Book Review
Europe In The Seventeenth Century, Second Edition, D.H. Pennington, Longman,
London, 1970
No question when I think of 17th century European history I am drawn immediately to think about the English bourgeois revolution of the mid-century. That event put paid to the notion that a ruler could rule by divine right and that through various twists and turns, not all of them historically progressive by any means, some rough semblance of democratic rule would work best. Work best then in tandem with an emerging capitalist order (of course the process stretched out for some two centuries but the shell was established then) as the means of creating a stable society.
Aside from kings and queens having to worry, worry to death, about their pretty little necks (ask Charles I and Louis XVI, among others) and having rough-hewn, warts and all, rulers like Oliver Cromwell enter the scene many other things were going on in Europe in the 17th century that would contribute as well to what we would recognize as a modern Europe. What those events were, and their importance, was why when I was first seriously looking at the English Revolution back in the late 1970s I picked up Professor Pennington’s nice little survey (well maybe not so little at six hundred plus pages). And a recent re-reading only confirms (with the obvious acknowledgement of a need for some updating given the immense increase in scholarship in this area since then) its worth as a primer.
Perhaps the most dramatic social change of the 17th century was the long term (very long term globally as it is still working its way through the whole planet) trend toward more efficient agriculture leading to the lessening need for farmer workers (and large farm families as well) freeing up a surplus population to head to the bright lights of the city (maybe) and availability to work in the newly emerging industries that were just beginning to be formed in a way that we would recognize. The old feudal lord-serf relations were beginning to become attenuated, very attenuated with this movement away from the land and its seemingly eternal fixed relationships. Starting with textiles and working through to almost every possible commodity it became easier to buy machine-made products, and usually, except in times of not infrequent economic duress, cheaper.
That little spurt into what we would now call the industrial revolution changed many other aspects of the European outlook as well. Science became a more pressing social concern as the need to understand the physical work and its laws became more pressing. Religion which drove conflicts of the previous century, while still important to the plebeian masses, was lessening its grip on a more urbanized population. And, of course with that change, without becoming enthralled with a “Whig” onward and upward progressive interpretation of history came a dramatic increase in more secular interest for the arts, education, thinking of new ways of governing beyond the old time divine right of kings theories, other more radical political ideas about the family and other social relationships, and the extremely important fact that the a “right to rebellion” if not in official dogma then in practice became a legitimate form of plebeian expression.
Needless to say, as with every century, wars, wars for possession, succession, or just plain hubris, highlighted by the Thirty Years War, get plenty of attention. And, at the governmental level, that way to resolve conflicts not unexpectedly takes up much of the book. But the real importance of Professor Pennington’s survey is that it gives the “losers” in that century, places like Spain, Portugal, Sweden and Denmark their “fifteen minutes of fame,” information that when I first read the book I was not award of since many presentations, including general surveys, are front-loaded toward looking at the “winners” in various periods. England and France get plenty of attention, especially at the end of the book (and the end of the century setting up the big rivalries of the next couple of centuries. I will admit though that trying to keep up with the various partitions, dissections, intersections, and the like would drive me mad-if I was a cartographer. If your grasp of 17th century European history could use a little brushing up this survey is just fine. Then you can use the extensive bibliography and end notes (over one hundred pages between them) and move on to get the inside story of places, people and events that interest you.
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