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This article argues that in spite of absolute monarchy's success in seemingly rising above society it developed claims and practices that ran counter to long-term representative tendencies contained within its own structures. It was never able to suppress these, nor did it intend to, because they remained enshrined in corporate society itself, on which it was based. Although the corporate society of the old regime was very hierarchical, its elites retained a large measure of autonomy in their own spheres. This sense of independence and the continued vitality of privilege provided fertile ground for a revival of conciliarist and later commonwealth arguments, and a historical belief in an ancient constitution. These arguments in favour of limited royal power eventually empowered an opposition that was able to take advantage of the excesses and contradictions that characterized some of the practices of absolute monarchy, whose power to enforce its central will was somewhat illusory.

This chapter deals with the vast territories east of the Elbe river, including Poland–Lithuania, the Czech lands, Brandenburg–Prussia, and Russia. There are two primary and interlocking themes, first the westernization of these lands, secondly, the origins and development of the ‘second serfdom’ in the agrarian East. Westernization of the agrarian East came largely through the introduction and expansion of the ‘Frankish agrarian system’, which began around 1200 with Western colonization east of the Elbe. Westernization was essentially a repetition of basic agrarian developments that had already taken place in much of north-west Europe in the period 600–1000 AD. One of the most important of these developments was manorialism, and the so-called ‘second serfdom’ in Eastern Europe was thus not a deviation from westernization, but rather an integral part of it.

The main developments in western European agrarian society and economy are surveyed at the outset in a regional analysis which stresses the degree of variety within quite small areas and by the same token the irrelevance of national boundaries. The survey considers employment and production beyond tillage and pastoralism: fishing, hunting, mining, or local crafts and manufacturing are treated as part of the rural economy. There follows a detailed thematic analysis which examines crop yields, credit, share-cropping, landholding, labour, and total factor productivity. The conclusion briefly takes up the debate over the transition from feudalism to capitalism, initiated by Robert Brenner, to argue that the regional variations in landholding and inheritance practices which might emerge from an initially similar environment, while casting doubt on aspects of Brenner’s general thesis, nevertheless were shaped as much by power or class relations as by natural endowment, ecology, or technological innovations.

Through their successfully waged war and also by their novel political strategies, eighteenth-century North Americans seeking home rule made history. By systematically organizing around a refusal of British goods and developing a new national taste, they politicized the everyday. Twenty years later, this politicization was reprised in the French Revolution. Whereas the new American aesthetic was defined by sobriety and domestic production, the forms generated in the French Revolutionary decade combined the symbols of Republicanism with styles connoting non-aristocratic values. The likeness and difference of the role of culture, domesticity, and gender in the American and French revolutions are represented in their iconic forms—homespun for the United States and the dress of the sans-culottes for France. Both revolutions were characterized by a consistent investment in material culture and everyday life, and gave rise to new political cultures. This reformulation is best conceptualized using the term “cultural revolution.”

When the American Revolution was over, citizens of the new nation could not agree about the event's true meaning and the best way to preserve its authentic legacy. After the new federal government was established in the 1790s, these tensions invaded the national political arena and contributed to the formation of the first political parties that became known as Democratic-Republicans and Federalists. Those who supported George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and the Federalist Party saw the war simply as a battle for home rule. On the other hand, those who gravitated toward Thomas Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans interpreted the Revolution as a conflict not only about home rule but also about who should rule at home. For these American women and men, the principles of equality and natural rights were the Revolution's most important legacies. This chapter discusses the national politics of the new nation following the American Revolution, and examines the origins of the first political parties, the French Revolution and mass politicization, and inclusions and exclusions in the first political parties.

This chapter traces the revolution in style and taste that swept over the visual arts as a result of the movement we call the Renaissance. Not only was there a transformation in subject matter, which was almost entirely religious at our starting-point, around 1450, but also in style, in the status of the artist, in the types of art that were produced, in patronage, and in the market for paintings and engravings. To follow these changes, the period has been divided into four broad periods: 1350–1520, the age of the Renaissance; 1520–1600, the age of Mannerism; 1600–70, the age of Baroque; and 1670–1759, the age of Rococo. In each segment the main developments in painting, sculpture, and architecture are outlined; the principal figures are identified; and changes discussed.

Many of early modern Europe’s connections to Asia were commercial in nature, in contrast to the colonial relations forged by Europeans in the Americas. This chapter considers the ways in which the connections that Europe had with Asia and the Americas provide a context for comparing the early modern political economies of China and Europe. Similarities and differences highlighted by this exercise help make clear both the dynamics of economic change common within both world regions as well as the character of their connections, illustrating important differences between them. The intellectual limitations of identifying historical parallels according to traits first observed in Europe is suggested by noting features of early modern Chinese political rule that are not observed in Europe until a later historical era. These topics illustrate various ways in which comparisons and connections to other world regions helps to place early modern Europe in a global history perspective.

