280. Carnaval

Carnaval 2018

Early in my greening career we worked Carnaval every year, and it was a royal pain. This is the festival that goes along with the yearly parade. The festival stretches for eight blocks down the middle of the Mission district. The Mission tends to be sunnier than the rest of the city, but it isn't consistently sunny at this time of year, and even when it is it can still be very windy. Wind being the bane of outside events around here as we often use cardboard boxes for the eco-stations that can blow away in even a moderate wind.

After a while we stopped doing it, and I was happy about that. So when "Carnaval" appeared on our scheduling calendar I was resistant until I saw that it was a "Civic Center Plaza" event. That area has the same weather issues, but at least it is a contained area and we work many events there. So I signed up for both days. I was cruelly tricked. 

Still no explanation about how "Civic Center Plaza" appeared on the calendar, but it was the usual Mission event. My favorite people were crew chiefing, so I went along. How bad could it be?

Before I even located our home base dumpster village, I knew it was going to be a nightmare. All of our eco-stations were lined with black bags. We use clear bags for landfill and recycling, and greenish-translucent compostable bags for compost. The virtue of clear bags is... that you can see what is inside them without opening them up in a good light and poking around inside. When I get black bags from vendors (they seem to think once inside the bag the contents become whatever you want them to be. "This is all compost" They will say confidently and I will open it up to find a lifetime supply of latex gloves and all the beer cans and bottles the vendor staff apparently drank while they worked.) I empty them into one of our clear bags so I, and anyone hauling or sorting the bags, can see what we're dealing with. An "all black bag" event is thus similar to a "let's all work an event blindfolded" event.

While I still don't know how "Civic Center Plaza" got in there -- yes, I'm a little bitter -- I do know how the event itself and the black bags came to be. Instead of running the whole show, we were sub-contracted to just to our eco-station and sorting thing while other groups took care of other aspects (like the food vendors). And the SF Department of Public Works donated the black bags. Free sounds good but, as is so often the case in life, there are often hidden costs that go along with the "free" item. Every phase of our work was harder -- and took longer -- because we couldn't see through the bags. 

I had a busy, food intensive block, and my method of pulling out the compost and letting the rest build up, was much harder to cleanup when you finally pulled a bag because I could only see the top, not the sides or bottom of the bag. We had a fair number of unsorted or semi-sorted bags from my block which I always try to avoid. Even the bags that I was relatively sure were near 100% landfill were a problem at the end because there was no way to mark them so that fact was obvious to the haulers.

On the other hand, the event really lucked out with the weather. It was overcast and cool until mid-afternoon on Saturday, then it cleared up and it has stayed sunny and even a little warm, for us. Of course this means I was working hard in the sun for eight hours, but that's not something I am going to complain about unless the temp is in the 80s F or above, and we aren't close to that.

My favorite pit bull, from Cinco de Mayo, was at Carnaval as well. He appears to think these events are intended to bring people into the streets to pet him. Which, actually, sounds like a great concept for an event.

Completely unrelated to anything

Today at lunch I saw another guy, trying to cross the street outside the cafe, who I'm pretty sure didn't understand the meaning of the traffic signals. Not only was he nearly hit by a car when he walked out on a red light, but he seemed equally confused when the light turned red for the cars and they all stopped for him. I would really like to know, both as a percentage and in total numbers for a given population (though I guess that comes to the same thing) how many people are so developmentally challenged that something like that is beyond them. 

279. Proletarians and serfs

Link to Chronology

Link to Table of Contents

Capitalism transforms society again

A History of Europe by Henri Pirenne
University Books, first published 1938 but written during the Great War


Book Nine
The Renaissance and the Reformation

Chapter I
The Transformation of Social Life From the Middle of the Fifteenth Century

2. The Renaissance in the Rest of Europe

Continued...

p525 The great wars of the beginning of the 16th century gave a fresh impetus to the spirit of capitalism. Charles V especially... was an extraordinary client for the financiers. Without the development of capitalism it may be said that his reign, which set so many armies on the march and launched so many fleets, would have been impossible... the profits of the bankers were fully comparable to the services which they rendered him. The prosperity of the Low Countries was largely responsible for maintaining the Emperor's credit, enabling him to reimburse his creditors, despite the fact he had to pay from 12 to 50 per cent interest. The Fuggers owed a great part of their fortune to the advances which they made to him... The bankruptcies of Philip II in 1575 and 1596 put an end to the alliance of private capitalism and monarchical policy. 

p526 At this moment, however, another source of gain offered itself to the insatiable financiers. About 1550 the silver mines of Peru and Mexico began to furnish Spain with ingots which presently found their way all over Europe in the form of silver coins. This inundation of precious metals reduced the purchasing power of the currency, the result being a general rise of prices. Trade, and especially industry, received a powerful stimulus, and had yet one more motive for enfranchising themselves from the insupportable control of the guilds and corporations. Manufacture -- that is, the form of production in which the artisan worked under his own roof, and was paid and given orders by a contractor -- became, from the middle of the 16th century, the typical form of industrial organization; and so it remained until the appearance of the modern factory, of which... some precocious examples might already be found here and there.

Remarkable as the development of capitalism may have been, we must not exaggerate its scope. It was superimposed on the old economic organization of the privileged cities, but it did not abolish this organization. The petite bourgeoisie continued to live in the shelter of the trade corporations and to supply the local market. Bakers, butchers, cabinetmakers, shoemakers, etc., remained faithful, until the end of the ancien regime, to the protectionism which reserved for them the exploitation of the municipal clientele. In no case did the governments think it wise or prudent to make them amenable to the common law... their fear of democracy persuaded them to tolerate these defects as the best means of keeping the "compagnons" in a docile mood... they... [did begin] to abolish the political privileges of the guilds, and to keep a tight hand, or at least of close watch, over the urban administrations... The cities could have retained their political and economic autonomy intact only be retaining their military strength. But what could their guilds and corporations do against regular armies, and what could their ancient walls avail against artillery? Only where the State was powerless, as in Germany, did they hold their own... The few attempts at resistance, such as that of the Liegois [people of Liege? I believe so.] against the Dukes of Burgundy, the people of Gand against Charles V and the people of La Rochelle against Francis I, showed that their claims were inspired only by a past which was indeed the past. The democratic policy which the petite bourgeoise had so ardently supported in the 14th century was henceforth a lost cause. Just as capitalism was supreme in the domain of wholesale trade, so the State was supreme in the domain of politics.

