284. Luther

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The religious aspect of the Reformation

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 II
The Reformation

1. Lutheranism

p550 Henceforth [after the failed Holy War of 1463], the Papacy was a political power only in Italy, and even there it was greatly inferior to Venice, the King of Naples, the Medici, and the Sforza... The prince often seemed to take precedence of the Pope in the person of the sovereign pontiff, the more so as the tiara was now conferred only upon Italians: Adrian VI (1521-1523) was to be the last of the ultramontane Popes... Each Pope profited by his elevation to assure the future of his family, and of his policy, by introducing... the greatest possible number of his kinsmen into the Sacred College... Imagine what an impression a believer must have carried away from the capital of the Christian world at a time (1490) when there were 6,800 courtesans in Rome, when the Popes and cardinals consorted publicly with their mistresses, acknowledged their bastards, and enriched them at the cost of the Church!... 

p551 ...The higher clergy, almost entirely recruited from among the proteges of the Curia or the courts of the princes, were complete worldlings... Only the Dominicans [of the monastics] still displayed a certain activity. But since Scholasticism had done its work, there was nothing left for them but their inquisitorial duties, and for lack of heresies to cope with they devoted themselves to the study of demonology. In 1487 two of them published, at Strasbourg, the Malleus Maleficarum, [From Wiki, "It endorses   extermination of witches and for this purpose develops a detailed legal and theological theory.^{[9][10][11][12][13][14][15]} It was a bestseller, second only to the Bible in terms of sales for almost 200 years.^[16]"] an abominable treatise on the crimes of witches.
...

p552 However, the faith was still intact. Since the 12th century, it would really seem that there had never been so few heretics as during the fifty years that preceded the outbreak of Protestantism. Wycliffism in England and Hussitism in Bohemia were almost extinct... No one deserted the Church, or dreamed of doing so; but religion had become little more than a habit, a rule of life for those who observed the letter rather than the spirit. Hence the success of the indulgences, of which the Papacy, always short of money, was continually authorizing new emissions on all sorts of pretexts...

p553 ...They [the humanists] hoped... without a crisis, merely by the influence of intellectual progress, common sense, and learning, and thanks to the support of the social authorities, to bring about a religious reformation full of moderation, breadth, and tolerance.

This pleasing dream lasted only for a moment. It was... impossible of realization, for the anti-ascetic Christianity of the humanist had nothing in common with that of the Church... The theologians who made common cause against Erasmus saw this plainly enough... The higher clergy paid court to the Erasmians much as the French nobility paid court to the "philosophers" at the end of the 18th century. The former no more expected a religious revolution than the latter anticipated a political revolution. There was nothing... that could have enabled anyone to foresee the sudden explosion of Lutheranism... In their [the northern humanists] writings, and above all in those of Ulrich von Hutten, [What an interesting life] we find for the first time... an opposition of Germanism and Romanism at which we should be tempted to smile if the political passions of the 19th century had not exploited it, with such blind fury, to the detriment of civilization... Whether in its pagan or in its Catholic form, Rome was thus regarded as the perpetual enemy of the German people.

p555 ...It would be incorrect to suppose that Germany was devoured by a spiritual thirst which the Church was no longer able to assuage -- that it felt itself cabined and confined in Catholicism, and was seeking to unite itself more intimately with God. It is only too easy to point to a religious opposition between the Germanic and the Latin soul. Reality shows us nothing of the kind. Although Protestantism was born in Germany, and while the form which it first assumed, and its early progress, can only be explained by the German environment in which it was born, this is no proof whatever of its alleged Germanic character. It would be only too easy to oppose the Frenchman, Calvin, to the German Luther. The Reformation was a religious phenomenon; it was not a national phenomenon, and while it is true that it was more widely diffused among those peoples that spoke Germanic tongues, this was not because it found in these countries minds which were specifically qualified to understand it, but because it was there favored by political and social conditions which it did not encounter elsewhere. 