This article reviews the transfer of goods and services between the continents bordering the Atlantic Ocean. It shows that the demands of long-distance trade, particularly but not solely across the Atlantic, encouraged innovation in technologies and methods, transformed commercial institutions, and required traders to develop novel ways of managing their businesses. After regaining independence from Spain in 1640, Portugal created a transatlantic trading system that was more vigorous than what had existed before 1580. The long eighteenth century witnessed a precipitate decline of France as an Atlantic commercial power and a steady rise of England. Paradoxically, France's Atlantic trading burgeoned, at least at first. While Britain and France struggled for Atlantic control, the Netherlands flourished, albeit in slightly different channels than before. The increase in the efficiency of shipping, the dematerialisation of finance, and the spread of information were substantial results of a burgeoning Atlantic trade. They also forced changes in traders' and governments' ideas about how commerce should be managed.

Divisions between Marxist and non-Marxist historians have fuelled debate of late medieval and early modern popular protest over the past fifty years. Yet, an underlying consensus has arisen with two broad forms of popular revolt, a ‘pre-modern’ (encompassing the Middle Ages to as late as the mid-nineteenth century) and a ‘modern’ one. Supposedly, high bread prices sparked the former, women filled their ranks, the leaders came from the elites and not the rank-and-file of peasants or artisans, their ideologies were primitive and backward looking, and these revolts ended in repression, not revolution. With modernity the characteristics changed. This chapter challenges this ‘pre-modern’/’modern’ divide, arguing that late medieval popular revolts differed profoundly from those of the early modern period across all of these characteristics. The changes depended on a growing gap in power between rulers and the ruled that had begun in places by the closing decades of the fourteenth century.

The notion that Scotland has long been depicted as a lawless, ‘uncivilized’ nation by its more ‘civilized’ southern counterpart is a historical red herring. Rather, it was not until the nineteenth century, when a general moral panic regarding crime and criminal activity took hold across Britain as a whole, that Scotland, in particular, was portrayed as a bad example to its neighbours south of the Tweed. By the mid-nineteenth century, the link between rising crime and social disintegration was strongly felt in a Scottish context. This article discusses the historiography of crime and criminality (including violence) in early modern Scotland. It also examines the extent to which the nineteenth-century concept of the ‘Barbarous North’ was applicable to Scotland during the early modern era. The article analyses nearly 6,500 criminal prosecutions brought before the Scottish Justiciary Court between 1700 and 1830.

‘Belief and its Limits’ outlines five major themes: (1) the transformation started by the Protestant and Catholic reformations of the sixteenth century that refashioned the way most people understood Christianity; (2) the slow emergence of peaceful co-existence among rival confessional churches after the violence of the Reformation that accompanied the disintegration of the Roman Church into dozens of different Christian churches; (3) the growing and protracted efforts of both church and state to control and regulate popular beliefs, practices, and behaviours, albeit with only limited success, with a particular focus on confessionalization, witchcraft beliefs, and printing; (4) the emergence of new ideas and belief systems by 1800 that historians have traditionally referred to as Enlightenment, that ultimately challenged the beliefs of the past; and (5) the continuation and even strengthening of belief in gender hierarchy and patriarchy in European cultures.

The article examines religious changes in Bohemia and Moravia from the age of Emperor Charles IV (1346–1378) through the first half of the seventeenth century. It begins by considering the vibrant ecclesiastical landscape in the generation before Hus. After reviewing the tumultuous events of the Hussite era, it evaluates both the radical and more conservative legacy of this movement with the development of the Utraquist Church and the Unity of Brethren. Entering the sixteenth century, the article analyzes the impact of Luther and Calvin on the Bohemian churches, the dynamics of confessional cooperation and conflict. The essay closes with an investigation of the early seventeenth century, events leading to the outbreak of the Thirty Years War, the re-Catholization of the region, the exile generation of John Comenius, and the survival of Protestant enclaves within the kingdom.

