The Hundred Years' War

The English (in Red) vs. The French (in Blue) at Crecy

The Causes
The plague that struck Europe from 1347-1351 returned to kill again every five to ten years for the next 150 years. The plague's return in western Europe was probably facilitated by the second disaster of the 14th century, the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453). This multi-generational war that divided Europe and dominated the political scene for the next century had its roots in the major problem with hereditary monarchy; the last Capetian monarch of France, Charles IV, died without a male heir. This led to a major dispute over the crown that was complicated by the fact that the closest male relative of Charles IV was his nephew, the young Edward III of England, the son of Charles' sister Isabella. Edward had a very clear claim to the crown, however was overruled by the nobility of France, who decided that the succession could not be passed through the female line. They opted for Charles' cousin, Philip of Valois, who became Philip VI of France in 1328. 

This little tiff over the succession to the French crown was bad enough. But it was made even worse by the feudal system of vassalage that governed politics in the middle ages. The king of England, Edward III, was also the duke of Gascony, a territory in southwestern France near the modern border with Spain. As the duke of Gascony, Edward was supposed to pledge his loyalty as a vassal to the king of France, his cousin Philip. This arrangement had always irritated the kings of England. They viewed themselves to be peers of the kings of France, and therefore on an equal footing. This was particularly annoying to Edward because he believed he had a claim as the rightful king of France, and refused to swear loyalty to Philip as a mere subject. He refused to swear loyalty as a vassal of France. Philip responded by seizing the duchy of Gascony. Edward then declared war on Philip, calling him the "so-called king of France." (Oh snap!)

The War

I will try my best to break this century-long conflict into more manageable chunks for you. It won't be easy. The war and it's course became increasingly complicated. The fighting wasn't constant. In fact, there was a twenty-year truce declared in 1396. The devastation was, however, made worse by the changes in the attitudes brought about by the plague, and by the changes in warfare that this kind of conflict necessitated. Take a deep breath. Here we go!

Phase I: 1337-1396
The first phase of the war did not go well for the French. French noblemen were true believers in the idea of chivalry. As trained warriors they saw themselves as true fighting heroes, capable of miraculous deeds on the battlefield, almost invincible. They looked down on the common foot soldier of peasant stock. They, like all nobles of the time, believed in their superiority over the commoners. After all, God had divided society between "those who pray, those who fight, and those who work" for a reason. The mounted knight, draped in heavy armor and weapons formed the core of the French army throughout most of the conflict. The English, on the other hand, was composed of many more paid foot soldiers. They were well armed with pikes, big can openers on a pole, perfect for dealing with mounted knights and the horses they rode in on. They were also armed with the Welsh longbow, a deadly weapon with a relatively rapid rate of fire.

English Longbows rule at Crecy

After his initial efforts in France fizzled out, Edward III tried to get things going with a big invasion of Normandy, directly across the Channel from England, in 1346. This set up the first major blunder for the French. Philip's forces, sensing the opportunity for glory, attempted to crush the English army camped out on high ground outside of the town of Crécy. Instead of giving his forces time to rest and to come up with some sort of plan after the long march to Crécy, Philip sent his knights charging immediately into battle. Edward and the English were ready and waiting for them. English archers negated the numerical superiority of the French under a hail of arrows. The English knights, having learned the value of dismounting and fighting along side the foot soldiers, combined with their forces to slaughter French knights who had been knocked off of their mounts in heavy armor. The French, slow to learn and still convinced of the superiority of the mounted knight, repeated this performance 10 years later at the Battle of Poitiers in western France. This time, the English managed to capture the king of France, John II. The English forces were led at Poitiers by Edward, the prince of Wales. His policy of living off of the land, stealing anything of value, and leaving behind nothing but burned cropland and villages earned him the nickname The Black Prince. The Peace of Brétigny, signed in 1359, forced the French to pay a huge ransom for their king, and enlarged English holdings in France. It was never enforced. Companies of mercenaries, no longer in the employ of the English, roamed the French countryside burning villages, killing, raping and stealing to support themselves. The image of the noble knight as the flower of chivalry and the protector of the innocent seemed as distant a memory as that of the Caesars.

The next king of France, Charles V, spent most of his reign (1364-1380) reclaiming the territory lost by his father in the Peace of Brétigny. The English preferred to stay locked up in their fortresses while the companies plundered the countryside. Edward III simply did not have the resources to claim all of France or to enforce his claim upon the French crown. By 1377 he was dead, and the conflict passed into the hands of a new generation, the ill-fated Richard II, son of The Black Prince. Charles V died in 1380, leaving the fate of the French monarchy to his son Charles VI, also called Charles the Mad. Feeling the need to address the political and economic chaos caused by the war, and to mount a response to the threat of the Ottoman Turks, who had now made an appearance on the continent, Charles and Richard agreed to a twenty-year truce in 1396. Richard would be arrested and assassinated by a faction of nobles led by Henry of Lancaster in 1399; a victim of the aristocratic factionalism that arose as a result of the war and would continue throughout the 15th century. Henry of Lancaster became the new king of England, Henry IV. Charles VI, plagued by bouts of madness, was an increasingly weak king ruled by the competing interests and influence of the dukes of Orléans and Burgundy. The truce was broken after 19 years.

