8 - Renaissance Europe

Summary

Europe in the early sixteenth century was still in many respects medieval. Its population was rural and agricultural to the extent of about 80 percent. Cities remained small; craft industries were small-scale and most were carried on domestically. Technology had made little advance during the previous thousand years, and there were few industrial and agricultural processes that would not have been understood by the year 1000. Over much of Europe the rural population was still unfree, bound to the soil and subject to heavy and arbitrary labor demands. One of the complaints made in the German Peasants' War of 1524–5 was of “labor services which … daily increase and daily grow.” Yet there was change; people were becoming more critical and enquiring. It is too early to speak of a scientific attitude, but institutions and beliefs were being questioned; new forms of organization were being adopted, and, in a slow and halting way, a spirit of innovation and experimentation was beginning to develop and spread.

NATIONALISM AND THE POLITICAL MAP

One of the most important intellectual developments of the age of the Renaissance was the emergence of a new attitude to the state and to public administration. The impact of central government during the Middle Ages had been slight. Its authority was mediated through the ranks of a feudal hierarchy. But now governments – in Britain, France, Spain, and Scandinavia – were beginning to reach down through this feudal structure and to control affairs at the local level.