Speaker 1: If you want to support the show and get the
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So if you head over to gum Road and you
subscribe through there, you'll get the episodes early and ad free,
and you'll get an invite into the Telegram group. So
I really appreciate all of the support everyone's giving me,
and I hope to expand the show even more than
it already has. Thank you so much. I want to
welcome everyone back to the Pecanana Show. Took a little
break on this one, Paul, but yeah, we're gonna do it.
Paul fahrenheits back, Hey don't Paul.
Speaker 2: Very well, mister Pete, thank you again for having me
back on to discuss one of my favorite topics, Spain,
Golden era Spain. And this is episode three of the
series itself. Episode four if you include the Disputation of
Tortosa episode that we did, and what I have planned
for this evening. I know it's not evening if you're
listening to on any other time, but what I have
planned for right now is we're kind of so since
the last two episodes, we've basically been sprinting through, you know,
fifteen hundred years of history plus like like we've been
We've we've been going through. We've been doing a massive
survey of some of the broad strokes of what happened
on the Iberian Peninsula and then throughout the rest of
Europe that brought us up to this point where we
are in the about the fifteen hundreds, right, We talked
a little bit about the Conquistadores and the foundation of
the Spanish Empire. We will talk about that a little
bit more in depth later on, but I want to
remind the listeners that this series had a sort of
thesis statement and a primary example of analysis, which is
a world systems theory, particularly through what we've called what
we're calling the Christendom world system. And and we are
going to be analyzing that world system, of which Spain
and the Holy Roman Empire are kind of the center
point at this era, and we are going to be
analyzing this era in Spain and the Holy Roman Empire
and its various opponents through this world system's lens at
about this time, because this was the final crisis of legitimacy. Now,
there were various crises of legitimacy before it. This is
the final crisis of legitimacy that finally brought it down.
So what this episode is going to be is kind
of a little bit of a table of contents as
to what the remaining episodes of the series are going
to be. I'm going to go into each episode that
we're going to cover a little bit, all right. Now,
We're going to go into much much more detail as
we get to these individual episodes. But if I'm counting correctly,
we have not counting this one, one, two, three, four,
or five, six, seven, eight, nine episodes after this one,
all right, So we have nine that I have planned
at least. All right, Maybe we have a bonus episode
thrown in, maybe we'll compress it if the schedule demands it,
but as of right now, we have nine episodes planned
after this one. So I told you we are going
to be analyzing this system through a variety of angles,
and we will be getting into we will be getting
into each angle. So what I'm going to do first
and foremost, so that the listener isn't sitting with baited
breath the whole time, I'm going to read out at
least the title of each episode we're going to do.
And then once I read out all of them, all
nine titles, We're going to come back and I'm going
to kind of start talking a little bit about what
we're going to be touching on with each individual episode
in the series. Does that sound good to you, mister Pete?
Speaker 1: Sounds great? Please proceed, all right.
Speaker 2: So, the first episode after this one will be called
the Declining Christendom World System. The episode after that will
be called the Italian Wars. The episode after that is
the Protestant Reformation. The episode after that will be the
Spanish World Economy. The episode after that will be the
First Modern State. The episode after that will be Contemporary Dissidents.
The episode after that will be Christendom's Crisis of Legitimacy.
The episode after that will be the Thirty Years War
and the End of the System. And the final episode
will be the Aftermath and Twilight of Spain. All right,
So those are the nine I believe that's nine episodes.
If I'm if some listener was counting like those not nine,
maybe maybe I'm just maybe I'm just stupid, But those
are going to be the next nine episodes, all right.
So now that I've kind of read all of those out,
so the viewer has an idea as to where we're
going to be going with this. It's a little bit
of chronology chronic because whenever you're doing history, you can't
avoid the chronological analysis, even if you're trying to like
dig deep. All right, But the whole point of this
multifaceted approach that we're going to be taking from a
variety of different angles and slightly different time periods, is
we're trying to understand the whole picture, what all of
the moving components of the system were that brought it
to this point. As you heard, we're going to be
one episode. We're going to be diving very heavily in
on economics, right, particularly the economic consequences of Spain's colonies
and what drove Spain to look for colonies in the
first place. We're also going to be looking at the
Spanish governance and institutions, as well as the governance and
institutions of opposing regimes. But one of note that I
think is particularly interesting is we're going to be looking
at the behavior of dissonance of varying stripes in this era, right,
because there were all kinds of dissidance in this era,
just like there were in our era. And they had
a brand new form of media to use to communicate
with each other and with the general public, which was
the Gutenberg Printing Press. Right, The Gutenberg Printing Press operated
in much the exact same way. Or it's it's analogous
to Twitter today, or I suppose these YouTube streams today
or sub stack articles today, all right, and it is
vital you cannot understand this era without understanding the impacts
of the Gutenberg Printing Press. So there will be some
books we will be reading. There will be some points
of of of some famous books that will go into
some that maybe you haven't heard of, some angles that
maybe were maybe you aren't familiar with. But overall, that's
kind of the various angles we're going to be take taking.
So I'm gonna go back and kind of go through
each episode that we're going to be doing in a
little in a sort of how should I say, in
a sort of brief kind of overview. I'm not going
to talk about it for for nothing. But by the way,
mister p if you have, if you have anything to
add or any interruptions that you'd like to make at
any point on this little survey of what we're going
to be doing, just let me know and feel free
to add anything.
Speaker 1: Yes, sir, you know I will.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So the first one, so the declining world, the
declining Christendom world system. That's going to be the episode
immediately after this one, all right, So in this episode,
what we're going to do is we're going to hyper
focus on what the Christendom world system was, and we
are going to actually go back into some earlier medieval
history in order to get a particularly with the church,
all right, particularly with the Church. And this relates because
the picture of the whole church needs to be understood,
right and the kind of why it got to this
point because the Empire almost everyone kind of understands what
it is. It's like, you know, competing dynasties and things like,
and the empire is sort of in separate from the
papacy and from the from the Catholic Church. Just as
theology is inseparable from politics political everyone has a political theology.