This is an excellent point. I hadn't realized, before reading Pirenne, how similar the situation of the German princes was to that of Henry VIII. Now the Puritan Commonwealth was a different matter. 

Luther belonged to the number of those who, in all countries and in all ages, are troubled in the most secret places of their hearts by religious problems which are more readily felt than defined. [The religious whack-a-doodles.] ...terrified by the idea of death, which had nearly taken him during a thunderstorm, he renounced his career and assumed the robe of a monk in an Augustinian monastery. Like so many others, he failed to find spiritual peace in the ascetic life, and in 1508 he was relieved at being chosen by the general of the order to fill a chair in the faculty of theology in the University of Wittenberg. There, in 1517, his famous thesis against the sale of indulgences made him suddenly emerge from his obscurity, and inaugurated the Reformation.

p556 ...Like Wycliffe and Huss, he wanted to address the nation, and it was in the national tongue that he wrote... The printing-press of his little University of Wittenberg sent his mighty words all over Germany... For the first time a religious question was debated in the hearing of the people, was brought within its competence and submitted to its judgment... Lutheranism was propagated by means of letterpress, and in the rapidity of its diffusion we see the first manifestation of the power of the Press. 

I have to admit I've always thought "journalism" when I've read "press" but I suppose that isn't necessarily accurate.

...In 1518 the question was merely whether an appeal should be made from the Pope to the Council. But no later than the following year the Papacy was proclaimed an institution of purely human origin; the Council itself was said to be capable of error, and Scripture alone was infallible. In 1520 the decisive step was taken: the Christian was justified by his faith, not by his works; faith in Christ made every Christian a priest; the Mass, and all the sacraments excepting Baptism, the Eucharist, and Penitence, were rejected; the clergy had no privileges that were not possessed by lay society; both were subject to the power of the secular sword, whose authority was extended to the Church as well as to the State.

p557 ...His [Luther's] theology was a continuation of the dissident theology of the Middle Ages [Wycliffe and Huss]; his ancestors were the great heretics of the 14th century; he was absolutely untouched by the spirit of the Renaissance. His doctrine of justification by faith was related to the doctrines of the mystics, and although... he condemned celibacy and the ascetic life, he was in absolute opposition to... [the humanists] in his complete sacrifice of free-will and reason to faith.

...the religious ideas of the reformer were understood only by a very small number of genuinely pious souls. The enthusiasm of the masses was excited mainly by the attacks upon the clergy and upon Rome. The doctrine of justification by faith was beyond their comprehension... Already numbers of monks were deserting the cloisters; and priests, preaching from the pulpit, proclaimed their adhesion to the movement. People were beginning to read and interpret the Bible. They were filled with naive indignation against the clergy who had so long deceived them by concealing from them the true religion contained in the Holy Book... Meanwhile, the princes were pondering the situation. What seductive prospects were offered by the hope of secularizing the ecclesiastical estates!... among the very great majority of its first adherents Lutheranism was far more a revolt against the Papacy than a genuine religious awakening.

p558 The Emperor Maximilian died on January 12th, 1519, at the very moment when the crisis was about to assume its gravest aspect...[the Electors choose Charles V of Spain who becomes the defender of the Church.]
...

Continued next time

Sikh Festival

One of the reasons I've been able to be a greening engineer for over a decade is my ability to forget how bad events (or the people at events) were from one year to the next. I try to remember practical details -- like the problem with wind at this event, which I reminded my boss of without it making the slightest difference and she's worked it the past two years.

Somewhere during the lunch rush, after the main group of marchers had streamed into Civic Center Plaza, hungry after marching through downtown, I remembered that, while at first this seems to be a colorful, vegetarian event with perhaps a few too many references to anti-Sikh Indian genocide (considering the recent history of Sikh assassination of Indian leaders), at the end of the day these people are pretty annoying. 

