17129 results in Cambridge Histories
3 - Spain
- from VI - The arts in Western Europe
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- By Enriqueta Frankfort, University of London
- Edited by G. R. Potter
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- The New Cambridge Modern History
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- 28 March 2008
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- 01 January 1957, pp 165-169
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Summary
One of the many fruits of national activity in Spain during the age of Ferdinand and Isabella was a new and widespread stimulus to the arts. If by European standards Spanish art of the period under consideration was only of minor importance, it was in many respects distinctive in character and it was to have a far-reaching effect in Spain's possessions in the New World. Whilst artistic production was still largely religious in purpose, royal patronage now played a major role in fostering it. Isabella herself built and endowed monasteries, churches and public institutions; the yoke and arrows, emblem of the Catholic sovereigns, and their escutcheon appear as decorative motifs on her buildings as they do in the margins of her manuscripts. Moreover, by adorning her residences with tapestries and paintings, mostly acquired from abroad, Isabella laid the foundations of the Spanish royal collection. The other chief patrons of art were the nobles and rich and powerful prelates, such as the Mendozas, Fonseca and Jiménez, who built palaces, chapels, hospitals and universities and followed the royal fashion for having themselves commemorated by monumental tombs. Newly acquired wealth and power nourished a taste for lavish decoration, inspired by the example of the Moors, in which the minor arts—woodwork, goldsmith's work, ironwork, etc.—played an important part.
Until the end of the fifteenth century Spanish art continued to be governed by northern influence which survived, moreover, well into the sixteenth century, when the style chosen for the cathedrals of Salamanca and Segovia was still pure Gothic. Echoes of the Italian Quattrocento first appeared in painting and sculpture during the last quarter of the fifteenth century, but they were confined for the most part to architectural features and ornamental details, which modified rather than transformed the prevailing Hispano-Flemish and Gothic styles.
VIII - The Burgundian Netherlands, 1477–1521
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- By C. A. J. Armstrong, Hertford College and Lecturer in Modern History in the University of Oxford
- Edited by G. R. Potter
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- The New Cambridge Modern History
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- 28 March 2008
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- 01 January 1957, pp 224-258
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The unconfirmed news of the death of Duke Charles of Burgundy at the battle of Nancy (5 January 1477) created confusion in the Netherlands, restive at the cost of his wars. On 11 January 1477 Charles's widow Margaret of York and Mary, his only child, summoned the Estates General to Ghent. A fresh army had to be raised for defence against France; and if the duke was dead, as was the case despite contrary rumours, Mary had to be admitted as his heir by the provincial estates in each of the territories that composed the Burgundian Netherlands.
The forthcoming assembly of the Estates General was contemplated with misgivings at court, for in 1476 they had bitterly attacked ducal policy, and in summoning the present meeting relief from outstanding taxation was at once promised. Nevertheless, the general, unlike the territorial, estates were founded not on local custom but on the the institution of Duke Philip le Bon; and they had, up to the death of Duke Charles, served the duke's prerogative more than his subjects' liberties.
On 3 February Mary addressed at Ghent the estates, which, by recognising her as heir in all her father's lands, preserved the cohesion of the Netherlands; but they asked that she should grant ‘certain general articles’. The Grand Privilege is the monument to the estates of 1477. To prevent the prince from pursuing a policy, domestic or foreign, other than one which satisfied each of his territories, it transferred to the estates, both general and local, the right to assemble themselves without summons.
The New Cambridge Modern History
- Volume 1, The Renaissance, 1493–1520
- Edited by G. R. Potter
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- 28 March 2008
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- 01 January 1957
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In a preface written for the paperback edition, Professor Hay examines some of the changes in Renaissance scholarship since the first publication of this volume in 1957. Successive chapters examine the social and economic structure of a continent about to establish trade and colonies in the New World, the intellectual and artistic movements which made up the Renaissance, the position of the Church on the eve of the Reformation, the political inheritance of the Middle Ages, with its rising nation states, and the growth of the Ottoman Empire.
XI - The Hispanic kingdoms and the Catholic kings
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- By J. M. Batista I Roca, University of Cambridge
- Edited by G. R. Potter
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- The New Cambridge Modern History
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- 28 March 2008
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- 01 January 1957, pp 316-342
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The year 1492 was an annus mirabilis for Spain. Granada was taken and the eight centuries of war with the Moslems brought to an end. The Jews were expelled from Spain, and the New World was discovered. Castile, which all through the Middle Ages had been secluded in the centre of the peninsula, suddenly emerged as a world Power. The rise of Castile was rather a matter of luck and accident than of thoughtful planning. But when opportunities came the Castilians rose to the occasion and seized them as successfully as they could, the chief limitation being the economic factor. Fate put enormous wealth into the hands of a nation with high ambitions and lofty ideals, but with little economic sense. No wonder the great empire which emerged was beset with financial problems. The real wonder is that it lasted so long.