The spiritual world and the political world are inseparable because
the political world follows from the spiritual world. Whatever your
contentions are as to what the spiritual world looks like
and how the political world, the material world should emulate it, right,
that shapes your politics, all right, And it absolutely did
shape the politics in the High and late Medieval, late
late Middle Middle Ages. So what we're going to be
talking about here is now obviously we're not going to
be taking a whole walk through space and time, but
it's important to understand specifically the issues that were arising
within the Catholic Church that sort of sowed the seeds
of these crises of authority that occurred within the that
kind of culminated finally culminated in the in the sixteenth
century and and later. But the sixteenth century was by
no means the Protestant Reformation did not come out of nowhere,
all right. The Protestant Reformation was the culmination of many,
many hundreds of years of you know, of of decay
within the Catholic Church. Critique with with from certain parts
of the Catholic Church to other parts of the Catholic Church.
The foundation of There were various reformations prior to the
Protestant Reformation. What comes to mind is the Franciscan Reformation,
the Benedictine Reformation, which created these monastic orders that everyone
knows about. These came from critiques within the Catholic Church
from certain parties which led to the establishment of these
monastic orders. I think the Dominicans also came as a
result of this. But also, all right, you have the
the investiture controversy. All right, so what was the invested
your controversy? We're going to be looking at that. The
investiture controversy is basically a dispute as to who has
the authority to appoint bishops, Who has the authority to
appoint bishops, right, whether it lies with the emperor or
whether it lies with the pope, and this you know,
you'd think you'd think it's a lot simpler of a
question that it turned out being. There's also the issue
right of the concept of anti popes, which we're going
to be talking about. Why did antipopes come about? Why
did you know the Holy Roman Empire Why did Frederick
Barbarossa or Frederick the second think that they could just
declare the Pope in Rome illegitimate, set up a pope
in their own realm, and then go down and depose
the sitting pope and replace him, replace him with their popes?
All right, what were the consequences of that? Why did
that come about? Was that scene as illegitimate? It very
much was, but you know, sometimes that's just how it goes,
was it? And And on that note, we're also going
to be talking about the Western schism? What was the
Western Schism? Well, it was when at one point two
and then at one point I think like four anti
popes all existed at once. Uh, there was the Pope
in Rome, the popen Avignon, the popeen in like Aragon,
and then the pope and I think I think Savoy
there was a fourth one and so and this and this, this,
this is a very serious thing. We're also going to
talk about the conflict between the Guelphs and the Ghibelins.
All right, If you may or may not be familiar,
the Guelfs and the Ghibelins were the competitors of two
really it was, it was two separate dynasties within the
Holy Roman Empire. It was most notable in the Italian
city states. We remember it from Dante's life. But the
Guelfs were supporters of the von Velf dynasty and the Ghibelins,
where I think the supporters of the the von Hoench Dolphins.
But what they kind of basically shook shook out to
be as the von Velfs built their dynastic authority on
complete submission to the pope and the emperor as like
the servant of the pope, as opposed to the Ghibelings,
the howen Chauphins, you know, the emperor as sort of
the this what is it? This the secular authority that
that that gains that derives legitimacy from the pope but
doesn't necessarily basically holds the pope as the spiritual leader
who doesn't have who should not, does not and should
not have authority over secular issues, all right, And so
that's kind of the earliest that this conflict appears. We're
going to be talking about the Hussite movement obviously, and
some of the earlier pre Protestant heresies. Pre protest We're
going to talk about the the Woldenzians, the Lollards, the
the Albagensians, the the was it the cathars Is, the
Albergensian Crusades, And we're also going to be talking about
the the shoot who else is there? Am I forgetting one?
But yeah? But but most notably the Hussites. The Hussites
were the most successful Reformation before the Reformation. All right,
we're gonna be talking about why what were these issues
based on why why do they happen? Et cetera, et cetera,
and you know, did they come out of this of
these these crises within the church. We're also going to
be talking about the conciliar Movement, all right. The Concilier
Movement was basically the reformation within the Church that happened
almost a century prior to the actual Protestant Reformation. This
was a reform proposal within the Catholic Church that made
serious traction and would have fundamentally reshaped how the Catholic
Church would have would have worked would have been if
it had, you know, if it had gotten more successful,
but you know, it was not successful. We're going to
talk about this, and then of course, finally it's going
to culminate with the UH with We're not going to
go so much into the Protestant Reformation itself, because that
will be its own episode, but we're going to explain
how all of these issues of crises within particularly the
the the church part of the Christendom world system led
to this crisis of authority within the Christendom world system,
which which created its own the crisis which ended it.
All right, anything on that, mister people before I move on?
Speaker 1: Nope, please proceed, all right, So.
Speaker 2: Next episode after that, we're going to be focusing on
the Italian Wars. This is when we're going to return
back to the secular part of the Christendom world system.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 2: The Italian Wars are extremely important because the Italian Wars
is basically the beginning of the competition between the two
major secular pillars or I guess three, but the primarily
it shakes out the two the two major secular pillars
of the Christendom world system, which is the Habsburg domain
versus France. All right. The Italian Wars are are the
the real the first the first major confrontation between France
and the Habsburgs, all right. And also it's a it's
an interesting way to kind of dive into some of
the military advances that because the Italian Wars were ostensibly
between Spain and France over claims on the Italian peninsula.
It's also it's also the end of the of the
what is it of the Italian Renaissance. And it's also
an interesting an interesting display of some of the critique
of the of the cracks that had formed between the
secular world and the ecclesiastical world. Because in fifteen twenty
seven Rome was sacked by Habsburg armies under Charles the
fifth right, So why does that happen? Why does a
Catholic emperor sack Rome? All right, we're going to get
into that. We're gonna we're going to show you how
this all happened, all right, how this all happened, why
it all led to this. We're going to talk about
a little bit about France's sort of nationalists anti because
there's sort of a Heygelian dialectic going on here with
this thesis in the Holy Roman Empire, the the the
Habsburg Empire is kind of the culmination of what Spengler
calls in Prussianism and socialism, the hoen Zoalorn ideal of
the you know, of the universal Catholic state under both
with with both emperor, as the Holy Roman Empire is
kind of the jurisdiction that's being expanded, and the Kingdom
of Spain is kind of the wealth and the military
that's expanding it. All right, stop me if this sounds
somewhat familiar, although I'm not saying that, you know, I'm
not I'm not making any moral equivalencies here. But then,
but then, you know, there's a sort of nationalist, kind
of inward looking, provincial, almost reaction antithesis to that in
the Kingdom of France as this, you know, the Catholic
Church of France being sort of the National Church of France,
the National Catholic Church of France, and you know, figures
like although he's not contemporary to this, but figures like
Cardinal Darichelu are great examples of this. So yeah, so yeah,
I'm particularly looking forward to that one because the Italian
Wars is very much understudied. I'm trying to remember, we're
we're trying to remember if Kaiser Maximilian was involved in
that one in the lands next. Yeah, some historian I am,
I don't know this off the top of my head. Yes,
I'm pretty sure, Yeah, he fought in this one. Yeah.
