MEDIEVAL HISTORY NOTES: GRADE 7

 

CHAPTER 7       CHANGES IN THE WESTERN WORLD

 

Section 1: The Enlightenment (page 190)

 

I.           Introduction

 

-Members of the court leaned forward, waiting for Galileo Galilei to respond to the question. Did the great Italian scientist really believe that Earth moved around the sun?

 

-This was an important question in 1633. The Roman Catholic Church taught that God made Earth the center of the universe. If that where true, everything—sun, planets, and stars—moved around the Earth.

 

-But in the 1500s, The Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus had said the Earth moved around the sun. Galileo had supported the ideas of Copernicus. Now the Church court was asking Galileo what he really believed.

 

-He knew that he could be tortured to death if he disagreed with the Church. So the old man told the court what it wanted to hear—that Earth did not move. Yet as Galileo was being led away, he is said to have muttered, “Nevertheless, it does move.”

 

 

II.        The Age of Reason (page 191)

 

-For hundreds of years, the Roman Catholic Church had been the most powerful institution in Europe. The Church told people what to believe about the physical world and how they should behave, based on the Bible and on faith.

 

-To protect its power, the Church excommunicated people who questioned its authority or teachings. It also gave the Inquisition, or Church courts, the power to torture, imprison, or condemn to death those who did not strictly obey the Church in thought and deed.

-Nevertheless, there were those who questioned Church teachings. Protestants broke away from the Church. The Renaissance encouraged the study of ancient texts and the development of new ideas.

 

-As scientists began to make careful observations of nature, they started a revolution in the way people looked at themselves and the world.

 

-This revolution in thought was called the Enlightenment. It was characterized by reliance on reason and experience rather than on religious teachings and faith. The 1700s, when Enlightenment ideas were the leading ideas in Europe, is called the Age of Reason.

 

-Enlightenment thinkers used reason, or logical thought, to shed a new “light” on traditional beliefs. In many cases, they challenged those beliefs. The Enlightenment affected politics, art, literature, science, and religion—almost every field of human thought.

 

-Many Enlightenment ideas were rooted in the Scientific Revolution of the 1500s and 1600s. The Scientific Revolution was a time when scientists began to rely on what they could observe for themselves. It was the birth of modern science.

 

-One of these scientists was Nicolaus Copernicus, who put forth the idea that Earth moved around the sun. Many experts rejected Copernicus’s theory.

 

-In the late 1500s, however, the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe provided evidence to support Copernicus. In the early 1600s, Johannes Kepler used Brahe’s data to accurately calculate the orbit of the planets around the sun.

 

-Galileo also studied the planets. Using a new scientific tool—the telescope—he was able to observe four moons orbiting around Jupiter.

 

-In England, Isaac Newton developed a theory about why planets move the way they do. He found that gravity holds Earth and the other planets in their orbits around the sun. In 1687, Newton published a book about the workings of the universe. He said that the natural world follows “natural laws,” or rules that can be measured and described mathematically.

 

-Scientists were developing a new way of learning about the world. This scientific method involves careful observation of nature and, in some sciences, controlled experiments. To use the scientific method, scientists make predictions and develop theories based on their observations.

 

-They then test their predictions by doing experiments and by careful observations. Logic and mathematics are used to analyze observations and compare them to the results expected from their theories. As scientists observe and learn more, they replace old theories with new ones that explain facts better.  

 

 

III.     New Political Ideas (page 193)

 

-Scientists were finding out that nature worked according to certain natural laws. Other Enlightenment thinkers declared that there were also natural laws that applied to human society.

 

-One of these thinkers was the Enlightenment philosopher John Locke. He said that natural laws govern human behavior. Government, he said, should be based on these natural laws.

 

-Locke believed that people were basically reasonable and good. He argued that people also had natural rights, or rights that belonged to all human beings from birth. They included the right to life, the right to liberty, and the right to own property.

  

-According to Locke, people form governments to protect their natural rights. Governments draw the right to rule from the people they govern. Therefore, rulers should govern only as long as they have the support of the people.

 

-If a government breaks the agreement by taking away people’s rights, the people have the right to change, or even replace, that government.

