Questions on The Sorrows of Young Werther

Some background: Sorrows was written fifty years after Persian Letters, just before the American Revolution, and it's set in the world of small German states, each centering on a principal city. These states shared language, culture, and many social ties, but Germany would only become a unified nation in the nineteenth century. Werther and his friends are well-off and well-educated but not noble; most of them work for these small governments, moving among the courtiers and advisers who surround the princes. Except for the unhappy ending, the story loosely corresponds to Goethe's own; unlike Werther, he would go on to become one of the most famous intellectuals of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Europe. Sorrows itself was an enormous hit when it first appeared; the hero's experiences apparently resonated for many young Europeans.

In thinking about the novel, start with its format. Like Persian Letters, Sorrows is an epistolary novel, so think about the similarities and differences in their organization and impact. Persian Letters gives us multiple voices and divergent truths; how many voices do we hear in Sorrows, and what are they like? Then think about the plot. What does Werther do, and what gets done to him? The story ends with Werther in complete despair: why? What's his problem?

Those questions point to the problem of emotions in the novel's development-- how important are they? What kinds of emotions, and how intense? Do we hear of anything comparable in Persian Letters? Both novels talk about love—but do they describe it in the same terms? We also hear a lot about friendship in Sorrows; how is it described, and how important is it? More broadly, what assumptions does the author seem to make about human psychology? How does Goethe see emotions, drives, reason, and will fitting together?

We also hear a lot in Sorrows about nature. How important is it in the letters, and what effects does it have on the characters? What ideas about nature come up in the novel? What makes it such a big deal? How does talk about nature fit with what the novel shows us of social and political interactions in Werther's social circles? What's the relationship between social organization and nature, as the novel presents it?

In class we've discussed the radical implications of Persian Letters and other Enlightenment texts. Are there radical implications in Sorrows? Namely? Is it a more or less radical book than Persian Letters? Think about "radicalism" in broad terms: that is, think both about what the novel has to say about politics and what it says about personal relations. To what extent does Werther seem like a modern man, with an emotional make-up that we might recognize?

Reading The Persian Letters

The Persian Letters goes in multiple directions; it's a book that combines philosophy, comedy, social observation, and straight narrative. As with our other readings, the first step in making sense of all this is to get a handle on the story: who are the main characters, and what are they like? What do they do, and what gets done to them? Note the wide range of characters we encounter— why does Montesquieu include so many of them? The names don't matter very much, but get a sense of what social types Montesquieu has included.

The next step is to think about connections between themes we've encountered earlier in the course and what's going on in the novel. First, we've talked about the rise of the big city and big city pleasures: do we see signs of those social processes in The Persian Letters? Note that the characters visit a café, typical of the urban amenities that emerged in the later seventeenth century—what's it like? In class we discussed the role that Montesquieu sees money playing in French society; what else do we hear about money and the marketplace? What kinds of problems do they seem to pose?

In the same way, Montesquieu has a lot to say about politics, especially about monarchy; what's his take? In class we discussed his portrait of Louis XIV; do we get other accounts of how power works and what problems it creates? Note that Usbek's authority over his slaves and wives parallels that of some kings; what position does Montesquieu take on that authority?

And Montesquieu takes up a third big them we've discussed, that of race, slavery, and empire. What position does he seem to hold on these questions? Was he a racist, insofar as we can judge from his book? In one of the letters (#64, pp. 130-134), an African slave tells his story; how is it presented? More generally, how much does Montesquieu seem to value freedom? Does freedom make a society stronger or weaker, in his opinion?

A fourth connected theme: that of science. At a few points, Montesquieu makes reference to the idea of an infinite universe; what implications does he draw from that idea? He also talks (#97, pages 180-182; #105-106, pages 192-196) about the benefits the west has drawn from science; what are they, and how enthusiastic is Montesquieu about them?

Think about the place of sex and other physical pleasures in this book—an awfully big place, considering that it's a work of philosophy. Why is it there? Do women enjoy these sides of life as much as men? How important are they to a good life, according to Montesquieu? What would be an alternative view? That is, what other moral assessments does the book consider and reject?

Finally, how radical a book is this-- both for its own times and for ours? Is there anything here that would seem shocking if published in 2010? Consider three episodes in particular: the tale of Apheridon and Astarte (letter 67, pages 136ff); the tale of Anaïs and Ibrahim (letter 141, pages 248ff); and the book's conclusion. I've said in class that the Enlightenment included a view of human nature; what views are implied by those stories?

Reading Margaret jacob, The Scientific Revolution, 1-119

What follows is meant to orient your reading of Margaret Jacob's book The Scientific Revolution. Start by considering the question that we discussed Friday in class: what makes this series of changes a revolution? Consider especially Jacob's own answers to this question. As we discussed, it's a question about which historians differ, and Jacob is taking a strong position in an ongoing intellectual debate; she believes strongly that this was a genuine revolution—partly because of the time frame, partly because of the range of ideas that were transformed. Get a command of the details of her argument: what time frame is she talking about, and what intellectual changes does she mention? Jacob's introduction also discusses the social spin-offs of changing ideas about science. What were some of these? How direct were linkages among science, technology, and business during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries? What hopes for such spin-offs were expressed by seventeenth-century writers? Consider in this regard the selections from Bacon and Descartes.