p527 Under the influence of the new conditions which were transforming social life the conception of the bourgeoisie was transformed in its turn. The political and juridical characteristics which had given it its special position in the society of the Middle Ages, beside the clergy and the noblesse, were gradually becoming less marked. From the beginning of the 16th century the bourgeoisie had become essentially a class of men living by exploitation or by the revenues of their wealth. The mere manual worker, according to current ideas, had ceased to belong to the bourgeoisie. It now rejected the artisans in whom its strength had formerly resided. It began to affect definitely plutocratic manners, which distinguished it from the petite bourgoisie and brought it nearer the noblesse. In each country... it developed its special features... It is enough to say that henceforth wealth was everywhere [the Low Countries, France, England] the sign par excellence of the bourgeoisie. The bourgoisie of the Middle Ages was privileged by law; the modern bourgeois is privileged by virtue of his economic situation... In the Middle Ages the bourgeois depended on his city for his livelihood, and existed for his city; the commune of which he was a member was the indispensable guarantee of his person and his interests; his mode of life and his ideas alike were dominated by the municipal group to which he belonged. But after the Middle Ages these conditions disappeared. For the modern bourgeois the city is merely a place of residence and a business center; it is no longer the center of his affections, his ideas and his interests. The sources of his wealth are widely dispersed... If he is a manufacturer his factories may be in the country; if he is a merchant his correspondents and his merchandise are distributed over distant ports and markets; if he lives on his dividends his money may be invested in distant countries, in loans, or in commercial or industrial enterprises of every kind. His livelihood is now... implicated in the existence of the nation as a whole, and its relations to foreign nations. He has to know what is happening in all parts of the world. Hence the development of the post, and presently, of the Press, whose object, in the beginning, was merely to bring within reach of all the news which until then had been translated only by private correspondence. 

I can't help thinking of Voltaire here. He not only abandoned the city, he was all but indistinguishable from a nobleman -- though Proust's Baron would not have agreed, I'm sure. But this is a trend Pirenne has already mentioned a number of times.

p528 Economic liberty... immediately imposed its consequences upon the world of workers... The regulations of the guilds determined the worker's rights, safeguarded his wages, and guaranteed him against too glaring abuses; they often granted him aid in case of sickness or old age... But there was no trace of all this in the new system of manufacture. Here, in conformity with the "common law," the employer and employee entered into contracts directly... The one sold his labor, the other bought it, and the price depended on their "free will."... Completely unorganized... the workers in the new industries had to submit to the law of the capitalist... from the beginning of the 16th century there is abundant evidence of the wretchedness of... [the worker's] conditions, and of their discontent. The rise of prices in the middle of the century exasperated them still further, and contributed largely to the success of the semi-social, semi-religions propaganda of the Anabaptists. As for the government, it did nothing for them, ignoring them as long as they did not trouble the public peace.

p529 Here again we have striking evidence of the degree in which social changes had weakened the influence of the Church... as the ascetic spirit declined, the halo of sanctity which surrounded the mendicant faded. People began to regard him as a vagabond, dangerous to the public peace, a professional loafer... [various factors] so multiplied the numbers of wandering men who had no other resources than alms, that towards the beginning of the 15th century they had become a veritable social plague. The authorities therefore began to persecute them mercilessly, in the hope of compelling at least the able-bodied among them to work. The first administrative regulations directed against mendicity authorized it only in the case of children, the aged, and the infirm, and sought to prevent the others from begging by the threat of corporal punishment... It was well understood, from the beginning of the 16th century, that it would be necessary to attack the root of the evil and abolish mendicity by removing its cause... the reforms introduced at Ypres in 1525, under the influence of Vives... by concentrating the resources of all the charitable establishments of the city, appointing visitors to the poor, and sending children in receipt of charity to school, or apprenticing them to a trade, sought to abolish pauperism by enabling the poor man to earn a living... It is interesting to note that... [these attempts] were especially numerous and effective where the development of capitalism and manufactures enabled the charitable societies to find situations for their charges. The example of Holland, and above all of England, is particularly significant in this respect. The English laws of 1551 and 1562 relating to the employment of the poor were the precursors of the famous Act for the relief of the poor of 1601, which was so admirably adopted to the needs of modern industry that in its essential features it has survived to this day. 

I have to say, this section could not be more relevant today. The main differences being that the problem now is the reduction in the number of jobs for the unskilled (or even the skilled) and possibly the degree to which mental illness or diminished mental capacity is involved.

p530 ...Society contented itself with compelling the poor man to work; it did not attempt, as the cities of the Middle Ages would have done, to regulate the work itself. Until the 19th century it subjected labor to no restrictions, and this fact is eloquent of the capitalistic character which was henceforth the essential feature of the economic world. 

It would be interesting to know how, back then, the successful capitalist justified to himself the exploitation of the workers. Was this perhaps where Calvinism played a role? Or were attitudes the same among Catholics?

p531 It is... not surprising that from the second half of the 15th century, contemporaneously with free industry, and increasing with its expansion, a proletariat made its appearance whose history has yet to be written. It is true that there existed, in the Middle Ages... a class of wage-earners whose condition was very nearly that of the proletariat.... the modern proletarian was completely at the mercy of his employer... Moreover, they were too wretched and too uneducated to organize themselves... during the three centuries that began about 1450... manufacture, even in those countries in which it was most advanced, still played only a limited part in the activities of the nation... It was far less important than commerce, and above all, than agriculture, which everywhere remained the essential branch of production.

God, this is a long, but interesting, chapter.

p532 ... Here too [in agriculture] the advance of capitalism was profoundly felt. In some counties it had the effect of enfranchising the peasant, while in others it forced him back into a state of servitude far completer, and... much harsher than that of the Middle Ages... In those counties which were economically the most advanced, like Italy and the Low Countries, the landowners... were inclined systematically to favor free labor.

...as early as the beginning of the 15th century we see that in Italy what was left of the ancient servitude was replaced by personal liberty. As early as 1415 a Florentine statute decreed the obligatory suppression of serfdom... In the Low Counties, from 1515 onwards, the prince issued a number of edicts whose purpose was to enfranchise both the man and the soil... The enfranchisement of the peasants was in reality the enfranchisement of the landowner, who, having henceforth to deal only with free men who were not attached to his land, could dispose of the latter by means of simple revocable contracts... 

p533 Further, as serfdom disappeared... the technical methods of agriculture were improved and modernized. In the 15th century the cultivation of rice was introduced in the Lombard plain; the rearing of silkworms became general in the Midi in the reign of Louis XI. In Flanders... Fallow land was sown with clover, so that it no longer lay idle... Spain and England sacrificed the cultivation of cereals to sheep-farming... It was the flocks of sheep that gradually made Castile the stony, treeless desert which it has become, and it was owing to sheep-farming that pastures began to cover a larger and larger area of the English soil, where the sheep replaced the peasant and his plough. From the reign of Henry VI onwards Parliament was continually passing Enclosure Acts, which authorized the conversion of arable soil into pasturage, driving evicted tenants into the ranks of the proletariat, from which the manufacturers recruited their workers. 