Phase II: 1415-1453
The first phase of this war had nearly ruined France and seriously damaged the power of its monarchy. The second phase, after nearly destroying the French monarchy, would severely damage the English monarchy and lead to the War of the Roses in England. When will they ever learn!?

By 1415, the political situation in France had become a complete mess. Charles VI became increasingly unable to rule, as a result of his more frequent bouts of insanity. This resulted in a civil war between the duke of Burgundy and the duke of Orléans who were fighting for influence over the king. England's new king, Henry V (Get used to the names and learn how to read the Roman numerals), used this as an opportunity to renew the war and the claim on the French crown. Henry invaded France, and once again the English crushed an army of French knights (this time wearing heavier plate armor and having to cross a muddy battlefield) at the Battle of Agincourt. Henry quickly conquered Normandy and allied himself with the duke of Burgundy to control most of northern France. Charles VI had no choice but to sign the humiliating Treaty of Troyes (1420), marrying off his daughter Catherine to the English king and recognizing Henry V as the heir to the French throne. It looked as if the English had finally won the war.

Saint Joan of Arc

After the death of Charles VI in 1322, the fate of the French now fell to Charles the Dauphin (heir to the French throne). Charles considered himself, not Henry V, the legitimate king of France. However, having been driven out of Paris and Orléans by the English and Burgundians, he was unable to back up that claim through coronation. The French caught a break in 1329 in the form of a 17-year-old girl from the Champagne region. Joan of Arc was able to convince the Dauphin, who had nothing to lose at this point, that she had been given a mission by the saints to escort him to Reims to be crowned as king of France. Joan rallied the French troops, liberated the city of Orléans, and saw the Dauphin crowned as Charles VII of France. Joan was captured by the Burgundians less than a year later, and burned at the stake by the English in 1431. The victories of the French armies under this teenaged peasant girl proved to be the turning point in the war. Aided by the introduction of cannons, which allowed them to smash through the walls of the English fortifications, and the increasing political chaos of England under Henry VI, the French finally drove the English out of France. By 1453, one-hundred sixteen years after it started, the conflict was mostly over. The French monarchy still had to take care of the Burgundians, and the troubles with the English flared up briefly in 1475 when they finally gave up all claims to lands in France.

Results & Legacy (The So What)
Okay, I just hit you with a bunch of information. So what? Why is all of this important? What impact did it really have on the greater scope of history?

The Hundred Years' War had an enormous impact on the political development of European states. In England, the war accelerated the development of Parliament as a modern political institution. Wars are expensive. Edward III had a constant need of money during his reign to pay for the mercenary companies that he employed in France. Edward needed to levy new taxes upon his subjects. In England, thanks to the Magna Carta, this meant that he had to rely upon Parliament. Parliament granted these taxes in return for a guarantee that the king would only be allowed to levy direct taxes with the consent of Parliament. They also demanded that Parliament be allowed to take a peek at the king's books to make sure that their tax money was being properly spent. The lower house of Parliament, now called the House of Commons, was able to draft petitions to the king that, if accepted, could become law.

While the English Parliament was becoming more important to English system of government, the French equivalent, the Estates General, was not. The Estates General, composed of representatives of the three feudal estates (clergy, nobles, and commons), only represented the north of the country and is representative of the decentralized nature of the French state in the medieval and early modern periods. That decentralization of political power almost destroyed the monarchy during the course of the Hundred Years' War (I'm looking at you, dukes of Orléans and Burgundy). Just like the English king, the king of France needed obscene amounts of money to pay for the soldiers (and ransom) necessary to conduct the war. This required new taxes, a hearth tax (the taille) and a tax on salt (the gabelle). In the French case, however, the Estates General was viewed not as an integral part of the government with whom the king must cooperate, but as an another obstacle to establishing royal authority. When an uprising of the Estates General led by the middle classes (3rd Estate) demanded a role in the French government similar to that of Parliament's role in the English government, King John II crushed the revolt. From that point on, French kings simply side stepped the authority of the Estates General, which was no longer a threat to their authority.

But the Estates General was not the only obstacle to the development of a centralized state in France. The noble factionalism that developed as a result of the war threatened Both of the monarchies of France and England. As the nobility lost its importance as the feudal warrior class of Europe, they found opportunities to continue as the political elite in the new bureaucracies that became necessary to manage the new taxes and armies. Many nobles chose to give the king cash in place of military service. That money was then used to hire a more dependable professional army. In order to assert their role as political leaders, nobles in France and Europe often formed political factions that fought for influence (often violently). This caused the monarchs of England and France to begin the process of centralizing power in the monarchy that would lead to the creation of the first modern nation-states in Europe. All of this was accelerated by the Hundred Years' War.

