This century saw the gradual development of the idea of "Powers" rather then kings, as the dominant factors in international affairs, although prior to 1750 almost all people of the globe were ruled by hereditary rulers[282]. It was a century of constant warfare with revolutions appearing at the end of the period, in multiple quarters. Great fortunes were made by men who equipped armies, but sugar and slave merchants of many countries were not far behind. (Ref. 213) The world production of gold more than doubled between 1720 and 1760 and some other metals increased still more. Braudel (Ref. 260) emphasizes still another aspect of the 18th century in that in both China and Europe the ancient biological balance of births to deaths at 40 per 1,000 each, was shattered - probably because of better crops and some control over disease. A demographic explosion resulted as births gained over deaths, but the basic civilizations changed little. For example, non-European societies, with the exception of China, had little furniture - there were essentially no chairs or tables in India or black Africa. Even the Russians had few tables and the Muslims all sat on cushions. There was not a fireplace in the whole of Turkish Islam, India or Japan. The Japanese used hot baths heated by wood fires as a means of keeping warm as much as keeping clean. Some northern Chinese homes, however, were heated by pipes under the floors, stoked from outside. Most of China did have elaborate furniture. (Ref. 260)
Almost every country had its peddlers, who although usually poor, were merchants carrying their meager stock on their backs and filling in the gaps in the regular channels of distribution. In backward regions economically, such as Poland, the peddlers actually dominated trade. All the glassware of Europe was distributed by peddlers, even to Scandinavia, England, Russia and the Ottoman Empire. (Ref. 292)
The "Age of Enlightenment"[283] of this century continued the process of diminishing power and importance of the papacy. The Spanish Church became practically independent of Rome and under government control. (Ref. 222) The Church's objection to usury continued to be a problem in the Christian world. Pope Benedict IV led a vigorous re-affirmation of the ancient restrictions on lending at interest in 1745. In 1777 a judgment of the Paris Parliament forbade any usury prohibited by the canons of the Church and it continued to be an offense in France until 1789. However, in general, the quarrel really terminated in the latter half of the century when a distinction was made between "usury", meaning excessive rates of interest and the regular price of borrowing money. (Ref. 292)
The Society of Jesus was abolished by the pope in 1773. At the end of the century, incident to the anti-clericalism of the French Revolution, a French army invaded the papal territory, set up a revolutionary Roman Republic (1798) and took Pope Pius VI off to France where he died with a year. (Ref. 52, 119) Methodism, one of the new branches of Protestantism, was developed in England. This will be further discussed in this chapter under the section on ENGLAND.
Through this century the entire Moslem world continued to be dedicated to its original concepts. Islam was not based on the world of Greece and Rome, but had been grafted on to the old Middle East, which was basically a trading civilization. The Muslim economy was an inherited set of trade links running between the merchants of Spain, North Af rica, Syria, Mesopotamia, Abyssinia, the Malabar coast, China and the East Indies. They inherited their gold dinar from Byzantium and their silver dirhem from Sassanid Persia. Mohammed himself had said: "He who makes money pleases God". (Ref. 292) Thus, Muslim merchants always enjoyed the best of considerations from their political rulers.
In the Middle East, as well as central and western Europe, Jews were tolerated and generally well treated in this century, except that Empress Maria Therea launched a program to drive them from Bohemia and Moravia in 1743. (Ref. 222) In Russia the merchants of Moscow complained in 1790 that they were being undercut in pricing by Jews and rural tavern owners resented their competition in that field. To solve the latter problem, in 1795 Catherine ordered that Jews be allowed to register and obtain civil rights only in towns, thus effectively eliminating them from rural tavern operations. Finally, Jews were allowed to settle only within certain regions of Russia, which by 1800 included all Polish territory claimed by Russia and most of southern Russia, including Kiev and the Crimea.