I guess the Highland Clearances are later in time, though the same idea. Actually they run together. The Clearances start in the first decades of the 18th century and are mostly complete by the middle of the 19th century while the first Inclosure Act is 1773 and the last not until near the end of the 19th century. Wiki says "Between 1604 and 1914" for the Inclosure Acts. Which is a century after Henry VII (1457-1509). This may be where Pirenne's inability to consult his books lead him a bit astray. At least in Britain, this effect of capitalism and modern methods seems to have occurred a century or more later than the period he's discussing.

p534 While in Western Europe the evolution of capitalism tended to make the peasant a farmer or a worker for wages, in Germany it created a new form of serfdom. The essential cause of this phenomenon... must be sought in the omnipotence and brutality of the nobles, whom the territorial princes did not dare to oppose... the nobles took advantage of the distress caused by the excess of population in order to oppress the rural class. If agriculture had been further advanced, or if industry had been more extensively developed, the peasant might have discovered new resources on the spot. But the feeble economic development of Germany delivered him, defenseless, into the hands of his seigneurs... beyond the... [Elbe], in Brandenburg, Prussia, Silesia, Austria, Bohemia, and Hungary, the most merciless advantage was taken of... [the situation.] The descendants of the free colonists of the 13th century were systematically deprived of their land and reduced to the condition of personal serfs (Leibeigene). The wholesale exploitation of estates absorbed their holdings and reduced them to a servile condition which so closely approximated to that of slavery that it was permissible to sell the person of the serf independent of the soil. From the middle of the 16th century the whole of the region to the east of the Elbe and the Sudenten mountains became covered with   Ritterguter  exploited by Junkers, who may be compared, as regards the degree of humanity displayed in their treatment of their white slaves, with the planters of the West Indies. The negro in the New World, and the German peasant in the Old World, were the most typical victims of modern capitalism, and they both had to wait until the 19th century for their enfranchisement. [The Junkers represent "modern capitalism"?]... There were still periods of dearth, but there were no more famines... [Check the climate data.] there may have been something like forty inhabitants per square kilometer in the two regions that were then most densely populated: Italy and the Low Countries. France, about 1550, seems to have had a population of something like 18,000,000. At the same date the commercial metropolis of the West, Antwerp... did not contain more than 100,000 inhabitants.

p535 ...The total amount of wealth had increased, but this increase was distributed in a very unequal manner. Practically no one profited by it excepting the great landowners, the nobles, the Church, the wholesale merchants, and the manufacturers. That middle class which was composed of small independent producers, which was so widely distributed in the 13th century... was visibly declining... If the noblesse of the modern era seems in many respects to have been even prouder and more arrogant that [than?] that of the Middle Ages, that is because it felt the need of maintaining the social distinction, in respect of the "nouveaux riches," which the similarity of fortune, education, and interests might easily have led the latter to overlook. However, nothing could have been easier than for the new men to obtain letters patent which would enable them to enter the ranks of the noblesse, and share in the prestige which it owed to tradition, but which was maintained by its wealth. Aristocracy and plutocracy -- these, in the last resort, are perhaps the two words which best characterize the social transformation which was accomplished at the time of the Renaissance. 

Haven't we seen the same thing going back to the Carolingian period? How is this any different? I appreciate the importance of the upper class always being permeable to new people of wealth, but if you are going to keep talking about it you either have to make clear how this differs from period to period or how it is identical.

I'm now caught up again, and I'm reading a new book club book. There will be another break before I return to Pirenne.

278. Rise of Antwerp & capitalism

Link to Chronology

Link to Table of Contents

Natural liberty

A History of Europe by Henri Pirenne
University Books, first published 1938 but written during the Great War

Book Nine
The Renaissance and the Reformation

Chapter I
The Transformation of Social Life From the Middle of the Fifteenth Century

2. The Renaissance in the Rest of Europe

p515 ... The great novelty that appeared at this time was capitalism... 

From... [the end of the 12th century] capitalism, to the north of the Alps... was hindered, supervised, restricted. It could operate only by evading the regulations, and it had little vitality, being crushed by Italian competition. The ecclesiastical and civil laws with regard to lending money at interest were also not without effect...

p516 But this situation began to undergo transformation as early as the first half of the 15th century. A new class of capitalists began to make its appearance almost everywhere in Flanders, France, and England, and in those cities of Southern Germany which maintained commercial relations with Venice. It consisted of new men; it was not in any sense the continuation of the old patriciate. It was a group of adventurers, of parvenus, like all those groups that made their appearance during each economic transformation. They did not work with old, accumulated capital. This they acquired only at a later stage. Like the mercatores of the 12th century, and the inventors and industrialists of the late 18th and the 19th century, these pioneers bought, [brought?] as their sole investment, their energy and their intelligence or cunning.

Their device, the device of the conquistadors of wealth, was liberty. It was liberty that their predecessors of the 12th century had demanded -- enfranchisement from the shackles of the agricultural and feudal system, which prevented the expansion of commerce. The liberty that the new men demanded was that which would enfranchise them from the urban regulations of the monopolies enjoyed by the trade corporations, the restrictions imposed upon sale and purchase, the control of the markets, the fixing of wages by the law, the official apprenticeship, and the privileges which, in every city, reserved commerce for the burgesses and reduced the stranger to the status of pariah. What they claimed was the common right to engage in industry and commerce, which must be rescued from municipal exclusivism, and disencumbered of those privileges which were doubtless indispensable when industry and commerce were in their infancy, but which were now preventing their development. What they wanted was "natural liberty," liberty without qualification, not a restrictive liberty as understood by the bourgeois, which was as incompatible with the "general liberty" as the "liberty" of the nobles had been with that of the villeins. [It would be interesting to reevaluate the founding documents of the United States with this sense of "liberty" in mind.] They wanted the cities to be accessible to all, so that all could share in their commerce; so that they would no longer exist merely for their own burgesses. But they also wanted the power to industrialize the countryside, to draw upon that great reservoir of labor, to employ hands that were accustomed to guide the plough, and by their aid, thanks to the law of tariff of wages, [I don't know what this means] to compete with the trade guilds of the cities: and all the more victoriously, inasmuch as, not being subject to their regulations, they could manufacture, at their own pace, as much as they wished, employ such methods as were convenient or useful, follow the changes of the fashions, market their products where they chose, and conclude such contracts as suited them.

p517 These adventurers... were favored by the political changes no less than by the inability of the cities to maintain their privileges in the midst of a progressive civilization. The princes, who required more and more money as the cost of wars increased, had need of them. It was more convenient to make use of these men of business than to parley with the States-General for taxes... now the native man of affairs was beginning to replace the Italian [at the courts of Philip the Fair and Edward III]. In Austria the Fuggers obtained the right to exploit the silver mines of the Tyrol, Bohemia and Hungary, thereby laying the foundation of their fortune outside the cities... [Goethe may have had this in mind when he wrote about Mephisto and mining in Faust.]

p518 These new capitalists did not appear in consequence of an extension of the market... nor had the population increased, but in consequence of the unaccustomed necessities which arose in the course of the formation of new States.