We're also gonna, you know, kind of talk about how,
you know, the the Burgundian succession has to do with
this and the beginning of the comp the disputes of
authority between France and the holder own empire. But that's
a lot that's gonna be a lot simpler of an episode.
Excuse me, So after that, anything on that, mister.
Speaker 1: Pete, No, everything sounds good for sure.
Speaker 2: So after that, I'm gonna stop after every episode just
to make sure sure as much as I like talking,
after a while, like I kind of feel kind of
get self conscious about it.
Speaker 1: So well, you know, our our friend Thomas comes on,
and you know what happens once, you know, he just
starts going and I let him because yeah, he's he's
the one providing the information just like you are. So yeah,
I appreciate that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, but regardless, So the next episode is going
to be the uh, you know, I said, we're going
to come back to the Protestant Reformation.
Speaker 1: I am.
Speaker 2: We're going to vary specifically with the Protestant Reformation episode.
We're going to dig down into the theological issues that
the that the various reformers, you know, Luther's Vingley, Calvin,
John Knox, you know all the other individuals. We're also
I'm also gonna, you know, see if I can, because
I know there were Spanish Protestants. There were not very many,
but there were a few, and there were Italian Protestants,
and there were there were a lot of French Protestants.
Calvin was French. But but you know, like we're gonna,
we're gonna basically go I want to kind of demonstrate
that Protestantism was not this just this ethnic Nordic movement,
right it it it There were others in other places.
It was much more Now they were stamped out very
quickly because frankly, they just did not have the organization
numbers or political power to resist. But you know, I
want to and and and likewise vice versa. Within the
Nordic countries, there were quite a few people who had
a problem with leaving the Catholic Church, you know, so
brazenly and abruptly. And so we're gonna go into this.
This is not it's it's it's it's the whole point
of this, you know, particular, and this is why I
think I said to you before the stream. I'm gonna
say this again, mister Peter. I think this is why
it's important that we have a Protestant and a Catholic
talking about this, because the whole point of this episode
is going to be to deconstruct the polemic.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: I'm not here to play raw raw Protestant or raw
raw Catholic, all right. We are here to figure out
the facts what went wrong. The whole fact that there
was a Protestant Reformation in the first place means something
was fundamentally wrong that was left to sit and rot
and was not addressed until it was too late. And that,
you know, I'm not saying one side is right or wrong.
It's just breaks like that within any system whatsoever, do
not occur unless there was a massive underlying issue, right,
and it may not even be necessarily with the church
structure itself. It may have been other things, all right,
But this is why we need to and this is
what the Protestant Reformation is episode is going to be.
We're going to be focusing on the secular issues, the
ecclesiastical issues, and you know, and and also we're going
to get into a little bit of the of the
Catholic Church's responses. We're going to talk about the Council
of Trent. We're going to talk about the counter Reformation.
We're going to talk about the Jesuits a little bit.
We're going to talk about the Catholic Church seriously addressing
and fundamentally agree with the the I think the Treaty
of Augsburg. Some other places we're gonna we're going to
show that the you know, we're going to go into
how the Catholic Church did very much, seriously take a
lot of the assertions that the Protestants were making about
the state of the Catholic Church after the break had
already done, and that's what they went into the Council
of Trent looking to do. All right, Now, there are
other councils we're going to talk about too, but obviously
those are the main big points. If you are, if
you are listening to this series attempting to get ammunition
for whatever particular ideology ideological goal that you want to pursue,
this is not the place for you. We are here
to understand what happened better, not worse. And I don't
mean to constantly emphasize this, but I know that people
will go in the comments or go on the timeline whatever,
and they will start, you know, causing problems over this. Right,
So that's I just wanted to re emphasize that. Right,
we are here as historians to attempt to get a
better understanding of what happened historically so that we can
avoid the same mistakes in the present. All right, I'm gonna.
Speaker 1: Leave it on that. Yeah, No, that's uh, that's important.
I mean, it's just too emotional of a of a subject.
The best to best to just approach it clinically and
just talk about what happened.
Speaker 2: Well, And I mean, and emotion isn't necessarily wrong because
how did how did something like this happen? I've yes,
this was there was clear negligence and it very likely
did it does exist on both sides, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it happened, but it happened for more than
one reason too. So that's that's what's most you know,
that's important.
Speaker 2: Too, Yeah, absolutely, And the key thing is to take
both sides seriously. It's like, you know, like if someone
just schism is never the first choice in anything. And
and frankly, if the goal as and I I don't
want to say the quiet part out loud, but if
the goal is to eventually, you know, you move past that.
