Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Western SIV Early Modern Overview Number
Speaker 1: four Religion, Economics and Technology. Well, I'm certainly not going
Speaker 1: to rehash our entire series on the Reformation and the
Speaker 1: early wars of religion here, I do want to note
Speaker 1: a few broad trends and changes over the course of
Speaker 1: the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. One thing I do
Speaker 1: want to explain is how the sixteenth century was truly
Speaker 1: the age of persecution. Interestingly enough, for much of the
Speaker 1: Middle Ages, the Catholic Church was surprisingly tolerant. There were
Speaker 1: grumm blayings about superstitions, etc. Etc. But there was very
Speaker 1: little that the Church could do about these issues anyway,
Speaker 1: even if it had wanted to. But by the sixteenth century,
Speaker 1: two key things had happened. One there was now a
Speaker 1: real enemy, the other for Catholics, these were Protestants and
Speaker 1: vice versa. Interestingly, both sides were more than willing to
Speaker 1: ally with the Ottoman Muslims if it gave them an
Speaker 1: advantage over their Christian adversaries. The other was also now
Speaker 1: just a lot more radical than it had been in
Speaker 1: the Middle Ages. Now people were rejecting things like infant
Speaker 1: baptism and openingly questioning the Trinity. But the second factor
Speaker 1: was more important. Governments had become much more sophisticated by
Speaker 1: the sixteenth century. As a result, they, in conjunction with
Speaker 1: the Church, could now crack down oh non aberrant behavior.
Speaker 1: This drove persecution and ultimately the religious wars of the
Speaker 1: late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It's worth pointing out as
Speaker 1: we begin that the Eastern Orthodox Church did not split
Speaker 1: in the same way the Catholic Church did in the West,
Speaker 1: so this wasn't a pan European phenomenon necessarily. Now, the
Speaker 1: biggest source of conflict in the late sixteenth century was
Speaker 1: not between Lutherans and Catholics, or Anglicans and Catholics. It
Speaker 1: was driven by what might be called the more radical reformers.
Speaker 1: Some individuals and groups rejected outright the idea that the
Speaker 1: church and state needed to be united and sought to
Speaker 1: create voluntary communities of believers as they understood that they
Speaker 1: might have existed at the time that the New Testament
Speaker 1: was first written. In terms of theology and spiritual practice,
Speaker 1: these and groups very wildly, though they were generally sort
Speaker 1: of termed radicals for their insistence on a more extensive
Speaker 1: break with the medieval past. Many of them, as I mentioned,
Speaker 1: outright repudiated infant baptism. They wanted as members only those
Speaker 1: who had intentionally chosen to belong. Some adopted baptism of believers,
Speaker 1: for which they were given the title of anabaptists or
Speaker 1: rebaptizers by their enemies. Others saw the outward sacrament of
Speaker 1: rituals as misguided and concentrated on total inner spiritual transformation.
Speaker 1: Some groups attempted to follow Christ's commandments in the gospels literally,
Speaker 1: while others reinterpreted the nature of Christ. Radicals were often
Speaker 1: pacifists and refused to hold any office or swear oaths,
Speaker 1: which were required of nearly anyone with any position of authority,
Speaker 1: including city midwives, toll collectors, as well as anyone involved
Speaker 1: in a court proceeding. Some groups attempted communal ownership of property,
Speaker 1: living very simply and rejecting anything that they thought was
Speaker 1: on biblical. Different groups blended these practices in different ways,
Speaker 1: and often reacted very harshly to members who deviated, banning
Speaker 1: them from the group and requiring other group members, sometimes
Speaker 1: including their spouses, to shaan or have no contact with
Speaker 1: them until they had changed their behavior. Others, in turn,
Speaker 1: argued for complete religious toleration and individualism. That idea was
Speaker 1: especially common against the radicals, who rejected the idea of
Speaker 1: the Trinity and viewed Christ as thoroughly human. The majority
Speaker 1: of those expressing radical beliefs were not theologians, nor were
Speaker 1: many particularly learned. Many, in fact, were women. One of
Speaker 1: the issues facing many Anabaptist groups were whether mixed marriages
Speaker 1: between those of different faiths were even permissible. Persecution also
Speaker 1: led radical leaders and their followers to migrate to parts
Speaker 1: of Europe that were more tolerant. Sympathetic nobles in the
Speaker 1: Holy Roman Empire sometimes allowed them to live in their territories,
Speaker 1: as did nobles in Moravia modern day Slovakia and Czech Republic,
Speaker 1: Silatia in modern day Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe. Eventually,
Speaker 1: many of these groups were forced to move even further.
Speaker 1: In the seventeenth century, some polls of an anti Trinitarian
Speaker 1: sect went into exile in what is Transylvania modern day Hungary.
Speaker 1: Mennonites and Huterites moved to southern Russia. The radicals represented
Speaker 1: one way that the early reformers were pushed further. Many
Speaker 1: of their ideas had social, economic, and political implications, which
Speaker 1: is in part why already saw them as so dangerous.
Speaker 1: Groups that linked Protestant ideas directly to various political and
Speaker 1: social programs were threatening. In fifteen twenty two to fifteen
Speaker 1: twenty three, free Imperial knights, who controlled small territories in
Speaker 1: the Empire and numbered in the thousands, revolted against their
Speaker 1: larger territorial princes. Their grievances were basically economic and military,
Speaker 1: but they used Lutheran ideas to justify their movement. Armies
Speaker 1: led by territorial princes quickly suppressed the revolt and burn
Speaker 1: a number of the knights castles. The Knights revolt thus
Speaker 1: succeeded only in making some princes more weary of these
Speaker 1: new religious ideas. And then, of course, the German peasants Revolt,
Speaker 1: which we talked about in the past, had much more
Speaker 1: far reaching consequences. Peasants in many parts of Germany objected
Speaker 1: to new laws limiting hunting and fishing rights, the rising
Speaker 1: levels of taxation, and the imposition of labor organizations. Local
Speaker 1: groups of peasants formed regional revolutionary organizations and military alliances
Speaker 1: in what was then central and southeastern Germany. In March
Speaker 1: of fifteen twenty five, a union of these groups issued
Speaker 1: the Twelve Tables of Mimigan, a manifesto that called for
Speaker 1: the total abolition of serfdom, hunting and fishing rights, reduced
Speaker 1: taxation and labor services, the right of the community to
Speaker 1: elect and dismiss pastors. Most dramatically, the Twelve Articles stated
Speaker 1: that any practice not in accordance with the Gospels should
Speaker 1: be rejected, thus linking the word of God what we
Speaker 1: might call divine law, with issues of social justice. All
Speaker 1: of this was expressed in clear language, and the articles
Speaker 1: were published as a small pamphlet which was quickly reprinted.