Sources

Merriman, John, A History of Modern Europe: From the Renaissance to the Present, 2nd ed., New York: W. W. Norton, 2004

Palmer, R. R., Colton, Joel, A History of the Modern World, 8th ed., New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995

Spielvogel, Jackson, Western Civilization, 6th ed., Belmont, CA: Thompson Wadsworth, 2006

The Black Death and the Later Middle Ages

Death and the maiden

Okay, future AP Euro students. I'm going to go ahead and jump into the Pre-AP Euro arena in this post. I know it's still early in the summer, but it never hurts to get a good start on the year. I just want to make sure that you understand a few things before you continue reading this post. The AP exam will only hold you responsible for knowledge of history after the year 1450. Anything that occurred before 1450 will not appear on the exam. It would be very convenient if history conformed itself to these nice little bookended dates. It doesn't. 1450, depending upon how you define it, falls in the middle of the first half of the Renaissance. Many AP Euro teachers (certainly the four on this campus) do expect their students to develop an understanding of the events leading up to 1450. This post will begin this process of filling in some of the details of these Pre-AP Euro years.

In an earlier post I talked about trying to find the big ideas in the historical narrative and trying to find the connections between the major events and ideas. One of the major trends of the middle ages (ca. 450 - 1400) was the recovery of Western Europe from the collapse of the Roman Empire and its development as a distinct civilization. This included the development of western Christianity and the Catholic Church, the development of a feudal economy and society, and relatively unbroken population growth as more land came under agricultural cultivation. This final century of the middle ages (the 14th century) saw a series of crises that "primed the pump" for the Renaissance (rebirth) of the 15th and 16th centuries. The population growth of the middle ages was spectacularly halted and reversed by famine and plague Black Death (1347-1351). The decline in the feudal economy and society, which was beginning to break up in the 13th century, was further accelerated in much of Europe by the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453). Even the church lost some of its shine in a series of crises throughout the century, the Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1309-1377) and the Great Schism in the Catholic Church (1377-1415). We can get to the crises of feudalism and the church in a later post. I really want to start with the first set of disasters in the 14th century, famine and the Black Death.

The medieval iron plow known as the carruca

The closer historians look at European society at the beginning of the 14th century, the more they see a society on the edge of disaster. By 1300, Europe had seen a tremendous increase in population as more land was brought under cultivation during the High Middle Ages (1100-1300). They did this by clearing the great forests of Europe (gasp!) and draining the swamps. In the Low Countries (the Netherlands) they "reclaimed" land from the sea by creating earthen dikes and pumping out the water behind it to create arable land. The use of a new heavy iron plow, the carruca, pulled by team of horses allowed peasant farmers to cultivate the heavier soils of northern Europe. These innovations are often credited with making this population growth possible. So, what happened? Well, the first thing that happened is that, by 1300, Europe's had reached the limit of what its agricultural system could support. The Three-Field System of agriculture that much of Europe adopted during the High Middle Ages still left a third of Europe's arable land uncultivated each year. As the countryside became overpopulated (I know it sounds crazy) many peasants and rural laborers migrated to urban areas to find better opportunities. Did they find these opportunities? Not really. In fact, the historical record is cluttered with reports of the increasing population of urban poor from cities all over Europe during this time. To make matters worse, as the population expanded to the limit of agriculture to support it the cost of food increased. It wouldn't take much to push the system beyond its limits.

The first disaster struck between the years 1315 and 1317. The middle ages had been a relatively warm period in Earth's history. The summers were regular and balmy (Not quite as warm as they are now, but still nice.). This kind of predictable weather is great for an agricultural society like that of medieval Europe. Right around 1300 those warm summers began to get a little less warm, and a little less predictable. This slight drop in overall temperature shortened growing seasons. It also caused very unpredictable weather. Between 1315 and 1317 torrential rains destroyed most of the harvests in northern Europe. This resulted in a severe shortage of food, hunger, and severe starvation. Chroniclers of the 14th century record the long processions of starving people, many looking like walking skeletons, wandering from town to town in search of food. In some instances, they even reported incidents of cannibalism. The shortage drove prices of food even higher, increasing the death toll of the famine. This Great Famine of 1315-1317 may have killed 10% of the population of Europe. Approximately one quarter of the harvests of the early 14th century may have been destroyed by the continuation of what has come to be called the Little Ice Age, ensuring the continuation of chronic malnutrition through the first half of the century. This first disaster was a perfect setup for the even bigger disaster to follow, the Black Death.