If the goal, if that's the goal, you you know,
everyone needs to understand what caused the problem in the
first place, all right, But yes, mister Pete, that's kind
of that's what we're going to be talking about in
this very specific Protestant reference. We're going to talk about
the diet of Verms and and uh, Charles the fifth
and and Luther and other things like that and all
in everything we're gonna and particularly where the break in
the world system occurred. But that's that's what we're going
to be addressing in that episode. Sounds good moving on here, Uh,
the so the next episode after that, we're going to
take a step back from serious emotionally driven topics and
talk about something I you know, you could almost jokingly
say more important, but uh, that'll also probably put a
good chunk of the audience to sleep, because what we're
going to be talking about in the episode after that,
mister Pete, is particular the Spanish world economy and the
world economy generally in and around this time period, and
specifically the massive shocks that came with the you know,
with with the Spanish colonies particularly with Spain trying for
the first time in history to have a completely commodities
based currency is actually the first time anyone to try
that at the at the extent, at the extent's main
did because you know, when you when you find when
you go into this foreign land and you find a
literal mountain of silver, like a mountain with so much
silver in it that the sunlight glints off of it
because of how much silver is is poking out of
this mountain, all right, you know, it's it's like it's
like recently, a lot of guys have been, you know,
showing sympathy for the boomers, and I think it's the
exact same way, right, Like, if you're a country that
finds a literal mountain of silver in a you know,
precious metals based currency world, would you act any differently
than the Spaniards did. It's like, if you were born
in the Boomer generation, would you act any differently than
the boomers did?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: It's like it's it's it's it's the resource curse. Right
when you have a glut of something, you kind of
treat it as you kind of treat it for granted.
So yeah, that's and and that's going to be a
big jungle. What we're going to talk about, We're going
to talk a lot about Spanish monetary policy, Spanish coinage,
you know, particularly based around their treasure fleets and the
gold and silver that they extracted from the colonies. But
what we are also going to talk about, I keep
mentioning the Grand Duchy of Burgundy and the Low Countries
and the Netherlands. It is extremely important to keep mentioning
these places because despite all of that currency, all of
that all those precious metals coming into the Spanish economy,
the most productive and valuable and revenue creating provinces within
the Spanish Empire were the Low Country provinces, was Flanders,
Holland Zealand, and the other Dutch provinces. These were the
the highest revenue creating provinces within the half spurg Spanish Dominion.
Which is why, you know, a very large part of
the reason why the Eighty Years War occurred is because
all of the sudden, all of these provinces, which were
the largest revenue generating provinces within the Spanish Empire, revolted
all of a sudden. You know, if you're here, this
is something I think this is a master key that
I think. I think your listeners, mister Pete, if they
haven't already taken it to heart, I think I think
they need to take I think a lot of our
guys need to start taking it seriously too. Someone once says,
some dictator somewhere said that politics is the entertainment of
the banking industry. And that doesn't mean politics doesn't exist
or isn't important, you know, I'm not. I'm not like
trying to be like some kind of gnostic here and
me like, oh, actually, the only thing you need to
watch is financial markets. Politics has now influence on anything,
because i'd be it does. But if you are not
looking at the world situation. And with that, if you're
looking at the world situation and you're not looking at
the financial aspect of it, you are not getting the
full picture. As a matter of fact, you know, one
of the reasons that the Dutch one against the Spaniards,
or at least that they were able to hold out
for so long, it's called the eighty Years War for
for for a reason, Amsterdam was under siege for so
long that a whole economy developed in Amsterdam like like
that it was like normal like like you know, like
like a whole siege economy developed to the point where
like Dutch officials were purposely not prosecuting privateers, but they
were raising prices to such a point that that that
like pirates and smugglers would start selling goods to their
citizens at a lower price than the than the Dutch
government could sell to their citizens, you know. So that's
that's like the kind of hard decisions that were being made.
But one of the reasons that we're that the that
the Dutch were able to hold out against this much
larger opponent for so long. Part of it is because
of Maurice of Nassau's military reforms, but part of it
is because the Dutch were superior accountants. The Dutch kept
better track of their goods than the Spanish did. Now
it's easier for the Dutch too, because they had a
much smaller area. But what was it. It was one
one miss payment to mercenaries changed the whole tide of
the of the Eighty Years War. So that's what we're
going to kind of go into. We're going to go
into the sort of hyperinflation which did occur with Spanish
gold and silver. That's very similar to today. We're going to
talk a lot about how the Spanish government declared bankruptcy
like seven times over fifty years. I think they declared
bankruptcy twice in one year. Once we're going to talk
about the talking about banking, We're going to talk about
the Fuggers, the f U G G E r S,
the richest banking family and history, who were the sort
of the the financial backers of the Habsburg dynasty and
their various constituent parts. They're the reason why the Habsburgs
were able to remain Holy Roman Emperor for so long
because the Fugger finances were what bought the elections. And
we're going to talk about like nascent banking systems and
like the decline of the Italian banks and the rise
of more Nordic banks. So we're also going to talk
about how the Protestant Reformation allowed for sort of these
nascent domestic credit markets within these Protestant countries to start
developing with something resembling fiat currency and early version of it,
and and as like a as a point of parallelism.
All right, but uh yeah, what else We're also and
we're also going to talk about how much like much
like is the case in the United States today, we're
going to talk about how the Spanish Empire actually impoverished
the Iberian Peninsula rather than enriched it because none of
that wealth, all of the wealth that was extracted from
the New World and that came from the Dutch provinces,
none of it was reinvested in the Iberian And that's
a very significant part of the reason why Spain is
so poor today as compared to like Italy, right not
because it's a Mediterranean country, because there's Italy right over there,
which is much better developed, has a lot more wealth
sitting in it. Spain was drained of wealth and manpower
and all these other things for these you know, constant
Habsburg wars. And a large reason for this was because
the Habsburgs were in many ways foreigners to the Iberian Peninsula.
They were not Spaniards, they were Germans, and you know,
actually to a certain extent they came from the Low
countries as well, and a lot of and their court
kind of reflected that. You know, there's a reason why
Spain and the Holy Roman Empire weren't really considered two
separate entities. They were considered the one contiguous Hapsburg entity,
and we're going to talk about how there was kind
of a domestic Spanish Castilian very specifically, but that's getting
into another episode. But but yeah, we're going to talk
about the economic strain and the economic costs that the
Iberian Peninsula had to kind of shoulder for this, because
unlike Great Britain, right, Great Britain had a whole different model.
Great Britain, all of the wealth that it extracted from
its colonies, it reinvested in the British Isles themselves. That's
why they were able to remain much more powerful for
much longer, was that money was reinvested in. This is
why the Industrial Revolution was able to occur in England,
in Great Britain was because revenues from the colonies were
reinvested in the empire in in England itself, at least initially.
