Category Archives: religion

by Joel | 25 April 2023 · 5:42 am

French Yield to Mohawks, 1622

From Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America, by Pekka Hämäläinen (Liveright, 2022), Kindle pp. 92-94:

In 1622, desperate to put an end to the violence that disrupted the fur trade, the raison d’être of New France, Champlain yielded to Mohawk demands. The Dutch came to their own conclusions about Mohawk power around the same time, retreating from closer interactions; and Champlain, spotting an opening, extended a peace proposal to the Indian nation. The Mohawks accepted a treaty, which freed them to focus on their Native rivals. They attacked Montagnais towns in the Saint Lawrence Valley, securing the northern and western flanks of Iroquoia, the Iroquois homeland. In the south and east, Mohawks, the “Keepers of the Eastern Door,” moved to discipline the Dutch, who, placing profits before politics, had opened Fort Orange to Mahicans. By 1628, the Mahicans and the Dutch had seen enough. The Mahicans agreed to pay the Mohawks an annual tribute in wampum, and the Dutch resigned to placate the Iroquois League with goods. Mohawk sachems now controlled who was allowed to trade at the fort—whose guns, lead, and powder could make and unmake Indigenous regimes in the Northeast.

France’s support for its Native allies was not altruism; it was secured by a generous trade in beaver pelts and through the social alchemy of sharing. “The Beaver does everything perfectly well,” a Montagnais hunter declared, “making sport” of French traders. “It makes kettles, hatchets, swords, knives, bread; and, in short, it makes everything.” It is only a slight exaggeration to say that the beaver also made New France itself. In 1627 the colony was home to mere eighty-five people, yet its charter granted it all of North America, from Florida to the Arctic Circle. To prop up the colony, Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister of King Louis XIII, established the Company of One Hundred Associates to facilitate immigration. Expectations were still modest. The company had to bring in fifteen hundred French “of both sexes” during the first ten years, or face heavy sanctions. It was clear that collaboration with the Indians through the beaver pelt trade would remain New France’s lifeline.

However, New France was also a religious and moral project that mobilized French officials, missionaries, and soldiers to make a concerted effort to enforce acceptable behavior. Marriage customs, especially polygyny, became a source of contention between Jesuits and Indians. For Native men, having multiple wives was essential as a mark of status, as well as insurance that they would produce more children who would contribute to the household’s prosperity and reputation. When French missionaries challenged Indigenous marriage arrangements, both Native women and men fought back fiercely. But large numbers of women—especially captured secondary wives—also sought relief from the grueling labor and lack of autonomy under authoritative and abusive husbands. For them and others, missionaries and Christianity could be useful: they could offer a different life.

In the early 1630s, New France, already inseparable from its network of Indian allies, encompassed an expanding domain around the Saint Lawrence Valley. French traders were reaching out to the Indians for their furs, and Jesuit friars were reaching out for their souls, entrenching the French in North America. In 1631, Champlain wrote a booklet on French and English colonization in the New World, stating that the English “do not deny us all New France and cannot question what the whole world has admitted.”

…

By the mid-seventeenth century, the colonies in Maine that had been founded by European powers were confined to the Atlantic coast below the Penobscot River, and most of those colonies were small and vulnerable. European maps were remarkably accurate when depicting coasts and rivers, but the rest of the continent remained terra incognita. The English, French, and Dutch colonies had not become launchpads for territorial expansion, and only the French had a plan for colonization—a plan that emphasized coexistence. All colonial powers simply struggled to survive. Rather than looking to the west for conquests, they looked to the east, toward their mother countries, for goods, weapons, and soldiers to keep them safe. The settlements were more footholds than full-fledged colonies. It is telling that the out-of-the-way Great Fishery was still the most lucrative of the European schemes, and it was a business venture, not a colony.

The Spanish Empire had instigated an early European surge consisting largely of ruthless pillaging, which was lucrative but not sustainable. It had not led to permanent possessions in North America. By 1600, the Spanish were seriously questioning their methods. More than a century of colonialism had merely scratched the surface of the Indigenous continent.

