2008-2009 HONORS SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

SUMMER ASSIGNMENT: (OUTLINE NOTES EXAMPLE AT THE BOTTOM!!)

Honors Seminar in Post 1945 U.S. Social Movements

2008 Summer Assignment

and

Course Information

Ms. Cronin   cronin_k@summitcds.org  www.summitcds.org/cronin   

• Congratulations, you have chosen to challenge yourself by signing up for an Honors level history course next year.  All Honors and AP courses in the Social Studies courses have summer assignments that must be completed by the first day of class. 40% of the grade will be deducted if it is not ready to hand in on the first day.

Course Information

• This course will not use a textbook except for the summer assignment and once in the 4^th quarter, but it does require quite a bit of reading.  There will be readings each quarter pertaining to the Social Movement we are covering that quarter.  If you do not enjoy reading about history and talking about it this is not the course for you.
• This course will involve research and writing.  Though it will not have one long paper like the sophomore class, it will have multiple shorter papers and other projects.  You should have time management skills and a willingness to work.  You will not be able to do well in this class if you are used to surviving by getting high test scores and doing little work.  There will be far fewer tests than you see in a normal history course.  Assessments will involve more paper writing and projects than tests.

SUMMER ASSIGNMENT

• In order to do an inquiry based course on specific topics like social movements you must know the basic history of the period.  For example, though we are not specifically covering the Cold War or the Vietnam War in depth, it did have an impact on the social movements of the period and you have to know about these topics.
• So you are reading and TAKING HANDWRITTEN OUTLINE FORMAT NOTES on the 4 xeroxed chapters in the handout ON YOUR OWN.  No 2 students choose to note down the same points in the same way so your notes should not match anyone else.  AN EXMPLE OF OUTLINE NOTES FROM A DIFFERENT BOOK IS BELOW, the example is typed but you must handwrite yours!

EXTRA CREDIT Opportunity:

If you want to start out the year with extra credit banked you can rent and watch any or all of the following movies set in the postwar era and complete a Historical Movie Review of each one you watch following the review format BELOW.
Driving Miss Daisy; Malcolm X; Mona Lisa Smile; That Thing You Do; Good Night and Good Luck; Mississippi Burning (this last one is rated R so you can only do it if you attach a note from your parents that says it’s ok that you watched this one)

Movie Critique

BEFORE VIEWING—Make sure you have already read the handout chapters about the time period of the movie. 

MOVIE INFORMATION—Write a short paragraph including the name of the movie, the director, producer, the three top stars and the approximate year of release.  Also include when and where you watched the film and any special comments on its release (was it an abridged or \colorized version, was it in more than one part, was it part of a series, was it based on a novel, etc.)

THE PLOT—In no more than one good paragraph, retell the plot.  Of course, you will not be able to give all the details.  Just condense the main story line into 8-10 sentences.

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE--

Were there any characters in the movie based on real people?  If so, who were they and were they treated with historical accuracy? 

Were there any real events (battles, migrations, laws, protests etc.)?  If so, were they correct as to event, time period, etc.?  If there were NO

real characters or events in a historical movie, explain why the film is still “historical”. MOST IMPORTANTLY: explain how the decades were portrayed, did it give the typical stereotypes of the decades covered, did it give typical gender/ethnic/religious/racial stereotypes.  Give specific examples.

THE SETTING— When and where was the movie set? 

If several locations were used, were they all depicted realistically?  (Were there forests, mountains, rivers, etc.  where they should have been for the real setting?_  How long a time span did it cover? 

Were the houses, furnishings, foods, tools, weapons, clothes, hairstyles, shoes, streets, etc.  shown with accuracy?  Give some examples of period props you think were especially well or especially poorly presented.

EVALUATION—Give an evaluation of the film.  Don’t just

say, “I liked it because it was a good movie,” or “I hated it because it was boring.”  Like a real film critic, point out the strengths and

weaknesses of the movie.  If the film were done many years ago, would it be done differently now?  Did the film make the viewer more aware of history or just confuse the issue?  What would have made the film better?  Would you recommend the film to another student?  Why?

