Absolutism 2

1. Elizabeth I was Protestant and Philip II was Catholic. Philip supported Queen Mary of Scot-land’s conspiracy to assassinate Elizabeth and establish Catholicism as the official religion. Elizabeth had supported Spain’s enemy, the Dutch, because they were the main market for English wools, they lacked a strong Protestant leader after the assassination of William the Silent, and the collapse of Antwerp seemed to signal a Catholic sweep through the Nether-lands. She sent 250,000 pounds and two thousand troops to the Low Countries between 1585 and 1587. Alexander Farnese, Philip’s son, argued that to conquer the Dutch, they must conquer England and cut off English help to the Netherlands. On May 9, 1588, the armada sailed from Lisbon with 130 ships. They met the English fleet of 150 in the English Channel. Due to smaller, faster, and more maneuverable ships with greater firing power than the Spanish ones, the English were able to defeat the Spanish with the help of storms and squalls, spoiled food and rank water, inadequate Spanish ammunition, and the disorga-nization that followed the English fire ships. The battle was pivotal because it prevented Philip from reimposing unity on western Europe by force and allowed England to be free. England continued to support the Dutch, and in 1609, Philip III of Spain recognized the Unit-ed Provinces. Seventeenth-century Spain had a spirit of defeatism, whereas it enhanced English nationalism.

2. In 1617, Ferdinand of Styria won the election to be king of Bohemia. When he tried to close some Protestant churches, the Protestant Estates of Bohemia protested. On May 23, 1618, Protestant hurled two of Ferdinand’s officials from a castle window in Prague. They sur-vived, with the Catholics believing they were saved by angels and the Protestants believed the have fallen on horse manure. This became the “defenestration of Prague” and led to the beginning of the Thirty Years’ War. The first, or Bohemia, phase occurred from 1618 to 1625 and was a civil war in Bohemia between the Catholic League, led by Ferdinand, and the Protestant Union, led by Prince Frederick of Palatinate. In 1618, the Bohemian Estates deposed Ferdinand of the crown and gave it to Frederick; however, he was defeated by Catholic forces led by Ferdinand at the Battle of the White Mountain. Ferdinand II, who had become the Holy Roman Emperor, wiped out Protestantism in Bohemia within ten years by forcible conversions and the activities of militant Jesuits. The second, or Danish, phase oc-curred from 1625 to 1629 and had Protestant King Christian IV of Denmark lose to the Catholics. The Catholic imperial army, led by Albert of Wallenstein, won many battles in northern Germany and Denmark. However, he became too interested into money rather than religion and divided the Catholic forces. In 1629, the Jesuits persuaded the Holy Roman Emperor to issue the Edict of Restitution, restoring all Catholic properties lost to Protestant-ism since 1552 and only allowing Catholicism and Lutheranism. The third, or Swedish, phase occurred from 1630 to 1635 and saw the arrival of the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus to Germany. He wanted to support the Protestants and assist his relatives. He defeated the Catholic forces at Breitenfield in 1631 and again in 1632 at Lützen, but died in the battle. The Swedish advances into Germany ended the Habsburg ambition of uniting all the Ger-man states under imperial authority. Without their leader, the Swedes were defeated at the Battle of Nördlingen and ushered in the French, or international, phase of the Thirty Years’ War (1635–1648). French foreign policy was based on opposition to the Habsburg because a weak, divided empire helped France. In 1622, France had supported the Dutch against Spain, and in 1635, Cardinal Richelieu declared war on Spain and helped the Swedes and German Protestant princes.

3. The Thirty Years’ War ended in October 1648 with the Peace of Westphalia. It marked a turning point in European political, religious, and social history and recognized the sove-reign, independent authority of the German princes. With power divided among more than three hundred princes, with no central government or courts, the Holy Roman Empire as a real state was destroyed. The independence of the United Provinces of the Netherlands was acknowledged. French and Swedish international statures were improved. The division of Germany and the acquisition of Alsace increased France’s size and prestige. France was al-lowed to intervene at will in German affairs. Sweden received a large amount of cash and control over German territories along the Baltic Sea. The treaties prevented the papacy from participating in German religious affairs. Calvinism became a legal religion. The war was a disaster for the German economy and society, as about 33% of urban residents and 40% of rural residents were dead. Due to the influx of silver from South America, Germany as well as Europe suffered an economic crisis from inflation. Southern cities were affected by trade moving from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. The loss of population caused rise in the value of labor. Serfdom was reestablished due to the high prices of land.

