A Short History of the World (16 page)

Like his father, Charles I was a strong believer in the divine right of kings and for a time he refused to allow parliament to meet, recalling it only to raise money to fight the Scots, who had invaded England after Charles had imposed a new prayer book for their church services. Charles’ unsuccessful attempt, in 1642, to have five members of parliament arrested drove the country to civil war. The Civil War was not between Catholics and Protestants but rather between royalists, known as ‘cavaliers’, and the opposition who were known as ‘roundheads’, due to their short haircuts.
 

Oliver Cromwell, a puritanical member of parliament, became leader of the anti-royalist forces and was instrumental in encouraging parliament to develop a professional army that he led to victory on numerous occasions both in England and Ireland. In 1649, having lost the Civil War, Charles I was executed, and four years later, Cromwell was appointed Lord Protector of the Commonwealth. Cromwell imposed military rule and led the country until he died in 1658. His son briefly replaced him, but Charles II, who had fled the country and spent his exile at the court of Louis XIV, was invited back in 1660 and reinstated as king of England, Scotland and Ireland. One of his first acts was to have Cromwell’s body dug up and posthumously beheaded.
 

Charles II’s reign was to see both the Great Plague in 1665 and the Great Fire of London in 1666 which destroyed some 13,000 homes. When Charles died in 1685, he was succeeded by his brother, James II, who proceeded to appoint a number of Catholics to senior positions in the realm, enough at any rate to worry a predominantly Protestant parliament. As a result, parliament urged the Dutchman, William of Orange, husband of James’ daughter, Mary, to save the country from a Catholic takeover.
 

When William landed in England in 1688 at the head of an army, James II, his father-in-law and the last Catholic monarch to rule England, fled the country and sought sanctuary in France. After this bloodless revolution, William and Mary acceded as co-rulers in 1689, and ruled the land together until Mary’s death in 1694, from which time William ruled alone until his own death in 1702. James II’s daughter, Anne, inherited the throne, but when she died in 1714, the Stuart royal line died with her. The crown passed to James I’s great-grandson, the Elector of Hanover, who was invited to rule England as George I. He spoke German, but no English.

By copying the advanced banking system of the Netherlands, and by turning its attention west towards the Americas where the future lay, England gradually replaced the Netherlands as the world’s economic and military superpower.
 

Japan Closes its Doors to the World (17th Century)

While Europeans were busy exploring the world, the Japanese were being forbidden to travel outside their country unless accompanying an army. In the 16th century Japan had only just emerged from a lengthy period of anarchy and civil war in which military governors, or Shoguns, managed the country in the name of the emperor. A number of these had become so powerful that they had been able to unify Japan. Under the last and most powerful shogunate, started by Tokugawa Ieyasu in 1603, based in the city of Edo (present-day Tokyo), Japan enjoyed some 250 years of peace.
 

The Portuguese had been the first Europeans to visit Japan in 1543; the Japanese word for thank you, ‘arigato’, still bears a striking resemblance to the Portuguese word ‘obrigado’. They were followed by other Europeans who were successful in introducing trade and Christianity, not to mention firearms. However, fearing military conquest by the Europeans and considering them a potential threat, the Japanese expelled them in the early 17th century. By 1635, Japanese citizens were forbidden from leaving the country and those already abroad were not permitted back. In 1641, all trade with Europeans was limited to the port of Nagasaki, all foreign books were banned,
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and the country was effectively locked from foreign interference for the following 200 years.
 

China Expands under the Manchus

In neighbouring China, the Ming Dynasty eventually weakened thanks to a series of average emperors unable to deal with the growing threat of the rival Manchus from the north-east. In 1644 Beijing, the home of the emperor, fell to a rebel army
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and those loyal to the Mings invited the Manchus to help recover the Imperial City. It was the Manchus that established the last Chinese imperial dynasty, the Qing (or Ching, meaning pure), which would last for over 250 years, only coming to an end in 1911.

The Manchus were a fraction of the size of the Chinese population and had a different culture, language and writing. They insisted that all non-Manchu men shave their heads, leaving a long pigtail at the back as a sign of submission. They were incredibly successful in expanding the empire, managing to conquer Mongolia and establish a protectorate over present-day Tibet. It took them only 30 years to complete the conquest of China, including that of the island of Taiwan, the last outpost of anti-Manchu resistance.
 

Meanwhile in Russia…

Shortly after Japan effectively closed its doors to foreign interference, Russia made its first attempts at westernisation. In the mid-1600s Russia was vast, remote and underdeveloped. The country had little external trade and a weak military; the Mongol yoke under which the country had been ruled for several hundred years had stifled the intellectual development that had been so predominant in European countries over the previous centuries. What’s more, ‘
Russia had had no or little exposure to the defining historical phenomena of Western civilisation: Roman Catholicism, feudalism, the Renaissance, the Reformation, overseas expansion and colonization
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’. Despite this, the country had grown since the grand Duke of Moscow, Ivan III, had renounced his allegiance to the Mongol Khan in 1480 and assumed the title of tsar. Since that time Russian leaders had gradually moved eastwards, ruthlessly destroying any opposition.