And France, France's France's colonies were never serious enough to
cause any sort of major reinvestment. But Spain is an
example of like, it had these mass, vast, sprawling colonies,
any of them, and it never even really developed itself.
And we're going to get into why that kind of occurred.
So yeah, I mean a lot of the more economically
minded of your listenership, your viewership might enjoy that episode
in particular because it's a it's an angle on world
history that not a lot of people take.
Speaker 1: People are going to be fascinated by it because they're
going to see a system that's way more advanced than
they would expect for the time.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, absolutely, yeah, no, you all were not. If you
should have learned one thing from the disson it right,
you should have learned this is that you're not as
clever as you think you are. And just because we
got computers and smartphones, that doesn't make us that much
different at all from our ancestors in terms of like
the complexity of systems we can create. Shoot, like I
was listening on them, I was on a stone Choir episode.
I heard this once that in Mesopotamia we found something
resembling like a credit card.
Speaker 1: You know, it was a.
Speaker 2: System of like exactly eighteen percent, which is the typical
market rate for a credit card today. So nothing Solomon
said it in in I think it's in Ecclesiastes. He
said this. I could be misquoting, but I think this
is in Ecclesiastes. If it's not in Ecclesiastes. It's in Proverbs,
but it's I think it's an Ecclesiastes. He says nothing
is new under the sun. And what he also said,
I know he says this in Proverbs. He also says
in Proverbs to do not inquire why the do not
inquire why were the former days better than these? For
it is not from wisdom that you ask this. All right, Look,
the past is not like this grand cornucopeia, great place
that you need to yearn for. It's dead, it's gone,
it's past, it's done. You know, you need to understand
it to understand how we got here. But you know,
the whole purpose of all historical study is to then
come back to the present with a better understanding of
how to manipulate things and how to change things. So yeah,
like yes, exactly on that point. These systems are very sophisticated,
and the ones we have today are really just scaled
up versions. That's the only real difference. And speaking of systems,
all right, the episode after we do the economy episode,
we're gonna start going into Spain as the first modern state.
We're also going to talk about, as always, the Duchy
of Burgen, the Grand Duchy of Burgundy, and a lot
of their systems that were borrowed by the Spanish and
the Habsburgs, and also by the Dutch, but particularly in
the Spanish context. We're going to be talking about the
Consta Contraxion, which was kind of in one building that
was sort of this I don't want to say that
it was like the administrative center of Spanish government that
decided coinage, contracts for colonial affairs, It decided, it decided
all sorts of things, and it really was. It's like
it's it's it's this first kind of modern even though
it's in one building. It's this first kind of modern
bureaucratic center that was required for an empire as big
as the Spanish was. We're also going to talk about
Elis Scoriol, which was the monastery palace that Philip the
Second reigned from and you know, did his work from.
We're going to talk about how Philip the Second's desk
had something like fourteen thousand pieces of paper on it
at any given time, and he was trying to basically
deal with all of it at once. We're going to
talk about the foundation of the city of Madrid itself,
because the city of Madrid, mister Pete, was actually an
artificial city. It was artificially it was a small, little
like river village. It was artificially created by the Habsburgs
as kind of this center of governance in this in
the geographic center of Spain, once they started adopting the
title Kings of Spain rather than Kings of Castile and Aragon.
And also we're going to talk about the Council of
the INDI's, which was this kind of this this novel
colonial institution that managed the rest of the empire. But
basically the whole point of this is in the government
of the Spanish Empire, you see the beginnings of what
we would call a modern state, and what that really
means is the changing nature of the bureaucracy. We're also
going to talk about the decidedly foreign character of a
lot of the Spanish bureaucracy, how a lot of the
Spanish bureaucrats came from the Low Countries or Germany or
other places, and the tensions that it caused with with
the what is it with the native Iberians with the Spaniards,
which actually brings us anything.
Speaker 1: On that, mister Pete, No, not on that part.
Speaker 2: So yeah, and so this brings us into the next episode,
which is about dissonance, contemporary dissonance. All right, this is
where we are going to compare ourselves to the group
of people we are the most analogous to at this time.
And it's not it's not just the Protestants, because lots
of Catholics started using the printing press too, lots of
particularly the Jesuits. The Jesuits were actually the ones who
were intellectually engaging with many of the Protestant reformers, many
of the Protestant thinkers. They were in correspondence, they were
in dialogue, they were the Jesuits were responding to many
of their theological claims. Many, many interesting theological developments came
out of this era. Particularly I'm thinking of a I'm
thinking of a particular school of eschatology, which actually a
Jesuit was the first one to fully write a systemized
treatment of called a prem which is the idea that
a good chunk of revelation and the and the tribulation
actually occurred in eighty seventy and that the that the
what was it that the Book of Revelation was not
written in eighty ninety five, but that actually it was
written in eighty sixty five, five years prior to the
destruction of the City of Jerusalem, which if and that's
just a minor archaeological quibble, but if it but said,
I don't want to, I don't mean to go into eschatology.
Some of you may be familiar with it, but that
was that was what is it? That was written by
a Jesuit priest, which was then taken seriously by a
group of Dutch of Dutch Reformed Protestants who kind of
treated it in I forget the name. It was one
guy it was, I forget his name. He if it
comes back. But basically what I want to show is that, like, look,
this was an intellectual war as much as it was
one of politics and economics, right, and these people were
in dialogue with each other.
Speaker 1: What was it?
Speaker 2: And and you know we're going to talk about like
the sort of the Guten you could call it, I
call it Gutenberg Twitter. You know, you had these like
hastily done woodcut memes that were rapidly printed and spread,
or at least in the whatever the seventeenth century version
of hyper fast of rapid pamphlets are being spread far
and wide miniature plays essays basically substacks. Uh, what the
Gutenberg printing press allowed for was just for people to
basically publish there. If you got one, you could publish
your own substack immediately. Yeah. And obviously we're going to
talk about some of the particularly the Protestant dissonant behaviors.
We're going to talk about a lot of the parallel
economies that they tried to set up, including you know,
you know, a nascent form of CAM. But we're also
going to talk about the English's maritime strategy to sort
of like you know, because here's the thing, right, none
of these countries could confront the Habsburgs directly, all right,
once again, stop me, this sounds familiar, right, None of
the Habsburg Empire was the dominant power, the the dominant force.
