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>Your assertion that the Protestant Reformation was responsible for renaissance exploration and trade is extremely dubious. You've misread michaelochurch's com
by 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 agoThe 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 agoThe 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.
- afterburner 14y agoI think the general theory that conflict creates progress has some merit though, even if his choice of examples turns up flawed. There is the general example/theory of several countries in Europe with good defensive terrain protecting them being able to compete with each other for a sustained period, without one power control the entire area as in other parts of the world (ancient China, say, or ancient Persia). It's interesting.