Chapter 16: Outline
The following
annotated chapter outline will help you review the major topics covered in this
chapter.
Instructions: Review the outline to
recall events and their relationships as presented in the chapter. Return to
skim any sections that seem unfamiliar.
I. | Opening Vignette |
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A. | In the early modern world, the West spread Christianity to Asians, Africans, and Native Americans. At the same time, the West developed a modern scientific outlook that sharply challenged Western Christianity. |
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1. | Christianity achieved a global presence for the first time |
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2. | the Scientific Revolution fostered a different approach to the world |
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3. | there is continuing tension between religion and science in the Western world | ||
B. | The early modern period was a time of cultural transformation. |
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1. | both Christianity and scientific thought connected distant peoples | ||
2. | Scientific Revolution also caused new cultural encounter, between science and religion | ||
3. | science became part of the definition of global modernity | ||
C. | Europeans were central players, but they did not act alone. |
II. | The Globalization of Christianity |
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A. | In 1500, Christianity was mostly limited to Europe. |
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1. | small communities in Egypt, Ethiopia, southern India, and Central Asia |
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2. | serious divisions within Christianity (Roman Catholic vs. Eastern Orthodox) |
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3. | on the defensive against Islam |
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a. | loss of the Holy Land by 1300 | ||||
b. | fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453 | ||||
c. | Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1529 | ||||
B. | Western Christendom Fragmented: The Protestant Reformation | ||||
1. | Protestant Reformation began in 1517 | ||||
a. | Martin Luther posted the Ninety-five Theses, asking for debate about ecclesiastical abuses | ||||
b. | Luther was one of many who criticized the Roman Catholic Church | ||||
c. | Luther’s protest was more deeply grounded in theological difference | ||||
d. | put forth a new understanding of salvation as coming through faith alone rather than through good works, with the Bible, not Church teaching, as the source of religious authority | ||||
e. | questioned the special role of the clerical hierarchy (including the pope) | ||||
2. | Luther’s ideas provoked a massive schism in Catholic Christendom | ||||
a. | fed on political, economic, and social tension, not just religious differences | ||||
b. | some monarchs used Luther to justify independence from the papacy | ||||
c. | gave a new religious legitimacy to the middle class | ||||
d. | commoners were attracted to the new religious ideas as a tool for protest against the whole social order |
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3. | many women were attracted to Protestantism, but the Reformation didn’t give them a greater role in church or society | ||||
a. | Protestants ended veneration of Mary and other female saints | ||||
b. | Protestants closed convents, which had given some women an alternative to marriage | ||||
c. | only Quakers among the Protestants gave women an official role in their churches | ||||
d. | some increase in the education of women, because of emphasis on Bible reading | ||||
4. | the recently invented printing press helped Reformation thought spread rapidly | ||||
5. | as the Reformation spread, it splintered into an array of competing Protestant churches | ||||
6. | religious difference made Europe’s fractured political system even more volatile | ||||
a. | 1562–1598: French Wars of Religion (Catholics vs. Huguenots) | ||||
b. | 1618–1648: the Thirty Years’ War | ||||
7. | Protestant Reformation provoked a Catholic Counter-Reformation | ||||
a. | Council of Trent (1545–1563) clarified Catholic doctrines and practices | ||||
b. | corrected the abuses and corruption that the Protestants had protested | ||||
c. | new emphasis on education and supervision of priests | ||||
d. | crackdown on dissidents | ||||
e. | new attention given to individual spirituality and piety |
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f. | new religious orders (e.g., the Society of Jesus [Jesuits]) were committed to renewal and expansion | ||||
8. | the Reformation encouraged skepticism toward authority and tradition | ||||
a. | fostered religious individualism | ||||
b. | in the following centuries, the Protestant habit of independent thinking led to skepticism about all revealed religion | ||||
C. | Christianity Outward Bound | ||||
1. | Christianity motivated and benefited from European expansion | ||||