Then consider relationships between science and religion during this period. As we know from our own society, that relationship can be complex, in some instances conflictual. In what ways did Christian beliefs encourage scientific development in the early modern period? Consider the examples of Copernicus and Bacon in this regard. What were the sore points between Christianity and science? Examine the selection from Christian Huygens with this question in mind. What challenges to Christian belief had emerged by the time Huygens wrote, at the end of the seventeenth century? What steps did Christian churches take toward scientific innovation, and how reasonable were these?

Any dramatic intellectual change like the scientific revolution raises questions of explanation: why did ideas change, and why did the changes occur when and where they did? What answers does Jacob offer in her introduction? Think as well about some of the particular examples included in the documents she presents. What sense do we get about how Copernicus, Descartes, Galileo, and Boyle came to their revolutionary ideas? To what extent were these new ideas the result of new instruments and discoveries? To what extent were they instead the result of new theorizing?

Jacob speaks of "the mechanical philosophy" that came to prominence during the seventeenth century. What does she mean, and what ideas were included in that philosophy? Why was this such an important mode of thought?

Some questions on Peabody and Grinberg, Slavery, Freedom, and the Law in the Atlantic World (pages 1-80, 102-121, 134-146)

This assignment touches on several issues that we've been considering: the functioning of the global commercial networks that (as we've seen) had emerged by around 1700; the economic significance of European empires; the human costs of Europe's eighteenth-century prosperity; and the attitudes of European political leaders toward economic life. As in our other readings, the assignment presents lots of details about how these broad patterns played out—but keep in mind that our main purpose is to understand the broad patterns themselves.

Some specific questions to help you do so—

1) The editors speak of the "Atlantic World" that had developed by 1700. What made the Atlantic region a single "world," and what was that world like? Why didn't it count as a world in earlier centuries? How many people did it involve, and what sorts of people were they? The editors supply an especially vivid picture of the French colony of Saint Domingue, today Haiti; what was it like in the eighteenth century?

2) The editors also underline the complexities of slaves' experiences during the eighteenth century. What were some of those complexities? How widely did slaves' lives vary, and why? Consider such determinants as work conditions, time, and geography.

3) How many free persons of color were there in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world, and what roles did they play? How had they acquired their freedom? How did they live as free people, and what social roles did they play?

4) Slavery and racism overlapped during long stretches of European and American history, but the overlap was more complicated than we might expect. Think about how these two institutions affected each other. Notice that in some situation racism became more important when slavery declined; why?

5) The first document in the assignment is a law code issued by Louis XIV dealing with slavery and race in French-controlled territories. How does it fit with other aspects we've seen of Louis XIV's government?

6) The assignment also includes French and British legal decisions from the later eighteenth century concerning slavery and race. What decisions did the courts come to, and what values seem to underlie them? How did eighteenth-century European lawyers view race and slavery? What terminology did they use, and what problems did they come up against in thinking about these issues?

Representing power, part 2

No European leader had a clearer awareness of the political impact of cultural choices than Louis XIV. Louis self-consciously used art, architecture, music, and literature to advance his political programs. This sponsorship of the arts can be described as a propaganda effort, but it was propaganda of a sophisticated, multi-layered kind. Artists and others emphasized the king's power, conveying the message that the king was in control of the country and ready to deal with disorder. But the message was also about the monarchy's creative powers, its concern for improving society and its capacity to do so. Louis's artists sought to show that the monarchy rested on more than mere force; rather, they wanted to show that the king was the real center of French society as a whole.

Here are three images of Louis. The first shows him as a young man, at the center of the picture, surrounded by members of the Royal Academy of Sciences, at the opening of a new royal observatory. The painting shows a king committed to advancing learning and scientific progress, one who plays a personal role in these efforts, meeting with scientists and even evaluating their efforts.


The second is a well-known portrait of Louis as an old man, standing before the throne, dressed in his royal robes, holding the royal scepter, with his crown next to him. The portrait suggests the magnificence of monarchy, but it also suggests the king's virile forcefulness even in old age—note the grace with which he wears his high-healed shoes, the shapely legs that he's showing off, and the enormous sword that he wears.


Third, an equestrian statue of Louis set in the middle of a plaza in Paris, the circular Place des Victoires. Again, it's an artistic creation with several messages: it makes the king a presence in the midst of a city that he rarely visited; it shows his force and valor, as a man mastering a spirited horse; it connects him to the great men of ancient Rome, where equestrian statues were much favored; and the architecture of the plaza itself (built during his lifetime and with his authorization) suggests order, inventiveness, and beauty. The viewer is left to contemplate the king's capacity to reconcile apparent opposites: warrior vigor with order, ancient Rome with modernity.


Finally, some photos of Versailles, the palace that Louis moved to in 1682. The architecture is meant to convey the greatness of the monarch, of course—the immense resources that he commands, the excellence of his taste, the great artists and workers that he can command. But (like the Place des Victoires) the architecture also conveys a mix of order and creativity. Versailles shows the king as a source not just of order, but also of beauty.





(Source: Wikimedia.)