1. The Vikings under Eric the Red and Leif Ericson discovered Greenland and the eastern coast of North America. They settled on, and politically influenced, Iceland, Ireland, England, Normandy, and Sicily. The Crusader kingdoms that were established after the Crusades were short-lived. Portugal took the Moroccan city of Ceuta in 1415 because they wanted to Christianize Muslims and find gold, an overseas route to India, and the mythical Christian ruler of Ethiopia, Prester John. Henry the Navigator made annual expeditions down the western coast of Africa and to Guinea, where under King John II, the Portuguese established trading posts and forts that could reach all the way to Timbuktu. Portuguese ships trans-ported gold to Lisbon, and by 1500, controlled the flow of gold to Europe. Bartholomew Diaz rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1487, Vasco da Gama reached India in 1497 and re-turned to Lisbon in 1499 with tons of spices and cloth, King Manuel sent thirteen ships under Pedro Alvares Cabral to set up trading posts in India, and on April 22, 1500, Portuguese ships discovered Brazil. Alfonso de Albuquerque, the governor of India, blasted open the ports of Calicut, Ormuz, Goa, and Malacca and made them major port cities and political bases. The cannon laid the foundation for Portuguese imperialism later.

2. Cannons had been fully developed in western Europe by 1350. Iron cannons were cheaper than bronze to construct, but were difficult to cast effectively and were liable to crack and injure artillerymen. Bronze cannons, were less subject to corrosion, but were very expen-sive. All cannons were difficult to move, required considerable time to reload, and were highly inaccurate. The Portuguese developed the caravel in the fifteenth century. It was small light, and three-masted. They were slower than galley but could hold more cargo and were more maneuverable. With cannons, they could dominate larger vessels. The magnetic compass allowed sailors to determine their direction and position at sea. The astrolabe was used to determine the altitude of the sun and other celestial bodies and thus for mariners to plot their latitude. Improved maps and sea charts gave information about distance, sea depths, and general geography.

3. Portuguese and Spanish explorers wanted to Christianize Muslims and pagans. After the failure of the Crusades, rulers shifted from Christianizing Muslims to the pagan peoples of Africa and the Americas. Many ambitious men in Spain immigrated to the Americas to be-come rich. Governments sponsored and encouraged exploration. The Dutch became rich off of the Dutch East India Company and dominated the European economy in 1650. England’s Henry VII was not interested in exploration. The desire to know more about the world and imagination fueled interest. Spices were of great interest to Europeans. The basic reason for European exploration and expansion was for material profit.

4. Twenty or forty years ago, Christopher Columbus was regarded as a missionary of Christian-ity and how he started American history even though people had already been living there for thousands of years. Nowadays, he is regarded as aggressive and incompetent. He en-slaved and sometime killed the Indians he encountered, governed ineffectively Spain’s Ca-ribbean colony, claimed to have discovered a land that was already there, misunderstood what he had found, and abandoned the mother of his illegitimate son. He was a deeply reli-gious man who was devoted to Ferdinand and Isabella. He believed that Christianity should be carried to places and peoples where it did not exist. In his first voyage, he wanted to find a direct ocean route to Asia that would expand European, and particularly Spanish, econo-mies. I think that the reason Columbus is now portrayed negatively is because of the God-given right for human rights. Columbus restricted the Native Americans’ rights to live and govern themselves. As more detail is known about his voyages, the more negative details come up. Also, the fact the he called the new land India even though it clearly was not makes him appear incompetent.

1. Prince Henry the Navigator—He set up a school for the study of geography and navigation and had annual expedition down the cost of Africa. He reached Guinea.

2. Bartholomew Diaz—He was the first person to round the Cape of Good Hope.

3. Caravel—A small, light, three-masted sailing ship that could hold more cargo and was more maneuverable than the galley. Also could hold cannons.

4. Astrolabe—An instrument that used the sun and other celestial bodies’ positions to deter-mine the latitude of the sailor.

5. Marco Polo—The greatest of medieval travelers who visited the court of the Chinese empe-ror and published his finding in Travels. He stimulated the trade of spices between Asia and Italy and made Venice the center of trade in western Europe.