Speaker 1: The demands of the Twelve Articles were backed by military action,
Speaker 1: and peasant armies seized castles, noble houses, abbeys, and even
Speaker 1: a few cities. Of course, in the end we know
Speaker 1: what would become the largest peasant uprising until we get
Speaker 1: to The French Revolution was brutally crushed by the Emperor
Speaker 1: and the nobles, but to an extent, the genie was
Speaker 1: out of the bottle. Though peasant grievances long predated the Reformation,
Speaker 1: the ideas of Luther and Zingli and others about Christian
Speaker 1: freedom and the reshaping of Christian life certainly influenced the
Speaker 1: way in which the peasants now called for change. The
Speaker 1: response by magistraal reformers was uniformly hostile. However, Luther urged
Speaker 1: rulers quote as God soored on earth to knock down, strangle,
Speaker 1: and stab the insurgents as one would a mad dog
Speaker 1: end quote. He and other reformers constantly asserted that their
Speaker 1: message was not to be linked with economic, social, or
Speaker 1: political grievances, and that the peasants and poor people owed
Speaker 1: their superiors obedience spiritual reasons never gave in individuals the
Speaker 1: right to oppose political authority by force, an idea that
Speaker 1: Zwingli later reaffirmed in fifteen twenty six. Now, not surprisingly,
Speaker 1: these reform efforts lost a lot of their popular appeal
Speaker 1: after fifteen twenty five, when they were brutally crushed, though
Speaker 1: peasants in urban rebels sometimes found a place for their
Speaker 1: social and religious ideas within the radical groups of the period.
Speaker 1: The Reformation brought with it more than one hundred years
Speaker 1: of nearly NonStop religious warfare. In fifteen fifty five, the
Speaker 1: initial stage of that conflict came to a brief pause
Speaker 1: in the Holy Roman Empire with the Peace of Augsburg. However,
Speaker 1: one of the key limitations of said peace was that
Speaker 1: it did not recognize Calvinism as a faith, which by
Speaker 1: fifteen fifty five was perhaps the most dynamic form of
Speaker 1: Christianity in Europe. It spread mostly in territories in which
Speaker 1: the nobility was relatively free to make decisions about their religion.
Speaker 1: In fact, in some parts of Germany and for a
Speaker 1: time in Poland, calvin became the official state religion, even
Speaker 1: though it was never recognized by the Peace of Augsburg.
Speaker 1: If Calvinism was the most important Protestant factor in the
Speaker 1: second half of the sixteenth century, the Jesuits were by
Speaker 1: far and away the most important Catholic innovation. The Society
Speaker 1: of Jesus or the Jesuits, had been founded by Ignatius Loyola.
Speaker 1: Loola was a Spanish knight who became acquainted with the
Speaker 1: works of religious writers and mystics while his leg was
Speaker 1: mending after being broken in several places during a battle
Speaker 1: in one of the ongoing Habsburg Valooi Wars. Like Luther,
Speaker 1: Loyola went through a period of inner turmoil and a
Speaker 1: crisis of conscience, but resolved this through a rigorous program
Speaker 1: of contemplation rather than a new theology. He later described
Speaker 1: his techniques in the Spiritual Exercises, which set out a
Speaker 1: training program of structured meditation designed to develop a spiritual
Speaker 1: discipline and allow one to meld one's word with God.
Speaker 1: The ultimate aim of Loyola's program, though, was action on
Speaker 1: behalf of God. Though Loyola had never studied as a humanist,
Speaker 1: his stress on individual will and possibility of self control
Speaker 1: and holiness certainly fitted with the idea of Erasmus and others.
Speaker 1: Their training and control of educational institutions made the Jesuits
Speaker 1: extremely effective. The Jesuits would, as a result, continued to
Speaker 1: be the most important Catholic order in Europe throughout the
Speaker 1: early modern period. What's been the rest of this our
Speaker 1: final overview episode discussing economics and technology. Needless to say,
Speaker 1: in both Arena's life changed a lot for Europeans. In fact,
Speaker 1: a lot more for Europeans between fourteen sixty and sixteen
Speaker 1: fifty two hundred years than it had perhaps between eight
Speaker 1: hundred of the Common Era and fourteen hundred six hundred years.
Speaker 1: In fact, some might argue that it changed more than
Speaker 1: it had between the year one of the Common Era
Speaker 1: and fourteen hundred. By the eighteenth century, economics and economists,
Speaker 1: and both of those were starting to become things began
Speaker 1: emphasizing the powerful role of capitalism, though it certainly had
Speaker 1: become force long before it was recognized. Obviously, the biggest
Speaker 1: name in the game here is Adam Smith, whose inquiry
Speaker 1: into the naturing causes of the Wealth of Nations in
Speaker 1: seventeen seventy six became virtually gospel until the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: For Smith, people had a natural tendency to trade with
Speaker 1: one another. This inclination led to the specialization of trade,
Speaker 1: as first individuals, then groups, then regions, and ultimately nations
Speaker 1: concentrated on products and tasks that they could produce or
Speaker 1: carry out better than their neighbors. The highest level of development,
Speaker 1: production and innovation. In other words, the greatest wealth of
Speaker 1: nations would be achieved by allowing free trade and open
Speaker 1: competition in both products and labor, an economic system later
Speaker 1: called capitalism, though I think it's worth noting Adam Smith
Speaker 1: never used that term. The development of capitalism was slow, uneven,
Speaker 1: and complicated. It involved change in the organization of production
Speaker 1: and the handling of money. And also increase in the
Speaker 1: amount of goods manufactured, bought, and sold. This expansion of
Speaker 1: the European economy was driven in part by a growth
Speaker 1: in population. Population statistics before the advent of regular registrations
Speaker 1: of births, baptisms, marriages, and deaths are sketchy at best,
Speaker 1: but many demographers set the population of Europe at about
Speaker 1: eighty million in thirteen hundred. Famine, plague, and other diseases
Speaker 1: killed at least a quarter of the population of the
Speaker 1: next century, but by about fifteen hundred it climbed again
Speaker 1: to pre plague levels, and over the next century it
Speaker 1: gradually grow to about one hundred million. Rulers and their
Speaker 1: officials regarded the growth in population as a good thing,
Speaker 1: for more people offered the possibility of greater economic and
Speaker 1: military power. The rising population brought problems as well as opportunities, though,
Speaker 1: The demand for food increased, leading to a sharp rise
Speaker 1: in food prices, especially the price of grain, which increased
Speaker 1: between four and seven times in Europe during the period
Speaker 1: from fourteen fifty to sixteen twenty. Prices of firewood and
Speaker 1: charcoal also rose as people chopped down trees for fuel
Speaker 1: or to increase the amount of land under the plow
Speaker 1: forests contracted sharply in size, and new land was created
Speaker 1: as coastal areas and marshes were drained. The hardest hit
Speaker 1: by the rising prices were those who had to buy
Speaker 1: all or most of their food, especially the urban and
Speaker 1: rural poor. This throughout the period led to bread and
Speaker 1: other types of riots. In fourteen ninety seven, five years
Speaker 1: after Columbus discovered the New World, a crowd of poor
Speaker 1: people in Florence attacked the city's public granary, provoking a
Speaker 1: riot in which some of them were trampled to death
Speaker 1: when crushed. In fifteen eighty five, a city council in
Speaker 1: Naples ordered that the standard loaf of bread would be
Speaker 1: smaller but cost the same, a common practice in cities
Speaker 1: during times of shortage. A mob seized one of the
Speaker 1: council members who made that decision, killed him, mutilated his corpse,
Speaker 1: and then burned his house to the ground. Crowds did
Speaker 1: not regularly kill officials, but they did often riot, seizing grain, flour,
Speaker 1: or bread and then selling it at what they regarded
Speaker 1: as the just, that is, the lower price. Governments, private
Speaker 1: groups like guilds and trading companies, and even the Church
Speaker 1: often attempted to shape economic growth by imposing tariffs and taxes,
Speaker 1: setting wages, establishing monopolies, and passing all other sorts of regulations.
