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Your assertion that the Protestant Reformation was responsible for renaissance exploration and trade is extremely dubious. By all accounts, Spanish and Italian

Your assertion that the Protestant Reformation was responsible for renaissance exploration and trade is extremely dubious. By all accounts, Spanish and Italian monarchs were behind the push for exploration, this occurring before the reformation. They wanted trade, and it didn't take a religious schism to provoke that. Rather, this happened in the thirteenth century when the Arabs lost their stranglehold of the Silk Road, and the Mongols opened it up (hence Marco Polo's travels). Advances in naval technology made the travels of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries possible. These trips were simply not feasible beforehand, it was not a matter of some nebulous cabal of "elites" suppressing the merchants and scientists. I find your interpretation of this history revisionist, framed to support your "VC-istan" thesis, which probably doesn't need historical evidence from the renaissance. You'll find plenty of suitable fodder in the past fifty years.

euroclydon 14y ago
Reading The System of the World, Neal Stephenson covered this topic. The Spanish were indeed prolific traders with their Manila-Acapulco Galleon trade. Stephenson chronicles that the Protestants created an economy based, not on silver currency, like the Spanish, but instead on debt and a fiat currency. I suppose it could be argued that this new currency enabled more commoners to participate in the economy and gain wealth.
- oinksoft 14y ago
  A fair assertion. Also, it is important to note Adam Smith et. al. got many of their ideas from the Islamic world (credit economy and such), not from Protestant reforms. Popular history seldom gives the Islamic world the credit it deserves for influencing later progress in Europe. There's a good case to be made that in the absence of Arab advances, Europe would have remained mired in feudal states and regional economies for a much longer time. Whether the reader finds this change positive or negative ... reflects their views on the merits of nationalism, and ultimately globalism.
  - obstacle1 14y ago
    It is not fair to say that Adam Smith et. al. got their ideas from the Islamic world and not from Protestant reforms. Surely some inspiration came from both. Further in the absence of Arab advances, we can't tell what the would would have looked like. It certainly wouldn't look like our current world, but there are a ton of possible worlds out there. You can't predict alternative histories retrospectively with any certainty. Nassim Taleb expounds on this in his latest book "Antifragile". He points out that while Adam Smith certainly drew inspiration from Arab philosophers (Al Ghazali in particular), we can't say how the world would look today without that particular intersection having happened.
  - michaelochurch 14y ago
    You make a great point. The Arab world (and, to a lesser degree, the Byzantine Empire) preserved and continued Western progress. For a long time, Baghdad and Beijing (and, quite possibly, Alexandria) were centers of the civilized world. By the Enlightenment, the great ideas were coming from all over-- American Indian civilizations, pirate ship organizations, the Arab world, and (later) the East. The (mostly American?) idea that the bulk of progress came from a bunch of bigoted Puritans is pure credit-taking. They played a role, but a small one compared to Parisian salons. In fact, the Pilgrims had the opportunity to "live in religious freedom" in the Netherlands and left because it was too liberal.
michaelochurch 14y ago
You know a lot about this and you're not wrong, but I think trade and exploration would have been very different without the Reformation, which created intractable competition among European elites. The standing elites, initially, bought into mercantilism and wanted to steal resources: especially gold, silver, and people (slaves). They had no interest in building new societies or challenging old ways of doing things. There's a lot of bad to be said about the Puritan Pilgrims, but they did have that ambition, leading to a pattern culminating in experimentation with rational government. (Pirates and the American Indian federations also provided some inspiration.) The Reformation provided an incentive for more nations-- poorer, Protestant ones far from the Mediterranean-- to get involved in (costly, dangerous) exploration in the 16th and 17th centuries. Being unable to compete with the existing powers (especially Spain) directly, they often got into industries (e.g. cotton) that had less short-term yield but more durability. Sea trade itself wasn't that interesting, or even new. Sailing was millennia old already. It was the desire for social and economic experimentation that made that era interesting. This isn't to white-wash that time or say that the experimentation mentality was purely virtuous. There was an incredible amount of ugliness involved (genocide, religious persecution, slavery) in the process. I do think, however, that there was a much faster rate of overall, eventual progress on account of the competition between two halves of the European elite.
- oinksoft 14y ago
  Your interpretation of renaissance history remains revisionist. England was perfectly able to compete with Spain, etc. particularly following the Spanish Armada. Note that Spain had been crumbling from within for a long time. Only at that point could the English settle in the Americas. Further, the English were every bit as interested in raping the Americas for gold as the Spaniards and Italians ... I have studied Virginia history at length, and the first colonists to Virginia were interested in very little apart from establishing a base so as to extract precious metals from the continent. Only when this proved impossible, and poor Englishmen realized how much opportunity the New World offered, did goals begin to change. I omit discussion of the Pilgrims because your original thesis was specifically about elites, claiming that their competition (specifically, when strongly divided) spurred innovation more than anything else, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a time in history where an oppressed people were not fleeing. It's an error to say that this was a novelty of the Protestant Reformation. Sea trade was in itself interesting. Yes, Europeans had been sailing for some time, but apart from the Vikings, nobody had sailed across great expanses the way the Europeans did in the age of discovery. Improvements in navigation and cartography enabled the new travels. In any case, what you seemed to interpret as a cage match between European rulers, divided by religion, was actually the rise of nationalism. As power was consolidated so as to combat the Arabs in Europe, which along with the Crusades broke the stranglehold the Arabs had on trade, the Europeans could dream of greater endeavors.
zeteo 14y ago
>Your assertion that the Protestant Reformation was responsible for renaissance exploration and trade is extremely dubious. You've misread michaelochurch's comment. He wasn't asserting the Reformation came before the Renaissance. His point was that the states newly energized by the Reformation became very active in exploration and trade and ultimately created the economic and political institutions that define the modern world. And, while he is correct about England (which, despite insularity, was never a great naval power before it began being ruled by Protestants), his best example would have been the Northern Netherlands, which featured: the first modern republic, religious toleration, the first stock exchange, extensive civil engineering, the revival of drill-based military techniques etc. Unlike earlier mercantile republics (say, Venice), the Dutch model also found ready imitators in many of its aspects (Sweden in its golden age, England especially after 1688, the North American colonies) and developed directly into the capitalist / parliamentarian society that many of us live in today.
- oinksoft 14y ago
  The kernel of his thesis is The best way to create social mobility for smart people is to create a massive, irreparable cleavage in the elite. In 1540, it was the Protestant Reformation, leading to exploration and trade and new theories about politics, culminating in rational government and modern capitalism. That is entirely backward and has little grounding in history. The points you make are sound and accurate, and had they been his, I would have had no reason to criticize.
  - michaelochurch 14y ago
    The way I might be wrong is in the assertion that the Protestant Reformation was responsible for creating cleavages within the European elites that might have formed in other ways and for other reasons. Did society need the Protestant Reformation, at that specific point in time, to get those advances? Possibly not. Did we need a Cold War with the Soviet Union, rather than some other kind of conflict, to get the Internet? Again, no. It's not specific conflicts that humanity has needed to advance, insofar as history could have played out in a million of other different ways. However, it has been the case throughout most of humanity's history that social health (rather than slow degeneracy due to a parasitic elite) requires some kind of intractable enmity to exist within the elite.