One on one, any one of these countries would have
been swamped, would have been crushed, all right. But also
the Habsburg system, the Spanish system, was very much in decline,
was very much in sort of bureaucratic bloat and over
extension and you know, very very poor resource misallocation. And
so the Protestants, basically the Protestant and France also, I
don't forget about France. The Protestants in France all kind
of took this approach of, well, don't confront them directly
if you can absolutely avoid it, and just let them
peter themselves out, because everyone knew eventually this could not continue.
But Spain, in the Habsburg system and in the Christendom
world system, had built up so much momentum that you
can't stop it. You just have to kind of sidestep it,
get out of its way and then maybe like cut
at the knees like England did with its privateer strategy.
And yes, and we're also going to you know, we're
also going to talk about the the the dissonance in
the in Iberia actually, who weren't at all Protestants, you know,
hated Protestants. They were good Catholics, but they did have
a what I call them the castel first party. And
they were not the only one. Matter of fact, there
was a there was a Portugal was under the possession
of Spain at this time, and there was a lot
of Portuguese who didn't like the idea of being under
Hapsburg dominion and they wanted as the same with the Italians.
The Italians had this long tradition of political republicanism and
city states that were separate from the sort of Habsburg Empire.
And so you have a lot of dissidence in these
places that is not necessarily religious in nature, but is
more so quasi I don't want to say nationalists, but
like because more so like like quasi, like hey, why
are we being ruled by all of these German speakers
who are sapping wealth from us? So, but particularly is
the sort of I call them the Caskial first party.
They did not like the direction that Spain was going in,
and they were a very vocal They were a group
of very vocally critical nobles within the Catholic the Habsburg court.
So yeah, I mean there's whenever you have any sort
of world system, there's all sorts of ways you can
criticize it. There's all sorts of grievances with it. But
the only thing that all the dissidents agree on is
the current thing has to go after that though, you
know anyway. That's yeah, that's what we're going to be
touching on with the with the Dissonance episode.
Speaker 1: Just to you're talking about the Dutch pastor, it was
Hugo Grotius who latched onto preterism from the Jesuits. And
then the what I think is the seminal work that
I've read, I read three times in one year is
book by j. Stewart Russell. He was a English Baptist,
called the Perusia, and he basically goes through it's a
great book to how he takes all of the the
scripture and harmonizes them to show how much of how
much of it had already come to fruition in the
first century.
Speaker 2: So yeah, and that's that's you might have to send
me that after the show because I'm I'm actually pretty
interested because preterism is the small little aside here. Eschatology
is one of those things I've been kind of, you know,
thinking about a lot recently. And the one that I'm
just I'm I just feel like would answer the most questions,
you know, without actually under at all undermining the text
of revelation, but would answer the most questions is preterism.
Predism feels like the viewpoint that answers the most questions
without undermining the text the text itself. Maybe some people disagree,
but yeah, send me the send me that I might
listen to this on the replay too, but send me
the title of that book. Sure, yeah, so but yes, yeah,
and I mean and that's exactly yeah, Hugo Grotius, that's
who it was. But yeah, there's also, uh, there's also
the other Now that we're on Dutch religious thinkers, I'm
thinking of the one who highly critique the Catholic Church
of Hitzinga. Wrote a book on him, highly critique to
the Catholic Church, but didn't become a Protestant. Matter of fact,
he rejected when the Protestants reached out to him. He
kind of reject. I'm trying to think he was another
Dutch guy, famous name Erasmus Erasmus. Yeah, Erasmus was was
you know, was another one of these like like you know,
another one of these sort of great intellectuals of the time.
And yes, this these people were all in dialogue. This
is the thing I want to emphasize. These all of
the brightest minds of the Catholic Church and of the
reformers were in some respects actually exchanging letters, debating things.
You know. That's the say you not think of people
at all. Uh. And there's you know, uh anyway, so yeah,
this is like yeah, so yeah, anyway, before without going
into something I've already said. That's what we're going to
be talking about with the and we're also going to
be talking about a lot of the responses that the
authorities took to the frankly, the Protestant. Just as how
the Catholics had their dissidents that were not necessarily Protestants,
the Protestant state authorities clamped down on their dissonants as hard,
if not harder than a lot of what the Catholics did. Right,
This is not like people talk about a lot about
the Reformation, but they forget a lot about like the
magisterial versus the radical and even with not even necessarily
just radical reformers. But you know a lot of the
dissidents who were orthodox Protestant but critique to the secular
authority of a lot of these Protestant states. Yet there
there was absolutely you know, like I said, this is
all like, yes, we have these simplistic narratives in our
head that kind of help with polemics, but the reality
is a lot more messy, and everyone is kind of
doing the same thing. It's just you know, for different
stated intentions. But yeah, we're gonna that's what we're gonna
talk about got us speed this up a little bit here.
So the episode after that, after we talk about a
lot about the dissonance. Now we're going to get into
the sort of the the end game. All right, We're
gonna get the end game started. So the episode after
that is going to be the shoot I lost the
I lost my little table of contents I.
Speaker 1: Was reading through.
Speaker 2: Uh here it is, all right, it's going to be
the Christendom's crisis of legitimacy. We're gonna go into the
Dutch revolt here. We're going into like the lead up
to the Thirty Years War basically is it's like you know,
the you know, the the French Wars of religion, the
you know, we're going to go into the consequences of
the Council of Trent, Philip the Second's claim on Spain,
or it's not a same Philip the Second's claim on
England through his marriage to Mary, Queen of Scott's what
is it he and and the Armadas and this kind
of this growing sort of like.
Speaker 1: What is it?
Speaker 2: This growing these growing two camps of like sort of
the Catholic League and the Protestant League, and what pushed
each individual country into both sides, you know, one of
the I've just noticed this, mister p I don't want
to mission creep any further. But as I was describing this, right,
one of the key factors that I haven't talked about
at all that I'm probably gonna have to find place
to insert because we can't do a whole epit. This
is not about this is not about them, but is
the Turks. I've totally forgotten the impact that the Turks
had on all of this. Right, It's easy to get
trapped in the Western europe bubble, but no, the Turks had.