A doctor attempts to treat plague victims

The Black Death is the name given to the outbreak of Bubonic plague that swept like wildfire across Europe between 1347 and 1351. This plague was made possible by the revival of trade routes to the east during the High Middle Ages. A ship full of Genoese merchants brought the plague with them to Sicily from the port of Caffa in the Black Sea in October of 1347. Instead of the silks and spices they were expecting, the Sicilians were treated to high fever, swollen lymph nodes (called buboes), aching joints, bleeding under the skin that caused dark blotches, and, eventually, death. The pneumonic form of the plague killed even faster, and was spread from person to person as the victim coughed up the blood that rapidly filled his lungs. The overcrowded conditions in Italian cities, combined with generally poor sanitation, caused the plague to travel swiftly up the Italian boot. In the preface to the Decameron, Giovanni Boccaccio (We'll talk about him later) described the terrifying speed with which this plague travelled.

"It spread without stop from one place to another, until, unfortunately, it swept over the West. Neither knowledge nor human foresight availed against it..."

 Modern science tells us that the plague was caused by a nasty little bacterium called Yersinia pestis, that was brought to Europe by hitchhiking fleas on the backs of hitchhiking black rats on that Genoese ship (So the moral of the story is don't pick up hitchhikers). 14th century medicine had no idea what caused it, and only a vague idea of how it was spread. 

"Neither the advice of physicians nor the virtue of any medicine seemed to help or avail in the cure of these diseases...The virulence of the plague was all the greater in that it was communicated by the sick to the well by contact, not unlike fire when dry or fatty things are brought near it."

A mass burial of plague victims

 The effects of this outbreak of the plague, the first major disease in Europe since the 7th century, were devastating. Europe may have lost one quarter to one half of its population (I lean a little closer to that second figure). In pure numbers, that means that in the space of three years the Black Death claimed the lives of up to 38 million people. The death toll was much higher in the urban areas of Europe. Cities like Florence, Paris, & Rome report numbers as high as 50% killed. It's a little hard for us to imagine this kind of devastation. It's should not be that difficult to imagine the impact of that kind of death on a civilization (The Second World War isn't that far in the past).

Economically, The Black Death was a big game changer. Economic activity cannot carry on as if nothing happened when up to half of the workforce has been killed. Towns and cities struggled to reorganize their workforce. Old systems of work and economy had to be transformed. The shortage of labor created by the plague may have accelerated the mechanization of labor (increased use of windmills and watermills) and increased the incentive for innovative solutions. The rural economy also took a big hit. Because labor was scarce, rural farm workers could ask for higher wages. Serfdom, which was already in decline, ended in much of western Europe. The remaining workforce needed the ability to move to where the work was (and the wages were higher, cha-ching!). Initially, food prices dropped as a result of the lower population (fewer people to eat the food). This was a disaster for the landed nobility. Their income from rents and agricultural produce fell as the cost of their labor increased. In many instances, they were forced to convert the old feudal labor obligations to rents. As they realized that their quality and way of life were threatened by this new social arrangement, feudal lords of Europe imposed wage restrictions and attempted to bring back the old labor obligations. The class tension that this created was one of the factors responsible for the outbreak of peasant revolts in France (the Jacquerie, 1358) and England (The English Peasants' Revolt of 1381) later in the century.

Recently excavated plague burial

The psychological effects of the plague were incredibly disturbing. Death became a regular feature in European life and art. In the face of what seemed to be certain death, many Europeans simply threw any sort of rules of civil society and morality out of the window. In an attempt to enjoy their increasingly limited time on earth, they went on drinking, spending, and sexual binges, described here by Boccaccio.

"Day and night they went from one tavern to another drinking and carousing unrestrainedly. At the least inkling of something that suited them, they ran wild in other people's houses, and there was no one to prevent them, for everyone had abandoned all responsibility for his belongings as well as for himself, considering his days numbered."

Others, fueled by a extreme sense of piety, and believing that the plague was sent to punish mankind for its sinful ways, turned to a form of extremist asceticism. Groups of people known as flagellants roamed from town to town, flogging themselves with metal-tipped whips and begging for God's forgiveness. Wherever they went they caused quite a stir amongst the population. Initially, these flagellants had the support of the Catholic church. This changed when the flagellants began to denounce Pope Clement VI, claiming that the end of the world was at hand, and attacking clergy who spoke out against them. To make matters worse, the flagellants began to incite violence against the Jewish population, blaming them for the plague and claiming that they had poisoned the wells. This violence was worst in Germany, where much of the Jewish population fled east to the protection offered to them by the king of Poland. Clement VI was forced to condemn the flagellants, and by 1350 the movement was crushed. 

Death comes for us all.

The art world also saw a morbid fascination with death. Images of skeletons and decaying corpses dancing amongst the living became a common theme in post-plague art. In countless works of art skeletons tugged at the beards of kings and dragged priests and bishops along by their robes. They carried away old men, beautiful young maidens, and little babies. This Danse Macabre was to serve as reminder that death come to us all, even bishops and kings.