The population in the peninsula under the Crown of Castile was not large. A count taken for military purposes in 1482 gave a total of 7,500,000. But the count was very rough and the figure seems much too high. Another count, taken in 1530 for tax purposes, gave only 3,433,000, but this did not include Galicia (perhaps with 600,000 people) or the kingdoms of Granada and Murcia, also densely populated. A third tax-count in 1541 gave about 6,272,000. Considering that 1530–70 was probably a peak period, the figure for 1482 ought to be much lower than for 1541, but should probably be over 4,500,000. As for the states of the Crown of Aragon, the approximate figures are: Aragon 270,000 (1495), Valencia 270,000 (1510) and Catalonia 307,000 (1512).
CHAPTER V - THE ENLIGHTENMENT
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- By A. Cobban, University College, London
- Edited by J. O. Lindsay
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- The New Cambridge Modern History
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- 28 March 2008
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- 01 January 1957, pp 85-112
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The eighteenth century was to be the age of the Enlightenment, but already before the seventeenth century had closed the prototypes of all the weapons in its armoury had been created and tested. Of the new thought of the seventeenth century Paul Hazard has written, ‘Total, imperious and profound, it prepared in its turn, even before the seventeenth century was completed, almost the whole of the eighteenth century.’ The great battle of ideas took place before 1715, and even before 1700.
Religion was the main citadel of orthodox thought, and the grand strategy of the attack on it had already been laid down by the English deists before 1715. A handful of extremists, such as Anthony Collins, moved beyond deism and repudiated religion altogether; but the latitudinarian divines of the Church of England had themselves gone so far towards the acceptance of rational religion that the deistic controversy died down in England for lack of opposition. Meanwhile the deistic and free-thinking writings of England were being introduced into France, where they were to acquire a new lease of life. Though French writers in the first half of the century handled the subject of religion with caution, their treatment concealed a more deep-seated hostility than existed across the Channel. When deism emerged into the open in France with the writings of Voltaire and the Encyclopédistes, it had lost its theological associations and become a loose formula, merely retained as a sanction for politics and morals, and a defence against the charge of atheism.
CHAPTER III - THE SOCIAL CLASSES AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE STATES
- Edited by J. O. Lindsay
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- The New Cambridge Modern History
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- 01 January 1957, pp 50-65
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Early eighteenth-century society, as mirrored by Saint Simon and Lord Harvey, by the family papers of the Russells or the Wyndhams, by the correspondence of the duke of Berwick or Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, seemed predominantly aristocratic and French. This impression is supported by castles in Sweden and palaces in and around Vienna, by portraits and libraries and famous collections of porcelain in England and in Russia. However, the impression is rather different if one considers Fleet Street, Liverpool and Bristol rather than St James's, Welbeck and Woburn; Rennes and Marseilles rather than Versailles; or Hamburg and Frankfurt-am-Main rather than Potsdam, Karlsruhe and Mannheim. It then appears that, even in the first half of the eighteenth century, economic forces were already in operation which tended to make the urban middle class increasingly numerous and powerful, and that French ideas and fashions were already being challenged from England, the German cities and even from the non-European world.
The social prestige of the aristocrats in the early eighteenth century was, however, undoubtedly very great. In most countries high office in the army, at court and in the diplomatic service was filled almost exclusively by members of that order. In most of Europe the aristocrats were marked off from the third estate by the right to display armorial bearings, as for example on the panels of their carriages, or, as in Spain, carved conspicuously over the main entrance to a town house. In most countries, though here the practice in England was peculiar, all descendants of aristocrats were still further differentiated from other people by the hereditary use of a title.
CHAPTER XIV - RUSSIA
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- By Ian Young, University of Cambridge
- Edited by J. O. Lindsay
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- The New Cambridge Modern History
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- 28 March 2008
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- 01 January 1957, pp 318-338
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In Russia, a new phase began with the defeat of Sweden at Poltava in 1709. The changes made by Peter the Great before that battle had been tentative and makeshift, dictated mostly by the immediate needs of war. When his victory at Poltava had freed Russia from the threat of invasion, he launched a programme of premeditated and consistent reforms, from which all his most enduring achievements emerged.
