5.4. Late Middle Ages (XVI - beginning of the XVII centuries.)

Great geographical discoveries. The pace of economic development of European countries even more increase in the last stage of the existence of medieval society in the XV - early XVII centuries. Capitalist relations are emerging and actively developing. This was largely due to the great geographical discoveries. Their immediate cause was the search by Europeans for new sea routes to China and India, about which (especially about India) spread fame as a country of countless treasures and with which trade was hampered because of the Arab, Mongol-Tatar and Turkish conquests. Great geographical discoveries were made possible thanks to advances in navigation and shipbuilding. So, the Europeans learned to build caravels - high - speed vessels capable of sailing against the wind. The accumulation of geographical knowledge was also important, especially in the field of cartography. In addition, society has already accepted the idea of ​​the sphericity of the Earth, and, going to the West, seafarers were looking for a way to the eastern countries.

One of the first expeditions to India was organized by the Portuguese sailors who tried to reach it, bending around Africa. In 1487 they opened the Cape of Good Hope - the southernmost point of the African continent. At the same time, the Italian Christopher Columbus (1451-1506), who managed to equip four expeditions with the money of the Spanish court, was also looking for a path to India. The Spanish royal couple - Ferdinand and Isabella - succumbed to his arguments and promised him huge profits from the newly discovered lands. Already during the first expedition in October 1492, Columbus discovered the New World, then named America by the name of Amerigo Vespucci (1454-1512), who participated in expeditions to South America in 1499-1504. It was he who first described the new lands and for the first time suggested that this is a new part of the world that is not yet known to Europeans.

For the first time an expedition of Portuguese led by Vasco da Gama (1469-1524) in 1498 was laid on the sea route to real India. The first round-the-world trip was made in 1519-1521, headed by the Portuguese Magellan (1480-1521). Of the 256 people of the Magellan team, only 18 survived, while Magellan himself died in a fight with the natives. Many expeditions of that time ended so sadly.

In the second half of the XVI-XVII centuries. the British, the Dutch and the French took the path of colonial conquest. By the middle of the XVII century. Europeans discovered Australia and New Zealand.

As a result of the great geographical discoveries, colonial empires began to take shape, and from the newly discovered lands to Europe - the Old World - treasures, gold and silver flow. The consequence of this was the increase in prices, especially for agricultural products. This process, which to some extent took place in all the countries of Western Europe, received the name of the price revolution in the historical literature . It contributed to the growth of monetary wealth from merchants, entrepreneurs, speculators and served as one of the sources of the initial accumulation of capital.

Trade. Another major consequence of the Great Geographical Discoveries was the movement of world trade routes: the monopoly of Venetian merchants on caravan trade with the East in Southern Europe was broken; The Portuguese began to sell Indian goods several times cheaper than the Venetian merchants.

The countries actively engaged in intermediary trade - England and the Netherlands are gaining strength. Mediating was very unreliable and dangerous, but very profitable: for example, if one of the three ships sent to India returned home, the expedition was considered successful and the profits of traders often reached 1000%. Thus, trade was the most important source for the formation of large private capital.

The quantitative growth of trade contributed to the emergence of new forms in which trade was organized. In the XVI century. For the first time in the history of mankind, stock exchanges arise whose main purpose and purpose were to use price fluctuations over time. First, for the conclusion of wholesale trade transactions merchants gathered in the squares. Then, in the major trading cities - Antwerp, Lyon, Toulouse, Rouen, London, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Lübeck, Leipzig and others - special stock exchange buildings were built. Thanks to the development of trade at this time there is a much stronger than before, the connection between parts of the planet. And for the first time in history, the foundations of the world market are beginning to be laid.

Agriculture. The process of primitive accumulation of capital was also taking place in the sphere of agriculture, which still serves as the basis of the economy of Western European society. In the late Middle Ages, the specialization of agricultural areas, which was based mainly on various natural conditions, increased significantly. There is an intensive drainage of the marshes, and, transforming nature, people transformed themselves. The area of ​​crops, gross gathering of grain, increased productivity everywhere. This progress was largely based on the positive evolution of agrotechnics and agriculture. So, although all the main agricultural tools remained the same (plow, harrow, scythe and sickle), they began to be made of the best metal, fertilizers were widely used, many fields and grass sowing were introduced into agricultural use. Cattle breeding was also successfully developed, cattle breeds were improved and its stabling was used. Socioeconomic relations in the field of agriculture were also changing rapidly: in England, France, and the Netherlands almost all the peasants were already personally free. The most important innovation of this period was the extensive development of rental relations. Landowners more and more willingly handed over the land to the peasants, since economically it was more profitable than the organization of their own landowner economy. During the late Middle Ages, rent existed in two forms: as feudal and capitalist. In the case of a feudal lease, the landowner gave the peasant some piece of land, as a rule, not very large, and if necessary could supply him with seeds, cattle, implements, and the peasant gave part of the crop for it. The essence of the capitalist lease was somewhat different: the owner of the land received a cash rent from the tenant, the tenant himself was a farmer, his production was oriented to the market and the size of production was considerable. An important feature of the capitalist lease was the use of wage labor. During this period, farming spread most rapidly in England, Northern France and the Netherlands.