...The cities could not contend on equal terms against these newcomers, who had their agents everywhere, forestalling and monopolizing, and supporting the new political powers. By means of their capital new industries were established in the countryside... a "new" textile industry had been established in Flanders, at Hondschoot and Armentieres, despite the opposition of the cities... The same thing happened in England, where new manufacturing centers were established. For example, the making of tapestries became a rural industry. And a rural industry was a capitalist industry. [This reminds me of something Jane Jacobs wrote about in Cities and the Wealth of Nations. She described corporations building isolated facilities in rural areas -- usually with tax credits -- that had very little multiplier value to the local community because they were simply a cog in a national or international machine, with no urban industrial vitality.] A completely novel mode of production made its appearance. The supervision which the trade guilds imposed upon the workers and the market was replaced by liberty. The peasant turned weaver contracted with a "master," but his wages and his labor were not subject to regulation... The small workshop survived, but it became degraded... it lost its independence by subordinating itself to a new system -- the system of manufacture. The urban industry, encompassed by its privileges, like a rampart raised against capital, managed to survive by producing for the local market. Its guilds and corporations continued to exist until the end of the ancien regime... The whole of the new industrial development, from the 15th century onwards, was opposed to it and outside it. The urban cloth industry of Flanders, the great export industry of the Middle Ages, lapsed into decadence after the middle of the 14th century. Owing to its excessive prices and its conservatism, it could not cope with the competition of the new English cloth trade and the rural weaving industry. The linen industry which replaced it until the age of factories was entirely rural. 

This sound so much like the story of industry in the U.S.A. following the 1960s. There's something else I'm noticing here, because Pirenne has taken a good deal of trouble that I should: One of the curious characteristics of the domainal order was that there was no incentive for innovation. A domain had a relatively fixed population and a fixed requirement for food and goods. All that was necessary was that this requirement be met. A surplus was not needed. More efficient production didn't get you much. The rise of the bourgeois cities changed this and encouraged innovation and increased production for a wider market. But then the petit bourgeois guild system again created an order where innovation was undesirable. It was in the interest of the masters, at least, that production and prices remained stable. Guilds were basically local monopolies. Now, we are seeing how the next level of capitalism is again introducing innovation and the "liberty" of the capitalist to reduce both the cost of goods and the cost of production. I don't expect Pirenne will get to the rise of European cartels in the 20th century. I.G. Farben was a way of creating a new kind of monopoly on a new scale of production, but the aim was the same as with the guild masters. Osram was the purest -- or most clever -- version of the cartel monopoly trend of that time. Siemens and AEG simply combined their respective lighting businesses in that market and offered one line of products and split the profits. Once again there would be no incentive to innovate as there was little outside competition. (That's not entirely the case, as there would still be an advantage in reducing the cost of production. But if your profit is guaranteed anyway, there's no reason to go to the trouble since you can simply raise prices if you need a higher profit.)]

p520 ... The example of Bruges is characteristic. As early as the middle of the 15th century its cosmopolitan customers were beginning to desert it for the young port of Antwerp. Here business was not burdened by tradition; commerce was able to organize itself from the very outset in accordance with the new spirit. This was a city which was adapted to future needs; for economic history shows us clearly how new needs were accompanied by a displacement of social classes and business centers. In England the "merchant adventurers" made their appearance, while the Dutch merchant fleet began to replace that of the Hansa. [I can't help wondering, without actually knowing anything, if the inaccessibility of the port of Bruges, compared with Antwerp, also may have played a role here. Just as New York superseded Philadelphia at least in part because it is difficult and slow to sail a ship into Philadelphia, the Medieval advantage of Bruges -- less accessible to Viking raiders -- became a disadvantage over time and that disadvantage would only increase as ships grew larger. If Bruges had been better placed, perhaps the factors Pirenne writes about could have been overcome, but with Antwerp available as a handy alternative, why even bother?] At the moment when this development had already made considerable progress an unlimited field of enterprise was opened by the discovery of the New World. This so completely transformed the surface of the globe that it seemed almost like a planetary catastrophe... the transformation of so many peoples, the hybridization of some, the annihilation of others, and the appearance of so many new products, which modified the conditions of life: tea, coffee, and tobacco, which conquered the markets of Europe, the introduction of cotton, and of our domestic animals, in America; and lastly, the gigantic achievements which were to open new highways for world traffic -- Suez, Panama. Of course, all of this did not happen all at once, and the immortal mariners who "saw new stars emerging from the waves" neither desired nor could have divined the future that they were opening up for Europe. [I have to pause here. He hasn't even mentioned the potato! The initial impact of the European discovery of the New World was what we would today call "academic." It would not have affected the average person, or average business person in the least. Now the formation of the Dutch and English East Indies companies would have repercussions both in the acquisition of wealth and in the kitchen. Many of the worst crimes of European history came from the efforts of multiple states to monetize the Americas. For the Spaniards this meant developing the silver trade. For the Dutch, French, and English it started with the sugar trade which lead directly to the slave trade and then the cotton trade (I believe.) American silver would come to bolster Spain and was the foundation of Habsburg power for a time while it at the same time held dire consequences for the Ottoman Empire. While sugar changed Europe -- in ways that are revealed in Dutch portrait painting -- the humble potato truly changed the world from Ireland and Scotland to Germany to Afghanistan.]... The Europe of the 15th century was not overpopulated; it had no need of colonies, and Portugal in particular... was not conscious of the least need of extending her commerce. There was nothing of the mercantile prince about Henry the Navigator. He was actuated by scientific curiosity and the desire to propagate the Faith. They were purely spiritual aspirations that gave rise to the discovery of the lands of gold and spices... But it must be admitted that without the development attained by Mediterranean navigation at the beginning of the 15th century these discoveries would have been impossible... 

p522 The voyages of Christopher Columbus... would have been inconceivable without the science of the Renaissance... His plans were too audacious for the Portuguese court, but the Spaniards allowed themselves to be persuaded... on October 3rd, 1492... [his caravels] reached the Antilles. There was still more than half the circumference of the earth between them and the Indies! The world was much larger than Toscanelli had supposed; all his calculations were erroneous, but, as so often happens, the very errors of science were fruitful, and in this case they led to the discovery of America. The subsequent voyages of Columbus (1492-1502) and the voyage of his compatriot Sebastian Cabot, who entered the service of Henry VII of England, revealed the stupendous nature of the discovery, by reaching the American mainland... Cabot [discovering] the coast of Labrador... [Where he discovered the Basque fishing fleet drying their catch on the shore. How exactly is is a "discovery" when you stumble upon the the place generations of Europeans have been working?] It was not until 1513 that the Pacific Ocean was seen from the heights of the Isthmus of panama...

p523 From the first years of the 16th century the consequences of these marvelous discoveries were manifested in the economic life of Europe. The first of these consequences was that the headquarters of the Oriental trade was removed from the Italian ports of the Mediterranean to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. The spices which the caravans brought to the ports of the Levant, whence they were carried by the trading vessels of Genoa and Venice, could not long compete, either in quantity or in price, with those which the Portuguese and Spanish ships brought direct from the Equatorial countries in which they were produced. Italy... found that the springs of her prosperity were drying up, and the drought was a prolonged one. Until the day when the piercing of the Suez Canal (1869) made it the highway to the Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean lost the great commercial importance which it had enjoyed without interruption since the dawn of civilization. But neither Spain nor Portugal took its place; neither Cadiz nor Lisbon was the heir of Venice and Genoa. The commercial hegemony which these ports had hitherto enjoyed fell to the lot of Antwerp.

