre-modern European states and
religions. Received colonial knowledge of Asia served Montesquieu greatly in
developing his theories on the determining role of climate and geography.
Robertson relied heavily on non-European knowledge to develop his idea of
stage-wise development of human society.
9.4 STAGES
Although the Enlightenment was initially anchored in France, particularly in
Paris, it quickly spread across much of Europe, including the German states, the
Dutch Republic, Britain, Italy, and North America. The Enlightenment ideas also
reached to Eastern Europe, particularly Russia and Poland, and to the Balkan
countries. The reception of French ideas took different forms in different countries.
For example, in Italy it provided opportunities for the anti-Church thinkers to
attack clerical and papal intervention in politics, while in Britain it gave rise to a
distinctive form of ‘Scottish Enlightenment’.
The initial sources of diffusion of Enlightenment ideas were the Parisian salons
and coffee houses. These became the hotbeds of ideas and opinions about society,
politics, government, education, and nature. It was here that most French
intellectuals and many intellectuals from other European countries gathered to
informally discuss and deliberate their ideas. And it was from here that these
ideas were carried to other parts of France and to other European countries, even
to America. The wide spread of Enlightenment ideas, though mostly within
Europe, resulted in the creation of a trans-border community referred to as the
‘republic of letters’. It was an informal international community of public
intellectuals engaged in spread of new knowledge and the new ways of thinking.
There were three main stages through which the Enlightenment evolved,
particularly in Western Europe. The first phase may be said to be during the first
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half of the eighteenth century, and this phase was directly influenced by the Enlightenment
ideas of the preceding modern scientific advancement, also known as the
‘Scientific Revolution’ which introduced radical changes in the intellectual
atmosphere of Western Europe. It was natural that the emerging Enlightenment
would derive many of its early ideas from this momentous intellectual change.
The second phase, known as high Enlightenment, began with the important works
of some most famous Enlightenment thinkers such as Montesquieu and Voltaire.
Montesquieu’s The Spirit of Laws (1748) may be said to have heralded this new
phase which can be said to end by 1778 when the three great French thinkers of
the period – Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau – were dead.
The third phase, also called late Enlightenment, marked ‘a shift from an emphasis
on human reason to a greater preoccupation with the emotions and passions of
mankind’ [Merriman, 2010: 313]. In this period, there were several monarchs
who adopted certain ideas of Enlightenment and applied them in their respective
domains. This period also witnessed a wider dissemination of these ideas among
common people resulting in undermining of the higher authority, particularly in
France. This process ultimately led to the growth of revolutionary ideas in France
and elsewhere. One of the distinctive features of this phase was a shift from
emphasis on reason to one on emotions, as earlier exemplified in Rousseau.
Another important trend was the emphasis on the idea of freedom on the working
of the economies as advocated by Adam Smith. The shift from mercantilism
(with emphasis on gold and silver and protectionist economic policies) to
economic liberalism (advocating free international trade) occurred in this period.
During this stage, there was also emphasis on the distinctive national cultures
and national identities. This phase also witnessed the increasing involvement of
the common people in the adaptation of the Enlightenment ideas with new
meanings, particularly radical anti-establishment stance.
Another important development of the late Enlightenment was the growth of

German idealist philosophy, beginning with Kant, which stipulated that reason
and sensory perceptions were not the only source of our knowledge of the world.
Instead, it laid emphasis on the primacy of ideas as the basis of knowledge. The
world could only be understood through the medium of concept generated from
each person’s own experiences. This led away from the High Enlightenment’s
belief in universality of ideas and a rational objectivity overriding individual
experiences and beliefs.
9.5 MAIN IDEAS OF ENLIGHTENMENT

The ideas of Enlightenment proved to be so potent and so applicable to the
emerging modern world that Enlightenment became one of the greatest intellectual
milestones in the history of humanity. The modern world became so closely
identified with Enlightenment that it is also referred to as post-Enlightenment
world in intellectual terms. These ideas encompassed long-ranging views on
nature, human world, society, economy, state, international relations, and human
freedom.
In the Western world, the Enlightenment thinkers questioned the centuries-old

thinking generated and rooted by Christianity and other traditional forms of
thought. Thus, the philosophes (as the French Enlightenment thinkers were also
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Rise of the Modern West-II called) pushed for secularization at all levels of politics and society and challenged
the established authority of the Churches. They emphasized on individual thinking
on rational lines and questioned the traditional ideas and practices passed on
from generation to generation without any thinking. At another level, they attacked
the institution of slavery widely established by the Europeans in the Americas
and elsewhere.
However, although very critical of organized religions, particularly Catholicism,

the Enlightenment thinkers were not anti-religion. Excepting a few, such as
d’Holbach (1723-1789) and Claude Helvetius (1715-1771), most Enlightenment
thinkers believed in the existence of God. However, their God was reasonable
and non-interfering. Many of the Enlightenment thinkers believed in deism which
meant that the creator of the universe was God but who did not interfere in the
working of universe or human society. Deism combined reason and belief in a
happy mixture. It was possible for the deists to analyse the nature and human
society in rational and scientific terms while at the same time keeping their faith
in the original Creator (God) intact.
Scepticism towards, even rejection of, the traditional authority was the hallmark
of Enlightenment. Universal reason, which was regarded as the way to understand
the world, was supposed to be applied by each individual. It was the belief that
all human beings were innately good and reasonable. It was possible to fully
comprehend the world if proper scientific analysis was applied. There could be
continuous development and progress if suitable use was made of reason and
science.
Some of the Enlightenment thinkers also emphasized the popular sovereignty
and the rule of law. Although many philosophers were patronized by kings and
nobles, and they did not reject the institution of monarchy, they were against
assumption of unbridled powers in the hands of the rulers, whether monarchs or
otherwise.
In its overall thrust, Enlightenment was anti-imperialist and many of the thinkers
strongly condemned the colonial rule of violence and exploitation. Some of them,
such as Diderot, Raynal, Herder, and Condorcet very strongly denounced the
European greed, arrogance, violence and rapacious behaviour in colonial
territories.
The Enlightenment thinkers were against the arbitrary nature of authority of
their times and advocated rule of law and emphasized on cultivating virtues
among the rulers. However, they believed in popular sovereignty but not in
democracy or power to people. For them, freedom consisted in ‘obedience only
to the legal actions of legally constituted authorities’ [Black, 1990: 214]. Equality
was qualified as equality before law not in social or economic terms. They
considered property as individual right, and the division of society into various
orders was regarded as natural.
The primacy of reason, rejection of dogmatic thinking, emphasis on individual
thinking, idea of progress, superiority of the modern world as against the pre-
modern one, the belief that the human nature was the same everywhere and
consequent universalism were the most important ideas of Enlightenment.
Although the Enlightenment thinkers propagated powerful anti-establishment
ideas, it was mostly done at the intellectual level. They were not activists and
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practical revolutionaries, and they did not lead revolts. They relied on pen, papers, Enlightenment
and prints to disseminate their ideas. Their mediums of communication were
‘letters, unpublished manuscripts, books, pamphlets, brochures, and … novels,
poetry, drama, literary and art criticism, and political philosophy’ [Merriman,
2010: 316].
Despite certain broad, common stand in favour of rational and secular thought,
the Enlightenment thinkers differed from each other in quite significant ways.
Thus, Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Rousseau were deists who believed that the
God existed as the prime mover of the natural machine. After setting into motion
the huge machine of nature and its basic laws, however, the God withdrew and
did not interfere in the everyday life of humanity. Thus, after initiating the laws
of nature and human world, the God left the humans alone to work out their
actions and routes of progress. On the other hand, Diderot, Holbach and Helvetius
were atheists. Even during what has been categorized as ‘late Enlightenment’
we find a variety of responses from intellectuals generally associated with
Enlightenment. Thus, while Condorcet took a radical stand on religion and
political authority, Kant was rather conciliatory to these. Even the ideas and the
terms used by different thinkers in different national contexts carried different
meanings. Similarly, the ideas related to the Enlightenment varied in different
countries and what was originally pronounced in France would not remain the
same in Italy or Poland. At another level, while many Enlightenment thinkers
believed in linear and continuous progress, some like David Hume supported a
cyclical view of history. Rousseau thought that human society had declined in
many ways rather than progressing.
However, belief in reason and critical enquiry were generally common among
all the Enlightenment thinkers. The reason served as both the goal and the method
of enquiry. It was believed that the reason helped in human progress by making
the humans overcome their environment and the human society to dominate the
nature. Reason also promoted scepticism towards any given norms and settled
authority and emphasized reliance of objectivity and proper scientific analysis.
The reason acted against the established authorities of the Church and the state
and helped to provide a radical edge to Enlightenment. At the same time, however,
it also served to demarcate a sharp distinction between the humans and animals,
and to help create a regime of marginalization for those humans who were regarded
as insane, mad, or lacking in the faculty to reason. Moreover, it also marked a
distinction between the people and countries possessing higher rational faculties,
such as the Europeans, and those with lower rationality such as the people in the
colonies, the blacks, the savages, the wild people, and the slaves. Distinctions
were also made between modern European people with a developed rationality
and hence social and political organization, and the pre-modern people of all
sorts.
In recent decades, questions have been raised about any linear development and
uniform character of Enlightenment ideology. It has been argued that although
Enlightenment thinkers apparently blasted against religion, it is possible to locate
that their attack was mostly against the established religion, particularly Catholic
Church and the priests, rather than against religion as such. There were in fact
very few direct attack against Christianity. In some cases, the reason was supposed
to reinforce the values and beliefs of Christianity. Reason was sometimes used
even to support divine revelation and miracles. Many intellectuals of this period
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Rise of the Modern West-II ‘shared Locke’s view that a rational appreciation of man’s situation would lead
people to be Christians’ [Black, 1990: 210]. Still, while most of them were not
anti-religious, or even anti-Christian, they were also not concerned about matters
of soul. Their concerns were definitely worldly and secular.
None of the major Enlightenment thinkers, even in France where they developed
a strong critique of establishment, faced any prolonged and severe penal action.
Despite their many anti-establishment views, the Enlightenment thinkers were
not averse to the idea of accepting favours from the contemporary monarchical
rulers. Thus, Voltaire, Montesquieu and Diderot accepted membership of the
French Royal Academy. They all praised the ‘enlightened’ monarch Frederick
the Great of Prussia and Catherine of Russia. Many of the famous philosophers
also earned a lot of money, besides gaining prestige. Most of them lived long life
in moderate affluence. They were appreciated and even lionised in many cases.
They enjoyed glory within their lifetime and they tried to convince many autocratic
rulers of their times to implement their ideas on government. Despite the critical
stance, most of them were reformers and not revolutionaries. Their criticism of
monarchy was rather limited, and even their radical critique of the Catholic Church
evoked less animosity and incurred less risk in France than it would have done
in a rigidly orthodox century like Spain. On the other hand, their deism and anti-
Church stance which appeared very radical in France would not have acquired
similar edge in England or Holland.
Scottish Enlightenment and New Economic Thought

The term ‘Scottish Enlightenment’ is used for a number of thinkers from Scotland
(part of Britain) who made enormous intellectual contribution to the
Enlightenment. David Hume, Adam Smith, and William Robertson were among
the main such Enlightenment thinkers. Among their most significant contribution
to Enlightenment thought was the emphasis on political economy. Hume and
Smith emphasized on commerce, manufacture and technological innovation rather
than on agriculture or bullion as the best means to achieve wealth. Moreover,
they envisaged a possibility of each country growing together because the
commercial wealth was ever increasing. The path to become rich would be
common to all, at least to all relatively developed European countries. Increasing
trade and commerce would provide opportunity and incentive for the
manufacturers and even landowners to invest. Adam Smith criticized the
restrictive mercantilist trade practices which relied on pressure, monopolies, and
control of markets. He instead favoured open commerce free from the control of
the guilds and the government.
The thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment offered strong opposition to

Rousseau’s trenchant critique of modern society. They argued that economic life
of the pre-modern society was inherently precarious, and it was only commerce
and manufacture, conducted as freely as possible, that would create wealth
required for the economic improvement of all countries and all classes. Such
arguments proved so influential that, after Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations most
thinkers and even policy-makers started considering commerce as crucial to an
understanding of the modern society. Now, political economy was accepted as
the most important and new science of society which would have universal
application. It was one of the greatest contributions made by Enlightenment
thought not only towards a knowledge of human society but also towards
improving its material conditions. This vision offered prospects of great material
124
progress in the present world dealing a huge blow to the religious idea of freedom Enlightenment
from misery in the next world. It made possible the secularisation of society at a
much broader level than could be possible by a simple separation of religion and
state. Moreover, the idea of free commerce projected a larger world beyond the
boundaries of individual countries; it was truly international in scope.

1) Discuss the main influences on Enlightenment thought.
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2) Write a note on the important ideas of Enlightenment.
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9.6 SOME IMPORTANT ENLIGHTENMENT

THINKERS
In this section we will discuss the ideas of some important French thinkers of
‘High Enlightenment’ whose ideas became crucial to the posterity for a long
time to come.
9.6.1 Montesquieu (1689-1755)

Montesquieu, a French political and historical thinker, was among the most
important Enlightenment thinkers whose famous work The Spirit of Laws (1748)
is considered to have inaugurated the high Enlightenment. He had a strong
deterministic view of human development. On the basis of his analysis of many
countries, he argued the primacy of climate and geography in determining the
nature of the various governments. Thus, a hot and humid climate gave rise to
despotism, the temperate climate encouraged the growth of democracies in various
forms, the most favoured being the constitutional monarchies. Moreover, he also
argued that the size of the ruled area also made a difference. Thus, a large territory
could be governed only through despotism, a monarchy is suitable for medium-
sized area, while a republic could survive only in a small area. Even people were
different in different regions. Thus, the people who lived in cold climates are
strong, vigorous, and courageous, while those living in hot climates were weak,
sensuous, and volatile. He praised the British system of constitutional government
and advocated separation of powers between various organs of the state.
According to him, only the rule by constitution could ensure that public order
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Rise of the Modern West-II and freedom of the individual could co-exist. He also did not believe in the
divine origins and divine rights of the kings and argued that the power of the
king was derived from the people and not God. Montesquieu looked up at the
nobility to restrict the unbridled powers of despotic kings.
9.6.2 Voltaire (1694-1778)

Voltaire (Francois-Marie Arouet,) was the most popular Enlightenment thinker
who was read very widely. He was very witty and sarcastic and attacked the
Church and the priests with utmost vigour. He believed in uniform human nature
and universalism. He criticized the determinism of Montesquieu. According to
him, all ‘civilized nations everywhere, beginning with India and ending with
Europe’, possessed the same truth. But he also thought that there was marked
differences between a ‘civilized’ and a ‘non-civilized’ society. While the Asian
and European societies were civilized, the African and pre-modern American
societies were uncivilized.
Voltaire’s severest attack was against the system of religion prevailing in France
concentrating a lot of powers in the Church. He, however, praised Confucianism
and Hinduism as containing relevant truths for humankind. He also believed that
a natural religion based on reason was necessary to maintain order in the society
and to give people hope. Without any such system there would be chaos and
anarchy. He supported a form of toleration which was to be worldly and non-
religious whereby ‘the physical and moral well-being of society’ would be
preserved and fanaticism and dogmatism would be rejected.
He was also a great admirer of Britain praising it for its constitutional government,
free press, religious tolerance, and commercial prowess. In contrast to
Montesquieu, however, Voltaire favoured the centralized monarchy to protect
common people from the oppression of the nobles.
9.6.3 Diderot (1713-1784)

Denis Diderot is famous for preparing the monumental Encyclopedia (in
association with d’Alembert and initiated in 1751) which became the most familiar
landmark of Enlightenment. It consisted of 60,000 articles and 2,885 illustrations
making 28 volumes. It claimed to collect, organized and classify all knowledge
from all over the world. Almost all the major Enlightenment thinkers in France
contributed article for it. Despite its bulk and price, the Encyclopedia became
quite popular with the middle classes and reached to almost all the countries in
Europe. It provided a sharp focus to the anti-establishment stance of the
Enlightenment and riled the French authorities so much that one of its volumes
was banned and Diderot was jailed for some time.
Diderot worked for many years to complete this in 1765, and he himself
contributed about 5,000 articles. Through his writings, he took a radical stance
going against the prevailing opinion in France and the West in general. He strongly
emphasized on rationality and laws of nature. Diderot criticized the oppression
and exploitation of women and the system of male domination. He condemned
slavery and advocated legal equality among human beings. The stand taken by
Diderot and the Encyclopedia in general was against monarchy and in support of
representative government, sometimes going as far as popular sovereignty, coming
close to demanding a republic.
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9.6.4 Rousseau (1712-1778) Enlightenment
Jean-Jacques Rousseau occupied an ambiguous place within the Enlightenment

because he put equal emphasis on reason and emotions. He believed that
spontaneity and instinct were as much part of human nature as rationality, order,
and laws. In opposition to many others, he held that history did not represent a
uniform and linear progress. He believed that the society changed from freedom
to unfreedom, from relative equality to inequality, and from pastoral-agricultural
setting to urbanization, growth of cities, congestion, and corruption of morals.
Rousseau offered a strong critique of the modern society and its moral decline.
At the economic level, he advocated a balanced growth between the rural and
urban areas so that there was no unilateral transfer of massive population from
the villages to the cities.
Rousseau believed the primitive societies were harmonious, non-hierarchical,
simple, and therefore ideal. The modern civilization, on the other hand, was
corrupt, acrimonious, mad after wealth, and non-egalitarian. In his famous book
The Social Contract (1762), he attempted to outline how in contemporary
societies, the people associate with each other for their safety and for getting
justice, but still remain free individuals. In line with Hobbes and Locke, Rousseau
also thought that there occurred a ‘social contract’ where the free-born individual
surrenders his / her natural rights to the ‘general will’ to find a community, order,
and protection. However, in contrast to his predecessors, Rousseau conceived
that this surrender of rights was not to an autocratic state or to a dynastic ruler
but to citizen-rulers who were equal and on the same ground with others. In
contrast to some other Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire, Rousseau did
not believe in the future enlightenment of the dynastic rulers. For him, sovereignty
was reposed in the people and not in the kings. Moreover, there was no divine
sanction of sovereignty.
9.6.5 Turgot (1727-81)

Anne Robert Jacques Turgot was a French economist who also served as Minister
in the French government. He was one of the earliest and strongest proponent of
the idea of progress. This progress was to be linear, completely secular, and
human-oriented rather than divine. As per his universalistic thinking, the societies
all over the world would follow the same path of linear and progressive
development. In this sense, progress was inevitable in every society. There would
be three stages of progress: from hunting to pastoral to agricultural. In the first
stage, it was passion and not reason which would be supreme, and the human
society would be in the savage state. This stage was not suitable for the creation
of culture. In the next stage, the society got wealthier and communication
increased. But, due to high mobility, people at large could not develop common
bonds, and no records could be kept. Finally, with the coming of agriculture,
settled life, and generation of surplus, the civilization emerged and human culture
took a higher form. It was from this time onward, according to Turgot, that progress
became a real and almost inevitable possibility. Turgot emphasized that progress
was uniquely human and was possible due to accumulation of knowledge,
memory, and written records through several generations. He sharply
distinguished human world from the natural world. While in nature the movement
is cyclical, in human world it has been mostly linear, collective and, after modern
science, inevitable. The wheel of history could not now be turned back; it is
bound to move forward and upwards. 127
9.7 LEGACIES OF ENLIGHTENMENT
The legacies of Enlightenment are so deep and wide-ranging that even today we
are considered to be living in the post-Enlightenment world, a world imbued
with the ideas broadly generated during the period of Enlightenment. The first
and foremost of these is the belief in Reason as separate from and opposed to
tradition and blind faith. The belief in the critical scrutiny of various phenomena
has been an enduring legacy of Enlightenment. The belief in human potential, in
science, and in progress still continues. The idea that rational human beings are
able to shape their own destinies without any appeal to divine authorities derived
from Enlightenment. Enlightenment put forward the idea that all human beings,
anywhere in the world, possessed the same faculties of reasoning and intellect,
even though all of them were not in the same stage of development. Moreover,
the Enlightenment idea of popular sovereignty has become much wider and
deeper. Human freedom has become a core value in today’s world and all forms
of unfreedom, such as slavery, bondage etc. are criticized. Enlightenment
generated the ideas of a broadly rational, individualistic, secular, and progressive
world in which most of the humans believe even now. The modern world, at
least in its thinking, is a legacy of Enlightenment. Most scholars now associate
various aspects of modernity with Enlightenment. In some of its manifestations,
Enlightenment can be linked with a variety of modern values such as
cosmopolitanism, universalism, rationalism, belief in scientific method and
continuous progress, secularism, tolerance, human rights, democracy, and even
gender equality.
On the other hand, sometimes consciously but also unintentionally, Enlightenment

reinforced the superiority of the modern European countries over the rest of the
world. Enlightenment’s formula of the stages of development relegated non-
European peoples to the lower stages from which they were to be rescued by the
more developed Europeans. Modern European values were put forward as norms
for the rest of the world, and it was considered as the responsibility of the
Europeans to educate and liberate the non-Europeans from their superstitions
and bondage to priests and kings. Thus, while they were critical of colonial plunder
and exploitation through violence, many Enlightenment thinkers still believed
that the Europeans had a role to play in the colonies. Even a radical Enlightenment
thinker like Condorcet suggested for the colonial people that ‘we would become
for them … generous liberators’. And Rousseau stated that the Europeans should
‘force them to be free’. Such statements provided ample justification for the
later imperialist ‘civilizing mission’ in the colonial territories. So, it can be said
that, in some respects, the Enlightenment left a contradictory legacy which
preached both liberation and domination – liberation from superstition, priesthood,
and despotism, but domination by modern European values, modern science,
and, if needed, by modern European rulers.

