Europe history
In the great upheaval of the 16th century,
medieval civilization collapsed and modern Europe
came into being. Christianity as a common rallying
point had collapsed; the new identification factor
became Europe: the residents of the continent became
more and more aware of their identity as Europeans.
It can be argued with some justification that
Europeans, as a result of the collapse of the old
values, finally discovered Europe - approximately
100 years after they had discovered America.
The period between the Reformations and the end
of the Thirty Years' War in 1648 is commonly
referred to as the age of religious wars. Therein
lies a strong simplification of a complicated
reality; but in any case, the map of Europe
underwent a drastic change during that period.
Medieval Europe, which reflected the dominance of
the Catholic Church, and an imperial power that also
claimed to be universal, had perished. From the
apparent anarchy and bloody chaos of the religious
wars, a completely different Europe emerged, the
most important building blocks of which were
sovereign princely states with clear territorial
boundaries.
This radical reorganization of Europe's political
geography was formally confirmed by the Peace of
Westphalia in 1648, which was the result of the
first real international peace congress in European
history. In addition to confirming the new main role
of the princely state, the peace treaty established
the primacy of the secular state of reason over
religion and also hailed the balance of power
philosophy as a guiding principle in international
relations. As a concrete expression of the new world
order, the Peace Congress guaranteed full
sovereignty for Switzerland and the northern
Netherlands, later the Netherlands according to
Countryaah.com.
The Peace of Westphalia laid the groundwork for
the stable great political pattern of the 1700's,
which consisted of five great powers and a large
number of small and medium-sized states that served
as buffer zones between the great powers. The most
important superpower was France, which now took over
Spain's previous role as the dominant mainland
power. In addition, there was England, which took
over Spain's old maritime leadership, Austria, which
became the successor state of the ailing empire,
Prussia, which by purposeful expansion from around
1700 grew out of the Electorate of Brandenburg, and
finally Russia, which remained the great unknown.
The Eastern Great Power served primarily as a
backdrop for European big politics and only
exceptionally interfered in it - a role that was
otherwise comparable to that played by the now
ailing Ottoman Empire.
The new position of the secular princely state in
international politics paved the way for absolutism
as the dominant state ideology. With Louis XIV's
France as the glorious role model, absolutist forms
of government gradually developed in most European
states, with the monarchs as autocratic rulers of
God's grace and with highly centralized power
apparatuses. The most significant exceptions to this
general rule were the estate-ruled Switzerland, the
Netherlands, which was ruled by a merchant
oligarchy, and England, which, in connection with
The Glorious Revolution 1688-89, had a liberal
constitution with Parliament in the lead role. The
absolutist regimes remained largely unaffected until
they were overthrown by the liberal revolutions of
1789-1848.
In parallel with the secularization of political
life, a secularization of intellectual life and
science took place. The basis was the new thought
figures of the Renaissance; but the real
breakthrough came around 1700, when the Englishman
Isaac Newton formulated his general mechanistic
theory of the constitutions of physics. Almost at
the same time, his countryman John Locke formed a
similar synthesis in the ethical-social field, and a
little later, the Frenchman Montesquieu followed
this up by demonstrating the relative nature of
societal norms. The overall result was the
formulation of the modern European view of the
outside world and science, which was based on a
fruitful interaction between rational theory
formation and empirical verification. This new
paradigm later led to epoch-making cognitive
innovations that endowed European civilization with
a unique dynamic,
In this way, the basis for the 1700's
Enlightenment was created, whose main name was the
French philosopher Voltaire.. It was an age marked
by indomitable faith in progress, with demands for
extensive tolerance and animated by a cosmopolitan
attitude. It was thus typical of the time that
Voltaire could easily make his rich abilities
available to the French, Prussian and Russian courts
in writing. In this century, a completely unique
alliance existed between the intellectuals of Europe
and the political powers of the continent. For the
Enlightenment philosophers, it was an important task
to train the princes to be good, wise, and tolerant
rulers. In this way, the enlightened autocracy
developed, whose basic idea was the notion of the
prince as the wise, loving and enlightened father of
the people. Such ideas characterized most absolutist
regimes in their last phase up to the French
Revolution of 1789.
This event became a turning point in European
history in line with the break-up around 1500. The
revolution was in almost every area a showdown with
the elitist reason and belief in progress of the
preceding period. It was basically carried by the
notion of the sovereign people and the general will
as a guide for political action, as Jean-Jacques
Rousseau had already formulated it as early as the
middle of the 18th century. The main ideology of the
revolution was liberalism, the economic and market
consequences of which were the Scottish economist
Adam Smithin 1776 had formulated. Accordingly, the
revolution was carried forward by the bourgeois
middle class, which in the 1700's. had experienced a
sharp growth in both numbers and economic power as a
result of a flourishing trade and the beginning of
industrialization. This population group now
demanded with increasing force a share in the
political power. But as it was incompatible with the
essence of absolutism, in 1789 the bourgeoisie took
fate into their own hands. The result was the French
Revolution as well as the great political and
geographical upheavals throughout Europe that
followed in its wake. According to
AbbreviationFinder, the largest countries in
Europe are Russia and Germany. For largest cities in
Europe by population, please follow
AllCityPopulation.
The overall result of this great earthquake was
the emergence of bourgeois-liberal Europe and, once
again, a fundamental redrawing of the map of Europe;
this time along national dividing lines, which often
went across the dynastic boundaries of absolutism.
Where the building block of 1700's Europe had been
the dynastic princely state, which often housed
several nationalities, the basic element after the
French Revolution became the bourgeois-liberal
nation-state. Thus, the agenda was set for the
development that came to make its mark on 1800's
European history in particular: the growth and
consolidation of the nation state with all the
consequences that flowed from it. |