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by Joel | 20 April 2023 · 9:51 am

Little Ice Age Effects in North America

From Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America, by Pekka Hämäläinen (Liveright, 2022), Kindle pp. 21-23:

IF THE LITTLE ICE AGE posed daunting challenges to North America’s agricultural societies, it was a boon for the continent’s hunters. The cool and wet conditions favored buffalo and grama grasses, the bison’s preferred forage, and the springs were wet, supporting crucial early growth of grass after the winter’s deprivations. Now the sole surviving species of megafauna, the supremely adaptable and prolific bison faced no serious competitors, and the herds expanded their range all the way from the Rocky Mountain foothills to hundreds of miles east of the Mississippi River, and from the subarctic to the Gulf of Mexico. And where bison herds thinned out, thriving deer herds took over, their domain covering much of the eastern half of the continent.

The majority of North American Indians became generalists who farmed, hunted, and gathered to sustain themselves. Instead of striving to maximize agricultural output—an aspiration that had animated Ancestral Puebloans, Cahokians, and other early farming societies—they sought stability, security, and solidarity. Instead of priestly rulers, they preferred leaders whose principal obligation was to maintain consensus and support participatory political systems. Power flowed through the leaders, not from them. Most North Americans lived in villages rather than cities. Ancestral Pawnees, Arikaras, Mandans, and Hidatsas were typical. They settled along the upper Missouri Valley, where capillary action drew groundwater to the surface. They lived in dome-shaped earth-lodge villages that housed hundreds rather than thousands. They were horticulturists and built fortifications only rarely. This sweeping retreat from hierarchies, elite dominance, and large-scale urbanization may have turned North America—along with Australia—into the world’s most egalitarian continent at the time.

The collective mindset that prevailed, reflecting broad-based and carefully balanced economies, also distinguished North America’s Indigenous peoples. The continental grasslands—the Great Plains—were teeming with tens of millions of buffalo. Huge herds blackened the flat plains to the horizon, pulling humans in. The Shoshones moved east from the Great Basin, the Blackfoot came from the northeast, and the Crows, Omahas, Poncas, and Kansas abandoned their villages and fields along the Missouri Valley. The Kiowas migrated south from the upper Yellowstone Valley and forged an alliance with the resident Apaches. Former farmers did not give up tilling, but all of them now hunted bison, surrounding them in large communal hunts and felling them with spears and arrows, chasing them into concealed corrals in riverbeds, or driving them over cliffs to their deaths. In the Black Hills, hunters stampeded bison herds, driving the panicked animals into a corridor marked by stones that channeled the beasts toward a buffalo jump, a steep sinkhole where the high fall did the killing.

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Filed under Australia, democracy, economics, labor, Latin America, migration, North America, religion

by Joel | 13 April 2023 · 7:01 am

The Asante Capital in 1817

From Britain at War with the Asante Nation, 1823–1900: “The White Man’s Grave” by Stephen Manning (Pen & Sword Books, 2021), Kindle pp. 40-42:

Osei Bonsu was correct in his assessment that the British were focused only on trade. Yet, with the parliamentary victory of the abolitionists this trade, as far as the British viewed it, would no longer be based on slavery. Of course, one of the primary drivers of Asante military expansion was the need to secure supplies of slaves. Indeed, the African Company formally recognised as early as 1809 that the Asante nation could not be expected to ‘acquiesce in the destruction of a trade [slavery] not inconsistent with their prejudices, their laws or their notions of morality and religion and by which alone they have been hitherto accustomed to acquire wealth …’. This contradiction of aims would result in further conflict throughout the century and see the African Company losing its role as the main British presence along the Gold Coast. However, this was in the future and in 1817 the major British concern was the urgent need to come to some sort of arrangement with the Asante nation to secure Britain’s immediate economic and political position.

The African Committee in London decided upon a direct course of action and ordered Governor John Hope Smith, who had replaced Colonel Torrance, to despatch a mission to the Asante capital of Kumasi to negotiate with the king for the establishment of a British Embassy at his court. Hope Smith selected four of the company’s officers for the task. Thomas Bowditch, a clerk, was to write a detailed account of the mission and became the lead negotiator for the company. The officers set out from Cape Coast Castle on 22 April 1817, along with a retinue of carriers. The journey was to take them nearly a month before they arrived in Kumasi on 19 May. En route they passed through Fante towns and villages that had been devasted by the Asante army until they reached the jungle belt and the condition of the path slowed their progress. At the town of Fomena, the first in Asante proper, the group met the local chief, who expressed his delight that he was able to greet a white man before he died for he was awaiting execution having offended Osei Bonsu in some way. The chief was, according to Bowditch, philosophical about his circumstances and, seated on a cloth, displayed dignity rather than shame whilst he calmly awaited his fate. The chief’s head duly arrived in Kumasi the day after the mission.