Speaker 1: National governments attempted to build up their own industries by
Speaker 1: setting high tariffs on imported manufactured goods and promoting exports.
Speaker 1: We still do that today. Government actions to ensure a
Speaker 1: positive balance of trade were part of an economic doctrine
Speaker 1: that later would be called mercantilism, which was the most
Speaker 1: popular form of economics in Europe between the sixteenth and
Speaker 1: eighteenth centuries. Mercantilists saw the amount of trade and production
Speaker 1: as fixed, so their policies were directed at grabbing a
Speaker 1: bigger piece of the pie and then taxing it and
Speaker 1: defending it, sometimes by military force. Government and personal responses
Speaker 1: to rising prices generally made things worse. Governments devalued coins,
Speaker 1: which meant minted coins with less precious metal content, either
Speaker 1: by making the coins smaller or by mixing the precious
Speaker 1: metals with other metals like lead. But this only drove
Speaker 1: prices up faster as people demanded more devalued coins for
Speaker 1: any purchase. Merchants and miller's hoarded grain and flour in
Speaker 1: the hopes of greater profits, which drove prices up further,
Speaker 1: and cities and nations prohibited the export of food, which
Speaker 1: often kept food from where it was actually needed to go.
Speaker 1: Most famines in Europe were actually completely localized and avoidable.
Speaker 1: One valley might have two little rain well the next
Speaker 1: one was totally fine. Or one village might experience especially
Speaker 1: devastating hailstorms right at harvest time their neighboring villages they
Speaker 1: were unscathed. The increasing population meant there was no shortage
Speaker 1: of tenants and landowners raised fees, fines and rents. Rents
Speaker 1: on Land and England may have increased as much as
Speaker 1: nine times between fifteen ten and sixteen forty, while grain
Speaker 1: prices simultaneously went up four times. Rural rebellions such as
Speaker 1: the German Peasants War or kentce Rebellion in England combined
Speaker 1: religious demands with those on a rollback to earlier levels
Speaker 1: of rents or fees. There was also no shortage of workers,
Speaker 1: especially those who little or no specialized training, so that
Speaker 1: wages increased much more slowly than food prices or rent
Speaker 1: and real wages declined. Wages in general increased more slowly
Speaker 1: than prices for manufactured goods, and enterprising investors saw the
Speaker 1: opportunity for enhanced profits in manufacturing. They developed new forms
Speaker 1: of capitalist organization for the production of goods, hiring families
Speaker 1: of workers while retaining ownership of the raw materials, tools,
Speaker 1: and finished products. Some of these merchant entrepreneurs were able
Speaker 1: to benefit from the enormous amount of gold and silver
Speaker 1: flowing into Europe from the Americas. This influx of precious
Speaker 1: metals drove down the value of coinage, which was made
Speaker 1: from gold and silver, the same way that an increase
Speaker 1: in the supply of any commodity were reduced price. The
Speaker 1: long period of price increases, which economist historians have labeled
Speaker 1: the price revolution, enhanced the wealth and power of long
Speaker 1: standing elites such as Eastern European noble landlords, and of
Speaker 1: relative newcomers such as Western European merchant entrepreneurs. Trade production,
Speaker 1: and population growth are all important factors in explaining Europe's
Speaker 1: economic expansion in the early modern period, though that expansion
Speaker 1: didn't change the fact that the vast majority of Europeans
Speaker 1: lived in rural villages, growing crops and raising animals for
Speaker 1: their own use. For the use of their landlords and
Speaker 1: for sale. In fourteen fifty, about one out of every
Speaker 1: twenty Europeans lived in a town or city with more
Speaker 1: than ten thousand inhabitants. By eighteen hundred, that proportion had
Speaker 1: only climbed to one out of every ten. There were
Speaker 1: places like the Netherlands, for example, where about eighteen hundred
Speaker 1: three out of every ten people lived in the city,
Speaker 1: but these, of course were offset by other geographic locations,
Speaker 1: places like Scandinavia and Spain in Eastern Europe, where there
Speaker 1: were almost no cities at all. Now, thinking about late
Speaker 1: medieval agriculture, terns of land ownership varied from one region
Speaker 1: of Europe to another, and one village to another, and honestly,
Speaker 1: sometimes one family to another within a single village. Some
Speaker 1: land that was termed allodial was owned by the peasants
Speaker 1: who farmed it, who might owe fees for certain services,
Speaker 1: but no other direct obligations. Most land was held by
Speaker 1: an absentee landlord, which might be an individual or an institution,
Speaker 1: oftentimes a monastery. The peasants who farmed it paid rents, taxes,
Speaker 1: and fees to the landowner, which had earlier been paid
Speaker 1: in labor or agricultural products, but which by the mid
Speaker 1: fifteenth century in Western Europe was increasingly paid with cash.
