A Short History of the World (14 page)

Safavid Persia (1502–1732)

In the confusion left by the retreating Mongols of Tamerlane, the Shiite Safavid dynasty had taken power in Persia and established a strong independent state, although it was eventually forced to cede Baghdad and all of Iraq to the Ottoman Turks whose interests it interfered with. Shah Abbas (1571–1629) was the most renowned of the Safavid Shahs but he was followed by weaker rulers, which made Persia less of a threat to the Ottomans. A weak Persia became the focus of a struggle between the Russians and the British in the 19th century.

The Catholic Counter-Reformation (1545)

In response to the growth of the Protestant movement, the Catholic Church instituted its own reforms. In 1545 the Council of Trent was called under Pope Paul III to reform the Church and to refute Lutheranism. However, in a defensive measure, the full fury of the Church was also unleashed on anybody who continued to challenge its authority. The Council endorsed the establishment of the Roman Inquisition that hunted down and executed heretics in the most gruesome of ways. An index of books deemed heretical was published in the first attempt at mass censorship, and to read them was to run the risk of excommunication, which was to many a fate worse than death.
 

In 1543 the Polish astronomer, Nicolai Copernicus, had been condemned for daring to suggest that the Earth, far from being the centre of the universe, actually rotated around the sun. 72 years later, Galileo Galilei was called to Rome by the Inquisition for daring to agree with Copernicus. While agreeing that the Bible was infallible, he had suggested that the people who interpreted it might not be. As a result, he was forced to state publicly that the Earth did not revolve around the sun and was sentenced to imprisonment in his own home. As David Landes states, ‘
The Protestant reformation gave a big boost to literacy, spawned dissent and heresies, and promoted scepticism and refusal of authority that is at the heart of the scientific endeavour. The Catholic countries, instead of meeting the challenge, responded by closure and censure.
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Exhausted by wars on all fronts, Charles abdicated in 1555, only to die in a monastery two years later. The German-speaking Habsburg lands passed to Charles' younger brother, Ferdinand, who became Holy Roman Emperor – now a virtually hereditary Habsburg title. The Spanish Empire, including the Netherlands, the Habsburg Italian possessions and, for a time, Portugal, passed to his fanatical son, Philip II. In this way, the minor branch of the Austrian Habsburgs and the major branch of the Spanish Habsburgs were founded.
 

The Dutch Revolt (1579–1648)

Philip II attempted to impose a more centralised system of government, partly to indulge his autocratic tendencies and partly to increase tax revenues to fund the spiralling costs of his wars. As a champion of Catholicism, Philip was also intent on repressing Protestants, hitherto tolerated in the Netherlands in the interests of trade, wherever he found them.
 

The beginning of Philip’s reign saw simmering discontent among the Dutch, whose country had only formally been joined to the possessions of Spain by Charles in 1549. Fiercely autonomous, they resented the new taxes levied by Philip. A series of bad harvests spread unrest among the masses and led to mobs sacking a number of churches and monasteries. Keen to impose his authority against the impertinent Protestants, Philip sent an army to quell the revolt; however, the brutal way in which his men handled the situation even alienated some of the Dutch Catholics and gradually turned the revolt into a fight for complete independence.
 

In 1579 seven northern provinces formed the ‘United Provinces of the Netherlands’, and two years later they stated that Philip was no longer their rightful king, effectively declaring independence from Spain. Little did they imagine that their independence would only be fully recognised in 1648 after a devastating Europe–wide war. The southern provinces, including present-day Belgium and Luxembourg, remained loyal to Spain. Losing the battle against the Spanish and in desperate straits, the United Provinces offered the Dutch crown to Queen Elizabeth of England and to the younger brother of the king of France. They both turned it down, but Elizabeth eventually sent a small army to help the rebels after William I of Orange was assassinated in 1584.