It's hard to even define how they are more annoying than our other crowds. God knows the other crowds are just as oblivious and arrogant. And this time (as opposed to Himalayan Festival) there weren't latex gloves in all the compost bags... if fact I never saw any latex gloves, which makes me wonder what they were doing in those food preparation tents, and also thankful that I only ate one small plate of free, veggie food. 

The biggest hit this year were the new playgrounds at Civic Center, that have finally opened since last festival. (A single image won't do these playgrounds justice. Google "San Francisco Civic Center Playground".) This event is very much a family affair with everyone dressed in traditional costume and it was entertaining to see the new playgrounds crowded with little Sikhs and the benches filled with their mothers and aunties. I don't know that this is better for the future of Sikh identity in America, but at least the younger demographic will be eager to attend next year.

Not only was Mary, my boss, Crew Chiefing the event yesterday, but because they skimped on the debris box rental (they ordered the minimum dumpster space they thought they could get away with, which turned out to be insufficient, so we had to smash down both the compost and the landfill to make room for it all) she spent most of the end of the event up on top of the compost. This was because she had used up all her experienced people to run the four or five other events this day (and not climbing into dumpsters is the one concession I make to being a senior citizen.) Almost all of our crew were new... and not all of them will last. Mary and I ran around all day putting out fires created by the inexperience (cluelessness) of the rest of the crew.

I had claimed the busiest eco-station (in the food area we had double stations they were so busy) and had it running smoothly when Mary pulled me to do roving sorting (my usual thing) because the person she replaced me with had been doing my least favorite thing -- visiting the eco-stations, giving them a nice massage (sorting), but then leaving without removing anything so that they were all filling up. 

I hit all the peripheral stations removing all the compost, found there were a couple other people seemingly doing the same thing, returned to the busy food area in time to catch a first-time crew member in a sort of meltdown. (To be fair, this really is something of a trial by fire as, not only is it spectacularly busy, but the routine has to change numerous times as we react to the volume of business and the fact that it gets so crowded that you can't cart away full bags but just pile them up until the crowd thins out. It's knowing how to react to these changes that takes the most time to learn.) For a while, both Mary and I were working together getting the station back into order, then I moved on to help the next overwhelmed station.

Still, it was a beautiful day. A shorter than usual shift (seven hours, for some reason?) And the food was good.

283. Renaissance snobs

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Renaissance to WEIRD

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

3. Ideas and Manners

Continued...

p545 ...In adopting the Latin of the classics as their language, the humanists of the South were bent merely on continuing the work of the ancients; those of the North were eager to indicate, by its adoption, their break with magistri nostri. The barbarous style for which they quite wrongly reproached the Latin of the universities and the Scholastics -- forgetting that it was an artificial and scientific language, perfectly adapted to its purpose -- seemed to them eloquent of the barbarity, crudity, and absurdity of the ideas which it expressed. However they did not undertake to attack the philosophy of the Middle Ages; they were content to despise it. For them, everything had to be reconstructed. Theology must be reconstructed, beginning with the study of the sacred texts. The great achievement of Erasmus was a Greek edition of the New Testament with Latin translation and paraphrase...

When we speak of the rationalism of the Renaissance... The liberty of thought which it claimed for man stopped short of the great religions and philosophical problems. Its standpoint was purely human and terrestrial. It did not attack the problems of destiny and the origin of the world; in this connection it accepted the Christian ideas... It was quite ready to admit the existence of mysterious and demonical powers beyond the limits of the visible world. It is interesting to note that this rationalism coincided with a recrudescence of magical practices, and it uttered no protest against the increasing frequency of the abominable trials for witchcraft, which must never be forgotten if we are to form an accurate notion of the mentality of the new era.

p546 What this rationalism brought with it... was not free thought... but what might be described as an intellectual and moral liberalism. Now liberalism is synonymous with individualism, and... one of the most definite consequences of the Renaissance was that it substituted for the social conceptions of the Middle Ages, according to which the world was a hierarchy of perfectly distinct classes... the idea that worth and esteem are purely personal things, appertaining to every man, by virtue not of his rank, but of his merit. It is interesting to observe that in this connection the Renaissance placed on earth what the Church had reserved for in heaven...

