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1. Atlantic expansion and its impact on the European states 1.1. Discovery of America, prior history and consequencesThe voyage of discovery of Christopher Columbus, who on 12 October 1492, while searching for a westerly route across the “Ocean Sea” to India, became the first European to sight islands on the western edge of the Atlantic Ocean, heralded a new phase of history, both for Europe and for the continent hitherto unknown to Europeans: a phase of global interaction. From now on, the history of the two si…

1. Introduction In the age of American liberation movements (e.g. the American Revolution) at the transition from the 18th to the 19th century, vast territories in both Northern and Southern America underwent a first systematic exploration, celebrated as America’s “new” or “second discovery” already by contemporaries. The exploits of America’s “second” discovery, comparable in significance to the explorations of James Cook (Voyages of discovery), are closely connected with Alexander von…

1. Introduction The voyages of discovery, sponsored by the Spanish kings from the late 15th century, which took seafarers to the parts of the world that came to be named America or the New World were originally not intended to discover new countries. The original aim was to win the race to India against the Portuguese, who had chosen the southward route around Africa. The Spanish plan was to take the supposedly shorter direct path across the Atlantic and then to find a navigable passage to India a…

1. Definition The term Bourbon reforms denotes the reform undertaken in Spain by which the Bourbon dynasty in the 18th century reshaped the structures it had inherited from its Habsburg predecessor in the fields of trade, economy, political, government, and the military.Hans-Joachim König 2. Historical context After the decline of the Spanish Empire under the last Habsburg king, Charles II (d. 1700), a process that reached its nadir with the Spanish War of Succession (1701-1713/14), the new Bourbon Dynasty began, hesitantly at first under …

1. IntroductionFrom the mid-16th century, the term “New World” denoted the Americas. This was not, however, the case from the outset, as the Portuguese and Spanish discovered new lands in the 15th century as they expanded into the Atlantic world, or when Columbus in 1492 added something completely new to European world perception by discovering America (America, discovery of).Even in Greco-Roman antiquity, authors like Strabo and Pomponius Mela used the expression “other/new world” (Greek  álle oikouméne; Latin  mundus/ orbis novus) for all newly-discovered regions of t…

1. IntroductionSocieties in which slavery and the slave trade were of significance are generally classified as either “societies with slaves” or “slave societies.” There were only a few instances of the latter in the early modern period. Their defining characteristic was that their social structure and economy were founded on slavery, and had to be secured by means of the slave trade, slave reproduction, and various forms of coercion.The systemic function of a slave society is most clearly apparent in the accusations that emerged as slavery came to an end. F…

1. IntroductionThe term “colonial rivalry” denotes the competitive struggle for hegemony in Europe and other regions of the world, conducted by the European states, following their “discovery” of America (America, Discovery of) and in the course of the European expansion that followed it (Expansionism) by means of the acquisition of colonies and the construction of colonial empires. It is a phenomenon specifically of European early modern history: although non-European states such as China (see C…

1. Introduction The understanding of history and the resultant historiography depend for the most part on a European self-image that was concerned to impose a certain interpretation and order on the past in accordance with European norms and categories (Eurocentrism).Outside Europe, however, such concerns had no part to play for much of the early modern period. Rather, many different views of history held sway, distinct not only from the European, but also from each other. Although European techniques and conventions were certainly a…

1. Introduction 1.1. Trends in researchThere need no longer be any suspicion of Eurocentrism in study of the European colonial empires. Even the national histories of former colonial powers today treat the expansion beyond Europe, and the glorification of the project of civilization process, with critical distance. Seeing the year 1492 as an epoch-making step in the cultural progress of America is questioned, and the alternative proposal that it marked the beginning of colonialist exploitation is instead made [2].This was not always the case. In 1555, for instance, the…

When Martin Luther, making his translation of the New Testament (1522), rendered the “ magi ab oriente” (“magi from the Orient”) in the Nativity story (Mt 2,1) as “Weise vom Morgenland” (“wise men from the morning-land”), he cannot have known that he was coining a term that would continue to be used in Germany for the next five hundred years. In geographical terms, “Morgenland” thus originally denoted the regions to the east of the biblical Holy Land, but it soon came to refer, like “Orient” in other European languages, to whatever lay in the direction of the “rising sun” (Latin:  oriens) f…