The English Reformation (1517–1558)

Meanwhile, in England, the Tudor king, Henry VIII, had come to the English throne in 1509. Henry became king only because his elder brother, Arthur, who had married Catherine of Aragon, had died. Henry VIII married his brother’s widow, but his roving eye soon fell upon another, and he tried to have his first marriage annulled, not realising for a minute the problems that this would cause. The ideas of Luther had already begun to percolate through to England and were welcomed by Henry’s new lover, Anne Boleyn. Catherine’s nephew, however, was Emperor Charles V, and his influence was brought to bear on the Pope who refused to annul the marriage. In turn, an embittered Henry refused to recognise papal authority, an ironic act from a man who had initially rejected the teachings of Luther to such an extent that he had earned himself the title ‘Defender of the Faith’ in 1521.
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As the Catholic faith did not recognise divorce, Henry ordered the Archbishop of Canterbury to grant him one, which he duly did. This break with Rome was confirmed in 1534 when Henry was made Supreme Head of the English Church by an Act of Parliament. The head of the Church of England was henceforth to be the king and those who challenged Henry were executed. Those who supported him, on the other hand, were richly rewarded with the lands and riches of the Church, which the king redistributed after having dissolved the rich monasteries. Royal revenues doubled in the process.
 

Henry’s eventual six marriages produced three heirs: Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth. Each had differing religious beliefs. His son, Edward, was staunchly Protestant, but his reign was short. Mary, like her mother, Catherine of Aragon, was a devout Catholic. When Mary became the first queen of England, she tried to turn the clock back, but squandered any goodwill she had managed to gather by marrying Philip II of Spain, the Catholic son of Charles V. England, after all, had no desire either to be ruled by a Spanish king or to have its religious life run by the Pope, and those who had benefited from the distribution of Church lands by Henry VIII certainly had no intention of giving them back.
 

Mary’s revival of heresy laws, and the public burnings that followed, were the final nail in her coffin and earned her the epithet of ‘Bloody Mary’. To make matters worse, England, now a friend of Spain, was dragged into a war with France in which England lost Calais – the last bit of land it held in France – in 1558. When Mary died that same year, she was not particularly mourned and, as her marriage to Philip II had not produced an heir, the throne passed to her sister, Elizabeth. Elizabeth who would gain a place as one of England’s greatest monarchs in a reign that lasted 45 years.
 

Elizabeth I: The Virgin Queen (1533–1603)

The new queen had Protestant sympathies for which she was eventually ex-communicated by the Pope, but she was not an extremist like her sister. She was generally tolerant except when religious questions of the day gave her no other option, such as when numerous plots were discovered to put her first cousin Mary, Queen of the Scots, on the throne of England. Much to her distaste, Elizabeth was forced to have Mary executed.

Elizabeth’s reign was a great one for England and she raised the country’s status in the world. During her reign the first English attempts were made to set up a colony in northern America. Walter Raleigh named the land Virginia, after the virgin queen, at the suggestion of the queen herself so she could curry favour with her Catholic subjects.

This claim on America, however, was the final straw for the Spanish; after all they had claimed the entire American continent as their own and with papal approval no less! By sending aid to the United Provinces, by repeatedly attacking Spanish shipping and settlements, and by executing her Catholic cousin, Mary, Elizabeth could surely not have expected a reasoned response.
 

The Spanish immediately started preparations for sending an ‘Armada’ of ships to invade England and restore the country to the Catholic faith. Word of this endeavour soon spread as Philip of Spain encouraged all Catholic countries to contribute funds and men. When it set sail, the Armada comprised 7,000 sailors, 17,000 soldiers and 130 ships. While the Pope blessed the venture, the whole of Europe looked on. Yet despite the funds at its disposal, the Armada failed.

First, there were delays when Francis Drake sailed brazenly into the port of Cadiz in southern Spain and sank 30 Spanish ships, infuriating Philip even further in the process.
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Second, the person put in charge of leading the Armada, the Duke of Medina-Sidonia had, rather unbelievably, never commanded a navy and sought desperately to get out of taking command. A combination of factors, including errors by the Spanish, bad luck with the weather and superb tactics by the English, together with their use of smaller and faster ships, ensured Spanish defeat. The Armada was forced to sail around the British Isles, and limped back into port in Spain with half its ships and approximately half its men – a financial disaster and a humiliating defeat.