Back to Africa: A.D. 1601 to 1700
Local war continued in Ethiopia. James Bruce, exploring that country as he traveled from Massawa to Gondar and thence to the Blue Nile, reported that the Ethiopian Empire was in decline, restricted to the area north of the Blue Nile and was wracked by rebellion. Galla tribesmen had penetrated the countryside and looted at will. (Ref. 270) Egypt was simply a part of the Ottoman Empire until the very end of the century, when Napoleon penetrated it as a gateway to the east (1798). The population had shrunk from about 8,000,000 in the 1st century C.E. to 2,000,000 at this time. (Ref. 68) Additional Notes
Hussein ibn Ali founded the Husseinite Dynasty in Tunis and threw off Turkish authority in 1705 and shortly thereafter Ahmed Bey made himself ruler of Tripoli, founding the Karamanil Dynasty, which was to last more than a century. The Spaniards were expelled from Oran for awhile, but they resumed control in 1732. From 1757 to 1789 Morocco was ruled by Sidi Mohammed, who established a regime of law and order and abolished Christian slavery. By 1800 those north African areas still subject to Ottoman Sultans were the most powerful communities controlled by outsiders on the continent. (Ref. 119, 83)
Copper bracelets, gold dust and horses were all used as currency in that part of Africa. Magnificient horses of the Moors were sold for 15 slaves each. In more southern areas a sheet of paper would obtain a fat, tender chicken. (Ref. 260)
In western Africa, local wars in Ghana finally allowed that state to be taken over by Ashanti warriors, whose king and major chief s wore regalia made of local gold and imported silver. This forest Akan Empire became supreme in the interior of that part of Africa, trading gold for European fire-arms. They used minature brass sculptures to measure their gold dust. (Ref. 19, 175) The west coast of Africa was also the source of slaves for the British slave trade to the Spanish colonies in America. Britain had obtained this right as part of the treaty ending the Spanish War of Succession. The Ibo, in Guinea, supplied a greater number of slaves than any other e-thnic group, but their internal state was very little disturbed. Late in the century (1787) Sierra Leone, on the west coast, was acquired by the British for the settlement of freed slaves and it was made a separate colony in 1799, the same year as the founding of the British Church Missionary Society. Also late in this period, at about 1776, there was a rise of the Tukulor power in west Africa on the upper Niger, pushing the French out of their Senegal possessions on the river of the same name. The French recovered these in 1778.
Farther east the Hausa continued as a power about Lake Chad. Oyo, south of the Hausa states, got horses from the latter and built up a large cavalry. They may have had as many as 6,000 towns and villages, with almost all of the population speaking the Yoruba tongue. Still farther east, about the Great Lakes, the lake kingdoms of Uganda and Buganda made contact with the outside world, particularly through the Arab and Swahili merchants on the east coast. The Arabs had settled the coastal area of Kenya and came under control of the Sultan of Zanzibar from 1740 on. (Ref. 83, 175)
In the equatorial area, 600 miles northeast of the Kuba Kingdom, were several states of warrior Zande stock and east of them were the Mangbetu who, although cannibals, had advanced metal work displayed in lavish treasure chambers. The origin of these people is unknown. On the southern savannahs the Bakuba of Zaire commemorated their king with many fine portrait statues and in the more isolated regions, the Bushmen continued rock paintings. In the Cape Colony, the Dutch gradually pushed inland as cattle raiders and farmers, reaching the Orange River in 1760 and the Great Fish River in 1776. In 1795 the British fleet, acting under mandate from the exiled Prince of Orange, captured the Dutch garrison, primarily to prevent the Cape Colony from falling into the hands of the French. We should note, in passing, that the end of the century marked the birth of Shaka, a great Bantu-speaking king who would eventually fuse the Zulu nations into a great war machine. The Bushmen of the Cape were essentially destroyed by the European impact. (Ref. 83, 119, 154)
Eritrea was colonized by the Italians in 1890, but otherwise Ethiopia remained independent throughout the century. The Oromos in the south, which were the largest group in the country, were subjugated in late century by Menelik II and the land was divided up among the royal family, the church, soldiers of the conquering army and other friends of the crown. The farmers became mere landless tenants
Back to The Near East: A.D. 1601 to 1700
Differing in language and cultural background, the Arabs of the peninsula began to give the Turkish Ottoman rulers troubles. In the far south Abdul Wahhab (Muhammad ibn Abdulwahhab), a Moslem fundamentalist, called for the re-assertion of the original Moslem truths and soon joined forces with the emir, Muhammad ibn Saud, to conquer central Arabia as the Wahhabi Empire, a precursor of present day Saudi Arabia. (Ref. 6) This empire combined brigandage and pillage with preaching.