Kumasi grew from a tree-encircled crossroads of trading routes. Tree is kum in the local Twi language. The city itself was situated on a hill overlooking the Subin River and when Bowditch and his party pushed their way through the 5,000 warriors who had been sent by the king to greet their arrival they discovered a city of 27 major streets, the greatest of which was used for significant receptions and parades and was over 100m wide. There were named quarters, or abrono, and trades, such as goldsmiths or umbrella makers, occupied specific quarters. When the mission finally reached the palace, which was the largest building in the city, covering a total area of 5 acres, they were formally greeted by Osei Bonsu. Apart from being the royal residence, the palace also housed a forum in which the council of the nation would debate important matters. Bowditch wrote of the elaborately carved doors and windows and even the lavatories found in the palace and described the wealth he saw, in terms of gold ornaments and rich clothes. When his work was published in Britain it was met with scepticism for the reviewers could not comprehend that Africa could possess such a large and elaborate native city.

Bowditch and his colleagues remained in Kumasi for several months and although treated with respect, they were not given the freedom to explore the local area and at times they must have thought they were little more than prisoners. However, Osei Bonsu was keen to negotiate a treaty with the British and Bowditch was finally able to return to the coast with a treaty signed by the king. In it the king pledged himself to ‘countenance, promote and encourage’ trade between his subjects and Cape Coast Castle and allowed for a resident to remain in Kumasi. In return the officers in charge of the British forts would give ‘every protection in their power’ to such Asante people who might require it. This feature of the treaty, point seven of ten, was quickly tested and the British were found wanting.

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by Joel | 24 March 2023 · 5:00 am

Smear Campaign vs. Vlad the Impaler

From The Making of Eastern Europe: From Prehistory to Postcommunism, by Philip Longworth (Lume Books, 2020), Kindle pp. 308-310:

The nickname Dracul (‘the Dragon’) probably derives from his father’s membership of the Hungarian chivalric Order of the Dragon, although in Romanian it takes on the meaning of a devil, and Vlad was certainly to earn the name with his draconian behaviour. A member of the ruling house of Basarab, he had, like Skanderbeg, been a hostage of the Turks, then turned against them, serving with John Hunyadi, and he was related by blood to King Matthias. Becoming Hospodar (lord) of Wallachia in 1448, he was promptly ousted by a rival, but in 1456 he regained power and this time took better care to keep it.

He built up a personal army of retainers, executed a number of hostile boiars [nobles] and took harsh measures against anyone else who opposed his will. He also tried to promote commerce, established Bucharest as the country’s capital, and in 1459 responded positively to Pius II’s call for a Crusade against the Turks. He withheld the Sultan’s tribute, killed Ottoman emissaries sent to deal with him, and then, in the winter of 1461–2, carried out a devastating assault into Ottoman territory. In a night attack, he routed an Ottoman force that had driven him back across the Danube – an occasion marked by a great slaughter of Turks.

At this point Vlad’s luck began to change. The Turks supported a bid by his half-brother Radu the Handsome to replace him and the movement gained increasing support within Wallachia, partly because of party interests, not least because it promised peace. Then, late in 1462, when the reluctant crusader King Matthias at last reached the ‘Saxon’ city of Brasov in Transylvania at the head of his troops, Vlad went to meet him, expecting, as did the Pope himself, that they would launch a joint operation against the Turks. Instead, Matthias arrested Vlad, took him back to Buda and kept him imprisoned there for thirteen years.

Vlad’s diminishing support in Wallachia no doubt prompted Matthias to have second thoughts about the crusading action he had promised the Pope, though there was another consideration: in an attempt to enrich Wallachia, Vlad had tried to regain territories that had been lost and wrest control of the profitable oriental trade away from the ‘Saxon’ cities of Transylvania (which supported pretenders to his throne) and even attacked them. A new Turkish-backed regime in Wallachia promised to restore the old pattern of trade and, for his part, Matthias was anxious to reassure them, for Transylvania, and the prosperous Saxon cities in particular, constituted an important source of income to the Hungarian treasury. However, he now had to justify his actions to the Pope. This he did so by mounting a highly effective campaign of disinformation against Vlad, incidentally drawing our attention to a facet of humanist activity that is sometimes overlooked: the manufacture of propaganda. In fact the Dracula legend was largely the creation of humanist officials at Matthias’s court.

