The Seventeenth Century: Europe, 1598–1715

273 Pages·2001·3.143 MB·English

by  Joseph Bergin

The Short Oxford History of Europe
GeneralEditor:T.C. W. Blanning
The Seventeenth
Century
Europe 1598-1715
EditedbyJoseph Bergin
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
Thisbookhasbeenprinted digitallyandproducedinastandard specification
inordertoensureitscontinuingavailability
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
GreatClarendon Street,OxfordOX26DP
OxfordUniversityPressisadepartmentoftheUniversityofOxford.
ItfurtherstheUniversity’sobjectiveofexcellenceinresearch,scholarship,
andeducationbypublishingworldwidein
Oxford NewYork
Auckland CapeTown Dares Salaam HongKong Karachi
KualaLumpur Madrid Melbourne MexicoCity Nairobi
NewDelhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto
Withofficesin
Argentina Austria Brazil Chile CzechRepublic FranceGreece
Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan SouthKorea Poland Portugal
Singapore Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam
Oxfordisaregistered trade mark ofOxfordUniversityPress
inthe UKandincertain other countries
Publishedinthe UnitedStates
byOxfordUniversity PressInc.,NewYork
©OxfordUniversity Press,2001
Themoralrightsofthe author havebeenasserted
Databaseright OxfordUniversityPress(maker)
Reprinted 2008
Allrightsreserved.Nopart ofthispublication maybereproduced,
storedinaretrievalsystem,ortransmitted, inanyformorbyanymeans,
without thepriorpermissioninwriting ofOxfordUniversityPress,
orasexpresslypermitted bylaw,orunder terms agreedwiththeappropriate
reprographicsrightsorganization.Enquiriesconcerningreproduction
outsidethe scopoef the aboveshouldbesentto theRightsDepartment,
OxfordUniversityPress,atthe addressabove
Youmustnotcirculatethisbookinanyotherbindingorcover
Andyoumust imposethis sameconditiononanyacquirer
ISBN978-0-19-873167-2
General Editor’s Preface
The problemsof writing asatisfactorygeneralhistory ofEurope are
many,but the most intractable isclearlythe reconciliation of depth
withbreadth.Thehistorianwhocanwritewithequalauthority about
everypart ofthe continentin allitsvarious aspectshas not yetbeen
born. Twomain solutions havebeen tried in the past: either asingle
scholar has attempted to go it alone, presenting an unashamedly
personalviewofa period, orteamsof specialistshavebeenenlistedto
write what are in effectanthologies. The first offers a coherent per­
spectivebut unequal coverage,the secondsacrifices unity forthe sake
ofexpertise.Thisnewseriesisunderpinned bythe beliefthat itisthis
secondwaythat hasthe fewestdisadvantages and that eventhose can
be diminished if not neutralized by close cooperation between the
individual contributors under the directing supervision of the vol­
ume editor. Allthe contributors to everyvolume in this serieshave
read each other’s chapters, have met to discuss problems of overlap
and omission, and have then redrafted as part of a truly collective
exercise.Tostrengthen coherence further, the editor has written an
introduction and conclusion,weavingthe separate strands together
to form a single cord. In this exercise,the brevity promised by the
adjective ‘short’ in the series’title has been an asset.The need to be
concisehas concentrated everyone’sminds on what reallymattered
intheperiod.Noattempt hasbeenmadeto covereveryangleofevery
topic in everycountry. What thisvolume doesprovide isashort but
sharp and deep entry into the history ofEurope in the period in all
itsmost important aspects.
T.C.W.Blanning
Sidney SussexCollege
Cambridge
Contents
Listofcontributors x1
Introduction: the uncertain prospect 1
JosephBergin
1 The economy 1
R. C.Nash
Population and the economy 13
Agriculture and agrarian society 18
Industry andtrade 36
Conclusion 48
2 Society 50
ThomasMunck
Socialrank and socialmobility 52
Peasants,serfsand subservience 58
Urbanization and socialchange 62
Poverty,vagrancyand crime 66
Riotsand socialcontrol 70
Alternativeideologies:theworldturned upsidedown? 75
Conclusion 78
3 Politics 80
Anthony Upton
Thepolitical structure ofEuropein1600 80
Theproblem oftheReformation 82
Thepressures ofwar:Richelieuand Olivares 84
Protest,rebellion,revolution: amid-centurycrisis? 88
The Englishrevolution, 1640-60 90
Thesearchforpoliticalstability 94
Alternative roads 103
viii | CONTENTS
4 Warandinternational relations 112
DavidParrott
The Thirty YearsWar and European conflict to 1634 112
Earlyseventeenth-century warfareandthe
‘military revolution’ 117
Peacedeferred 120
Malplaquet and military change inEuropeafter 1660 125
The wars of French expansion, 1667—97 127
The Spanish succession 135
Conclusion 141
5 The ageofcuriosity 145
Laurence W.B.Brockliss
The Augustinian landscape 145
Curiosity,observation and measurement 152
Thedisenchantment ofnature 160
Thesun-centred and infinite universe 167
The ascent ofman 172
Towardtshe Enlightenment 180
6 Europe and the wider world 185
AnthonyPagden
Contexts 185
The meanings of‘discovery’ 188
Nature andits laws 191