Speaker 1: This transformation to cash payments had been accompanied by disappearance
Speaker 1: of serfdom, so the peasants were no longer legally tied
Speaker 1: to the land, but were tenants of the landowner. They
Speaker 1: still often owed fees based on earlier feudal rights, such
Speaker 1: as special fees to mill grain or pressed grapes, to
Speaker 1: buy sell inherent land, or to take a case to court,
Speaker 1: and in some areas they still had a few labor
Speaker 1: obligations called the courvet in France that's going to be
Speaker 1: hated by the way going into the revolution. Peasants also
Speaker 1: generally paid taxes and fees to support the church, which
Speaker 1: were collected by the village priest and then shared with
Speaker 1: his superiors. Priest himself was often poor and integrated into
Speaker 1: the economic life of the village, so that he farmed
Speaker 1: during the week alongside his parishioners. Landlords generally appointed officials
Speaker 1: from the outside village to oversee the legal and business
Speaker 1: operations of their holdings, collecting taxes and fees, handling disputes.
Speaker 1: The lords of their officials also had courts at regular
Speaker 1: intervals which handled legal matters like fights, assaults, robberies, litigations
Speaker 1: between villagers, and infractions of laws and customs regarding roads
Speaker 1: or public places. These courts relied more on the collective
Speaker 1: memory of village traditions and customs than unwritten laws, so
Speaker 1: that groups of responsible adult men in England called jurors,
Speaker 1: were often asked to decide issues such as who had
Speaker 1: the right to a certain piece of land, by simply
Speaker 1: talking amongst themselves and to others who might know. Because
Speaker 1: of this, jurors were chosen from among those most likely
Speaker 1: to know the facts of the case, quite the opposite
Speaker 1: of modern jury selection. Landlords and government officials had direct
Speaker 1: power in the countryside. By the fifteenth century, villages in
Speaker 1: many parts of Europe had also developed self governing institutions
Speaker 1: to handle issues like crop rotation and to choose additional
Speaker 1: officials such as constables, churchwardens, and even ale testers. How
Speaker 1: they were chosen and elected was more often a matter
Speaker 1: of oral tradition than written law. That both those who
Speaker 1: chose officials and the officials themselves were almost always adult men,
Speaker 1: and generally the heads of households. Women had no official
Speaker 1: voice in the running of the village, though they did buy, sell,
Speaker 1: and hold land independently. There were handfuls of cases in
Speaker 1: England of women chosen as churchwardens in the minor office,
Speaker 1: charged with the physical upkeep of the parish church, especially
Speaker 1: as widows. Women headed households and were required to pay
Speaker 1: all rents and taxes. Being a woman might have meant
Speaker 1: you had no sand government, but you still had to
Speaker 1: pay your taxes. In areas of Europe where men were
Speaker 1: going for long periods of time foresting or fishing, like
Speaker 1: Portugal or the northern Basque region of Spain, or were
Speaker 1: men left seasonally or more permanently in search of work Elsewhere,
Speaker 1: women made decisions about the way village affairs were to
Speaker 1: be run, though they did not set up formal institutions.
Speaker 1: In a previous episode, I mentioned this, but it bears
Speaker 1: repeating that most parts of Europe depended on grain based agriculture.
Speaker 1: In southern Europe this meant rye while oats were dominant
Speaker 1: in the north. Along the coasts, many people dependent on fishing.
Speaker 1: Of course, in the more rugged terrains of Brittany, Scandinavia
Speaker 1: and Ireland, the grays of sheep, goats and cattle with
Speaker 1: the most important economic activity, and of course all of
Speaker 1: these are primarily agricultural activities. In Western and Central Europe,
Speaker 1: villages were generally made up of small houses for individual
Speaker 1: families with one marital couple, their children, including step children,
Speaker 1: and perhaps one or two other relatives, a grandmother or
Speaker 1: perhaps a cousin whose parents had died. A significant minority
Speaker 1: of the population didn't marry until late in life or
Speaker 1: not at all, so some households contained only an unmarried
Speaker 1: person or a widow, or several unmarried people who lived together.
Speaker 1: Villages themselves were nucleated. What I mean by that is
Speaker 1: that houses were clumped together, with the field stretching beyond
Speaker 1: the group. Each house might have a tiny yard for
Speaker 1: smaller animals like chicks or ducks, and of course a
Speaker 1: vegetable garden. Crops were rotated according to tradition and need,
Speaker 1: and some fields were left unworked or fallow to a
Speaker 1: allow the soil to rejuvenate. Most families also allowed to
Speaker 1: let their pigs, oxen, cows, and sheep grays in the
Speaker 1: woods and meadows beyond the fields. They worked to gather firewood, nuts, mushrooms,
Speaker 1: and other foods from these areas. They were called the
Speaker 1: commons because they were held in common by the village whole.
Speaker 1: Remember in England this is the fierce debate over the
Speaker 1: enclosure movement in Southern In some parts of Eastern Europe,
Speaker 1: though nuclear families and single person households were not unknown,
Speaker 1: extended families were more likely to live in the same
Speaker 1: household or very near to one another than in Northern Europe.
Speaker 1: Father and son or two married brothers might share a
Speaker 1: house with both of their families, forming what demographers call
Speaker 1: the stem or complex household. The milder climate and the
Speaker 1: Mediterranean allowed for more frequent planting and greater range of
Speaker 1: agricultural products. Commercial agriculture developed mostly in more urbanized regions
Speaker 1: of Europe, where city populations provided a concentrated market for crops.
Speaker 1: In Flanders, peasant farmers worked their land more intensively by
Speaker 1: multiple hoeings, plowings and weedings, and planted bean crops and
Speaker 1: peas to cover and rejuvenate the soil rather than allowing
Speaker 1: it to lie fallow. Rural areas, however, were not static
Speaker 1: and changed tremendously over the course of the early modern period,
Speaker 1: in both areas with specialized agriculture and places where traditional
Speaker 1: grain growing predominated. The relative prosperity of most peasants in
Speaker 1: the fifteenth century generally gave way to an impoverishment of
Speaker 1: a majority of these same people. By the late sixteenth century,
Speaker 1: landlords increased rents and fees faster than the prices for
Speaker 1: agricultural products rose. Centralizing states, always in need of money,
Speaker 1: increased tax let throughout the incredibly expensive sixteenth century. Wealthier
Speaker 1: peasants were sometimes able to take advantage of the situation
Speaker 1: and purchase more land, but this came from middling and
Speaker 1: poor peasants, who, as a result, were reduced to holding
Speaker 1: nothing but a cottage or no property at all. In England,
Speaker 1: by sixteen twenty, around forty percent of rural residents held
Speaker 1: only a cottage and a garden with outfields. In southern Spain,
Speaker 1: almost three quarters of the rural population held no land
Speaker 1: at all. This process of increasing polarization of wealth in
Speaker 1: the countryside proceeded slightly differently in different parts of Europe.