The motive was both strong and simple: Pope Pius had to be convinced that, so far from being a doughty Crusader, Vlad was an oppressor, a murderer, a sadist – a disgrace to the Christian cause, from whom he should at all costs distance himself. To this end Janos Vitez, who was to become Primate as well as Chancellor of Hungary, Janus Pannonius, later Bishop of Pecs, and other literary talents at the court of Matthias were set to work. They used the complaints made by the Saxon merchants and stories put about by Vlad’s enemies in Wallachia in their apparently successful attempts to convince Pius; and these stories were essentially true. Vlad had undoubtedly had many people impaled (it was a commonplace form of execution in the region); he had fired many villages (as part of a scorched earth policy in the war against the Turks) and put many Ottoman subjects to death (though Matthias’s own father had once slaughtered a thousand Turkish prisoners).

However, by carefully ignoring the reasons for his actions, and by inventing new tales (for example about his allegedly favourite pastime in prison: slowly picking off the limbs of live insects) they were able to create the impression that Vlad was a traitor, a capricious despot, a sadist and a psychopath. A Latin poem by Pannonius picturing Vlad as a tyrant gained wide currency, and in 1463, as part of a wider propaganda effort, the printing, in German, of the ‘Story of Prince Dracula’ was arranged. It proved highly popular and was subsequently republished many times with embellishments and in several languages. Ultimately it was to provide Bram Stoker with the inspiration to invent a modern, fictional, Dracula. Opinion manipulators of our own times would have had little new to teach a Renaissance humanist.

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by Joel | 19 March 2023 · 8:19 pm

Losing Your First Language: Ukrainian

From Face[t]s of First Language Loss, by Sandra G. Kouritzin (Routledge, 1999), pp. 154-155:

Er that I ferther in this tale pace,
Me thinketh it accordant to resoun
To telle you al the condicioun
Of eech of hem, so as it seemed me,
And whiche they were, and of what degree,
And eek in what array that they were inne:
(Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, General Prologue, lines 36-41)

Nadia was the first person to volunteer for this research project, completing her interviews before the call for subjects was published. A registered nurse, Nadia came to my home to collect urine samples when my husband and I purchased our life insurance. We talked a little bit about our respective professions, and, when I explained the subject of my research, Nadia became excited and said that she would love to participate, because her first language was Ukrainian. Nadia was, in essence, a pilot study. With her, I discussed not only the subject of language loss, but also the best ways to both ask questions and aid people in their struggles with narrating large sections of their lives.

Nadia was born in a small town in Manitoba into a unique linguistic situation, one which left her alone and often lonely. She and her family were Ukrainian-speaking Catholics in a town that was predominantly German and Mennonite. She therefore had to travel outside the town to go to church, and was isolated from many activities. She remembers some German teaching in her school, even though the linguistic norm was English. Nadia also remembers having several reserve First Nations’ schoolmates who spoke English as a second language, but she didn’t notice their cultural difference when she was very young, and they had largely dropped out of school by the time she was in high school.

Most of Nadia’s memories of speaking Ukrainian in childhood revolve around food and ceremonies. This was understandable, given that holidays and festivals were occasions for her family to travel and to visit with other members of their family and their church. As she also explained, “I jumped around and started talking about my culture and stuff. I see many languages associated to a culture, and so, also, when I did family things, that’s where Ukrainian was” (June 13th, 1995, p. 30). At the time of our interviews, Nadia was enrolled in Ukrainian lessons through her church, hoping to recapture enough of the language to participate in family conversations, and to surprise her parents on her next visit home.

Ukrainians in Canada were interned as enemy aliens (from Austria-Hungary) and put to hard labor during World War I.

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by Joel | 17 March 2023 · 9:59 am

Early Ottoman Rule in the Balkans

From The Making of Eastern Europe: From Prehistory to Postcommunism, by Philip Longworth (Lume Books, 2020), Kindle pp. 302-305:

There had been a good deal of peaceful interchange as well as fighting between Byzantium and the Ottomans in the decades preceding 1453; and not a little intermarriage. Mehmet’s own ancestors included Byzantine Christians. Besides he entertained considerable respect for some aspects of the Byzantine tradition; he was invited to think of himself as ‘Emperor of the Romans’, like the Byzantine Emperors of old, and came to believe that he could unite all Christendom under his rule. More immediately he used certain Byzantine institutions as models for the system he set up to run his Empire. Thus the Byzantine fief seems to have been the inspiration of the sipahi system; Byzantine offices, taxes and even ceremonials became bases for Ottoman administrative and court practices, and certain posts, particularly those involving foreign affairs, became almost a monopoly of Greeks. This is not to suggest, however, that much about the new regime was not alien and burdensome.

