History Notes General History III: 1400–1650 (Renaissance, Recovery and Reform) Notes
These notes provide comprehensive cover of the General III Preliminary paper. They were the sole resource that I used for my preliminary examination revision, in which I achieved a mark of 69%. They include a wealth of specific and detailed examples spanning across the whole of Europe, as well as discussion of a broad range of historiography, making them a complete resource for studying for the prelim in General III. They are often structured around key questions, meaning that they also come in u...
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GHIII Historiography Revision:
Capitalism:
BRENNER DEBATE = key to development of capitalism.
Marxist: saw class struggle as cause of change, rather than changing prod methods.
Tensions came from small-scale agriculture’s inability to innovate.
Focuses on unique English environment.
Also talks of “a nearly unique symbiotic relationship between agriculture and industry”.
Were “wholly disparate overall patterns”.
Croot & Parker:
Agree to an extent: “the celebrated class of English yeomanry”.
However, Brenner over-emphs French peasantry’s strength.
“The first half of the sixteenth century is marked by a sudden upsurge of agrarian capitalism in western Europe”.
Malthus focuses on demographics.
B Geremek’s argument: low wages = “a driving force in the evolution of capitalism”.
R S DuPlessis:
Talks of a “Protestant ethic”.
“Europe’s economic center of gravity… shifted to the N Atlantic”.
Immanuel Wallerstein: Labels overseas expansion and subsequent wealth “the prime solvent of Europe’s feudal order”.
C R Friedrichs:
Development was “by no means unilinear”.
Overseas expansion = “an important stimulus”.
Le Roy Ladurie: Wars distracting.
Kamen: loans = “an instrument for the deterioration and expropriation of an independent peasantry”.
R Jutte: Capitalism “an absolute impoverishment of the rural masses”.
Education:
Grafton and Jardine: Humanism had “the cultural seal of superiority”.
Paul Grendler: “without universities, there would have been no Ref”.
Humanism:
C G Nauert:
Erasmus = “The apogee of reformist humanism”.
“Quite literally epoch-making… an important force in human history”.
P Dear:
Argues that the relat between humanism and scholasticism is characterised by “co-existence rather than conflict”.
“A centrally relevant cultural dimension”.
Following ancients = “the route to cultural respectability”.
“Strongly coloured the style and content of univ curricula”.
N Mann:
“Comes to pervade… almost all areas of post-medieval culture”.
By C15th, “the studia humanitatis were firmly enshrined in the uni curriculum”.
Hale:
John Colet’s lectures “broke radically with the trad methods”.
Printing “made the labours of classical scholars more and more conspic in booksellers’ shops”.
“Had a broader, independent life”.
M Davies:
Humanist writing style = “well on the way to sweeping the field”.
“There was no humanism without books”.
P Burke:
“A new age seemed to have dawned”.
Overseas expansion:
Nicholas Davies:
Talks of commercial and conquest as 2 types of expansion.
Popular Religion:
Clifford Flanigan spoke of ‘alienated liturgy’.
R N Swanson:
“It is all too easy to approach the pre-Ref laity with a patronising stance”.
“The faith itself is essentially atomistic, dependent on individs creating their own relationships with the divinity”.
“Pre-Ref Cath was… a ‘demand-led’ religion”.
“The ‘elite’ and the ‘clerical’… were often a veneer over the ‘lay’ and ‘popular’”.
“What is notable… is the general lack of complaints about the theological activities of the clergy”.
“Purely doctrinal theology was always elitist”.
“Discipline and devotion are to the fore, rather than theology”.
Pope = “virtually Christ-on-Earth”.
“Perhaps the most daunting is the need to try to penetrate minds”.
E Duffy:
Power to perform mass “implied an enormously high doctrine of priesthood”.
R C Finucane:
Talks of “much anti-papal feeling”.
“The increasing use of the vernacular… drew more and more laymen into the life of the Church”.
John Delumeau spoke of ‘the “folklorisation” of Christianity’.
M Rubin talks of “a symbolic system”.
Popular Revolt:
P Blickle:
Focuses on Norway.
Excessive gov’t oppression in Norway, 1490s, ^.
Tension over serfdom major cause in rural areas.
“Peasants were not called to arms by the nobility”.
L Stone blamed the Eng Rev on weaknesses of the Stuarts.
J A Goldstone:
“Brought on by purely polit conflicts and exacerbated by chance conjunctions of unfortunate circumstances”.
Explains how contemps viewed taxes as fair trade for gov’t maintaining stability.
People could have controlled demographics.
J H Elliott:
Wars of Relig in France brought French recruits into bands of bandits.
Blames demographics for Barcelona food riots.
Martin van Gelderen:
“Precarious balance of power” in the N’lands.
Created “a tradition of urban revolt”.
G Parker: ‘Military rev’ war cost x10.
Theda Skocpol: argued that rev’ns happened when state faced war with more advanced capitalist countries.
Rude (1964) – cross section of pop = mob.
Poverty:
P Elmer and O P Grell:
Emph desire to help poor in Florence.
Support Lindemann’s pro-hospital stance.
Hosps in Florence “certainly tools of social policy” but could also be “genuine expressions of Christian charity”.
M Lindemann:
Hospitals “always assumed great significance”.
Talks of “the Ref’s pruning” of hosps.
P Slack:
1572: “A comprehensive PL… went the whole way”.
The dissolution of the monasteries etc. was helpful LT as it enabled more central gov’t programmes to take place.
“Their common inspiration was...
Buy the full version of these notes or essay plans and more in our General History III: 1400–1650 (Renaissance, Recovery and Reform) Notes.
These notes provide comprehensive cover of the General III Preliminary paper. They were the sole resource that I used for my preliminary examination revision, in which I achieved a mark of 69%. They include a wealth of specific and detailed examples spanning across the whole of Europe, as well as discussion of a broad range of historiography, making them a complete resource for studying for the prelim in General III. They are often structured around key questions, meaning that they also come in u...
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