1) What are the legacies of Enlightenment for contemporary world?
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2) Discuss the ideas of two important Enlightenment thinkers. Enlightenment
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9.8 LET US SUM UP

Enlightenment is regarded as the harbinger of the modern world at intellectual
level. Its emphasis on rational thinking and on the individual paved the way for
breaking away from traditional and religious dogmas and superstitions.
Enlightenment thinkers derived from the earlier intellectual movements in science,
rationalism and empiricism to put forward their own ideas about nature and
society. These thinkers, also known as philosophes, believed in scientific method
of observation, experimentation, and analysis for the study of society, and doubted
the validity of divine revelation and miracles. Individualism, rationalism,
universalism, tolerance, and liberalism were some important legacies of the
Enlightenment.

EXERCISES
1) See Section 9.3
2) See Section 9.5

1) See Section 9.7
2) See Section 9.6
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UNIT 10 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC
ISSUES IN THE AMERICAN
REVOLUTION*
Structure
10.0 Objectives
10.1 Introduction
10.2 Background of the Revolution: Nature of Colonisation in America
10.3 Interface of Political and Economic Aspects in the American Revolution
10.4 The Consequences of Seven Year War
10.5 Growing Antipathy Between the British Crown and Colonies in America
10.6 Colonial Resistance Erupts: Reactions to Stamp Act
10.7 The Townshend Acts and Continuation of Protest
10.8 The Boston Carnage, the Boston Tea Party, and the Intolerable Acts
10.9 Road to Revolutionary War and Declaration of Independence
10.10 Let Us Sum Up
10.11 Answer to Check Your Progress Exercises
10.0 OBJECTIVES
After reading this Unit, you will learn the:
nature of colonization in America,
role of political and economic factors in American Revolution,
nature of antagonism between the British Crown and American colonies,
and
nature of resistance and protest of the people in American colonies.
10.1 INTRODUCTION
As a significant event in American world and Atlantic history, the American
Revolution has always aroused great interest. A huge amount of literature has
been written on it. Some scholars viewed it as a precursor of the most important
event which was the formation of the United States. It is thus a key episode in
the development of American nationalism and the American state. Some other
scholars see the American Revolution as part of a larger age of revolutions and
also see it as arising out of global contexts and having major consequences as a
major episode in the birth of the modern world. Most of the events that led to the
American Revolution and the War of Independence itself are well known, but
their interpretations differ. The liberal historians tended to see the American
Revolution as having mainly political rather than socio- economic consequences.
The Progressive school sees the American Revolution as a broader social-
economic upheaval and not merely as a political revolt, akin to the French and

130
the Russian Revolutions. Whatever interpretation is accepted, significance of Political and Economic Issues
in the American Revolution
the event cannot be denied. The ideal enshrined in the Declaration of Independence
regarding the equality of all men and the ‘inalienable rights’ of man electrified
the atmosphere in America and outside. Thomas Paine, one of the founders of
the United States, also participated in the French Revolution. By its example, the
American Revolution inspired many revolutionaries across Europe later in the
19th century. It encouraged Spanish and Portuguese colonies in Central and South
America to rebel and gain their independence. However, the main accomplishment
of the American Revolution was in laying foundation of a republic. This republic
was, however, not truly democratic. The right to vote was limited. The Blacks,
most of them still slaves, indigenous American Indians, and women had no vote.
Election laws in all states favored men of property for many years. But progress
towards democracy had begun.
10.2 BACKGROUND OF THE REVOLUTION:

NATURE OF COLONISATION IN AMERICA
In 1607 The Virginia Company of London, an English trading company, started
the first enduring English settlement in North America at Jamestown. The life of
these first settlers was not easy, apart from harsh climate, wild untamed land, the
settlers had to face diseases, starvation and the hostility of indigenous population.
The successful establishment of this colony was an important achievement in
those difficult times. The Virginia Company functioned under a royal charter
which was, granted by King James I, which assured the original settlers they
would have all liberties, franchises and immunities as if they had been “abiding
and born within England.”
One of the main reason behind indigenous people’ hostility to European settlers
was their different perspectives regarding property that you can see from text
box -1 below.
Indigenous American Perspective :

“No tribe has the right to sell, even to
each other, much less to strangers...Sell
a country! Why not sell the air, the
great sea, as well as the earth? Didn’t
the Great Spirit make them all for the
use of his children?”
European Perspective : “A right to

property is founded in our natural
wants, in the means with which we are
endowed to satisfy these wants, and the
right to what we acquire by those
means without violating the similar
rights of other sensible beings.”
The Virginia Company failed and Jamestown became a royal colony (owned by
The British Crown) in 1623. However, the operation and settlement of colonies
in America from the very beginning shows how the nature of colonialism was so
different to our own experience of colonial rule. The Virginia Company allowed
colonists to own their own land (property ownership) and created the House of 131
Rise of the Modern West-II Burgesses, a group of elected representatives who made decisions and passed
laws for the colony (which means a kind of self-rule permitted to settlers), and
naturally they protested when the king eliminated the House of Burgesses.
By 1760, England and Scotland had united into the Kingdom of Great Britain
and her settlements in North America had grown to thirteen thriving colonies
with strong cultural, economic, and political ties to the mother country. Each
colony enjoyed a certain amount of self-rule. The ties which bound Great Britain
and her American colonies were many. These colonies could be divided into
following three categories.
1) New England colonies: New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island,

Connecticut (These were formed mostly by religious dissenters, (people who
disagree with orthodox existing view.) The colonialists in them were relatively
wealthy, skilled and educated and based in cities and towns. The economy of
theses colonies was subsistence economy producing only enough to feed urban
centres. They engaged in fishing, fur trade, timber, iron works and shipping.
There were no big plantation farms and so there was no need for slavery. They
were self-governed and made their own laws separate from England.
2) Middle colonies: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware. Originally

founded by the Dutch, but later conquered by England , these colonies were
ideal for farming with rich soil and mild winters but they did not rely heavily on
slave labour. Here, even poor immigrants became wealthy landowners with
passage of time. The main resources here were fur, cattle, grain, tobacco, iron,
ships, and timber. These colonies were marked by religious and ethnic diversity
with a mingling of English Quakers, German Lutherans, French Protestants,
etc.
3) Southern colonies: Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina,

Georgia. These were based on Tobacco and rice industry and largely rural colonies.
The plantation farming on fertile soil with year-round crops required labor-
intensive techniques. It required slaves or indentured servants (people who worked
for a set time without pay in exchange for free passage to America). About 68%
of the 235,000 African slaves lived in the South and made up nearly half of the
entire South’s population. But still there was no religious persecution.
Rich and wealthy men in the colonies, such as George Washington, used British
trading companies as their agents to conduct business. Young men from prominent
families, like Arthur Lee, went to Great Britain to obtain education. Colonial
churches received services of ministers who were educated in Great Britain.
Many of the brightest men in the colonies, such as Benjamin Franklin of
Pennsylvania, James Otis of Massachusetts, and Peyton Randolph of Virginia,
served the British government as appointed officials. What then caused these
strong ties to be shattered l after 1760? What caused the American colonists to
revolt against their mother country in 1775? Though not recognized by most
people at the time, economic and political forces beginning in 1760 on both
sides of the Atlantic reshaped the relationship between Great Britain and her
American colonies.
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Political and Economic Issues
10.3 INTERFACE OF POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC in the American Revolution
ASPECTS IN THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
The establishment of colonies in America provided an outlet to surplus population
at home. Under the economic doctrine of mercantilism, the colonies and their
economies were also supposed to promote British shipping and commercial
interests. The trade in products such as tobacco, wood, and sugar had grown.
Despite providing some degree of autonomy to these colonies, the mercantilist
thinking of the age believed that colonies should be for the economic benefits of
the mother country. So Britain tried to impose trade restrictions from the very
beginning on the colonies. There were ways and means by which American
colonies and its traders evaded trade control. Navigation Acts of seventeenth
century, which were a series of laws passed by England to guarantee profit for
itself, sowed the seed of first resentment against England in American colonies.
Under these laws, all goods had to be carried on English ships or on ships made
in the English colonies. They permitted European imports to the colonies only
through English ports and officials were to tax any colonial goods not shipped to
England. The Acts led to smuggling and piracy on a large scale to evade the
provisions of the Acts.
The Seven Years War (1756-1763), which was a war between a coalition of Great
Britain and its allies against a coalition of France and its allies, resulted in
expansion of British colonial possessions in America. Financing the administration
of these new colonial possessions was a vital problem faced by the British
government. The war had been a costly affair and at the end of the Seven Years
War, England’s national debt stood at over £122 million and even annual interest
payment on this debt was nearly £4.5 million. Compounding Britain’s financial
troubles, the government faced growing protests for tax relief after increasing
taxes for war at home. A series of attempts were made to raise more revenue
from American colonies and impose strict control over them and their economy.
The American colonial resistance found political articulation in opposition to
the economic and administrative measures imposed by Britain in the wake of
Seven Years War. This found expression in the slogan of “No taxation without
representation!” which became the political justification of the American
revolutionaries. In 1767, patriot merchants throughout the colonies were signing
non-importation agreements. In other words, they planned to boycott goods
produced in the mother country— especially goods that were being taxed without
the colonists’ consent. The idea was both novel and brilliant. If the patriot
merchants succeeded, they would severely affect the prosperity of English
merchants who benefited from trade with the American colonies. Patriots believed
that if revenue from the colonies dried up, the English merchants would pressure
Parliament to repeal the Townshend Acts, and reestablish free trade with the
colonies. John Dickinson wrote a series of twelve letters and published them
under the title, Letters from a Farmer in Philadelphia. In the Letters, John
Dickinson railed against the unconstitutionality of the taxes Parliament was
imposing on the colonies. He cited the fact that the revenue collected from the
taxes would pay the salaries of royal officials. Previously, it had been the
responsibility of each colony’s legislature to raise money to pay the royal officials,
now that right had been taken out of their hands.
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Rise of the Modern West-II The ‘triangular trade’ connecting Africa, the New-World plantation-zone and
Britain was a central motor of the ‘Atlantic economy’. The markets created by
the African slave-trade and the plantation-economies for British manufactured
goods as diverse as iron, textiles, glass, and china were important stimuli for the
growth of industrial capitalism in Britain. Scholarly discussion of plantation-
slavery and economic development has produced two broad interpretations.
Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman, argue that, despite the un-free legal status
of slave-labourers, plantation-slavery was a variant of capitalism. The planters’
ability to organize their slave-labourers in a centralized labour-process allowed
the planters to maximise profits in the production of staple-crops, sugar, tobacco,
cotton, etc. for a competitive world-market. On the other hand, Eugene D.
Genovese argues that the slaves’ un-free legal status gave rise to a number of
social-institutional hindrances to the development of capitalism. For a variety of
reasons, but most importantly the slaves’ supposed lack of motivation and the
resulting need for their close supervision in simple, repetitive and unskilled tasks,
slavery was an obstacle to technical innovation in agriculture. But, despite having
a significant presence on the social map of American South colonies, this particular
issue found no resonance in the political discourses of the contemporary times.
10.4 THE CONSEQUENCES OF SEVEN YEAR WAR

The Seven Years War (1756-1763) was a war between a coalition of Great Britain
and its allies against a coalition of France and its allies. The war escalated from
a regional conflict between Great Britain and France in North America and spread
to other colonies and Europe too. George Washington, a wealthy Virginia planter
and an officer in the Virginia militia, served under British General Braddock in
the early years of this war. The Seven Years War ended in a resounding victory
for Great Britain and its allies and a crushing defeat for France and its allies.
France lost to Great Britain most of its North American colonial possessions,
known as New France. This included Canada and all of its land east of the
Mississippi River, including the Ohio Valley. Despite a big military victory, Great
Britain faced a number of serious geo-political and financial problems after the
war. The first difficulty faced by the British government was how to govern and
control vast territories won during war. In North America, the British now had
liability for protecting lands acquired in Canada and the areas east of the
Mississippi River. These former French colonies included thousands of Indians
and many French-speaking Catholics who had no desire to become subjects of
the British crown or to live under English common law. This posed the problem
of getting consent of the governed in a legitimate manner. Great Britain also had
gained control over East and West Florida which Spain, an ally of France, was
forced to cede to Great Britain at the end of the war. Financing the administration
of these new colonial possessions was a vital problem faced by the British
government. The war had been a costly affair and at the end of the Seven Years
War, England’s the national debt stood at over £122 million and even annual
interest payment on this debt was nearly £4.5 million. Compounding Britain’s
financial troubles, the government faced growing protests for tax relief after
increasing taxes for war at home.
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Check Your Progress 1 Political and Economic Issues
1) Discuss the nature of colonization of America. How do you think it was
different from the colonization of India?
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2) How the Seven Years War can be seen as a major catalyst for the American
Revolution?
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10.5 GROWING ANTIPATHY BETWEEN THE

BRITISH CROWN AND COLONIES IN
AMERICA
During the Seven Year War, Britain and the colonies fought side by side.
Americans in colonies supported Britain in its war efforts. However, when the
war ended, troubles started rising. Britain wanted to govern and control its 13
original colonies and the newly acquired territories as a result of victory in the
war in a uniform way. So the British Parliament in London imposed new laws
and restrictions and obligations on the colonies. Previously, the colonies had
been allowed a fair degree of self-governance. The first of Parliament’s
enactments was the Proclamation of 1763. It did not allow the settlement of
the colonists in the west of the Appalachian Mountains. Britain wanted this land
to remain in the hands of its indigenous people. There were tensions between
Indian tribes (indigenous people) and Great Britain already at the end of the
Seven Years War. The Indian tribes living in the Ohio Valley and the Great Lakes
had traded with the French for years, few French settlers without taking over
their lands. After defeat of France in war, British settlers began crossing the
Appalachian Mountain and moving westward (a system of mountains in the
Eastern North America) in large numbers looking for good farm land. The actions
of Major General Jeffrey Amherst, the British Commander of British forces in
North America, also contributed to the tense relations between the British and
the Indians in the final years of the war. During the war, the British and the
French both tried to gain the support of a number of Indian tribes by giving their
chiefs generous gifts. As military operations in North America came to a an end,
General Amherst decided to discontinue the practice of giving gifts to Indian
chiefs and decided to cut back on trading gunpowder to the Indians. This annoyed
Indigenous chiefs further. In May 1763, Pontiac, an Ottawa chief, led a number
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Rise of the Modern West-II of Indian tribes in the area of the Great Lakes in an uprising against British
forces and settlers along the frontier. Many British soldiers were killed, and
numerous settlers were forced to flee from the region. The Pontiac’s Rebellion
lasted until 1764. Though peace returned, the possibility of further conflicts with
the Indians strongly affected Britain’s decision to leave a standing army in America
after the Seven Years War.
The proclamation of 1763 enraged colonists who had hoped to move to the fertile
Ohio Valley. Many of these colonists had no land of their own. It also upset
colonists who had bought land as an investment. The Proclamation affected the
rich and powerful social group of American colonies as they had made investment
in companies in the hope of making long-term huge profits. Some of these real
estate companies were the Ohio Company (established in 1747), the Loyal
Company (organized in 1749), and the Mississippi Company (1763). These
companies wanted to earn big profits and their modus operandi was to get land at
cheap rates from the British and resell the land to new people who wanted to
settle in lands beyond the Appalachian Mountains. Some of the men who invested
in these companies were big names of American history like George Washington,
Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, and Arthur Lee of Virginia
and Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania. Unable to obtain title for the land from
the British government, the land companies could not make sales. Though agents
of the companies were sent to London to argue on behalf of the land companies,
the British government refused to reverse its position. The powerful and rich
men who had invested in these companies suffered significant financial losses.
King George III, the British monarch, wanted to enforce the proclamation and
also keep peace with indigenous Indian tribes. To do this, it was decided to deploy
10,000 soldiers in the colonies. This was done through the passing of the
Quartering Act in 1765 by the British Parliament. Under the provisions of the
Act, the colonies were required to maintain the British soldiers. This was to be
done by people of colonies by providing them with residence in their houses and
food and other necessities to them. So, it cost nothing to British and the upkeep
of their army became an obligation of the colonies. General Thomas Gage,
commander of these forces, put most of the troops in New York. Britain had
incurred a huge debt from the Seven Year War and was not in a position to
maintain its troops in the colonies. By making the colonies pay for its troops
stationed there, British Parliament has designed a financial strategy to have the
colonies pay part of the war debt. It also wanted them to contribute toward the
costs of frontier defense and colonial government. Against the well-established
conventions of the past, the colonial assemblies were advised by the King raise
new taxes through which military operations in the colonies can be financed by
the colonies themselves without burdening the already strained British
Government’s finances. This time, however, Parliament voted to tax the Americans
directly.
An attempt was also made to forcefully implement Britain’s trade laws with the
American colonies. Smuggling and piracy had made it difficult to enforce
Navigation laws. But now, with a substantial presence of the British Navy it was
possible to curb colonial smuggling and enforce trade laws more effectively. To
obtain this objective, the British government also increasingly began to use an
instrument called Writs of Assistance. A Writ was a type of search warrant which
authorized government officials to look for contraband, such as smuggled goods,
136
both in private homes and business premises. The writs also placed no limits on Political and Economic Issues
the time, place or manner of a search. In 1761, sixty-three Boston merchants
challenged the legality of the process. James Otis, Jr., an attorney who had
formerly represented the royal government, argued the case for the merchants.
Though they lost their case, the surrounding publicity fueled anger within the
merchant classes of Boston against the British government.
In 1764, Parliament passed the American Revenue Act of l764, which came to
be popularly known as the Sugar Act. The Act replaced the existing Sugar and
Molasses Act (1733) under which the rate of tax was six pence per gallon on
molasses which was imported from the French West Indies or the Dutch West
Indies. Molasses was an important ingredient in the manufacture of rum which
was one of New England’s most important emerging industry. The purpose of
the enactment was not to generate revenue bill but it was designed more as a
means to regulate trade. The main objective of the Act was to support imports
from the British West Indies and discourage imports from the French and Dutch
West Indies. Due to wide-spread smuggling and bribery, the tax on molasses
from the French and Dutch West Indies was rarely collected. So. on April 5,
1764, the British Parliament replaced it with the American Revenue Act of 1764.
While the new act cut the tax on molasses in half, Britain’s Finance Minister
Grenville anticipated that more forceful collection of the duties would bring in
more revenue. The act further empowered customs officials to have all violations
of the law tried in Vice Admiralty courts rather than general courts. Vice Admiralty
courts had jurisdiction over maritime issues, while general courts handled criminal
cases in the colonies. Vice admiralty courts, unlike general courts, did not use
juries, and Grenville recognized that colonial juries were often very considerate
to popular local merchants involved in smuggling. The Sugar Act would meet
with major resistance in New England where the manufacture of rum from
molasses had become a major industry. Colonial leaders such as James Otis
claimed that Briitsh Parliament had no legal right to raise revenue in the colonies,
since people living in the American colonies had not a single representative in
that Parliament. As Otis exclaimed, “Taxation without representation is tyranny!”
British ruling circles disagreed. They maintained that the people of American
colonies were subjects of Britain and enjoyed the protection of its laws. So, it
was legitimate to tax them.
The British had their own financial compulsions as they needed more revenue
for military operations in America and more troops were to deployed in order to
maintain its controls over the colonies. In order to pay the expenses involved in
this military deployment in North America, Grenville proposed a Stamp Act
(1765) for the colonies. A stamp duty was in existence in England since 1694
and proved useful in collecting revenues. Under the provisions of the Stamp Act,
a tax was imposed on all legal documents. Items such as commercial contracts,
newspapers, legal wills, marriage certificates, diplomas and degrees, pamphlets,
and even playing cards — all were taxed in the American colonies. The Stamp
Act was the first direct tax used by the British government to collect revenues
from the colonies. Though there were some objections in British Parliament to
imposing a stamp tax to collect revenue from the colonies, it appeared a natural
law to most members of British Parliament. Another economic step passed by
Parliament was what came to be known as the Currency Act (1764). Bills of
Credit were, like currency notes, were also issued by the government and they
were in circulation as a kind of alternative currency. This act outlawed the use of
137
Rise of the Modern West-II bills of credit as a medium of currency or as an alternative mode of payment by
the American colonies. Bills of credit was a local answer to the shortage of silver
and gold currency in the colonies. These instruments were supported by the credit
of the government in a colony which issued them. Now the American traders and
businessmen could not make payment and transactions with their British
counterparts through this mode. This was in favour of British businessmen because
the value of these bills of credits has declined in the market over the years. It led
to widespread economic malfunction because now the British businessmen
demanded payment only in silver and gold currency. This was unjustified because
the bills of credit were also issued by the British Government and they represented
accumulated credit of the American colonies.
While many colonists blamed the Currency Act for causing the downturn in the
economy, there were not any extensive protests over this measure in the colonies.
It was perceived by many viewed the act as an extension of those earlier power
of the British Parliament. The resentment against the Sugar Act were also fairly
low-key affairs as it did not affect common people though trading community
especially in the New England colony was upset. Samuel Adams, who was a
popular leader in Boston area especially among political clubs that had sprang
up there recently, was opposed to the move and organized a movement against
the imposition of Sugar tax. He, further, attempted to plead with the Massachusetts
General Assembly to move in the same direction. Some Boston merchants agreed
to boycott the purchase of British luxury goods in reprisal. Thus began the boycott
of British goods, as a tool of colonial protest. A five member Committee of
Correspondence was appointed in June 1764 in Massachusetts to coordinate action
and exchange information with other colonies.
10.6 COLONIAL RESISTANCE ERUPTS:

REACTIONS TO STAMP ACT
The Stamp Act was a new kind of tax for the colonies. The Stamp Act was a new
tax applied within the colonies. It fell directly on all colonists. Even more, the
colonists had to pay for stamps in silver coin— in a scarce thing in the colonies.
Colonial leaders vigorously protested its one-sided imposition. They believed
that were being taxed without their consent by a Parliament in which they had no
voice. The resistance was speedy and passionate. The first official opposition to
the stamps came from the Virginia House of Burgesses. On May 29, 1765, the
House of Burgesses passed five resolves proposed by Patrick Henry. The Virginia
Resolves tied the liberties and immunities enjoyed by Virginians in 1765 to the
first two royal charters granted by King James I in the early 17th century. The
third resolution boldly stated:
“That the Taxation of the People by themselves, or by Persons chosen by

themselves to represent them, who can only know what taxes the people are able
to bear, or the easiest Method of raising them, and must themselves be affected
by every Tax laid on the people, is the only Security against a burdensome
Taxation....”
The fifth resolve, the most radical of the five resolutions passed by the House,
stated that only the General Assembly of Virginia had the power to lay taxes on
its inhabitants. This declaration reflected the growing principle in the colonies
that there could be no taxation without representation. These radical, although
138
expunged from the official records later by political alliance of moderate and Political and Economic Issues
conservative elements. Other colonial assemblies followed Virginia’s bold lead.
Shortly after Virginia’s action, the Massachusetts lower house proposed a meeting
of representatives from all of the colonies. This meeting, known as the Stamp
Act Congress, met in New York in October 1765. A Stamp Act Congress was
organized in New York in which delegates from nine colonies took part. This
was one of the earliest instance when the colonies combined together in protest.
Delegates prepared a petition to be sent to the king as a sign of protest against
the Stamp Act. The petition affirmed that the Crown had no right to impose tax
on the people of colonies, rather it could be done only by the colonial assemblies.
The right of the British Parliament was challenged. Colonial assemblies and
newspapers proclaimed—”No taxation without representation!”. In addition to
protests by colonial legislatures, mobs in numerous cities violently demonstrated
against the Stamp Act. Many of these crowds often went by such patriotic names
as the Sons of Liberty and the Liberty Boys. These secretive and volatile groups,
often composed of printers and artisans, were led by some of the most powerful
men in the colonies. Samuel Adams led the Sons of Liberty in Boston. In addition
to mob violence, other groups organized efforts to boycott the British goods.
Parliament finally saw that the Stamp Act was a mistake and repealed it in 1766.
But at the same time, The British Parliament was ready with another legislation
which was named as the ‘Declaratory Act’. This piece of legislation affirmed the
supreme authority of British Parliament in matters of governance and taxation.
The Americans celebrated the revoke of the Stamp Act. They ignored the new
legislation as simply without the real substance because they had successfully
challenged the right of British Parliament in concrete manner and the Declaratory
Act made no difference. A war between the British Parliament and the colonies
had begun.
10.7 THE TOWNSHEND ACTS AND

CONTINUATION OF PROTEST
After the political upheaval over the Stamp Act, Britain wished to avoid any
further clash with colonies. Even so, it faced financial compulsions and was in
need of revenue generating avenues to pay for troops and cost of administration
in America. Charles Townshend , the new Finance Minister of Britain proposed
three new measures that became known as the Townshend Acts. These consisted
of the Revenue Act of 1767, the Suspension of the New York Assembly Act, and
the Board of Customs Act. The Revenue Act laid new taxes on the colonies. As
a measure of raising more revenue, it imposed new import duties on commodities
like lead, glass, paints, and tea. The New York Assembly Act suspended the New
York Assembly until it agreed to obey the Quartering Act. The American Board
of Customs Act established a Board of Customs Commission in Boston to enforce
the duties imposed by the Revenue Act and created new Vice Admiralty courts
in Boston, Philadelphia, and Charleston.
However, the colonies immediately protested the imposition of Townshend duties.

They had developed organizational networks and leant mass mobilization
techniques after the Stamp Act protest, the colonies quickly moved again by
boycotting British goods as an effective tool of protest. Though the opposition
to the Townshend duties was not as violent as the mob protests over the Stamp
Act, the colonists resorted again through sending their petitions. Apprehensive
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Rise of the Modern West-II of another big upheaval, the British Parliament rescinded all of the Townshend
duties in 1770 except the tea tax which was maintained as a token to demonstrate
Parliament’s supremacy over the colonies.
10.8 THE BOSTON CARNAGE, THE BOSTON TEA

PARTY, AND THE INTOLERABLE ACTS
Nevertheless, the troubles were not over, there continued to be confrontations
between British soldiers and colonists. The colonists were also angry about the
writs of assistance. Many believed that the writs went against their natural rights
and felt that the Townshend Acts were a serious threat to their rights and freedoms.
Continued enforcement of British trade laws and the presence of British soldiers
in several major port cities remained a perpetual source of these conflicts. On
March 5, 1770, one such incident occurred when British soldiers in Boston fired
into a mob, killing five people. The incident became known as the Boston
Massacre and received wide-spread publicity throughout the colonies. Though
there was a general outcry throughout the colonies to the Boston Massacre, the
British government allowed the soldiers to be tried in Massachusetts. Six of the
eight British soldiers on trial were acquitted while the remaining two were
convicted of manslaughter. Many on both sides of the Atlantic felt the soldiers
received a fair trial.
To protest the Townshend Acts, colonists in Boston announced another boycott

of British goods in October 1767. The driving force behind this protest was Samuel
Adams, a leader of the Boston Sons of Liberty. Adams urged colonists to continue
to resist British controls. The boycott spread throughout the colonies. The Sons
of Liberty compelled shopkeepers and traders not to sell British imported goods.
The Daughters of Liberty called on colonists to weave their own cloth and use
American products. As a result, imports from Britain declined sharply.
Then, in 1773, the British Parliament passed the Tea Act to safeguard its own
interests. Tea had become a popular drink in the American colonies and large
amount of it was imported illegally from Holland. The Tea Act was an attempt to
put the British East India Company in command of the American tea trade so
that it can tide over its financial difficulties. Under this act, the tea imported by
the East India company was made duty-free and it could directly export tea to
American colonies. Even though the company’s tea was still subject to the
Townshend tax, but allowing duty-free arrival of the East India Company’s tea
made it possible to sell its tea cheaper than the tea coming from Holland. It was
like granting sole right to import tea to the East India Company as now only its
ships carried tea to the ports of colonies and only the merchants of East India
Company sold it in American markets. Earlier the consumers in Colonies had
been enjoying tea coming through traders from Holland. Since most of it arrived
in America illegally they did not have to pay any tax on consumption of such tea.
Now even the cheaper British tea became costly as this has to pay Townshend
tax on it too. Soon protests against the Tea Act took place all over the colonies.
It spread to South Carolina, New York City and Philadelphia. In Boston, the
Sons of Liberty organized what came to be popularly known as the Boston Tea
Party. On the evening of December 16, 1773, a group of men boarded three tea
ships docked in Boston Harbour and destroyed huge amount of tea. Some colonial
leaders offered to pay for the tea if Parliament would repeal the Tea Act. Britain
140 rejected the offer. It not only wanted compensation for the loss, but it also wanted
the men who destroyed the tea to be brought to books. The British response to Political and Economic Issues
the Boston Tea Party only helped in spreading the protest to other colonies, and
soon all places were in flames of rebellion. It ended any hope to reconciliation
with the British Crown. The British government the episode of the Boston Tea
Party as a senseless destruction of private property by a group of hooligans.
Instead of appeasing the colonies by repealing the Tea Act, the British government
decided to punish Boston and the people of Massachusetts with a series of
repressive acts which became known as the Intolerable Acts.
The first of these measures, the Boston Port Act, was passed in March 1774.
This act provided for the closure of port of Boston and full compensation to the
East India Company for the damages incurred by it and a payment to the British
Government equivalent to the loss of custom duty in American colonies. The
second of these measure was the enactment of the Administration of Justice Act
(1774). Under this law, if any British official was found involved in a crime that
was committed while performing his duty of enforcing law and order or helping
in controlling a riot, then British government could allow a change of venue to
another British colony or to Great Britain, instead of an American colony, for
trials of such officials. The third of the Intolerable Acts, better known as the
Massachusetts Government Act, was a law to done away with the popularly
elected upper council of the colony and to replace it with a 12-36 nominated
member council, with all its members to be nominated by the King. The fourth
of the Intolerable Acts was the Quartering Act. This law was passed on June 2,
1774. Like the preceding Quartering Act, the revised rule allowed a colonial
governor to make provisions for British soldiers to be housed in vacant houses
and barns.
Mass protests in the colonies followed the passage Intolerable Acts. There were
protests in legislatures of colonies and mass constitutional and extra-constitutional
mobilization soon followed. In July 1774, George Washington, now a member
of the Virginia House of Burgesses, and his neighbor, George Mason, drafted the
Fairfax Resolves. These resolves listed many common grievances against the
British rule, called for boycott of British goods, demanded an end to the slave
trade, and urged the calling of a general congress of representatives of all colonies
which would make draft of a petition to the King on behalf of all colonists.
George Washington carried the Fairfax Resolves to the Virginia Houses of
Burgesses which took up the matter on August 1, 1774, as the First Virginia
Convention, the revolutionary body which governed Virginia until l776. Across
the thirteen colonies, local groups were adopting similar resolutions to protest
the Intolerable Acts.
10.9 ROAD TO REVOLUTIONARY WAR AND

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
The British goal of isolating and making an example of the people of Boston and
the Massachusetts colony using the Intolerable Acts completely failed. Instead
of isolating Massachusetts from the other colonies, it united the colonies against
The British power. More and more people joined into the ranks of the patriots.
The number of loyalists, people who supported the British government, declined
considerably. This congress, known as the first Continental Congress, met briefly
in Philadelphia from September 5 to October 26, 1774, to consider ways of
redressing colonial grievances and became a symbol of national unity. Delegates 141
Rise of the Modern West-II to this convention included George Washington and Patrick Henry of Virginia
and John Adams and Samuel Adam of Massachusetts. The Congress constituted
a body called The Continental Association. This body worked for implementing
a public boycott of British goods in the American colonies. The Congress also
gave consent to an open ‘Declaration of Rights’ of American citizens. It denied
the British right to impose taxes in American colonies and stoutly affirmed that
people of America could be taxed only by their own representative and legislative
bodies.
By late l774, provisional governments, some of which came to be known as

‘Committees of Safety’, took control of administration in some of the American
colonies. Local militias fully armed and trained in use of arms were formed in
many places to assist these provisional governments. In September 1774, British
General Thomas Gage, the newly appointed as the governor of Massachusetts,
took control of the guns and other weapons stored in garrisons of Charles Town
and Cambridge and also began to fortify his position in the city of Boston. The
British Parliament declared Massachusetts in a state of rebellion in February
1775 and authorized General Gage to use force to crush the rebellion. On April
14, 1775, General Gage was ordered to make British government in the area safe
by disarming all rebels and arresting main rebel leaders. British troops left Boston
on the night of April 18, 1775, to seize the munitions stored by the patriots in
Concord. Patriot spies gave warning of the movement of British troops, and
minutemen assembled along the road from Boston to Lexington. The conflict
the next day between the British soldiers and the New England minutemen (local
militiamen who can be available in a minute for military service) in Lexington
transformed into a full-fledged war. Meanwhile the second Continental Congress
reconvened in Philadelphia and authorized the creation of the Continental Army
and, on June 15, 1775, appointed George Washington commander of the American
revolutionary forces.
Some people still wavered and hoped for a peace. But finally, on July 4, 1776,
the Continental Congress adopted a document that proclaimed independence—
the Declaration of Independence. The core idea of the Declaration was that people
have unalienable rights, or rights that If not recognized by a government then it
lose the right to govern people. This is how Jefferson explained it. The people
then have the right to overthrow that government and use of force for that purpose
was justified. They also have a right o establish a government of their own that
would recognize their rights and protect them. When Jefferson spoke of “the
people,” however, he had in his mind only free white men. Women and slaves
were denied any rights so the Declaration was restrictive in the sense that not all
people were treated equal. The Declaration gave the reasons for breaking ties
with Britain and declaring colonies free and independent.

1) Discuss the process of growing antagonism between the British Crown and
its American colonies.
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142 .......................................................................................................................
2) Examine the nature of resistance to of the people of American colonies against Political and Economic Issues
the British Crown.
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10.10 LET US SUM UP

In this Unit, we have seen how the nature of colonies in American differed from
the rest of the world, allowing them a degree of autonomy and self-governance.
The relationship between changed after Britain’s Seven Years War with France.
The financial troubles that arose in the wake of this great war, gradually led to
growing antagonism between the British Crown and the American colonies. The
ethnic and religious composition of the colonies provided a uniqueness to this
antagonism. This was the background of the protest and resistance that evolved
in American colonies. This eventually led to a revolutionary war and final creation
of United States of America. Although a republic was born after the American
revolutionary war, the birth of this republic bore the imprint of social hierarchies
of the day and it was in reality a republic of propertied white males. A limitation
against which the democratic and civil rights.

EXERCISES
1) See Section 10.2
2) See Section 10.3

1) See Section 10.5
2) See Sections 10.6, 10.7 and 10.8
143
UNIT 11 AGRICULTURAL AND
DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGES IN
EUROPE*
Structure
11.0 Objectives
11.1 Introduction
11.2 State of Agriculture on the European Continent
11.2.1 France
11.2.2 Germany
11.2.3 The Netherlands
11.2.4 Russia
11.3 Agriculture in Britain and the Agrarian Revolution
11.4 Demographic Trends, 1500-1800
11.5 Mortality – Famines, Epidemics and Wars
11.6 Marriage Patterns – Fertility, Birth and Death Rates
11.7 Let Us Sum Up
11.8 Key Words
11.0 OBJECTIVES
After reading this Unit, you will be able to understand:
the significance of the eighteenth century from the point of view of
agriculture,
agricultural transformation in the north-western countries of Europe,
state of agriculture in France, the Netherlands, Germany and some other
regions,
the nature and impact of the ‘agrarian revolution’ in Britain,
the relationship between agricultural changes and growth of population,
the factors determining population trends, and
how the share of agriculture was shrinking compared to industry and
commerce in the economy in terms of job creator and wealth generator.
11.1 INTRODUCTION
Agriculture had always been the key sector in the economy of pre-modern Europe.
It provided employment to a significant portion of population. Till the eighteenth
century, hardly any technological innovation was carried out in most regions of
Europe with the exception of England, the Netherlands and the north-western
states. Population and agriculture had a close relationship, particularly in those
* Resource Person : Prof. Arvind Sinha

144
regions where natural or subsistence economy existed and agriculture continued Agricultural and
Demographic Changes in
to be dependent on natural resources. It is debatable whether the growth of Europe
population was due to improved methods of agricultural production and better
nutrition or due to the rising population that had applied pressure on agriculture
which led to the extension of cultivable land by cutting forests and woodlands,
and reclamation of swamps and wastelands. There is a need to examine the factors
responsible for demographic upward trend. By eighteenth century, it was not the
quality of soil or access to water resources that determined the level of agriculture,
but the growing pressures of the market that brought changes in the nature of
production. The agrarian revolution in England from the late-eighteenth century
demonstrated the scale of agricultural transformation and its contribution to the
newly emerging industrial sector. To understand this, there is a need to study the
reasons for regional variations in agriculture as well as the demographic trends.
11.2 STATE OF AGRICULTURE ON THE