 OUTLINE NOTES EXAMPLE FROM A DIFFERENT TEXTBOOK (these are from a chapter in an older edition of the AP European history book, this chapter had 5 large section titles in addition to the intro and conclusion that all chapters always have so you will see 7 major section titles and then each section has subsections with titles)  When doing outline notes the important thing to remember is to keep the information clearly with the section titles so you will see notes indented under section titles.  When doing handwritten notes you obviously can't bold your titles to make them standout so either underline, use a different color pen, or skip a line before and after each title to make them visually obvious!

Hunt Chapter 18  The Atlantic System and Its Consequences  1690-1740

I.  Introduction

• Dutch East India Company brought coffee java plants to Indonesian islands, then to French Caribbean
• Coffee imports to Europe in second half of 17^th c. led to coffeehouses
• Gathering place for men to drink, read, discuss politics
• New worldwide economic links led to greater consumption of tea, coffee, chocolate, and other novelties like sugar
• Bought slaves in West Africa, sold them in colonies, brought over coffee and sugar to sell in Europe
• Improvements in agriculture also began in early 18^th c.
• More disposable income for extras like papers, concerts, paintings, novels
• New middle-class public
• More evenly matched competition in Europe encouraged better diplomatic skills and drew attention to public health as a way of encouraging population growth
• New intellectual movement in the Enlightenment
• Angered by revocation of Edict of Nantes French Protestants published works in exile critical of absolutism in politics and religion
• Increased prosperity, growth of middle-class, and decline in warfare after 1715 all fostered new critical spirit
• Popularization of science and new travel literature encouraged skepticism
• Enlightenment began in France, Britain, and the Dutch Republic

II.  The Atlantic System and the World Economy

A.  Introduction

·        Europeans drew the rest of the world into their economic orbit in the 1700s

·        The system and the growth of international trade helped to create a new consumer society

B.  Slavery and the Atlantic System

1.  Introduction

·        Planters and plantations won out because slave labor was cheap and could produce mass quantities at low prices

·        Began in Brazil with sugar plantations and spread to Caribbean then to North America

·        More than 11 million Africans, not including those who died on the way, were transported to the Americas during the slave trade years to the 1850s

2.  The Life of the Slaves

·        Proportion of slave population to white depended on crops produced

·        Most slaves sold to Europeans by Africans who had acquired them in warfare or kidnapped them

·        Horrible conditions on the overseas trip, chained, branded, women raped

·        Once there they had no social identities of their own

·        Worked 15 to 17 hours a day, poorly fed, lacked decent clothing, often died

·        Resistance was common and laws were strict

3.  Effects on Europe

·        Landowners did not always live in the colonies but let others run their plantations for them

·        Slave trade permanently altered consumption patterns for ordinary people

·        Sugar became a standard food item

·        By 1790s it had become so common that when it was in shortage people in Paris rioted

·        Tobacco also spread rapidly, men of every country and class smoked pipes or took snuff

4.  The Origins of Racism

·        As early as 1610 there were a few men condemning the slave trade

·        By 1700 slave owners were justifying their actions by claiming that the mental and spiritual qualities of Africans were inferior

·        Described them as animal like and closer to apes

·        Churches often defended or stayed silent on the issue of slavery

C.  World Trade and Settlement

1.  Introduction

·        Atlantic system extended trade eventually across the globe

·        To expand trade Europeans seized territories and tried to establish permanent settlements

·        This all prepared the way for western global dominance in the 19^th and 20^th c.

