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Diplomacy in the age of the Reformation Custom Essay

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This was a golden era for diplomats and international lawyers. To the network of alliances that became established throughout Europe during the Renaissance, the Reformation added confessional pacts. Unfortunately, however, the two systems were not always compatible. The traditional amity between Castile and England, for example, was fatally undermined when the Tudor dynasty embraced Protestantism after 1532; and the “auld alliance” between Scotland and France was likewise wrecked by the progress of the Reformation in Scotland after 1560. Moreover, in many countries, the confessional divisions of Christendom after Luther created powerful religious minorities who were prepared to look abroad for guarantees of protection and solidarity: for example, the English Catholics to Spain and the French, German, and Dutch Calvinists to England.

These developments created a situation of chronic political instability. On the one hand, the leaders of countries which themselves avoided religious fragmentation (such as Spain) were often unsure whether to frame their foreign policy according to confessional or political advantage. On the other hand, the foreign policy of religiously divided states, such as France, England, and the Dutch Republic, oscillated often and markedly because there was no consensus among the political elite concerning the correct principles upon which foreign policy should be based.

The complexity of the diplomatic scene called for unusual skills among the rulers of post-Reformation Europe. Seldom has the importance of personality in shaping events been so great. The quixotic temperaments and mercurial designs of even minor potentates exerted a disproportionate influence on the course of events. Nevertheless, behind the complicated interplay of individuals and events, two constants may be detected. First, statesmen and churchmen alike consistently identified politics and religion as two sides of the same coin. Supporters of the Bohemian rebellion of 1618, for example, frequently stated that “religion and liberty stand or fall together”: that is, a failure to defend and maintain religious liberty would necessarily lead to the loss of political freedom. The position of Emperor Ferdinand II (1619–37) was exactly the same. “God’s blessing cannot be received,” he informed his subjects, “by a land in which prince and vassals do not both fervently uphold the one true Catholic faith.”

These two views, precisely because they were identical, were totally incompatible. That their inevitable collision should have so often produced prolonged wars, however, was due to the second “constant”: the desire of political leaders everywhere, even on the periphery of Europe, to secure a balance of power on the continent favourable to their interests. It is scarcely surprising that, when any struggle became deadlocked, the local rulers should look about for foreign support; it is more noteworthy that their neighbours were normally ready and eager to provide it. Queen Elizabeth I of England (1558–1603) offered substantial support after 1585 to the Dutch rebels against Philip II and after 1589 to the Protestant Henry IV of France against his more powerful Catholic subjects; Philip II of Spain (1556–98), for his part, sent troops and treasure to the French Catholics, while his son Philip III (1598–1621) did the same for the German Catholics.

This willingness to assist arose because every court in Europe believed in a sort of domino theory, which argued that, if one side won a local war, the rest of Europe would inevitably be affected. The Spanish version of the theory was expressed in a letter from Archduchess Isabella, regent of the Spanish Netherlands, to her master Philip IV in 1623: “It would not be in the interests of Your Majesty to allow the Emperor or the Catholic cause to go down, because of the harm it would do to the possessions of Your Majesty in the Netherlands and Italy.” Thus, the religious tensions released by the Reformation eventually pitted two incompatible ideologies against each other; this in turn initiated civil wars that lasted 30 years (in the case of France and Germany) and even 80 years (in the Netherlands), largely because all the courts of Europe saw that the outcome of each confrontation would affect the balance of power for a decade, a generation, perhaps forever.

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Reformation and Counter-Reformation Custom Essay

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In a sense, the Reformation was a protest against the secular values of the Renaissance. No Italian despots better represented the profligacy, the materialism, and the intellectual hedonism that accompanied these values than did the three Renaissance popes, Alexander VI, Julius II, and Leo X. Among those precursors of the reformers who were conscious of the betrayal of Christian ideals were figures so diverse as the Ferraran monk Savonarola, the Spanish statesman Cardinal Jiménez, and the humanist scholar Erasmus.