It would take at least 250 years for the population to return to pre-plague levels. Don't worry, it's not as bad as it sounds. As is often the case in history, periods of great devastation and decay are the catalysts for periods of incredible recovery and sweeping change. That was the case with the disastrous 14th century in Europe.

Next Time: The Hundred Years' War! 

Sources

Merriman, John, A History of Modern Europe: From the Renaissance to the Present, 2nd ed., New York: W. W. Norton, 2004

Palmer, R. R., Colton, Joel, A History of the Modern World, 8th ed., New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995

Spielvogel, Jackson, Western Civilization, 6th ed., Belmont, CA: Thompson Wadsworth, 2006

Europe 101

The summer reading list for AP Euro is only three books long, but there is quite a bit of variety in the choices offered. There is a historical and philosophical novel (Sophie's World), a standard history (A World Lit Only By Fire), and then there's Rick Steves' Europe 101: History and Art for the Traveller. Most AP Euro teachers would never put this book on any reading list (I'll take the blame for putting it on the list.). After all, it's not a formal work of history. So what the heck is it? Why is this odd little book on the reading list?

Rick Steves is a travel writer and tour guide. He specializes in European travel and even has his own show on PBS. He claims that he is first, and foremost, a teacher. He teaches people how to travel and to get the most out of the experience. When it comes to European travel, the best way to have a meaningful experience is to know something about the history, art, and cultures of the continent. This serves as the focus of Rick's television show and everything else he does. He wrote Europe 101 with this in mind. It is a crash course in European history and art for people who are planning on traveling to Europe so that they may have a deeper understanding of what they are experiencing. Because it is not written with an eye toward history professors or your general history geek the book is written in a very easy-to-read and conversational style (He even cracks history jokes 0_o). It's a guide to history for people who usually don't find history all that interesting. That's whyI figured that this would be a great introduction to European history for most sophomores. It also has a great selection of full color pictures and diagrams to help you understand some of the things we will be discussing in class.

David, Michelangelo (1504)

I prefer to look at us all as travelers in the classroom. We will be taking a journey through history to places far away, and into cultures that seem familiar yet are clearly very foreign to us. To better understand why an artist uses a certain image, or why a particular ruler acted in a particular manner, or why a people might have reacted to that image or act in a certain way we must develop an understanding of the cultures that produced the artists, rulers, and people. If you look at Michelangelo's David through 21st-century eyes, it is just a 14 foot tall statue of a naked guy. But if we look at it through the filter of the Italian Renaissance, it becomes a symbol of the unlimited potential of man and a new vision of what it means to be human. If you're curious to find out more, welcome to AP Euro.

A World Lit Only By Fire

One of the summer reading choices is William Manchester's A World Lit Only By Fire, an informal history of the end of the Middle Ages in Europe and the beginning of the Renaissance. The basic thesis of Manchester's book is that the medieval mindset of Europe was shattered by several events that occurred around the the year 1500. The events he describes, the decline of the Roman Church, the advent of humanist thought, the increasing power of the "New Monarchies," and the circumnavigation of the Earth by Magellan and his crew, are presented as the keys to the formation of the modern mindset and very clear break with the Middle Ages. In the introduction to his book, Manchester admits that, while he was not completely unfamiliar with the world of the early sixteenth century, it was not ground that he had often trod upon. In fact, Manchester is better known as a 20th-century historian, having written books on John F. Kennedy, Douglas MacArthur, and Winston Churchill. This is why he had his work reviewed by James Boyden, "an authority on the sixteenth century." However, we must still be very careful when reading Manchester. While he did get many things right, he still got much of it wrong.

I know what you're thinking. "How in the world can you say that?! Why would you have us read a book that is wrong?!" No need to panic. Like I said, Manchester did get some things right. His claim that these events that occurred between 1450 and 1550 DID have a profound impact on the way that Europeans thought about themselves and the world around them. These are only some of the events that historians identify as those things which led to the development of the modern world. What Manchester gets wrong, in the judgement of myself and that of many current historians, is the scale of this change. Manchester presents the world of Medieval Europe as a "dim era." He makes the claim that "Intellectual life had vanished from Europe," using the illiteracy of Charlemagne to support this claim. He paints a picture of a dark age of "incessant warfare, corruption, lawlessness, obsession with strange myths, and an almost impenetrable mindlessness. It's very easy for us to sit back from the comfort and pass judgement on people who lived from 1,500 to 650 years ago. We can travel around the world in a matter of hours. Information travels even faster! An era when it may have taken months to travel from one side of Europe to the other, and books were a precious and incredibly expensive commodity may, indeed, seem a bit dark to those of us living in the information age. Unfortunately, modern historical research has discredited this view of the Middle Ages as a Dark Age. In fact, historians haven't really held this belief since the 1920s and 30s.