a. | Spaniards and Portuguese saw overseas expansion as a continuation of crusading tradition | ||||
b. | explorers combined religious and material interests | ||||
2. | imperialism made the globalization of Christianity possible | ||||
a. | settlers and traders brought their religion with them | ||||
b. | missionaries, mostly Catholic, actively spread Christianity | ||||
c. | missionaries were most successful in Spanish America and the Philippines | ||||
D. | Conversion and Adaptation in Spanish America | ||||
1. | process of population collapse, conquest, and resettlement made Native Americans receptive to the conquering religion | ||||
2. | Europeans claimed exclusive religious truth, tried to destroy traditional religions instead of accommodating them | ||||
a. | occasional campaigns of destruction against the old religions | ||||
b. | some overt resistance movements (e.g., Taki Onqoy in central Peru) |
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3. | blending of two religious traditions was more common | ||||
a. | local gods (huacas) remained influential | ||||
b. | immigrant Christianity took on patterns of pre-Christian life | ||||
c. | Christian saints took on functions of precolonial gods | ||||
d. | leader of the church staff (fiscal) was a prestigious native who carried on the role of earlier religious specialists | ||||
e. | many rituals survived, often with some Christian influence | ||||
E. | An Asian Comparison: China and the Jesuits | ||||
1. | Christianity reached China during the powerful, prosperous Ming and Qing dynasties | ||||
a. | called for a different missionary strategy; needed government permission for operation | ||||
b. | Jesuits especially targeted the official Chinese elite | ||||
2. | no mass conversion in China | ||||
a. | some scholars and officials converted | ||||
b. | Jesuits were appreciated for mathematical, astronomical, technological, and cartographical skills | ||||
c. | missionary efforts gained 200,000–300,000 converts in 250 years | ||||
3. | missionaries didn’t offer much that the Chinese needed | ||||
a. | Christianity was clearly an all-or-nothing religion that would call for rejection of much Chinese culture | ||||
b. | early eighteenth century: papacy and other missionary orders opposed Jesuit accommodation policy |
III. | Persistence and Change in Afro-Asian Cultural Traditions |
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A. | African religious elements accompanied slaves to the Americas |
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1. | development of Africanized forms of Christianity in the Americas, with divination, dream interpretation, visions, spirit possession |
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2. | Europeans often tried to suppress African elements as sorcery |
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3. | persistence of syncretic religions (Vodou, Santeria, Candomble, Macumba) |
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B. | Expansion and Renewal in the Islamic World |
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1. | continued spread of Islam depended not on conquest but on wandering holy men, scholars, and traders |
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2. | the syncretism of Islamization was increasingly offensive to orthodox Muslims |
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a. | helped provoke movements of religious renewal in the eighteenth century | ||||
b. | series of jihads in West Africa (eighteenth/early nineteenth centuries) attacked corrupt Islamic practices | ||||
c. | growing tension between localized and “pure” Islam | ||||
3. | the most well-known Islamic renewal movement of the period was Wahhabism | ||||
a. | developed in the Arabian Peninsula in mid-eighteenth century | ||||
b. | founder Abd al-Wahhab (1703–1792) was a theologian | ||||
c. | aimed to restore absolute monotheism, end veneration of saints | ||||
d. | aimed to restore strict adherence to the sharia (Islamic law) | ||||
e. | movement developed a political element when Abd al-Wahhab allied with Muhammad Ibn Saud; led to creation of a state | ||||
f. | the state was “purified” | ||||
g. | the political power of the Wahhabis was broken in 1818, but the movement remained influential in Islamic world | ||||
h. | reform movements persisted and became associated with resistance to Western cultural intrusion | ||||
C. | China: New Directions in an Old Tradition | ||||
1. | Chinese and Indian cultural/religious change wasn’t as dramatic as what occurred in Europe | ||||
a. | Confucian and Hindu cultures didn’t spread widely in early modern period | ||||
b. | but neither remained static | ||||
2. | Ming and Qing dynasty China still operated within a Confucian framework | ||||
a. | addition of Buddhist and Daoist thought led to creation of Neo-Confucianism | ||||
b. | both dynasties embraced the Confucian tradition | ||||
3. | considerable amount of debate and new thinking in China | ||||