2.  The Americas

·        North American colonies had 1.5 million nonnative peoples by 1750

·        Racial attitudes differed from place to place

·        Spanish and Portuguese tolerated intermarriage with natives so that mestizo children accounted for more than a quarter of the population in Spanish colonies by 1800, but slaves were still treated differently and harshly

·        Where intermarriage was greatest the conversion to Christianity also was better

·        Far more men than women went to the colonies

·        By 1700 a culture of pirates or buccaneers had grown up in the Caribbean

·        Some women dressed as men and joined them

3.  Africa and Asia

·        White settlement remained small and mostly insignificant

·        Most influence was in Java in the East Indies and in India

·        French and English vied for influence in India where calico was the staple of trade in the early 1700s

·        People were intrigued by religious practices there but also saw in them signs of European superiority which would feed the excuse for colonial domination in the future

D.  The Birth of Consumer Society

• Population growth surged between 1700 and 1750
• Fast-growing northwest and lagging south and central Europe began to diminish
• London’s population more than tripled and Paris doubled as cities experienced growth
• This was the beginning of the modern population explosion caused mostly by a decline in the deathrate caused by better weather with good harvests, improvements in agricultural techniques, disappearance of the plague by 1720
• Caused a consumer revolution by early 1700s as demand grew so did trade and imports
• Number of cafes and coffeehouses exploded

III.  New Social and Cultural Patterns

A.  Introduction

• Impact of Atlantic system more in cities where people had more money
• But agricultural changes made it possible to feed more people with a smaller workforce
• More people moved to cities where found themselves caught up in urban culture
• Experiences varied depending on where they lived

B.  Agricultural Revolution

• Britain’s domestic market grew the fastest
• More aggressive attitudes toward investment and management using techniques pioneered by the Dutch and the Flemish
• 4 major changes:

1.  farmers increased the amount of land under cultivation by draining wetlands and using acreage that had previously been used for grazing

2.  Consolidation of smaller scattered plots into larger more efficient units

3.  livestock raising became more closely linked to crop growing, farmers planted fodder crops like clover and turnips to add nutrients to the soil eliminating the need for fallow fields, more fodder meant more livestock which meant more fertilizer

4.  selective breeding of animals with increased fodder meant improved quality and size of herds

• by 1730s and 40s agricultural output had increased dramatically and prices of food had fallen
• biggest landowners consolidated their holdings in the “enclosure movement” putting pressure on small farmers to sell or give up common lands
• Act of parliament usually needed to eliminate common village lands and grazing rights
• Second half of 18^th c. many such acts were passed
• Landlords then leased to tenant farmers for rent who then employed those without land on salary to work
• English peasantry disappeared replaced by hierarchy of big landlords, tenant farmers, and poor agricultural laborers
• For the rest of Europe subsistence farming continued to dominate (outside of Britain and the Low Countries)
• Eastern Europe witnessed worsening conditions for the peasants as landlords tried to improve their yields
• Forced peasants off the lands they worked for themselves and into compulsory labor services, serfdom

C.  Social Life in the CitieS

1.  Introduction

·        Emigration from countryside caused population growth

·        18^th c. on saw continuous urban growth

·        south-to-north shift occurred in pattern of urbanization

·        1500 the largest number of cities were in Italy, Spain and Portugal

·        1700 saw northwestern and southern Europe equal with urbanization

·        Eastern Europe lagged behind

2.  Urban Social ClasseS

·        Top of the ladder were the landed nobles who employed thousands of artisans, shopkeepers, and domestic servants

·        Middle classes of officials, merchants, professionals, and landowners were next

·        This group began to develop distinct ways of life, living primarily in towns and cities, eating moderately but well, houses with about seven rooms, mirrors and coffeepots and ornaments and clocks, drank beer (or wine in France) with supper

·        Artisans and shopkeepers in guilds were next, their wives often kept the accounts, supervised employees, and ran the household well

·        Journeymen, apprentices, servants, and laborers

·        Unemployed poor surviving on intermittent work and charity

·        Women from lower classes often worked as servants until married

·        So many employed servants that the servant population in the cities grew faster than any

3.  Signs of Social Distinction

·        Rich districts had wide streets, gardens, and fresh air

·        Poor districts had dirty, smelly, humid streets with damp and crowded houses