Peter the Great, who ruled Russia between 1682 and 1725, is credited with a series of reforms that transformed Russia into a powerful modern state. A brush with the Ottoman Turks early in his reign encouraged Peter to seek support from various European powers that were also weary of Ottoman influence. As part of this endeavour, in 1697, Peter undertook a 17-month tour of Europe during which he visited Germany, the Netherlands and England among other countries.

During his trip Peter learned how western European countries had used new technology and trade to gain power and wealth and he was determined to do the same in Russia. On his return, he established a ship-building industry, modernised the army, reorganised the government, banned ancient dress, simplified the Russian alphabet, promoted education, and even put a tax on beards – all in an effort to make Russians adopt Western ways and to drag the country out of the Middle Ages. Yet Peter also had many faults; alongside his progressive vision, he was a ruthless leader who had his son tortured and murdered and caused the death of thousands of workers in his stubborn efforts to build the city of St Petersburg on marshland.

One of Peter's main goals was to gain access to the Baltic Sea and to its trade through the establishment of a warm water port, which Russia lacked. In 1700, after making a secret alliance with Denmark and Poland, he marched into the Baltic region, thereby inciting war with Sweden under its young king, Charles XII. Charles initially won a series of battles, which gave him a reputation as a great military man, but eventually lost the ‘Great Northern War’ that lasted 21 years. When the war ended, Russia kept the new land it had gained and Peter was declared ‘Peter the Great and Emperor of all Russia’ as well as tsar. Under Peter’s orders, the capital of Russia was moved from Moscow to Saint Petersburg. Sweden lost its supremacy as the leading power in the Baltic region and Russia’s growth ‘
alerted other powers to the fact that the hitherto distant and somewhat barbarous Muscovite state was intent upon playing a role in European affairs.
’
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After Peter I’s death in 1725, with the exception of a few short interludes, Russia was ruled for the next 70 years by women, including Catherine the Great, the German wife of Peter’s grandson. During this time, Russia continued to expand, extending its borders well into central Europe, but failed to keep up with the rapidly developing West. Following Peter’s lead, Catherine flirted with reform, but changed her mind when Louis XVI of France was executed during the French Revolution. The lack of reform in Russia would lead to ever-increasing discontent and, with time, to revolution.
 

The Kingdom of Prussia (1701–1871)

West of Russia, the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 had divided the Holy Roman Empire into 300 different principalities. One of these, Prussia, became its own kingdom in 1701 and grew in power under its first king, Frederick I. When his son, Frederick II (Frederick the Great), inherited the crown in 1740, he also inherited the most advanced army in Europe. Wishing his Hohenzollern Dynasty to become as great as that of the French Bourbons and the Austrian Habsburgs, whose rivalry dominated European politics in the 18th century, he took the opportunity to put his army to the test in two major conflicts. One was over the succession of the Austrian Habsburg emperor, Charles VI, and turned into an expensive stalemate. Another came in 1756 after he occupied land that lay between Austria and Prussia.
 

The result of these wars was that Prussia and Russia now overtook Spain and the Netherlands as great powers. Poland had the misfortune of being sandwiched between them and was eventually partitioned by them both, ceasing to exist as an independent country and only re-emerging after the First World War.
 

Little did Frederick II know, however, that his land grab would instigate a major war that would involve all the leading European powers and spill over into America. The consequences of the war in America between the French and the British that followed would, thanks to its huge costs, ultimately lead to the American War of Independence and to the French Revolution.
 

The Seven Years War (1756–1763)

Since 1754 there had been open hostilities between the French and the British over the possession of territories in America and over control of the lucrative fur trade. With the eruption of war in Europe, open war also finally broke out in America in 1756. With major support from the native Indians, who had been alienated and badly treated by the British, the French initially seized the advantage, but the tide turned in 1758 under William Pitt, the new Secretary of State and future Prime Minister, who had been assigned responsibility for war. A great orator, and confident of his own abilities, he stated, ‘I know that I can save this country, and that no-one else can.’

Through its mastery of the seas, the British navy destroyed the French fleet in 1759, thereby hampering France’s ability to supply its troops in America. The writing on the wall for the French came when Montreal and Quebec fell to the British. By 1760 the whole of French Canada was in British hands and the war was effectively won, although a peace treaty to end the war was not signed until 1763. Concerned about the balance of power, the Spanish had finally supported the French in 1762, but their support came too late and all they had to show for it was the loss of Cuba to the British.
 

The consequences of the war in America were enormous: Britain gained all of northern America east of the Mississippi, including Canada from the French and Florida from the Spanish
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and, with a vastly increased empire, emerged as the greatest colonial power. France, on the other hand, was defeated on all fronts, ceding all its territory in mainland America, with the exception of New Orleans and a few sugar islands in the Caribbean. This saw not only the end of France’s American empire, but
 
also the end of France’s political and cultural influence in the region.