Speaker 1: In Spain, government officials sold off communal lands known as ballidios,
Speaker 1: to wealthy, aristocratic or ecclesiastic landlords, depriving peasants of places
Speaker 1: to gather firewood or let their stock. Graze. Those same
Speaker 1: noble landlords also purchased position as tax collectors als, assuring
Speaker 1: their exemption from paying taxes. They were not interested in
Speaker 1: agricultural improvements, but in extracting as much as they could
Speaker 1: from their tenants. Rants and taxes became so high that
Speaker 1: many peasant families could not pay them. They lost their
Speaker 1: leases and swelled the ranks of the growing landless poor
Speaker 1: in Italy. Wealthy urban residents increasingly bought land around major
Speaker 1: cities places like Florence, Pisa, and Venice. They rented it
Speaker 1: out to tenant farmers, often through sharecropping contracts called mesodia,
Speaker 1: in which the owners supplied the seed, animals, and tool
Speaker 1: as well as the land. Landowners increasingly increased the interest
Speaker 1: rates in mezededia contracts and other rents, and the city
Speaker 1: governments that controlled the countryside fixed prices artificially low on
Speaker 1: agricultural products in a misguided effort to control inflation and
Speaker 1: assure urban residents of access to food. Tenants got caught
Speaker 1: in the middle of this whole process, and the number
Speaker 1: who were well off declined dramatically. Village organizations of self
Speaker 1: government did little and could do little to halt this
Speaker 1: neither peasant tenants nor wealthy landlords saw any benefit in
Speaker 1: agricultural improvements, and landlords increasingly spent their excess income on
Speaker 1: fancy country houses, elaborate furnishings, and art. The situation was
Speaker 1: no better in France, where the religious wars absolutely destroyed
Speaker 1: year in and year out crops and villages, and government
Speaker 1: policies exempted land owned by nobles and often owned by
Speaker 1: bourgeoisie urban residents from taxes. This made land attractive to
Speaker 1: upper and middle class buyers, but as they purchased more
Speaker 1: and more land, the tax burden became spread among fewer
Speaker 1: and fewer were remaining people. Only in the Netherlands, where
Speaker 1: taxes and rent on rural land remained moderate and leasa's
Speaker 1: long term did prosperity continue for a broad spectrum of
Speaker 1: the present population. So as we know, England was not
Speaker 1: unique in suffering through agricultural difficulties during the early modern period,
Speaker 1: but it did suffer from one somewhat unique phenomenon enclosure.
Speaker 1: Enclosure is just what it sounds like. A landlord builds
Speaker 1: a fence around what had previously been common land and
Speaker 1: used it for economic profit. Normally, this meant for grazing
Speaker 1: land for sheep to produce wool, but this meant a
Speaker 1: plot of land previously used for the whole village was
Speaker 1: now used for one individual. Peasants often relied on those
Speaker 1: public plots to raise communal cattle or goats to grow gardens.
Speaker 1: As a result, they suffered tremendously. Nobles and yeoman peasants,
Speaker 1: along with urban landlords, benefited from enclosure horror. Peasants quickly
Speaker 1: became forced to sell what small plots they owned it
Speaker 1: just to survive, since it wasn't economic to keep them
Speaker 1: without access to public land. I don't want to overstate
Speaker 1: this process. Though enclosure was slow and uneven, by sixteen fifty,
Speaker 1: only ten percent of the land in England had been enclosed.
Speaker 1: Men and women with little to no land in the
Speaker 1: countryside worked in the expanding labor pool for handicrafts no
Speaker 1: matter how many family members worked. However, their wages simply
Speaker 1: couldn't keep pace with inflation. Real wages for agricultural labors
Speaker 1: and rural artisans in England were cut in half during
Speaker 1: the period from fifteen hundred to sixteen fifty, and those
Speaker 1: around Paris slashed by two thirds. There was often too
Speaker 1: little work available even at depressed wage levels, and large
Speaker 1: numbers of landless agricultural workers drifted continuously in search of
Speaker 1: employment or better working conditions, in addition to those who
Speaker 1: migrated seasonally following the harvests. It appeared to many contemporaries
Speaker 1: that poverty was increasing at an alarming rate, and that
Speaker 1: more of the poor were what they termed sturdy beggars,
Speaker 1: that is, able bodied men and women who could work
Speaker 1: if they chose, rather than those who were poured through
Speaker 1: no fault of their own, such as orphans, the infirm,
Speaker 1: or the handicapped. Most cities in Europe began to pass
Speaker 1: laws forbidding healthy people to beg or ordering them back
Speaker 1: to their home area, or even forcing them into workhouses.
Speaker 1: But things were a lot worse for the peasantry in
Speaker 1: East central Europe were the reintroduction of serfdom, tied people
Speaker 1: to the land, forbidding them to move or even increasingly.
Speaker 1: By fourteen hundred, serfdom had all but disappeared in Central Europe.
Speaker 1: Onerous labor services in the Holy Roman Empire, called robot
Speaker 1: in Czech, which is the root of our modern word robot,
Speaker 1: had all but vanished, but then between fourteen hundred and
Speaker 1: sixteen hundred, a series of weak ruling houses in Central
Speaker 1: and Eastern Europe led to a dramatic expansion in the
Speaker 1: power of the nobility. In Germany, these powerful nobles were
Speaker 1: called junkers. Acting together, these nobles curtailed the power of cities,
Speaker 1: limited their growth, reinstated labor duties for their peasants, and
Speaker 1: increased rents. Without a strong central authority, there truly was
Speaker 1: nothing to stop them then, as we know, in fourteen
Speaker 1: ninety seven, Russian legal codes restricted the of peasants to move. Later,
Speaker 1: even the Terrible abolished their right to move all together
Speaker 1: and sell their labor. In sixteen forty nine, a new
Speaker 1: Russian code will set no limit to the lord's ability
Speaker 1: and authority over their peasants, who could now be bought
Speaker 1: and sold. This process was replicated elsewhere. In fact, thirty
Speaker 1: thousand young German men in the late seventeen seventies were
Speaker 1: outright sold to the British to fight in the American
Speaker 1: War for Independence. Neo serfdom was just as onerous in
Speaker 1: its labor obligations and limitations on freedom as earlier European serfdom,
Speaker 1: but it was very economically different in that it was
Speaker 1: not designed for the market, not for subsistence either. Landlords
Speaker 1: sold the grain produced on their estates and taken in
Speaker 1: as taxes on rents and peasant land, both regionally and internationally.
