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The three centuries from the early sixteenth to the end of the Napoleonic Wars saw changes of fundamental importance in the ways in which European peoples viewed themselves, their continent, and the world. When this period began the emperor Charles V had just triumphed over the French at Pavia (1525) and, in the minds of many, was about to restore an empire, both holy and Roman, and to unify Europe. When it ended, the bid for continental dominance by Napoleon had been shattered at Leipzig (1813) and Waterloo (1815), and Europe was set for a century of nationalism and economic growth. A NEW WORLD The changes which were achieved during this period can, for our purposes, be listed and discussed under five heads. First was the concept of nationalism, which was slowly and unevenly taking shape at this time. A nation is a body of people held together by a sense of belonging together. A common language and culture were important bonds. So also were a common historical tradition, the occupation of a well-defined territory, and, often enough, a common enemy. Many a nation has been forged in conflict with another and perhaps more powerful state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The two centuries from the early fourteenth to the early sixteenth form one of the more enigmatic periods in European history. It was one of continuous warfare and civil disturbance, yet it saw the birth of humanism and the beginnings of the Renaissance. It has been represented as a period of economic depression, while at the same time the peasantry in some parts of Europe enjoyed a higher material living standard than at any other time in the Middle Ages (Fig. 7.1). It was an era of extreme bigotry, intolerance, and superstition, and at the same time of reason and enlightment. Its art showed a preoccupation with death, and at the same time it could display the lightness and grace which we associate with the Renaissance. These many contradictions spring from the horrific experiences of the Great Plague and its subsequent recurrences. The bubonic plague reached western Europe in the ships of the Genoese at the end of 1347. It came from the Crimea in the bloodstreams of infected rats, having been brought to the Crimea in the baggage of merchants from the Far East. Wherever the ships called, the pathogens of the plague went ashore with the crew and spread rapidly through the local population. Their vectors were the black rat and the flea, the former carrying and nurturing the bacillus, the latter distributing it to all whom it bit. Crowded, dirty, and rat-infested homes were ideal for its diffusion. It spread fast. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By the early fourteenth century the period of medieval economic growth was over; the population of Europe reached its peak at about this time, and the spatial pattern of cities was to develop no farther before the nineteenth century. POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY The political map of Europe had assumed a form which, with minor changes, it was to retain into modern times. Only in the Balkan peninsula, where the Byzantine empire was clinging desperately to its last foothold, were major changes still to come. In most of Europe political control was becoming more centralized, and kingship more absolute. Feudalism, as a mode of government, was weakening, though its outward symbols were as conspicuous as ever. Only in eastern Europe and Russia were feudal relationships tending to strengthen. In the Spanish peninsula the southward advance of the Christian states had reduced the Moorish kingdom of Granada to the Sierra Nevada and neighboring coastlands. To the north, Castile, having absorbed Léon and other petty states, reached from the Biscay coast in the north to the Strait of Gibraltar (Fig. 6.1). It dominated the Meseta, while around its periphery lay Navarre and Gascony, Aragon and Portugal. Only Castile still had a boundary with the Moors and still continued its centuries-old crusade against them. Portugal and Aragon were casting their eyes beyond the seas and were beginning that commercial expansion which was to take them to Asia and the New World. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The centuries from the early ninth to the early fourteenth saw the rise and splendor of medieval civilization. They saw also the emergence of a political organization of the land which underwent little fundamental change before the end of the eighteenth century: an increase in population which stretched to its limits the agricultural resources of Europe, and the development of a pattern of cities, that remained almost unaltered until the Industrial Revolution. Not until the nineteenth century do we encounter again a period of comparable development and change. THE INVASIONS The period began with another wave of invaders from beyond the core areas of western and central Europe. These came from Scandinavia, westward from the fjords of Norway and the plains of Denmark to the British Isles and France, eastward from Sweden to the shores of Russia and overland to the Black Sea (Fig. 5.1). The first of these sea raiders reached the shores of western Europe before the death of Charlemagne; the last landed on those of northern Britain two and a half centuries later. Their raids were but an episode in European history, but they had, locally at least, far-reaching consequences. The sudden explosion of Nordic peoples in the ninth century is as enigmatic as that of the Tartar peoples during previous centuries. It has been attributed to political struggles within Scandinavia, to overpopulation, and to environmental change in this climatically marginal land. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