·        Homeless slept under bridges and in abandoned homes

·        Clothing was reliable indicator

·        Poor working women in woolen skirts, dark colored blouses, caps, cotton stockings, and their one pair of shoes

·        Lawyers in dark robes

·        Masons and butchers in aprons

·        Wealthier had variety of fabrics and colors, unusual designs, many outfits

D.  The Growth of a Literate Public

• Ability to read and write reflected social differences
• City people more than rural, wealthy more than poor, protestants more than catholics,
• Primary schooling remained far behind in most places in Europe and no country had a system of control or supervision
• Yet middle classes became increasingly literate demanding books and periodicals
• 1695 Britain stopped government control of publishing and new newspapers and magazines immediately sprung up
• first London daily in 1702, first literary magazine in 1709
• France did not get a daily paper until 1777

E.  New Tastes in the Arts

1.  Introduction

• Middle classes also pursued painting, concerts, and novels making them new patrons for new work
• Appearance of criticism of the arts set stage for political and social criticism

2.  Rococo Painting

• Particularly in France rococo challenged baroque and classical schools
• Emphasized irregularity and asymmetry, movement and curvature as baroque had but on a much smaller and subtler scale
• Depicted scenes of intimate sensuality not monumental grandeur
• Personal portraits and pastoral paintings took place of heroic landscapes and scenes
• Served as form of interior decorating not as statement of piety
• Antoine Watteau and Francois Boucher to great French rococo painters emphasized the erotic, the former painted aristocratic life style the latter middle class

3.  Music for the PubliC

• First public music concerts performed in England in 1670s, frequent by  1690s
• High price of tickets limited concert halls to the well off
• Music clubs in towns and villages
• Opera continued to spread
• Composers could now begin to liberate themselves from court patronage and play for a public audience though both went on throughout the 18^th c.
• Handel composed oratorios combining the drama of opera with the majesty of religious and ceremonial music featuring chorus over the soloist
• Music became an integral part of the new middle-class public’s culture

4.  Novels

• The literary genre that underscored the 18^th c. taste for novelty
• Novel took on its modern form becoming more concerned with individual psychology and social description that adventures
• Available in serial form in periodicals
• Women figured in as characters and women writers were numerous
• Eliza Haywood earned a living writing many novels concerned with the proper place of women as models of virtue in a changing world, she also published a magazine The Female Spectator that argued for higher education for women
• Daniel Defoe wrote Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders, the character of Crusoe showed the need for ingenuity in the new expanding economy
• Defoe also wrote social commentary on trade, plague, pirates, and the economy

F.  Religious Revivals

• Religious books and pamphlets still sold in huge numbers and Europeans remained devout
• Pietists believed in a mystical religion of the heart, wanted a more deeply emotional ecstatic religion, urged intense Bible study, attended catechism instruction every day, and two prayer meetings a day
• Appealed to both Lutherans and Calvinists
• Jane Leade, a pietist, formed the Philadelphians which spread to the Dutch Republic and German states, she advocated universal, nondogmatic church including all reborn Christians
• Catholics also had revivals
• French woman Jeanne Marie Guyon, Quietism, she claimed miraculous visions and prophecies urging mystical union with God through prayer and simple devotion
• Jansenism gained many adherents to their austere form of Catholicism taking a revivalist turn in the 1720s when crowd claimed to have seen miraculous healings at the tomb of Parisian priest in 1727
• Some believers fell into frenzied convulsions
• Emotional appeal of cult around the tomb reflected that popular expressions of religion could not be easily contained
• After 1750 Jansenism became political when joined in opposition to crown policies on religion

IV.  Consolidation of the European State System

A.  Introduction

• Warfare settled three main issues between 1690 and 1740:

1.  a coalition of powers held Louis XIV’s France in check on the continent

2. Great Britain emerged from the wars against Louis as the preeminent sea power

3.  Russia defeated Sweden in the contest for supremacy in the Baltic

• With warfare less frequent and less widespread states could spend money on est. and controlling own populations at home and in their colonies