Study questions on Parker, 82-145, and de Vries, 113-146

Between 1500 and 1800, Europeans acquired significant power over numerous other parts of the world: the Americas, large parts of India, and smaller areas of east Asia came under their direct control, and they established trading stations in Africa and other parts of Asia. The key question is, how did this happen? What forces underlay European imperial successes? This week's assignments in Parker and de Vries are meant to supply some answers.

The large question of European success can be subdivided into some smaller ones. First, what impelled the Europeans to undertake such difficult, expensive ventures? Why were they willing to undertake the enormous risks that long-distance exploration and commerce posed? And why were the successful when they got to these far-off places? Why were they able to defeat long-established and powerful empires?

Parker of course is especially concerned with this last question: he asks what Europe's military revolution meant for its struggles with other societies, in the Americas and in Asia. What answers does he come up with? He's particularly interested in the capacity of other societies to adapt to European military techniques; consider the examples that he gives of both successes and failures in resisting European intrusions.

Finally, consider what de Vries has to say about the profitability of international trade during the seventeenth century. How did Dutch trade with the East Indies compare in this respect with its trade in the Baltic region of Europe?

Keep in mind what's in the background of these discussions. It's the question of imperialism's contribution to Europe's eventual industrial revolution and economic take-off: did Europe become rich through its exploitation of other continents and their peoples? Or did European wealth come mainly from internal developments, in social relations and technological innovations? Put somewhat differently: is imperialism an essential or an incidental part of the European story?

Representations of power in seventeenth-century Europe (part 1)

In the seventeenth century, art and power enjoyed a symbiotic relationship. Political leaders understood the emotional impact that painting and architecture might have on their subjects, and they generously sponsored leading artists of the day. Meanwhile, artists had few alternatives but to seek the patronage of the great. Except in the Low Countries (in the arts as in so much else Europe's most modern society), the public market for art was limited; their best hope for financial success was to paint for kings, aristocrats, and the church. As we saw in the case of Spain, that situation did not mean artistic conservatism. All across Europe, ruling groups had a taste for sophisticated, innovative art.

These are some pictures of leading political figures in seventeenth-century England and France, whose doings we've been following over the last couple of weeks. From England, the two great antagonists of the English Revolution, king Charles I and the parliamentary leader Oliver Cromwell. (Though an ineffectual king, Charles was a brilliant patron of the arts; the portrait is by the Flemish artist Anthony van Dyck, from whom Charles purchased a number of paintings.)




Finally, some leading characters from France. First, our friend Cardinal Richelieu, here presented in full the grandeur of his ecclesiastical robes by the French painter Philippe de Champaigne:




Then the king whom he served, Louis XIII, here presented by the same artist in armor-- appropriately, since Louis was the last French king who regularly led his troops in battle.




(Source for all reproductions: Wikimedia, under a Creative Commons License.)

Still more study questions

Louis XIV and Absolutism is a different kind of book from any we've read so far: it's a collection of documents, selected and organized by a contemporary American historian of France, and designed for classes like ours. There's less argument and interpretation than in the other books we've read, and more effort to orient students who are unfamiliar with the period.

In reading, start by getting a handle on the chronology: how does the reign of Louis XIV fit with the events we encountered in Richelieu and Olivares? and how does it fit with the social changes we learned about in The Economy of Europe? The details don't matter, but construct for yourself a rough time-line of the seventeenth century.

Then think about the problems on which Beik focuses. In introducing the various documents, he repeatedly emphasizes the successes of Louis's government in confronting the challenges posed by various groups in French society. What were some of those challenges, and what social groups were especially dangerous? How did these challenges manifest themselves? Give special thought to the place of rebellion in seventeenth-century French life—before Louis's birth (as discussed in Richelieu and Olivares, during his childhood, and after he assumed personal control of the government. (Louis himself described the Fronde as an important influence on his later policies: get a rough idea of what that movement was and why it mattered.)

Third, think more broadly about Louis's efforts to mold French society. He and his minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert viewed themselves as in some ways modernizers, concerned with improving France's economy and society. How did they approach this task? What specific measures did they undertake? What values and assumptions guided their actions?

Fourth, give some thought to court life during Louis's rule. What was it like? What political functions did the court serve? In what ways did it contribute to Louis's political plans?

Finally, think comparatively. We've explored the workings of French and Spanish governments during the first half of the seventeenth century—how different were things during the second half? How similar/different were Louis XIV's objectives to/from Richelieu's? His techniques of government? Was Louis more or less successful than Richelieu?

Scenes from a golden age (cont'd)

Here are two more examples of the cultural action going on in seventeenth-century Spain—and of the radical innovations that this society encouraged, despite its apparent rigidities. They're paintings by El Greco, "The Greek"—his real name was Doménikos Theotokópoulos. El Greco grew up on the island of Crete, worked for a time in Italy, then settled in the small city of Toledo, in central Spain, producing works for the church and nearby aristocrats; he died in 1614. As a favorite of churchmen and aristocrats, he was an artist who enjoyed serious financial support from society's most tradition-minded elements. Those elements are visible in his pictures, which often show religious scenes and aristocratic figures.