Industrial production. A certain progress was observed in the industry. Machinery and technology have been improved in industries such as metallurgy: blast furnaces, drawing and rolling mechanisms are beginning to be used, and steel production is expanding significantly. Drainage pumps and lifts were used throughout the mining industry to increase the productivity of miners. In the cloth making and weaving, the one invented at the end of the 15th century was actively used. self-spinning machine performing two operations at once - twisting and winding the thread. The most important processes that took place at that time in the field of socio-economic relations in industry were reduced to the ruin of part of the artisans and their transformation into wage-workers in manufactories. Other classes of capitalist society — capitalists — are emerging and gaining momentum .

Politics. In the field of politics XV-XVII centuries. also brought a lot of new. Statehood and state structures are noticeably strengthened. The line of political evolution common for most European countries was to strengthen the central authority, to strengthen state intervention in the life of society.

The foundations of new political ideas in Europe were laid by the Italian Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527), who held the state post of secretary in the Republic of Florence, the author of the famous book “The Sovereign”. Machiavelli clearly distinguished between private and political morality, considering that there is nothing in common between them. For Machiavelli, the moral content of politics is determined by state expediency: the good of the people is the highest law, he repeated after the ancients. Machiavelli was a fatalist. Every nation, he believed, has its own destiny, its purpose, which it is impossible to avoid or change. The genius of political leaders and the purity of public morals can only delay, delay the moment of the fall of the state, if it is predetermined. Machiavelli argued that all means leading to the achievement of the public good are justified by this goal. On the whole, Machiavelli's influence on European political thought was certainly strong, but far from exclusive.

Reformation of the church. Apparently, the ideas of Renaissance and Reformation - the ideas of toleration and tolerance ¹ had an even stronger impact on the mentality of the Europeans. In this respect, the Netherlands and England were the leaders, whose peculiarity of public thinking was the awareness of the uniqueness of each person, the value of human life, freedom and dignity. In the middle of the XVI century. The Reformation movement split the unity of Catholic Europe. In countries where Protestant ideas were spread, church reforms were carried out, monasteries were closed, church holidays were canceled, and secularization of monastic lands was partially carried out. Dad lost his global power in the ideological realm. The position of the Jesuits weakened, and the Catholics in a number of countries began to be subject to a special tax.

Thus, in the late Middle Ages, a new world view based on humanism was formed in Europe . Now the specific person, and not the church, was placed in the center of the world. Humanists sharply opposed the traditional medieval ideology, denying the need for complete subjection to the soul and mind of religion. A person is more and more interested in the world around him, he is happy and is trying to improve it.

In this period, inequality in the levels of economic and political development of individual countries is more pronounced. The Netherlands, England and France are developing at a faster pace. Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany are lagging behind. However, the most important processes in the development of the countries of Europe are still common to all countries, and the trends towards unity are intensifying.

Development of science. European science is developing along the same course, having so strongly influenced not only European civilization, but also all of humanity.

In the XVI-XVII centuries. in the development of natural science there are significant changes associated with the general cultural progress of society, the development of human consciousness and the growth of material production. Great geographical discoveries contributed to this enormously, giving a lot of new facts on geography, geology, botany, zoology, astronomy. The main progress in the field of natural sciences in this period went along the line of generalization and understanding of the accumulated information. Thus, the German Agricola ¹ (1494-1555) collected and systematized information about ores and minerals and described mining techniques. Swiss Conrad Gesner (1516-1565) compiled the fundamental work "The History of Animals". The first multivolume plant classifications in European history appeared, the first botanical gardens were laid in Europe. Famous Swiss doctor FA Paracelsus (1493-1541), the founder of homeopathy, studied the nature of the human body, the causes of diseases, methods of their treatment. Vesalius (1514-1564), born in Brussels, who studied in France and Italy, the author of the work “On the Structure of the Human Body”, laid the foundations of modern anatomy, and already in the XVII century. Vesalia ideas were recognized in all European countries. English scientist William Garvey (1578-1657) discovered the blood circulation in humans. The Englishman Francis Bacon (1564-1626) played a major role in the development of natural science methods, arguing that true knowledge should be based on experience.