The corruption of the religious orders and the cynical abuse of the fiscal machinery of the church provoked a movement that at first demanded reform from within and ultimately chose the path of separation. When the Augustinian monk Martin Luther protested against the sale of indulgences in 1517, he found himself obliged to extend his doctrinal arguments until his stand led him to deny the authority of the pope. In the past, as in the controversies between pope and emperor, such challenges had resulted in mere temporary disunity. In the age of nation-states, the political implications of the dispute resulted in the irreparable fragmentation of clerical authority.

Luther had chosen to attack a lucrative source of papal revenue, and his intractable spirit obliged Leo X to excommunicate him. The problem became of as much concern to the emperor as it was to the pope, for Luther’s eloquent writings evoked a wave of enthusiasm throughout Germany. The reformer was by instinct a social conservative and supported existing secular authority against the upthrust of the lower orders. Although the Diet of Worms accepted the excommunication in 1521, Luther found protection among the princes. In 1529 the rulers of electoral Saxony, Brandenburg, Hessen, Lüneberg, and Anhalt signed the “protest” against an attempt to enforce obedience. By this time, Charles V had resolved to suppress Protestantism and to abandon conciliation. In 1527 his mutinous troops had sacked Rome and secured the person of Pope Clement VII, who had deserted the imperial cause in favour of Francis I after the latter’s defeat at the Battle of Pavia. The sack of Rome proved a turning point both for the emperor and the humanist movement that he had patronized. The humanist scholars were dispersed, and the initiative for reform then lay in the hands of the more violent and uncompromising party. Charles V himself experienced a revulsion of conscience that placed him at the head of the Roman Catholic reaction. The empire he ruled in name was now divided into hostile camps. The Catholic princes of Germany had discussed measures for joint action at Regensburg in 1524; in 1530 the Protestants formed a defensive league at Schmalkalden. Reconciliation was attempted in 1541 and 1548, but the German rift could no longer be healed.

Lutheranism laid its emphasis doctrinally on justification by faith and politically on the God-given powers of the secular ruler. Other Protestants reached different conclusions and diverged widely from one another in their interpretation of the sacraments. In Geneva, Calvinism enforced a stern moral code and preached the mystery of grace with predestinarian conviction. It proclaimed the separation of church and state, but in practice its organization tended to produce a type of theocracy. Huldrych Zwingli and Heinrich Bullinger in Zürich taught a theology not unlike Calvin’s but preferred to see government in terms of the godly magistrate. On the left wing of these movements were the Anabaptists, whose pacifism and mystic detachment were paradoxically associated with violent upheavals.

Lutheranism established itself in northern Germany and Scandinavia and for a time exercised a wide influence both in eastern Europe and in the west. Where it was not officially adopted by the ruling prince, however, the more militant Calvinist faith tended to take its place. Calvinism spread northward from the upper Rhine and established itself firmly in Scotland and in southern and western France. Friction between Rome and nationalist tendencies within the Catholic church facilitated the spread of Protestantism. In France the Gallican church was traditionally nationalist and antipapal in outlook, while in England the Reformation in its early stages took the form of the preservation of Catholic doctrine and the denial of papal jurisdiction. After periods of Calvinist and then of Roman Catholic reaction, the Church of England achieved a measure of stability with the Elizabethan religious settlement.

In the years between the papal confirmation of the Jesuit order in 1540 and the formal dissolution of the Council of Trent in 1563, the Roman Catholic church responded to the Protestant challenge by purging itself of the abuses and ambiguities that had opened the way to revolt. Thus prepared, the Counter-Reformation embarked upon recovery of the schismatic branches of Western Christianity. Foremost in this crusade were the Jesuits, established as a well-educated and disciplined arm of the papacy by Ignatius Loyola. Their work was made easier by the Council of Trent, which did not, like earlier councils, result in the diminution of papal authority. The council condemned such abuses as pluralism, affirmed the traditional practice in questions of clerical marriage and the use of the Bible, and clarified doctrine on issues such as the nature of the Eucharist, divine grace, and justification by faith. The church thus made it clear that it was not prepared to compromise; and, with the aid of the Inquisition and the material resources of the Habsburgs, it set out to reestablish its universal authority. It was of vital importance to this task that the popes of the Counter-Reformation were men of sincere conviction and initiative who skillfully employed diplomacy, persuasion, and force against heresy. In Italy, Spain, Bavaria, Austria, Bohemia, Poland, and the southern Netherlands (the future Belgium), Protestant influence was destroyed.

