The Age of Religious Wars, 1559-1715 By Richard S. Dunn

Part of the Norton History of Modern Europe series, this is a good introductory history of a fairly turbulent period written in 1970. I’ll note that the series was apparently reorganized later, as there is a 1979 version of the book that runs to 1715 instead of 1689.

The book starts with the end of international conflict, and runs through the internal crises that beset most of Europe in the later sixteenth century. In so doing, it lays some groundwork that would have helped me with parts of Braudel’s Mediterranean in the Age of Philip II. It spends a fair amount of time showing the evolution of political structure, with the rise of absolutism in France, the failure of absolutism in Spain, the rise of constitutional government in England, to the dissolution of central power in much of Central Europe and Russia.

Despite the title, there’s not a lot of warfare here. Everything from the Hugenots to the Glorious Revolution is discussed, and gives a fairly solid understanding of why things happened for such a small volume. There is a good chapter on the limitations of pre-modern production, and how it limited the economy, and the end of the book gives a whirlwind tour of the trends in art and evolution of the sciences.

In all, if this is a period where you don’t have a lot of background knowledge (and it was never a popular period in my classes), this is an excellent and clear place to start. The Age of Religious Wars, 1559-1715 A really sold textbook on early modern Europe, covering every aspect of social, economic and military history, with a refreshingly broadminded take on various competing schools of thought. I purchased this one back in my schooldays (the 1980s!) and have re-read it for research purposes for my next novel. It's aged very well, and contains quite a few corking one liners, my favourite being: There is no way of reasoning with people who equate genius with book learning or blue blood. Richard S. Dunn An interesting re-read, having been required background reading in college. A very accessible primer on some of the dynamics shaping history and culture in early modern Europe, with particular focus on confessional conflicts and their political ramifications. With this excellent book, Richard Dunn demystifies a complex and colorful era.

Writing with beautiful clarity on politics, economics, society, intellectual life and culture, Dunn covers all parts of Europe. He addresses big questions with sound judgments, on topics ranging from economics â€" the alleged connection between Protestantism and capitalism; and how English commerce benefited from mercantilist policies â€" to culture: the meaning of the Baroque, and the secularization of art.

In international relations, Dunn shows that the brutal Thirty Years’ War which devastated Germany finally resulted only in restoration of the previously established principle of territorial churches, either Catholic or Protestant. Across Europe, he observes that those leaders who practiced moderation rather than intolerant violence, namely Henry IV and Elizabeth I, came out best from the religious upheavals.

Dunn punctuates his political narrative with crisp biographies of key people and telling side-remarks about national character. Castilians (Spaniards), for example, “valued business well below fighting and praying”, and developed no significant industries. In Russia,

Tsars, nobles, priests and peasants all accepted physical brutality â€" flogging and torture â€" as [a] staple feature of society.

Dunn avers that Peter the Great had more confidence to deal with the West “than most of his countrymen have had, then or since.”

The reader will enjoy Dunn’s accessible language and slightly irreverent humor, as when he compares Rubens’ “Adoration of the Magi” to the crowd at Grand Central Station. King James I, he says, bore a large tongue, rolling eyes, and a “perpetually apprehensive expression.” As for Louis XIV, that he “had received a very superficial education was doubtless an advantage, since it permitted him to accept his own greatness naively….”

The book goes far beyond these witticisms, in outstanding surveys of the religious wars in which idealistic Protestants and reformed Catholics slaughtered without mercy; the explosion of trade-based capitalism, from which the Dutch and English earned the greatest benefits; the rise of absolute monarchy in France and constitutional monarchy in England, both supported by collaboration of aristocrats; the tremendous achievements of the “century of genius” â€" the era of Galileo, Newton, Rembrandt, and Shakespeare; and the wars at the end of the century, concluded through treaties which established a new balance of power among the major states.

Supplemented with well-chosen illustrations and excellent maps, every chapter of Dunn’s book rewards the reader with insight and understanding.