The Ottoman state was run by a system of slavery, even though the Sultan’s slaves constituted an administrative and military elite. Furthermore, the Turks took an irregular levy of children (devshirme) from their subject Christian population and made Muslims of them, even though they also trained them for their service and set them on ladders of opportunity which enabled them to reach the highest offices of state. Furthermore, Christians were made to feel their inferiority. They were forbidden to wear green or to paint their houses in bright colours, forbidden to ride horseback in the presence of Muslims, and restricted in the number and the height of their churches. On the other hand there was freedom of worship; non-Muslims were not obliged to do military service; and they were largely subject to their own justice within their own religious millets, of which by far the largest was the Orthodox, administered by the Patriarchate of Constantinople whose latest incumbent was invested in office by the Sultan himself. The Great Church was largely in captivity, but it retained most of its autonomy. The monasteries of Mount Athos were not disturbed, and the Turks did not distract the monk Gabriel of Rila from his life’s work, a vast compilation of the sayings of St John Chrysostomos.

The Ottoman Turks also breathed new life into decrepit Byzantine cities and above all into Constantinople which they called Istanbul. Christians, Muslims, Armenians and Jews were brought from all over the Empire and settled there. Hence the population which had shrunk to about 10,000 in the immediate aftermath of its fall increased by as much as tenfold within thirty years. Most came voluntarily recognising opportunity or responding to concessions, though some were forcibly resettled; and huge building and rebuilding projects were soon under way. Water supplies, sewage disposal, street-paving and street furniture were soon renewed or supplied for the first time; ruined structures were rebuilt, others restored and new palaces, fountains, public baths and hospitals erected. Also a great bazaar – for the Ottomans had long recognized the importance of commerce.

In the Balkan countryside Ottoman domination replaced uncertainty and periodic anarchy with an orderly system that did not at first always unduly disturb existing social relationships. Local lords who submitted to the sultan were generally left in possession of their estates in fief provided they served the Ottomans as loyal vassals. They were encouraged to convert to Islam and embrace Ottoman culture, of course, but pressures to do so tended to be applied gradually over a period of two or three generations, by which time many had gravitated naturally to the ways of the new elite. Lower down the scale peasants could gain privileges such as certain tax exemptions by serving as military auxiliaries or local police; most monasteries that had not earned the Sultan’s displeasure continued in the possession of most of their estates; and the populations of some regions, notably the heretical Bogomils of Bosnia, positively welcomed the Turks.

In two other respects the Ottoman system can be regarded as superior to some others in the Europe of the time. It was unequivocal about the ultimate ownership of property belonging to the state, eliminating powerful lordships, bases of individual power which could be exercised capriciously; and it did not permit the military class to become too numerous. Christian servicemen surplus to requirements were reduced in status and lost their privileges. This was not the case in Poland and Hungary, where, as we have seen, a swollen nobility and the virtually unrestricted power of lords were to be conducive to great harm. Furthermore the Turks provided security for the great majority of the Balkan population to live in tranquility in accordance with a familiar culture. By uprooting and changing Byzantine institutions, it has been said to have decapitated Byzantine high culture. On the other hand, as we have seen, Byzantine civilization had made some impression on the Turks themselves; and its cultural legacies, to both Eastern and Western Europe, were particularly rich.

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by Joel | 15 March 2023 · 9:05 am

Heyday of Heyduks, c. 1600

From The Making of Eastern Europe: From Prehistory to Postcommunism, by Philip Longworth (Lume Books, 2020), Kindle pp. 269-271:

This malaise was associated with the onset of the ‘Little Ice Age’, the resumption of war between the Habsburgs and the Turks (1593–1606), and a severe economic recession. At the same time there was a great welling-up of social discontents and political upheavals. The entire frontier zone from Ukraine to the Adriatic was affected by the troubles as well as Russia and the Ottoman Balkans; and there were reverberations in Poland and for the Habsburgs. The crisis was the confluence of many streams and was expressed in many forms, but one of its most frightening manifestations were the bands of undisciplined and ruthless soldiery who plagued both sides of the frontier in Hungary.