EUROPEAN CONTINENT
Eighteenth century represented growth and expansion of economy in many states
after a century of retrogression and stagnation. Signs of agricultural growth in
the north-western states were evident. Manufacturing was taking the form of
rural cottage industry and capitalist relations were emerging but most regions of
Europe feudal system prevailed. The seventeenth century was a period of rural
depression in central and southern regions of Europe. In England, agricultural
transformation had commenced with technological progress that continued during
the next century and contributed in the increase of productivity. European
agriculture till the early nineteenth century presented an uneven picture where
northern and Western Europe had moved towards capitalist structure while central,
eastern and southern regions were still grappling to break the feudal shackles.
You have already studied the state of agriculture in different parts of Europe in
the first Unit. In this Unit, let us briefly review the agricultural trends of some
major countries during the eighteenth century.
11.2.1 France
Territorially, France is almost four times the size of England. Scholars of pre-
modern France have divided French economy of the eighteenth century into two
prime geographical zones: 1) interior France of north which specialized in cereal
production, and 2) the wine-producing zone of the south. France had a long
coastal belt along the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. The expansion of colonial
trade had led to the growth of towns and industries in the coastal region, but the
interior regions remained feudal agrarian lands with low productivity. Yet, the
Seine valley near Paris was a relatively advanced region where capitalist relations
of production were emerging. In the rest of France, seigneurialism (feudal
landlordism) was still the dominant aspect of agrarian life. It was the foundation
of rural-social relations and an integral economic fabric of the ancient regime.
Peasants in France constituted a stratified group who were very poor. They formed
semi-proletarian group called by different names such as manouvriers,
journaliersetc. They possessed small pieces of land but they were insufficient
for their subsistence and hence they had to work on the fields of others. Any kind
of crisis pushed them to the ranks of wage-earners. They constituted the exploited
section of the feudal order and the scale of their exploitation varied from one 145
Rise of the Modern West-II region to another. Usually, they had no rights of ownership but many of them
had the right to tenure for centuries that made them virtual proprietors. The middle
segment was called haricotier and they were slightly better-off. The wealthiest
and the best equipped were the gros fermiers, who owned vast stretches of land.
When the government exempted cleared land from forests or marshy areas in
1763 and 1766, the gros-fermiers were the first to grab the opportunity. During
the second half of the eighteenth century, when the grain prices were soaring,
this class gained through land amalgamation. Landowners took advantage of the
rise of cereal prices and land rents and the seigniors imposed fresh obligations
on the peasants and tried to strengthen their power over rural produce. A strong
reaction of the lower peasants was due to two forms of amalgamation:
a) The rural proprietors had gradually expanded their estates by absorbing
adjacent holdings either through purchase or foreclosure, and
b) By acquiring scattered farms one by one at the expense of small peasants.
Unlike the rural scene of England where the middling sort of peasants became
the new landlords, the French agriculture’s social and economic structure was
still numerically dominated by the small peasant producers. According to Alfred
Soboul, it was the persistence of land property rights that prevented proper
restructuring of the French agriculture. The feudal structure remained strong and
protected by the feudal absolutist monarchy that placed checks on the transfer of
peasants’ property. The extra-economic coercion by the seigniorial class prevented
any major breakthrough in French agriculture.
During the eighteenth century, some changes in rural France were discernible in
land clearances, decrease in fallow land, increasing yield ratio, some new
agricultural techniques, and in agrarian organization. However, the pace of change
was too slow and confined to specific regions. There was no agrarian revolution
of the English type. Production kept pace with increasing population for most
part of the century without transforming the technology and productivity. This
makes Michel Morineau observe that the expansion of French agriculture was a
‘development within stagnation’. Yet capitalist forces began to emerge at a few
places where productivity of soil increased with the introduction of some new
methods and greater use of fertilizers. Some improvements were noticed in the
north-east regions like the French Flanders which were following new methods
of agriculture borrowed indirectly from Belgium and the Netherlands. Between
1751 and 1760, Duhamel du Monceau brought out ‘Introduction to improving
agriculture’ in 6 volumes. His ideas were largely borrowed from those prevalent
in England. It was particularly publicized by the ‘physiocrats’ like Turgot and
Nemour, who were advocating reform of the agrarian structure on capitalist lines.
Another noticeable change in rural France was the rise of a professional class of
‘managers’ or the fermiers génénaux. They were like the capitalists who rented
estates of one or more landlords and usually functioned as collectors of seigniorial
dues and tithes of the church. We do not find any enclosure movement in France
like the one in England. Some individual landlords did approach the French
government demanding enclosures around their estates from the mid-eighteenth
century but King Louis XV showed no interest in it. Yet, some individuals carried
out amalgamation of scattered land accompanied by ousting the original owners
or tenants. Here, they tried scientific method of farm management. Georges
Lefebvre described them as rural bourgeoisie. They were different from the
146
traditional seigneurs because they had appropriated surplus land for making profit Agricultural and
from production while the seigneurs were only interested in increasing their dues. Europe
Growing population pressure in the eighteenth century along with increasing

grain prices caused seigneurial reaction. It meant intensification of feudal
obligations. Harvest dues of the lords proved most burdensome for the peasants.
Taxes on property transfers like lods, ventes.and rachets were introduced;
however, the seigneurial reaction varied from one region to another. According
to C. Lis and U. Soly, peasants had to pay about 25 to 30 per cent of their produce
to a small minority of feudal lords. Between 1720-29 and 1780-89, the rent
increased by 142 per cent while agricultural prices rose by 60 per cent.
In most parts of France, three-fourths of the peasants owned less than five hectares
of land which was considered minimum to retain economic independence. Of
these, 25 per cent of peasants had barely 1 hectare to cultivate. Besides, the
peasants were heavily burdened by taxes like taille (land tax imposed by the
state), tithe (payable to the church varying from 8 to 12.5 per cent) and corvee
(services to be rendered to the seigneurs, which was later converted to money
rent) impeded any attempts of land reforms. A large number of very small land
holdings and the surplus extraction by the seigneurs prevented the introduction
of improvements in land management and technology to augment productivity.
It is estimated that the number of rural proletariat and semi-proletariat had grown
substantially during the eighteenth century. According to Lis and Soly, the
percentage of day labourers had increased from 12 per cent in 1696 to almost
23.3 by 1789. Since industrialization in France was at quite a slow pace, this
must have caused immense suffering for this section of peasantry.
A controversy exists over key issues regarding economic and social evolution of
the French countryside during the second half of eighteenth century. There are
divergent views among the historians. The main debate is on the question of
whether agricultural production stagnated or increased during the period of
transition. Jean Claude Toutain suggests that there was an increase in agricultural
production between 1750 and 1790 at an annual rate of 1.4 per cent that amounted
to 60 per cent despite several famines. Michel Morineau questions the methodical
base of the figures. He contends that the first national agriculture census was
conducted in 1840 which suggests that agriculture hardly made any progress.
According to him, agriculture was fragile and highly vulnerable to fluctuation, it
was under heavy tax burden, peasant property was fragmented into small land
holdings and the continuation of communal rights in agriculture prevented
migration of workforce to urban centres.
Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie rejects this argument and contends that there was
hardly 25 to 40 per cent increase between 1700-09 and 1789-89. Ladurie further
argues that no agrarian revolution was experienced in France. Though the
production increased, there was no change in productivity (measured in terms of
new crops, new techniques and increased yields per acre).
One of the most contentious aspects of the agrarian life during the eighteenth
century was the village common land. It reinforced the collective nature of rural
life. It was based on the principle of feudalist ‘collective usage’ as opposed to
the idea of individual ownership. A bitter debate took place during the second
half of the eighteenth century between the supporters of mercantilist regulations
of the state and the Physiocrats like Vincent de Gourney, Quesney, Nemour, etc.
147
Rise of the Modern West-II Gourney, in his articles in Encyclopedie (1756-57), attributed the decline of French
agriculture to a) heavy taxes and b) artificially low price of corn caused by ban
on export. He advocated large-scale farming, prosperity of farmers and substantial
capital investment in agriculture. The Physiocrats considered agriculture to be
the real creator of wealth and favoured natural laws of economy. They advocated
large-scale capitalist farming, promotion of private property, liberation of
producers from feudal and guild restrictions, bourgeois form of land tenures,
freedom from seigneurial customs and capitalist form of rent. These scholars
were opposed to state regulation and the famous finance minister Necker removed
state protection of grain prices in 1776. Henri Leonard Bertin, a well-known
agronomist, attempted to abolish collective practices and reform the usage and
tenure of common land through the edicts of 1761 and 1766. The land clearance
edict of July 1770 marked a distinctive legislative victory for agrarian
individualism in Languedoc.
There are two divergent pictures of the French agriculture as presented by Arthur
Young, the famous English traveller and scholar who travelled across France
from 1787-89 and Alexis de Tocqueville, the French minister and great scholar
of 1840s and 50s.In his Travels in France (1792), Arthur Young states that France
was a country ‘possessing nothing but privilege and poverty’. In 1788, he observed
the sub-division and wide dispersal of holdings that provided further obstacles
to the diversification of crops and selective breeding. While Young wrote a gloomy
picture of French agriculture, highlighting its poverty and backwardness, for
Tocqueville, the French agricultural scene was progressing well.
The French Revolution brought a sudden change by abolishing the feudal structure
through the legislation of 1789 and 1793 along with the destruction of the
seigneurial regime based on privileges and taxation rights. Its impact was not
felt immediately and the actual reshaping of rural France took place by mid-
nineteenth century with the coming of new forms of communications, railways
and big industries which helped in the creation of a national market.
11.2.2 Germany
The German agrarian condition was very similar to the one that existed in pre-
revolutionary France. The German nobility was constantly criticized by the
bourgeois enlightened scholars without much effect. The pace of agrarian reforms
was too slow and the emancipation of peasants did not end the feudal agrarian
relationship. The real change came only in the nineteenth century.
During the eighteenth century, Germany showed signs of socio-economic changes

that were bringing slow transformation of agrarian society. The population growth
during the eighteenth century became more marked from 1756. Progress in the
early years of the eighteenth century was disrupted due to the War of Austrian
Succession in 1740s and the Seven Years War in 1750s. A spurt in industrial
production and the demographic growth stimulated agriculture by creating
demand for food grain and raw materials, and the widening market stimulated
agriculture. The rise of towns and urbanization began to put pressure on the rural
economy.
One of the catalysts for agrarian change was the population growth, like England,
but the change came much later, perhaps in the second half of the eighteenth
century. Unutilized land was brought under cultivation and agrarian reforms
148
contributed in increased production. The Enlightenment ideas encouraged the Agricultural and
rulers to carry out diverse reforms through state initiative. The adoption of Europe
improved ‘three-field’ system and crop-rotation resulted in increased yield per
acre to feed the growing population. Among the new plant crops was maize to
supplement the traditional food supplies in some states of Germany like Baden,
Wurttenberg, the Palatine, etc. Introduction of potato cultivation by state
governments but was initially resisted by the peasants but experience revealed
its benefits. It could be sown in infertile soil or in unfavourable climate. In
1770-71, potato cultivation became a life saver when there was a famine caused
by grain failure.
The German agriculture also contributed to industrialization by providing raw

material like flax, hemp, chicory, hops, tobacco and grapes for wine. The main
production centres of hemp were in Baden, Westphalia, Hesse and Wurttemberg.
Hemp was used for making ropes; it was used in coarse textiles of common use
and for extracting oil. Flax was used for finer textiles and was grown in Silesia,
Westphalia, Hanover and Bohemia. Chicory was used as a coffee substitute and
tobacco cultivation was promoted by the state governments but did not achieve
much success. Also, till the end of the eighteenth century, none of these crops
made Germany a specialized region or helped it in capturing international market.
The expansion of meadows was another special feature in many parts of Europe
from the late-seventeenth century. It promoted animal husbandry and also
provided manure in larger quantities to help agriculture. During the later years
of the eighteenth century, a few improvements were made in agricultural practices
such as sowing the fallow lands with nitrogen-fixing plants and greater care of
meadows and animals. These steps saw significant improvements in productivity.
Proper land utilization was another noticeable development in the eighteenth
century though its fruits appeared in the next century. The concepts of fallow
land and three-field system were disappearing with the introduction of clover,
legumes and root crops like potato, turnip, etc. Marginal lands were reclaimed.
The privileges of powerful nobles were curtailed by the enlightened despots and
a limited form of enclosures had emerged. However, the feudal structure had not
been dismantled.
Like England, the German agrarian relations were influenced by the market forces
but the feudal nobility could not be destroyed alone by the rulers. It was only in
the nineteenth century that new landowning class emerged along with the
capitalists and military elements that became the pillars of power in unified
Germany.
In the eighteenth century, a gradual difference emerged between the agrarian

system of Germany in the east and the west of river Elbe. The western region
experienced restricted commercialization and intensification of agriculture that
was attempted by the state. The eastern parts of Germany remained locked under
the shackles of feudal ruler-nobles nexus. They placed obstacles on the path of
capitalist market society. The landed magnets in Germany became politically
powerful till the First World War.
11.2.3 The Netherlands

As in England, the landowners in the Netherlands during the eighteenth century
were able to overcome the agrarian problems by adopting new techniques and
149
Rise of the Modern West-II new methods of farming. Among them, enclosure of open fields and crop rotation
were most important. The major centre of agronomical experiments was located
in southern Netherland. Flanders and Brabant had achieved the highest yield
ratios in Europe. This was possible because of the high labour-intensive farming,
good quality fertilizers, advanced methods of crop rotation and production of
good quality fodder and commercial crops for the market. As a result, by mid-
eighteenth century, this region was exporting five per cent of the yearly produce
of grain.
Except for Holland, cereal cultivation came to be practiced in most parts of the
Netherlands though rice was the main crop. It was used for preparing gin and
bread. In times of food scarcity, it could be mixed with oats or other cereals to
make bread. The consumption of wheat bread increased during the eighteenth
century. Regions like Zeeland had started cultivating wheat when its demand
was increasing. However, wheat imports declined and its consumption reduced
with sudden rise in its prices. In rest of the regions, rye cultivation remained
popular among the peasants. Foodstuffs like buckwheat were fast replacing wheat
and by 1798, its consumption constituted 17 per cent of the total cereal
consumption in Holland (J.A. van Houtte).
Potato was another crop that was fast becoming popular in Brabant, Zeeland,
Utretcht and Friesland. Its popularity was due to high cost of grain during famines.
It was preferred by the cultivators too as potato was exempt from the tithe and
increasing rates of taxes. Other crops like flax, hemp, hop and tobacco continued
to be grown in many states in the eighteenth century. After 1750, decline of
textile industry in this region adversely affected the cultivation of flax.
Flanders had heavy density of population and small fragmented landholdings.

Yet, crop rotation was introduced and it contributed to intense cultivation in this
region, an innovation borrowed by England from here. Flanders had shown to
the neighbouring countries the importance of intensive cultivation through crop
rotation. This was adopted in many regions including Antwerp, Campier and
northern Brabant. It was adopted by small farmers as well as in lands of
proprietors. The inferior land could be utilized either for stock farming or potato
cultivation; the latter could be cultivated in small units of land. According to Lis
and Soly, the proportion of the small farms of less than one hectare was 49 per
cent in 1711 but by 1790, it had gone up to 66 per cent. The peasants of Flanders
experienced disruption of the traditional order as the landlords had started raising
rents seeing the demographic pressure while the merchants and manufacturers
were keeping the wages low. The spread of proto-industrialization for the
preparation of linen from the late-seventeenth century had shifted the
manufacturing activities to the countryside in order to avoid the whims of urban
guilds.
11.2.4 Russia
The problem of Russia was quite different. The vast territory with very low density
of population was a problem for the government. It needed large peasant
population base for state taxes and for the recruitment of soldiers. It was for this
reason that serfdom was imposed from above. It was outlined in the legal code
of 1649 in the Ulozhenie which included barschina (forced labour) and led to
the decline of the mir (village community). The availability of vast land and
150 cruel forms of exploitation resulted in constant migration of peasants. Villages
were isolated and peasants were under constant distress. StenkaRazin’s rising in Agricultural and
southern Russia (1667-71) began as a form of banditry and then turned into a Europe
vast protest against serfdom.
Feudalism in Russia survived in varying degrees of rigour, with range of dues

and services that were part of seigneurial rights. Strengthening of the ties of
mutual interest bound the Czars and the landowners. The Russian peasants were
growing in numbers but during the eighteenth century, were not secured. They
were sent out to farm new lands. Catherine the Great, known to be a leading
enlightened ruler, transferred 800,000 serfs into private ownership. These serfs
could not marry, move or take up a trade without the permission of the feudal
land owner. Thus, while feudal structure was destroyed in north-western regions
of Europe, in Russia, the period of enserfment had started that lasted till the
second half of the nineteenth century.
11.3 AGRICULTURE IN BRITAIN AND THE

AGRARIAN REVOLUTION
Economically, Britain became the leader in agrarian and industrial fields.
According to E.J. Hobsbawm, agriculture held an important place in England
for two reasons – first it was the indispensable foundation for industry and second,
the ‘landed interest’ dominated British politics and social life.
Major changes in the English agrarian structure were experienced after the
Bourgeois Revolution of mid-seventeenth century. It marked the advent of
capitalist land relations that brought an end to the feudal economic structure
including the land tenures. The share of agriculture in the overall employment
throughout the century continued to shrink from 80 per cent around 1700 to
about 40 per cent in 1800. Yet, the decreasing agricultural force was able to feed
the growing population of England.
During the sixteenth century, a decisive shift in agriculture had already begun.
According to Robert Brenner, the English ruling class was the most self-organized
one in Europe and was able to exploit the peasantry and by eighteenth century,
they dispossessed the peasantry by means of enclosures. It was the retention of
property rights that enabled the lords to undermine the customary rights and
copyholds of the peasantry in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries
and enabled them to farm their holdings on capitalist lines.
According to Phyllis Deane, there were four major feature of the British agrarian
revolution. It involved farming in large consolidated units instead of the medieval
practice of open-field cultivation. Second, it involved the extension of arable
farming instead of heaths (open uncultivated land) and adoption of intensive
livestock husbandry. Third, it implied the transformation of village community
of self-sufficient peasants into labourers, dependent on market forces rather than
on local factors. Fourth, it involved an increase of agricultural productivity. These
characteristics were evident by the eighteenth century.
Enclosures
The enclosure movement was an important factor in rural transformation that
brought about the ‘agrarian revolution’ in England. Till the eighteenth century,
cultivation system varied from place to place. The persistence of open fields or
151
Rise of the Modern West-II its conversion to enclosed ones depended on various factors like the quality of
soil, nature of produce and its distance from the market. Even in the eighteenth
century, nearly half of the agricultural land in England was still held in intermixed
open-field system.
The farmers of big estates were interested in consolidating their landholdings in