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Turkey and eastern Europe Custom Essay

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A contemporary who rivaled the power and prestige of Francis I and Charles V was the ruler of the Ottoman Empire, the sultan Süleyman I the Magnificent (1520–66). With their infantry corps d’élite (the Janissaries), their artillery, and their cavalry, or sipahis, the Ottomans were the foremost military power in Europe, and it was fortunate for their Christian adversaries that Eastern preoccupations prevented them from taking full advantage of Western disunity. A counterpoise was provided by the rise of the powerful military order of the Ṣafavids in Persia—hostile to the orthodox Ottomans through their acceptance of the heretical Islamic cult of the Shīʿites. Ottoman strength was further dissipated by the need to enforce the allegiance of Turkmen begs in Anatolia and of the chieftains of the Caucasus and Kurdistan and to maintain the conquest of the sultanate of Syria and Egypt by Süleyman’s predecessor, Selim I. Süleyman himself overran Iraq and even challenged Portuguese dominion of the Indian Ocean from his bases in Suez and Basra. The Crimean Tatars acknowledged his suzerainty, as did the corsair powers of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. His armies conquered Hungary in 1526 and threatened Vienna in 1529. With the expansion of his authority along the North African coast and the Adriatic littoral, it seemed for a time as if the Mediterranean, like the Black Sea and the Aegean, might become an Ottoman lake.

Though it observed the forms of an Islamic legal code, Turkish rule was an unlimited despotism, suffering from none of the financial and constitutional weaknesses of Western states. With its disciplined standing army and its tributary populations, the Ottoman Empire feared no internal threat except during the periods of disputed succession, which continued to occur despite a law empowering the reigning sultan to put to death collateral heirs. It was not unusual for the sultan to content himself with the overlordship of frontier provinces. Moldavia and Walachia were for a time held in this fashion, and in Transylvania the vaivode John Zápolya gladly accepted Süleyman as his master in return for support against Ferdinand of Austria.

Despite the expeditions of Charles V against Algiers and Tunis, and the inspired resistance of Venice and Genoa in the war of 1537–40, the Ottomans retained the initiative in the Mediterranean until several years after the death of Süleyman. The Knights of St. John were driven from Rhodes and Tripoli and barely succeeded in retaining Malta. Even after Spain, the papacy, Venice, and Genoa had crushed the Turkish armament in 1571 in the Battle of Lepanto, the Ottomans took Cyprus and recovered Tunis from the garrison installed by the allied commander, Don John of Austria. North Africa remained an outpost of Islam and its corsairs continued to harry Christian shipping, but the Ottoman Empire did not again threaten Europe by land and sea until late in the 17th century.

Poland, Lithuania, Bohemia, and Hungary were all loosely associated at the close of the 15th century under rulers of the Jagiellon dynasty. In 1569, three years before the death of the last Jagiellon king of Lithuania-Poland, these two countries merged their separate institutions by the Union of Lublin. Thereafter the Polish nobility and the Roman Catholic faith dominated the Orthodox lands of Lithuania and held the frontiers against Muscovy, the Cossacks, and the Tatars. Bohemia and the vestiges of independent Hungary were regained by the Habsburgs as a result of dynastic marriages, which the emperor Maximilian I planned as successfully in the east as he did in the west. When Louis II of Hungary died fighting the Ottomans at Mohács in 1526, Archduke Ferdinand of Austria obtained both crowns and endeavoured to affirm the hereditary authority of his dynasty against aristocratic insistence on the principle of election. In 1619, Habsburg claims in Bohemia became the ostensible cause of the Thirty Years’ War, when the Diet of Prague momentarily succeeded in deposing Ferdinand II.