Speaker 1: In Poland, for example, rye exports to the west were
Speaker 1: six thousand tons in fourteen sixty, seventy thousand tons in
Speaker 1: fifteen sixty, and two hundred thousand tons in sixteen eighteen.
Speaker 1: Nobles sold grain locally to the increasing number of peasants
Speaker 1: who had become landless when they could no longer afford
Speaker 1: their rents, and to the armies regularly engaged in the
Speaker 1: various dynastic and religious wars or battles. Some landlords specialized
Speaker 1: in other types of commercial crops, such as wine, grapes, hops,
Speaker 1: and flax, but grain remained the primary product. Increases in
Speaker 1: the price of grain during the sixteenth and seventeenth century
Speaker 1: encouraged landlords to raise rents, further, expand labor obligations, buy
Speaker 1: more land, and put still more land into grain cultivation.
Speaker 1: All of these resulted in more short term profits and
Speaker 1: were safer and easier than trying to introduce new crops
Speaker 1: or new agricultural techniques. Long run, though, these practices lowered
Speaker 1: yields and reduced productivity and hindered economic growth of all types,
Speaker 1: not just in agriculture. The situation was so terrible for
Speaker 1: serfs that slavery sometimes seemed like the better option. Slaves
Speaker 1: were quite common around Moscow, perhaps around ten percent of
Speaker 1: the population, where they could include the offspring of slaves,
Speaker 1: military captives, indentured servants, and people who had enslaved themselves
Speaker 1: or their entire family just to pay off their debts.
Speaker 1: Most slaves lived in rural areas and worked the lands,
Speaker 1: but some were estate managers, household workers, or soldiers. Though
Speaker 1: a series of slave rebellions in the early seventeenth century
Speaker 1: had led the government to prohibit military training for slaves.
Speaker 1: In the mid sixteenth century, a central office for recording
Speaker 1: and handling all types of slaves, called the Slavery Chancellery,
Speaker 1: was established in Moscow. About half the slaves were limited
Speaker 1: contract slaves, who after the fifteen nineties were freed on
Speaker 1: the death of their owners. The fact that slave status
Speaker 1: was not heritable and that slaves did not pay taxes
Speaker 1: led peasants to sell themselves more frequently, especially after legal
Speaker 1: changes in sixteen forty nine made serfdom even more onerous.
Speaker 1: Once the government realized what was happening, it converted all
Speaker 1: slaves back into serfs, which effectively ended slavery per se,
Speaker 1: although Russian serfdom by this point wasn't much different. Russians,
Speaker 1: along with Ukrainians, Poles, and other Eastern Europeans, were also
Speaker 1: captured by Crimean tartars and sold as slaves into the
Speaker 1: Ottoman Empire. Perhaps as many as two point five million
Speaker 1: slaves were handled through the Crimean port city of Kafa
Speaker 1: in the period between fifteen hundred to seventeen hundred. Armies
Speaker 1: fighting over a territory and religion in Europe were enormous,
Speaker 1: sleek consumers of grain and other foodstuffs. They also had
Speaker 1: an insatiable appetite for metal, particularly after the development of
Speaker 1: gun based weapons. By one calculation, the siege of an
Speaker 1: average size city at the end of the sixteenth century
Speaker 1: used more than ten thousand cannon balls per day, to
Speaker 1: say nothing of the metal required to make the artillery
Speaker 1: that shot those cannon balls. Warfare consumed massive quantities of copper, lead, tin, iron,
Speaker 1: and various mixtures of these, and the demand for metal
Speaker 1: and architecture housing and other crafts increased dramatically in the
Speaker 1: early modern period as well. Metals to be smelted required
Speaker 1: huge amounts of fuel, which in the Middle Ages have
Speaker 1: been primarily meant wood or charcoal made from wood. Wood
Speaker 1: prices increased and many areas were deforested, leading to soil
Speaker 1: erosion and other environmental problems. Coal was increasingly used as
Speaker 1: an alternative to wood, and coal mining dramatically expanded in
Speaker 1: certain areas around the city of Liege. In the Low
Speaker 1: Countries it basically quadrupled in the first half of the
Speaker 1: sixteenth century, and in the English counties of Northumberland and
Speaker 1: Durham it grew ten times between fifteen hundred and sixteen fifty.
Speaker 1: Mining and metal production in the Middle Ages were largely
Speaker 1: organized in the same way as other crafts were, with
Speaker 1: groups of artisans and guilds or associations who leased from
Speaker 1: landowners the land on which ore was found. As the
Speaker 1: demand for metals went up, however, complicated machinery was needed
Speaker 1: to dig and maintain deeper tunnels and speed up the
Speaker 1: production process. This was too expensive for artisans, but as
Speaker 1: the price and possibility for profit works also growing up,
Speaker 1: other players became interested rulers, including the popes and various
Speaker 1: members of the Habsburg family, opened or expanded mines. The
Speaker 1: popes had a monopoly on alum, a mineral used for
Speaker 1: fixing dye in cloth, and the Habsburgs held copper and
Speaker 1: silver mines in Eastern Europe. Noble landowners opened new mines
Speaker 1: and iron foundries on their estates, using some of the
Speaker 1: profits they had earned from the grain trade to build
Speaker 1: vast blast furnaces, gravitational or hydraulic pumps to get the
Speaker 1: water out of mine shafts, devices for ventilating shafts, and
Speaker 1: other types of machinery. As part of their increased labor obligations,
Speaker 1: serfs on these estates were required to cut wood or
Speaker 1: hul raw materials. Private individuals and family ferns also expanded
Speaker 1: mining operations through huge amounts of initial investments and the
Speaker 1: increased use of machines. Clearly, metallurgy was important, but the
Speaker 1: most common non agricultural occupation for Europeans was in the
Speaker 1: textile industry. Raw wool and finished cloth remained the most
Speaker 1: important European commodity other than food throughout the sixteenth century. Initially,
Speaker 1: most finished cloth was produced in Italy, but By the
Speaker 1: sixteenth century, Dutch, English and the French began playing a
Speaker 1: much larger role in the process, particularly in the Northern Netherlands,
Speaker 1: which became the Dutch Republic. New technology enhanced organizational changes
Speaker 1: to increase production. The Dutch ribbon bloom, for example, allowed
Speaker 1: a single worker to weave up to twenty four ribbons
Speaker 1: at a time. Wind power was tapped to full cloth
Speaker 1: and fulling meals similar to the one that started Don
Speaker 1: Quixote were built in many parts of the Dutch countryside.