Students at a medieval university; Is that guy in green texting?!

Just like any era in history, the Middle Ages in Europe were far more complex then many people give them credit for. Learning and intellectual life was not unknown to the Europeans of the Middle Ages. While formal education was not nearly as widespread as it is today, the monasteries and universities of Europe were lively centers of education and debate. Theology was the major subject of intellectual inquiry, but the traditional liberal arts (The trivium of grammar, rhetoric, and logic and the quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music) formed the foundation of education at medieval universities. The learning of the Classical Era did not die during the Middle Ages, either. It was being preserved in the Latin manuscripts copied in the monasteries of Europe and in the Arabic transcriptions of the Greek classics by Muslims in Spain and the Middle East. The 15th century would see the rapid "rediscovery" of these classical works described by Manchester.

"To what extent is the term 'Renaissance' a valid concept for a distinct period in early modern European history?" This is one of the first questions we tackle at the beginning of the year in class. It's really just a very academic way of asking what made the Renaissance the Renaissance, and is it really so different from the era that came before. As we get a broader picture of what the Later Middle Ages was like, and a more comprehensive view of the Renaissance, we will find more continuity between the two than is presented in Manchester. That's the beauty of history; it's an ongoing conversation and debate.

On a side note: Manchester is a bit obsessive in his coverage of Magellan. He devotes one third of the book to his historic voyage. The only thing you really need to come away with is that Magellan's voyage provided confirmation of the spherical nature of the Earth. While this is something that many had already assumed (Otherwise, why would you sail west hoping to reach the east?), it did have the effect of changing the way we thought about the nature of the universe that would impact the Scientific Revolution of the following century.

As always, you can use the comments section or email me to ask any questions.

Big Idea: Realism vs. Nominalism

Some of you may have chosen to read Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder for the summer reading. This book is very different than the other two choices on our list. The most obvious difference is that it is a novel instead of a traditional work of history. The novel is part mystery (Who is the philosopher? Who is Hilde? Who is Albert Knag, and what does he want with Sophie?) and it is part history of western philosophy. Of course, for our purposes, we are more interested in this novel as a history of philosophy. Gaarder does a very good job of making western philosophy more accessible to younger readers by wrapping it in the narrative of Sophie and the Philosopher. Pay close attention to the big ideas presented by the Philosopher in his lessons and the effect those ideas have on the world in which Sophie lives. It is these big ideas with which we should concern ourselves.

In our survey of modern European history this year we will be studying the history of ideas. Many students struggle with these ideas (especially when we get to the 19th century -isms). We added Sophie's World to the list of reading many years ago precisely because it deals only with ideas. One way to help understand the big ideas in the history of philosophy is to develop an understanding of the major themes in philosophy and some of the major conflicts. Every era likes to pretend that it has invented some great new idea or philosophical thread. On closer inspection, what seems like something new and revolutionary turns out to be a variation on a theme that sometimes can be traced back to the ancient Greeks. Einstein's search for a unified field theory can (as an idea) be traced back to Thales of Miletus, who postulated a theory of the universe as far back as 600 B.C.E. He believed that everything in the universe was tied together by water as the basic element. Even teachers haven't really invented anything new. We still use the basic question-and-answer technique to lead our students to understanding that was developed by Socrates in the 5th century B.C.E. (the Socratic Method). So, it should come as no surprise to see the same basic idea come and go throughout history.

Detail from The School of Athens by Raphael (1509 - 1511)

To give you a little bit of help with Sophie's World, I will briefly introduce you to one of the biggest conflicts in philosophical history; the problem of universals. In the 12th century C.E. (A.D. for most of you), the problem of universals was a major issue for many theologians at the universities of Europe. The basic problem was actually the nature of reality. What constitutes reality? What is "real"? These theologians (people who study God's attributes and relation to the Universe) were divided into two camps that directly reflected the earlier schools of Plato and Aristotle, the Ancient Greek philosophers. Take a close look at the picture above. It's a detail from The School of Athens by the Renaissance painter Raphael (We'll learn more about him later this year.). In this giant fresco located in the Apostolic Palace at the Vatican, Raphael places images of Plato and Aristotle arguing about the nature of reality in the center of figures representing philosophy and the liberal arts. Raphael envisioned philosophy as the search for causes of knowledge, and identified this conflict between Plato and Aristotle as the root of this search.

So what? What were these big ideas that Plato and Aristotle have? How are they related to the "problem of universals" in the 12th century? Some of these arguing theologians took the position of Plato (the guy on the left). They claimed that the physical objects that surround us (rocks, trees, horses, etc.) are not real. They are simply the physical manifestations of universal ideas (ideals, "rockness", "treeness", "horseness", etc.) that reside in the mind of God. Plato called this the world of ideals. To him, we were all imperfect reflections of ideal forms that existed in this ideal world. We are nothing more than shadows cast on the wall. All knowledge comes from this world of ideals. That's why Plato is pointing to the heavens in the painting. To these 12th century theologians that means that every thought, every bit of knowledge that enters your mind has been planted there by God. One can only arrive at the truth by examining these universals. These theologians were known as realists. 

