4.30 Europe: a.d. 1601 to 1700  (Page 14/30)

We must not make the mistake of centering all our attention on Paris and the Court in these centuries. Much of what is present day France had only limited or no real allegiance to the central government. In Aquitaine, for example, between 1590 and 1715 there were about 500 insurrections or would-be insurrections among the peasants. In Savoy, which remained separate from France proper in the early century under Charles-Emmanuel I, there were innumerable calamities - plague, extreme poverty, bad harvests and wars of their own. Out of this turmoil a new aristocracy supplanted the old feudal nobility. (Ref. 292 ) (Continue on page 961)

The netherlands and belgium

In 1609 Spain recognized the independence of 7 provinces of which Holland was the chief one, while keeping the entire southern Spanish Netherlands. Those 7 provinces warred with Spain (1621-1648) as an off-shoot of the Thirty Years War and after the peace, formed in essence, the Dutch Republic. (Ref. 8 ) It was initially ruled by a States-General made up of representatives from each of the provincial assemblies. The control was an oligarchy of business men with the aristocratic House of Orange given the control of the army. Those two ruling classes clashed at intervals, but it did not seriously interfere with the tremendous prosperity and progress of the country. In the first half of the century Holland had the intellectual leadership of Europe. The Frenchman, Descartes, working in Holland, developed his laws of refraction, his philosophy and his mathematics in his Discourse on Method, published in 1637. (Ref. 125 ) Van Leeuwenhoek did his early work with the microscope and single-celled organisms; the artists Rembrandt, Hals, Vermeer and Ruisdael did their painting; and Baruch Espinosa, later known simply as "Spinoza", born in Armsterdam of Jewish-Spanish heritage, wrote his philosophy, alienating all religion, not accepting Christianity - and he was cast out of Judaism. Christian Huygens, who developed the wave theory of light was second only to Newton as the greatest scientist of the age, inventing among other things, the pendulum clock. (Ref. 53 ) Two Dutchmen were the greatest medical teachers of the time - Sylvius and Boerhaave, both at Leiden. Jan Baptiste van Helmont (1577-1644) was the leading Paracelsian and iatrochemist of the century, although he re jected Paracelsius ' astrology, as well as the medicine practiced by most churchmen of the era. He felt that enzymes were fundamental to all physiological mechanisms, a most modern concept. (Ref. 125 )

Amsterdam became the financial and trade center of the world, where both expertise and credit were readily available. When Lisbon was closed to Dutch trade as a result of French and English influence, the Dutch had to find their own way to the East and they were soon challenging command of the Indies with Portugal. The Dutch navy became supreme, supplanting Portuguese commercial power in the South Seas. The Dutch East India Company took control in Batavia in 1619, Ceylon in 1638, the Cape of Good Hope in 1652 and Sumatra in 1667. It paid dividends averaging 18% over a period of 198 years. Of 20,000 vessels carrying the maritime commerce of Europe in 1665, 15,000 were Dutch. In the middle of the century 33% of busy Amsterdam's East India trade was in pepper. (Ref. 53 , 222 )