euroclydon 14y ago

Reading The System of the World, Neal Stephenson covered this topic. The Spanish were indeed prolific traders with their Manila-Acapulco Galleon trade. Stephenson chronicles that the Protestants created an economy based, not on silver currency, like the Spanish, but instead on debt and a fiat currency. I suppose it could be argued that this new currency enabled more commoners to participate in the economy and gain wealth.

oinksoft 14y ago
A fair assertion. Also, it is important to note Adam Smith et. al. got many of their ideas from the Islamic world (credit economy and such), not from Protestant reforms. Popular history seldom gives the Islamic world the credit it deserves for influencing later progress in Europe. There's a good case to be made that in the absence of Arab advances, Europe would have remained mired in feudal states and regional economies for a much longer time. Whether the reader finds this change positive or negative ... reflects their views on the merits of nationalism, and ultimately globalism.
- obstacle1 14y ago
  It is not fair to say that Adam Smith et. al. got their ideas from the Islamic world and not from Protestant reforms. Surely some inspiration came from both. Further in the absence of Arab advances, we can't tell what the would would have looked like. It certainly wouldn't look like our current world, but there are a ton of possible worlds out there. You can't predict alternative histories retrospectively with any certainty. Nassim Taleb expounds on this in his latest book "Antifragile". He points out that while Adam Smith certainly drew inspiration from Arab philosophers (Al Ghazali in particular), we can't say how the world would look today without that particular intersection having happened.
- michaelochurch 14y ago
  You make a great point. The Arab world (and, to a lesser degree, the Byzantine Empire) preserved and continued Western progress. For a long time, Baghdad and Beijing (and, quite possibly, Alexandria) were centers of the civilized world. By the Enlightenment, the great ideas were coming from all over-- American Indian civilizations, pirate ship organizations, the Arab world, and (later) the East. The (mostly American?) idea that the bulk of progress came from a bunch of bigoted Puritans is pure credit-taking. They played a role, but a small one compared to Parisian salons. In fact, the Pilgrims had the opportunity to "live in religious freedom" in the Netherlands and left because it was too liberal.