The other camp took the position of Aristotle in the argument. They believed that the objects around us (those same rocks, trees, horses, etc.) constitute reality. If you've ever had an unfortunate encounter with a rock, tree, or horse, you probably see their point (ouch!). Just like Aristotle, they believed that universal ideas and concepts were simply names that we have applied to these things in the world. In other words, ideas come from the world around us through the application of human reason (which is a gift from God). One can only arrive at the truth by examining the objects and the world around us. This is why Aristotle is motioning to the world under the heavens in the painting. Adherents of this way of thinking were known as nominalists (from the Latin word nomina; name).

Now, get a load of this! Fast forward 500 years to the 17th century and the foundations of the Scientific Revolution. Two distinct modes of thinking and discovering "the truth" about the world developed. The first of these ideas claimed that the world of the senses was illusory and the only way that one could reach the truth was through the application of deductive reasoning. Deductive reasoning is a process that arrives at conclusions from a set of premises. In this case, these premises came from the examination of universal truths through the application of human reason. For example; all cats are animals; this is a cat; therefore, this is an animal. The most basic truth of all was the starting point for the major proponent of this way of thinking, Rene Descartes: I think, therefore, I am. The second way of thinking, known as inductive reasoning, was advocated by Francis Bacon. According to Bacon, the whole of human knowledge comes from observing the world around us, and then applying human reason to what we have observed. For example; every polar bear we have ever seen is white; therefore, all polar bears are white. This would have to be verified by further observation. While these may seem like new ideas, they are really a variation on the Plato (realists/deductive reasoning) vs. Aristotle (nominalists/inductive reasoning) argument. 

If you are reading Sophie's World this summer, look for these big ideas and how they affect the way in which Sophie perceives the world around her. If I have confused you, or you have questions about the other books feel free to send me an e-mail, or use the comments section below.

Look for the "Big Idea"

The most difficult thing for most AP Euro students to grasp in the first term of the course has to be the reading. The textbook we use, Western Civilization by Jackson J. Spielvogel, uses a very narrative style that is a bit easier for most high school students to read. However, it is still a college text book. The vocabulary used in the book is intended for college-aged readers, just out of the reach of your average high-school sophomore. You will also encounter a more sophisticated style of writing when we get into the primary sources throughout the year. Don't get discouraged if you don't understand a few words, and don't just read past them. You live in the age of insanely instantaneous gratification. Use the Internet for something more than sending stupid pictures to your friends on Snapchat! Look up those words on Dictionary.com (It's an app too!).  I know it's a lot of work to look up new words (sarcasm... a bit), but you will be much better off if you actually understand what you read. After all, you signed up for this class to stretch your mind.

This course will ask you to stretch your mind by changing the way you think about history, as well. In my first post I mentioned that many people look at history as a collection of dead people, events, dates, and facts to be memorized. I think that is why many people claim to hate history, do poorly in history courses, and show very little interest in history beyond the occasional Band of Brothers marathon on the History Channel (We won't concern ourselves with the appropriateness of this name right now). What they miss out on is the glue that holds all of those dates, people, events, and facts together. They miss out on the connections between events and other events. They fail to concern themselves with the connections between ideas and events, or ideas and other ideas. That's the good stuff! That's the stuff that makes history work! It's also the stuff that will help you to make sense of the past, and allow you to better remember the details.

I'll use an example from the 14th century (Chapter 11 in our text) to illustrate some "big idea" thinking.

The really big idea that sums up the 14th century is that it was a major disaster for European civilization. Actually, the 14th century saw three major disasters; famine and plague, the Hundred Years' War, and series a crises in the Roman Catholic Church. As students of history we should be concerned with finding cause and effect relationships within these three disasters. It's important to remember that all things are connected. Let's look at the example of the the first of these disasters, the Black Death.

A doctor treats victims of the Bubonic Plague (From the Toggenburg Bible, 1401)

Thanks to the modern science of biology, we now know that the Black Death was caused by a nasty bacterium called Yersinia Pestis that was transmitted by fleas on the backs of black rats. So what? Where did the rats come from? Why did they come in the 14th century? What was the effect of the Black Death on European society? The causes of the Black Death provide us with a great example of the cause-and-effect relationship of historical events. During the 13th century, the Mongols (Genghis Khan, his sons, and grandsons) conquered most of the Eurasian continent, from Poland and Hungary in the west to China in the east. In the process, they conquered the Persian Empire and tied the old Silk Road together under one empire. This unity further opened up the east-west trade routes, bringing about a medieval boom in trade that was dominated by the Italian cities of Venice and Genoa in the Mediterranean. It was along these trade routes that the black rats and their fleas hitched rides out of the steppes of Mongolia during the 14th century  into China and eventually Europe. So, Mongolian conquest and expanded trade in the 13th century eventually led to the Black Death and the loss of up to half of the European population.