But let us at once admit that the liberalism of the Renaissance was an aristocratic liberalism. By no means did it proclaim the rights of man, but only, in the words of Rabelais, the rights of men who were "free, well born, well educated, and conversant with honest company." In short, its ideal was the vir bonus dicendi peritus of antiquity; that is, the "honnete homme," the "gentleman" of the modern era. It regarded the privileges of birth as absurd, but it insisted, all the more vigorously, on the privileges of intellectual culture. In this its point of view approximated pretty closely to that of antiquity. Regarded in this sense, Rousseau's declaration that the arts and letters were destructive of equality is a protest against society as envisaged by the Renaissance. The opposition between the freeman and the slave was replaced by the opposition between the literate and the illiterate. The Renaissance felt nothing but disdain for "mechanic trades," and the prejudice in favor of the liberal professions, which survives to this day, dates from the Renaissance. The prejudice was doubtless largely responsible for the indifference to the lot of the lower classes which characterizes the modern era. Moral ideas have surely played as much part in this as the economic interests of landowners and capitalists. 

The English words "Barbarous" and "barbarian" have been used in ways that I've found confusing in this translation, but you could define "barbarian" as a person who doesn't speak your language. This could mean a 5th century BCE Thracian who didn't speak Attic Greek. It could also mean a 21st century hick who wonders if the Earth might be flat, questions evolution, and would think QED was nonsense if he ever bothered to consider it. Jonathan Haidt's "WEIRD" (Western Educated Industrial Rich and Democratic), simply do not speak the same language as the non-WEIRD -- though it might be more accurate to say that it's the non-WEIRD who don't know the language in question. I may not share this Renaissance attitude toward the work of the lower classes, but I would share the disinterest in spending much time in conversation with them. 

p547 ...The organic unity which was lacking in the modern world would... be compensated for by the prodigious animation provoked and maintained by the enfranchisement of thought and action. In order to arrive at a just appreciation of the Renaissance, we must remember that for three hundred years the art and literature of every people have been evolving in the direction which it struck out for itself... One might liken our civilization to a river which became navigable only from the point where the affluent of antiquity mingled its waters with the stream. Of course, the river has its source at a much remoter point, but its upper reaches are accessible only with difficulty; to explore them, to become familiar with their aspect... requires a considerable effort. Barely a century has elapsed since the Middle Ages ceased to be regarded with disdain, but in spite of the reaction which has occurred in their favor, they are so remote from us that we cannot blend them with our own life in a really intimate fashion. More often than not, Neo-Gothicism [Footnote: "The allusion here is to the 'neo-Gothic" architecture which flourished especially in Belgium, before the war."] is merely the form affected by ideas and tendencies which are in reality extremely modern. The Renaissance, on the contrary, still surrounds us on every hand... Despite the admirable vigor of contemporary art, our government continues to maintain their "Ecoles de Rome," their "travelling scholarships," while our Athenaeums, Lyceums and Gymnasiums are merely continuations of the Latin schools of the 16th century. From the Renaissance, too, dates the development of the sciences; for a long time they exerted no influence upon human history, accumulating the new knowledge in silence, until, at the end of the 18th century, the spate of discoveries, increasing our knowledge of Nature, led to a second renaissance of thought, and thanks to the progress of technique, multiplied a hundredfold the output of human effort.

p548 Nevertheless, the influence of the Renaissance upon civilization was by no means so efficacious as its early years might have led man to expect. Another force, even more powerful -- the religious Reformation -- began to clash with it at the very moment when it was beginning to trace the direction of intellectual progress, and it was their twofold action, sometimes combined, but more often opposed, that determined the destinies of the modern world.

