Lectures
Week 1, tutorial 1
part 1
In the early modern period, life span was way shorter than it is now.
People died more easily from disease, that didn’t mean that people didn’t become old, just
that there were a lot of things that threatened death.
Moments of crisis indicate rapid change. Scholars have opinions on how change happens.
They have a pick order with which events made more impact on the current establishment,
some more than others. Some recent scholars indicate that change is not slowly evolving
over time, but there are radical changes that happen over time making them distinctively
different from before. Moments that make most impact on people are game changers, one
of those is for example the Black death. Which might have paved the way for modern way of
life. The reason for starting with the Black Death. Which spread though the maritime routes
and the Silk roads. Movement of the Mongols caused the spread of the Plague too, the
armies were known spreaders. It seemed to have halted the Mongols from overtaking
Europe.
Radical moments are moments of change.
Recently, historians have emphasized on the positive outcome of the black plague. If it
weren’t for the black plague, peasants wouldn’t have stressed on more fertile lands (higher
yields higher reward for work), there was a scarcity of labor and people earned more due to
that. Kings, nights and peasants started to decline in numbers. New power dynamic.
In Europe, there were three areas with significant change. state formation, new political
entities. rise of new groups in society and change in traditional leadership and the change in
authority (weakening) of the catholic church (did not have an answer to the black death and
people began to look elsewhere for personal devotion or resistance).
New entities of power: England and France in the place of older entities, the church was
divided, at one time 3 popes, personal devotion.
The early modern period is the period leading to the modern period, which is why it has its
name.
the French revolution is the beginning of the modern period.
People come up with radical solutions to times of crisis.
part 2
disease has not always something to do with disease. It can happen when people feel
unhappy and deprived. Perceived depravation people are open to new ideas about a future,
radical solutions emerge.
The birth of Jesus was so changing that we have our calendar adjusted to his birth.
Early modern got his name for what happened after the period not for what happened in
what happened in it. We study the period leading toward the modern.
Early modern period ended with the onset of the modern period> the French revolution. It
was a crisis shaped by men due to taxes.
-Severn years’ war.
-State nearly bankrupt. The King wanted to impose higher taxes but needed the approval of
the Estates, when the General Estate agreed, they wanted more power and less power for
the King. The third estate would have to carry the burden of the tax and created the national
assembly only the third estate.
-The economy was in a bad condition. Bad harvest and people became hungry. They stormed
the bastille and rose against their lords. The assembly took positions of all the nobility and
clergy and denounced all the powers of the nobility and church.
>France became a constitutional monargy, but everything ended in terror. Foreign armies
were sent to suppress the revolution. The peasants and the people in the cities formed a
front and people under Robespierre the latter pushed back the foreign invaders.
-the king was beheaded, and the land became a republic, napoleon took over and spread
radical ideas over Europe.
Mckay: origins of the French Revolution:
-enlightenment ideas
-erosion of state authority
-financial consideration of states
The societal change after the black death has the same origins. In both France is important in
the creation of creation of nation state.
The industrial revolution is the transition from natural power to machine power according to
Mckay.
Impact: unprecedented population growth, before it would’ve led to hunger. first this would
lead to a correction with death but now there was enough food. After the industrial
revolution, people benefitted from it. All due to the use of machines, modern economic
growth due to efficient use of technology. But it has effects on the environment, we use up
the earth.
The industrial revolution indicated a problem:
-there is no crisis.
the definition technological change comes first. And predicates other changes. People
invented machines the work to do it for us. The steam engine was the most important in
England, first it was only used for Cotton.
It solved a problem, the slow production of spinning. Some people think that this wasn’t a
problem.
James watt invented the steam engine. But it had several types before that, with its origins
in the Roman era. First it was used for power in mining, after that it would produce cloths
making them very cheap. The steam engine was also put to work in transport.
Other countries soon followed.
Why did it happen? no one is sure
Weakness, it was not a revolution but evolution according to some scholars. It took too long
for people to have improved lives for it to be a revolution.
Black Death is a possible beginning of the Early Modern age, but there are other possible
moments when it could have started. Then it mainly would boil down on the Europeans.
Sociologists tried to define when the early modern period started. They were mostly
interested in the shift from the premodern to the modern period.
^sociologists where fascinated by this. essence of modernity and the essence of change in
order to become modern. They defined premodern situation^
^their modern definition of things that have changed.
But did any country really establish modernity there are stills kings and queens after all.
Is Covid a game changer?
it could be the end of fossil fuels or the end of globalization.
Lecture 2