 

-He was saying that monarchs like those of France, Spain, and Russia did not have divine right to rule. They should not have absolute power. They could—even should—be replaced if they did not meet their responsibilities toward those they ruled.

 

-People in many countries read about these new ideas and began to wonder whether their rulers were governing properly. Some people eventually translated Locke’s ideas into action.    

 

 

IV.       The French Philosophes (page 194)

 

-Enlightenment ideas were also being explored in France. The philosophes were a group of French thinkers and scientists who believed that the ideas of the Enlightenment could be used to reform and improve government and society.

 

-They spoke out against inequality and injustice. The philosophes distrusted institutions, like most governments and the Church, that did not support freedom of thought.

 

-One of the most important philosophes was Jean Jacques Rousseau. Like Locke, Rousseau thought that people were naturally good. He added that imperfect institutions such as the Church and governments corrupted, or spoiled, this natural goodness.

 

-In his 1762 book The Social Contract, Rousseau argued that governments should express the will of the people and put few limits on people’s behavior.

-Perhaps the most famous philosophe was Voltaire. His essays, plays, and novels exposed many of the abuses of his day. He used his biting wit to attack inequality, injustice, and religious prejudices. Voltaire was a great champion of freedom of speech.

 

-In the mid-1700s, articles by many of the philosophes were collected by Denis Diderot in the Encyclopedia. One purpose of this huge work was to bring together information on all of the arts and sciences.

 

-Another purpose was to make this information available to the public.  A third goal was to advance the ideas of the Enlightenment.

 

-Articles in the Encyclopedia attacked slavery, urged education for all, and promoted freedom of expression. They also challenged traditional religions and the divine right of kings. Both the French government and the Catholic Church tried to ban the Encyclopedia.

 

 

Section 2: Political Revolutions (page 198)

 

I.           Introduction (page 198)

 

-Elizabeth I was a powerful monarch, but she knew that her power was not absolute. As far back as 1215, the Magna Carta had put limits on the power of English rulers. Elizabeth knew that she ruled with the approval of Parliament and the people.

 

II.        Changes in England (page 199)

 

-Queen Elizabeth died without children. Her crown went to her cousin, the king of Scotland, James Stuart. Although he had agreed to rule according to English laws and customs, James I believed that he was king by divine right and that his power was absolute.

 

-James, and his son Charles I who ruled after him, clashed with Parliament, the council that had been advising English monarchs since the 1200s.

 

-Over the centuries, Parliament had grown in size and power. Divided into the House of Lords and the House of Commons, it had become a true legislature, passing bills that became law with the monarch’s approval.

 

-Nevertheless, when Parliament would not approve the taxes he wanted, James dissolved, or closed, Parliament.

 

-Over time, a power struggle developed between the king and Parliament. Both James and Charles often refused to allow Parliament to meet. But when Charles needed money, he summoned Parliament, which could levy taxes. Parliament responded by trying to limit the king’s power.

 

-Charles summoned Parliament in 1640 when he needed funds to put down a rebellion in Scotland. This Parliament refused to bow to the king. It tried and executed some of the king’s ministers, and declared that it could not be dissolved without its own consent.

 

-In response, Charles led troops into the House of Commons. Parliament leaders who escaped raised their own army. Forces loyal to the king fought forces loyal to Parliament in the English Civil War.

 

-Led by Oliver Cromwell, a skilled general, the military forces of Parliament were victorious. In 1646, they captured Charles I. Parliament set up a court that tried and convicted the king as “a tyrant…and a public enemy.”

 

-Charles I was beheaded in 1649. It was the first time a European monarch had been tried and executed by his own people.

 

-After the war, Parliament abolished, or did away with, the monarchy. Oliver Cromwell ruled England through a committee of Parliament.

 

-Cromwell was a Puritan, a member of a Protestant group that wanted to simplify the services of the Church of England and to enforce strictly moral behavior. 

-When he faced challenges to his power, Cromwell took up the title Lord Protector and set up military rule.

 

-In 1660, just two years after Cromwell’s death, Parliament invited the son of King Charles I to return from exile and rule the country. This re-establishment of the monarchy under Charles II is called the Restoration.

 

-Charles II was a popular king, but his brother, James II, who became king in 1685, was not. Not only was James Catholic, he also behaved like an absolute monarch.