282. Renaissance society

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A revolution from above

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

3. Ideas and Manners

p536 ...In Italy the new orientation of ideas, manners, and artistic feeling began at the very moment when the economic development of the nation had reached its apogee. It was not contemporary with this development, but subsequent to it, and while the intellectual movement continued to progress the economic development was already beginning to decline. This intellectual development was the fine flower of the entire civilization that preceded it; the product of thought and beauty succeeding to the product of force. This development was not unlike that of ancient Greece in the days of Pericles: Athens in the 4th century, and Florence in the middle of the 15th century, shone with a glory which was no longer commensurate with their real strength; the dazzling radiance which they shed upon the world, before they made way for more vigorous successors, had the splendor but also the ephemeral quality of a sunset. At the very moment when the genius of Machiavelli, Guiccardini, Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci was in flower, the discovery of the New World was diverting the current of European life from the Mediterranean. 

I see what he means about Florence but how was Pericles's Athens in decline?

The case was very different to the north of the Alps. Here the Renaissance was not a sunset but a sunrise... it must not be believed that capitalism provoked the renaissance of thought which was contemporaneous with it. The one and the other were different symptoms of the same crisis of growth... What the discovery of the New World was for capitalism, the Italian Renaissance was for the intellectual movement...

p537 ...The relaxation of morals in the 15th century, and the predominance of temporal interests, were no less striking in Northern Europe than in Italy... The Low Countries, under the Dukes of Burgundy, between France and England, the one exhausted by war and the other a prey to civil discord, were enjoying a period of peace and prosperity, and they afforded a spectacle which presented curious analogies with that of Italy. One might have observed, at the court, in the society of the great nobles, and among the government officials and the capitalists, whether landowners or merchants, a kind of life whose principal features were precisely those which are commonly attributed to the early Renaissance in Tuscany and Lombardy: a general relaxation of morality, a love of luxury and social festivities, a demand for elegance and comfort in private dwellings, a pronounced taste for fine clothing, and for the nobler pleasures of art, and the general diffusion of education and good breeding. Here... we see that the aristocracy of birth, like the aristocracy of wealth, was living a social life of a kind that no longer had anything in common with the conventional cortesia of the Middle Ages... it is enough to recall the adorable landscapes which assuredly contributed to the success of the Belgian school of painting in the 15th century in order to realize that the discovery of Nature at this period was by no means a purely Italian discovery. The same may be said of the discovery of the individual...

p539 This worldliness of manners and of thought in and about the court of Burgundy was also to be observed, though in a less degree, in France and England... What were the first books to be printed? When Caxton established his printing-press in London, his customers, who consisted for the most part of noblemen, but also included a city haberdasher, asked him to produce translations from the French and Latin. He himself translated the Aenid... The printing-press did not create the taste for reading, for that already existed, but it hastened its diffusion... the great difference between the 15th century and the age of Charlemagne and the Middle Ages was that the culture which men of the 15th century acquired by reading was purely secular. The Church had no part in it...

p540 We cannot doubt that in all these people [Edward IV, Richard III, Louis XI, the Dukes of Burgundy and others] there was an insatiable thirst for learning: an awakening -- unconscious, I believe, but none the less an awakening [what??!] -- of curiosity, eager to see beyond the two narrow frontiers within which the traditions of caste and religion had hitherto imprisoned it...