Britain valued its American colonies primarily because of their contribution to the nation's security, power, and influence in Europe. A recurring British fear was that France, Britain's inevitable enemy during the period, might invade the British Isles. Many argued that Britain must be actively engaged in Europe, and that it was a fundamental British interest to prevent the French from dominating the continent. There is a general consensus on the main trends in British foreign relations during the American Revolution. During the Seven Years' War, Britain was able to effectively distribute resources between European and global theaters of war. Throughout the 1760s and 1770s, however, it became increasingly isolated in Europe, and thus had no European ally when it tried to crush the American rebellion. The specter of a global war led the British governing elite to confront what they perceived to be their problem with the United States: owing to the weak governance of Britain's dependencies, the colonies were not capable of defending themselves or of making an adequate contribution to British efforts to defend them.

During the American Revolution, Britain relied primarily on its army to subdue the rebellious colonies. At its peak, the British army in North America had approximately 50,000 officers and men, constituting the largest expeditionary force sent overseas by any British governments. After nearly seven years of fighting, however, the British Parliament realized that military operations in the colonies would not crush the rebellion. The American Revolution has been linked to various myths, three of which relate to the British army and its role in the War of Independence. One myth is that the weaknesses of character and approach of the British army account for its loss in the war that it should have won. This chapter challenges the myths of the War of Independence and offers a different explanation for the failure of the British army to quash the American revolt.

Reformed Protestantism originated in the 1520s in both Zurich under the direction of Ulrich Zwingli and in Strasbourg under the influence of Martin Bucer and several others. It was not until Guillaume Farel and John Calvin arrived in Geneva in the 1530s, however, that it became a major force of the Reformation. Although theologically very similar to Lutheranism, including Calvin’s views on predestination, theology was never the foundation of Reformed identity. An emphasis on independence from the secular state as well as enhanced moral discipline, specifically in the development of the institution of the consistory in Geneva, are what made Reformed Protestantism distinct. Although it spread quickly and significantly throughout Europe and the New World, it invariably was forced to adapt to differing political and cultural circumstances in every case. Thus, while Calvin’s Geneva was always the prototype for Reformed Protestantism, it never became a model to be copied elsewhere.

Like any human construct, Europe had to be imagined into being. It emerged gradually as an idea, a place, a people, and a culture, from its first appearance in ancient texts through its triumphalist self-assertion as Queen of Continents in the early modern era. This chapter opens with a chronological survey of ancient, medieval, and early modern understandings of Europe, and then turns to the difficulties posed by the blurry margins where Europe set itself apart from others. Oceans set clear boundaries around three sides of Europe, but establishing the eastern limits, especially in the region we now call Russia, raised persistent challenges. In a final section, the chapter explores some views from outside, from those who occupied grey zones of potential membership in the European club and from places definitively categorized as non-European.

This chapter reviews major themes in the history of Western Christianity from the onset of the Western Schism (1378) to the opening of the Council of Trent (1345). Topics include late medieval reform movements, trends in lay religious belief and activity, the papacy and conciliarism, the dominant schools of philosophical and theological thought, heresy and orthodoxy, Renaissance humanism, the early Protestant Reformation and contemporaneous Catholic renewal, and the relationship between Church and state. The scope of the chapter encompasses developments within Western Christianity as well as in its relationship to Eastern Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, as well as its expansion into Asia, Africa, and the Americas. The chapter also considers the effects of general historiographical developments over the last century on church history, such as overarching trends within intellectual and institutional history on the one hand and social and cultural history on the other.

This chapter traces the development of European colonial societies in the extra-European world c. 1500–1800, chiefly in the Americas. It examines the factors affecting the growth and stabilization of those societies, including: the impact of disease; the establishment of coercive labour regimes; European interactions with indigenous peoples; the genesis of complex economies based on precious metals and agricultural commodities for export to Europe; and the formation of a creolized cultural life and identity. The chapter’s overarching theme is the transformation of European overseas settlements from mere dependent appendages of Europe into distinctive colonial societies with strong identities of their own, increasingly in conflict with the European states that governed them. Special attention is paid to the hybridity of colonial societies, which emerged from the sustained interactions between those of European, Amerindian, and African descent, as well as to the legal and cultural regimes discouraging such cross-cultural and inter-racial encounters.

This chapter places the Protestant Reformation in a global perspective in two ways, using methods and examining themes common in world history as a field. First, it compares the Reformation to other religious transformations that were occurring at roughly the same time, including the early development of Sikhism, reform movements within Chinese Confucianism, and the reinvigoration of Islam in the Songhay Empire by King Askia the Great. Second, it examines the spread of Protestant ideology and institutions in the increasingly interconnected early modern world, with the colonies of the Dutch East India Company and the missionary work of the Moravians serving as the primary examples of such cultural encounters. It argues that moving beyond Europe to adopt a broader spatial scale enhances our understanding of the religious dynamism of the period, which does not diminish the importance of the Protestant Reformation, but allows us to view it in new ways.