The Turks had long used a variety of paramilitary forces (armartolos, derbentsy, akinji, vojnuki, etc.) as auxiliary troops, frontier raiders, mountain-pass guards and the like; as we have seen, the Hapsburgs had followed suit; and the Cossacks constitute a parallel in Ukraine and southern Russia. Such troops usually received some pay and also rations or plots of land, but by no means always. There was an Ottoman category known as deli, young men noted for their dare-devilry who would take part in campaigns and sieges for no reward whatsoever, except the opportunity to share in any plundering. Another such type of predatory soldiery was known as haramia. These had an equivalent on the other side of the frontier in the unpaid heyduks and uskoks (venturini) attached to the ‘official’ groups of heyduks and uskoks employed by the Habsburgs to garrison frontier forts and stations, and the unregistered Cossacks of the Ukraine who were to play such a prominent role in the Khmelnytsky rising of 1648.

Evidence from a wide variety of sources suggests that the numbers of such freelance warriors increased sharply in the later sixteenth century, despite a general increase in the numbers employed not only by governments but in the private armies of noblemen, like the Wisniowieckis in Lithuania, the Bathorys in Transylvania or the Frankopans in Croatia.

This increase in the soldiery, both freelance and employed, and the tumults they promoted were linked to the endemic warfare of the frontier, which created both a demand for such troops and, by disrupting the economy of entire districts, a supply of them from among the ranks of the homeless and indigent. But the phenomenon was also related to the huge increase in the population of the Balkans and to the imposition of serfdom. The demographic explosion which doubled the population of Balkan cities also fed migration northwards and eastwards across the frontier, mostly, it seems, through the gap of Timisoara.

The subsequent economic difficulties and the onset of disorders no doubt increased the flow. In any case the numbers of heyduks called ‘Racz’ registered in Eastern Hungary (and there were units in which nearly two-thirds of the men bore that name) points to a sizeable migration northwards from the Balkans, for racz in Magyar (rat in Romanian) means ‘Serb’. Their names also indicate that, although most were or became linguistic Hungarians, some heyduks had originated in Slovakia (toth), Romania (vlach, olah) and Ukraine (kozak, rusnak) as well as in Hungary and the Balkans. And there were Hungarian, Romanian and Tatar names among the Zaporozh’e Cossacks, though most had migrated from Belorussia, Ukraine and Russia. Circumstances suggest that a proportion of these were peasants escaping serfdom, and this was also the case with the recently enserfed Szekels whose support for Michael ‘the Brave’ when he invaded Transylvania regained them their freedom as frontier servicemen.

As late as the 1580s heyduks are reported in groups of up to a few hundred, or, occasionally, of a thousand; but by the turn of the century no fewer than 8,000 unpaid heyduks were reported to be serving Michael ‘the Brave’, Prince of Wallachia, alone. The growth of the phenomenon is suggested by the extremity of their behaviour as well as increasing numbers. Compared with them, Elizabethan England’s problem with sturdy beggars pales into insignificance. In some areas heyduks claimed to be Calvinist, yet they would kill Calvinist priests without compunction; and the Transylvanian Saxons have left matter-of-fact, but eloquent testimony in their memoirs and diaries to the heartless bestiality of the heyduks.

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by Joel | 14 March 2023 · 6:28 am

Eastern Europe After Mohacz

From The Making of Eastern Europe: From Prehistory to Postcommunism, by Philip Longworth (Lume Books, 2020), Kindle pp. 250-252:

The political consequences of the battle of Mohacz were also considerable. Louis II had died childless; and the Habsburgs of Austria, long-sighted dynastic politicians and shrewd diplomatists, became the leading contenders for the thrones of both Hungary and Bohemia, and soon gained both. But in Hungary there was strong backing for a local candidate, John Zapolyai, and he, too, was crowned king. This political division weakened resistance to the Turks, who by the end of 1541 had occupied the southern and central parts of the country, including the capital Buda; and gained suzerainty over the east, which became a largely autonomous principality, Transylvania.

The death of Louis had ended one Eastern European dynasty. Two others failed to survive the sixteenth century. The last Jagiellonian King of Poland-Lithuania died in 1572; the last of Russia’s ancient Riurikid dynasty in 1591. In both instances political hiatus encouraged tumults, though, as we have seen, the long-term outcomes were quite dissimilar. While Russia returned to dynastic rule, Poland abandoned it. In this respect she came to resemble the smaller polities in the region, the Danubian Principalities, self-governing tributaries to the Turk, which also lacked dynastic rule: The instability of their domestic politics is suggested by the fact that, in the course of one century Wallachia had twenty-four, and Moldavia no fewer than forty, changes of ruling prince, or hospodar.