p541 ...The "New Learning," as the English called it, was a direct return to antiquity, provoked, of course, by the example of the humanists, but not subordinated to them. It is true that there had been humanists in the North, and especially poets, like Pierre Gilles and the author of the Basia, Jean Second, while the Certamen poeticum Haftianum of Amsterdam was in the direct line of descent. Longolium of Malines belonged to the same school. But not so the great writers: neither Roechlin in Germany, nor Colet [John?] and More in England, nor the greatest of all, Erasmus. The literature of antiquity influenced them less by its form than by enfranchising their thought. It enfranchised it from the scholastic tradition, not only by means of the classic tongue, which they immediately adopted, but by the new standpoint which it gave them. The Miles Christianus of Erasmus might be described as their programme. And what do we find in it? The secular spirit!... religion is envisioned as an exhortation to morality, addressed to the honest man. The ideal is no longer asceticism, but the life of the citizen, with all its duties... hence... a whole plan of reforms, with a view to the future, and especially pedagogic reforms, which would replace the schools of the clergy by new schools, in which children should be educated in the cult of belles lettres, and in which "politesse" would have its place in a training which was to prepare the pupil no for the cloister, but for life. The Adagia of Erasmus, which appeared in 1500, exercised a pedagogical influence comparable only to that of Rousseau's Emile. For the first time... it was seen that the function of the school was to impart intellectual culture. One may say that the whole organization of education to this day is based on the conception of education evolved by these northern humanists. For them, the object of education was the free development of the personality... More, like Erasmus, was opposed to monasticism, asceticism, the celibacy of priests, and the worship of relics; and both, if the truth be told, tended to transform Christianity into a philosophia evangelica... in the North the spirit of the Renaissance was revolutionary, but it was purely theoretical... It made war upon the Church. It spared the State, hoping that the progress of enlightenment would win acceptation [?] for its opinions.

p543 In return, all the social authorities made much of the humanists, just as they made much of the philosophers before the French Revolution... In their optimism they believed that the world might be changed. Vives wanted the Utopia to be placed in the hands of schoolboys, together with the Colloquia. If governments, and even popes and kings, applauded these books, as did all the high officials also, it was because they were careful to avoid political discussion. Their attitude was precisely that of Voltaire. In order that enlightenment should triumph, they had need of a strong government, an authority superior to the parties, more powerful than the Church. Like all intellectuals, they were, though they did not confess it, in favor of the "intelligent despot." The revolution of which they dreamed was to be carried out from above, because they expected that it would be the work essentially of science and reason. No doubt they wanted to extend its benefits to all men, but it must begin at the top, and as for the means by which it was to be brought about, they relied on the social aristocracy, hoping for the final constitution of an intellectual aristocracy...

p544 Everywhere... [but Spain], during the twenty years which elapsed between the end of the 15th century and the appearance of Protestantism, it seemed as though a new world was on the point of birth. All that was strong and youthful and vigorous revolted against the past. Never, perhaps, have the social authorities so unanimously supported an intellectual movement... All were moving and straining in the same direction: authority, society, fashion, the politicians, the women, the artists, the humanists. There was a boundless confidence abroad, a feverish joy. The mind was liberated from authority, was free to wander under the heavens; the monopoly of knowledge was abolished, and it was now the possession of the whole community. And the knowledge that was derived from antiquity was all the more seductive, inasmuch as it went hand in hand with beauty, and was, so to speak, almost identical with beauty. 

This would be more convincing if we hadn't just read about the Hussite Wars in Bohemia, almost exactly a century before. I'm sure Pirenne is correct about how Erasmus and his friends felt, but notice that you will not find the common man in the list above of social factions all straining in the same direction.

Continued next time.

281. The Renault FT

Note:
I've finished my other book (The Storied Life of A.J. Fickry by Gabrielle Zevin, is very enjoyable, especially for someone who was in the retail book business for a number of years). I inadvertently started writing a -- very, very concise -- history of the Pacific War. And I anticipate resuming my Regieren blog soon, when I start rereading The Magic Mountain with my book club. 

I also just browsed ahead in this book (A History of Europe) and discovered we end with the Reformation. So... I'm going to try to wrap this up before I move on to those other projects.