...It is not enough that ships should bring merchandise to the port; they must also be able to obtain wares in exchange... the manner in which the trade in spices and precious metals was carried on in Portugal and Spain prevented the establishment of powerful commercial houses. The Crown, as the possessor of the overseas factories and colonies, excluded foreigners from them, and reserved for itself, as a monopoly, the greater part of the import trade. Its agents were entrusted with the sale of the imported products, and in order that they might sell them more promptly and more readily the Crown took good care not to exclude those very foreigners who were forbidden access to the country where the merchandise was produced. Accordingly, from the beginning of the 16th century the capitalist merchants of Antwerp maintained at Cadiz, and above all in Lisbon, factors who were entrusted with the purchase of the precious wares. Consequently the seaport of the Scheldt became the great international emporium for spices. Only there did they become the objects of commercial transactions and enter into circulation... Never has any other port, at any period, enjoyed such world-wide importance, because none has ever been so open to all comers, and, in the full sense of the word, so cosmopolitan. Antwerp remained faithful to the liberty which had made her fairs so successful in the 15th century. She attracted and welcomed capitalists from all parts of Europe, and as their numbers increased so did their opportunities of making their fortune. Germans, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Portuguese, Spaniards and Italians, all hurried thither. And there was not a single great bank or commercial house without its representatives in Antwerp. The great financial power of the 16th century, the Fuggers, had their headquarters at Augsburg, but it was their Antwerp branch that made the most enormous profits. This rendezvous of contractors, merchants, sailors and adventurers became the center of the commercial world... There was no supervision, no control: foreigners did business with other foreigners as freely as with the burgesses and the natives of the country at their daily meetings. Buyers and sellers sought one another out and came to terms without intermediaries. Prices were fixed, and credits were opened by the commercial companies, and speculation claimed its first victims. From the year 1531 all this commercial activity was concentrated under the galleries of a special building constructed at the expense of the city, the Bourse, the forerunner and model of the future Exchanges of London and Amsterdam.

I'm going to break here so we can bask in the glory days of what would one day be Pirenne's Belgium..

277. Himalayan Fair

Himalayan Fair

This is an event I've never greened before because it conflicts with Maker Faire. This year my boss passed on Maker Faire because we were so busy, so I jumped on the Himalayan event to avoid the dreaded Bay to Breakers (B2B) footrace/walk/party in San Francisco. B2B starts too early, stretches all the way across town, and there's a vile tradition of tossing corn tortillas into the air, especially as the "runners" (ha) are waiting to start the race. This would make me want to hit them except that so many are naked.

So instead of walking a few (10?) blocks to the start of B2B, I walked seven blocks to catch the train to Berkeley and then caught a bus to the utterly charming Live Oak Park for Himalayan Fair. This isn't quite as random as it may sound -- a "Himalayan" event being held in Berkeley I mean. Berkeley has a large South Asian population as evidenced by the massive number of South Asian restaurants which have drawn me there for decades -- Indian has been my favorite cuisine, though now I would say Burmese.

I am not familiar enough with the local politics to know how unlikely this mixing of Nepalese, Tibetan, and Indian traditions would seem back in Asia. There used to be a Balkan social club here, which, back in the days before the breakup of Yugoslavia, always made me wonder if it was actually some sort of fight club. Did Serbs and Croats and Albanians really group together to reminisce about the generations of genocidal warfare?

In any event, in Berkeley these populations gather to serve up traditional foods and to sell things of a North Indian/Himalayan character. I can't actually report much about what the non-food vendors were up to as they were setup in a field on the other side of the little creek that runs through the park. I stayed in the food area until it was time to shut down our stations at the end of the day, and by that time the vendors were either buttoned down for the night (on Saturday) or packed up to leave (on Sunday). There was also the local music and, at the end of the day Saturday, a large meditation event with what I suppose was meditative music from a small stage and the contemplative sounds of me sorting down and hauling away the waste from one of our eco-stations at the edge of the zone -- it's not a big park.

Regular food vendors are bad enough (from my waste sorting perspective) but what's worse is when the food is prepared by amateurs/volunteers, which was the case at some of the booths at Himalayan Fair. I was fishing latex gloves out of the compost -- and recycling -- all weekend. Several of the food vendors were eager to feed us, especially on Saturday when it was slower, but I can't help thinking there is a bribery aspect to their largess. "We're not going to pay much attention (if any) to sorting our trash, but enjoy this curry we currently have in abundance." Still the food was good and there were plenty of veggie options for once.

I said it was a small park, and really it's not a big event in terms of numbers, but the dumpsters were placed at the top of the park so there was a lot of hauling up hill. During the day, I would just be hauling a bag or two of compost at a time and tossing them into the dumpsters. But at the end of the day I would fill one of our large toters with bags of sorted trash and then drag the toter to the dumpsters, often up hill. The final haul of the day was from this little nest of Nepalese down by the creek. I was not only carrying the bags of trash (sorted) but also the steel frames that hold the bags. And being food vendors, just as I was about to drag all this all the way up (2 sets of frigging steps, also) the vendor shows me the unsorted trash can they've been using themselves. So I have to pull the bags out and sort this. Finally, after I have refused his offer of nine bean soup three times, it becomes obvious that accepting the soup isn't optional. So now I have a cup of (quite good) soup in my hand while attempting a task that requires two hands. So I have to climb to the top of the slope and set my soup someplace I hope the rats can't get to it before going back and dragging up the heavy toter. 

You would think that, after all this "good work" in what was, at least in parts, a Buddhist event, doves would escort me to my bus stop where the bus would magically appear -- possibly proceeded by an apparition of the Dalai Lama (I originally typed "Deli" Lama, which I really like. "Would you like a pickle with your transcendence?") But no. My transit luck was about normal. The bus that was to take me to the train, passed as I was on the other side of the street so I had to walk ten blocks. I could hear the train leaving as I entered the train station, so I had to wait for the next train -- my usual 20 minute wait at Downtown Berkeley. On the train I decided I would take advantage of my senior rate $3 fare for riding the cable car seven blocks to my house, but the cable car was pulling away as I came up the escalator and there were no more cable cars waiting, so I walked up my hill, as usual.

I'm really close to finishing a juicy section of the Pirenne book, but I need one more day.

276. Renaissance Italy

Link to Chronology

Link to Table of Contents

I've been in dental hell, though without actually being able to schedule an appointment with a dentist. I'm also very close to being caught up with my reading, so while there's some good stuff coming up, I will run out of material again soon. My plan is to publish every few days, or a couple times a week.