Until 1720 the English and Dutch East India Companies had to go to Mocha, Yemen, for coffee beans, but in that year the Dutch discovered that they could get coffee in Java and then Ceylon, while the English found it could be grown in the West Indies. (Ref. 211)
All these regions remained more or less docile under the Ottoman yoke.
Persia in this century was squeezed between an aggressive group of Afghans in the east, the Turkish Ottomans in the west and the Russians in the north. It is of interest that in spite of political diff iculties, trade apparently continued across the involved area. A document of 1708 says that camels carried loads of from 1,000 to 1,500 pounds between Tabriz and Istanbul. (Ref. 260) In 1722 the Afghan Mahmud defeated a central Persian army and made himself shah. He later went mad and instituted a reign of terror, massacring all Persian nobles and princes and many others. Russia and Turkey made an agreement to dismember Persia, but this plot was foiled by Nadir Kuli, another powerful chief of the Afshar tribe of Khorosan (part of Turkistan) by first def eating the Afghans that were in Persia and later defeating the Turks. In the end the Russians actually helped in this defeat of the Turks. In 1732 Abbas III, the last of the Safavid Dynasty, became the Persian Shah while still an infant, with Nadir still effectively in control. On the death of Abbas in 1736 Nadir became the shah, on the condition that the Persians renounce the Shi'a heresy. As a Turk by race, Nadir Shah was a Sunnite, but he was never able to make this orthodoxy acceptable to the people.
Forty thousand northern Persians died in an earthquake in 1755. Intermittent wars, rebellions and assassinations continued until the end of the century. Aga Mohammed founded the Kajar (Qajar) Dynasty, but probably because of his brutal, avarice nature, he was assassinated within three years. In 1800 the British East India Company concluded a political and commercial treaty in which the British agreed to supply arms and money in the event of an attack by Afghanistan or France. (Ref. 222, 119)
In spite of their weaknesses, or perhaps because of them, in November of 1710 the Ottoman Empire declared war on Russia, marching north from their secondary capital of Adrianople in Serbia, to be joined at the mouth of the Danube by Tatar cavalry, making a total of 200,000 men. (Ref. 131) In this instance the Russians under Peter the Great were overwhelmed and the czar had to buy his way out by the Treaty of Pruth (1711), in which Russia again gave up Azov. But throughout this century Turkey fought on the defensive against Persia and the Balkan groups, as well as having further wars with Russia. Substantial defeats between 1714 and 1718 finally stimulated the Turks to attempt to train troops in the European fashion, but this only led to a successful mutiny by the Janissaries, in 1730. (Ref. 279) In the end Russia gained great territorial areas around the Black Sea and in the eastern Balkans and the Russians called Turkey the "sick man of Europe".
The Turks were at war for 41 of the 109 years between the siege of Vienna in 1683 and 1792, which was the end of the second Russo-Turkish war, involving Catherine 11 and the Treaty of Jassy. (Ref. 8) They progressively lost Hungary, the Banat (part of present Yugoslavia and Romania), Transylvania and Bukovina (west Ukraine and northeastern Romania), as well as the north shore of the Black Sea, including the Crimea. The real breakdown occurred in the 1760s when, because of Russian policies in Poland many Poles fled to Turkey, with the Russian troops right behind them. The Turkish Porte, backed by France, declared war, which became known as the First War of Catherine. The French involvement in the declining Ottoman Empire was imperialism disguised as friendship and Turkey became the first French protectorate. (Ref. 74) The Russian fleet in that war was officered by the British, who came from the Baltic to the Turkish coast, while the Russian infantry attacked by land. That war ended by the Treaty of Kuchuk Kainarji, only when Russia developed internal troubles with the revolt of Pugachev, of which we shall hear more later. But Russia obtained the right of free navigation in Turkish waters and many other concessions. The Second War of Catharine developed in 1787 as a result of Turkish intrigues with the Crimean Tatars.