 

-Parliament wanted a Protestant king who respected Parliament. In 1688, they invited James’s Protestant daughter Mary and her husband, the Dutch prince William of Orange, “to rescue the nation and the religion.”

 

-When William and Mary’s armies landed in England, James fled to France. This bloodless overthrow of James II is called the Glorious Revolution.

 

-Parliament officially offered the throne to William and Mary—with one condition. They had to accept the English Bill of Rights, which stated that all laws had to be approved by Parliament and gave the House of Commons the power of the purse—the power to raise and spend money.

 

-The Bill of Rights also restated the traditional rights of English citizens, such as trial by jury. In 1689, William and Mary agreed, and Britain became a constitutional monarchy, or a government in which the monarch’s power is limited by a set of laws.   

 

 

III.     The American Revolution (page 201)

 

-By the 1750s, about two million people lived in the British colonies in North America. To help pay for the defense of their faraway colonies, the British wanted to collect taxes from the American colonists.

-Under British law, people could not be taxed unless they had representatives in the Parliament that had voted for the tax. But the colonists had no representatives in the Parliament. They complained that by taxing them, the British government was taking away their rights.

 

-As American protests increased, British leaders feared that they were losing control of their colonies. They approved more taxes and stricter laws. Americans grew angrier.

 

-Leaders such as Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, who admired the Enlightenment ideas of John Locke, started to think about rebelling against British rule. The colonists began to gather weapons and ammunition.

 

-On April 19, 1775, British soldiers marched to Lexington and Concord, towns near Boston, Massachusetts. Their purpose was to take weapons and ammunition away from the Americans. The Americans, however, fought back. The American Revolution had begun.

 

-In 1776, thirteen North American colonies officially declared their independence from Britain under a document called the Declaration of Independence.

 

-It was written by Thomas Jefferson. Echoing Locke’s ideas, Jefferson stated that governments have power only because the people give it to them. If a government takes away people’s rights, the people have a right to change the government or put an end to it.

 

-With the aid of the French, the Americans won their independence in 1781. In 1789, the Constitution became the supreme law of the new nation.

 

-It was based largely on the ideas of the Enlightenment and on the traditional rights of English citizens. A written Bill of Rights protecting individual citizens became part of the Constitution.

 

 

IV.       The French Revolution (page 202)

 

-King Louis XVI of France had helped the American colonists with their independence. Yet he was no great friend of liberty. He had helped because he wanted to reduce the power of the British.

 

-The Americans appreciated the help. The French people did not. They had to pay heavy taxes to support the French army.

 

-Under the French political system, only the working people paid taxes. Nobles and clergy paid hardly anything. Thus, the poorest people carried the heaviest tax burden.

 

-As France’s debt increased, the French government increased taxes even more. The French people grew resentful and demanded that Louis share power. They used the arguments of the Enlightenment thinkers to support their demands.

 

-Adding to France’s economic problems, poor harvests in the late 1780s sent food prices soaring. Millions of people were going hungry. Riots broke out as poor people demanded bread.

 

-Finally, the king called a meeting of representatives of the three estates, or divisions, of French society—the nobles, the clergy, and the middle class. When these representatives met in 1789, they declared themselves the National Assembly.

 

-As food shortages worsened and rumors spread that royal troops were going to occupy the capital, the people of Paris reacted. On July 14, 1789, they attacked the Bastille, a prison that held political prisoners. To this day, July 14 is celebrated as Bastille Day.

 

-Rioting continued all over France. Meanwhile, the National Assembly passed laws to make the people of France equal under the law. The Assembly’s Declaration of the Rights of Man echoed the American Declaration of Independence. In 1791, the National Assembly produced a constitution setting up a limited monarchy.

 

-European monarchs were horrified. Fearing that the “French Plague” would spread and that they would lose their own power, they sent armies to France to help the king. The National Assembly declared war on these foreign powers.

 

-When the war began to go badly for France, rioting French citizens stormed the palace and captured the king. A few months later, the king was executed.

 

-A group called the Committee of Public Safety took power to defend France and the revolution. The Committee declared that the constitution was no longer in effect. Maximilien Robespierre led the Committee in carrying out what became known as the Reign of Terror.