B.  The Limits of French Absolutism

1.  Introduction

·  William III prince of Orange and King of England and Scotland had forged alliance of Britain, Dutch, Sweden, Austria, and Spain that fought Louis to a stalemate in the War of the League of Augsburg also known as the Nine Years War

·  the fighting started again in war of Spanish succession which finally brought France’s expansionist ambitions to a halt

2.  The War of the Spanish Succession, 1701-1713

·        Charles II died in 1700 without a direct heir fight began

·        Power had declined as gold and silver exhausted, kings ignored manufactures, debased coinage, failed to adopt new scientific ideas and commercial practices

·        Louis XIV’s family and Leopold I of Austria had competing claims to the throne

·        Most of Europe allied against French fearing union of French and Spanish territories

·        Peace of Utrecht 1713/1714 named Louis’s second grandson Philip to throne but he had to renounce any future claim to French throne; Spain surrendered its territories in Italy and Netherlands to Austrians and Gibraltar to the British; France ceded possessions in North America to Britain

3.  The Death of Louis XIV and the Regency

·        In France Louis’s absolutism fomented bitter hostility

·        Nobles resented promotion of commoners to high office

·        Criticism of court excesses

·        When he died successor was his grandson who was only 5 years old

·        Nephew of Louis XIV was named regent and he revived some of parlements powers and gave leading nobles a greater say, moved court back to Paris

·        Financial problems plagued regency, John Law’s scheme ended in speculation and crashed hopes of state bank and paper money for another century

·        Cardinal de Fleury helped est. some financial stability and was most powerful member of govt. after regent died

·        He balanced budget, new road and canal construction carried out, colonial trade boomed

·        Peace and acceptance of territory boundaries helped French prosper

C.  British Rise and Dutch Decline

1.  Introduction

·        English subjugated Ireland and incorporated Scotland becoming Great Britain

·        Dutch declined even though its merchants controlled large portion of world trade it still had to rely on alliance with bigger powers

2.  From England to Great Britain

·        William and Mary had no children

·        Had to have Protestant succession so Parliament ruled that Mary’s sister Anne would succeed them and then house of hanover because elector of Hanover was a protestant great grandson of James I so he became King George I when Queen Anne died in 1714

·        House of Hanover is still on the British throne, it renamed itself Windsor during WWI when the Germans were the enemy

·        Scots and Irish wanted deposed catholic king James II and his son James Edward on the throne—known as Jacobitism

·        Scottish Protestants agreed out of fear of this to 1707 Act of Union which abolished Scottish Parliament and recognized House of Hanover as successors

·        Jacobite rebellion in Scotland in 1715 was suppressed though it continued into the 1740s

·        Irish were more difficult since 90% Catholic, by 1700 Irish Catholics owned just 14% of the land in Ireland

·        Protestant controlled parliament in Ireland passed laws limiting Catholic rights: couldn’t bear arms , send children abroad for education, est. Catholic schools, marry Protestants, sit in Parliament, or vote for its members.

·        Ireland became like a colony with most Irish like peasants who lived in primitive housing and subsisted on meager meatless diet

·        Powers of Parliament reaffirmed in Triennial Act in 1694 which provided that it must meet at least once every three years

·        Only 200,000 propertied men could vote out of 5 million people and most members of Parliament came from the landed gentry

·        A few hundred families controlled all the important political offices

·        George I and II relied on Robert Walpole as First Lord of the Treasury who really operated as the first prime minister leading House of Commons from 1721 to 1742

·        Walpole est. pattern of parliamentary government in which a prime minister from leading party guided legislation through House of Commons

·        Also built vast patronage machine for govt. jobs

·        His successors reliance on it would eventually alienate the Tories and the middle classes

·        Great Britain became a great power on the world stage by virtue of navy and ability to finance wars

·        1694 founding of the Bank of England enabled govt. to raise money at low interest for foreign wars