While the inflow of wealth from the Americas helped Spain in recovering fairly rapidly from its financial losses, the country was less able to recover from the blow to its prestige. Who were the English to defeat mighty Spain, or the Dutch for daring to challenge them for that matter? The defeat gave the English and the Dutch new confidence in attacking the Spanish at sea and contributed to their growth in power over the coming century. As a result of the Armada’s defeat, Francis Drake became a national hero and Elizabeth became a legend; she had seen off the greatest threat the country had faced since the Norman invasion 400 years earlier.
 

While Elizabeth had made England great, her successors unravelled much of what she had achieved. In 1603, the son of Mary Queen of Scots, James VI of Scotland, became James I of England, although it would take a hundred more years and the Act of Union in 1707 before the two governments were officially joined in the Kingdom of Great Britain.
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James was unloved by the people and it was during his reign in 1605 that a group of Catholic peers, led by Guy Fawkes, plotted to blow up the Houses of Parliament – an act still remembered every year in England on 5th November. James’ son, Charles I, would lead the country to civil war.
 

The Thirty Years War and the Peace of Westphalia (1618-1648)

Philip II of Spain died in 1598, deeply in debt
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and militarily exhausted. His successor, Philip III, had no choice but to call for a truce between Spain and the United Provinces of the Netherlands in 1609. The peace lasted for nine years, only to be broken by a 30 year long and Europe-wide religious war that lasted from 1618 to 1648 and involved most of the continental powers. To complicate matters, the French Bourbons, despite having a Catholic king, fought alongside the Protestants, concerned as they were with being surrounded by Habsburg territories.
 

Germany felt the brunt of the attack, with entire regions devastated and up to one-quarter of the population killed by war, famine and disease. Other nations were bankrupted. Outside Europe, the war also raged in its nascent colonies with hostilities occurring in Asia, Africa and America. In the East the Dutch waged a tough war against the Portuguese and ended up taking from them most of their possessions, including the lucrative Spice Islands.
 

Negotiations for peace began in 1643, only to be agreed upon five years later, after interminably long negotiations. The Peace of Westphalia, which was signed in 1648, marked both the end of the 80-year-long Dutch revolt and the Thirty Years War. Christianity, purportedly a religion of peace, had brought death and destruction and permanently divided Europe. It was clear to everyone that change was desperately needed.
 

The negotiations revealed a new Europe: the Dutch Republic was finally recognised as an independent state and the German territories of the Holy Roman Empire, were given de-facto sovereignty – an action that effectively reduced the power of the Holy Roman Emperor. Such territorial adjustments however, were in many ways only a side story compared with the fundamental changes that occurred.
 

First, it was agreed that people should be allowed to express their religious opinions freely, a belief that continues to be the basis of civil society. Calvinism, Lutheranism and Catholicism were all recognised equally and religion became separate from the state, and remains separated in most Western countries to this day. Second, the edicts that were signed set the basis for modern-day sovereign nation states as opposed to imperial blocks, with kingship becoming the dominant form of government from that time forward. It established boundaries for the states, many of which remain the same or similar today, and from this time onwards it would be national rivalry, rather than religious disputes, that would lead to wars and cause shifts in the balance of power in Europe.
 

The Colonisation of North America (17th Century)

Over in North America, the European presence in the 16th century had been primarily focused on the search for a way through to the riches of the Indies, still seen as the easiest way to wealth. America was not initially seen by many Europeans as a land to conquer and in which to settle, but more as a territory for settling the differences of the major European powers and as a source of plunder with which to finance their wars.
 

By the mid-16th century Spain held most of central and southern America, together with the huge amounts of silver it had mined there. Having enslaved and murdered a large proportion of the local population in their hunt for riches, the Spanish began to import slaves from Africa in the hope that they would be more resistant to disease and be harder workers. The Portuguese soon followed suit, importing slaves to man their sugar plantations in Brazil.