In the field of physics can be called a number of great names. This is Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). A brilliant scientist, he drafted technical designs, far ahead of his time, drawings of mechanisms, machine tools, apparatus, including the design of a flying machine. The Italian Evangelista Torricelli (1608-1647) dealt with the problems of hydrodynamics, studied atmospheric pressure, created a mercury barometer. French scientist Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) discovered the law on the transfer of pressure in liquids and gases.

The Italian Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), who actively studied kinematics, dynamics, resistance of materials, acoustics, hydrostatics, made a major contribution to the development of physics. However, he became even more famous as an astronomer; He first constructed a telescope and for the first time in the history of mankind saw an enormous number of stars invisible to the naked eye, mountains on the surface of the moon, spots on the sun. His predecessor was the Polish scientist Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543), the author of the famous work "On the conversion of the celestial spheres", in which he argued that the Earth is not a fixed center of the world, but rotates with other planets around the Sun. The views of Copernicus were developed by the German astronomer Johann Kepler (1571-1630), who managed to formulate the laws of the motion of the planets. These ideas were also shared by Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), who asserted that the world is infinite and that the Sun is only one of an infinite number of stars that, like the Sun, have planets similar to the Earth.

Mathematics is rapidly developing. The Italian Gerolamo Kardano (1501-1576) finds a way to solve equations of the third degree. Invented and in 1614 published the first tables of logarithms. By the middle of the XVII century. special characters are used in general for recording algebraic actions; signs — additions, exponentiation, extraction of root, equality, brackets, etc. The famous French mathematician François Viet (1540-1603) proposed to use letter designations not only for unknown, but also known values , which made it possible to set and solve algebraic problems in a general form. Mathematical symbolism was improved by René Descartes (1596-1650), who created analytical geometry. The Frenchman Pierre Fermat (1601-1665) successfully developed the problem of calculating infinitely small quantities.

National achievements quickly became the property of all European scientific thought. By the end of the late Middle Ages, the organization of science and scientific research was noticeably changing in Europe. Created circles of scientists, jointly discussing experiments, methods, objectives, results. Based on scientific circles in the middle of the XVII century. national academies of sciences are being formed - the first of them appeared in England and France.

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The Middle Ages epoch lasted for 1,200 years, during which the feudal system prevailed in Europe, large feudal land tenure and small peasant land tenure prevailed, and the cities liberated from the power of the feudal lords and became the center of crafts and trade were widely developed.

In the XI-XV centuries. instead of feudal fragmentation in Europe there is a process of formation of centralized states - England, France, Portugal, Spain, Holland, etc. Where there are government bodies - the Cortes (Spain), the parliament (England), the General States (France).

The strengthening of centralized power contributed to a more successful development of the economy, science, culture, the emergence of a new form of organization of production - manufactory. In Europe, capitalist relations are conceived and established, to which the Great Geographical Discoveries contributed in no small measure.

In the Middle Ages, the formation of Western European civilization began, developing with greater dynamism than all previous civilizations, which was determined by a number of historical factors (the heritage of Roman material and spiritual culture, the existence of empires of Europe of Charlemagne and Otto I, which united many tribes and countries, the influence of Christianity as a single for all religion, the role of corporation, permeating all spheres of social structure).

In the late Middle Ages, the most important idea of ​​the West is shaped: an active attitude to life, the desire to learn about the world and the conviction that it can be known with the help of reason, the desire to transform the world in the interests of man.

Questions for self-test

1. 1. What are the main economic, political, ideological characteristics of the development of Western European society in the Middle Ages?

2. 2. What stages can be distinguished in the development of Western Europe in the Middle Ages? Name the country leaders of each stage.

3. 3. What is the essence of the idea of ​​the West? When is it issued?

4. 4. When does the ethnic, economic, political, religious, cultural community of Western Europe begin to form?

5. 5. What was the basis of the unity of Western European society in the Middle Ages?

6. 6. When did the revolution begin in natural science? What were its causes and consequences? How is the organization of Western European science changing in the late Middle Ages?