In the 16th century, eastern Europe displayed the opposite tendency to the advance of princely absolutism in the West. West of the Carpathians and in the lands drained by the Vistula and the Dnestr, the landowning class achieved a political independence that weakened the power of monarchy. The towns entered a period of decline, and the propertied class, though divided by rivalry between the magnates and the lesser gentry, everywhere reduced their peasantry to servitude. In Poland and Bohemia the peasants were reduced to serfdom in 1493 and 1497, respectively, and in free Hungary the last peasant rights were suppressed after the rising of 1514. The gentry, or szlachta, controlled Polish policy in the Sejm (parliament), and, when the first Vasa king, Sigismund III, tried to reassert the authority of the crown after his election in 1587, the opportunity had passed. Yet, despite the anarchic quality of Polish politics, the aristocracy maintained and even extended the boundaries of the state. In 1525 they compelled the submission of the secularized Teutonic Order in East Prussia, resisted the pressure of Muscovy, and pressed to the southeast, where communications with the Black Sea had been closed by the Ottomans and their tributaries.

Farther to the east the grand principality of Moscow emerged as a new and powerful despotism. Muscovy, and not Poland, became the heir to Kiev during the reign of Ivan III the Great in the second half of the 15th century. By his marriage with the Byzantine princess Sofia (Zoë) Palaeologus, Ivan also laid claim to the traditions of Constantinople. His capture of Novgorod and repudiation of Tatar overlordship began a movement of Muscovite expansion, which was continued by the seizure of Smolensk by his son Vasily (Basil) III and by the campaigns of his grandson Ivan IV the Terrible (1533–84). The latter destroyed the khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan and reached the Baltic by his conquest of Livonia from Poland and the Knights of the Sword. He was the first to use the title of tsar, and his arbitrary exercise of power was more ruthless and less predictable than that of the Ottoman sultan. After his death Muscovy was engulfed in the Time of Troubles, when Polish, Swedish, and Cossack armies devastated the land. The accession of the Romanov dynasty in 1613 heralded a period of gradual recovery. Except for occasional embassies, the importation of a few Western artisans, and the reception of Tudor trading missions, Muscovy remained isolated from the West. Despite its relationship with Greek civilization, it knew nothing of the Renaissance. Though it experienced a schism within its own Orthodox faith, it was equally untouched by Reformation and Counter-Reformation, the consequences of which convulsed western Europe in the late 16th century.

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Nation-states and dynastic rivalries Custom Essay

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The organization of expansion overseas reflected in economic terms the political nationalism of the European states. This political development took place through processes of internal unification and the abolition of local privileges by the centralizing force of dynastic monarchies. In Spain the union of Aragon, Valencia, and Catalonia under John II of Aragon was extended to association with Castile through the marriage of his son Ferdinand with the Castilian heiress Isabella. The alliance grew toward union after the accession of the two sovereigns to their thrones in 1479 and 1474, respectively, and with joint action against the Moors of Granada, the French in Italy, and the independent kingdom of Navarre. Yet, at the same time, provincial institutions long survived the dynastic union, and the representative assembly (Cortes) of Aragon continued to cling to its privileges when its Castilian counterpart had ceased to play any effective part. Castilian interest in the New World and Aragonese ties in Italy, moreover, resulted in the ambivalent nature of Spanish 16th-century policy, with its uneasy alternation between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. The monarchy increased the central power by the absorption of military orders and the adaptation of the Hermandad, or police organization, and the Inquisition for political purposes. During the reign of Charles I (the emperor Charles V) centralization was quickened by the importation of Burgundian conciliar methods of government, and in the reign of his son Philip II Spain was in practice an autocracy.

