Abstract
The year 1648 was an obvious turning-point in European history. That year, by the Treaty of Westphalia, the Thirty Years’ War, which had devastated much of Central Europe, was brought to a merciful conclusion. But the war, and the epidemics associated with it, had reduced both the population and the economy of central Europe alarmingly. Destruction had been especially great in Germany but the disruption which the war occasioned had wider-reaching effects: trade routes had changed and markets lost; agriculture had been neglected, cities ruined, and bands of marauders, the flotsam of the war, were to plague a number of districts, not least Bohemia, for some time thereafter. For towns, countryside and governments alike, the tasks of reconstruction were daunting.
Proud, restless, noisy, impossible to satisfy. Untrammelled license is what they want.
Montecuccoli on the nobility of Hungary
Without order there can be no security.
Alexis, Tsar of Russia
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
The idea that the seventeenth century saw a ‘general crisis’ has long been current among historians (see T. Aston (ed.), Crisis in Europe 1550–1660 (London, 1970) though they differ about its nature and causes. There are differences, too, about its timing: e.g. for Paul Hazard it starts about 1680, Theodore Rabb places it in the period 1630–75, while Ronald Mousnier dates it c.1620–c.1660. Remarkably little attention, however, has been paid by Western historians to the crisis in Eastern Europe. For the origins and earlier stages, see Chapter 7.
According to one of the most distinguished students of the war, J.V. Polisensky (The Thirty Years War, London, 1974), it contributed to the rise of the West as well as the relative decline of Eastern Europe. More particularly it promoted the economic rise of the Netherlands and England; destroyed the middle classes; discouraged enterprise among the nobility in Central Europe; and exaggerated the move towards serfdom Eastern Europe. All this gave the West advantages over the East and hence promoted the separation of the two parts of the continent (p. 260).
See Chapter 7.
See the appropriate maps plotting the incidence of hajduk activity in B. Cvetkova, Hajdutstvoto v blgarskite zemi (Sofia, 1971).
The Assembly of the Land was hardly a nascent parliament, however — see L. Cherepnin, Zemskie sobory russkogo gosudarstva v xvi–xvii vv (Moscow, 1978).
See the rules for his falcon hunt in my Alexis, Tsar of All the Russias (London, 1984) pp. 118–20.
Alexis, op. cit., passim but especially Chapter X; also ‘The Emergence of Absolutism in Russia’ in John Miller (ed.), Absolutism in Seventeenth Century Europe (London, 1990) pp. 75–93.
See Chapter 10.
This was the liberum veto. The first to exercise it was one Wladyslaw Sicinski.
Aside from J. Tazbir in A. Gieysztor et al. (eds), History of Poland, 2nd ed. (Warsaw, 1979) esp. pp. 218–19, see the valuable essay by A. Kaminski, ‘The Szlachta of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Their Government’ in I. Banac and P. Bushkovitch (eds), The Nobility in Russia and Eastern Europe (New Haven, 1983) pp. 17–46. On the implications for the Polish army in the decades that followed, see J. A. Gierowski, ‘The Polish-Lithuanian Armies in the Confederations and Insurrections of the Eighteenth Century’ in G. Rothenberg et al. (eds), East-Central European Society and War in the Pre-Revolutionary Eighteenth Century (New York, 1982) pp. 215–38.
F. Carsten, The Origins of Prussia (Oxford, 1968); also C.A. Macartney (ed.), The Habsburg and Hohenzollern Dynasties (New York, 1970) pp. 209ff. and H. Rosenberg, Bureaucracy, Aristocracy and Autocracy (Boston, 1966) pp. 34ff..
R.J. W. Evans, The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy 1550–1700 (Oxford, 1979).
Largely because of the expense, not only of uniforms and equipment but of barracks and supply, so that the troops should not alienate and impoverish Habsburg subjects as the much smaller and inadequately-financed Polish army did (see Gierowski, loc. cit.). The Habsburgs also disposed of defence forces on the southern frontier of Slavonia who, like Cossacks, were rewarded in land and tax exemption rather than pay. See G. Rothenberg, The Austrian Military Border in Croatia (Urbana, 1960). Also Chapter 7.
On this, and for much of what follows, see J.P. Spielman, Leopold I of Austria (London, 1977) as well as Evans, op. cit., and J. Bérenger, ‘The Austrian Lands: Hapsburg Absolutism under the Emperor Leopold I’, in Miller, op. cit., pp. 157–74.
Notably Imre Thokolly, ambitious rebel and leader of kuruc. On Thokolly, see the works of L. Benczedi, including his essay on Hungarian sentiment of the period in Harvard Ukrainian Studies, X (3–4), December 1986, pp. 424–37. Also Bérenger, loc. cit..
On the Koprolu reforms see Stanford J. Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, vol. I (Cambridge, 1978) pp. 207–16 (in which he chiefly follows the Turkish chronicler Naima); also A. Kurat, ‘The Reign of Mehmet IV’ in M.A. Cook (ed.), A History of the Ottoman Empire to 1730 (Cambridge, 1976) pp. 163ff., and P. Sugar, Southeastern Europe under Ottoman Rule (Seattle, 1977) pp. 198ff..
E.g. Thomas M. Barker, Double Eagle and Crescent (New York, 1967); John Stoye, The Siege of Vienna (London, 1964).
Reproduced in Macartney, op. cit., pp. 67–76.
On inter-state relations in eastern Europe at the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, see B. Sumner, Peter the Great and the Ottoman Empire (Oxford, 1949).
