Chapter One: The Rise of Europe

Introduction to Chapter
a. Europe largest political, military, economic, technological, and scientific
apparatus.
b. Top at beginning of twentieth century.
c. Internal conflicts and spreading of modernity recent decline
d. Modernization acquiring or adapting some of the technical skills and
powers first held by Europe. Idea of Nation came from Europe.
e. Modern times begin in Europe around 1500. The thousand years before
are the Middle Ages. Thousand years before that Greco Roman
civilization. Ancient = times before European Middle Ages.
Section One: Ancient Times: Greece, Rome, and Christianity
I.

II.

III.

IV.

Introduction to Section
a. Egypt began with written records in 4000-3000 BC
b. Before 2000 BC Europe and the Neolithic New Stone Age
i. Tools, cloth, build, domesticate animals, plant seeds, and harvest
crops.
c. Middle East 2000 years more advanced
Indo-Europeans
a. 2000 BC European Bronze Age and 1000 BC Iron Age
b. Spoke Indian and Iranian languages.
i. Melted into Indo-European language and were precursors to Greek
and Roman civilization
1. Basis of all Euro languages, except Basque
The Greek World
a. First to emerge into history.
b. Greece 1300 BC 1150 more tribes and wars
c. 800 BC Homer writes the Illiad and the Odyssey
d. Troy 1200 BC
Greek Accomplishments
a. Thought and writing.
i. Conscious of human mind; ideas of beauty; politics
b. Tiny city states
i. Independent and at war with each other and few miles apart
1. Ex. Athens, Corinth, Sparta
ii. Many were democratic
1. All male citizens could congregate in the market place to
elect and discuss.
2. Fail modern sense of democracy because slaves, resident
no citizens ie Metics and women excluded from politics
c. Politics turbulent. Democracy alternated with aristocracy, oligarchy,
despotism, and tyranny.
i. Birth of systematic political science. Republic of Plato. Politics of
Aristotle.

V.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

d. Written history as a subject distinct form myth and legend.

i. Herodotus, the Father of History, traveled and wrote about the past
ii. Thucydides, a history to guide and enlighten citizenship and
statecraft. Wrote of Wars between Athens and Sparta
The Classical Virtues
a. Prize of the Ancient Greeks
b. Ideal in moderation, or golden mean.
i. Order, balance, symmetry, clarity, and control.
c. Man noble creatures dignified, poised, unterrified by life or death,
masters of themselves and their feelings.
d. Written language contrived, planned, and organized.
i. Epic poem, lyric, drama, oration, history, philosophy all had rules
of forms
e. Greek Philosophy
i. Something more fundamental existed beyond the world of
appearances. True reality, not what meets the eye.
ii. Rational and natural explanations for what they saw.
iii. Others felt the world was made of four elements, fire, water, earth,
and air. Some said change was illusion, all basic reality being
uniform. Some change real and the world in flux.
f. Pythagoras
i. Reality in numbers and mathematics.
ii. Greeks laid foundations to science.
iii. Science of logic.
g. Aristotle
i. Codifier of Greek thought on all subjects. Athens 384-322 BC
Spread of Greek Civilization
a. Widely and rapidly spread
b. Greek city states unable to unite succumbed to conquest by Philip of
Macedon. He came from relatively crude northern part of Greek world.
Son, Alexander the Great, conquering of Asia Persia and India.
c. Art, thinking, and culture influence came from Hellenized Middle East
and Alexandria in Egypt. Strabo geography, Galen in medicine, Ptolemy in
astronomy influential Greek thinkers in their fields.
The Roman world
a. 146 BC Greeks of Greece conquered by Romans, who kept Latin
language, but took art and culture
b. In 2 centuries created a world and ancient empire west of Persia
c. Acted as civilizing agents.
Roman empire
a. 31 BC
b. Politically united; and internal peace.
c. Orbis Terrarum circle of lands, the known world
d. Consisted of coasts of Mediterranean Sea
e. Civilization remarkably uniform.
i. NO DISTICNT NATIONALITIES

IX.

X.