order to use new methods of cultivation and make profit from it. The open field
system had dominated rural England since the Middle Ages. Even the big landlords
had scattered holdings interspersed by land strips owned by neighbours. Owners
of such scattered holdings were compelled to follow traditional practices of
cultivation. The open-field system was a big hindrance in the adoption of new
methods and technology as the whole village community decided on the choice
of crop or the number of cattle each member could take for grazing and quantity
of wood that could be collected from the forest.
Since the end of fifteenth century, private enclosures were carried out but the
process of consolidation of landholdings was legalized by the acts of parliament
during the eighteenth century. The Tudor rulers of the sixteenth century did not
encourage enclosures fearing social and political upheavals. Its interests were to
keep the peasants tied to their land as enclosures would have caused large-scale
evictions. Thus enclosure drive was kept in check till the late seventeenth century
when political power came in the hands of new landed class and bourgeoisie.
Voluntary enclosures were difficult to achieve because the earlier legislation
made them necessary to have the consent of all the members of the village
including the poor farmers. Parliament usually passed the Enclosure Act now in
response to a village a petition supported by 4/5th of the land owners including
the ecclesiastical land owners. The entire procedure of land enclosure was difficult
and expensive. The land was surveyed and land redistribution had to be done in
proportion to the earlier holdings.
The first Act of Parliament on enclosure was carried out in 1710 but the progress
was rather slow. It was only after 1760 that pace of enclosed lands picked up.
Between 1750 and 1760, parliament passed 156 acts of enclosure while the
number of acts on enclosure went up to 906 by 1810. According to Lis and Soly,
no less than 600,000 hectares of common and waste land was enclosed between
1761 and 1815.
Historians believe that enclosures carried out by the parliamentary acts formed
the most radical aspect of agrarian change in England. The process had
commenced from the sixteenth century but gained speed in the eighteenth century
due to the involvement of Parliament. Historians have debated the significance
of enclosure movement in the socio-economic sphere. One view treats its value
as a precondition for industrialization in the cities. It is also suggested that there
was a distinct improvement in agrarian organizations and in animal husbandry
that pushed England ahead of other European nations. The English agriculture
began to meet not only the domestic demand but provided surplus for exports
after 1750. Steady rise of prices and demographic growth promoted capitalist
farming. Wheat exports continued to increase, with a sudden spurt in 1730s -
from 109,000 CWT in 1710-19 to 116,000 CWT in 1720-29 and then jumped to
296,000 in 1730-39.
However, the advantages of enclosures should not be overestimated. It had a
darker shade too. It should not be seen as the lone factor in improving agricultural
152
productivity. Certainly, it removed restrictions on technological progress, but it Agricultural and
was done at the cost of rural welfare. It undermined the traditional economy and Europe
security of the small farmers. Even the small landowners and copyholders with
legal property rights were eliminated under enclosure acts. Small farmers who
managed to survive found it too difficult to compete with their rich neighbours
in investments for land improvement. They were forced to migrate to urban centres
for their lively hood. Phyllis Deane points out that the standards of food
consumption deteriorated for the rural poor during the second half of the
eighteenth century. The diet of small farmers was restricted to mainly bread and
cheese. Enclosures had taken away their pasturage and sources of fuel and fish
from the ponds, which often became the part of enclosed land. The physical
appearance and social landscape also underwent a major change. The scene of
large cultivators working on their fields was replaced by vast stretches of land
with trim hedges demarcating their boundaries. The large estates with imposing
manor houses, gardens and parks transformed the sight of the countryside.
Apart from the enclosure enactments of the eighteenth century, the agrarian
revolution had some other features which led to the transformation of the agrarian
structure of England. Constant use of the land caused loss of fertility and this
was overcome by the practice of leaving a part of their land fallow under two or
three-field system. It helped the soil to get nitrogen. Poverty among the farmers
did not allow them to keep enough animals for manure. Till the late-seventeenth
century, the English agriculture had remained largely traditional. Improvement
in agricultural technology brought about a change in productivity. Among the
first innovations that contributed to the increase of productivity was the one by
Jethro Tull. His experiments proved very beneficial. He designed a horse-driven
hoe and mechanical seeders which made farmers sow seeds in straight line. It
also made the harvesting easier. It made farming labour-intensive and more
productive. Lord Townshend demonstrated the value of growing turnips, clover
and other field crops in rotation that helped the soil to retain fertility even with
continuous usage. William Coke prepared several tracts on the use of field grasses,
new fertilizers like oilcake and bone meal and the principles of efficient estate-
management. Arthur Young popularized new agricultural ideas in his Annales of
Agriculture in 1784. He organized competitions among the farmers and also
created farmers’ club. King George III was himself inspired by these ideas and
established a model farm at Windsor where Merino sheep farming was introduced.
Norfolk in the east came to be known for its techniques of ‘high farming’, while
East Kent and Worcestershire developed orchards and hop fields, Sussex and
Surrey specialized in geese and capons (domestic fowl).
The agrarian revolution resulted in the increase of agricultural productivity and
technological advancement. Social and economic outcomes enabled the
population to far exceed earlier levels and facilitated England’s march to industrial
dominance. Britain attained most productive agriculture in Europe, nearly 80
per cent higher than the continental average in the nineteenth century.
It is also argued by a few scholars that the increase in food supply contributed to
the rapid growth of population in England and Wales from 5.5 million in 1700 to
over 9 million in 1801agricultural productivity went hand in hand with decline
of agricultural share in total labour force as modern methods could produce more
food with less man power.Enclosures of land pushed small farmers out to become
industrial workers. The new agrarian structure helped in the creation of a vast
national market of agricultural goods.
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Rise of the Modern West-II By end of the eighteenth century, North-western Europe witnessed rapid growth
of population. Belgium and the Netherlands had reached a high level of
productivity in agriculture. After England, these were the most developed
economies. By 1800, England recorded the lowest proportion of rural population
of 51 per cent while Spain had 79 per cent and Italy 74 per cent. In 1700, barely
15 per cent of Europeans lived in towns though the figure varied from one country
to another.

1) Discuss the state of agriculture in France and Germany during the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries.
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2) Write a note on the enclosure movement in England.
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11.4 DEMOGRAPHIC TRENDS, 1500-1800

The demographic history from the end of the fifteenth century witnessed
alternations from growth, decline or stagnation to growth again, subject to regional
variations. There was demographic upswing from the late-fifteenth century that
lasted until the beginning of the seventeenth century. Several parts of Europe
underwent a decline or stagnation during the seventeenth century. There was a
sharp upward swing from the early eighteenth century. It is estimated that the
population increased by 0.6 per thousand annually but it doubled between 1700
and 1850. The rate of growth had gone up to 5.3 per thousand from the seventeenth
century to the end of the twentieth century. According to Paolo Malanima, the
average growth during the eighteenth century was about 4 per thousand. All
these figures are based on rough estimates and vary enormously with each writer
and different methods of calculations. It was only from 1801 that Britain started
a decade-wise census under the influence of Thomas Malthus, the famous theorist
of demographic studies.
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Rough Estimate of Population in Millions Agricultural and
Years 1700 1750 1800 1850 Europe
Belgium 1.75 2.25 3.25 4,50

Britain 5.75 6.00 9.25 18.00
France 22.00 24.00 29.00 36.00
Germany 13.00 15.00 18.00 27.00
Italy 13.00 15.00 19.00 25.00
A rough estimate of the total European population suggests that in 1600, it was
107.05 million (including Russia); in 1700, the population was 114.85 million;
in 1750 it jumped to 143.23 million and in 1800, it reached 188.30 million. The
population of north-western regions of Europe has grown rapidly after 1700.
England and Wales had a population of 4.4 million in 1600, that increased to
5.45 million in 1700, 6.3 million (1750) and in 1800, it jumped to 9.25 million.
In Netherlands, from 1.5 million in 1600, the figures went up to 1.95 million in
1700 and 2.1 million in 1700. Similarly, the population of Belgium grew from
1.3 million in 1600to 1.9 million in 1700 and then climbed to 2.9 million in
1800. The French population too increased from 18.5 million in 1600 to 21.5
million in 1700 and leaped to 29 million in 1800. In central regions, the increase
was not too high. For example, in German states the population was 16.2 million
in 1600, declined to 14.1 million in 1700, primarily due to Thirty Years War
(1618-1648) and the general crisis of the seventeenth century, and then grew
rapidly in the eighteenth century to 24.5 million in 1800. In southern Europe, the
Italian population was 13.3 million in 1600 but stagnated at 13.5 in 1700, and
then increased marginally during the eighteenth century to 18.1 million in 1800.
The Spanish population grew moderately from 6.8 million in 1800 to 10.5 million
in 1800. Although, these figures are not reliable and are based on rough estimates
provided by Paolo Malanima, they provide general trends of demographic changes
in pre-modern Europe. The demographic figures of central and southern Europe
indicate the impact of wars and production crisis in a subsistence economy. The
increasing population resulted in heavier density of population. Around 1700,
the average density of Europe was 11 inhabitants per kilometre that increased
nearly ten-fold. In western and central regions of Europe, the average density
was about 50; in Spain, it was about 20 and in Prussia and Poland, it was nearly
14 and in Russia, with the lowest density in the region, it was merely 3 persons
per kilometre.
In natural economies, the relationship of population and agriculture is crucial, as

argued by Thomas Robert Malthus, the famous British theorist of population
studies. An Essay on the Principle of Population appeared in 1798. It was a
warning to the English authorities of the consequences of the rapid growth of
population by stating that population grows at geometrical ratio while food
production was limited to arithmetic proportion. Malthus brought out socio-
demographic dynamic of pre-industrial societies. His theory suggests that growing
population leads to a rising supply of labour and consequently lower wages.
Continuous population rise thus leads to poverty. His arguments contributed to
the passing of the Censes Act of 1800. His work ignited a controversy based on
his views on population growth. The classical economists of the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries shared this view. More recent economic historians do not
155
Rise of the Modern West-II agree with the classical approach on population and point out the influence on
technological progress. They point out to the shortcomings of Malthusian simple
notion of natural constraints based on population-land relationship citing the
experience of Sweden and Ireland. Wrigley and Schofield have tried to present
an inverse side of the Malthusian model. Yet, Malthusian principles could not be
entirely discounted in context of pre-modern agrarian societies. Malthus opened
gates for more advanced population theories that are better applied to post-
eighteenth century.
11.5 MORTALITY – FAMINES, EPIDEMICS AND

WARS
Famines and epidemics are some factors that played a decisive role in determining
the size of population. Famines too, had impact on the demographic and
agricultural growth throughout the seventeenth century. Economic historians have
stressed upon the co relationship between famines and mortality. The pre-industrial
agricultural regimes of Europe were precariously placed in the absence of
technological development. Famines also caused an indirect impact on mortality.
This view is also contested by many science writers. There is no doubt that poor
nutrition makes a person susceptible to infection and diseases.
The critics of this viewpoint argue that in many cases like small pox, malaria,
diphtheria, encephalitis and plague, there is no relationship between the nutritional
diet and the probability of contacting the illness. The rise of medical science
began to provide protection against diseases like smallpox. The introduction of
inoculation against small pox in the late- eighteenth century by E.Jenner had a
positive impact. Among the deadliest epidemics, plague was the most serious.
The disease had existed in ancient times but had disappeared till the eight century.
Between 1347 and 1352, plague had caused death of about one-thirds of the
European population. This epidemic often broke out in different parts of Europe
and it ravaged Britain in 1665-66 having death toll of nearly 70,000. Plague was
disappearing from the eighteenth century after breaking out in Marseilles (1720),
Ukraine (1737) and Moscow (1789). It is difficult to provide precise reasons for
the disappearance of plague. Scholars have given different explanations such as
preventive health and measures of hygiene, changing the material for house
construction from wood to bricks and stones and keeping vigil over rats.
11.6 MARRIAGE PATTERNS – FERTILITY, BIRTH

AND DEATH RATES
Demographic trends in pre-modern age were determined by the birth and death
rates, which was the fundamental feature. The first stage of the Demographic
Transition Model is applicable to pre-industrial societies and explains how the
birth and death rates affects population growth rate. In the first stage, the high
birth rate and high death rate keeps the population stable and checked. In the
subsequent period, high birth rate and reduction of death rate results in rapid
growth of population as had happened in the second half of the eighteenth century.
The usual death rate during this period was about 35 per thousand which could
rise in periods of epidemics and famine. The birth rate was higher, 1 or 2 units
above infant mortality rate. The gap between the birth and death rates enabled
slight increase of population. It was the mortality that was the principal device in
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maintaining the population balance in relation to resources. It proved to be one Agricultural and
of the important means of population check. Europe
Another factor that controlled demographic growth was the marriage age of the
youngsters. Late marriages reduced the period of child bearing age or decreased
the female reproductive period.
Although it is not clear whether specific forms of birth control existed in pre-
modern period. Some forms of birth control appear to be prevalent in some parts
of Europe among the upper classes, religious minorities and urban habitants.
Paolo Malanima provides evidence in the form of legal proceeding in Merzario
to prove that birth control was practiced in rural France and Hungary during the
eighteenth century.
In recent demographic research, experts argue that variations in birth and death
rate ratio can play a decisive role in demographic changes. Fertility level is
determined by fecundability and fecundity. A set of factors that affect the
likelihood of a woman to reproduce if exposed to sexual intercourse without
contraception, called fecundability, did not vary much during the early modern
period. Much more important factor was fecundity, the physiological ability to
bear children. Improvement in nutrition and health facilities resulted in the
increase of fecundity. At the same time, we should keep in mind that improvements
in nutritional value in food may not have affected the masses.
Apart from birth control methods, the practice of breast feeding was commonly
used as a primitive type of contraception, sometimes for two-three years, thereby
checking birth rate by temporary sterility in women following breast feeding.
Recent works on early modern demographic trends have shown the importance
of marriage age and the proportion of married men and women as mechanisms
to control fertility.
In the pre-industrial societies, the population was checked as much by birth control
and epidemics as by late marriage. About two per cent of the population did not
marry due to religious reasons like celibacy or following the vocation of priest,
nun or monks. Compared to Asian societies where everyone is supposed to marry,
Europe had good number of people who did not marry. Widows and widowers
rarely married. Percentage was much higher-as much as 15 to 20 among women
who did not marry. Late marriage was an effective factor in constraining
population growth. Several documentary studies of marriage patterns have been
made of Western Europe. Compared to the Asiatic societies, the practice of
marrying late was prevalent in the western regions of Europe. The marriage age
differed from one region to another in pre-industrial age. It remained around 25.
Before 1750, in France women married at 24.6 years of age, in England and
Belgium at 25 while in Scandinavian countries it was 26.7 and in Germany it
was 26.4 ( according to Molanima) Demographic scholars tend agree that there
was a decline in mortality rate during the eighteenth century, particularly due to
the relationship between economy and population. A common belief is that during
the eighteenth century, the reduction of death rate caused by famine and epidemics
was the result of improved nutrition. This was the result of progress in agriculture
leading to improved productivity, reducing the impact of famines. Improved diet
is believed to have developed resistance against diseases. An increase in the per
capita consumption of agricultural produce in England during the eighteenth
century resulted in the rise of population. Scholars have disagreement with the
157
Rise of the Modern West-II above-mentioned explanation which they find too simplistic. Total growth of
about 50 million in the European population between 1700 and 1800 has to be
explained with a wider approach.
The technology of weapons had undergone radical change from the medieval
period till the French Revolution. Older versions of weapons were transformed
into destructive firearms and wars were not based on personal valour but on
military organization. A large number of civilians were killed in wars as had
happened in the French religious wars, the Dutch revolt, Thirty Years War
(1618-1648), etc., and crops were severely damaged by trampling and burning,
livestock killed and vast stretches of land ravaged. The population suffered the
damaging effects of these wars. Population losses were about 40 per cent in
many parts of Germany and central Europe, Poland, Masovia—they all
experienced negative impact of the wars.

1) Discuss the demographic trends in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries.
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2) Analyse the marriage patterns in Europe in the eighteenth century.
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11.7 LET US SUM UP

In this Unit you studied:
The vast variation in the organization of agriculture in different European
countries,
Factors that were responsible for regional variations,
Why the north-western regions of Europe succeeded in transforming
agriculture on capitalist lines and the importance of commercial practices,
How the English agrarian transformed the entire economy resulting in the
establishment of capitalist structure,
A close relationship existed between demographic trends and pre-modern
agrarian economy, and
How variables like birth and death rates, fertility, marriages determine the
trends in demography and the nature of changes during the eighteenth century.
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Agricultural and
11.8 KEY WORDS Demographic Changes in
Europe
Celibacy : To lead an unmarried life without sex for religious
reasons.
Enclosure : Enclosing common land by planting hedges for
personal use by landlords.
Fertility : Reproductive capacity.
Junkers : Nobles of the Prussian provinces who dominated the
higher posts in bureaucracy and officer corps.
lods and ventes : Dues on property transfers.
Physiocrats : A set of writers in the eighteenth century who
advocated the destruction of seigneurial regime and
develop modern agriculture based on property-
relations.
Seigneur : The French feudal lord enjoying social and economic
privileges.
Taille : A direct tax on agricultural produce and sometimes
on property.

EXERCISES
1) See Sub-section 11.2.1 and 11.2.2
2) See Section 11.3

1) See Section 11.4
2) See Section 11.6
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UNIT 12 THE PATTERNS OF CONSUMPTION
AND PRODUCTION*
Structure
12.0 Objectives
12.1 Introduction
12.2 The ‘Industrious Revolution’
12.3 The Role of European Marriage Pattern
12.4 Evaluation of ‘Industriousness’
12.5 Proto-Industrialization in Early Modern Europe
12.6 Critique of the Theories of Proto-Industrialization
12.7 Book Production, Literacy and Human Capital Formation
12.8 Let Us Sum Up
12.9 Answer to Check Your Progress Exercises
12.0 OBJECTIVES
After reading this Unit, you will understand the following aspects of consumption
and production in the Early Modern Europe:
notion of the ‘industrious’ revolution and its critical appraisal,
role of European marriage pattern and its impact on nature of economy,
concept of proto-industrialization and its evaluation; and
nature of literacy, book-production and human capital formation.
12.1 INTRODUCTION
In traditional history, Industrial Revolution was regarded the most important
event. However, the recent researches has made it clear that this ‘revolution’
was not a abrupt surge in the tempo of economic growth, but a gradual stepping
up of growth, which cannot really be characterized as a clear ‘revolution’. ‘Proto-
industry’ – rural, small-scale industries in which the labour force combined
agricultural activities with industrial work for the world market – was discovered
as an engine of industrial and demographic growth that had preceded the industrial
change. The early modern period in Europe especially in the Western Part
bordering the North Sea was not a stagnant period but as a dynamic one that led
to a significant increase in urbanization, rapid growth in long-distance trade and
finance, and increased output and productivity in the agricultural sector. Similarly,
our understanding of how early modern people consumed, why consumed
particular commodities and how this consumption impacted the society, has also
changed. Earlier Marxist scholars naturally favoured the preponderance of
production over consumption. It was believed that changes in consumption tend
to follow those in production, commerce and technology. Now many scholars
feel that consumption and its pattern were crucial for the socio-economic and
cultural changes in the early modern Low Countries. The most important argument
160
is that the growth of a ‘consumer society’ in the early modern Low Countries The Patterns of Consumption
and Production
would have facilitated the development of ‘industriousness’, that might have
resulted in economic growth and eventual industrial growth across Western
Europe.
12.2 THE ‘INDUSTRIOUS REVOLUTION’

Jan de Vries postulated an ‘industrious revolution’ that came before the onset of
the industrial revolution. This view has become one of the most significant for
re-examining the early modern European economic history. In 1975 De Vries’
hypothesis was based on the consumption pattern of early modern peasants in
Friesland in Holland. He argued that these peasants had the capacity to demand
more goods and commodities and their increased purchasing power made it
possible for them to consume more and more household commodities. He found
the proof of it in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He saw that the curtains
for windows and mantel cloths were slowly used in peasant households. They
started using different kinds of tables and chairs, new type of glasses, tin and
pottery. They more frequently used table and kitchenware, and use of mirrors,
clocks and books in peasant households became common. Although from the
standpoint of individual peasant there was nothing revolutionary in these changes
but if we take them together they demonstrate a slow and steady adoption of
consumption behaviour of urban people or imitation of their cultural practices.
The end result of all these was a different style of consumption in Dutch rural
hinterlands. In his subsequent writings, De Vries again stressed that because of
the increased consumption levels of the peasants, the nature of the household
economy also got changed and this helped in development of proto-industries.
Due to more supply of consumer goods in the market, households had to rethink
about their economic strategies of how to re-allocate their resources and labour
according to the prevailing conditions of the market. Peasant households now
more and more began to produce for the market. They also became more
dependent on the market for their own consumption needs All this resulted in the
greater specialization and the division of labour. The ultimate result of this was
more productive use of resources and higher production also meant lower relative
prices of available goods and commodities. Thus, according to De Vries’ view, it
was the changes in consumer desires and demand particularly – ‘the search for
comfort, pleasure, novelty and identity’ that define the ‘active searching consumer’
of his ‘industrious revolution’. It was a drastic change that took place before the
onset of the industrial revolution and subsequently led to large scale industrial
production on factory lines. These slow and steady changes towards the Industrial
Revolution were helped by certain economic trends such as growth of consumer
demand. This manifested in the surge of consumerism, which involved demand
for more and more new goods, and according to De Vries, this was what actually
transpired in seventeenth century in Holland and England due to ‘industriousness’.
During the first half of the seventeenth century the spread of use of long-lasting
and out of the ordinary goods paved the way for new needs and demands which
the peasant households could only acquire by increasing their income levels. For
a peasant household this meant three things:
1) they worked harder and more consistently and the process has been
acknowledged as labour intensification;
2) they worked for longer hours (labour prolongation); and
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Rise of the Modern West-II 3) they sold and/or bought labour in market more often, thereby increasing
their participation in the labour markets (labour amplification).
12.3 THE ROLE OF EUROPEAN MARRIAGE