a. | Wang Yangming (1472–1529): anyone can achieve a virtuous life by introspection, without Confucian education | ||||
b. | Chinese Buddhists also tried to make religion more accessible to commoners—withdrawal from the world not necessary for enlightenment | ||||
c. | similarity to Martin Luther’s argument that individuals could seek salvation without help from a priestly hierarchy | ||||
d. | kaozheng (“research based on evidence”) was a new direction in Chinese elite culture | ||||
4. | lively popular culture among the less well educated | ||||
a. | production of plays, paintings, and literature | ||||
b. | great age of novels, such as Cao Xueqin’s The Dream of the Red Chamber (mid-eighteenth century) | ||||
D. | India: Bridging the Hindu/Muslim Divide | ||||
1. | several movements brought Hindus and Muslims together in new forms of religious expression | ||||
2. | bhakti movement was especially important | ||||
a. | devotional Hinduism | ||||
b. | effort to achieve union with the divine through songs, prayers, dances, poetry, and rituals | ||||
c. | appealed especially to women | ||||
d. | often set aside caste distinctions | ||||
e. | much common ground with Sufism, helped to blur the line between Islam and Hinduism in India | ||||
f. | Mirabai (1498–1547) is one of the best-loved bhakti poets | ||||
3. | growth of Sikhism, a religion that blended Islam and Hinduism | ||||
a. | founder Guru Nanak (1469–1539) had been part of the bhakti movement; came to believe that Islam and Hinduism were one | ||||
b. | Nanak and his successors set aside caste distinctions and proclaimed essential equality of men and women | ||||
c. | gradually developed as a new religion of the Punjab | ||||
d. | evolved into a militant community in response to hostility |
IV. | A New Way of Thinking: The Birth of Modern Science |
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A. | The Scientific Revolution was an intellectual and cultural transformation that occurred between the mid-sixteenth century and the early eighteenth century. |
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1. | was based on careful observations, controlled experiments, and formulation of general laws to explain the world |
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2. | creators of the movement saw themselves as making a radical departure |
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3. | Scientific Revolution was vastly significant |
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a. | fundamentally altered ideas about the place of humankind within the cosmos |
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b. | challenged the teachings and authority of the Church | ||||
c. | challenged ancient social hierarchies and political systems | ||||
d. | also used to legitimize racial and gender inequality | ||||
e. | by the twentieth century, science had become the chief symbol of modernity around the world | ||||
B. | The Question of Origins: Why Europe? |
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1. | the Islamic world was the most scientifically advanced realm in period 800–1400 | ||||
2. | China’s technological accomplishments and economic growth were unmatched for several centuries after the millennium | ||||
3. | but European conditions were uniquely favorable to rise of science | ||||
a. | evolution of a legal system that guaranteed some independence for a variety of institutions by twelfth/thirteenth centuries | ||||
b. | idea of the “corporation”—collective group treated as a legal unit with certain rights | ||||
c. | universities became zones of intellectual autonomy | ||||
4. | in the Islamic world, science remained mostly outside of the system of higher education | ||||
5. | Chinese authorities did not permit independent institutions of higher learning | ||||
a. | Chinese education focused on preparing for civil service exams | ||||
b. | emphasis was on classical Confucian texts | ||||
6. | Western Europe could draw on the knowledge of other cultures, especially that of the Arab world | ||||
7. | sixteenth–eighteenth centuries: Europeans were at the center of a massive new information exchange | ||||
a. | tidal wave of knowledge shook up old ways of thinking | ||||
b. | explosion of uncertainty and skepticism allowed modern science to emerge | ||||
C. | Science as Cultural Revolution | ||||
1. | dominant educated-European view of the world before the Scientific Revolution, derived from Aristotle and Ptolemy: | ||||
a. | the earth is stationary and at the center of the universe, with sun, moon, and stars revolving around it | ||||
b. | a universe of divine purpose | ||||
2. | initial breakthrough was by Nicolaus Copernicus | ||||
a. | On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres (1543) | ||||
b. | promoted the view that the earth and the planets revolved around the sun | ||||
3. | other scientists built on Copernicus’s insight | ||||
a. | some argued that there were other inhabited worlds | ||||
b. | Johannes Kepler demonstrated elliptical orbits of the planets | ||||
