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History 321: State and Society in Early Modern Europe: The Thirty Years War

History 321: State and Society in Early Modern Europe: The Thirty Years War. Question. How destructive was the Thirty Years War?. Interpretations. the “all-destructive fury” The Lamentations of Germany (1638) Friedrich Schiller, 1790s

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History 321: State and Society in Early Modern Europe: The Thirty Years War

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  1. History 321: State and Society in Early Modern Europe:The Thirty Years War

  2. Question • How destructive was the Thirty Years War?

  3. Interpretations • the “all-destructive fury” • The Lamentations of Germany (1638) • Friedrich Schiller, 1790s • Gustav Freytag, Bilderaus der deutschenVergangenheit, 5 vols. (1859-1867) = Pictures from the German Past • boundless, chaotic violence • Germans as innocent victims of brutal foreign aggressors • hope for a new Germany

  4. Interpretations • the “early decline school” (vs. the “disastrous war school”) • S. G. Steinberg, The Thirty Years War and the Conflict for European Hegemony (1967) • claims, but little evidence

  5. Reasons for debate • “The extensive operations and rapid reversals of fortune fostered a climate of uncertainty” (p. 783) • “shifts in theatres” (p. 785) • peasant revolts • crop failures • disease • depopulation / shift in population • imprecise statistical data

  6. Demographic impact • Steinberg: population increase • Günther Franz: decline by 40% • “Even a 15 per cent decline would make the Thirty Years War the most destructive conflict in European history” (p. 787). • Depopulation varied by region. Statistics on p. 788. • “The post-war demographic recovery flowed from a rising birth rate and a fall in mortality” (p. 795).

  7. What were the causes of death? • violence: soldiers, not civilians, the main victims • “Disease proved more potent than muskets, swords and cannon” (p. 790). • ratio for soldiers killed in action to soldiers killed by disease (p. 791) • bubonic plague • migration, troop movements • “very likely that many of the people who died in the Empire between 1618 and 1648 would have had their lives cut short even without the war” (p. 793)

  8. Economic Impact • trade and industry • regional variations • “overwhelmingly negative” impact of the War • drainage project in the Archbishopric of Salzburg, 1625-1644 • agriculture • consolidation of farms • Increasing value of labour

  9. Economic Impact • economic situation before the War • Kipper and Wipper hyperinflation (1622) • coin debasement after 1618 • private consortium (1622) • 1 silver mark = 19 fl. (1618), 79 fl., 110 fl. • fall of revenue in real terms, price increases • 1623: use of imperial institutions to end crisis

  10. Economic Impact • indebtedness • in evidence before 1618 • hyperinflation • imprudent investments in conspicuous consumption • “shrinking tax base” (p. 803) • Reichstag Recess, 1654 (p. 804) • uneven economic recovery • animal husbandry • labour and capital shortages • capital- and time-intensive industries • viticulture

  11. Impact on the territorial state • decline of Estates • centralization of princely power • territorial changes • threat to local government • change of “the ideal of the state from the guardian of the established order to promoter of the common good” (p. 811)

  12. Cultural impact • destruction / removal of cultural treasures • demise of some Protestant universities • emigration of artists

  13. Cultural impact • artistic developments • music: Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672) • poetry: Martin Opitz (1597-1639) • Johann Rist (1607-1667) • Johann von Grimmelshausen (1622-1676) • Simplicissimus (1668)

  14. Jacques Callot, Miseries of War (1633)

  15. Sourcebook, docs. 79-90, 145-151 • What do the documents tell us about the Thirty Years War and the way in which contemporaries experienced it? Can we use them to show that “absolute destruction” was a “myth” (Wilson, Europe’s Tragedy, p. 779)? • Do you think the accounts of contemporaries are reliable? • How do the documents relate to the argument about the religious nature of the War? • Identify two passages that you find particularly revealing about the violence of the War and / or the experience of living through the War. Why did you choose these passages?

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