INTRODUCTION The purpose of this chapter is to reconstruct how Dutch Reformed Protestants faced the questions concerning the attitude the faithful should take with regard to a hostile, persecuting government and whether they developed a distinct Reformed Protestant approach to the questions of political obedience and resistance which had troubled Protestants throughout Europe from the very beginning of the Reformation. Luther himself had set the tone for Reformation political thought on these issues, following the basic tenet of texts such as the thirteenth chapter of Paul's letter to the Romans, 1 Peter 2 and the fourth commandment. All of them emphasized that obedience was a divine command. As the earthly powers were ordained by God to protect the good and to punish the wicked, ‘he who resists the authorities, resists what God has appointed’, as Romans 13:2 put it. However, Luther's emphasis on obedience and non-resistance was by no means unqualified. From the outset he pointed out, again following the scriptures, that one should obey God rather than men, and that therefore the faithful were obliged to disobey worldly authorities whenever these ordered anything that was ungodly. Moreover, from October 1530 Luther started to waver in his support for the idea of absolute non-resistance, with which he had so ferociously condemned the German Peasants' War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

THE NETHERLANDS AROUND 1555 ‘The people of this country are in general of beautiful stature, well made and proportioned, and amongst their other beautiful features they have the most beautiful men and women. In general their personage is upright but many exceed the normal and are tall, principally in Holland and Friesland where they are extremely tall.’ In these terms the Florentine merchant Lodovico Guicciardini praised the physical features of the inhabitants of the Low Countries. Lodovico, who was a member of the famous Guicciardini dynasty and a nephew of Francesco Guicciardini, spent most of his life in the Netherlands, especially in Antwerp where he lived for forty-eight years. In 1567 he published his Descrittione di tutti i Paesi Bassi, which contained a meticulous description of the Low Countries, their towns and rivers, their economy, their political system and their inhabitants. According to Guicciardini the Dutch were rather ‘cold’ and sober-minded people, who wisely took the world and Fortune as it came. They were neither ambitious nor haughty, but polite and open, enjoying good company which sometimes led to licentiousness, especially since their main vice was drinking. Passion, even when love came into play, seemed alien to them: ‘As persons of cold nature they are very temperate in the matters of Venus, and they strongly abhor adultery.’ Guicciardini had a keen eye for Dutch women. He described them as beautiful, gracious and of good manners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Before describing the Celys' domestic life in further detail, a chapter must be taken to sketch in the background of international affairs and the fortunes of the Staple trade in the years 1482 to 1485. March 1482 had seen further negotiations dragging on between England and France: ‘upon Palm Sunday the French embassy come into London, and they were worshipfully received with the mayor and all the crafts of London’, but their entertainment was to little real purpose. There had also occurred a disaster to one of the new English ultimate weapons: ‘at afternoon [of 27 March] was the great new gun of brass shot at Mile End, 'at was made at the Tower. And it brast all to pieces.’ On that same day the Duchess Mary of Burgundy died as the result of a hunting accident. It was not long before the Estates of Flanders declared that her widower, Maximilian, was unacceptable as regent for his son, who was in the custody of the people of Ghent. In May there was word in England that Thérouanne had been burnt by the French and that Ghent and Bruges had made their own peace treaties with France, and on 31 July William Cely sent the alarming news that the town of Aire is given up to the Frenchmen, and another castle within a Dutch mile of St Omers, by the means of treason … and the Frenchmen purposeth to be at Gravelines, and they be not letted [prevented] within this two days and less. […] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Another most unfortunate lacuna in the extant correspondence means that we know little about the Celys’ social activities during the period between October 1484 and January 1487, save for such casual references in extracted accounts as one of their attendance at William Walgrave's marriage on 15 January 1486. Their business affairs are better documented, especially for the years 1486 and 1487, which saw their important new diversification into the shipping trade. Their acquisition, early in 1486, of the Breton fishing-vessel which they renamed the Margaret Cely and her subsequent operations, will have a chapter to themselves. Besides their new commitment as ship-owners, Richard and George started 1486 with a heavy investment in wool, to compensate for their scanty shipments in the previous year. In April they exported 31 sarplers and a poke and 2,194 fells. In addition, they made an exceptional deal with the Spaniard Juan Pardo. Pardo, from a family originating in Burgos, did business in Bruges