These religious and political changes were obvious to contemporaries. But there were other shifts, no less profound in their effects, which were much less noticeable at the time, or recognized only in retrospect.

Europe’s centre of economic gravity had been moving from the Mediterranean to the countries bordering on the North Atlantic; from the basin of the River Po to that of the Rhine (where it has remained); and from the emporia of Istanbul and Venice to that of Amsterdam. Furthermore, a surge in the population of Western Europe, and in particular of its cities, was stimulating a sharply increasing demand, and hence higher prices, for imported foodstuffs which Eastern Europe was able to supply. This was to have marked social as well as economic effects, especially on those regions with access to the Baltic, not least in encouraging the rise of serfdom.

At the same time the importation of silver from the Americas was promoting a sharp increase in the money supply and hence serious inflation. This was to throw the finely-tuned mechanisms of the Ottoman state out of kilter and prove a major factor in its subsequent decline. And there was one change perceived by very few, if at all, the indirect effects of which were felt by almost everyone. This was ‘the little ice age’, a slight but insidious drop in the average temperature beginning late in the sixteenth century. By restricting the latitude and height at which agriculture was viable this precipitated famines, population movements and the great disorders which were to overtake most of Eastern Europe at the turn of the century, turning the frontier lands especially into a crucible of violence.

And there was a plethora of other factors which intervened at various points with varying intensity to influence the course things took. Linguistic differences, for example, sometimes fed into religious and political struggles; and social classes sometimes gained or lost constitutional rights according to the religion they embraced at a particular moment. Low population density in Poland-Lithuania contributed to the enserfment of the peasant; yet high population density in the Ottoman Empire contributed to the disruption of that state. Sometimes the effects seem paradoxical. The Turkish presence, so often assumed to be a wholly negative influence, slowed down and even reversed the process of enserfment in Hungary for a time. The Baltic grain boom had helped to promoted serfdom, yet the end of the boom around the turn of the century served not to remove serfdom, but to entrench it. And though Protestantism is often associated with the origins of modern science Copernicus was a priest whom Polish Protestants rejected, while the patron of Tycho Brahe and Kepler was a Habsburg. The interactions of circumstances and catalysts that shaped Eastern Europe in the period from 1526 to 1648 far exceeded in complexity the most complicated transmutation process in any alchemists’ laboratory.

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by Joel | 13 March 2023 · 5:01 am

The Ramshackle Habsburg Empire

From The Making of Eastern Europe: From Prehistory to Postcommunism, by Philip Longworth (Lume Books, 2020), Kindle pp. 225-227:

Like the Hohenzollerns of Prussia, the Habsburgs had a variety of rights and powers in many different lands. They were Archdukes of Austria, hereditary Kings of Bohemia, traditional candidates to the elective throne of Hungary (though the Turks occupied much of it and Transylvania was an autonomous principality); and, besides holding a plethora of other titles, were Emperors of the Holy Roman Empire (again as hereditary candidates), a position which gave them little direct power, but a great deal of prestige and not a little patronage. The Habsburgs, then, governed in various ways at once – sometimes exerting direct authority backed up by force; more often abiding by precedents, negotiating, persuading, exerting influence through their powers to grant titles and make appointments.

Theirs was a ramshackle empire, which had expended much of its wealth and sustained much damage during the Thirty Years’ War; and it was still threatened by powerful enemies, notably Ottoman Turkey and France. Furthermore, although the Habsburgs had been the chief protagonist of the Catholic cause in the war, and although the peace sanctioned their imposing it on all their subjects, it was not practicable to do so in Hungary, where there were many Protestants; and the suppression of Protestantism elsewhere, as in Bohemia, tended to promote sullen resentment which might be exploited in the cause of rebellion. How, then, were these obstacles to Habsburg authority to be overcome? What glue could be found to bind these disparate peoples and territories into a cohesive body politic?

According to a leading authority the recipe called for the mutual support of the dynasty, the Counter-Reformation Church and a cosmopolitanized aristocracy, who formed a community of interest; and the use of religious mysteries, the mystique of kingship and the magic of the arts to hold people in thrall. But the military was also important.