In the days of Peter the Great the chief source of Russia's wealth was her forests. The fertile steppe land of the south had not yet been brought under the plough. The spearhead of the southward colonisation movement was formed by the Don Cossacks, most of them deserters from the army, dissenters escaping persecution, or runaway peasants, all of whom despised the plough and lived a life of plunder along the rivers. In central Muscovy, which was the main agricultural area of Russia, some peasants continued the practice of burning tracts of forest, sowing their crops on the ashen soil for thirty to forty years and then moving off to repeat the process elsewhere. Even where the population was more permanent the peasants were reluctant to enrich the soil because their strips of land were redistributed every seven to twelve years. Most peasants used a light wooden plough with an iron share, but some still preferred a primitive hook plough that had been used in Russia for 700 years. Crops were harvested with the sickle in spite of Peter's efforts to introduce the scythe. Rye was the main crop in central Russia, but Peter induced the Baltic landowners to produce flax and hemp for export.
CHAPTER IX - INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
- Edited by J. O. Lindsay
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- The New Cambridge Modern History
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- 28 March 2008
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- 01 January 1957, pp 191-213
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In 1713 and 1714 eleven separate treaties of peace almost brought the War of the Spanish Succession to an end. They left the Emperor and the king of Spain still at war, but large-scale hostilities were over and most of the belligerents had been able to reach a satisfactory settlement. The Spanish possessions were divided. Philip V, the grandson of Louis XIV, was recognised as king of Spain in spite of the disapproval of the Protestant Powers and of the Emperor; but he had to resign his claims to the throne of France, and he was not allowed to inherit the empire of Charles II in its entirety. Philip V received Spain and Spanish America, but the Netherlands, Milan, Naples, Mantua, Sardinia and the Spanish ports in Tuscany went to the Emperor Charles VI. Sicily went for a few years to the duke of Savoy.
In addition many other problems besides the division of the territories of the Spanish Habsburgs were settled by the peace treaties of 1713–14. In the treaty concluded between England and France the claim of the Hanoverians to the throne of England was also recognised. Implicitly this gave recognition to the theory of civil contract, and this concept was given further validity by the provisions that the arrangements for the successions to the thrones of France and of Spain were to be officially registered by the Parlement and by the Cortes respectively. The French diplomats warned their English colleagues that such an attempt to regulate the succession was not valid in French law; that the right to rule was derived from God, and that, should the death of the infant French prince leave the throne vacant, Philip V could not be bound by his renunciation but must mount the throne to which God had called him; but they did, at last, accept the provisions in public law which professed to regulate the succession by man-made agreements.
IV - The Papacy and the Catholic Church
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- By R. Aubenas, University of Aix-Marseille
- Edited by G. R. Potter
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- The New Cambridge Modern History
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- 28 March 2008
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- 01 January 1957, pp 76-94
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After the long period of strife brought about by the Great Schism, the Church had at last become reunited. Rallying round Nicholas V (1449), it seemed as though, in a less troubled atmosphere, it would now pursue its unchanging ideal. There resounded once more the two words which symbolised its twin aspirations: at home, reform; abroad, crusade. Both were of pressing necessity. Perspicacious minds in every country were calling for a far-reaching reform of the Church and hoping —somewhat vaguely, it is true—for something of a return to the purity of earlier times. As far as the crusade against the Turks was concerned, events which moved daily more rapidly were enough to prove, even to the most indifferent, that it had become inescapably necessary. From then on, and for a long time to come, reform at home and crusade abroad were to occupy a prominent place in papal speeches—in speeches and bulls rather than in deeds.
Indeed, by the middle of the fifteenth century, the Renaissance was already to some extent bursting upon Italy, and the brilliance with which it was spreading was to dazzle the Papacy itself no less than the nations. Nicholas V, a first-rate scholar (he it was who founded the Vatican Library), was to be the first ‘Renaissance Pope’, and his decision to pull down the old basilica of Constantine and put up in its place a building in keeping with the spirit of the new age was a sign of his propensities and tastes. His decision, it should be added, has been criticised as an act of vandalism. The brilliance of the Renaissance was to be so intense as to blind the pope to every other ideal and lead the Holy See into a course where temporal glory and artistic splendour pushed spiritual matters into the background. Even an event as spectacular as the capture of Constantinople by the Turks (1453) could not rouse the already lukewarm fervour of the Christian world, nor did it effectively tear the Papacy away from preoccupations primarily concerned with earthly glories—or even, more sordidly, from mere family ambitions.