Other European monarchies imitated the system devised by Roman-law jurists and administrators in the Burgundian dominions along the eastern borders of France. In England and France the Hundred Years’ War (conventionally 1337–1453) had reduced the strength of the aristocracies, the principal opponents of monarchical authority. The pursuit of strong, efficient government by the Tudors in England, following the example of their Yorkist predecessors, found a parallel in France under Louis XI and Francis I. In both countries revision of the administrative and judicial system proceeded through conciliar institutions, although in neither case did it result in the unification of different systems of law. A rising class of professional administrators came to fulfill the role of the king’s executive. The creation of a central treasury under Francis I brought an order into French finances already achieved in England through Henry VII’s adaptation of the machinery of the royal household. Henry VIII’s minister, Thomas Cromwell, introduced an aspect of modernity into English fiscal administration by the creation of courts of revenue on bureaucratic lines. In both countries, the monarchy extended its influence over the government of the church. The unrestricted ability to make law was established by the English crown in partnership with Parliament. In France the representative Estates-General lost its authority, and sovereignty reposed in the king in council. Supreme courts (parlements) possessing the right to register royal edicts imposed a slight and ineffective limitation on the absolutism of the Valois kings. The most able exponent of the reform of the judicial machinery of the French monarch was Charles IX’s chancellor, Michel de L’Hôpital, but his reforms in the 1560s were frustrated by the anarchy of the religious wars. In France the middle class aspired to ennoblement in the royal administration and mortgaged their future to the monarchy by investment in office and the royal finances. In England, on the other hand, a greater flexibility in social relations was preserved, and the middle class engaged in bolder commercial and industrial ventures.

Territorial unity under the French crown was attained through the recovery of feudal appanages (alienated to cadet branches of the royal dynasty) and, as in Spain, through marriage alliances. Brittany was regained in this way, although the first of the three Valois marriages with Breton heiresses also set in train the dynastic rivalry of Valois and Habsburg. When Charles VIII of France married Anne of Brittany, he stole the bride of the Austrian archduke and future emperor Maximilian I and also broke his own engagement to Margaret of Austria, Maximilian’s daughter by Mary of Burgundy. Margaret’s brother Philip, however, married Joan, heiress of Castile and Aragon, so that their son eventually inherited not only Habsburg Germany and the Burgundian Netherlands but also Spain, Spanish Italy, and America. The dominions of Charles V thus encircled France and incorporated the wealth of Spain overseas. Even after the division of this vast inheritance between his son, Philip II of Spain, and his brother, the emperor Ferdinand I, the conflict between the Habsburgs and the French crown dominated the diplomacy of Europe for more than a century.

The principal dynastic conflict of the age was less unequal than it seemed, for the greater resources of Charles V were offset by their cumbrous disunity and by local independence. In the Low Countries he was able to complete the Seventeen Provinces by new acquisitions, but, although the coordinating machinery of the Burgundian dukes remained in formal existence, Charles’s regents were obliged to respect local privileges and to act through constitutional forms. In Germany, where his grandfather Maximilian I had unsuccessfully tried to reform the constitution of the Holy Roman Empire, Charles V could do little to overcome the independence of the lay and ecclesiastical princes, the imperial knights, and the free cities. The revolts of the knights (1522) and the peasantry (1525), together with the political disaggregation imposed by the Reformation, rendered the empire a source of weakness. Even in Spain, where the rebellion of the comuneros took place in 1520–21, his authority was sometimes flouted. His allies, England and the papacy, at times supported France to procure their own profit. France, for its part, possessed the advantages of internal lines of communication and a relatively compact territory, while its alliance with the Ottoman Empire maintained pressure on the Habsburg defenses in southeast Europe and the Mediterranean. Francis I, however, like his predecessors Charles VIII and Louis XII, made the strategic error of wasting his strength in Italy, where the major campaigns were fought in the first half of the century. Only under Henry II was it appreciated that the most suitable area for French expansion lay toward the Rhine.

