Renaissance

Rulers soon recognized that capitalist enterprise offered them a revenue source to support state functions, and the competition among states was extended into the economic arena.

Renaissance,

c. 1450-1648 CE

In the 16th and 17th centuries, Europeans experienced profound economic and social changes. The influx of precious metals from the Americas and the gradual recovery of Europe’s population from the Black Death caused a significant rise in the cost of goods and services by the 16th century, known as the price revolution. The new pattern of economic enterprise and investment that arose from these changes would come to be called capitalism. Family-based banking houses were supplanted by broadly integrated capital markets in Genoa, then in Amsterdam, and later in London. These and other urban centers became increasingly active consumer markets for a variety of luxury goods and commodities.

Rulers soon recognized that capitalist enterprise offered them a revenue source to support state functions, and the competition among states was extended into the economic arena. The drive for economic profit and the increasing scale of commerce stimulated the creation of joint-stock companies to conduct overseas trade and colonization. These demographic and economic changes altered many Europeans’ daily lives. As population increased in the 16th century, the price of grain rose and diets deteriorated, all as monarchs were increasing taxes to support their larger state militaries. All but the wealthy were vulnerable to food shortages, and even the wealthy had no immunity to recurrent lethal epidemics.

Although hierarchy and privilege continued to define the social structure, the nobility and gentry expanded with the infusion of new blood from the commercial and professional classes. By the mid-17th century, war, economic contraction, and slackening population growth contributed to the disintegration of older communal values. Growing numbers of the poor became beggars or vagabonds, straining the traditional systems of charity and social control.

In eastern Europe, commercial development lagged and traditional social patterns continued; the nobility actually increased its power over the peasantry. Traditional town governments, dominated by craft guilds and traditional religious institutions, struggled to address growing poverty. The Reformation and Counter-Reformation stimulated a drive to regulate public morals, leisure activities, and the distribution of poor relief.

In both town and country, the family remained the dominant unit of production, and marriage remained an instrument of families’ social and economic strategies. The children of peasants and craft workers often labored alongside their parents. In the lower orders of society, men and women did not occupy separate spheres, although they performed different tasks. Economics often dictated later European marriage patterns. However, there were exceptions to this pattern: in the cities of Renaissance Italy, men in their early 30s often married teenaged women, and in eastern Europe, early marriage for both men and women continued to be the norm. Despite the growth of the market economy in which individuals increasingly made their own way, leisure activities tended to be communal, rather than individualistic and consumerist as they are today. Local communities enforced their customs and norms through crowd action and in some cases, rituals of public shaming.

Source: https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/pdf/ap-european-history-course-and-exam-description.pdf

New legal and political theories, embodied in the codification of law, strengthened state institutions, which increasingly took control of the social and economic order from traditional religious and local bodies. ... By the end of the Thirty Years’ War, a new state system had emerged based on sovereign nation-states and the balance of power.

Renaissance intellectuals and artists revived classical motifs in the fine arts and classical values in literature and education. Intellectuals—later called humanists—employed new methods of textual criticism based on a deep knowledge of Greek and Latin, and revived classical ideas that made human beings the measure of all things. Artists formulated new styles based on ancient models. The humanists remained Christians while promoting ancient philosophical ideas and classical texts. Artists and architects such as Brunelleschi, Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael glorified human potential and the human form in the visual arts, basing their art on classical models while using new techniques of painting and drawing, such as geometric perspective. The invention of the printing press in the mid-15th century accelerated the development and dissemination of these new attitudes, notably in Europe north of the Alps (the Northern Renaissance).

Three trends shaped early modern political development: (1) a shift from decentralized power and authority toward centralization; (2) a shift from a political elite consisting primarily of hereditary landed nobility toward one open to men distinguished by their education, skills, and wealth; and (3) a shift from religious toward secular norms of law and justice.

One innovation promoting state centralization and the transformation of the landed nobility was the new dominance of firearms and artillery on the battlefield. The introduction of these new technologies, along with changes in tactics and strategy, amounted to a military revolution that reduced the role of mounted knights and castles, raised the cost of maintaining military power beyond the means of individual lords, and led to professionalization of the military on land and sea under the authority of the sovereign. This military revolution favored rulers who could command the resources required for building increasingly complex fortifications and fielding disciplined infantry and artillery units. Monarchs who could increase taxes and create bureaucracies to collect and spend them on their military outmaneuvered those who could not.

In general, monarchs gained power through the corporate groups and institutions that had thrived during the medieval period, notably the landed nobility and the clergy. Commercial and professional groups, such as merchants, lawyers, and other educated and talented persons, acquired increasing power in the state—often in alliance with the monarchs— alongside or in place of these traditional corporate groups. New legal and political theories, embodied in the codification of law, strengthened state institutions, which increasingly took control of the social and economic order from traditional religious and local bodies.

However, these developments were not universal. Within states, minority language groups retained a more local identity that resisted political centralization. In eastern and southern Europe, the traditional elites maintained their positions in many polities. The centralization of power within polities took place within and facilitated a new diplomatic framework among states. Ideals of a universal Christian empire declined along with the power and prestige of the Holy Roman Empire, which was unable to overcome the challenges of political localism and religious pluralism. By the end of the Thirty Years’ War, a new state system had emerged based on sovereign nation-states and the balance of power.

Source: https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/pdf/ap-european-history-course-and-exam-description.pdf

Renaissance,c. 1450-1648 CE

Renaissance,​c. 1450-1648 CE

Contents

Early Modern Society

Public Morality

Renaissance

The New Monarchies

Political Theory

Trastámara Spain

Valois France

Tudor England

The Holy Roman Empire

War and Diplomacy

Spain and England

Sweden, Poland, and Russia

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Renaissance,
c. 1450-1648 CE

Renaissance,

c. 1450-1648 CE