Antiquity rediscovered

A History of Europe by Henri Pirenne
University Books, first published 1938 but written during the Great War


Book Nine
The Renaissance and the Reformation

Chapter I
The Transformation of Social Life From the Middle of the Fifteenth Century

1. Italy and Italian Influence

p505 ...Just as Florence took precedence of all the cities of the Middle Ages, so the Italian Renaissance manifested a variety and originality and vigor unknown elsewhere, and to which it owed its astonishing influence.

The fact is that the traditional authorities which dominated both social and intellectual life declined or disappeared far earlier in Italy than in the rest of Europe. And this was largely a consequence of the the extraordinary development of urban life. Just at first the nobles inhabiting the cities were involved in incessant conflicts with the bourgeoisie, but gradually, insensibly, they began to engage in commerce, so that the very clear line of demarcation which elsewhere divided the noble from the non-noble was slowly effaced, the descendants of knights and the offspring of enriched merchants intermingling in a community of manners and interests, independently of birth. The social status became more important than the juridical status; moreover, in the course of the 14th century the Italian nobility abandoned the profession of arms, thereby losing the raison d etre of its constitution as a distinct and privileged class. War became a profession that was left to specialists, the condottieri, men of the most various origins, the majority being successful   parvenus; men in whom there was no trace of the old feudal loyalty... The progress of economic organization, the development of commercial society, and the improvement of instruments of credit had the consequence, from the very first, of requiring in the banker or the man of affairs an intellectual ability and culture which were not found in the same degree among the merchants of the North... While giving due attention to his business, he allowed himself some hours of leisure, so that he was able to distract himself by intellectual interests, embellish his house with works of art, and acquire a refinement which made him singularly unlike the "patricians" of Germany, Flanders or France. And so, recruited at once from the nobility and the bourgeoisie, a sort of mundane aristocracy came into existence, comprising all those who lived the same kind of life, enjoyed the same degree of education, had the same tastes, and indulged in the same pleasures; and this kind of aristocracy had not its like in any other country. [I am reminded of Charles Swann. Swann's Way was published just before the Great War.] The old society was disintegrating. New groups were in process of formation, no longer determined by convention and prejudice, but coming into existence freely, by virtue of affinities; and in these groups one may say that the spirit of class was replaced by the spirit of humanity.

The development of capitalism involved still further consequences. [Footnote: "Here I should need my books and my notes before I could say anything definite." I think this is the first time he has passed on a subject like this. Maybe he hadn't lectured on the subject as yet?] We should note... the effective principality of the Medici in Florence, which had no other origin than their wealth.

...Florence is the only European city that could be compared with Athens; and like Athens, Florence was in every sense of the word a State which had to deal with as many foreign as domestic problems. It is not surprising that the first political theorists worthy of the name, Machiavelli (1469-1527) and Guiccardini (1483-1540), should have been born upon this fertile soil... They were as independent of theological conceptions as of the juridical constructions which had hitherto influenced political ideas. Urban life was overflowing the narrow frontiers of the Middle Ages and becoming civic life.

p507 ...Never having been squeezed into a single State, Italy was then able to become, in respect of the rest of Europe, something of what ancient Greece was for Rome. If the policy of Frederick II had succeeded in unifying Italy, Florence would have been impossible.

p508 The overthrow of social and political traditions was accompanied by the decadence of manners and morals... the morality of the Middle Ages... regarded the secular life as something secondary and inferior... in accordance with the strict theological precept, all commercial profit, all successful speculation, all bargaining was to be condemned as proceeding from the sin of avarice... One must read compilations like those of Caesar von Heisterbach (1180-1240) or Thomas de Cantimpre (1201-1263) to obtain an exact idea of the mentality of the 13th century with regard to commerce. It could hardly imagine the merchant's strongbox without picturing the devil squatting on the lid...

p510 While the Renaissance had liberated itself from the ascetic morality of the Middle Ages, it did not replace it by any other morality. The strongest and noblest souls imposed upon themselves an ideal of virtue and honor; for others glory was the dominant motive; but the majority seem to have obeyed no other rules than those of personal interest, or they allowed themselves to be led by their tastes and their passions. The loosening of the conjugal tie, and the frequency of assassinations, poisonings, and crimes of every kind and in every class of society, are incontestable evidence of a moral crisis. [Doesn't this contradict the picture he's painted for us of the behavior of the rival princes?] And yet, in the midst of this disorder, we see the beginnings of a sense of individual liberty, of human dignity, of the beauty of energy, and of the responsibility of the private man before his own conscience. Shall we go too far if we credit the Renaissance with having realized... that morality should not consist of a mere code of precepts, and that it cannot be complete without the free adhesion of the personality? This, no doubt, is an aristocratic conception; in the sense, at least, that it is given to few to attain to it. But was not the whole achievement of the Renaissance aristocratic? Was it not characterized above all by the formation of an intellectual elite? ... And was it not to this intellectual elite that it owed its most striking feature, which -- above all in Italy -- gave it its final and proper physiognomy -- the return to antiquity?

p511 ... If the literature of antiquity had had the power of provoking... ["The change in the ideas, the manners and the morals of the 15th century"] the Renaissance would have occurred as early as the reign of Charlemagne... between the Aeneid and the "Divine Comedy" there is a gulf. Dante did not understand Virgil, and could not have understood him; he was too profound, too exalted a Christian and a mystic. What the Middle Ages was able to feel and appreciate in the thought of antiquity was neither the form nor the spirit, but a few sentences, a few anecdotes, a few "moralities," understood in a symbolic sense. The unknown masters who built the Romantic and Gothic Cathedrals had before their eyes a great number of ancient monuments, and they lived in their midst without seeing them... Their incomprehension of classic art is comparable only to the incomprehension of the art of the Middle Ages itself after the triumph of the Renaissance... Without a preliminary orientation of thought and feeling, neither the Renaissance, at the close of the 14th century, nor Romanticism, as the beginning of the 19th century, would have found so many and such fervent adepts... 

This is an interesting variation on the argument in In Search of Lost Time and in Proust Was a Neuroscientist that the artist must train an audience to see art in a new way.

p512 ...At the very moment when the Church was ceasing to satisfy the needs of the intellect, it happened... that an incomparable art and literature became available, which did satisfy them. Men deserted the cathedral to find themselves before the open doors of the temple of antiquity... 

p513 ... the Italian humanism of the 15th century... made... classic Latin, correct and elegant -- the international language of all educated people, down to our own day. It thus created, for the benefit of laymen, a uniform [aristocratic] culture, externally very like that of which the clergy had hitherto retained the monopoly. In so doing it completed the constitution of that intellectual aristocracy which social evolution had created in the heart of the nation... [I could remove my "aristocratic" insertion, but I love that I anticipated where Pirenne was heading.] Writers whose taste was formed by the study of the classics transferred to their national languages the idea of beauty which they discovered in the classics... Men assimilated the forms and the ideas of antiquity, but did not allow themselves to be dominated by them. Their minds were sufficiently enfranchised to retain their independence... 