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Discovery of the New World Custom Essay

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In the Iberian Peninsula the impetus of the counteroffensive against the Moors carried the Portuguese to probe the West African coastline and the Spanish to attempt the expulsion of Islam from the western Mediterranean. In the last years of the 15th century, Portuguese navigators established the sea route to India and within a decade had secured control of the trade routes in the Indian Ocean and its approaches. Mercantile interests, crusading and missionary zeal, and scientific curiosity were intermingled as the motives for this epic achievement. Similar hopes inspired Spanish exploitation of the discovery by Christopher Columbus of the Caribbean outposts of the American continent in 1492. The Treaties of Tordesillas and Saragossa in 1494 and 1529 defined the limits of westward Spanish exploration and the eastern ventures of Portugal. The two states acting as the vanguard of the expansion of Europe had thus divided the newly discovered sea lanes of the world between them.

By the time of the Treaty of Saragossa, when Portugal secured the exclusion of Spain from the East Indies, Spain had begun the conquest of Central and South America. In 1519, the year in which Ferdinand Magellan embarked on the westward circumnavigation of the globe, Hernán Cortés launched his expedition against Mexico. The seizure of Peru by Francisco Pizarro and the enforcement of Portuguese claims to Brazil completed the major steps in the Iberian occupation of the continent. By the middle of the century, the age of the conquistadores was replaced by an era of colonization, based both on the procurement of precious metal by Indian labour and on pastoral and plantation economies using imported African slaves. The influx of bullion into Europe became significant in the late 1520s, and from about 1550 it began to produce a profound effect upon the economy of the Old World.

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Politics and diplomacy; The state of European politics Custom Essay

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In the 15th century, changes in the structure of European polity, accompanied by a new intellectual temper, suggested to such observers as the philosopher and clerical statesman Nicholas of Cusa that the “Middle Age” had attained its conclusion and a new era had begun. The Papacy, the symbol of the spiritual unity of Christendom, lost much of its prestige in the Great Western Schism and the conciliar movement and became infected with the lay ideals prevailing in the Italian peninsula. In the 16th century, the Protestant Reformation reacted against the worldliness and corruption of the Holy See, and the Roman Catholic church responded in its turn by a revival of piety known as the Counter-Reformation. While the forces that were to erupt in the Protestant movement were gathering strength, the narrow horizons of the Old World were widened by the expansion of Europe to America and the East. (This section treats the political, diplomatic, and military history of Europe from the Reformation to the Peace of Westphalia. For a discussion of the religious history of this period, see Christianity, Protestantism, and Roman Catholicism. The expansion of European culture to new lands is covered in colonialism.)

In western Europe, nation-states emerged under the aegis of strong monarchical governments, breaking down local immunities and destroying the unity of the European respublica Christiana. Centralized bureaucracy came to replace medieval government. Underlying economic changes affected social stability. Secular values prevailed in politics, and the concept of a balance of power came to dominate international relations. Diplomacy and warfare were conducted by new methods. Permanent embassies were accredited between sovereigns, and on the battlefield standing armies of professional and mercenary soldiers took the place of the feudal array that had reflected the social structure of the past. At the same time, scientific discoveries cast doubt on the traditional cosmology. The systems of Aristotle and Ptolemy, which had long been sanctified by clerical approval, were undermined by Copernicus, Mercator, Galileo, and Kepler.

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Political and cultural influences on the economy Custom Essay

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The centralized state of the early modern age exerted a decisive influence on the development of financial institutions and in other economic sectors as well. To maintain its power both within its borders and within the international system, the state supported a large royal or princely court, a bureaucracy, and an army. It was the major purchaser of weapons and war matériel. Its authority affected class balances. Over the century’s course, the prince expanded his authority to make appointments and grant pensions. His control of resources softened the divisions among classes and facilitated social mobility. Several great merchants and bankers, the Fuggers among them, eventually were ennobled. Yet, in spending huge sums on war, the early modern state may also have injured the economy. The floating debt of the French crown came close to 10 million ecus (the ecu was worth slightly less than a gold florin), that of the Spanish, 20 million. These sums probably equaled the worth of the circulating coin in the two kingdoms. Only in England did the public debt remain at relatively modest proportions, about 200,000 gold ducats. Governments, with the exception of the English, were absorbing a huge part of the national wealth. The Spanish bankruptcies were also sure proof that Spain had insufficient resources to realize its ambitious imperial goals.