P.S. After writing the above I resumed reading Pirenne at page 536. *Sigh* Pirenne's account of the Renaissance and the Reformation is so like Mann's use of Settembrini and Naphtha that I feel like I should have been directed to Pirenne rather than to Goethe and Nietzsche to obtain a better understanding of The Magic Mountain. TMM is simply the European society of the early 20th century wrestling with the opposing social, intellectual, and moral trends of the 16th century. And all this continues today in the Age of Trump. For five centuries human society has attempted to transcend into a rational realm, and repeatedly failed. Each time we've tried to soar we've fallen back to earth like Goethe's Euphorion.

Now I'm feeling bad about finally convincing my book club to read TMM.

At this point, the two books I would suggest to people puzzled by TMM would be A History of Europe and The Brothers Karamazov.

But now for something completely different...

The Renault FT tankette

I ran into a feature on this little tank from the Great War, on the BBC's website, HERE. It's a nice piece on its own, but there are some things left out. 

The main problem with both aircraft and armored vehicles during the Great War was the state of engine development. There simply weren't good enough (power for weight) petrol or diesel engines to power the things. The Renault design works around this to some extent by creating the lightest possible armored fighting vehicle. 

If you look closely at the photos of the FT, it is amazing how many things the design got right (quite possibly by accident, but there's nothing wrong with that.) It took the Germans until the Panzer V (Panther) to adopt sloped armor, but the FT already has sloped armor. (Sloped armor increases the stopping power of a given weight of armor. And it increases the likelihood the shell will simply ricochet away.)

And look at those large front drive wheels. Future tanks would not copy this feature, but those steel wheels provide effective side armor protection for the driver, and thus do double duty.

But there are also some problems with the design. The one man turret set what would prove to be an unfortunate precedent for the French Army. It works fine when your primary weapon is a machine gun, as here, but when artillery is added and loading and aiming becomes more complicated, as was the case by 1940, then a single person was incapable of both manning the gun and staying aware of the battle going on around him. This is why three man turret crews became the norm in WW2. Now, if the French could have equipped their Char B1 tanks with something like today's 25mm to 40mm automatic chain guns, the history of the Battle of France might have been very different.

Mounting the engine in the rear did become the standard for tanks, but the Israelis -- who really know armored warfare -- have elected to put their engines in the front where it acts as additional armor  protection for the crew. This also permits them to place a hatch at the back which makes egress easier. They can even easily load a few infantrymen or casualties without exposing them to small arms fire. This is also the standard layout for Infantry Fighting Vehicles, because they also need the door at the rear. Though back in 1918 all this would have been very hard to anticipate.  

And finally, the English, by the end of the Great War, had realized that their huge lumbering tanks were also valuable as trucks -- I suppose I should say, "as lorries." Those Schneider CA1 tanks may have been failures as fighting vehicles, but they look like they could have been useful hauling men and material through a blasted battle zone. The difficulty of doing that was what stopped the German offensives of early 1918. This is also why I think the U.S. Army DUKW was as important as any fighting vehicle to winning WW2 -- transporting the stuff of war is as important as fighting.

And given what I now know of the impressive Jean Baptiste Eugene Estienne (thank you BBC), it really should have occurred to him that even the CA1 could have been adapted to carry an indirect fire weapon, like a mortar, forward to support an attack. He could have been the creator of the first mechanized version of horse artillery. Of course hindsight is always 20-20, but you really would think that a French artillery officer would have been alive to the importance of all aspects of cavalry operations. That, as Ney demonstrated so thoroughly at Waterloo, the best light and even heavy cavalry in the world can achieve only so much without proper support by horse artillery and/or dragoons. (I hope I've already written somewhere that I now think Ney isn't so much to blame for this as I used to think. I now think his horse artillery was decimated at Quatre Bras. I still need to research his strength in dragoons.) This was a lesson the Germans learned in 1940 and they converted some of their Panzer Is (which was the German equivalent of the FT) into modern horse artillery which helped them on the Eastern Front.

Converted Panzer I.

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..