The Turks were one of the biggest, like you know,
exterior forces of this whole thing. So I might have
to actually, I'll find places to insert the Turks. But yeah,
the Turks are very important here as well, but more
so as like an outside kind of influence as to
what's causing things to happen within Europe. But yes, as
we kind of we're going to talk about the sort
of crisis we're going to end right on the eve
of what would then become the Thirty Years War. Then
we're gonna have a whole episode talking about the Thirty
Years War, all right, you could do a whole series,
multiple series on the Thirty Years War. There is so
much to cover. We've got only an episode, all right,
So what we're gonna focus on within the Thirty Years War,
I'm as much as I'd like to, I don't think
we're going to focus on as much the what is it?
The military aspects of it or things like although, shoot,
the Thirty Years War, I mean I made a tweet
about this once, but just the wide spread quality of
generalship that everyone had in the Thirty Years War, you know,
on both the Catholic and Protestant sides. You know the
most famously Gustavus Adolphus, the Count of Bourbon, who was
a Catholic on the Protestant side because he was French Christian,
the fourth of Denmark, Maurice of Nassau in the in
the in the Dutch sense. But then on the on
the on the Spanish side, you have you have Friggin' Wallenstein,
who's one of my favorite commanders, invented military logistics, Count Tilly,
you know Piccolomini, uh Spinola, Ambrosio Spinola, the Cardinal and Fonte.
There's so many, so many like just outstanding, stellar generals.
It was stacked. It was a stacked era, right, and
everyone was like top quality. That's to say nothing of
what was going on in England with the English Civil War.
We're actually we're not going to touch on that, but yeah,
and then of course we're going to talk about that,
and and sort of the whole point of the Thirty
Years War episode is to basically show like, yeah, this
is the death knell of Christendom as a world system
with the Treaty of Asphalia. The Treaty vest Faalia is
you know, it's one of the few firm dates that
everyone agrees on and everyone points to as like like
one of the actual like watershed moments. Is like, okay,
you know, the Treaty of vest Fallia firmly ends Christendom
as a world system and kind of begins this nascent
idea of a sort of nations, a competing nation states.
I don't think it's it's accurate to describe best Falia
as a world system because there was no real central authority.
It was more of like an agreed upon set of
rules for a certain period of time instead of a
you know, a sort of internationally imposed set of rules.
Although maybe some disagree with me on that. That's fine,
but that's what we're gonna primarily be focusing on is
just the Thirty Years War, the end of the Christendom
world system, and the Treaty of as Fhalia in that episode.
Very simple, particularly, we're going to be looking at the
power politics. And the point I want to take is
that with the Thirty Years Wars that a lot of
people like, oh, it's just this secular war and had
nothing to do with religion, and I kind of want
to like, at least initially, as wars drag on, they
just kind of become their own reason for existence. You know,
most people forget the reasons why they're fighting the war
about a year in, especially if they drag out. That's
why war is terrible and it is to be avoided
at all costs. Guess where I got that. But uh yeah,
So that's what we're gonna be talking about. But what
I want to get at here is that the Thirty
Years War absolutely was a religious war. Being characterized as
like a religious confrontations between Protestants and Catholics is probably
one of the only accurate ways you can characterize that conflict.
It's like, oh, but what about France. France had its.
France is like a special special case France had its
as we'll we'll go into. But yeah, that's what we're
gonna talking about for the episode, and that's going to
be our second to last episode. Anything on that real quick, mister.
Speaker 1: Pete, Nope, keep going, all right.
Speaker 2: So this brings us into our final episode of the
series that we will end the series, all right, and
we might have like a sort of an episode after
this where we kind of review the series and we
kind of talk about the things that had been brought
up and the applications to modern day. But this is
like the final episode of like content that I have
planned itself. And we may have bonus episodes and we
may have we may compress some of these, but like
I said, this is the last episode. This is going
to be a sort of clean up of everything. We're
going to talk about the aftermath of everything that happened
and the sort of the twilight of because Spain is
a world power actually did not end with the Treaty
of St. Foalia. Spain was still a world power after
the Treaty of ast Fallia, but it did not end
as a as a world power until the Treaty of
the Pyrenees, which was about I think ten or so
ten to fifteen years later somewhere around that point, which
basically Spain firmly was ended as the dominant world power
of Europe, to be replaced by France. And that begins
the sort of the that begins the sort of the
Grand century of France, or well the grand two centuries
of France really, So, yeah, we're going to talk about
how the nature of the papacy and modern politics changed
with the end of the Thirty Years War. We're going
to talk about how the Holy Roman Empire changed with
the Treaty of Esphalia, because all these things stuck around,
but they were completely different and how everyone thought of them.
We're going to talk about how the Habsburg dynasty themselves
changed after the Thirty Years War. We are going to
be talking about, of course, the Treaty of the Pyrenees
and like the sort of the decline and end of
Spain as the primary European power. Now Spain is still
Spain is still a serious European power until the War
of Spanish Succession, which we're actually going to touch on
as well. Yeah, we're going to look at the post
Treaty of the Pyrenees kind of decline and end of
Habsburg Spain with the death of Charles the Second. And
we're not going to really go into the War of
Spanish Succession, but the War of Spanish Succession is going
to be the kind of the first salvo of the
there's kind of a half century breather after the Thirty
Years War for a lot of reasons, but you know,
it kind of completely obliterated the content. But in the
beginning the War of Spanish Succession, which begins and I'm
pretty sure seventeen o one and ends in seventeen twelve,
the War of Spanish Succession is the beginning of the
next kind of nascent great power competition, the sort of
the era what I call the Great Powers Era. The
War of Spanish Succession is really when this idea of
nation states as competing entities really get started and the
borders of these nation states start getting a lot more
well defined and less complex, and that kind of has
to go with the Enlightenment. But that's well outside the scope.