michaelochurch 14y ago

You know a lot about this and you're not wrong, but I think trade and exploration would have been very different without the Reformation, which created intractable competition among European elites. The standing elites, initially, bought into mercantilism and wanted to steal resources: especially gold, silver, and people (slaves). They had no interest in building new societies or challenging old ways of doing things. There's a lot of bad to be said about the Puritan Pilgrims, but they did have that ambition, leading to a pattern culminating in experimentation with rational government. (Pirates and the American Indian federations also provided some inspiration.) The Reformation provided an incentive for more nations-- poorer, Protestant ones far from the Mediterranean-- to get involved in (costly, dangerous) exploration in the 16th and 17th centuries. Being unable to compete with the existing powers (especially Spain) directly, they often got into industries (e.g. cotton) that had less short-term yield but more durability. Sea trade itself wasn't that interesting, or even new. Sailing was millennia old already. It was the desire for social and economic experimentation that made that era interesting. This isn't to white-wash that time or say that the experimentation mentality was purely virtuous. There was an incredible amount of ugliness involved (genocide, religious persecution, slavery) in the process. I do think, however, that there was a much faster rate of overall, eventual progress on account of the competition between two halves of the European elite.

oinksoft 14y ago
Your interpretation of renaissance history remains revisionist. England was perfectly able to compete with Spain, etc. particularly following the Spanish Armada. Note that Spain had been crumbling from within for a long time. Only at that point could the English settle in the Americas. Further, the English were every bit as interested in raping the Americas for gold as the Spaniards and Italians ... I have studied Virginia history at length, and the first colonists to Virginia were interested in very little apart from establishing a base so as to extract precious metals from the continent. Only when this proved impossible, and poor Englishmen realized how much opportunity the New World offered, did goals begin to change. I omit discussion of the Pilgrims because your original thesis was specifically about elites, claiming that their competition (specifically, when strongly divided) spurred innovation more than anything else, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a time in history where an oppressed people were not fleeing. It's an error to say that this was a novelty of the Protestant Reformation. Sea trade was in itself interesting. Yes, Europeans had been sailing for some time, but apart from the Vikings, nobody had sailed across great expanses the way the Europeans did in the age of discovery. Improvements in navigation and cartography enabled the new travels. In any case, what you seemed to interpret as a cage match between European rulers, divided by religion, was actually the rise of nationalism. As power was consolidated so as to combat the Arabs in Europe, which along with the Crusades broke the stranglehold the Arabs had on trade, the Europeans could dream of greater endeavors.

zeteo 14y ago

>Your assertion that the Protestant Reformation was responsible for renaissance exploration and trade is extremely dubious. You've misread michaelochurch's comment. He wasn't asserting the Reformation came before the Renaissance. His point was that the states newly energized by the Reformation became very active in exploration and trade and ultimately created the economic and political institutions that define the modern world. And, while he is correct about England (which, despite insularity, was never a great naval power before it began being ruled by Protestants), his best example would have been the Northern Netherlands, which featured: the first modern republic, religious toleration, the first stock exchange, extensive civil engineering, the revival of drill-based military techniques etc. Unlike earlier mercantile republics (say, Venice), the Dutch model also found ready imitators in many of its aspects (Sweden in its golden age, England especially after 1688, the North American colonies) and developed directly into the capitalist / parliamentarian society that many of us live in today.

oinksoft 14y ago
The kernel of his thesis is The best way to create social mobility for smart people is to create a massive, irreparable cleavage in the elite. In 1540, it was the Protestant Reformation, leading to exploration and trade and new theories about politics, culminating in rational government and modern capitalism. That is entirely backward and has little grounding in history. The points you make are sound and accurate, and had they been his, I would have had no reason to criticize.
- michaelochurch 14y ago
  The way I might be wrong is in the assertion that the Protestant Reformation was responsible for creating cleavages within the European elites that might have formed in other ways and for other reasons. Did society need the Protestant Reformation, at that specific point in time, to get those advances? Possibly not. Did we need a Cold War with the Soviet Union, rather than some other kind of conflict, to get the Internet? Again, no. It's not specific conflicts that humanity has needed to advance, insofar as history could have played out in a million of other different ways. However, it has been the case throughout most of humanity's history that social health (rather than slow degeneracy due to a parasitic elite) requires some kind of intractable enmity to exist within the elite.