PATTERN
Women played a significant role in ‘Industrious Revolution’, it is argued. A
growing desire for market goods motivated households and especially women to
re-allocate time from leisure and household production to income-earning work.
Some scholars have argued that a new marriage pattern emerged in Europe in
late Medieval and early Modern period which facilitated this. In the European
Marriage Pattern women had more choice in choosing their life-partner and it
was based entirely on the consent of a boy and a girl for marriage. The position
of children, in particular when they started to contribute to the income of the
household, was also relatively strong. Another feature of this pattern of marriage
was that late marriages became common as a girl had to choose her own husband
and establish her own household with a steady income. There was possibility of
some girls remaining unmarried. The European Marriage Pattern was a new
institutional adaptation of marriage or more generally of human reproductive
behaviour in a period to get a job and when wages levels were generally high for
about a century after the high mortality in the epidemic that is popularly known
as the Black Death. In brief, in these circumstances when wage earnings were
rather high, marriage patterns also started to change. The relationship between
consenting marriage partners changed and it was influenced by market forces
especially as the development of labour markets gained significance. The wage
income component become important for household income. Not only labour
markets were expanding but these households of wage earners also had right of
entry to capital markets and to buy consumer goods from the accessible nearby
markets. At the same time, they developed new mechanisms for long-term survival
to adapt their life to new conditions and enhance chances for their children to
utilize opportunities made available by emergence of markets all around.
Compared to earlier times when nobody cared too much for schooling and training,
now even families with modest means started to invest more in formal schooling
of their children. They also made use of training facilities as apprentices or as
servants in other households. Why people invest more in acquiring ‘social capital’?
In new marriage system, the traditional ties of extended larger families started to
break and people had to adapt to solve the problems attendant on old age or
single parenthood. So such investment in education and training would help them
in improving their chances to earn more. This societal restructuring was taking
place and making way for a remodeled society in the late Middle Ages in the
North Sea region, in England and the Low Countries in particular.
In the North Sea region, compared to earlier period, wages were higher after the
Black Death, and one can easily make use of expanding labour market for getting
a job, although women were still at a serious trouble in the labour force compared
to men. In this context, European Marriage Pattern emerged in the late medieval
period. These catalysts were: the values taught by the Catholic Church, the manner
in which resources were transferred among generation through family inheritance,
creation of labour-markets due to employment of people for a wage outside the
household, and the socio-economic impact of the Black Death. The power and
authority of parents over their children and of men over women declined in the
162 new marriage system that evolved in Europe in these circumstances. The emerging
commercial activities and market for labour and products also facilitated the The Patterns of Consumption
and Production
emergence of this so called ‘European Marriage Pattern’ The families became
small and nuclear with only husband, wife and children and it became dependent
on wage labour mostly. Use of credit markets and attempt to save some money
for rainy day became essential to survival for people. The changes in nature and
structure population, its employment, division of labour and creation of labour
and credit markets went hand in hand. This was both the outcome and consequence
of growing commercialization of economy and society in this age. It is estimated
that a large number of people (about one-third to two-thirds of the population)
became (to some extent) earned their livings through wage labour, and earning
livelihood in this manner become a normal thing of life and its conditions. The
extraordinary expansion of markets in late medieval and early modern Europe,
especially in the area around the North Sea, should be seen in this light. The
emergence of the ‘European Marriage Pattern’ had important other long-term
effects. Transfer of income and resources between generations changed radically
as a result of this new marriage system. Firstly, the younger people stood to gain
because their parents now invested more in them so as to increase their value, in
other words, parents were making increased investment in what we nowadays
call the ‘human capital.’ Secondly, to some degree the ‘European Marriage Pattern’
increased the age of marriage and thereby restricted the number of children one
could have in a short life-span of those times. With fewer children, parents invested
more to improve their chances in life through their education and training.
‘Investment in human capital’ through formal schooling and on the job training
was a new experience now the life cycle of young men and women, which must
also have delayed their entering the marriage market. Thus, instead of being
backward-looking, i.e. taking care of the lineage and the older dependent parents,
the household became progressive in the sense that they began to invest in children
more and more. The older people in such households, however, were probably
the most important sufferers of the new demographic and social change. The
power and authority of the older members of the household was diluted. They
used to get some resources in older type of arranged marriages system but now
when marriage became a more or less free choice between two consenting adults,
this source of their older patriarchal privilege disappeared. It was possible for
them to save from their earnings which were now relatively good due to higher
wages and this could have offered them some safety. Some people feel that there
may be some correlation between the emergence of the ‘European Marriage
Pattern’ and the emergence of capital markets in Western Europe in the late
medieval period. Now people might have started saving money for old-age
security and investing that in newly emerging joint stock companies. The new
marriage pattern, however, posed a new social security risk because as the
households became smaller, there was more likelihood it’s collapse if one of the
parents died prematurely. So side by side, new social arrangements emerged
that offered some degree of social security for the aged, the children, and the
disabled. We may say that the ‘industrious revolution’ was a result of many social
and economic changes that materialized during the late medieval period. The
early modern period saw changes in the orientation of households that took
advantage of the market opportunities, which resulted in an increased labour
supply. Jan de Varies believes these changes preceded the Industrial Revolution
of the eighteenth century, and he argues that women’s and teenagers’ labour was
a key to understand the economic changes that occurred in the North sea region.
The so called ‘Dutch Golden Age’ of the seventeenth century was created by
this economic transformation. Increased employment of women and children
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Rise of the Modern West-II through labour markets, higher level of investment in education and training ,
and the general development of labour and capital markets were obviously
associated with the appearance of the ‘European Marriage Pattern’.
12.4 EVALUATION OF ‘INDUSTRIOUSNESS’

It is important to note here that De Vries rejected the model of ‘social-emulation’
which is based on the hypothesis that consumption patterns of a higher social
group or class reflected in tastes or needs, are transferred from and imitated by
one social class to another. This poses the question that how these new
consumption desires emerged suddenly in the seventeenth century and how
industriousness was able to destroy idleness or traditional leisure time of the
workers? Since there is no evidence of any mass diffusion of new tastes and new
luxury commodities among general population before industrial revolution, De
Vries bases his story and especially its time-line of its evolution on less sound
empirical evidence, but it has been woven around the moral arguments,
philosophical conjectures, and prevalent political economic thinking and
observations by contemporary writers. In other words, there is hardly any material
evidence to demonstrate the time-line of an actual ‘industrious-consumer
revolution’, so he prefers to give many kind of literary evidences. These literary
evidences only show changes in the connotations of sumptuousness,
industriousness and idleness. They cannot be taken as the proofs of an abrupt
and sudden change in the nature and intensity of consumption. Several studies
exist on the late medieval and sixteenth-century commercial exchanges and
articles and goods that were in domestic possessions. They are indicative of a
notable increase of domestic sumptuous consumption in England, the so-called
‘Low Countries’, and even in Ireland and Denmark. This preceded what was
later described as the ‘consumer revolution’. But the evidence for penetration of
consumerist behaviour among the lower classes and social strata is very thin.
This was reasonable because there is historical evidence that shows that wages
were declining in real terms and this trend persisted throughout most of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Western Europe. Jan de Vries’ ‘industrious
revolution’ provides us with a different explanation. In his view, fall in wages in
real terms went alongside simultaneous increase in the level of consumption
especially among the lower social classes. In order to reconcile these rather
contradictory trends, he argues for a simultaneously growing input and
intensification of labour. Other scholars have argued against him on the ground
that for English rural poor labourers, the so called ‘industrious revolution’ might
have meant more economic hardships rather than an increase of consumption
level. There was also a prolonged economic stagnation after the commercial
revolution of sixteenth century in Europe. Some little research has been done on
probate inventories to investigate consumption standards. But they have not been
very useful in providing information on the living standards of the lower social
groups in early modern society. This is so because such inventories provide more
information about the consumption of relatively better off social groups and
classes. These classes were literate and make such inventories of their articles of
consumption whereas we hardly find existence and survival of inventories. So
the evidence of consumption level investigated through inventories is more
skewed towards the middle social groups and higher classes. Therefore, scholars
of inventories did not make any tall claims about change of consumer behaviour
with regard to the lower social strata. Some scholars, however, still believe that
164
the change in the behaviour of consumers was more extensive and it occurred The Patterns of Consumption
and Production
among the poor labouring classes too. But it can be safely said that there is a
very little confirmation of the expansion of consumption among the lower social
groups of society before the industrial revolution and corroborating evidence for
it is lacking.
The ideas emanating from the ‘industrious revolution’ and the ‘consumer
revolution’ both questioned the notion of a fixed working year for the labourers.
They imagine an increase in the number of days worked per year as people earned
surplus money to buy novel consumer goods like tea, sugar, books, and clocks.
If the working year increased in this way, then labour inputs increased more
rapidly than the population, leading this way to economic growth in pre modern
period. In contrast to the usual approach in the real wage literature, which assumes
that the working year was constant and then computes how much annual
consumption changed as wages and prices varied, Robert C. Allen and Jacob L.
Weisdorf (2010) in an empirical study of England workers between 1300-1830
assumed that workers acted to stabilize consumption over time and compute
how much the working year had to change in order to achieve that given changes
in wages and prices. Specifically, they used an analytical tool which they called
‘a basket of basic consumption goods’ and compute the working year of rural
and urban day labourers on the basis of number of days required to work if they
wished to buy commodities in that basket. They compared their result with
independent estimates of the actual working year and found that there were two
examples of ‘industrious’ revolutions among rural workers. In their analysis,
however, these were results of economic hardships, and there was no indication
of any ‘consumer revolution’. In comparison to rural labourers, however, the
evidence for urban labourers was different. Here, they saw that there was a
widening gap between their actual working year and the number of days they
were required to work to buy the basket. So in urban areas, there was more
scope for a consumer revolution. The study was conducted for two groups of day
labourers: farm workers in southern England and London building workers. For
farm labourers, the work required to buy the basket agrees reasonably well with
independent estimates of the actual working year. Since the consumption basket
they used contained no novelties (no sugar, tobacco, tea, coffee etc), but only
daily consumption goods that were readily available in early modern England,
the fact that they largely match the actual working year suggests that something
like a consumer revolution did not take place among pre-industrial farm workers.
For London building workers, by contrast, a large and widening gap between
their actual working year and the number of days they worked in order to buy the
basket suggests that there was large possibility for a consumer revolution in the
run up to the industrial revolution, harmonious with the notion of the ‘industrious’
revolution and the ‘consumer revolution’. The empirical exercise carried out in
this study also provided other insights into the work-patterns of pre-industrial
day labourers. For farm workers, they found two episodes of steep increase in
work-requirements: one between 1540 and 1616, and another between 1750 and
1818. The initial upsurge in labour input coincides with the removal of 49 holy
days in England, conducted in 1536 as part of the Protestant Reformation. If this
abolition of holy days was intended to help the poor maintaining their consumption
by allowing them to work more days throughout the year, then it might have
helped also more affluent groups of workers, such as urban labourers, to realize
a higher desired consumption level, which in turn could have been a stimulus to
the manufacturing sector. The apparent industriousness among farm labourers in
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Rise of the Modern West-II their study, though supporting the idea of households supplying more labour
over time, does not seem consistent with a consumer revolution marked by more
and new goods entering their consumption basket. Rather, additional labour input
of farm workers stems from the fact that daily consumption goods become harder
to obtain economically. Between 1500 and 1616, days of work required per year
to obtain same basket of goods increased from around 160 to slightly more than
300 for the farm workers.

1) What do understand by term ‘industrious revolution’? Critically evaluate its
impact on economy and society in Early Modern Europe.
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2) Analyse the role of ‘European Marriage Pattern’ in economic and social life
of Early Modern Europe.
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12.5 PROTO-INDUSTRIALIZATION IN EARLY

MODERN EUROPE
Proto-industrialization was a notion that indicated the growth of domestic
industries that produced goods and commodities for distant markets. The
development of such industries was noticed in many regions of Europe between
the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries. These so called ‘proto-industries’
mostly grew in the rural areas and they co-existed and were developed alongside
agriculture. They did not use any advanced technology. The labour force was
also not centralized in the form of factory-production in such industries. This
extensive industrial growth in domestic domain in early modern Europe evinced
considerable interests although it was also a controversial theme. But in the
1970s, interest in the study of this theme was re-kindled and researchers focused
attention on ‘proto-industry’. This became one of the explanations behind the
transition from feudalism to capitalism and emergence of factory industrialization.
Franklin Mendels was first to use the term ‘proto-industrialization’ in his 1969
dissertation on the Flemish linen industry (published in 1981) and he published
a famous article based on that research. His argument was that development of
‘proto-industry’ led to population growth. This demographic change in population
led to further expansion of proto-industry to expand further, creating a kind of
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self-sustaining development. Mendels argued that this sustained growth in The Patterns of Consumption
and Production
domestic industry led to many of the economic changes viewed as essential for
factory production such as commercialization of agriculture, accumulation of
capital, growth of entrepreneurship, capture of overseas markets, and creation of
an industrial workforce. Mendels claimed that ‘proto-industrialization’ was the
beginning of industrialization. In the 18th century, like all pre-modern agrarian
societies, agricultural operations were seasonal and such an agriculture created
seasonal underemployment for rural people in Europe. But what was new was
that now many rural people started producing through domestic crafts and they
also started to export their produced goods to distant markets, far beyond their
immediate markets and regions. As a result of this change, traditional urban
institutions such as guilds that had previously limited industrial growth, began
to lose relevance and began to disappear. This process simultaneously undermined
rural institutions such as inheritance systems, communes, and manorial systems.
In the traditional society, population growth and economic resources had a
different kind of balance and equilibrium. Now that balance was disrupted. In
1974, David Levine also stressed the role of demographic change in the form of
population as a result of development of proto-industry. He argued for role of
these developments for the creation a wage-dependent ‘proletariat’ for industrial
capitalism. In 1976 Joel Mokyr, while rejecting most of these arguments, claimed
that proto-industry in the traditional sector created a pool of cheap surplus labour
for the modern sector. Finally, in 1977, three German historians, Peter Kriedte,
Hans Medick, and Jurgen Schlumbohm, shifted the focus away from
industrialization, arguing that proto-industry broke down the demographic,
economic, social, and cultural obstacles in traditional European society to the
development of capitalism and modern industry. Initially there were only two
major empirical studies on the topic Mendels’ study of eighteenth-century
Flanders, and Levine’s of nineteenth-century Leicestershire.
Deyon and Mendels enlisted four main effects of proto-industrialization. Firstly,

growth of ‘proto-industries’ stimulated population growth and culminated in land
fragmentation as a result of undermining of traditional control by communes,
landlords and inheritance systems over the rural populations. Secondly, profits
earned in ‘proto-industrial’ production also helped in the accumulation of the
capital for factory industrialization. Thirdly, ‘proto-industries’ trained traders
and workers in the entrepreneurial skills that were prerequisite for factory
industrialization. Lastly, proto-industrialization was a catalyst for agriculture and
encouraged commercialization, Without a huge markets for agricultural goods,
it would have been impossible to sustain urbanization and industrialization on a
permanent basis. This is how proto-industry paved the way for factory industry
– although the authors admitted that sometimes it had opposite effect of destruction
of industries also.
12.6 CRITIQUE OF THE THEORIES OF PROTO-

INDUSTRIALIZATION
The theories of proto-industrialization have been criticized on several grounds
by the scholars. First problem with theory is that exact regional size and nature
of a production unit is not precisely defined. Proto-industries may vary in their
regional expanse and often went beyond economic zone of a single market town,
or on the other hand they involved production by limited number of people of
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Rise of the Modern West-II only one or two communities situated in a specific area. In this sense, we can
define the area of a particular proto-industry as a geographical area where people
were engaged in production of commodities for sale in distant markets. But this
appears to be very vague and ambiguous definition without analytical rigour.
Secondly, scholars do not have consensus on the issue of the percentage of
employment of labour of a particular area that must have been employed in
non-agricultural field to define it as proto-industrial zone. There is no clarity
also about the change in intensity and quantity of labour employment in the
industrial production, sustainability of such a labour force in that particular
economic activity in order to qualify as it as a case of ‘proto-industrialization’.
The implication of export markets for proto-industrialization is also problematic.
Can ‘proto-industrialization’ sustain itself without existence of stable export
markets or whether the export markets are absolutely essential for proto-industries
to develop or what fraction of total industrial production need to be exported to
designate it as a ‘proto-industry’? Then what should be location of the export
markets and their distance from the ‘proto-industrial’ zone to characterize them
as ‘supra-regional’ or export- market rather than ‘local’? These questions remained
unanswered. The differentiation between local crafts and export-oriented ‘proto-
industries’ remained a bone of contention among proponents of theory. The
analytical rigour in such categories was too obvious to be ignored. The theory of
‘proto-industrialization’ also ignored other types of industrial production. The
pre-industrial manufacturing was not solely based on cottage industry. The
technology used in ‘Proto-Industry’ based on craft-production was rather of
primitive variety. The centralized manufactories based on more technologically
advanced crafts that employed skilled workers and was based in urban centres
and was producing for export also existed in pre-industrial early modern period.
Some historians have argued that pre-industrial manufacturing existed in diverse
forms and that all type of industrial production should be considered for analysing
the impact of industrial production on the economy before the onset of Industrial
Revolution. Others argued that large urban-based export industries working in
the putting-out system, and more sophisticated centralized industrial units, should
also be added to the quantity of industrial production. The ignoring of
technological factors and role of physical geography in sustaining various kinds
of pre-industrial production was another major criticism. Mendels made a
momentary reference to minimum inputs needed to produce a specific output
(what contemporary economists call as the ‘production-function’) and significance
of transport costs, but the role of these factors in details remained an unexplored
territory. In short, Critics pointed out underplaying of role of technological,
geographical, and institutional factors.
The theories had a prejudiced view about the ‘traditional societies’ in which
changes were introduced by the growth of proto-industry, and these pre-
conceptions were challenged. The ‘Proto-industrialization’ hypothesis borrowed
uncritically from the ideas of Alexander Chayanov. Chayanov regardeded peasants
as irrational human beings that were hardly able to calculate economic variables
like costs and profits. Their use of money or transactions in markets were not
based on rational approach. But this perception of peasant and other non-agrarian
producers of early modern period were not based on any verifiable empirical
study. The subsistence orientation of the rural producers and consumers has been
taken for granted. The peasants and even the proto-industrial workers were
simultaneously engaged in a number of multiple roles such as traders, middlemen,
putters-out, and sometimes as manufacturers. The economic decisions and
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productive choices of pre-modern producers was changing due to demographic The Patterns of Consumption
and Production
and economic factors, their viewpoints and perception were subject to change
and they were not dominated by unchanging, immutable ‘traditional mentalities’.
The social changes around them compelled them to think in terms of economic
calculations. Their decisions began to be guided and governed by rational-
economic choices and they also felt the impact of market-forces. The demographic
predictions of the theories were also found to be fallacious as more and more
empirical studies poured in on the subject. Similarly, the impact of ‘proto-industry’
was also not uniform and it varied according to class, gender, region and other
demographic factors. Its impact was vastly different on demographic variables
like marriages, fertility, mortality and migration across the European societies. It
had been postulated that all regions that experienced growth of ‘proto-industries’
also experienced increase in population, in terms of absolute numbers and higher
density per unit area, and they demonstrate lowering of marriageable age, and an
increase in fertility rates etc. The actual empirical studies, however, exhibited
wide range of variations. Moreover, there was no direct correlation between these
demographic changes and the growth of ‘proto-industry’. The relationship
postulated between commercialization of agriculture and ‘proto-industry’ was
also uncertain. The agrarian relations in the areas of ‘proto-industries’ also have
no homogeneity . The areas varied from subsistence cultivation to market centred
commercial farming, and large chunk of areas that were still under feudal
domination and were worked by serf labour. The craftsmen in Proto-industries
were in many cases dependent partly on agriculture too. They were not simply
consumers of agricultural produce like urban workers. The degree of survival of
the traditional agrarian institutions and rural social structure also showed
difference across regions. In some, they start to crumble but in others they
continued to exist unaffected for much longer. So, the role of socio-political
structures and institutions has also been positively amended. The stability and
continuity of ‘traditional’ social structure and gradual penetration of markets in
now acknowledged. Scholars now believe in the persistence of structures
associated with guilds and their privileges, village communities and manorial
institutions etc. for a much longer period. A final major criticism questioned the
role of proto-industry in paving the way for factory production industrialization
or as acting as a pre-cursor to industrial revolution.
12.7 BOOK PRODUCTION, LITERACY AND

HUMAN CAPITAL FORMATION
In the late Middle Ages, the North Sea area already had encouraging conditions
for investment in human capital, both in craftsmen’s skills and in overall literacy
(and probably general education). At the same time, during the fifteenth century,
a revolution in the way knowledge was reproduced resulted in a very sharp decline
in book prices, which in turn gave strong positive feedback to the production
and reproduction of ‘academic’ knowledge. Book output increased enormously
in the decades and centuries after 1455. Then there was a new system of spreading
information already in existence. Two of the key events which defined the
beginning of the early modern period were linked to ideas. The first was
technological: the development of printing using type. Ideas had been circulating
in manuscript for centuries, but the printing press provided an additional means
of reproducing texts in very large numbers. Books were produced in both cheap
and expensive editions. The production of cheap editions, coupled with the
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Rise of the Modern West-II increasing numbers of people who were able to read and write meant that people
from across society were reading – the rich, the middling and even some working
people had access to books and ideas. Printing affected all areas of life. For
example, the availability of cheap books would have had a big impact on religion
and culture. For the spread of the Protestant ideas, books and pamphlets were
crucial. Reading and writing had existed in the European Middle Ages and Asian
Empires but they remained restricted activities, largely limited to the clergy and
the medieval scribes’ who tirelessly copied and re-copied. Literacy remained an
elite privilege, and until 1500 CE, most likely not more than 10% of the world
population could read or write. What changed then, in the Early Modern West, of
course, was the arrival of Gutenberg’s printing press and movable type. Until
Gutenberg’s invention, the only way to reproduce text was copying by hand, a
laborious task. The printing press made books a mass commodity, and for precisely
that reason, literacy became a mass phenomenon. The social history of ‘Book’
has been traced by Roger Chartier. Standardized typefaces made reading an easier
activity, because readers no longer had to deal with the idiosyncrasies of another
person’s handwriting. The errors so frequently made by scribal copyists were
eliminated, and thus thousands of people could have access to the same,
presumably error-free “standard edition” of a text. This introduced new modes
of production, transmission and reception of written word. Although measuring
literacy in pre-industrial societies and early modern Europe is a daunting task,
but spread of literacy cannot be doubted. The geography of literacy indicate
higher literacy in North and North-West Europe, however, there were inequalities
across gender, occupations and estates. Literacy was predominantly linked to a
person’s work and status.
Finally, the gap between common workmen and those engaged in mental labour
and intellectual pursuits was bridged by the marked rise in literacy in the same
region; this process probably began in the Low Countries (and northern France,
and perhaps parts of Germany and Italy as well) during the one-and a-half centuries
after the Black Death, and spread to England in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. At the end of the period, almost all skilled craftsmen in the North Sea
region were probably literate; they were definitely able to read and write in the
Low Countries, and increasingly so in Great Britain, Germany, and France.
Efficient training institutions produced relatively high levels of human capital
formation. The falling book prices and increase in literacy went hand in hand.
The revolution in printing had a number of other socio-economic consequences.
Several new roles emerged in society and the economy: 1) the intellectual, who
lived from his pen, i.e. from the proceeds of his books (Erasmus was perhaps the
first example), and 2) the publisher/printer, who often played a key role in bringing
academics together, in commissioning new books, and developing new projects.
The invention of the newspaper and the journal came later.

