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Tag Archives: The Great Powers in Conflict
World-Machine, Rationalism, and Materialism | The Great Powers in Conflict
All these investigations in the various sciences tended to undermine the older Aristotelian concept of a thing's being "perfect." Instead of perfect circles, post-Copernican astronomy posited ellipses; instead of bodies moving of themselves, Newton pictured bodies responding to forces acting upon them.
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Leave a commentThe Scientific Revolution 1543-1700 | The Great Powers in Conflict
A major role in the cultivation of a new scientific attitude was taken by the English thinker and politician Francis Bacon. Though not himself a successful practitioner of science, Bacon was a tireless proponent of the need to observe and to accumulate data. In Novum Organum (1620) he wrote that scientists must think all things possible until all things could be tested. By relying on "the empirical faculty," which learns from experience, Bacon was promoting what he called induction, which proceeds from the particular observed phenomenon to the general conclusion to be drawn.
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Leave a commentScience and Religion in the 16th Century | The Great Powers in Conflict
During the long sixteenth century and deep into the seventeenth, a slow transition from societies based on religious certainties to societies derived from secular concerns was taking place throughout western Europe. The pace was uneven; it differed markedly from place to place, and for most people religion remained at the root of human concern, since salvation was still the desired end of life. But religion was receding toward the background, and security and stability seemed to be a matter for the state rather than the church.
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Leave a commentThe Thirty Years’ War: The Peace of Westphalia, 1648 | The Great Powers in Conflict
The terms of the peace extended the Augsburg settlement to Calvinists as well as to Lutherans and Catholics. Princes would still "determine" the faith of their subjects, but the right of dissidents to emigrate was recognized. In most of Protestant Germany, multiplicity of sects was in fact accepted.
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Leave a commentThe Thirty Years’ War: The Habsburg-Bourbon Conflict, 1635-1648 | The Great Powers in Conflict
The remainder of the Thirty Years' War was a Habsburg- Bourbon conflict. The Protestant commander had to promise future toleration for Catholicism in Germany and to undertake to fight on indefinitely in exchange for a guarantee of French men and money.
The war became transformed into a struggle between emerging national identities. The armies on both sides were a mixture of men from every nationality in Europe; they fought as professional soldiers, changing sides frequently. As these armies ranged across central Europe, the land was laid waste in their wake.
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Leave a commentThe Thirty Years’ War: Intervention by Denmark and Sweden, 1625-1635 | The Great Powers in Conflict
A vigorous and ambitious monarch, King Christian IV sought to extend Danish political and economic power over northern Germany. To check the Danish invasion, the German Catholics enlisted the help of the private army of Albert of Wallenstein (1583-1634). Wallenstein recruited and paid an army that lived off the land.
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Leave a commentThe Thirty Years’ War: The Struggle over Bohemia and the Palatinate, 1618-1625 | The Great Powers in Conflict
A major physical obstacle blocking Spanish communications was the Palatinate, a rich area in the Rhineland ruled by a Calvinist prince, the Elector Palatine. In 1618 the Elector Palatine, Frederick V, also headed the Protestant Union. Frederick hoped to break the Catholic hold on the office of emperor upon the death of the emperor Matthias (r. 1612-1619), who was old and childless.
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Leave a commentGermany and the Thirty Years’ War | The Great Powers in Conflict
Like the great wars of the sixteenth century, the Thirty Years' War of 1618-1648 was in part a conflict over religions. This time, however, most of the fighting took place in Germany. The Habsburg emperor, Ferdinand II (r. 1619-1637), made the last serious political and military effort to unify Germany under Catholic rule.
The Thirty Years' War began as a conflict between Catholics and Protestants; it ended as a struggle to reduce the power of the Habsburgs. The war finally involved most of the European powers and their colonies. It was, in the context of the times, the first "world war."
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Leave a commentThe Dutch Republic, 1602-1672 | The Great Powers in Conflict
The United Provinces of the Northern Netherlands gained independence from Spain before the death of Philip II, though formal recognition of that independence came only in 1648. The Dutch state was an aristocratic merchant society, the first significant middle-class state in Europe with virtually no landed aristocracy. Despite its small size, it was a great power, colonizing in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, trading everywhere, and supporting an active and efficient navy.
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Summary | The Great Powers in Conflict