1. Introduction The beginnings of a project to “conquer nature” that became apparent in European science and technology from the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and the sense of superiority this engendered, distorted views of the accomplishments of non-European civilizations (World perception) [2. 81 ff.]. This was particularly true of perceptions of and attitudes towards the countries of Asia and the “Orient” as a whole (Orientalism). During the 16th and 17th centuries, this region of the world had found its way to an albeit volatil…

1. BasicsFrom the 2nd century on, numerous legends grew up around Mary, the mother of Jesus, whose life is only briefly sketched in the NT. Especially after the divine sonship of Jesus Christ was defined dogmatically in the 4th and 5th centuries, she was venerated privately and liturgically. Particularly in the Middle Ages, a growing number of Marian feasts were established and distributed throughout the church year, while churches and pilgrimage sites (Pilgrimage, local) were dedicated to the Mother of God (see 2.2. below).In the Middle Ages, she was also seen as an exempl…

1. General surveyIn the early modern period, resistance to government (Sovereign power) should be understood as a corrective to the exercise of familial, economic, ecclesiastical, and political authority. In a way, it was a substitute for later correctives like the control of government by Parliament and the control of institutions, churches, and enterprises by their own internal organs, some of which came into being through democratic processes, while others functioned as authorities. There were …

1. Introduction 1.1. European expansion in the context of world historyEuropean expansion from the mid-16th century is rightly regarded as a key event of world history in the early modern period and of epoch-making significance. It is of relevance to Europe itself, doing much to shape its power structures, economy, politics and world view. The explorations that began along the west coast of Africa, then proceeded with the discovery of the New World and the ensuing occupation of important trading posts in …

Tordesillas, a small Spanish town on the Duero in the Castilian Meseta, gave its name in 1494 to one of the most important early modern treaties in the context of European imperialist expansionism and the emergence of the Atlantic world.In 1493, immediately after Christopher Columbus returned from his first voyage, on which he believed he had reached the Indies beyond the Atlantic Ocean (America, discovery of), the Spanish monarchs Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon had taken steps to exclude their rival Portugal and ot…

1. Europe 1.1. Concept and researchThe verb “travel” in the sense of “go from one place to another” or “make a journey,” is unique to English, deriving from the Middle English  travailen, which originally meant “to toil” or “to labor,” suggesting an association with the difficulty of travel in the Middle Ages. The Romance languages express the concept with terms derived from the Latin  via (road, way, travel; e.g. French  voyager; Italian  viaggiare). German evolved the verb  reisen from an original sense (OHG  reisa, MHG  reise; compare English “rise”) of “to get up and go,”…

1. Concept Decolonization in general denotes the withdrawal of colonial powers from territories in which they formerly ruled over an indigenous population. From the perspective of the colonial powers, this is a process of dissolution in the sense of a setting free; from that of the colonized peoples, it is a process of release from the colonal power with the aim of liberation and state sovereignty. Decolonization thus also refers to the end of the European colonial empires that had beco…

1. Introduction and concept The history of the early modern period is the history of the first modern global society. It is still commonplace to interpret it as a period of untrammeled European expansionism. This, however, is uncritically to project the ascendancy of the highly industrialized states of Europe and the United States back into earlier periods, ignoring the fact that this ascendancy only came about in the late 19th century (Industrialization). Through haste and generalization, the slave…

1. Theory 1.1. IntroductionStarting with the 1978 study by the Palestinian-American literary scientist Edward Said [27] and its rapid reception in the early 1980s, the term “Orientalism” has become nothing short of a vogue expression, at the core of a frequent approach to research. Since this time, the term has remained as ambiguous as it has always been in the history of its European usage, from its first appearances in dictionaries (French  orientalism e [3]; [6]) at the turn of the 19th century. It carries many connotations today, from the perception of the Orie…

1. Concept and meaningAs a manifestation of the world system, “world empire” is a historiographical organizational concept of an entity that (1) encompasses much of the known world and an ethnically and culturally diverse body of subjects, as characteristic of an empire (Reich), that (2) forms a territorial domain based on political power, the real (often military) threat of force, and cultural hegemony, with concomitant self-image and perception of supremacy, that (3) influences the regions…