XI.

ii. Mist significant cultural differenceeast of Italy Greek. West

Latin
f. Relied on labor of slaves.
g. More cities in east. More manufacturing and dense population
h. Aptitudes in organization administrations government and law.
i. Armies systematically formed, maintained
i. Self-governing and republican institutions, but they lost them in the
process of conquest.
j. Authoritarian government.
k. Local city-states autonomous
Pax Romana
a. The Roman Peace
i. Justice between its peoples
ii. Lawyers worked on the body principles known as Roman Law
iii. Judges settled disputes between persons of different regions.
Conflicting customs.
b. BIRTH OF UNIVERSAL LAW
i. Also known as natural law. Human nature and reasonnot
distinct customs
ii. Drew on Greek philosophy law derives its force from being
enacted by a proper authority.
iii. Majestas, sovereign power, the authority to make law. Attributed
to the emperor.
iv. Formed from enlightened intelligence consistent with reason and
the nature of tings; they associated it with solemn action of official
power.
v. Favored the state and public interest as seen by government rather
than liberties of individuals. Men more rights than women.
The Coming of Christianity
a. Confucius, Buddha, and Jewish prophets, and <Muhammad came about
800 BC AD 700.
b. Jesus born 4 BC in Palestine. Son of God.
i. First Christians were Jews
ii. All are alike in spirit
iii. Leadership of Paul
1. Jewish born, Greek Culture, Roman citizenship
2. Made converts without regard to former belief.
iv. Paul and Peter Died as martyrs at Rome in the time of Emperor
Nero AD 67
Emergence and Spread of Christianity.
a. Spread at first among the poor, people bottom of society, Greek glories
and Roman splendors had passed over or enslaved.
b. Hope and delight for the existing world.
c. Women drawn because Christianity offered more autonomy and more
opportunities for leadership than they found in patriarchal Roman society.

XII.

XIII.

XIV.

XV.

d. Somewhere along the line, Christian ideals reached the upper class; and
few became converts.
e. Second century Christian bishops at work in the Roman Empire.
f. Third Century Roman government persecution began because of decline
in the empire
g. Fourth Century 312. Emperor Constantine accepted Christianity.
h. Fifth Century Entire Roman world was formally Christian.
i. No other religion was officially tolerated
ii. Deepest thinkers were Christians who combined Christian beliefs
with thousand year old Greco Roman thought and Philosophy.
Christian Beliefs and Their Importance to History as an Academic Subject
a. New sense of human life. Christians explored the soul and they taught
that all were equal and had equal dignity and worth.
b. Greeks taught beautiful good and ugly bad; Christians resolutely saw
beauty in everything.
c. God was love; suffering itself was in a way divine because God suffered
on the cross.
d. New dignity was found for suffering that the world could not cure.
e. Worked to end suffering as well.
f. Protests Against:
i. War; slaves; gladiators
g. Taught value of humility
h. Men and Women Equal
Intellectual advancements by Christianity
a. Marked revolution
i. Dispelled the swarm of greater and lesser gods and goddesses
ii. Dispelled blood sacrifices; immolation; frantic resort to magic;
fortune telling etc.
b. One God; One salvation; One Providence; and all Human beings took
origins from one source.
c. Intolerance from Christianity stems from the sense of human unity which
rubbed those well to do the wrong way
Persecution
a. Denounced for Political Ideas
b. Roman Empire as a world state and points of contention
i. No other state but it; no living being except emperor was
sovereign; no one anyway on earth was his equal.
ii. No clear distinction between gods and humans.
iii. Emperor held to be god
iv. Divus Caesar; Semper Augustus
1. Cult of Caesar was establishedregarded as necessary to
maintain state
2. Christians refused to accept.
3. Would not worship Caesar; caused Roman persecution.
c. Render to Caesar what is Caesars and to God what is Gods.
St. Augustine

a. 420 AD wrote the City of Goddualism presented. Most influential in

shaping the later development of Western civilization
b. 410 Rome plundered by barbarians.
c. Augustine wrote the City of God to show that thought he material world
could perish there was yet another world more enduring.
d. Two cities
i. Earthly and Heavenly; temporal and eternal; city of man; and the
City of God.
e. Earthly city was the domain of the state and empire, of politics;
i. Good for part of Gods providential scheme; but it had no
inherently divine character of its own. Emperor was human; the
state not absolute; it could be judged, criticized, and corrected from
sources outside itself. Subordinate to higher spiritual power. This
power is in the City of God
f. City of God
i. Meant many things; interpreted in many ways
ii. Heavenly City might mean heaven itself, the abode of God. It
might mean certain elect spirits of this world the good people are
as opposed to the bad.
iii. Maybe even a system of ideal values or ideal justice as opposed to
crude real world.
XVI. Caesaropapism
a. A political system in which one person holds the powers of ruler and of
pontiff. Instead the spiritual and the political power were held to be
separate and independent with the Dualistic attitude.
b. Popes and kings often quarreled. Clergy often struggled for political
power; governments attempted to dictate belief. Neither side has won in
European history.
c. The idea that no ruler, no government; and no institution is too might to
rise above moral criticism eventually opened the way to a dynamic and
progressive west.