3.  The Dutch Eclipse

·        William III had no heirs so for 45 years the Dutch were without a stadtholder

·        Population not growing as fast as others

·        Share of Baltic trade decreased from 50% in 1720 to 30% in 1770s. because after 1720 Prussia, Russia, Denmark, and Sweden followed protectionist policies to protect their own industries

·        Biggest exception was trade with the New World which increased with demands for sugar and tobacco

·        So they focused more on international trade and finance instead of great power rivalries

D.  Russia’s Emergence as a European Power

1.  Introduction

·        Dutch and British commerce and shipbuilding impressed Peter I

·        Peter aimed for dominance on land in the East

·        He transformed public life in Russia and est. an absolutist state on the western model

·        Westernization ignited controversy, did he disrupt Russia’s natural evolution or just put it on the inevitable path required to compete with the west

2.  Peter the Great’s Brand of Absolutism

·        Reorganized govt. and finance on western models

·        Streamlined ministries and gave each a foreign advisor

·        Ruthless recruiting forged an army of 200,000 men

·        Created schools for artillery, engineering, military medicine, built first navy, and taxes tripled

·        Used torture and executed thousands

·        Even his own son was killed, some believe at Peter’s hands other historians say accidently in prison

·        Forced all nobles into state service

·        1722 Table of Ranks classified service into military, administrative, and court categories codifying relationships in Russia for the next two centuries

·        all advantages now based on service to the crown

·        male children began serving at 15

·        to increase authority over the church he replaced the Patriarch with the office of the Holy Synod in 1721 which got him labeled the antichrist by manY

3.  Westernization

·        set up greenhouses, laboratories, technical schools, and founded the Russian Academy of Sciences

·        ordered translations of western classics

·        adopted Julian western calendar

·        first public newspaper

·        ordered officials and nobles to shave their beards and dress in western fashion and published book of manners

·        encouraged foreigners to move to Russia to offer advice and skills

·        Construction on St. Petersburg began in 1703, 40,000 a year assigned to work there on construction

·        By 1725 it had 40,000 residents

·        It represented a break with the past and he put the new capital there

·        Tried to improve status of women by ordering them to appear in public and to dress in European styles

·        Upper classes learned French or German

·        Mass of population had no contact with the new ideas but paid for them with taxes or their lives

·        But he could not secure the succession and this would allow the nobles to weaken the code of state service

·        By 1754 the legal code listed serfs as property not legal subjects

E.  The Balance of Power in the East

1.  Introduction

·        Peter’s successes changed the balance of power in the east

·        Defeated Sweden and became leading power in the Baltic region

·        Poland-Lithuania became the battleground and victory spoils for great power rivalries between Russia, Prussia, and Austria

2.  The Decline of Sweden

·        Had dominated the Baltic area since the Thirty Year’s War

·        Russia, Denmark, Saxony, and Poland joined against Sweden in 1700

·        Charles XII stood up to them all in the Great Northern War until he was finally defeated for the first time at Poltava in 1709

·        Prussia and other German states joined the Russian alliance and finally the war ended in 1721 with the Treaty of Nystad

·        Aristocratic reaction against Charles XII’s increased demands for war supplies ended Sweden’s absolutist regime and removed them from great power competition

3.  Prussian Militarization

·        Frederick William I (1713-1740) doubled the size of the Prussian army and made it the best trained army with the most up-do-date weapons

·        Highest proportion of nobles in the military of any European country

·        He was obsessed with his army

·        He was one of first rulers to wear a military uniform as everyday dress

·        Installed system of recruiting by having local quotas on districts

4.  The War of Polish Succession, 1733-1735

·        Prussia stood on the sidelines

·        War showed how complex the balance of power had become

·        King of Poland-Lithuania died in 1733

·        France, Spain, Sardinia supported one man for the throne another was supported by Austria and Russia

·        In the end Austria got its candidate on the throne and France got the province of Lorraine