The effort to control the economy in the interest of enhancing state power is the essence of the political philosophy known as mercantilism. Many of the policies of 16th-century states affecting trade, manufactures, or money can be regarded as mercantilistic, but as yet they did not represent a coherent economic theory. The true age of mercantilism postdates 1650.

Cultural changes also worked to legitimate, even to inspire, the early modern spirit of enterprise. In a famous thesis, the German sociologist Max Weber and, later, the English historian Richard Henry Tawney posited a direct link between the Protestant ethic, specifically in its Calvinist form, and the capitalist motivation. Medieval ethics had supposedly condemned the profit motive, and teachings about usury and the just price had shackled the growth of capitalist practices. Calvinism made the successful merchant God’s elect. Today, this thesis appears too simple. Many movements contributed to a reassessment of the mercantile or business life, and the rival religious confessions influenced one another. Calvinism did not really view commercial success as a sign of God’s favour until the 17th century, but 16th-century Roman Catholic scholastics (as the humanists before them) had come to regard the operations of the marketplace as natural; it was good for the merchant to participate in them. Martin Luther, in emphasizing that every Christian had received a calling (Berufung) from God, gave new dignity to all secular employments. Roman Catholics developed their own theory of the “vocation” to both secular and religious callings in what was a close imitation of the Lutheran Berufung.

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Growth of banking and finance Custom Essay

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Perhaps the most spectacular changes in the 16th-century economy were in the fields of international banking and finance. To be sure, medieval bankers such as the Florentine Bardi and Peruzzi in the 14th century and the Medici in the 15th had operated on an international scale, but the full development of an international money market with supporting institutions awaited the 16th century. Its earliest architects were South German banking houses, from Augsburg and Nürnberg in particular, who were well situated to serve as financial intermediaries between such southern capitals as Rome (or commercial centres such as Venice) and the northern financial centre at Antwerp. Through letters of exchange drawn on the various bourses that were growing throughout Europe, these bankers were able to mobilize capital in fabulous amounts. In 1519 Jakob II Fugger the Rich of Augsburg amassed nearly two million florins for the Habsburg king of Spain, Charles I, who used the money to bribe the imperial electors (he was successfully elected Holy Roman emperor as Charles V). Money was shaping the politics of Europe.

The subsequent bankruptcies of the Spanish crown injured the German bankers; from 1580 or even earlier, the Genoese became the chief financiers of the Spanish government and empire. Through the central fair at Lyon and through letters of exchange and a complex variant known as the asiento, the Genoese transferred great sums from Spain to the Low Countries to pay the soldiers of the Spanish armies. In the mid-16th century, dissatisfied with Lyon, the Genoese set up a fictional fair, known as Bisenzone (Besançon), as a centre of their fiscal operations. Changing sites several times, “Bisenzone” from 1579 settled at Piacenza in Italy.

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If you worked at a company and your boss asked you to make some adjustments to the financial statements, what would you do? How would you know that the boss was acting with unethical intent? Custom Essay

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Research on this assignment and write 5 pages based on the question; If you worked at a company and your boss asked you to make some adjustments to the financial statements, what would you do? How would you know that the boss was acting with unethical intent?.

Ensure that the assignment is original free from plagiarism and use journals and book as references.

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What if you have an under-trained accountant that didn’t know about revenue recognition Custom Essay

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Research on this assignment and write 5 pages based on the question; What if you have an under-trained accountant that didn’t know about revenue recognition? Do you think that would still be considered unethical? Why or why not?.

Ensure that the assignment is original free from plagiarism and use journals and book as references.

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