He's thinking about art here, but when it comes to political ideas I'm not so sure about this. To what extent were the ideas that shaped the American Constitution (think slavery) influenced by the example of Athens and Rome? For that matter, the European adoption of the African slave trade occurred under the watch of the Renaissance.

p514 A universal curiosity was abroad. Hardly anything was known of the philosophy of the ancients, apart from Aristotle, and he was discredited by the portrait which the Scholastics had drawn of him. Platonism was therefore welcomed with all the greater enthusiasm. The Greek literature which the Byzantine refugees had revealed to Italy, even before the Turkish capture of Constantinople, opened up new intellectual horizons. Already a few pioneers dreamed of going even further, and ventured into the domain of Hebraic studies and Oriental philology. Lastly, the exact sciences began their glorious careers. Physics, astronomy and mathematics flourished in that springtime of modern thought which gave the Italy of the 15th century its incomparable charm. It must not be forgotten that Copernicus studied at Padua and Bologna, and the scientific labors of Toscanelli and Luca Paccioli contributed largely to the discovery of the New World. 

Pirenne wouldn't have known that the Basques had been fishing in the New World for centuries. Though he might have, if he had read carefully the accounts of the later "Discoverers". It doesn't actually require that much science to cross an ocean or navigate around a continent. What it does require, and this is something Pirenne should have been on top of, is the commercial interest to do the thing.

275. The Renaissance and the Reformation

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Europe wakes up and then goes to hell

A History of Europe by Henri Pirenne
University Books, first published 1938 but written during the Great War


Book Nine
The Renaissance and the Reformation

Introduction

p501 ...Before the Renaissance, the intellectual history of Europe was merely a chapter of the history of the Church... even those who contended against the Church were entirely dominated by it, and thought only of transforming it. They were not freethinkers but heretics. With the Renaissance... The Cleric no longer had the monopoly of learning. Spiritual life... became secularized; philosophy ceased to be the servant of theology, and art, like literature, emancipated itself from the tutelage which had been imposed upon it ever since the 8th century. The ascetic ideal was replaced by a purely human ideal, and of this ideal the highest expression was to be found in antiquity. The humanist replaced the cleric, as virtue (virtus) replaced piety... Not only for the Italian humanists, but also for Christians as convinced as Erasmus or Thomas More, the claim of the theologian to domineer over learning and letters, and even morality, was as ridiculous as it was harmful. They dreamed of reconciling religion with the world. They were tolerant, not unduly dogmatic, and extremely hostile to the secular studies which Scholasticism had superimposed upon the Bible. They were interested above all in moral questions. Their program, which we find in Miles Christianus [not sure what this is supposed to be. It seems to be a literary work and not THIS.] and the Utopia, is that of a broad, rational Christianity, entirely devoid of mysticism, which would make the Church, not the Bride of Christ and the source of salvation, but an institution for moralization and education in the highest sense of the word... they were optimists, and they hoped that it would be possible to induce... [the Church], by gentle pressure, to enter upon the new path [of reform].

p502 ...The Reformation, on the other hand, attacked the problem with passion, violence and intolerance, but also with profound faith, and the passionate longing to attain to God and to salvation which was destined to conquer and subjugate men's souls. There was nothing in common with it and the Renaissance. It was... the antithesis of the Renaissance. It replaced the human being by the Christian; it derided and humiliated the power of reason... Luther was much more akin to the Middle Ages than to the humanists... Erasmus and More very soon turned aside from this revolutionary... They divined the tragedy which was about to commence, and they shuddered at it, understanding that it meant the end of their hopes of reconciliation.

Yet it was not Lutheranism that provoked the catastrophe of the wars of religion. After a first popular effervescence, marked by the rising of the German peasants and the insurrection of the Anabaptists, it submitted with docility to the control of the princes. It abandoned the Church to the secular power so completely that when Charles V decided to take action against it he had to fight the princes, and the conflict that followed was far more political than religious... 

p503 But then Calvin made his appearance, and with him the... comparitively peaceful course... was suddenly modified. An austere, exclusive, intolerant religion claimed the right to impose itself upon the government, and to force it, even by rebellion, to obey the Word of God. Calvinism was no longer satisfied with the national existence which had hitherto contented Protestantism. The Calvinist propaganda aspired to conquer the world. The faith which it inspired in its "elect" urged them to political action, and this action was the beginning of the tragic epoch of the wars of religion...

...the industrialists, capitalists and politicians were protesting and rebelling in their turn against the restrictive system of trade corporations, against the economic limitations, the traditions and prejudices that impeded the free expansion of their activities. Everything was undergoing transformation, the economic world no less than the intellectual; the birth of modern capitalism was almost contemporaneous with the appearance of the first scientific works, and it collaborated with science in the discovery of the East Indies and America... we should do wrong to restrict the application of the word "Renaissance" to the new orientation of thought and art; it should be extended to the whole field of human activity, as revealed in its manifold aspects from the middle of the 15th century...

90's Music

And by that I mean the Pop music I heard on the radio during the 1990s. I think people think I'm joking when I praise 90's music, which seems to lack even the ignore-the-hair popularity of 80's music. But I'm serious. 

Like the Beatles -- and how often do you hear that comparison -- 90's Pop music has been so easy to hear on the radio that I've never bothered to buy it for my iPod. (Some artists, like the Indigo Girls, did not get much radio play so I do own them). Last night the YouTube algorithm offered me a Goo Goo Dolls hit, which lead to a little binge of their music and the music of some of their contemporaries. Lisa Loeb seemed as shocked as I was that she was performing her hit, "Stay," again twenty years later.

I know I've written about this before, but there's something disconcerting about being reminded that the artists of a much younger generation -- that you discovered and liked as you were on the verge of middle age -- are now middle aged themselves. 

My fondness for the music of the '90s -- like my fondness for the music of the mid to late '60s -- may be at least in part because that was a good decade for me, over all. (Even Sid & Susie stopped their series of covers with the 1980s. Did they run out of gas as an act, or did they really think there was nothing worth covering in the next decade?) 

274. The end of the Middle Ages

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Iberia and the Levant

A History of Europe by Henri Pirenne
University Books, first published 1938 but written during the Great War


Book Eight
The European Crisis
(1300-1450)

The Avignon Papacy, the Great Schism, and the Hundred Years War

Chapter IV
Spain. Portugal. The Turks.

1. Spain and Portugal

p486 ...Duty, sentiment, and interest all combined to rally the Christians of Spain to the Holy War. It was a Holy War in the full meaning of the term, for its aim was not the conversion but the massacre or expulsion of the infidels... It was not enough to be a Christian; a man must be an "old Christian," [not a Morisco] which really meant that he must be "of old Spanish stock"; so that nationality became the proof of orthodoxy, and national feeling, becoming confounded with faith, was imbued with its uncompromising spirit and its fervor.