(Burial of the Count of Orgaz, ca. 1588; source, Wikimedia Commons)

But the pictures themselves are anything but conservative. Although scholars note continuities with earlier forms, especially with icons of the Greek Orthodox Church, the main impression the pictures convey is of astonishing modernity. El Greco isn't trying for photographic reproduction of reality, but rather to convey his own interpretation of it, in the manner of nineteenth- and twentieth-century artists like van Gogh and Picasso. At the very least, he makes the point that the reality we see is unstable and subject to distortion, both from our own specific perceptions and from larger forces, natural and super-natural alike. He also makes the point that the artist is not bound by past conventions, but rather is free to create new visions of the world.

(View of Toledo, ca. 1600, now at the Metropolitan Museum in New York; source, Wikimedia Commons)

And that's the larger point: in early modern Europe, innovation and conservatism often allied, in ways that repeatedly surprise us.

Scenes from a golden age

Standard ideas about seventeenth-century Spain tend to focus on troubles: military defeats, economic backwardness, social rigidity, religious uniformity. These were part of the reality, but only part. Spanish culture was also one of the most brilliant in seventeenth-century Europe. Spanish painters and writers produced work that was inventive and in many ways astonishingly modern—and their work enjoyed strong support from the crown and the great aristocracy, groups from which cultural conservatism might have been expected.

The picture below is one of the greatest examples of this cultural flowering: Las Meninas (The Maids of Honor), from 1656, by the court painter Diego Velázquez. (Elliott's Richelieu and Olivares reproduces several other examples of his work, since he served as the king's official painter during Olivares's time in power.)

(source: Wikimedia Commons)

The picture shows a scene in the royal palace: Velazques himself appears at the left, holding his brush and palette; at the center, looking right at us, is the king's daughter, with her two companions, richly dressed but subservient to her; a little boy plays with a pet dog, and a dwarf (still a popular entertainment at seventeenth-century courts) is also present; behind them are a nun and a priest, and a courtier (dressed in a standard aristocratic outfit of the era) looks at the scene through an open door.

But the story of the painting plays out elsewhere in the picture, with the two characters—a man and a woman—whom we see straight ahead of us. Since a series of paintings hangs around the room, we may at first think that we're seeing a portrait. In fact it's a mirror, and the figures are the king and queen. The scene, it turns out, is a portrait of portrait painting. The king and queen are posing for their portrait, and they're standing right in the spot that we the viewers occupy; that's why six of the characters in the painting are staring at us, with a variety of expressions—the princess with the look of a beloved, perhaps spoiled daughter, others with looks of respect or concern, Velazquez himself with a look that seems understanding, almost compassionate.

So the picture actually explores ideas about identity, and it does so with a modern sense that who we are is not fixed and simple, but rather an unstable construct. It puts us, ordinary viewers, in the place of the king and queen: for a moment we experience what it's like to be in their shoes, with all eyes turning toward us and with global responsibilities waiting when the portrait session is over. Yet it's also a self-portrait of the artist and a depiction of the process of artistic creation: it forces us to think about how images are constructed, whether by paint or by the mirror itself. All of this takes some time to sort out, and that's yet another message of the painting. In a world of mirrors, painted images, and complex social relations, reality isn't self-evident.

Study questions on J. H. Elliott, Richelieu and Olivares, 1-85, 113-172

Yet again, this is a book aimed at professional historians, rather than at the general public. So an important aspect of your task as a reader is to think about the questions that Elliott poses and the answers that he comes up with. Remember that good history isn't just retelling the details of what happened in the past; it's making sense of the past, understanding how and why things played out as they did, and defining what changed as a result.

Here the starting point is to develop for yourself thumb-nail sketches of the two main characters. Who were Richelieu and Olivares? What were their social and cultural backgrounds? What training did they have for power politics? What was the basis of their power, and how did they hang on to it? After all, neither was a king or elected official; how did they come to play such big roles?

Then think about the outcomes. After a long struggle, Richelieu won and Olivares lost, raising a series of further questions: What exactly was this long struggle? What was being fought over, and what were the methods of the struggle? What events marked the ultimate triumph/defeat?

This leads to one of Elliott's basic claims (spoiler alert...), that Richelieu won by a very narrow margin, and that France rather than Spain might well have failed first. Think about this argument: what steps does it involve, and how does Elliott back it up? One argument that he makes centers on the similar problems and challenges that all seventeenth-century governments faced. What were these?

We've discussed at length the costs of early modern warfare, as a by-product of the military revolution. How important were these costs for France and Spain? What kinds of choices did they require? How difficult was it for these states to sustain their military efforts? What had to be sacrificed in doing so?

Finally, think about these two men as personalities. What was their emotional make-up? What kinds of religious commitments did they display, and what were the limits on their piety? What were their personal lives like? How similar to us do they seem?

Toward a new kind of society

The images here illustrate the social transformations going on in some corners of seventeenth-century Europe—notably in the Dutch Republic and Britain, the primary beneficiaries of the growing importance of the Atlantic to Europe's economy. As the wealthiest, most innovative society in Europe, the Dutch Republic experienced an explosion of artistic production. One result for historians is excellent documentation of daily life there. The painting below (it depicts a middle-class home in the mid-seventeenth century) shows how comfortable that life was. Note the size and number of the glass windows, the tiled floor, and especially the landscape painting on the wall; this economy generated enough discretionary income to sustain a large art market. The four main figures are nicely but not richly dressed, and they suggest some of the other purchasing choices available in this period: one man smokes, another drinks from an elegant wine glass, and the woman is playing cards with one of the men. (Manufacturing playing cards was a big business in the seventeenth century, an offshoot of the printing and paper technologies that had developed over the previous century.)


