Early Modern Era

1. Chapter 16 Strayer

2. Chapter Overview
 The Globalization of Christianity
 Persistence and Change in Afro-Asian
Cultural Traditions
 A New Way of Thinking: The Birth of
Modern Science
 Reflections: Cultural Borrowing and Its
Hazards

3. Chapter Overview
 The current evolution vs. “intelligent design”
debate has its roots in the early modern
period.
 Christianity achieved a global presence for the first
time
 the Scientific Revolution fostered a different
approach to the world
 There continues to be tension between religion and
science in the Western world

4. Chapter Overview
 The early modern period was a time of cultural
transformation.
 both Christianity and scientific thought connected
distant peoples
 Scientific Revolution also caused new cultural
encounter, between science and religion
o science was a new worldview, almost a new religion
for some
 science became part of the definition of global
modernity
 Europeans were central players, but they did
not act alone.

5. The Globalization of
Christianity
 In 1500, Christianity was mostly
limited to Europe.
 serious divisions within Christianity
(Roman Catholic vs. Eastern
Orthodox)
 on the defensive against Islam
o loss of the Holy Land by 1300
o fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman in
1453
o Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1529

6. The Globalization of Christianity
Western Christendom
Fragmented: The
Protestant Reformation
 Protestant Reformation
began in 1517
 Luther’s protest was more
deeply grounded in
theological
difference

7. The Globalization of Christianity
 Luther’s ideas provoked a massive
schism in Catholic Christendom
 fed on political, economic, and social tension, not
just religious differences
 some monarchs used Luther to justify
independence from the papacy
 gave a new religious legitimacy to the middle
class
 commoners were attracted to the new religious
ideas as a tool for protest against the whole
social order

8.  Henry VIII sets up the Anglican
church
 Calvinism: The idea of
Predestination which eventually
makes its way to the New
World
The Globalization of
Christianity

9. The Globalization of Christianity
 Catholic Reformation is launched to counter
Luther’s attacks
 1562–1598: French Wars of Religion
(Catholics vs. Huguenots)
 August 24, 1572: St. Bartholomew’s Day
Massacre: massacre of thousands of
Huguenots in Paris
 Edict of Nantes issued by Henry IV in 1598
granted considerable religious toleration to
Protestants

11. Questions
 In what ways did the Protestant Reformation
transform European society, culture, and
politics?

12. Conversion and Adaptation in
Spanish America
 Process of population collapse, conquest, and
resettlement made Native Americans receptive to the
conquering religion
 vast majority were baptized by 1700
 Europeans claimed exclusive religious truth, tried to
destroy traditional religions instead of
accommodating them
 occasional campaigns of destruction against the old
religions
 some overt resistance movements
○ e.g., Taki Onqoy (“dancing sickness”) in central Peru (1560s)
○ blending of two religious traditions was more common


13. An Asian Comparison: China and
the Jesuits (the Society of Jesus [Jesuits])
 Christianity reached China in the powerful,
prosperous Ming and Qing dynasties
 called for a different missionary strategy;
needed government permission for operation
 Jesuits especially targeted the official Chinese
elite, were respectful of Chinese culture, tried
to accommodate it

14. An Asian Comparison: China
and the Jesuits
 Jesuits were appreciated for mathematical,
astronomical, technological, and
cartographical skills
 missionary efforts gained 200,000–300,000
converts in 250 years
 early eighteenth century: papacy and other
missionary orders opposed Jesuit
accommodation policy
 was regarded as an affront to Chinese culture and
the emperor’s authority

15. Persistence and Change in
Afro-Asian Cultural Traditions
 African religious elements
accompanied slaves to the Americas
 development of Africanized forms of Christianity
in the Americas, with divination, dream
interpretation, visions, spirit possession
 persistence of syncretic religions (Vodou,
Santeria, Candomble, Macumba)

16. Questions
 How was European imperial expansion
related to the spread of Christianity?
 In what ways was European Christianity
assimilated into the Native American
cultures of Spanish America?
 Why were missionary efforts to spread
Christianity so much less successful in
China than in Spanish America?