As their military power declined the Ottomans had to rely more on conference and diplomacy to maintain their prestige and in this capacity the Phanariots rose to power. That was a Greek-Christian group, who had been living in a ghetto in a corner of Stamboul, where the Moslems had allowed a center of Orthodox Christianity to remain under the control of the patriarch. They became very powerful in the government and probably had visions of establishing a new Greek-Orthodox domain through the framework of the Ottoman Empire. Phanariot families controlled the Patriarchate of Constantinople and extended its jurisdiction over the formerly independent Serbian and Bulgarian churches. Istanbul had narrow, dirty streets and houses were usually of only one story, built of wood and bricks and were white-washed. Fire often did great damage. (Ref. 260)
Although the geographical area of Armenia was still controlled by Ottomans and the Armenian people were dispersed widely, many of the Armenian merchants and financiers played important parts in Constantinople and other Turkish cities. Some Armenian merchants traveled as far as Sining on the Chinese frontier to trade silver for gold, a very profitable operation at that time. Even Lhasa in Tibet and any number of cities of India were common "ports of call" for these business men. (Ref. 292) From the old Armenian homeland, itself, cantaloupe was taken to Europe. (Ref. 260)
Back to Europe: A.D. 1601 to 1700
Even before the Industrial Revolution of the last quarter of this century, there was dramatic change in Europe. Spain and Italy were declining rapidly, while England, France, Sweden (exploiting mineral resources) were developing quickly. But it was a century of almost constant warfare, with conflict going on in some area all the time and in several localities at once most of the time. (Ref. 8) McNeill (Ref. 279) emphasizes that there were four limits to the existing military organizations:
The difficulty of controlling the movements of an army of more than about 50,000 men. New forms of communication and more accurate terrain maps were needed
Slow transport of supplies. Food for the men and fodder for thousands of horses made a bulky and awkward supply train. Living off the countryside destroyed the tax-base and allowed the soldiers to get out of control as they became immersed in plunder, so the rulers sought to supply armies from the rear
Organizational and tactical problems. With the long history of mercenary contingents and patronage appointments, it was difficult to organize an effective, cohesive army based on training and ability, tempered with seniority
Sociological and psychological restraints. Peasants were needed to produce the food and townsmen to provide the money, so that it was difficult to recruit enough men for a professional army without infringing on those two necessary groups
The answer to some of the above situations was in the development of new technology in weapons, such as mobile field artillery; development of accurate small-scale mapping; the break-down of the armies to divisions, units of about 12,000 men, but complete within themselves, with infantry, cavalry, artillery and all supportive elements; and better road-building .
At the same time, in spite of the warfare, the 18th century saw the heyday of wealthy merchants all over Europe. (Ref. 292) The philosophers were convinced that this was an age of enlightenment and progress, but it was a time of bungling politicians, greedy nobles, of immorality and corruption also. There were other paradoxes. In spite of great scientific advancements in physics and chemistry, the practice of medicine lagged far behind and may even have declined. Bleeding, cupping and purging remained prominent treatments. (Ref. 125) An estimated 60 million Europeans died of small-pox in the century and early there was an extensive famine, as frost killed crops as far south as the Mediterranean coast. The winter of 1709 was especially severe, with most northern rivers and even ocean coastal waters frozen. (Ref. 222) Typhus fever took its own toll, with a severe epidemic in Sweden and the loss of 30,000 people in France in mid-century. Yellow fever killed 10,000 in Cadiz, Spain. (Ref. 222)
The population of Europe went from 140 to 188 million from 1750 to 1800. The majority of the people were illiterate. In the f irst half of the century their civilization was based almost as much on wine as on wheat. Europe as a whole must have been burning 200 million tons of wood yearly up until about 1790 when coal came into more common usage. At the same time there were approximately 14 million horses, 24 million oxen, the equivalent of 4 to 5 million horsepower in the form of wood, 1.5 to 3 million horsepower potential in 600,000 watermills, 900,000 horsepower in the 50 million human workers and 233,000 horsepower in the form of sails, not counting war-fleets. (Ref.