(From Wikimedia Commons, under a creative commons license.)

The second picture shows a similar scene: a comfortable interior, with a picture above the mantel, a musical instrument hanging on the bed, and even a pet cat (note that the cat has a collar with a bell). The couple is playing chess, a sign of the wife's sophistication, and in fact she seems to be winning.


(From the The Yorck Project. The compilation copyright is held by Zenodot Verlagsgesellschaft mbH and licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.)

The third picture makes the same point, by showing a young woman engrossed in writing: women were highly literate in this society, and it did not seem threatening to display their command of writing. In this picture as in the previouos one, a Persian rug has been used as a table covering—a sign not only of wealth, but also of awareness of the world beyond Europe.


(The Yorck Project: 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei. DVD-ROM, 2002. ISBN 3936122202. Distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH.)

Finally, a diagram of the Newcomen steam engine, the first commercially viable mineral-based energy source. These were used in the coal mines of northern England from the early eighteenth century; though inefficient, they worked well enough that by 1750 they were being used elsewhere in Europe and in the Americas.


(From Wikimedia Commons.)

And still more study questions: Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution, pp. 1-81

As with all historical writing, the first question to ask is about genre: what kind of book is this? What's the intended audience? To what extent does it present specialized research? To what extent is it a broader reflection on existing research?

The second step is to think about argument. Parker develops a central idea through the book, a claim about what changed in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European warfare and about what change meant for other aspects of European life. (That's true of most historical writing beyond the textbook level.) How would you sum up that argument, in two or three sentencs? Think also about Parker's evidence: how does he back up his argument?

Then think about some more specific questions:

1) How important was war in early modern Europe? How many wars were there, and why were they fought? How significant were the issues that they decided? How did contemporaries view war? You don't need to worry about the details of specific wars and treaties, but try to get a sense of the main power struggles; who were the great-power players?

2) The phrase "military revolution" refers to changes over the early modern period in how wars were fought. What were the most important of those changes? Parker argues that the military revolution started with the introduction of gunpowder technology, but that many other changes were involved; what were these? Why should these specific changes constitute a revolution? Think especially about what happened to army sizes, fortifications, and training.

3) Parker argues that the military revolution affected the non-military sides of government, as well as the army. Why and how? How deeply were governments changed by the impact of war? Consider especially such matters as taxation and bureaucratic organization.

4) What was military life like in the early modern period? How large were armies, how well disciplined and trained? What sort of people wound up in them? We saw that cavalry played a big role in medieval warfare—what did the military revolution do to mounted warfare? More generally, what did it mean for the way battles unfolded in the early modern period?

5) Parker wants us to think about contemporary parallels to the changes he describes; we also live in a time of changing military technology. Do contemporary changes in warmaking technology constitute another military revolution? Do these changes have effects similar to what Parker describes?

Homeownership

Like their clothing, nobles' houses became more expensive in the early modern period. Fashion increasingly required comfort and complicated designs, which would display the owner's sophistication. The cost could be enormous, and even wealthy noble families often got themselves into financial trouble with their building projects.

As illustration of this process of change, here are three country houses, all from France. The first is from the mid-sixteenth century, and was the family home of the nobleman-poet Pierre Ronsard. It's a beautiful house, elegantly designed, but solid and sensible rather than fancy-- a glorified farm-house rather than a wannabe palace. (The tower in the middle is strictly practical; it houses the staircase.)


The second example comes from the early seventeenth century, and it counts as a real chateau (the French word literally means castle, but can refer to any fancy country home); it's much bigger than Ronsard's house, with towers at each corner. But the look remains very practical, with limited exterior decoration; note how plain the window frames are. This house could be defended in case of armed conflict, one reason that the windows are so small; glass was also expensive, another reason to limit the number and size of the windows.


Finally, a chateau from the mid-seventeenth century, meant to be a real architectural statement. The owner, so the building would have told seventeenth-century visitors, had both the money and the taste for an elegant design. There are lots of windows, absolute symetry, and allusions to Rome in the arches along the ground floor; this is neither a farmhouse nor a military outpost, rather a site for elegant living. The building also conveys messages about order and control; its elements correspond perfectly to one another—for instance, windows on the ground floor line up exactly with those on the second and third floors.

Looking aristocratic

The images that follow are meant to illustrate our discussion of what happened to Europe's nobles during the seventeenth century. The basic pattern is simple: battlefield prowess became less central to nobles' self-definition, while culture, wealth, and a refined mode of living became more important. As we've discussed, that could be a difficult transition for many nobles, especially those without deep financial resources, and not all of them succeeded in it. A lot of spending power is on display in the portraits here.

First a characteristic scene from the late Middle Ages, portraying a mid-fifteenth-century Italian battle. Note that this is an all-cavalry scene; the horsemen carry enormous lances, and wear heavy-duty armor.

(The reproduction is part of a collection of reproductions compiled by The Yorck Project. The compilation copyright is held by Zenodot Verlagsgesellschaft mbH and licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.)