and also London, where he was associated with Pedro De Salamanca, an associate in turn of Alvaro De Cisneros, who had now replaced Pedro Valladolid as the English agent of the Celys’ customer, De Lopez. There was a whole group of such Spanish (or rather Castilian) merchants, who are to be found in English records trading in a variety of commodities, in what appear to be ad hoc partnerships among themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Those starting out in the wool-merchant's business, and many small or part-time staplers like William Maryon and John Cely, might deal almost exclusively in fells, that is the wool-bearing skins of slaughtered sheep. But about 72 percent of old Richard's trade was in shorn fleece-wool, and when Richard and George inherited his business they increased this proportion to some 81 percent. One essential in the training of a stapler, whether he dealt in fells or fleece-wool, was the ability to judge the quality of a fleece and to distinguish wools from different areas of England. The original author of one section in that compendium of earnest advice, the ‘Discourse of Weights and Merchandise’, had observed caustically: If a man buy Yorkshire wool [as] Burford wool or Leominster wool, he should know what he bought ere it were all uttered [i.e. ‘his customers would let him know about it before it was all off his hands’]. Therefore there is an old proverb: ‘he is no wise merchant that buy the cat in the sack’, that is to say, he that buyeth a ring and seeith it not, he trusteth another better than himself, which is against all manner wisdom. This obvious counsel was not always heeded. A case heard at Bruges in 1449 concerned the sale of six bales of English wool called Jorcxwouts wulle (wool from the Yorkshire wolds). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because sales on credit were a normal feature of the Staple trade at this period, new customers of good standing must often have brought letters of introduction, like that which John De Scermere presented to Richard Noneley. No year is given, but the letter was written by Lowis De Moy, the Celys’ ‘Lois De May’, who masquerades in the Public Record Office Index as ‘Allyn Weijlowijs de Moy’, because his valedictory clause, ‘By d'alhu vrij Lowys de Moy’, was misread and mistaken for the whole signature. ‘Lieven Huter Meere’ who is mentioned in the letter may conceivably be the ‘Levyn Demore’ whose name is written on a Cely note of sale to De Scermere (?) in 1478. Quite possibly Noneley sent De Scermere on to George Cely, so that his letter of accreditation came into the Cely collection, from which it was later separated. Translated from its original Flemish, it runs Honoured friend, I recommend me to you and let you know that the bringer of this is a drapier of Ghent. Lieven Huter Meere has prayed me to help him make his acquaintance with the merchants of the Staple of Calais. I understand, moreover, that he is a good young man, and that his business at home is such as to make him a very wealthy clothier, and if he wished to buy eight or ten sarplers of wool here, he should be in good credit. […] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The affectionate relationship between the brothers Richard and George gives human warmth and colour to the family correspondence in its early years. Since George was the unsystematic hoarder who preserved these letters, his own side of the correspondence is poorly represented. So while the flavour of Richard's personality comes over directly from his letters to an intimate friend and brother, in the letters we see George chiefly through the eyes of his family and acquaintances, and he makes an appearance in his own right more often in his accounts and memoranda. That Richard was the elder of the two is clear from his position as his father's chief executor and from the inheritance pattern of his parents' properties. It could not be guessed from the brothers’ own correspondence, which was carried on in terms of complete equality. They also shared equally in the partnership which they began in 1476, and carried on until George's death in June 1489. But most of the extant letters from Richard to George were written between 1476 and 1482, because after the death of their father both brothers lived for most of the time in London or close to each other in Essex, and the correspondence then comes from William Cely, managing the Calais end of the business. The handwriting of the brothers is a good indication of the differences in their temperaments and personality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Until a few decades ago, historians of economic change in the sixteenth century concentrated predominantly on the towns, the centres of manufacture and nodal points for both regional and interregional trade. It was held that European expansion overseas, the opening of new markets and new sources of raw materials, above all the acquisition of the precious metals of South America, justified calling the age that of early capitalism. The fact that most people lived on the land and were engaged in exploiting it appeared immaterial in this context, inasmuch as the land and its use appeared still to be limited by ‘feudal’ conditions and thus could not be a part of the progressive developments which were to lead to the Industrial Revolution. However, a scheme that separated town from countryside demonstrated its inadequacy in explaining the emergence of the modern industrial societies of Europe when the attempt was made to transmit the results of a process lasting four