Speaker 1: Because the Netherlands is flat, falling water is not a
Speaker 1: common power option, but the Dutch adapted technology developed for
Speaker 1: water mills to wind power, using windmills to grind seed,
Speaker 1: crush seed for oil sawmill, and many other purposes. These
Speaker 1: technological innovations required large amounts of capital, much of which
Speaker 1: was provided by the partnerships and companies that had been
Speaker 1: originally established to share the risk in trading ventures. The
Speaker 1: Dutch combined new technology, a simplification of production processes and
Speaker 1: a sharper division of labor in shipbuilding and in textile production.
Speaker 1: Throughout the early sixteenth century, Dutch shipyards were producing many
Speaker 1: types of ships from small fishing boats to huge galleons,
Speaker 1: supplying a merchant fleet that at its height in the
Speaker 1: seventeenth century could have numbered upwards of fifteen thousand ships.
Speaker 1: Toward the end of the century, Dutch shipbuilders invented the
Speaker 1: flute or fly boat, a long, flat bottom ship made
Speaker 1: of pine or fur soft wood that could be cut
Speaker 1: by wind driven sawmills. Because there was little piracy in
Speaker 1: the North and Baltic seas, where the Dutch primarily traded,
Speaker 1: flutes carried no guns but could be crammed with bulky
Speaker 1: cargoes such as grain, fish, lumber, wine, and metals. Flutes
Speaker 1: were mass produced quickly and cheaply in the area just
Speaker 1: north of Amsterdam. Because they were rigged simply, they needed
Speaker 1: only half the crew of other ships for the same
Speaker 1: amount of cargo, making them much cheaper to operate as
Speaker 1: well as produce. Dutch ships brought raw materials from all
Speaker 1: over Europe and later from around the world to the Netherlands,
Speaker 1: where merchants invest in traffics, trafficking and judge. These were
Speaker 1: firms that specialized in the processing and refinishing products for
Speaker 1: re export. Raw sugar could be refined into white table sugar,
Speaker 1: and raw diamonds cut into gems. In Amsterdam, gin was distilled,
Speaker 1: tobacco was cut, whale blubber could be boiled into whale oil,
Speaker 1: clay made into ceramics and paper and leather goods and
Speaker 1: glass produced throughout the various Dutch towns. These products were
Speaker 1: then shipped internationally and also sold locally to prosperous farmers
Speaker 1: and city residents over the canals and river that crisscrossed
Speaker 1: the Dutch countryside. New types of financial organization also played
Speaker 1: a role in this commercial expansion. In the fifteenth century,
Speaker 1: the most important European banks were run by Italian merchants
Speaker 1: in Florence, Venice and Genoa. They loaned money to individuals
Speaker 1: and governments, issued maritime insurance on overseas voyages, speculated in
Speaker 1: foreign exchange, and accepted deposits of coins. Deposit banks with
Speaker 1: similar functions became common in major cities, but they often
Speaker 1: made speculative loans and frequently failed. These failures ultimately led
Speaker 1: to the creation of public banks overseen by government officials,
Speaker 1: of which the first was Tabila di Covenia of Barcelona,
Speaker 1: founded in fourteen oh one. In the middle of the
Speaker 1: sixteenth century, Naples and Palermo founded public banks, and the
Speaker 1: northern Italian cities soon followed. Those in Genoa were specifically
Speaker 1: designed to handle gold and silver coming from the Spanish
Speaker 1: New World. Public banks were opened in Amsterdam and other
Speaker 1: Dutch and North German cities in the early seventeenth century
Speaker 1: and gradually took over more and more business from private banks.
Speaker 1: Though both private and public banks issued various forms of
Speaker 1: paper bills of exchange and statement of deposit, most businesses
Speaker 1: in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was carried out with coins.
Speaker 1: We're talking gold, florins, ducats, ekus, or nobles for large
Speaker 1: transaction of the nobility. In merchant class, we could talk
Speaker 1: about large silver coins for major purchases and rents, smaller
Speaker 1: silver or copper pennies for everyday purchases. Mints that made
Speaker 1: coins were monitored and taxed by government authorities, but were
Speaker 1: generally operated privately. When governments needed money, they ordered mints
Speaker 1: to make smaller coins or used less precious metal, thus
Speaker 1: increasing the amount of taxes flowing to the government for
Speaker 1: the same amount of metal. Debased coins grew smaller and
Speaker 1: their purity declined from twenty four it's to eighteen and
Speaker 1: then even less. While silver coins turned black because they
Speaker 1: had such a high copper content. Some even grew so
Speaker 1: thin that they simply crumbled upon touch. Merchants thus often
Speaker 1: weighed coins rather than counting them, and relied on networks
Speaker 1: of information about which coins they should avoid. The debasement
Speaker 1: always led to inflation. Now look, most Europeans never saw
Speaker 1: a large gold eku or silver coin. They paid their
Speaker 1: taxes and bought items with the small silver, copper, or
Speaker 1: often mixed metal variety. In the beginning of the sixteenth century,
Speaker 1: Antwerp was the largest financial center in all of Europe.
Speaker 1: Portugal decided to make Antwerp the main outlet for spices
Speaker 1: in Europe after the first Portuguese voyages to India. Once
Speaker 1: the money was there, where the Habsburg Holy Roman emperors
Speaker 1: did most of their banking in Antwerp itself. Loaning money
Speaker 1: to the crowned heads of Europe was of course the
Speaker 1: most lucrative venture at the time, but it was also
Speaker 1: the riskiest. As we know, Philip the Second of Spain
Speaker 1: defaulted on his debts several times. Antwerp reached the height
Speaker 1: of its prosperity circa fifteen sixty. Then came the Dutch
Speaker 1: Revolt in fifteen seventy six, Spanish troops housed in the
Speaker 1: city who had not been paid for months ran amok.
Speaker 1: They seized everything of value, burned buildings, raped women, and
Speaker 1: slaughtered between six to seven thousand citizens. This Spanish fury
Speaker 1: was followed less than a dec heead later by the
Speaker 1: French Fury, when French soldiers did basically the same thing.