Nobles continued to fight in later centuries, but there was growing emphasis on looking educated and graceful. The young man portrayed here (from mid-sixteenth-century Italy) holds a book, and the portrait emphasizes his gracefulness—in the overall pose, and in such details as his hands, with a ring on one finger. Despite the dark color, the clothing is very fancy: bows on his hat, and on his coat buttons, complicated stitching, and a series of cuts designed to show off the lining.

(Image from Wikimedia, under a Creative Commons licence.)

This sketch of an early seventeenth-century French nobleman makes the same point; every item in this look required careful and expensive tending—the hair, the beard, the ruff around the neck. The look seems deliberately to blur gender boundaries, but this young man in fact was one of the most violent in seventeenth-century Paris; he fought in the royal army, and in about a dozen private duels, before the king finally had him decapitated.

(Image from Wikimedia, under a Creative Commons licence.)

Women's dress of course was even more expensive. These two examples come from the mid-seventeenth century. The one (a portrait by the Flemish artist Anthony van Dyck) shows the richness of the fabrics that might be used; the other (a portrait of the French writer Madame de Sévigné) shows a more casual look, but one that cost plenty of money— note the lace and gauze, the pearl buttons on the arms and the jewels buttoning the front. As in the portrait of the young man above, a lot is made of the young woman's hand. Here and in the two following portraits, the message is, it's not just about clothing; these people have been trained to carry themselves well.

(The reproduction is part of a collection of reproductions compiled by The Yorck Project. The compilation copyright is held by Zenodot Verlagsgesellschaft mbH and licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.)

(Image from Wikimedia, under a Creative Commons licence.)

The new civil servants who became so prominent after 1500 had a very different look. The portrait shows the French finance minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert, wearing the black robes that marked him as an official. The look is dignified, restrained, non-flashy; but his shirt underneath is abundantly trimmed with lace, making the point that he too has money to spend on his clothing.

(Image from Wikimedia, under a Creative Commons licence.)

More study questions

These are some questions to think about as you read the second assignment (pp. 147-254) in Jan de Vries's The Economy of Europe in an Age of Crisis. The main question to keep in mind is simple: by 1750, Europe was close to industrialization and broader economic modernity—what had changed to produce that result? What are de Vries's answers to that question? What answers does he reject or downplay?

Some more specific questions:

1) What happened to European cities during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries? How big did the biggest become? What were the primary engines of economic growth? Note especially p. 154, where de Vries points out that "urban Europeans did not become relatively more numerous;" if city population remained a constant percentage of the total, what's the big deal about urbanization? What did change?

2) How did the texture of city life change? What new pleasures and experiences did it offer? What new attitudes did it encourage or require?

3) De Vries describes the development of European colonies and international trade after 1600: how many countries got into these acts? What sort of colonies did they set up, and what were the main commodities being traded?

4) How important were these commercial empires, according to de Vries? He presents reasons for viewing these empires as less important than we might imagine: how does this argument work? (More or less—don't worry too much about the details.) He suggests that the key questions concern the home societies, rather than the overseas empires that they controlled—why?

5) In Chapter 6, de Vries traces the changing demand for goods during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. What changed? Consider especially the changing demands of ordinary people of ordinary people for consumer items. How much did this form of demand change between 1600 and 1750, and why? How is it that peasants and other relatively poor people could afford more goods in 1750 than a century earlier?

6) What impact did government action have on economic development during these years? Was the impact good or bad, big or small? "Mercantilism" is a standard term for early modern governmental economic regulation; try to get a sense for what the term meant and how well its policies worked.

Cityscapes

These are images of early modern cities, starting with two small German cities in around 1700. Note the walls around each, and how sharply they divided city from countryside; cities did not have the rings of suburbs that we're accustomed to today. As we discussed in class, city walls mattered. Europe usually had wars going throughout our period, and almost all cities (set as they were along key lines of transportation) had military as well as economic significance. After European armies started using artillery, a little before 1500, city walls had to be carefully engineered—they had be thick enough to resist bombardment, and they had to include angles allowing defenders to fire on attackers. The corollary to military effectiveness was population density: rebuilding city walls was very expensive, so cities grew inward rather than outward, filling in as many open spaces as possible. The walls had another function, as a mechanism of urban policing. The authorities could control movement in and out of their cities (usually the gates were closed at night), adding to contemporaries' belief that cities were safety zones in a frequently violent world.




Even much bigger cities were carefully fortified. The map shows Paris in 1615, when it was biggest city in Europe. Again, fields started right outside the city gates, but in this case population pressure did produce in suburbanization; notice the development shown in the upper right of the map. Notice also the prominence of the city's public buildings, true in any early modern city, but especially in great capitals like Paris. These included churches (note the cathedral complex on the island in the middle of the city); law courts (taking up the other end of the island); and the immense royal palace complex near the river, at the bottom of the map (the Louvre and Tuilleries palaces).


A great deal of money went into these public buildings; they were meant to display the grandeur of the city itself and of its governing institutions. Here's a nineteenth-century drawing of the main courthouse in Rouen, a French provincial city (the building was constructed early in the sixteenth century, in the "flamboyant gothic" style of the late Middle Ages).



Finally, three street scenes from the same city, conveying a sense of what most seventeenth-century city houses would have been like: three or four stories high, built of wood and plaster, with shops on the ground floor. Because space was at a premium and wheeled traffic infrequent, streets tended to be narrow; that would begin to change after 1600.