·        Prussia and Russia dueled for influence in Poland-Lithuania while Austria was more concerned with its southern provinces and the Turks

·        Hungarians under Rakoczi raised an army of 70,000 against the Austrians and did manage to force them to recognize in 1711 local Hungarian institutions and return estates to Hungarian nobles

F.  The Power of Diplomacy

• Believed in the necessity of a balance of power for peace
• Relied on diplomacy once fighting began
• France set the pattern for diplomatic service with nobles serving in embassies of foreign capitals
• But still they engaged in secret negotiations as well creating confusion at times
• Principles of Peace of Westphalia continued as great powers met to hammer out agreements for peace throughout the following centuries

G.  The Power of Numbers

1.  Introduction

·        Strength depended on size of army so concern for growth and health of population

·        Hospitals transformed from public charities into medical institutions focused on disease, but health care was still far from modern

2.  Political Arithmetic

·        Increased effort to the statistical estimation of total population, rates of birth, deaths, marriages, and fertility

·        Advocated state intervention to improve health and welfare

·        Campaigns to improve public sanitation

·        Local officials drained low-lying areas, buried refuse, cleaned wells

·        All helped lower the rates of death from epidemic diseases

3.  Public Hygeine and Health Care

·        Cities unhealthy b/c of animal and human waste

·        Only the wealthy could escape walking in mucky streets by hiring men to carry them in sedan chairs or drive them in coaches

·        Physicians began to differentiate illnesses, do postmortems

·        People didn’t like the idea of postmortems and reports of body snatching and grave robbing by physicians outraged the public into the 1800s

·        Midwives, “cunning women”, bonesetters, bloodletters, etc. all continued to exist

·        Trained physicians were few and almost nonexistent outside of cities in the 18^th c.

·        Folk remedies common, antiseptics unknown

·        Insanity was considered a physical ailment caused by melancholia

·        After 1750 physicians developed successful procedures for widespread vaccination against smallpox but many resisted

·        Most people washed or changed clothes rarely, lived with poor ventilation, and got their water from contaminated sources

·        Until mid-1700s bathing was considered dangerous because it opened the body to disease

·        Cleanliness associated with linens, powdered hair, and perfume

V.  The Birth of the Enlightenment

A.  Introduction

• Economic expansion
• Emergence of a new consumer society
• Stabilization of the European state system
• Group of writers and scholars who believed human beings could apply a critical, reasoning spirit to every problem encountered in this world
• After 1740 criticism took a more systematic turn as writers provided new theories for the organization of society and politics
• Authorities realized they faced a new set of challenges

B.  Popularization of Science and Challenges to Religion

1.  Introduction

·        Enlightenment writers glorified geniuses of new science and championed scientific method as solution for all social problems

·        Fontenelle’s Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds 1686 made the Copernican sun-centered view available to the literate public

·        By 1700 mathematics and science were fashionable

·        Some women now participated in the discussions of science

2.  The New Skepticism

·        As prestige of science increased some developed a skeptical attitude toward attempts to enforce religious conformity

·        Pierre Bayle launched an international influential campaign against religious intolerance from his safe haven in the Dutch Republic.  News from the Republic of Letters attacked Louis XIV’s anti-Protestant policies.

·        Bayle then published the Historical and Critical Dictionary which cited all errors and delusions in past and present writers of all religions holding religion up to standards of natural understanding and reason.

·        He also asserted that atheists might possess moral codes as effective as those of the devout

·        Others scholars challenged the authority of the Bible by subjecting it to historical criticism

·        Defenders of church and state published books warning of the dangers of the new skepticism

·        Forbidden books were often published in Dutch Republic, Britain, and Switzerland and smuggled back across the border

3. The Young Voltaire Challenges Church and State

·        Most influential writer of the early Enlightenment

·        1730s Letters Concerning the English Nation attacked Catholic bigotry and government rigidity in France.