17. Expansion and Renewal in the
Islamic World
 continued spread of Islam depended not on
conquest but on wandering holy men, scholars,
and traders
 offered connections to the wider, prosperous world of
Islam
 the syncretism of Islamization was increasingly
offensive to orthodox Muslims
 helped provoke movements of religious renewal in the
eighteenth century
 series of jihads in West Africa (eighteenth/early
nineteenth centuries) attacked corrupt Islamic practices
 growing tension between localized and “pure” Islam

18. Expansion and Renewal in the Islamic
World
 the most well-known Islamic renewal movement
of the period was Wahhabism
 founder Abd al-Wahhab (1703–1792) was a theologian
 aimed to restore strict adherence to the sharia (Islamic
law)
 movement developed a political element when
Abd al-Wahhab allied with Muhammad Ibn Saud;
led to creation of a state
 the state was “purified”
○ women were expected to subject themselves to husbands
○ tobacco, hashish, and musical instruments were banned
○ reform movements persisted and became associated with
resisting Western cultural intrusion

19. Questions
 What accounts for the continued spread
of Islam in the early modern era?
 What accounts for the emergence of
reform and renewal movements within
the Islamic world?

20. China: New Directions in an Old Tradition
 Chinese and Indian cultural/religious change
wasn’t as dramatic as what occurred in
Europe
 Confucian and Hindu cultures didn’t spread widely
in early modern period
 Ming and Qing dynasty China still operated
within a Confucian framework
 addition of Buddhist and Daoist thought led to
creation of Neo-Confucianism
 both dynasties embraced the Confucian tradition

21. China: New Directions in an Old Tradition
 Considerable amount of debate and new thinking in
China
 Wang Yangmin (1472–1529): anyone can achieve a
virtuous life by introspection, without Confucian education
 Chinese Buddhists also tried to make religion more
accessible to commoners
 similarity to Martin Luther’s argument that individuals could
seek salvation without help from a priestly hierarchy
 kaozheng (“research based on evidence”) was a new
direction in Chinese elite culture
○ emphasized need for analysis,
○ led to new works on agriculture, medicine, etc.
○ included critical analysis of ancient historical documents

22. India: Bridging the Hindu/Muslim Divide
 Several movements brought Hindus and
Muslims together in new forms of religious
expression
 Bhakti movement was especially important
 devotional Hinduism
○ appealed especially to women
○ often set aside caste distinctions
○ much common ground with Sufism, helped to blur the
line between Islam and Hinduism in India

23. India: Bridging the
Hindu/Muslim Divide
 Growth of Sikhism, a religion that blended Islam
and Hinduism
 founder Guru Nanak (1469–1539) had been part of the
Bhakti movement; came to believe that Islam and
Hinduism were one
 Nanak and his successors set aside caste distinctions
and proclaimed essential equality of men and women
 gradually developed as a new religion of the Punjab
○ developed a Sikh holy book, the Guru Granth (teacher
book)
 evolved into a militant community in response to
hostility

25. The Scientific Revolution
 The Scientific Revolution was an intellectual and
cultural transformation that occurred between the
mid-sixteenth century and the early eighteenth
century.
 was based on careful observations, controlled
experiments, and formulation of general laws to
explain the world
 Scientific Revolution was vastly significant
 challenged the teachings and authority of the Church
 challenged ancient social hierarchies and political systems
 also used to legitimize racial and gender inequality
 by the twentieth century, science had become the chief
symbol of modernity around the world

26. The Question of Origins: Why
Europe?
 the Islamic world was the most scientifically
advanced realm in period 800–1400
 China’s technological accomplishments and
economic growth were unmatched for
several centuries after the millennium
 but European conditions were uniquely
favorable for the rise of science
 evolution of a legal system that guaranteed some
independence for a variety of institutions by
twelfth/thirteenth centuries