Villagers

In 1600 the vast majority of Europeans lived in the countryside, in small villages; two centuries later, the population was still mainly rural, though by a smaller majority. The standard term for early modern country-dwellers is "peasants;" it's the word de Vries uses, and I'll use it often in class. But it's a complicated concept, with multiple implications that not all historians accept. Literally, peasant just means someone who lives in the countryside (from the French word pays. In addition, though, the term implies a series of attitudes and social relationships: a commitment to traditional ways of doing things, strong attachments to family and community, some financial obligations to landlords and other outsiders.

All this implies a distinction between peasants and modern farmers, whose economic decisions are based on calculation of profit and loss, rather than tradition. Many historians say that English farmers ceased to be peasants in the seventeenth century, because they became more market oriented and individualistic. Other historians go farther, and say that no early modern farmers count as peasants in the usual sense of the word. Even centuries ago, these historians argue, all farmers had to think carefully about their economic choices-- their survival depended on doing so.

European artists found peasants fascinating, so we have some powerful images of them. Here's a harvest scene, by the Dutch-Belgian artist Pieter Brueghel, from the late sixteenth century:
Note how many workers it took to cut and bind the grain; note also that women worked alongside men-- the men are shown cutting the grain, the women binding it into sheaves.

Another well-known Brueghel work shows a village wedding:
It's a scene of abundance and comfort (note the jugs of wine on the left), which also suggests the intensity of village life; people lived and worked close together, and socializing was expected to reflect that.

The social imagery is more complicated in the next two pictures, both by the French painter Louis Le Nain, from 1642:



Again, there are signs of abundance: there's wine, rather elegant glassware, music (note the boy holding a violin), and a pet dog in the lower left; most of those depicted are wearing solid shoes and quality clothing. But the mood is somber, and there's a poor man on the right, without shoes and not drinking. Poverty is presented here as a village reality.

This is another picture by the same artist, with some similar themes: there are signs of comfort, but also a somber mood-- there's wine, but the only food on the table is bread:



One reason for the intense collective life of early modern villages was the organization of rural space: most villagers lived close together, rather than in the isolated farms we're familiar with in North America. The map (of a village in France) below shows the result: fields were spread out around the village, divided into narrow strips of land. The map shows dozens of such strips, owned by small landowners. Just to get to their own fields, villagers had to cross paths with one another, and many villages organized some collective forms of labor to deal with this situation.


The last picture shows an estate in Germany, belonging to a monastery:


This is the kind of agricultural enterprise that became much more common in seventeenth-century Europe: consolidated property ownership combined with heavy capital investment (note the size of the farm buildings toward the bottom of the picture). One of de Vries's central arguments is that this organization of the countryside opened new possibilities for Europe's economy. With better equipment and consolidated fields, farms like this could produce more, and they were more oriented to the market than smaller farms.

More on reading history: historians and their documents

Historical knowledge is a complex construction. Some of the facts of history are straightforward—no reasonable person doubts that the Battle of Waterloo actually took place, or that Napoleon lost. But the interesting facts are more complicated. even about something as straightforward as a battle, and especially about the kinds of issues that Jan de Vries considers in The Economy of Europe: how people lived, whether they were getting richer or poorer, what lay behind economic development, why some places advanced and others declined. When we try to answer questions like those, we have to assemble interpretations. Historical interpretation like de Vries's comes partly from the historian's own thinking, his/her ideas about how the world works and how people behave. But it also comes from documents, the materials that people in the past created and left behind for us to examine.

By the time our course starts, in 1600, Europeans were actually churning out a lot of documents about their private lives. Just as we do today, they had to use lawyers and contracts for a lot of the ordinary business of life: dividing up an inheritance, buying, selling, and renting property, giving money to their kids. They also used writing for more personal purposes, for letters, diaries, and memoirs. A book like The Economy of Europe is based on these kinds of documents, whether directly (on topics that de Vries himself has researched) or indirectly (based on the research of others, which he has summarized).

There are millions of pages of these materials, and historians will probably never read all of them; certainly we're nowhere close at this point. That's one reason why there are debates among historians: new materials keep being discovered, and these force us to rethink problems we thought were settled.

Here are some photos of documents from early seventeenth-century France, to give you a sense of what a historian like de Vries is working with. One is an agreement between a wealthy mother and her adult daughter about an inheritance; it lists the goods in the family's Paris mansion. Notice how elegantly both women sign the document (the other signature is by the family's lawyer).



This is the deathbed testament of another woman from the same family, from 1646:



The next is a page from a rental agreement between a landowner and a rich tenant farmer, in southwest France.


These documents were written on paper, standard procedure in the early seventeenth century; because paper was then made entirely out of rags, it was very high quality and has lasted beautifully. But as late as 1550, documents like these were written on parchment, made from sheepskin and much more expensive than paper, like the contract below (it deals with the rental of a big estate):



Notice how much more careful the handwriting is; only a professional could produce handwriting like this, and it would have taken him a lot of time to do so. As written documents became more commonplace, handwriting became faster and less formal, and more people produced it. Because paper was much cheaper than parchment, written documents were less of a major production and much more widely used.