1) Was proto-industrialization a precursor of Industrial Revolution? Explain
your position in detail.
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2) Briefly discuss the nature of book-production. The Patterns of Consumption
and Production
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12.8 LET US SUM UP

In this Unit, we have basically demonstrated how the underpinning changes that
led to rise of industrial production in the form of modern factory system were
gradually gathering pace since the beginning of Early Modern Europe in what
are commonly known as the Low Countries. The consumption and production
patterns have respectively conceptualized as the ‘industrious revolution’ and
‘proto-industrialization’ by some scholars. These are conceptually controversial
topics in history. The empirical proofs are also not conclusive despite large
academic investment in the field. But one thing is certain that some divergence
was visible in the society and economy of countries bordering the North Sea
when compared to the rest of the world economy. The consumption and production
patterns and development of institutions are indicators of this divergence.

EXERCISES
1) See Sections 12.2 and 12.4
2) See Section 12.3

2) See Section 12.7
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UNIT 13 PATTERNS OF TRADE,
COLONIALISM AND DIVERGENCE
IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY*
Structure
13.0 Objectives
13.1 Introduction
13.2 European Trade and the Americas
13.3 Trade and Colonialism in Asia
13.4 Colonies and Capitalism
13.5 The Great Divergence
13.6 Agriculture and the Industrial Revolution
13.7 War and Military Fiscal Factors
13.8 Science and the Industrial Enlightenment
13.9 Wages and Factor Prices
13.10 The Great and Little Divergence– Western Europe and the Rest
13.11 Let Us Sum Up
13.12 Key Words
13.0 OBJECTIVES
After reading this Unit, you will understand the followings:
nature of trade between Europe and colonies,
role of colonial trade in emergence of capitalism,
conditions for the rise of industrial capitalism, and
various viewpoints on the existence and nature of difference of conditions
between Europe and the rest of the world.
13.1 INTRODUCTION
After the discovery and colonization of the Americas by the Spanish and
Portuguese a huge expansion of world trade took place. By the eighteenth century
the Dutch, British and French had become the dominant naval, mercantile and
colonial powers. Trade and colonial expansion, supported by mercantilist policies
of the European states, was spearheaded by trading companies that are regarded
as the world’s first multinational companies. According to the mainstream
European account it was in the period between 1500 and 1800 that the conditions
for the industrial revolution in Europe emerged. These conditions were not present
elsewhere and led to European ascendancy in the world. A grand narrative of the
Rise of the West, dominant in the late 20th century, was critiqued by Kenneth
* Resource Person : Dr. Rohit Wanchoo

172
Pomeranz in The Great Divergence in the year 2000. He made a strong case that Patterns of Trade,
Colonialism and Divergence
the difference between Europe and China only emerged in the eighteenth century. in the Eighteenth Century
Third world nationalists, Marxists, dependency school advocates and critics of
imperial expansion have emphasized the role of colonialism in the rise of European
capitalism and the Great Divergence. Several scholars like Jan de Vries, Wrigley,
O’Brien, Mokyr and Allen have highlighted endogenous developments in Britain
and Europe – the emergence of agrarian capitalism, the industrial changes,
appropriate fiscal policies, substitution of wood by coal and the relative prices
of labour and capital. As some scholars like Prasannan Parthasarthy have
discovered the elements of capitalism and dynamism in the economies of China
and India before the 18th century, the divergence debate still rages.
13.2 EUROPEAN TRADE AND THE AMERICAS

Adam Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations that “the discovery of America and
that of a passage to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope are the two greatest
and most important events recorded in the history of mankind.” The Spanish
Empire brought in silver, gold, new crops and commodities into Europe. The
demand for cheap labour in the West Indies, the southern colonies of America, in
Cuba and in Brazil led to a flourishing slave trade. In the southern parts of America
after 1700 African slaves constituted nearly two-fifths of the total population.
Slave-based production of sugar in the West Indies was vital to the Spanish,
French and British for more than a century. Some scholars have highlighted the
contribution of the West Indies to the initial accumulation of capital needed for
the British industrial revolution. The expansion of cotton cultivation in the
southern states of America contributed to the rise of capitalism in Britain and
America. Approximately half of all slaves - 46 percent- sold to the Americas
between 1492 and 1888 arrived there in the years after 1780 as the British
industrial revolution took off.
Many contemporaries in the 18th century thought that the French were better
placed than the British in the 1760s and 1770s in the colonies. Saint Domingue
was one of the richest regions of the world until the revolution in Haiti struck a
blow. Together with the French revolution of 1789 it put back the growth of
France by several decades. The eventual success of the British was based on the
successful use of the Navigation Acts of the mid-17th century to monopolize the
trade with its colonies. The British consumer had to pay a price for this mercantilist
policy but it gave a competitive edge to British shipping. Mercantilist policies
strengthened British naval and maritime power. Adam Smith felt that the British
attached greater value to defense than material gains. The Spanish and the
Portuguese lost their initial advantage although Cuba remained one of the most
important producers of sugar. The Dutch were militarily weak and focused on
commercial success in the Americas although they were able to establish their
dominion in Indonesia. The French, who were the biggest rivals of the British,
were eventually edged out by the early nineteenth century.
Of the 6,658,400 slaves imported by the European colonizers between 1451 and
1790 only 802,800 black slaves were shipped to Spanish America constituting
about twelve percent of the total. In Mexico and Peru, with substantial Indian
populations, their role was much less important and they worked as domestic
labour and artisans in the towns. In the lower lying and coastal areas slaves were
more important because in these regions Amerindians had perished in large
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Rise of the Modern West-II numbers. Slave based plantations producing sugar, rice, cotton and cocoa emerged
in Columbia, Venezuela and Guatemala in the second half of the eighteenth
century but were in decline in the 19th century. About five million slaves were
exported from West Africa in the 18th century. Since the 16th century, the combined
force of armed European capitalists and European states created war capitalism
which led to Industrial Revolution. The state had to create and protect global
markets, as well as to create and enforce private property rights in land. It had to
enforce contracts over large distances, tax populations, and build a framework
that could mobilize labor through wage payments.
It has been estimated that over fifty one thousand metric tons of silver reached
Europe between 1493 and 1700 constituting 81 percent of the world stock. This
inflow of silver into Spain benefitted other European countries, particularly
Netherlands and Britain, more than Spain. The silver was used to buy textiles
from India, spices from Indonesia and tea and silk from China. These products
were re-exported and increased consumption levels in Europe. Imported textiles
from India were also used to pay for slaves in West Africa. The indigenous African
states had the practice of enslaving their enemies but these slaves could rise in
social life by serving in the armies or administration. In Africa rulers sought to
enhance their power by accumulating slaves rather than land since there was a
quasi-communal control over land. Over time firearms were used to pay for the
slaves and this created the basis for more militarized states in the region. Thereafter
more and more slaves from the interior were captured by these militarized states
in order to pay for the firearms. The increasing demand for slaves in the Americas
in the 18th century was met by the slave traders who benefitted from the
competition between militarized African states. The silver from the Americas
also expanded trade with India and China which would otherwise not have been
so eager to trade with the European companies. It has been argued that output of
silver expanded in the Americas because of the great demand for silver in China.
13.3 TRADE AND COLONIALISM IN ASIA

In Asia the European trading companies grew substantially in the eighteenth
century not only in South Asia but also in South East Asia. According to K. N.
Chaudhuri the European demand for Indian textiles – cotton and silk – stimulated
the growth of artisanal production in the coastal regions of India from the late
seventeenth century onwards. Scholars like Christopher Bayly have argued that
European demand for Indian commodities encouraged both artisanal production
and commercialization of agriculture contributing to the dynamism of the Indian
economy in the eighteenth century. As there was little demand for European
goods in India imports from India had to be paid for in precious metals and
silver. Bullion stimulated the Indian economy and led to charges of a drain of
wealth to India by the critics of the East India Company in Britain. Several
revisionist scholars have argued that even after the British victory in the Battle
of Plassey in 1757 the economy of Bengal did not suffer a significant decline.
On the other hand, other historians like Irfan Habib and Sushil Chaudhuri have
observed that the East India Company acquired control over the revenue of Bengal
after it was granted the Diwani by the Mughal Emperor in 1765. Therefore the
British no longer needed to import treasure after 1765 and could transfer large
quantities to Britain. This constituted a substantial proportion of the capital
required in the early stages of the Industrial Revolution in Britain. War and
174
conquest, utilization of Indian soldiers and resources, usually in alliance with Patterns of Trade,
some Indian power, helped the British establish their dominion in India. The in the Eighteenth Century
ascendancy of the East India Company in eastern and southern India by the end
of the eighteenth century promoted British trade and led to the drain of wealth
from India. By creating monopolies to buy commodities like opium and salt-
petre the British increased both income and power. The forced cultivation of
opium yielded high profits and exporting opium to China also helped to pay for
the tea and silk that Britain was importing from there. This was the triangular
trade that used Indian opium to reduce the outflow of silver to China. The revenue
surplus was also used to remit money to Britain by financing the purchase of
goods for sale in Britain.
The trade of the European countries with America and Asia grew at about one
percent per annum for over three centuries up to 1800. As west European GDP
grew at 0.4% per annum between 1500 and 1820, ratios of inter-continental trade
to GDP were evidently rising. Urbanization and GDP in England, France, the
Netherlands and Spain involved in the Atlantic trade grew faster than in the
other European countries between 1500 and 1800. In Spain the inflow of resources
strengthened absolutist rule and damaged the competitiveness of the
manufacturing sector. In France the net reinvested profits from overseas trade
between 1715 and 1790 amounted to 7% of French GDP per capita growth.
Assuming that overseas profits stimulated investment throughout the economy
they might have been “responsible for as much as one-third of French growth.”
The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, Volume I has cited O’Brien’s
estimate of 1982 that the periphery contributed only 15% of British gross
investment in the period 1784-1786. But the authors also point out that Britain’s
domestic market was not as large as that of China and India and the country was
dependent on rising exports for its industrial goods. As it was, increases in exports
were equivalent to 21 percent of the total increase in GDP between 1780 and
1801, over 50 percent of additional industrial output during the same period, and
over 60 percent of additional textiles output between 1815 and 1841. Furthermore,
between 1780 and 1801 the Americas accounted for roughly 60 percent of
additional British exports. Therefore colonial markets played a necessary but
not sufficient role in accounting for the rise of Britain.
13.4 COLONIES AND CAPITALISM

The colonial world provided capital to the European economies for
industrialization, access to raw materials and markets for manufactured goods.
Imports of cheap food also improved living standards. Irfan Habib estimated
that the tribute from India contributed nearly 30 percent of the total national
savings transformed into capital in Britain around 1800. This was based on the
calculation of tribute from India at around two percent of national income and
the rate of capital formation at around seven percent of national income. Utsa
Patnaik has estimated the tribute from the colonies at six percent of Britain’s
GDP in 1801 amounting to 46.36% of the gross capital formation in that year.
According to Habib the money received as unrequited imports could have been
subsequently invested in industry even if it was initially in the hands of planters
and nabobs.
According to one estimate, slave profits in 1770 constituted 0.5% of Britain’s
national income, about 8% of total investment and 39% of commercial and
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Rise of the Modern West-II industrial investments. Income from colonial properties was an important factor
in reducing the interest rates in Britain during the 18th century. The import of
cheap cotton from American slave plantations enabled Britain to sell its textile
products in West Africa and to the plantation slaves in the Americas. The colonial
market for British manufactures was a significant factor in the rise of the British
textile industry. During the period 1750-1800 colonial trade constituted 15% of
Britain’s national income. Without the advantages provided by slave based
plantations the British textile industry would not have been able to compete with
Indian textiles in the 18th century. Further, the import of commodities like sugar,
tobacco and coffee raised the levels of consumption and the standard of living in
Britain. It also provided incentives to produce more efficiently. The building of
port cities like Liverpool and Bristol and cotton manufacturing centres like
Manchester are linked to the slave trade and plantations. Banks like Barclays
and Lloyds developed out of the profits of slavery or the slave trade and later
helped to finance industries.
The flow of resources from the colonies to the metropolis was important at various
levels for all the colonial powers. While the dominant view is that the Spanish
exploited their colonies ruthlessly recent work has pointed out that there were
substantial transfers from one Spanish colony to another. It has been estimated
that the loss suffered by Spain in the early 19th century because of the
independence of its colonies amounted to 8% of its national income on the
assumption that the revenues received were used productively. The profits from
colonial trade did not contribute more than 18% of the total capital formation of
Spain during 1784-96. Graf and Irigoin argue that although the share of revenues
extracted from the Americas rose to 13% by the late 18th century the actual
share collected fell from 11% (1729-33) to 4.8% (1785-9), rising slightly to 5.2
% (1796-1800) owing to intra-colonial transfers.
13.5 THE GREAT DIVERGENCE

The debate on divergence involves three issues. First, the reasons for the rise of
industrial capitalism in Europe and why Britain became the First Industrial nation.
The second issue is to determine when the ascendancy of the west emerged and
the third one is why China and India lagged behind Western Europe. Kenneth
Pomeranz has argued that the standard of living in the Yangtze delta of China
and southern England was similar and that per capita income, levels of
urbanization and labour productivity in agriculture were comparable. It was access
to the land and labour of the New World which made the crucial difference in the
later economic trajectories of the two regions. The Americas were important not
because of the flow of capital to finance growth but because they released Britain
from an ecological constraint and a foreseeable Malthusian problem. It could
urbanize and industrialize based on the imports of food and raw materials. This
development was as important as the change in energy use from wood to coal
highlighted by E. A. Wrigley. Recent work has confirmed Pomeranz’s claims
that levels of agricultural productivity in the Yangtze delta and in England were
similar. He therefore questions the dominant “agrarian fundamentalism” which
had asserted that levels of industrialization in Europe were related to differences
in levels of agricultural productivity. At the same time Pomeranz has
acknowledged that he had not considered the importance of war and the rise of
the military fiscal state in the rise of industrialization but most notably the role
of science and technology. He acknowledges that the divergence may have begun
176 by 1750 or even 1700, instead of 1800.
Check Your Progress 1 Patterns of Trade,
1) Discuss the role of colonial trade in industrialization of Western Europe. in the Eighteenth Century
.......................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................
2) How the slave trade was important in development of economies of Western
Europe?
.......................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................
13.6 AGRICULTURE AND THE INDUSTRIAL

REVOLUTION
The observation that, in the century before the industrial revolution, consumption
was rising even while real wages were not led Jan de Vries to propound the
argument about an industrious revolution. A change in the economic behaviour
of the household created a greater output of marketable goods and increase in
the hours of work. The wage rates did not rise but the increased output and
labour of the households – including women and children – added to the income
of such households. Increased income of such households created the demand
for new commodities like sugar, tea and tobacco. This constituted a demand side
explanation of the industrial revolution instead of the supply side one which
focused on the expansion of production driven by technological advancement.
The productive resources of the household were reallocated because of changes
in relative prices and tastes as well as decline in transaction costs. This change,
from the mid seventeenth century onwards, was not based on discipline, coercion
or upper class attempts at educating the common people but on aspirations of
peasant and cottar households who raised their output of food and proto-industrial
products.
The Marxist argument was that the enclosure movement in Britain led to the
consolidation of large farms, the emergence of landlessness and the development
of capitalism in agriculture based on capital investment and wage labour. Brenner
has emphasized the importance of class conflicts and changes in the class structure
which created the conditions for capitalism in agriculture and the preconditions
for the industrial revolution. Zmolek has argued that the growth of agrarian
capitalism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries gradually exerted economic
pressures upon manufacturing to constantly improve productivity as in agriculture.
While acknowledging other factors like international trade and the development
of technology he emphasizes “the transformation of class relations and the 177
Rise of the Modern West-II corresponding growth of an unprecedented, integrated and specialized domestic
market that preceded the Industrial Revolution in England and Britain.”
[Zmolek, p. 288]
Allen has argued that the growth of cities and high wages in countries like England
and the Netherlands led to greater demand for food and labour from the agricultural
sector. This led to the agricultural revolution and output per farm worker increased
by fifty percent in both countries. The introduction of new cropping patterns like
increasing cultivation of clover, and fertilization techniques like marling,
contributed to higher productivity growth. Agricultural productivity in England
was higher than in France because in 1800 it had two-thirds more animal power
than the latter. The availability of horsepower in the Mediterranean region was
even lower. Allen argues that although agricultural revolutions in the Netherlands
and England were integral to the economic expansion, the role of the cities was
more pronounced that of the countryside. There was not only a landlord but a
yeoman agricultural revolution. Yeomen too wanted to buy tea, sugar, tobacco,
clocks and other items of consumption available to urban labourers. London and
the proto-industrial centres were the “engines of growth.” [Allen, 2009]
13.7 WAR AND MILITARY FISCAL FACTORS