 

-For nearly a year, people who were considered enemies of the revolution were executed—perhaps as many as 70 to 80 in a day.

 

-As political power shifted, those who had helped to create the Constitution were killed as well as those who had fought against it. Finally, Robespierre himself was executed, and the Reign of Terror soon ended.

 

-The French Revolution lasted ten years. It was a time of chaos and tyranny as well as of reform and idealism. The Revolution would finally end when one of the most powerful leaders in history took control of France in 1799.   

 

 

Section 3: The Industrial Revolution (page 204)

 

I.           A New Kind of Revolution (page 205)

 

-Until the middle of the 1700s, most people lived on farms or in very small towns. Agriculture was the basis of their economies. Most goods that people needed were made by hand, either at home or in small shops.

 

-Then in only 100 years, this way of life changed in a large part of the world. From about 1760 to about 1860, the way manufactured goods were produced shifted from simple hand tools in homes and shops to complex machines in factories. This change is called the Industrial Revolution.

 

-The Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain in the 1760s. At that time, trade from its growing overseas empire was fueling the rapid growth of Britain’s economy.

 

-British colonies provided both the raw materials needed to manufacture goods and the people to buy the goods once they were produced. British businesspeople became wealthy and had money to invest in new ventures, such as factories.

 

-In the 1760s, the leading industry in Britain was the textile industry, or the making of cloth. Spinning and weaving were done mostly by people working in their homes. It took a long time to make each piece of cloth, so textiles were expensive. Only the wealthy had more than one change of clothes.

 

-Several inventions of the 1760s made it possible to produce more cloth quickly and more cheaply. For example, the spinning jenny allowed one worker to do the job of eight people using spinning wheels.

 

-On the other hand, the new textile machines were so big and so fast that they needed more power than one person could supply.

 

-Inventors came up with ways of using flowing water to supply power to these huge machines. They dammed rivers and built mills that used water wheels. Later, steam engines were used to supply power.

 

-Britain’s large deposits of coal powered these engines. The new textile machines had to be housed in large buildings called factories. Now, in order to work, people had to leave their homes and families and go to the factories.

 

-Soon other industrial inventions took advantage of the new power supply. Mighty steam-driven hammers forged iron parts for newly invented farm machines, railroad cars, and engines.

 

-Trains powered by steam locomotives, traveling on steel rails, moved people and goods more quickly, cheaply, and reliably. Even agriculture became more like industry, as farmers used new steam-driven machines to plant, harvest, and process crops.

 

-The Industrial Revolution spread to other nations in Europe and to the United States, and it affected more than production. It changed people’s lives and the structure of society.

 

-One change was a huge increase in the amount and variety of goods available to ordinary people. Cities grew as people left their farms and settled near the new factories.

 

-Instead of providing for themselves on farms, people bought the things they needed with the money they earned working in factories.

 

-These new jobs presented opportunities for more people to move into the middle class. The middle class had the money to purchase many new products that could make people’s lives easier.

 

 

 

II.        Problems of the Industrial Age (page 208)

 

-People who had produced goods in their homes or in local shops had been able to spend time with their families. Industrial workers, on the other hand, often spent 12 to 14 hours a day, every day, away from home at work in a factory.

 

-Factories were noisy and dirty. The work was mind-numbing: A typical factory worker did the same simple action, over and over, hundreds of times a day.

 

-The work could also be dangerous. The large, powerful machines sometimes injured or even killed workers. And factory workers were paid very poorly. Often parents had to put their children to work in a factory just so the family could earn enough money to live.

 

-By 1800, in many industrial areas, home offered little relief from the dirt and danger of the factory. Workers lived in small, cramped quarters. Soot from factory smokestacks and trains covered everything, even indoors. Often families shared a single bathroom, or had no indoor plumbing at all.

 

-Garbage piling up in the streets attracted rats and packs of dogs. Dyes and dust from textile mills poisoned the air and water. Diseases swept easily through such cities. Many people died of cholera and typhus. Even minor diseases could be fatal under such conditions.

 

-In response to the problems of industrialization, some workers formed labor unions. These were organizations that helped workers bargain with employers to improve their pay and working conditions.