The Habsburgs emerged from the war with a permanent standing army and thereafter strove to enlarge it, though as late as 1683 the establishment was only 36,000. Since this was a professional, disciplined, force which did not normally live off the land, it did not arouse the resentment of the population in the localities where it was stationed, as had formerly been the case. Indeed, in time, the army came to promote loyalty to the dynasty not only among those who served in it (the new permanent armies presented welcome new career opportunities to gentlemen and commoners alike), but among a wider public. The sight of neat ranks of men in attractive uniforms marching by to the invigorating sound of flutes and drums tended to arouse popular enthusiasm, and when the army won victories the dynasty gained prestige.

Nonetheless, as in Russia, the practice of religion and the institution of the Church were recognized as being of prime importance in legitimating the dynasty and promoting deference among its subjects. Both Ferdinand III and his successor Leopold I (1657–1705) were personally devout and, like Alexis of Russia, made public show of it. Leopold often made pilgrimages, visited monasteries three or four times a week and dispensed a great deal of charity to the needy. He also believed oaths, including those he himself swore, to be binding. Yet, like Alexis, insofar as he showed himself to be as pious as any prelate, he felt entitled to interfere in church affairs. Not only did he control the more important ecclesiastical appointments, order special prayers to be said and proclaim religious holidays by decree, he imposed taxes on the clergy and milked the church of funds, plate and valuables as the need arose. One can therefore understand the wry comment of the papal nuncio who wished the Emperor were not quite so pious.

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by Joel | 10 March 2023 · 9:08 am

Rough Road to Greek Nationhood

From The Making of Eastern Europe: From Prehistory to Postcommunism, by Philip Longworth (Lume Books, 2020), Kindle pp. 206-208:

It was difficult for Bulgarians to think in terms of liberation other than through the church, which was dominated by Greeks, so that Bulgarian national feeling emerged almost as much in reaction to the Greeks as to the Turks.

The Greeks themselves present a different case, for they included important mercantile and administrative classes. These elements formed a cultural community of sorts, but they were distanced from the common people, who had also built up a tradition of self-defence, especially in the mountain areas and some of the islands. The Greek elite was also widely dispersed geographically. Their trading network ramified throughout the Mediterranean, the Balkans and the Black Sea littoral, while the Phanariotes staffed much of the Ottoman diplomatic service and bureaucratic machine besides ruling the Romanian principalities (often corruptly, but sometimes in the spirit of enlightened despotism). The Greek elite constituted fertile ground both for conspiracy and manipulation by foreign powers.

The Greek diaspora extended to Paris, and beyond; and French agents had been active in the Greek world since the later 1790s. Revolutionary notions were to grip members of the merchant class (though not the more substantial of them), some Orthodox clergy (though few bishops), and even an occasional potentate in the Ottoman service. But it was on Russian, not French soil, that the Greek revolution got off the ground. In 1814 expatriate Greeks formed a friendly society (Philiki Etairia) in Odessa. Like others founded earlier in Paris and Vienna its aims were cultural; unlike them, however, it aimed to liberate ‘the motherland’.

In 1821 it mounted an attempt to do so, launching an invasion of the Danubian Principalities. But Vladimirescu’s followers provided none of the support they had hoped for, and the Turks soon mopped them up. The conspirators succeeded, however, in sparking an insurgency in the Peleponnese and some of the islands. Though the Russians withdrew their ambassador from Istanbul, and Metternich opined (quite rightly as it happened) that Greece was merely a geographical expression, the Powers supported neither side. Then the Turks executed the Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople, even though he had roundly denounced the rebellion – and the idealists of Europe rallied to the cause of Greek independence. The volunteers (including Byron), the money, and, not least the publicity which they supplied contributed greatly to the success of the cause. Albeit indirectly, they also helped to ensure that the emergent state of Greece would adopt a Western-type constitution highly unsuitable for a society that was largely traditional and innocent of Western values. Events were to demonstrate that although the seeds of Western democratic ideas were to germinate in Eastern Europe, unlike the rampant bean-stalk of nationalism, the plants that grew out of them would be weak and spindly.

Greece’s first head of state, Capodistrias, understood the problem. He was an authoritarian in the mould of the enlightened despots. He set out to build sound administrative and educational systems, to improve communications and the economy. He also favoured land reform. Anticipating Stolypin, he regarded a free and prosperous peasantry as the foundation of a stable society. Traditional interest groups, whom he held in contempt, and idealists starry-eyed with Western ways, all hated him. In 1831 he was assassinated. When the ensuing anarchy finally subsided, independent Greece found herself (thanks to an agreement between Russia, France, and Britain) with a sizeable Western loan, a Bavarian King [Otto] and a small Bavarian army.