centuries to the countries of the Third World. There those one-sided notions concerning industrialisation regularly led to failure. Thus we have come to realise how fundamental the transformation had to be which would enable an agrarian society to undertake industrial growth. A rural economy engaged in producing food, raw materials and in addition beasts as the only mobile source of energy, an economy which of necessity involved a large part of the population, needed to be transformed into an economically defined separate sector to be called agriculture – a sector capable of guaranteeing the provisioning of society in a planned and predictable fashion, but employing only a small part of the population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The significance of Maurice's refusal to become count and duke in the United Provinces became clear with his death. Had he taken the crown when it was within his grasp, his brother Frederick Henry would have succeeded him as stadholder by established right. Now, however, Frederick Henry did not step at once into his brother's boots, but had to wait for the States to act. There was no question about his succession in command of the army. He had been named deputy commander on 12 April, when Maurice's incapacity and approaching death had become evident, and then, when his brother was no more, he was appointed captain-general of the Union by the States General, as they had promised Maurice they would do. His command was therefore more extensive than Maurice's had been, for it included all troops in the service of the States General, including those in the northern provinces, where, however, all significant military operations had ceased. There was discontent in some of the provinces that the States General had not waited for their customary prior approval, but Holland pressed for Frederick Henry's universal command over the troops of the Union. The haste with which Frederick Henry was given command came from two concerns. One was that no opportunity be given to the Spaniards to exploit a period of uncertainty. It was bad enough that they took Breda on 5 June; but Spinola was a bold general whose enterprising spirit there was every reason to fear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Dutch republic was the first new state of modern times whose independence was born and forged in revolution. Not only that. The revolution in the Netherlands that founded a new republican state also led to the creation of a new nation. Contrary to the supposition of recent theorists of modernization, post-1776 America was not the “first new nation.” This place must be reserved for the Dutch, although perhaps because the Netherlands rebellion lacked the universalism of the American revolution the fact is easy to overlook. Of course, the Dutch nation and its country were a truncation of a larger body, the seventeen provinces of the Low Countries subject to the Spanish monarchy, which became politically divided in the course of the rebellion itself. One part, often generally called Holland, achieved independence and under the name of the Dutch republic or United Netherlands became the seat of a durable regime. The other part, Belgium, remained under Spanish and later Austrian Habsburg rule. There was nothing inevitable or preordained about this split, as a modern Dutch historian has made it his lifework to show. Nevertheless, it happened, and from the crucible of rebellion an independent Dutch state and nation arose. Most of the newly independent states that appeared after 1945 began as colonial possessions from a condition of backwardness. To contemporary students of modernization, they exemplify the assorted problems of underdevelopment, poverty, and deficient economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

CHARACTER OF THE PERIOD 21 At the end of the eleventh century, western European society finally left behind the archaic feudal and agrarian structures which had characterized the early Middle Ages. Important advances were made in the course of this transformation of the West. The sovereign nation state became the dominant form of political organization, and its symbol was the absolute monarch of early modern times. The society of the late Middle Ages, in which the various social orders had managed to obtain a share of power by means of a system of representative ‘estates’, was no more than a passing phase in the evolution of the state, as was the political independence of the great cities at that time. The emergence of national authorities was at the expense of the empire, and it obstructed German attempts to restore the universal power of the Roman empire. The same development also meant that the power of feudal lords diminished to the same degree that central governments asserted and reinforced themselves. The organization of the church had a similar centralist tendency. Here power was concentrated at a supra-national level, and allowed a bureaucratic and hierarchical church to take shape under the direction of the papacy. The closed and essentially agricultural manorial economy was replaced by a market economy. This was sustained by the development of international commerce and industry, an intense circulation of capital, and the development of a banking system: in other words, a renewal and transformation of economic activity in general, assisted by the rise of numerous cities. In spite of the dampening effects associated with corporatism and mercantilism, free enterprise was the driving force of the new economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]