·        He liked English toleration of Christians

·        He popularized Newton’s scientific discoveries which glorified the human mind and to many seemed to reduce God to an abstract, external, and rationalistic force

·        Voltaire brought these ideas out from obscurity

·        Voltaire’s fame was complete and international by the 1750s

C.  Travel Literature and the Challenge to Custom and Tradition

1.  Introduction

·        A more general skepticism also began to emerge as a result of the expanding knowledge about the world outside of Europe.

·        Accounts of travel to exotic places in the 17^th and 18^th centuries increased and some used differences to criticize their home countries

2.  Travel and Relativism in Morals

·        In the Americas they portrayed people as “noble savages” who appeared to live in conditions of freedom and equality and were naturally good and happy

·        In China they found a prosperous and ancient civilization

·        The basic lesson of the travel literature: justice, freedom, property, good government, religion, morality all seemed to be relative to the place

·        Some complained that travel encouraged free thinking and the destruction of religion

3.  From Travel Account to Political Commentary

·        Travel literature turned explicitly political in Montesquieu’s Persian Letters which tells the story of two Persians who travel and they criticize France.

·        He suggested that the French monarchy might be as despotic as the Persian empire

·        1748 The Spirit of the Laws his work on comparative govt. where he outlined separation of powers in government, checks and balances, using aristocracy to balance power of monarch

D.  Raising the Woman Question

• Montesquieu recognized the tyranny that existed over women
• The Enlightenment saw feminist ideas presented systematically for the first time
• English author Mary Astell in 1694 published A Serious Proposal to the Ladies in which she advocated he founding of a private women’s college.
• She wanted intellectual training for women
• She later criticized the relationship between the sexes in marriage and she was criticized then for going against scripture
• Other women wrote about the need for education and the violation of the liberties of women
• Men complained about women’s self-centeredness
• Bayle argued that women were more profoundly tied to their biological nature and less capable of discernment
• Continued to debate women’s nature and appropriate social roles

VI.  Chapter Inserts

A. Oral History and the Life of Slaves

• Difficulty of finding sources to study enslavement from point of view of slaves
• Use of oral history of the descendants is controversial
• Compare them to histories left by owners, officials, clergy
• Runaway slaves in Guyana and French Guiana were so numerous that they developed their own societies in the interior and so their oral histories are particularly useful.

B.  Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Inoculation for Smallpox

• Daughter of a duke, wife of an ambassador, mother-in-law of a prime minister
• 1715 she caught and survived smallpox leaving her with pitted skin and no eyelashes
• 1716 her husband was named the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire
• she discovered the Turks had an inoculation against smallpox and she returned determined to bring it to Europe
• ridiculed by some men for meddling in public affairs
• publications of her letters from Turkey showed the value of new perspectives of another culture and the possibilities of gaining inventions

C.  Progress

• many Enlightenment writers preached a new doctrine about the meaning of human history
• optimistic vision: human nature was inherently good and progress would be continued if education developed human capacities to the utmost
• science and reason would bring happiness to the world
• began to think of themselves as more advanced
• oriented themselves towards the future and began to call their epoch as modern
• saw it as their duty to bring their new enlightened ways to those they colonized
• the wars, genocide, disasters of the twentieth century would cast doubt on this idea
• Foucault in the 1970s argued that history did not reveal a steady progress toward Enlightenment, freedom, and humanitarianism but a descent into a greater social control.  All now taught people to watch themselves more closely and to cooperate in the state’s efforts to control their lives
• Is there a direction in human history or is history a set of repeating cycles?

VII.  Conclusion

• Moved from economy governed by scarcity and the threat of famine to one of ever increasing growth and the prospect of continuing improvement.
• Greater wealth, longer life spans, and higher expectations for the future
• Spirit of optimism
• Everyone did not share equally: slaves, serfs, rural folk all got far less in the new consumer society
• Population and production increased and cities grew
• A tide of new thinking about society swelled in Great Britain and France
• The combination of the Atlantic System and the Enlightenment would eventually give rise to a series of Atlantic Revolutions.