But that's kind of that's all the stuff we're going
to touch on on the final kind of content episode
and like I said, we might have an episode after
that where we all where we you know, you and
I would just kind of talk for an hour about
every thing we discussed in that series, the takeaways that
the that the viewer can kind of take in the
world system that we currently live in today, and you know,
but like other than that, that's that's just kind of
that's that's whether it's at your leisure, but for the
most part, that's the whole. That's the table of contents,
ladies and gentlemen. That's it. That's everything. That's all I've
got planned for right now. I don't want a mission
creep and I don't want to expand that, and I
already have fit a lot into those into those episodes.
So yeah, I mean that's uh, that's that's pretty much everything.
Speaker 1: Excellent. Yeah. I like the idea of doing a doing
a wrap up at the end, maybe even a live
stream where we can take questions.
Speaker 2: No, I think that's a great idea. Yeah, because this
is something I want, like like your series with Thomas,
this is a deep dive. This is like I want
the viewers to like watch this as it comes out,
because the thing is like this is not like a
series where you can just watch one episode, like you know,
I may contradict that later, but like this, this is
something where you have to watch the whole thing. You
have to you have to get as complete of a picture,
because this analysis will not work if you aren't sort
of following us down the rabbit holes to the different
kind of ways that you can analyze this. Because you know,
if you want to operate, especially as a dissonant in
today's or I get instead of saying it isn't, I
guess you should say as a as a external elite.
All right. If you want to operate as that, you
need to approach it from a multi domain, a multifaceted lens,
and you need to have you need to have a
lot of what you need to have a lot of
what's going on a lot of different levels in your
head at once. So yeah, that's what I have to say.
Speaker 1: Say.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean yeah, no, I like the idea of
a live stream with people asking questions, So yeah, I
want your listeners to follow along with this. I want
I hope they get something out of this. I'm certainly
going to be putting quite a lot of work uh
into into getting this uh done. Shoot, this may even
this may even turn into a book at some point
if I really have that kind of time and energy,
which I doubt I will. But yes, that's a that's
everything I got, mister Pete.
Speaker 1: Sounds good. Promote away. I think I know what you'll promote.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just you know, Old Glory Club. I have to
say it every single time. You all know it's coming.
Just Old Glory Club. Get involved, Get involved. It's absolutely
vital you get involved in the As I said last
time that I did one of these episodes, the time
for you to get in on the ground floor is
very rapidly closing. At the rate we are growing, you
will not be able to join at the same standing
you can join at right now, right cause we are
we are still at a size where just about everyone
can be known. But just given the number of group
chats that have spontaneously organized to start getting nascent chapters,
I don't know half the people in some in most
of those group chats. All right, So if you were
on the fence about joining the Old Glory Club, you've
been listening to Pete show, you know, maybe on and off,
maybe religiously, and you haven't pulled the trick on the
Old Glory Club. Yet it is now or never, because
I do not know if you can join as easily
in the future as you can join right now. We
are growing, we are getting very large, and it's going
to get to a point where we are going to
have to start maybe even telling some people no because
of because we might want to keep. We might want
to keep we're doing here with the system in tax
So if you want to get involved, a lot of
I've seen a ton of you, Pete, when you do
these shows, what.
Speaker 1: Is it like? Like?
Speaker 2: What is it when I go and check the email
sometimes in the Old Glory Club Gmail account A lot
of the time it's it's more than I think anyone.
It's like, hey, I heard about this from listening to
the Pete Canyona show. Hey I heard this listening to
the Peak con Yona show. Hey I Pete was talking
about this. I want to see. So this is one
of the most important platforms for getting this word out there.
But if you were on the fence about joining the
Old Glory Club, do it now? Get involved now? I
do not Where we are wrapping up what we're calling
the second Founding that's going to be wrapped up by
about year's end, we have what is it? There's only
I don't know. I mean, you could quibble about Alabama,
but there's there's, there's there's yeah, I guess you could.
You could count Alabama. You could count Florida too. So
we have four first founding chapters, all right, we have
four first founding chapters. Those are the only ones who
are going to be the first founding. But if if
you want to be in the second Founding, right, you
got to get involved by the end of this year,
because that's when we're going to be wrapping up this
second Founding. And I absolutely assure you there will be
differences between chapters that are first and second Founding, but
that's how it always goes. So if you want to
get involved now, it's better to get involved. It was
better for you to get involved a year ago. But
the second best time is right now. And if you
get involved right now, it's better to be in the
second Founding than in the forty sixth or the the
or when we stop numbering it.
Speaker 1: And it's just.
Speaker 2: Dogc as set right. So I know that, I know, Pete,
that's a long friggin' ramble, But I really want to
drive this home. If you are on the fence about
getting involved, you need to get involved right now. Contact us.
I'm sure Pete puts the email in the in the
show description or the website or whatever. Contact us somehow
and we can get you in contact with you know,
even if it's not we can get you in contact
with a pre existing chapter or an organizing chapter in
your local area, even if you're somewhat remote. We've even
thought about creating because chapters aren't necessarily geographically restricted, we've
thought about creating a floating free agent chapter of all
the guys who are just in a in disparate areas
and they can't there's no one around them, So we've
thought about throwing them and giving them a chapter just
so they have other guys that they know. So yeah,
I'm sorry, mister Peter. I've been talking about this for
like bringing three minutes at this point, but I do
want to drive this home. Get involved. You do not
want to be too late. Get involved.
Speaker 1: I have at least probably five people contact me daily.
Is there a chapter in my area? Is there a
chapter in my area? And yeah, but yeah, you're right.
The earlier you get involved, the yeah, then you start
to learn about what we're doing, and yeah, I'll leave
it at that. Yeah, it's yeah. I think one of
the smart things is that you you don't go out
there and you tell everybody your plans. It's for you know,
there's some things that we just we want to talk
about privately, and yeah, that's it, that's it. Get involved
and uh yeah, and you'll you'll find out what You'll
find out where we're going and what we plan on doing.
Speaker 2: Absolutely absolutely, and frankly, if you want to find out
about those plans, it's better to get involved sooner rather
than later, because as we get larger, those plans will
not extend out as far as they have been. But yeah,
that's that's all I really got. If you want to
follow me on Twitter, I guess cav king Paul.
Speaker 1: That's it all right, Paul, have a good evening. Thank you,
Take care,