Although overtaken in detail, Jan Rutkowski’s Histoire Economique de la Pologne Avant les Partages (Paris, 1927) still provides a generally sound overview, esp. pp. 89–92, 159–60.
Evans, op. cit., pp. 146–52; Spielman, op. cit., pp. 22–6.
See inter alia Fikret Adanir, ‘Tradition and Rural Change in Southeastern Europe during Ottoman Rule’ in D. Chirot (ed.), The Origins of Backwardness in Eastern Europe (Berkeley, California, 1989) pp. 131–76.
See H. Marczali, Hungary in the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1971) pp. 207–12. These are not to be confused, however, with various German settlements in Transylvania which originated much earlier (See Chapter 9).
Spielman, op. cit., pp. 54–5; Eberhard Hempel, Baroque Art and Architecture in Central Europe (Harmondsworth, 1965) especially pp. 88–98.
J. Tazbir, ‘Culture of the Baroque in Poland’ in A. Maczak, H. Samsonowicz and P. Burke (eds), East-Central Europe in Transition (Cambridge, 1985) pp. 167–80; also in Gieysztor, op. cit., pp. 226–8; J. Michalski, ‘Le sarmatisme et le probleme d’europeisation de la Pologne’ in V. Zimanyi (ed.), La Pologne et la Hongrie aux xvi–xviii siecle (Budapest, 1981) pp. 113ff.; J. Krzyzanowski, History of Polish Literature (Warsaw, 1978) pp. 133–7. Something of the mentality of the lesser gentry of the period can be gauged from the autobiography of Jan Pasek, Memoirs of the Polish Baroque, (ed. C. Leach) (Berkeley, California, 1976).
Shaw, op. cit., I, pp. 234–8; A. Kurat and J. Bromley, ‘The Retreat of the Turks 1683–1730’ in Cook, op. cit., pp. 215–16.
The Uniats could also be used as a counterweight to the Hungarians. The indirect result was the first stirring of Romanian nationalism when, in the 1740s, Uniat Bishop Ion Klein found a way of legitimizing his flock’s claim to equality with the three historical Hungarian ‘nations’ (Hungarians, Saxons and Szeklers) by claiming they were descended from the ancient Dacians. See K. Hitchens, ‘Religious Tradition and National Consciousness Among the Romanians of Transilvania’, Harvard Ukrainian Studies, X (3–4), December 1986, pp. 542–58. Meanwhile, as a direct consequence of the failure of Peter’s offensive against the Turks, in conjunction with Dimitru Cantemir, the ruler of Orthodox Moldavia, the Turks installed ‘Phanariot’ rulers both there and in Wallachia (1714), considering administrators of Greek culture more reliable.
This is certainly the case, with rare exceptions, of the English travellers, whether merchants or diplomatists, from the Elizabethans (e.g. Giles Fletcher, Of the Russe Commonwealth (London, 1591) but see also R. Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation (Glasgow, 1903) II, pp. 248ff. and III) to Charles Howard, Earl of Carlisle (see G. Miege, A Relation of Three Embassies.... (London, 1669).
See Chapter 7.
On the encouragement and regulation of trade see the New Trade Statute, Alexis, op. cit., pp. 191–2, and note 18, p. 273; on whether the state helped or hindered the economy in the seventeenth century see S. Baron (Muscovite Russia, London, 1980), who changes his mind on the question. For the idea that the Russian economy was insulated from world trends of price inflation, see B. Mironov, ‘Revoliutsiia tsen v Rossii xviii v’ (cyclostyle), 1989. On price inflation in the sixteenth century, see Cap. VII. For the history of pre-Petrine monetary policy (and the monetary reform of 1654–63), see A. Mel’nikova, Russkie monety ot Ivana Groznogo do Petra Pervogo (Moscow, 1989). Some reflections of S. Troitskii are also pertinent. See his Russkii absoliutizm i dvorianstvo v xviii v (Moscow, 1974). On forced migrations of merchants to Moscow (not always effective), see P. Bushkovitch, The Merchants of Muscovy (Cambridge, 1980).
The Academy founded by Tsar Fedor, though largely Greek in orientation, did embrace Latin culture, however, and its chief luminaries, the Likudi brothers, had Venetian connections. For a translation of part of the old Academy’s charter, see G. Vernadsky et al., eds., Source-Book For Russian History, vol. I (New Haven, Conn., 1972) p. 248.
J. Szucs, ‘The Three Historical Regions of Europe’, Acta Historica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, 29(2–4) 1983, esp. pp. 161–7. He errs, however, in accepting P. Anderson’s notion that in the East absolutism was merely ‘a device for the consolidation of serfdom’. The serfdom question will be addressed in Chapter 7.
On Pretenders, see P. Skrynnikov, Samozvantsy v Rossii v nachale xvii veka (Moscow, 1990) (more particularly on the imposture of G. Otrep’ev), and the works referred to in my ‘The Pretender Phenomenon in Eighteenth Century Russia’, Past & Present, 66, 1975, pp. 61–83.
On the nobility’s changing views of business, see P.L. Pach, in Etudes Historiques Hongroises (Budapest, 1985) vol. II, pp. 131ff.; also Marczali, op. cit., pp. 86–7.
The nobility (including the’ sandalled’ gentry) accounted for about 10 per cent of the population of Poland-Lithuania and a good 5 per cent of Hungary’s, although in some counties (including those of Szatmar and Bihar, where noble status had been granted collectively to the entire population of certain settlements) it was as high as 20 per cent.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1992 Philip Longworth
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Longworth, P. (1992). The Imposition of Order (1648–1770). In: The Making of Eastern Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22202-5_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22202-5_7
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-22204-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-22202-5
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)