Documents like these were drawn up by notaries, legal specialists akin to our business lawyers; they knew what formalities and terminology had to be used if an agreement was to be valid. Here are a couple of pictures of notaries at work in their offices, one from Germany in the later sixteenth century, the other from Holland in the later seventeenth. There would have been offices like these in every European city, and a big city like Paris had dozens; even many villages had notaries. As the images make clear, business was booming!

Wikimedia Commons under a creative commons licence)

Wikimedia Commons under a creative commons licence)

Reading history

Like everyone else, historians write with specific audiences in mind. Some books are aimed at the general public, some at small groups of specialists; some are textbooks meant just for the classroom, while others try to sort out big problems in ways that will both interest specialists and make sense to those who don't know much about the field. So when reading a work of history, the starting point has to be a question: what kind of book are you dealing with? Knowing which category a book fits into will help you understand what information you can get from it and what you should look for as you read.

Nothing we're reading in this course counts as a textbook, that is, a book that lays out the basics, supplying a simplified narrative of events. Instead, the first three books we're reading are attempts by prominent historians to make sense of some big questions about early modern life. We're starting with the most basic question of them all, how did Europeans keep themselves alive in this period, and what was their life like? (In the coming weeks, we'll move on to books dealing at a similar level with two other basic aspects of early modern life, war and government.) There will be lots of details in all three of these books. But in all of them the details are really secondary to bigger questions, of the kind that we'd ask about any society, including our own. In doing the reading, try not to get bogged down in the details. Instead, ask yourself what matters for a big-picture understanding of this society.

To help in that effort, I'll be posting questions here about each of the readings; they're meant to indicate what I believe matters in the books, as opposed to the details, and they'll form the basis for our class discussions.

1) De Vries focuses on the period 1600-1750; where does that period fit in relation to the Industrial Revolution? To other big events that affected Europe's economic life, like the encounter with the Americas? De Vries argues that this period is important for understanding what happened in the Industrial Revolution; what connections does he see between the two? How could a period of economic crisis produce industrialization?

2) What made this an "age of crisis?" Think both about the signs of crisis, the indicators that the European economy was having a hard time, and about causes—what forces produced the hard times? How hard were hard times in this society?

3) How important were agriculture and the countryside in early modern Europe? Why did so many people live in the countryside? De Vries speaks of "yield ratios" as a key concept for understanding early modern agriculture; what's that about, and what were the period's yield ratios? Why were they so low, and what needed to change in order to improve them?

4) De Vries describes the "divergent paths" that different regions of Europe followed during the early modern period. What's the basic story? Where did conditions improve, and where did they stagnate? On his interpretation, what needed to change in order for agriculture to improve? He also describes an important division between western Europe and the region east of the Elbe River; what was the difference between those two regions, and how did relations between them change?

5) In thinking about how any society changes, an important question concerns the roles of technology and of social arrangements: that is, does a society change because of new inventions and discoveries, or because of new ways of organizing collective life? How does de Vries answer this question for seventeenth-century Europe? Were social or technological changes more important in reshaping European life during this period? What technological and social changes does he see in the period?

Stay tuned—I'll provide some more questions late in the week.

Welcome!

This blog is meant to supplement our classroom work in History 316. It will serve as a way to share some images from the times and places we're studying, cover some details that we didn't have time for in class, and answer questions that come up after class. Comments and questions should go to my UB e-mail address; I'll try to respond quickly to them, and I'll post those that are of general interest.

As a first installment, I'm uploading some images relevant to last week's discussion of European geography. There are three maps—the European states today, the European states in 1600, and a late sixteenth-century map of the world, conveying a sense of what the Europeans knew about the world and what they didn't . Their image of the Americas, the map shows, was hazy; on the other hand, they had a good sense of Africa and Asia—approrpiately, since the Ottoman Empire extended into southeastern Europe and the Islamic states of North Africa were very near. As emphasized in the lectures, Europe in 1600 was already closely connected with other parts of the world. Note also the large number of political units into which Europe was divided in 1600.

I've included also some photos of two northern Italian cities, Vicenza and Verona; in 1600 both of them were under the control of Venice, one of the wealthiest of the small states that dominated the region. These city scenes illustrate several points that we discussed last week. First, these places had a lot of money, the product of Italy's ongoing role as Europe's economic kingpin; check out the elegance of the town houses in which the city's elites lived. Second, even such relatively small cities were sites of intense urban life, with dense populations and a range of urban amenities. Third, images of ancient Rome were a powerful presence in this society. There were the physical remains that the Romans left behind (one of the photos includes Verona's ancient Roman arena), but above all there was the effort to imitate Roman styles-- here visible in the Roman-style architecture of the sixteenth century.

Europe today:

(Image via Wikimedia Commons under a creative commons licence)

Europe in 1600:

(Image via Wikimedia Commons under a creative commons licence)

Europe's geographical imagination-- a world map from 1570:

(Image via Wikimedia Commons under a creative commons licence)

Street scenes (Verona):


The Roman inheritance 1, the real thing:


The Roman inheritance (2), imitating the Romans:





(These are two buildings designed by the great Italian architect Andrea Palladio [1508-1580], one of them an urban palace, the other a theater-- the first indoor theater in Europe since Roman times.)