c. | Galileo Galilei developed an improved telescope | ||||
4. | Sir Isaac Newton was the apogee of the Scientific Revolution | ||||
a. | formulated laws of motion and mechanics | ||||
b. | central concept: universal gravitation | ||||
c. | natural laws govern both the micro- and the macrocosm | ||||
5. | by Newton’s death, educated Europeans had a fundamentally different view of the physical universe | ||||
a. | not propelled by angels and spirits but functioned according to mathematical principles | ||||
b. | the “machine of the universe” is self-regulating | ||||
c. | knowledge of the universe can be obtained through reason | ||||
6. | the human body also became less mysterious | ||||
7. | Catholic Church strenuously opposed much of this thinking | ||||
a. | burning of Giordano Bruno in 1600 for proclaiming an infinite universe | ||||
b. | Galileo was forced to renounce his belief that the earth moved around an orbit and rotated on its axis | ||||
c. | but no early scientists rejected Christianity | ||||
D. | Science and Enlightenment | ||||
1. | ideas of the Scientific Revolution gradually reached a wider European audience | ||||
2. | scientific approach to knowledge was applied to human affairs | ||||
a. | Adam Smith (1723–1790) formulated economic laws | ||||
b. | people believed that scientific development would bring “enlightenment” to humankind | ||||
3. | Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) defined Enlightenment as a “daring to know” | ||||
4. | Enlightenment thinkers believed that knowledge could transform human society | ||||
a. | tended to be satirical, critical, and hostile to established authorities | ||||
b. | attacked arbitrary government, divine right, and aristocratic privilege | ||||
c. | John Locke (1632–1704) articulated ideas of constitutional government | ||||
d. | many writers advocated education for women | ||||
5. | much Enlightenment thought attacked established religion | ||||
a. | in his Treatise on Toleration, Voltaire (1694–1778) attacked the narrow particularism of organized religion | ||||
b. | many Enlightenment thinkers were deists, believing in a remote deity who created the world but doesn’t intervene | ||||
c. | some were pantheists—equated God and nature | ||||
d. | some even regarded religion as a fraud | ||||
e. | example of Confucianism—supposedly secular, moral, rational and tolerant—encouraged Enlightenment thinkers to imagine a future for European civilization without the kind of supernatural religion they found so offensive in the Christian West | ||||
6. | Enlightenment thought was influenced by growing global awareness | ||||
7. | central theme of Enlightenment: the idea of progress | ||||
8. | some thinkers reacted against too much reliance on human reason | ||||
a. | Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) argued for immersion in nature rather than book learning | ||||
b. | the Romantic movement appealed to emotion and imagination | ||||
c. | religious awakenings made an immense emotional appeal | ||||
E. | Looking Ahead: Science in the Nineteenth Century | ||||
1. | modern science was cumulative and self-critical | ||||
2. | in the nineteenth century, science was applied to new sorts of inquiry; in some ways, it undermined Enlightenment assumptions | ||||
3. | Charles Darwin (1809–1882) argued that all of life was in flux | ||||
4. | Karl Marx (1818–1883) presented human history as a process of change and struggle | ||||
5. | Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) cast doubt on human rationality | ||||
F. | European Science beyond the West | ||||
1. | science became the most widely desired product of European culture | ||||
2. | Chinese had selective interest in Jesuits’ teaching | ||||
a. | most interested in astronomy and mathematics | ||||
b. | European science had substantial impact on the Chinese kaozheng movement | ||||
3. | Japan kept up some European contact via trade with the Dutch | ||||
a. | import of Western books allowed, starting in 1720 | ||||
b. | a small group of Japanese scholars was interested in Western texts, anatomical studies in particular | ||||
4. | Ottoman Empire chose not to translate major European scientific works | ||||
a. | Ottoman scholars were only interested in ideas of practical utility (e.g., maps, calendars) | ||||
b. | Islamic educational system was conservative, made it hard for theoretical science to do well |
V. | Reflections: Cultural Borrowing and Its Hazards |
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A. | Ideas shape peoples’ mental or cultural worlds and influence behavior. |
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B. | The development of early modern ideas took place in an environment of great cultural borrowing. |
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1. | borrowing was selective |
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2. | borrowing sometimes caused serious conflict |
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3. | foreign ideas and practices were often “domesticated” |