Several scholars have pointed out that the Europeans had developed war capitalism
and military technology that enabled them to conquer and dominate large parts
of the world. Using gunpowder technology they were able to conquer thirty-five
percent of the world and to dominate trade routes in Asia by 1800. Military
rivalry and incessant warfare in Europe compelled states to improve technology.
Competitive markets created the conditions for military innovation. Hoffman
has argued that while the small states of Europe were spending huge sums of
money to win wars with other powers using gunpowder technologies other powers
in the world were not. The Chinese did not try and improve gunpowder technology
they had developed because they had to fight nomads against whom archers and
cavalry were more effective. The Ottoman Empire and armies in India too had
limited incentive to develop gunpowder technologies because they had to rely
on cavalry against the nomads. Although the Ottomans were also fighting the
major gunpowder states in Europe their tax revenues were less than those of
eighteenth century European states. Therefore, they were unable to innovate or
import weapons on a scale sufficient to achieve victory.
In Britain the government could levy more taxes than other European states.
Indirect taxation became important in the seventeenth century notably after the
Civil War and the Interregnum. After 1713 nearly three-quarters of all tax revenues
in Britain were collected in the form of indirect taxes on production of goods and
services in the form of excise and stamp duties. The government could service
debts based on the tax revenues expected in the future. Commercialization,
colonization, urbanization and proto-industrialization created more opportunities
for duties on imports as well as on production within Britain. Major European
powers with powerful provincial estates, oversized bureaucracies and expensive
franchised administrations could not increase tax collection as effectively as in
Britain. The wealthy elites accepted higher levels of taxation since the state
introduced measures that added to the value of their property rights. A favourable
mercantilist strategy which created gains from servicing an expanding global
economy increased the English wage levels conducive to technological growth.
178
While the larger agrarian states of Eastern Europe and of West, South and East Patterns of Trade,
Asia had a lower tax rate per capita and per square kilometer of territory the in the Eighteenth Century
smaller states raised their resources by adopting mercantilist policies. The landed
interest was coopted by not increasing taxes on land but on imports and domestic
output. The state tried to strengthen the role of markets by various means. Alliances
forged between landlord and merchant groups led to investments in mines,
harbours and canals before the emergence of railways. These projects provided
opportunities to develop new technologies that led to the industrial revolution.
The Glorious Revolution of 1688 did not lead in a straightforward way to the
creation of more efficient markets and fiscal policies. What changed was that
localized rent-seeking was increasingly replaced by national level coalitions that
became influential in Parliament.
13.8 SCIENCE AND THE INDUSTRIAL

ENLIGHTENMENT
The great advances in science in the 17th century were once treated as crucial for
the industrial revolution. But some historians have argued that science was not
so directly useful for production processes in industry until 1900. The political
fragmentation in Europe and the recurring conflicts between states created the
demand for newer techniques by rulers and the wealthy elites. The existence of
intellectual and cultural unity in Europe created the ability of dissenters and
innovators to migrate to other territories or rival states. The Republic of Letters
that emerged in Europe before the emergence of the Enlightenment created an
integrated market for ideas from the sixteenth century onwards. The institutions
supported markets while the Republic of Letters sustained the market for ideas.
In other parts of the world scientific developments eventually petered out or
became slowed down. Chinese science was not sufficiently interested in how
and why things worked despite its practical achievements and there was a
reluctance to accept ideas from outside.
By 1700 European knowledge in hydraulics, optics, astronomy, scientific

instruments and crop rotations had grown substantially. The coevolution of
propositional and prescriptive knowledge created a self-reinforcing virtuous cycle.
Therefore the gap between West and East in technology grew rapidly in the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. According to Mokyr more than ideas
of scientists like Newton the culture of “careful measurement, precise formulation,
well-designed experiments, empirical testing, (and) mathematization” created
the climate for invention and adoption of new techniques in the early stages of
the industrial revolution. The Industrial Enlightenment laid the foundations for
the industrial revolution in Western Europe although it began first in Britain. He
argues that earlier “technological efflorescences” in Song China and Renaissance
Europe had fizzled out and asserts that the new culture of innovation to promote
economic growth was sui generis-a new and unique phenomenon in the world.
13.9 WAGES AND FACTOR PRICES

The Newcomen engine, improvements in the steam engine, coke smelting, and
the invention of the spinning jenny and water frame led to the industrial revolution
in Britain. Yet Britain was not the only country which made advances in science-
the French had developed the paper, textiles, clock-making and glass industries.
179
Rise of the Modern West-II Britain had higher wages than other parts of the world while the prices of both
capital and energy were low. Therefore, the businesses in Britain had a strong
incentive to use more capital and energy instead of labour and to improve or
invent technology. Product innovation was encouraged because the high level of
wages created a mass market for consumer goods. High real wages enabled more
people in Britain to pay for their education and training. The higher levels of
literacy and numeracy increased the ability to invent and improve existing
technology. The structure of wages and prices in Britain was itself the outcome
of her success in commercial and imperial expansion. Even though scientific
developments did contribute to the industrial revolution not much progress would
have been made if there had been no demand for the inventions. The Jacquard
loom in France, which reduced the cost of making lace and knitwear, could not
expand output substantially because the demand for these products was limited
unlike in the case of the cotton industry.
According to Allen, there were four ways in which wages were higher than that
of other countries. Firstly, in terms of the exchange rate. Wages measured in
terms of value in silver or the silver wage indicated higher living standard in
Britain compared to other countries. They were also higher when compared with
capital prices. Finally, compared to the price of coal-or energy price - wages in
northern and western Britain were very high. Cheap energy encouraged the
substitution of labour by capital. The city of London, which grew because of
international trade, created the demand for coal. It was the rising demand for
coal which led to the exploitation of coal resources.
13.10 THE GREAT AND LITTLE DIVERGENCE –

WESTERN EUROPE AND THE REST
Several authors have highlighted that there was a growing gap between Europe
and Asia and between West Europe and South, Central and East Europe by the
seventeenth century in terms of wages. According to one estimate, the silver
wage in India was about forty percent of the silver wage in Britain in the first
half of the 18th century. The grain wage in India was closer to that of Britain
until the close of the seventeenth century but declined substantially in the
eighteenth century. India was comparable to the peripheral countries of Europe.
The higher silver wages in Europe reflected higher command over traded goods
and higher levels of urbanization and greater non-agricultural production.
Similarly, the living standards were lower in Beijing, Canton or Suzhou compared
to London and Amsterdam. Another finding was that for most of the eighteenth
century unskilled workers in Chinese and Japanese cities had an approximately
similar standard of living as unskilled workers in central and southern Europe.
That only England and the Low countries forged ahead of the rest in the early
modern period — and not all the European countries — is regarded as proof of
both the Great and Little Divergence.
Tirthankar Roy has calculated that the average income in Bengal was one-fifteenth
of the income in England and Wales in 1763 estimating it at rupees 12.5 or 1.25
pounds. The silver equivalent of these incomes also differed similarly but the
grain equivalent income was one-fifth of that of England. Like Parthasarthy for
South India he argues that the Bengal peasant was as well off — in terms of
caloric sufficiency — as those in Europe and the Yangtze delta. However, like
180 the peasants in China those in Bengal were vulnerable to higher subsistence
risks. In both India and China the concept of absolute private property rights did Patterns of Trade,
not exist but there were substantial informal or customary rights in both countries. in the Eighteenth Century
In India customary laws of the merchants were good enough to secure a leading
position in the international textile market. What was crucial was that tax revenues
per capita in grams of silver declined in India and China from 20 to 15 and from
7 to 3-4 between 1670 and 1800. In China the per capita tax revenues in 1850
fell to less than a half of what they were in 1700. This was the exact opposite of
what was happening in Europe. The states in West and South Asia shared
sovereignty with chiefs and military elites and landlords or jagirdars. China and
India, affected more by internal rebellion than external threats, adopted a policy
of appeasement by keeping tax levels moderate.
Prasannan Parthasarthy has pointed out that although pessimistic assessments of

developments in India and China are based on rigorous quantitative methods the
range or quality of the data they rely on is often inadequate and insufficient. This
applies to assessments of the flow of silver into India and the standard of living.
In his view the inadequacy of Indian institutions is overstated. The grain markets
in India were less unified than in Europe but the substantial market for cotton
was more unified. The capital market functioned with rates of interest very similar
to those in Europe. The states in India played an important role by investing in
agriculture to expand cultivation and output in good times and to aid recovery
after crises. Moreover, astronomy, metallurgy, mathematics and manufacturing
flourished based on patronage of rulers in Jaipur, Tanjore and Lucknow.
According to Parthasarthy, the “coal, iron and steam complex” did not emerge in
the more advanced regions of India and China because of differences in economic
and ecological pressures and the responses of economic agents and the state to
these challenges. The state in Britain was very supportive of the cotton industry,
businessmen were acutely conscious of the competition from Indian textiles and
breakthroughs in technology enabled Britain to forge ahead. Even Adam Smith
had noted the competition from Indian textiles that British businessmen faced.
As London was a major consumer of coal for domestic use it was politically
important to ensure the supply of reasonably priced coal. The ability to tax coal
also made the state keen to promote the coal industry. In China coal found
primarily in the North was far from the major areas in the Yangtze region. The
fiscal resources of the Chinese state were limited and it allocated huge sums in
order to maintain granaries to cope with scarcity and famine. In India the pressures
were different because even in densely populated regions like the Ganges-Yamuna
Doab there was substantial forest cover in the 18th century. As the advanced
regions of India did not face a shortage of wood — as in western and central
Europe and parts of China — they had little incentive to use coal and lignite for
domestic or industrial purposes.
Kaveh Yazdani has argued that eighteenth century Gujarat and Mysore were in
“a transitory stage that left open the possibility of a successful industrialization
process” before British conquest. He concludes that though Mysore witnessed
great market orientation there was no agrarian consumer revolution as in the
advanced parts of Europe. The state witnessed semi-modernization even though
the “bourgeoisie” was weak and scientific and intellectual development was
insufficient. He asserts that without colonial rule a state led process of forced
industrialization would have been possible once indigenous circumstances had
matured. In 18th century Gujarat although there was a large banking and small
181
Rise of the Modern West-II scale sector, the GDP increased, and imports grew, there were no signs of a
consumer or industrious revolution as in Britain or Holland. Abundant supply of
wood, geo-climatic conditions and global leadership in textiles diminished the
incentive to introduce technical innovations or explore coal mines. The greatest
gap was in coal mining and mechanical engineering which were the driving force
in British and European industrialization.

1) Briefly discuss the role of war and military fiscal policies in economic
development of Western Europe.
.......................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................
2) Was there any divergence in economic development of the Western Europe
and the Rest of the world? When and how did it emerge?
.......................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................
13.11 LET US SUM UP

The relative importance of factors like emergence of agrarian capitalism,
development of science and technology, fiscal and state policies, the cost of
labour relative to capital and the role of the colonies for the onset of the industrial
revolution are still being debated. Many scholars assert that the industrial
revolution and the divergence between Western Europe and the rest of the world
was a product of long-term factors or endogenous developments; others focus
on colonial exploitation. Lately, the persistent underestimation of the potentialities
for development in the non-European world has been highlighted. Although the
arguments are more nuanced today the debate is far from over.
13.12 KEY WORDS

Cottar : A farm labourer or tenant occupying a cottage in
return for labour (in Scotland and Ireland) .
Divergence : The notion of economic and technological gap

between the West Europe and the Rest of the
world that emerged in early Modern Times.
Industrious Revolution : A change in the economic behaviour of the

182
household created a greater output of marketable Patterns of Trade,
goods and increase in the hours of work prior to in the Eighteenth Century
Industrial revolution that increased their income
and therefore consumption levels.

EXERCISES
1) See Section 13.3

1) See Section 13.7
2) See Section 13.10
183
SUGGESTED READINGS
A. L. Morton, A People’s History of England.
Allen, R. C., & Weisdorf, J. L. (2010), ‘Was there an ‘Industrious Revolution’
before the Industrial Revolution? An Empirical Exercise for England, c. 1300-
1830’, Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen.
Arnold Hauser, Social History of Art. Vols 2 and 3. Routledge, London, 1962.
Arvind Sinha, Europe in Transition: From Feudalism to Industrialization,
Manohar, Delhi, 2010.
Aston, T.H., & C.H.E. Philipin (eds.), The Brenner Debate: Agrarian Class
Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe, Cambridge
University Press, 1985.
Aston, Trevor, (ed.), Crisis in Europe 1560-1660, Garden City, N.Y. 1967.
Bailyn, Bernard, Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, Harvard
Benedict, Philip & Myron P.Gutmann, Early Modern Europe: From Crisis to
Stability, University of Delaware Press, 2006.
Cameron, Euan (ed.), The Sixteenth Century, Oxford University Press. 2006.
Cameron, Euan, Enchanted Europe: Superstition, Reason, and Religion, 1250-
1750, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2010.
Christopher Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian Society in the
Age of British Expansion, 1770-1870. Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Christopher Hill, The Century of Revolution, 1603-1714, London And New York:
Routledge. 1980 (first published in 1961).
Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas during the
English Revolution, London: Penguin Books, 1975 (first published in 1972).
Cohen, H. F.( 1994), The Scientific Revolution: A Historiographical Inquiry,
Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press.
D.H. Pennington, Europe in the Seventeenth Century, London and New York:
Longman, 1989.
Ferling, John, Almost a Miracle: The American Victory in the War of
Independence, Oxford University Press, 2007.
G.H.R. Parkinson (ed.), The Renaissance and Seventeenth-Century Rationalism,
London and New York: Routledge, 1993.
George Rude, Europe in the Eighteenth Century: Aristocracy and the Bourgeois
Century, Phoenix Press, London, 2002.
HG Koenigsberger, Early Modern Europe 1500-1789, Longman, 2009.
Irfan Habib, ‘Colonialization of the Indian Economy, 1757-1900’, Social Scientist,
Vol 3, No 8 March 1975, pp 23-53.
184
Irfan Habib, ‘Towards a Political Economy of Colonialism,’ Social Scientist, Suggested Readings
Vol. 45, No. 3/4 (March-April 2017), pp. 9-15
Jan de Vries, ‘The Great Divergence after Ten Years: Justly Celebrated Yet Hard
to Believe,’ Historically Speaking, Volume 12, Number 4, September 2011, pp.
13-15.
Jan de Vries, The Economy of Europe in an Age of Crisis, 1600-1750, Cambridge,
CUP, 1994.
Jan de Vries, ‘The Industrial Revolution and the Industrious Revolution’, Journal
of Economic History , 1994, Vol. 54, pp. 249-70.
Jeremy Black, Europe and the World, 1650-1830, Routledge, 2002.
Jeremy Black, History of Europe: Eighteenth Century Europe, 1700-1789, New
York, Macmillan Education, 1990.
Joel Mokyr, A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy, Princeton
John Christian Laursen, ‘Skepticism’ in New Dictionary of the History of Ideas,
volume 5.
John Merriman, A History of Modern Europe, New York: W.W. Norton &
Company, 2010.
John Robertson, Enlightenment: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford
Kaspar Von Greyerz, Religion and Culture in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1800.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Kaveh Yazdani, India, Modernity and the Great Divergence: Mysore and Gujarat
(17th to 19th C.), Brill Leiden 2017.
Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of
the Modern World Economy, Princeton 2000.
Lindberg, David C. (1992), The Beginnings of Western Science, Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
M. S. Anderson, Europe in the Eighteenth Century 1713-1783, Longman, 1970.
Martin Fitzpatrick, Peter Jones, Christa Knellwolf, and Iain McCalman (eds.),
The Enlightenment World, London and New York: Routledge, 2004.
Mendels, F. (1972), ‘Proto-industrialization: the first phase of the industrialization
process’, Journal of Economic History, Vol. 32, 241-61.
Michael Andrew Žmolek, Rethinking the Industrial Revolution: Five Centuries
of Transition from Agrarian to Industrial Capitalism in England, Brill Leiden
2013.
Munck, Thomas 2005, Seventeenth-Century Europe: State, Conflict and the Social
Order in Europe, 1598-1700, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Olwen Hufton, Europe: Privilege and Protest 1730-1789, Second Edition.
Blackwell Publishers, 2000.
185
Rise of the Modern West-II Parker, Geoffrey & Leslie M. Smith (eds.), The General Crisis of the Seventeenth
Century, Routledge, 2nd edition, 1997.Pennington, D.H. 1989, Europe in the
Seventeenth Century. Second Edition. London and New York: Longman. 1989
(Original Edition in 1970).
Philip Weiner (ed.), Dictionary of the History of Ideas, volume 4. Entry on
‘Skepticism in Modern Thought’ by Richard H. Popkin.
Prasannan Parthasarathi, ‘Review: The Great Divergence,’ Past & Present, No.
176 (Aug., 2002).
Prasannan Parthasarthy, Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not: Global
Economic Divergence, 1600-1850, Cambridge University Press, 2011.
R. C Allen and J.L. Weisdorf, ‘Was there an ‘industrious revolution’ before the
industrial revolution? An empirical exercise for England, c. 1300–1830,’
Economic History Review, 64, 3 (2011.
R.S. Woolhouse, A History of Western Philosophy: The Empiricists, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1988.
Robert Allen, Global Economic History: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford
University Press 2011.
Roderick Floud and Paul Johnson (eds), The Cambridge Economic History of
Modern Britain, Volume I: Industrialisation, 1700-1860, Cambridge University
Press, 2006 edition.
Roy Porter and Mikulas Teich, The Enlightenment in National Context,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
S. Shapin, The Scientific Revolution, Chicago, University of Chicago Press. 1996.
Shashi Bhushan Upadhyay, History in the Modern World: Western and Indian
Perspectives, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1916. Chapter 8: ‘Enlightenment
Historiography’.
Thomas Hahn-Bruckart, ‘Dissenters and Nonconformists’, at ieg-ego.eu/en/
threads/crossroads/religious-and-confessional-spaces, accessed 21.06.2020.
Thomas Munck, The Enlightenment: A Comparative Social History, 1721-1794,
New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Wood, Gordon S. The American Revolution: A History. New York, 2002.
186

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BHIC-108

RISE OF THE MODERN WEST-II

School of Social Sciences

Unit 9 deals with Enlightenment – the greatest collective intellectual movement

* Resource Person : Prof. Arvind Sinha 7

1.2 HISTORICAL DEBATE ON THE NATURE OF

In between the above mentioned approaches, we find some other interpretations

Another important contributor to the debate on the seventeenth century crisis

1.3 ORIGINS OF THE CRISIS

Check Your Progress 1

1.4 EXTENT OF THE CRISIS

1.4.1 Demographic Crisis

What led to the decline of population in the seventeenth century is explained

The demographic crisis had long-term consequences, including on family life,

1.4.2 Agrarian Crisis

1.4.3 Monetary Crisis

1.4.4 Climatic Factors

1.4.5 Economic Crisis

1.5 THE THIRTY YEARS WAR (1618-1648) AND

J. V. Polisensky focuses on internal forces in an excessively German approach

1.6 MEDITERRANEAN COUNTRIES AND THE

1.6.1 Decline of Spain

As to the precise period of decline, we find no unanimous answer. Each historian

On the issue of the nature of decline, again there is no unanimity of opinion.

1.6.2 Decline of Italian States

1.7 IMPACT OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

An important post-crisis development was the shifting of economically active

The crisis of the seventeenth century led to the strengthening of serfdom as it

From political perspective, economic disruptions, military operations and

Check Your Progress 3

1.8 LET US SUM UP

* Resource Person : Dr. Nalini Taneja

History of modern Europe cannot be understood without these associated and

2.2 MERCANTILISM: DEFINITION AND

Capitalism required that what is produced should be transformed into

2.2.1 Mercantilist Ideas

2.2.2 Mercantilist Policies and Changes in the Nature and

2.3 MERCANTILISM IN EUROPEAN COUNTRIES

2.3.1 The Dutch Republic

There was a consistent policy of reducing imports and increasing exports. In

2.3.4 Other Countries

2.4 THE NATURE OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION

2.5 MIGRATIONS, SETTLEMENTS, AND

The expansion of Europe manifested itself differently in these two kinds of

2.6 PLANTATION ECONOMIES

2.7 SLAVERY AND SLAVE ECONOMIES

2.9 MERCHANT CAPITALISM

In general, this period contributed to the creation of accumulation of capital in

Check Your Progress 2

2.10 LET US SUM UP

2.11 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

3.2 REFORMATION AND COUNTER-

3.2.1 Protestant Reformation

In Switzerland, Protestantism was preached initially by Huldrych Zwingli (1484-

The most aggressive response to Protestant Reformation was offered by the

By the mid-seventeenth century, institutional Protestantism manifested as much

3.3 DISSENTERS AND NON-CONFORMISTS ON

In 1534, an Anabaptist group won in the elections in the town of Munster in

In 1524, a fierce peasant revolt occurred in many German-speaking areas