 

-Factory owners fought against unionization, sometimes with violence. By the late 1800s, however, labor unions were well established. They won shorter hours, better pay, and safer working conditions for their members and for other workers.  

 

 

Section 4: Nationalism and Imperialism (page 212)

 

 

I.           Introduction (page 212)

 

-It was November 1884. A group of men from Britain, Belgium, France, Germany, Portugal, Spain, and other countries had assembled for a conference. They were thinking about Africa.

-For months, they negotiated, drawing lines on maps of Africa. Finally, they reached an agreement: They had divided up Africa—an entire continent—among themselves.

 

-No one from Africa participated in this conference. Those who did attend were not interested in the African people. The Europeans were interested only in the continent’s resources. Their purpose was to avoid conflict with one another about whose nation would control these riches.

 

 

II.        The Age of Napoleon (page 213)

 

-During the French Revolution, other European nations invaded France. At that time, one of the most capable officers in the French army was the young Napoleon Bonaparte. He won victory after victory against the foreign armies, rising quickly from captain to general.

 

-Then, in 1799, he took control of the French government. The beginning of Napoleon’s rule marked the end of the French Revolution in France but the beginning of its influence on government and culture across Europe.

 

-Claiming he was defending the ideals of the revolution, Napoleon brought many reforms to France. Perhaps the most important one was reforming French law. The new system of laws, called the Napoleonic Code, embodied such Enlightenment principles as equality of all citizens before the law.

 

-The Napoleonic Code had far-reaching effects. It became the basis for the legal systems of many European countries that came under French control in the 1800s.

 

-Napoleon made another important change. He permitted the Catholic Church to operate freely again, but he also allowed freedom of worship to followers of other religions.

 

-In 1804, Napoleon convinced the French parliament to name him emperor. He then set out to make Europe a French empire. He almost succeeded. In 1805, however, when Napoleon tried to invade Britain, the French fleet was destroyed at the Battle of Trafalgar. Soon, other nations began to rebel against French domination.

 

-When Russia withdrew from its alliance with France, Napoleon invaded Russia and marched to Moscow. But his freezing, starving armies were forced into a disastrous retreat in 1812. That was the beginning of the end of his power. An alliance of European nations finally defeated Napoleon at Waterloo, Belgium, in 1815.  

 

 

III.     Nationalism (page 214)

 

-Napoleon’s armies carried the ideas and spirit of the French Revolution with them. One of these ideas was nationalism, which included pride in one’s own nation and a desire for independence.

 

-Pride in France spurred Napoleon’s armies to win battles for their nation. However, this spirit of nationalism also led many countries that Napoleon conquered to rebel against French rule.

 

-France, England, and Spain were already nations by the time Napoleon came to power. Much of the rest of Europe, however, was divided into small kingdoms. During the 1800s, many of these kingdoms were unified into nations. Both Germany and Italy became nations in the 1870s.

 

IV.       Imperialism in Africa and Asia (page 215)

 

-By the 1800s, some European countries had already claimed land in distant parts of the world. For example, the Spanish, French, English, and Portuguese had established colonies in the Americas. Now, confident of their economic and political strength, they wanted to expand their power even more.

 

-European factories needed more of the raw materials—cotton, metals, coal, and rubber—that were plentiful in other lands. These factories also needed people to buy their goods.

 

-To gain both raw materials and new markets, European countries established colonies in less-industrialized regions of Africa and Asia. Colonies also helped European nations to protect their trade routes. This effort to create an empire of colonies is called imperialism.

 

-Nationalism also contributed to imperialism. Controlling vast territory fueled national pride. And pride led to rivalry. Each country wanted more power and greater wealth than its neighbor.

 

-Europeans had a long history of trade with Africa and Asia. In the 1800s, however, European nations colonized nearly all of Africa. They also gained control of large areas of Asia.

 

-In the 1850s, the British began their rule of India. France, Russia, Germany, Britain, and the Asian nation of Japan divided up large areas of China in the 1890s.

 

-The United States, too, became an imperialist power. It claimed Puerto Rico in the Caribbean and the Philippines in the Pacific.

 

-By the 1900s, the richest and most powerful countries were the imperial powers of Europe.