...In 1195 the Emir Iacub Almansor won such a signal victory over Alfonso VIII of Castile at Alarcos that for a moment there seemed a danger of a general catastrophe. But the Papacy... had never lost sight of the fact that Spain constituted the right wing of Christendom in... [the Holy War.] Innocent III immediately intervened... For once, thanks to the exhortations of Rome, Aragon, Castile, Leon and Portugal combined their forces. In 1212 the battle of Navos de Tolosa avenged the disaster of Alarcos and shattered the Musulman resistance.

p487 Henceforth the advance of the Christians was irresistible and definitive. Jayme II of Aragon (1213-1276) obtained a foothold in the Belearics, and in 1238 captured Valencia. Ferdinand III of Castile captured Cordova in 1236 and Seville in 1248. Meanwhile Alfonso III of Portugal annexed the Algarves and gave the kingdom the expanse which it has retained to this day. Of all its possessions in Spain, Islam retained only the territory of Granada, and even this was subject in vassalage to Castile.

p488 ... The States of Asturias, Galicia and Leon (1230) were united to Castile, and Catalonia was combined with Aragon. Navarre, now ruled by a French dynasty, and too confined within her mountains to compete with her more fortunate neighbors, was restricted to a local existence. Portugal, inevitably oriented toward the West by her long seaboard and the course of her rivers, the Douro and the Tagus, turned her back upon the peninsula, which was divided between Castile and Aragon... What drew Aragon toward Europe and gave it, from the 14th century, a character less narrowly Spanish than that of Castile, was its situation on the shores of the Mediterranean. Owing to this situation it was encouraged to take part in the Levantine trade which was, par excellence, the important trade of the Middle Ages. Barcelona was not slow to follow in the track of Venice, Pisa, and Genoa, and in the 12th century the Catalan sailors mingled with the Italians and the Provencaux in the ports of Syria and Egypt... 

Aragon takes the Balearic archipelago, Sicily, Corsica and Sardinia, and in 1443 conquers the Kingdom of Naples.
...

p490 ...The nobles, [of Castile, Aragon, and Portugal] who were essentially military, long preserved a haughty and arrogant attitude in respect of the monarchy... In order to resist this nobility of ricos hombres and hidalgos, the kings, from the beginning of the 13th century, depended on the support of the bourgeoisie. In this connection their conduct was dictated by political interests, as was that of the kings of France after Louis VII. But the alliance of the cities and the Crown was far more intimate and of far longer duration in Spain than in France... Perhaps it was on account of the greater arrogance of the nobles. What the bourgeoisie expected of the king was peace and security on the highways. In order to obtain these, they themselves formed leagues (hermandades), like the German cities, and the leagues also reinforced the judicial power of the king... Under Alfonso X the Codigo de las siete pardidas was compiled for Castile, and Jayme II of Aragon won fame as a legislator. King Denis of Portugal (1279-1325) was known as el Justo. Pedro I (1357-1367) was praised for his pitiless severity. Consequently the bourgeoisie did its utmost to support the king, as against the military nobles, in his role of guardian of the law and the public peace... the cities... obtained representation in the Cortes at a very early date. From the 13th century their deputies sat beside those of the nobles and the clergy. The dynastic quarrels which troubled Spain in the 14th century afforded the Cortes an excellent opportunity of increasing their intervention in the government, and more than once they prescribed to the kings, above all in Aragon... concessions not unlike those which were obtained from the princes of the Low Countries in the same period...

p491 [The war against the Moors of Granada was in abeyance into the 15th century,] ... On the other hand they developed their commerce and added to their wealth. Sheep began to cover the countryside, and in the trade with the North of Europe Spanish began to compete with English wool... sheep-farming began to give Castile its characteristic aspect and to enrich the nobility. There was an increasing trade with the North in Iron from Bilbao, olive oil, oranges and pomegranates. Bruge was the central market for this trade; and in the first half of the 15th century the Spanish nation was almost as strongly represented in that city as the Hansa. This economic orientation toward the North must not be overlooked; indeed, we can hardly avoid regarding it as a preparation for the dynastic alliance which in 1494 was to bind the Low Countries to Castile.

Brief account of Henry the Navigator, King of Portugal (1394-1460) and his expansion of European navigation down the west coast of Africa and leading to the discovery of the Atlantic islands and setting the stage for all that was to follow on the high seas.

p492 Thus, in the middle of the 15th century, even before the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella, which was to affect the permanent union of Castile and Aragon, Spain had won a position in the world whose future possibilities no one could as yet foresee, but which prepared her for the part which she was about to play... 

2. The Turks

p494 ...From the 10th century the Turks, Barbarians of Finnish origin, had been for the Caliphate of Baghdad very much what the Germans, six hundred years earlier, had been for the Roman Empire. They had invaded it, and naturally were immediately converted to its religion... The great Mongol invasion of the 13th century... drove them into the mountains of Armenia. But they soon descended from the mountains, under the leadership of Omman, and moved westwards into Asia Minor... [this is the transition from Seljuk to Ottoman Turkish history] Broussa (1326), Nicomedia, and Nicea (1330) fell into the hands of the invader. Nothing was left of the Empire's Asiatic possessions... The conquest of Europe followed immediately upon the conquest of Asia. Murad I captured Andrianople in 1352 and Philoppopoli in 1363, defeated the Serbs in 1371, drove them back into Macedonia, and entered Sofia in 1381... [the Serbs] were defeated in the bloody battle of Kossovo (June 15th, 1389)... Bajazet (1389-1403), the son of Murad, subdued Bosnia, Wallachia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Thessaly. The whole Balkan peninsula, as far as the Danube, was now merely an annex of the Musulman world... [A Crusade against the Turks is defeated at Nicopolis (September 12th, 1396)]. It seemed as though Constantinople's hour had nearly come. It was delayed for fifty years by the unexpected incidence of a fresh Mongol invasion.

p495 Once again, and happily for the last time, following in the trail of Attila and Jenghis Khan, a Barbarian of genius, Tamerlane, had just released a torrent of yellow hordes. His conquests had been as overwhelming as those of the terrible destroyers to whom he was a worthy successor... The Turkish Empire was menaced. Bajazet had just laid siege to Constantinople; he raised the siege in order to hasten to the defense of Asia Minor. The two Barbarians met in 1402 at Angora, and the man whom the Europeans had been powerless to check was vanquished by the Mongols (July 20th, 1402). But Tamerlane's career was as brief as his rise had been sudden. After his death (1405) the peoples bowed under the Mongol yoke raised their heads amidst the ruins of their civilizations. Sulieman, the son of Bajazet (1402-1410), succeeded in reorganizing the debris of Turkey-in-Asia... Murad II (1421-1451) reappeared before the walls of Constantinople and recaptured Salonica... the Turkish dominion, after the battle of Varna (1444), was reestablished throughout the Balkan peninsula.

p496 This time the fate of Constantinople was inevitable... Constantine XI was a worthy last representative of the long series of Emperors who derived directly from the Roman Emperors whose title they continued to bear. On the day of the final assault. May 29th, 1453, he fell fighting against the enemy...