Peasants working a lord's demesne (domain) in France (from the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, 1412-16)

Now that we have dealt with the causes of the Black Death, we need to turn our attention to the consequences of this plague. The plague first struck between 1347 and 1351, and reoccurred every five to ten years until the end of the 15th century. The European population would not even begin to see a recovery until 1500, and it would take over a century to see the population levels close to those before the plague. The immediate result of this rapid depopulation was social upheaval and dislocation. Europe's economic and political system, the feudal system (Remember 7th grade?), was based upon a large population of peasants who were either tied to the land (serfs) or free peasants who paid rents to their landlords. When half of this labor force died, the labor they provided became a valuable commodity. In other words, they became much more expensive. They demanded, and got higher wages. The Black Death also accelerated the end of serfdom, which had already begun in the 13th century. The lack of labor and reduced population was bad news for the noble landowners. The reduced population also reduced the demand for their agricultural produce. They found their revenues also reduced by declining rents. In short, the Black Death raised the standard of living for the peasant survivors, but lowered the standard of living for the nobility who depended upon those peasants for their survival. Don't worry too much about the nobility. They survived peasant revolts in Flanders, France, and England in the second half of the century with their power intact. However, the upheavals after the Black Death in the 14th century were just the beginning of the kind of social conflict that characterized modern European history.

I know that seems like a lot of information, but it's not that bad if you focus on the big idea stuff. Here it is in a shortened form (notes):

Black Death (14th century):

• Carried to Europe on trade routes from the east
• first outbreak in mid-14th century
• killed up to 50% of European population
• social upheaval
• labor shortage- accelerated end of serfdom
• higher wages
• lower prices
• lower revenue from rents
• high standard of living for peasants
• lower standard of living for noble landowners
• peasant revolts in Flanders, France, England

As you read your summer reading choice, try looking for the "big ideas." Look for the cause-and-effect relationships. Look for the "characteristics" of ideas, or "-isms." If you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments section below, or send me an e-mail message. Don't worry if you're struggling with any of this. It's the struggle that pushes us to become more than we are. Besides, we have the entire school year to work on it.

Welcome to AP Euro

Outside the gates of Versailles

Welcome to AP European History! I know it’s summer, but my hope is that you will choose to pick up one of the books on our recommended reading list and read a couple of chapters. Don’t worry, I am very realistic about the chances of this happening for everyone. It is summer, and this is Southern California. You should be outside soaking up some sun and enjoying the fact that you live in one of the best climates in the world. However, a key to success in high school (in life, really) is to develop a balance in your life. This means that you should not let your mind go idle over the break. That is the reason why we continue to encourage you to give the summer reading a shot, even though it is not a required assignment.

So, why is the summer reading no longer a required assignment? Well, there are a couple of reasons for this. The practical reason is that there are more teachers teaching AP European History at Westview than there were in earlier times. This course has become one of the more popular AP options for sophomores on this campus. We currently have four AP Euro teachers teaching seven sections of the course. That means approximately 300 or more students enrolled in the course! Traditional summer assignments usually come with written assignments. Trying to manage all of those assignments between four teachers, and trying to grade them before the beginning of the year is absolute madness! More importantly, requiring a summer assignment limits access to the course. Required summer assignments have been used as a way to thin the AP student herd before the course begins. Our goal at Westview has always been to open up access to rigorous AP courses to all students, and then to retain these students throughout the length of the course. Requiring a summer assignment seemed like one hurdle that should be removed.

So, what’s so important about the summer reading. Well, beyond keeping your mind sharp over the summer, the summer reading selections have been designed to give you a taste of “historical thinking” before you get dropped into an AP Euro classroom. Historians tend to think a bit differently about history than the rest of the population. Where most people think of history as just a collection of dates, dead people, events, and facts to memorize, historians see a series of patterns, trends, and relationships amongst the facts. Because history is based upon the written record left by past generations, the historian sees history as something to be interpreted and (most importantly) argued. The mind-numbing pile of facts are used to support the bigger idea being argued by the historian. It is not enough to memorize a pile of facts. You must learn to see these bigger ideas and patterns in history. This kind of thinking is something to which you must acclimate yourself. It does not come easily and will require patience. Yoda said it best; “You must unlearn what you have learned.” I will address this kind of thinking more in future blog posts.

That is enough for now. Follow my blog or follow me on twitter (@wvapeuro) for future updates. If you have questions, feel free to leave them in the comments section below.  Enjoy your summer.