27. The Question of Origins: Why Europe?
 in the Islamic world, science remained mostly
outside of the system of higher education
 Chinese authorities did not permit independent
institutions of higher learning
 Chinese education focused on preparing for civil service
exams
 Western Europe could draw on the knowledge of
other cultures
 Arab texts were important in the development of
European science between 1000 and 1500
 sixteenth–eighteenth centuries: Europeans were
at the center of a massive new information
exchange

28. Science as Cultural Revolution
 Dominant educated-European view of the world
before the Scientific Revolution:
 derived from Aristotle and Ptolemy
 initial breakthrough was by Nicolaus Copernicus
 On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres (1543)
 promoted the view that the earth and the planets
revolved around the sun
 other scientists built on Copernicus’s insight
 Johannes Kepler demonstrated elliptical orbits of the
planets
 Galileo Galilei developed an improved telescope
○ questioned the perfection of heavenly bodies
○ discovered the moons of Jupiter and new stars

29. Science as Cultural Revolution
 Sir Isaac Newton was the apogee of the Scientific
Revolution
 formulated laws of motion and mechanics
 central concept: universal gravitation
 By Newton’s death, educated Europeans had a
fundamentally different view of the physical universe
 knowledge of the universe can be obtained through reason
 Catholic Church strenuously opposed much of this
thinking
 burning of Giordano Bruno in 1600 for proclaiming an infinite
universe
 Galileo was forced to renounce his belief that the earth moved
around an orbit and rotated on its axis
 but no early scientists rejected Christianity

30. Science and Enlightenment
 The Scientific Revolution gradually reached a wider
European audience
 Scientific approach to knowledge was applied to
human affairs
 Adam Smith (1723–1790) formulated economic laws
 people believed that scientific development would bring
“enlightenment” to humankind
 Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) defined Enlightenment
as a “daring to know”
 Enlightenment thinkers believed that knowledge
could transform human society
 attacked arbitrary government, divine right, and aristocratic
privilege
 many writers advocated education for women

31. Science and Enlightenment
 Much Enlightenment thought attacked established
religion
 many thinkers were deists—belief in a remote deity who
created the world but doesn’t intervene
 some were pantheists—equated God and nature
 Enlightenment thought was influenced by growing
global awareness
 Central theme of Enlightenment: the idea of progress
 Some thinkers reacted against too much reliance on
human reason
 Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) argued for
immersion in nature rather than book learning
 the Romantic movement appealed to emotion and
imagination

32. Looking Ahead: Science in
the Nineteenth Century
 Modern science was cumulative and self-critical
 In the nineteenth century, science was applied to
new sorts of inquiry; in some ways, it undermined
Enlightenment assumptions
 Charles Darwin (1809–1882) argued that all of life
was in flux
 Karl Marx (1818–1883) presented human history
as a process of change and struggle
 Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) cast doubt on
human rationality

33. European Science beyond the
West
 Science became the most widely desired
product of European culture
 Chinese had selective interest in Jesuits’
teaching
 European science had substantial impact on the
Chinese kaozheng movement

34. European Science beyond the
West
 Japan kept up some European contact via
trade with the Dutch
 import of Western books allowed, starting in 1720
 a small group of Japanese scholars was interested
in Western texts, anatomical studies in particular
 Ottoman Empire chose not to translate major
European scientific works
 Ottoman scholars were only interested in ideas of
practical utility (e.g., maps, calendars)

35. Reflections: Cultural
Borrowing and Its Hazards
 Ideas shape peoples’ mental or cultural worlds
and influence behavior.
 The development of early modern ideas took
place in an environment of great cultural
borrowing.
 borrowing sometimes caused serious conflict
 foreign ideas and practices were often
“domesticated”

36. Questions
1. Why did the Scientific Revolution occur in Europe
instead of China or the Muslim World?
2. What was “revolutionary” about the Scientific
Revolution?
3. In what ways did the Enlightenment challenge
older patterns of European thinking?
4. How did 19th century developments in the
sciences challenge faith during the
Enlightenment?
5. In what ways was European science received in
the major civilizations of Asia in the Early Modern
era?