Western Civilization -- The Seventeenth Century from the Bottom Up

I. Introduction: The Course

II. Structure of Course

A. What was the relationship between the “common man/woman,” leaders, and institutions? And how did knowledge and information pass between them?

B. Does the modern period create a new kind of social, political, economic, intellectual, cultural, or military conflict? Does it lead to new ways of dealing with conflicts? Or are there significant commonalties among the conflicts of the modern and early modern periods?

C. Syllabus

III. Map of Europe

IV. Background

A. 17th and 18th centuries marked by 4 important phenomena (to be covered over the next week and a bit

1. intense religious and social violence (as evidenced in the Thirty Years War

2. the attempt to use political solutions to solve violence (absolutism and constitutional monarchism

3. the attempt to use economic solutions (rise of mercantilism) to solve social violence

4. the gradual development of “modern” scientific and philosophical ideas

B. European society

1. multiple factors determined every individual’s place in early modern Europe

a. estate (birth)

b. gender

c. race

d. religion

e. place of origin

f. economic fortune or misfortune

g. age/generation

2. separate estates

a. aristocracy: nobility

b. Peasantry

c. Townspeople

d. Church

e. Outsiders

3. What Characterized Every Day Life?

V. Things to Consider for Section (tomorrow)

1. What does the Tom Thumb Story tell us about early modern European life?

2. What are the benefits and detriments of studying every day life? What kind of sources does such a study demand?

3. Imagine you lived during this period -- what estate would be most attractive to you? Why? What do you think you would find most challenging about this time period?

4. map: can you find: Bohemia, Spain, England, Prussia, Brandenburg, Netherlands, France

5. To Consider as you begin reading for next week: Was the Thirty Years War about religion? Was it the last of the religious wars or the first of a series of “modern” European conflicts?

Terms

Estate

Nobility

Guilds

Catholicism

Lutheranism

Calvinism

House of Habsburg

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