Mare liberum? 194
Competing forempire 202
Therise ofslavery 204
Religionand civilization 209
Conclusion 215
Conclusion:the ancient and the modern 217
JosephBergin
Further reading 229
Chronology 233
CONTENTS ix
Maps 244
Europe in1600 244
Europe in1660 246
Europein 1715 248
Index 251
List of contributors
JOSEPHBERGiIsN Professor ofHistory at the University ofManches­
ter and aFellowofthe BritishAcademy.Hehaspublished extensively
on sixteenth-and seventeenth-century France,includingtwsotudies
of Richelieu: Cardinal Richelieu—powerand the pursuit of wealth
(1985),TheRiseofRichelieu(1991),and alarge-scale study ofFrance’s
bishops, TheMaking ofthe French Episcopate1589-1661(1996).Heis
currently working on the Frenchchurchin the ageofLouisXIV.
LAURENCEBROCKLISSisReader in ModernHistory at the University
of Oxford, and Fellow of Magdalen College. His most important
works include FrenchHigher Education in theSeventeenthand Eight­
eenth Centuries (1987)and, with Colin Jones, TheMedical World of
Early Modern France (1997).He has published extensively on early
modern medicine,philosophy andlearninggenerally,andiscurrently
workingon astudyofthe diffusionofenlightenmentideas insouth­
ern France.
THOMASMUNCisK Senior Lecturer in History at the University of
Glasgow.He is the author of The Peasantry and the Early Absolute
Monarchy in Denmark (1979),Seventeenth-Century Europe1598-1700
(1990) and most recently The Enlightenment, a comparative social
history(1999).Hehas published essayson enlightened reform in late
eighteenth-century Denmark andis preparing astudyofpublishing
andpublicopinion inlateeighteenth-century Copenhagen.
R. C. NASHis Lecturer in Economic History at the University of
Manchester.Hehasresearched and published on Englishtrade inthe
later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Hiscurrent work focuses
on financial and commercial links between Britain and its colonies,
especially the West Indies and the Carolinas, in the eighteenth
century.
ANTHONYPAGDENfo,rmerly Reader in Intellectual History and Fel­
low of King’sCollege,Cambridge, is now Harry C. BlackProfessor
of History at the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. He has
researched and published extensivelyon the cultural and intellectual
dimensions of Europe’s encounter with other societies since the
xii | LISTOFCONTRIBUTORS
sixteenth century, notably The Fall ofNatural Man (1982),Spanish
Imperialism and thePoliticalImagination (1989),European encounters
with theNew World(1992),and LordsofAllthe World(1995).
DAVIDPARROTisT aFellow of New College, Oxford. His research has
mainly focused on French political and military history, and heis
author of a forthcoming book, Richelieu’sArmy.He has published
essayson aristocratic politics in seventeenth-century France,and has
explored the diplomatic, dynastic and military history of northern
Italianstatesinthe sameperiod.
ANTHONYUPTONisProfessor Emeritus ofNordic History atthe Uni­
versity of StAndrews. He has written on Balticpolitics in the twen­
tieth century,but more recentlyhiswork hasbeen on earlymodern
Swedishhistory, especiallyin the later seventeenth century. He isthe
author of CharlesIXand SwedishAbsolutism(1998),and of ageneral
history of Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
(forthcoming).
Introduction: the
uncertain prospect
Joseph Bergin
Mostpeoplewitha smattering ofhistoricalknowledgecasntill read­
ily associate certain centuries with a series of events or a process—
usuallyifnot alwaysofavaguelypositivekind—whichthey feelhave
some underlying historical significance.Equally,other centuries fare
much less well in this competition for attention. So the sixteenth
century is instinctively yoked to the Protestant Reformation, the
eighteenth to the Enlightenment, sinceboth phenomena loom large
inmostexplanationsofhowthemodern worldtooktheshapeit did.
Butwhat, one may ask,about the century in between, separating or
connecting—depending on one’s point of view—these two great
‘peaks’of early modern history? In the Anglo-Saxon world alteast,
seventeenth-century Europe’splaceinhistoricalmemoryis insecure,
doubtless because of the absence of any defining characteristic
resemblingtheReformation ortheEnlightenment. Relativelyfewhis­
torical surveys of the century have succeeded in finding a title that
encapsulates awidely-shared viewofthe century’s essence.Interest­
ingly,this lackofan overarching‘identity’ applicableto seventeenth­
century Europeas awholecoincideswith theuseindifferentparts of
thecontinentof avarietyofcaptionswithwhictho labelthecentury,
inwhole or in part. Their veryproliferation, asmuch astheir diver­
sity of meaning, may be one reason whiyt is so difficult to clearly
identify the century for Europe as a whole! A fewexamples should
sufficeto make the point. Sweden’s‘ageof greatness’ undoubtedly
spanned the entire seventeenth century,with the Dutch ‘goldenage’
not far behind. The Spanish siglo de oro, as the tag suggests, also