Speaker 1: These incidents ended half a century of Antwerp's dominance, and
Speaker 1: the he receded in importance. Urban life continued to improve
Speaker 1: throughout the early modern period. Almost all European cities were
Speaker 1: now enclosed by walls and gates. The center of most
Speaker 1: cities was the most desirable neighborhood, with large houses of merchants, lawyers,
Speaker 1: and other wealthy individuals. The city center was also home
Speaker 1: to government buildings. Slightly out from the center were the
Speaker 1: homes of guild masters and other professionals. The control of
Speaker 1: servants and journeymen was important to urban elites, but they
Speaker 1: were more worried about the large number of people who
Speaker 1: neither lived nor worked in the households of responsible tax
Speaker 1: paying citizens. Tax records from early modern cities indicate that
Speaker 1: half or even more households didn't own enough to pay
Speaker 1: any taxes at all. These were people married, single widowed,
Speaker 1: who lived in attics and sell in rooms that they shared,
Speaker 1: or in flimsy housing just inside or just outside the
Speaker 1: city walls. They supported them anyway that they could. Men
Speaker 1: repaired houses and walls, dug ditches and hauled goods from ship.
Speaker 1: Women laundered clothing, spun, wooled, and cared for invalids. Children
Speaker 1: carried messages or packages around the thriving city or even
Speaker 1: into the surrounding countryside. The poor found work in city orphanages,
Speaker 1: infirmaries and hospitals, where the poor made up most of
Speaker 1: the patients, as well as being the caregivers. They made
Speaker 1: or sold simple items that were unregulated by the guilds,
Speaker 1: little things like wooden dishes, pins, and soap. They gathered
Speaker 1: nuts or firewood outside city walls, carried them through the
Speaker 1: gates and sold them for a few pennies. They bought
Speaker 1: eggs from villagers, cooked them in a small pot on
Speaker 1: a charcoal brazier, and sold them as a quick to
Speaker 1: go beal. They bought and sold used clothing, household articles,
Speaker 1: or worked in taverns or inns. Sometimes these people engaged
Speaker 1: in criminal activities, stealing merchandise from houses or wagons and
Speaker 1: then selling it on the sly, or cutting the strings
Speaker 1: of pouches and purses, or they did all these at once,
Speaker 1: taking advantage of whatever opportunity presented itself. For those without
Speaker 1: any means of support, the only alternative was begging. But
Speaker 1: as inflation increased in economic conditions worsened in the later
Speaker 1: sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, states began cracking down on begging.
Speaker 1: Cities band begging and opened workhouses where people were forced
Speaker 1: to perform basic manual labor. Orphaned boys were apprenticed to
Speaker 1: learn a trade, girls were taught domestic tasks. Poor relief
Speaker 1: was handled by accommodation of institutions, private philanthropic organizations, monasteries,
Speaker 1: voluntary charitable groups, city village agencies, the parish, and in
Speaker 1: Catholic areas of piscopal councils. Beginning in the fifteen twenties,
Speaker 1: both Protestant and Catholic cities in Western Europe tried to
Speaker 1: centralize and consolidate the dispensation of charity, control begging, and
Speaker 1: put everyone who could work to work. They often established
Speaker 1: what were called common chests or central collections of gifts
Speaker 1: appointed men women as overseers of the poor to visit
Speaker 1: people in their homes and distribute these alms in places
Speaker 1: called almshouses. In Catholic areas, orders like the Franciscans who
Speaker 1: survived by begging, oppose the new poor laws, arguing that
Speaker 1: the poor are a right to beg and that begging
Speaker 1: allowed people to show their Christian charity. Most Catholic clergy
Speaker 1: and rulers did not have such misgivings. However, acts of mercy,
Speaker 1: such as donating to the poor were certainly meritorious good deeds,
Speaker 1: but they needed to be funneled through structures established and
Speaker 1: controlled by bishops. Franciscans and other orders were allowed to beg,
Speaker 1: but Catholic rulers preferred that they solicit contributions through personal appeals,
Speaker 1: not on the streets. In both Catholic and Protestant areas,
Speaker 1: authorities hoped that voluntary contributions would provide enough money for
Speaker 1: poor relief, but they also recognized that forced contributions could
Speaker 1: be necessary, especially during times of famine or epidemics. Poor
Speaker 1: people could only collect support in their home, parish or town, however,
Speaker 1: not in the cities where they might have migrated. To
Speaker 1: looking for work. Poor laws in many places made sharp
Speaker 1: distinctions between the quote unquote worthy poor talking about orifans, widows,
Speaker 1: the elderly, working families with many children, those whom illnesses
Speaker 1: or accidents might have incapacitated or maimed, in other words,
Speaker 1: respectable people who had fallen on hard times, and the
Speaker 1: quote unquote unworthy poor, vagrants and idlers, who came usually
Speaker 1: from somewhere else. The worthy poor were to be taken
Speaker 1: care of in their own homes or in municipal hospitals.
Speaker 1: The unworthy poor sent to workhouses, where they were often
Speaker 1: joined by debtors and people awaiting prison sentences. Workhouses and
Speaker 1: jails could never hold all the people in the sixteenth
Speaker 1: and seventeenth centuries who didn't have work, Given the often
Speaker 1: runaway inflations and rapidly changing economic conditions. Throughout the eighteenth century,
Speaker 1: physical punishments for idleness continued to be common. Banishment from
Speaker 1: a city for a period of time was often the
Speaker 1: consequence of someone who was chronically without work. Beginning in
Speaker 1: the late fifteenth century, France, Spain, and the Italian city
Speaker 1: states started sentencing vagrants to galley service. By the seventeenth century,
Speaker 1: galley service was the most common criminal punishment in all
Speaker 1: of France, and it was only when they stopped using
Speaker 1: the galleys that that stopped being the case. So economics
Speaker 1: and technology changed rapidly between fourteen fifty and roughly sixteen fifty,
Speaker 1: transforming the lives of Europeans, both for the better and
Speaker 1: oftentimes for the worse. And we're going to see all
Speaker 1: of these factors play out now in our next massive
Speaker 1: story arc, the Thirty Years War. Thirty Years War is
Speaker 1: so deliciously complicated that I'll be spending the next couple
Speaker 1: episodes walking through the Holy Roman Empire at the time
Speaker 1: that the Thirty Years War breaks out in the seventeenth century,
Speaker 1: and explaining how the idiosyncrasies of the Empire overlapped with
Speaker 1: changing religious, economic, and technological developments to create the perfect
Speaker 1: tinderbox for the most devastating war that Europe would experience
Speaker 1: up until the Napoleonic period. Now, if you've enjoyed the show,
Speaker 1: please consider leaving a rating or review. It helps other
Speaker 1: people find it. And if you're looking for financial ways
Speaker 1: to support the show, there's a bunch of different options
Speaker 1: in the links in the show notes. In Western CIV
Speaker 1: two point home