0393090213 For much of the second half of the 1500's, civil wars raged between Catholic and Protestant in France. What? France? Home of the world's greatest collection of Gothic cathedrals? How can this be? Yet, France was little different than many other countries in Europe in this era, continuing into the 1600's, divided by religion and locked into war with themselves and one another. The fallout from the Reformation, begun by Martin Luther and his ilk in the early 1500's, raged for a very long time. The 30 Years War alone, for example, which dragged on from 1618 to 1648, turned the collection of states that much later became Germany into a battleground involving most of the great European powers of the day. The war killed about one third of the population of that region. The outcome left Europe hardened into much the same distribution of religious boundaries we see today, although religion has dwindled to play an ever smaller role in the daily lives of the average French, German, Dutch, Belgian, Austrian, Czech, or Swedish citizen.

It wasn't religious dogma, however, that drove those bloody conflicts. It was the struggle over power and wealth, both within and between nations, to the extent that the concept of nation even existed in the minds of many of the participants. Thus, it was important to a Protestant German prince, for example, to be able to dictate the religion of his people for simple reasons of consolidating his power and controlling the wealth of the church -- which required denying the authority of a distant Catholic emperor or pope. For this, millions died.

The author's discussion of this period of a century and a half of European history is remarkably broad, embracing politics, war, religion, scientific developments, intellectual currents and even literature. It's not a quick, simple read.

The geographic breadth is equally great. Though the book focuses more on Western Europe -- with which I am more familiar -- there is also extensive coverage of Eastern Europe as well, particularly of the conflict between the Ottoman empire and its neighbors, especially the Austrians. During this era, the Ottomans went from dominating the whole of the Balkans and almost conquering Vienna itself in 1683 to finding themselves in rapid retreat and giving up huge chunks of territory in Hungary, Romania, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia and elsewhere. The Ottomans would never recover. The rise and fall of Sweden (yes, the Swedes were once a great European power) vs. many other players, particularly the Russians, is another surprising saga.

Overall, I highly this recommend this work as an excellent survey of European history of the era. You will walk away with a much better understanding of why some powers, such as Spain and the Ottomans, went into steep long-term decline and why others, such as England, France and Russia ended this period far stronger. You will also have much greater respect for why the European Union is such a great gift to Europe today, helping to ensure that countless centuries of European warfare of bygone eras will stay just a bloody memory. Pity some Europeans are forgetting that lesson (yes, Brexit is almost here).

Paperback

Good again, although I preferred the previous volume's balance among different types of history. This one put a heavier emphasis on political developments and seemed to address social and intellectual developments as an afterthought. One welcome addition was more attention to eastern Europe. English I was kind of torn in my ranking between a 3 and a 4, a 3.5 would be most appropriate. It's well written and is a good survey-type of history of 16th and 17th century Europe. This is the kind of book that will interest more or less only those who are inclined toward history in the first place, but I would say that it's quite readable considering the genre. The author is a bit overly obsessed with the France/England dynamic, and indeed devotes an entire chapter to these two growing empires. My personal preferences lie in Eastern Europe, and I would have preferred to have more information about the (similarly) growing Habsburg Empire and its religious and ethnic diversity. I was also a bit perplexed by Dunn's citation/reference style, as footnotes are few and far between and are often seemingly trivial. I've seen it done much better in other historical surveys. In the end, I learned a lot about this period that I did not know before, so that in and of itself made it worthwhile. 322 Very dry on it's own, this book was recommended by our homeschool curriculum for our Rhetoric history studies. It was too analytically detailed for a high school course, where my kids were already reading several other books and taking other classes.
English you’ve outdunn yourself, dunn Richard S. Dunn Informative, but not dry! It took me forever to read, but I'm really glad I did. It was very helpful, and most any time I was a little lost, they'd restate the main point to help make sure the issue was understandable! :) The Age of Religious Wars, 1559-1715

The individual volumes interlock to form a continuous narrative, but each volume also stands alone as a distinctive study of a major period of European history. Emphasis is placed on trends rather than isolated facts and on meaning and process in history. Where standard views are dated or inadequate, the authors do not hesitate to advance fresh interpretations. the result is history on a broad scale that measures up to the demands of current scholarship.

The Volumes in the Norton History of Modern Europe are striking in the quality of their illustrations and maps. New Sources have been drawn upon for engravings and halftones from contemporary documents and works of art; unusually clear maps have been prepared by the cartographer Harold K. Faye. The Age of Religious Wars, 1559-1715