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Renaissance
The Renaissance, also known as "Il Rinascimento" (in Italian), was an influential cultural movement which brought about a period of scientific revolution and artistic transformation, at the dawn of modern European history. It marks the transitional period between the end of the Middle Ages and the start of the Modern Age. The Renaissance is usually considered to have originated in the 14th century in northern Italy and begun in the late 15th century in northern Europe.
Historiography
The term Rebirth (Rinascenza), to indicate the flourishing of artistic and scientific activities starting in Italy in the mid-1300's, was first used by the Italian historian Giorgio Vasari in the Vite, published in 1550. The term Renaissance is the French translation, used by French historian Jules Michelet, and expanded upon by Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt (both in the 1860s). Rebirth is used in two ways. First, it means rediscovery of ancient classical texts and learning and their applications in the arts and sciences. Second, it means that the results of these intellectual activities created a revitalization of European culture in general. Thus it is possible to speak of the Renaissance in two different but meaningful ways: A rebirth of classical learning and knowledge through the rediscovery of ancient texts, and also a rebirth of European culture in general.
classical learning and knowledge, an example of the blend of art and science during the Renaissance.]]
Multiple Renaissances
During the last quarter of the 20th century many scholars took the view that the Renaissance was perhaps only one of many such movements. This is in large part due to the work of historians like Charles H. Haskins (1870–1937), who made a convincing case for a "Renaissance of the 12th century", as well as by historians arguing for a "Carolingian Renaissance." Both of these concepts are now widely accepted by the scholarly community at large; as a result, the present trend among historians is to discuss each so-called renaissance in more particular terms, e.g., the Italian Renaissance, the English Renaissance, etc. This terminology is particularly useful because it eliminates the need for fitting "The Renaissance" into a chronology that previously held that it was preceded by the Middle Ages and followed by the Reformation, which many believe to be inaccurate. The entire period is now often replaced by the term "Early Modern". (See periodisation, Lumpers and splitters)
Other periods of cultural rebirth have also been termed a "renaissance"; such as the Harlem Renaissance or the San Francisco Renaissance. The other renaissances are not considered further in this article, which will concentrate on the Renaissance as the transition from the Middle Ages to the Modern Age...
Critical views
Since the term was first created in the 19th century, historians have various interpretations on the Renaissance.
The traditional view is that the Renaissance of the 15th century in Italy, spreading through the rest of Europe, represented a reconnection of the west with classical antiquity, the absorption of knowledge—particularly mathematics—from Arabic, the return of experimentalism, the focus on the importance of living well in the present (e.g. humanism), an explosion of the dissemination of knowledge brought on by printing and the creation of new techniques in art, poetry and architecture which led to a radical change in the style and substance of the arts and letters. This period, in this view, represents Europe emerging from a long period as a backwater, and the rise of commerce and exploration. The Italian Renaissance is often labelled as the beginning of the "modern" epoch.
Marxist historians view the Renaissance as a pseudo-revolution with the changes in art, literature, and philosophy affecting only a tiny minority of the very wealthy and powerful while life for the great mass of the European population was unchanged from the Middle Ages. They thus deny that it is an event of much importance.
Today most historians view the Renaissance as largely an intellectual and ideological change, rather than a substantive one. Moreover, many historians now point out that most of the negative social factors popularly associated with the "medieval" period - poverty, ignorance, warfare, religious and political persecution, and so forth - seem to have actually worsened during this age of Machiavelli, the Wars of Religion, the corrupt Borgia Popes, and the intensified witch-hunts of the 16th century. Many of the common people who lived during the "Renaissance" are known to have been concerned by the developments of the era rather than viewing it as the "golden age" imagined by certain 19th century authors. Perhaps the most important factor of the Renaissance is that those involved in the cultural movements in question - the artists, writers, and their patrons - believed they were living in a new era that was a clean break from the Middle Ages, even if much of the rest of the population seems to have viewed the period as an intensification of social maladies.
Johan Huizinga (1872–1945) acknowledged the existence of the Renaissance but questioned whether it was a positive change. He argued that the Renaissance was a period of decline from the high Middle Ages, which destroyed much that was important. The Latin language, for instance, had evolved greatly from the classical period and was still used in the church and by others as a living language. However, the Renaissance obsession with classical purity saw Latin revert to its classical form and its natural evolution halted. Robert S. Lopez has contended that it was a period of deep economic recession. Meanwhile George Sarton and Lynn Thorndike have both criticised how the Renaissance affected science, arguing that progress was slowed.
Start of the Renaissance
science, Italy. Florence was the capital of the Renaissance]]
The Renaissance has no set starting point or place. It happened gradually at different places at different times and there are no defined dates or places for when the Middle Ages ended. The starting place of the Renaissance is almost universally ascribed to Central Italy, especially the city of Florence. One early Renaissance figure is the poet Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), the first writer to embody the spirit of the Renaissance.
Petrarch (1304–1374) is another early Renaissance figure. As part of the humanist movement he concluded that the height of human accomplishment had been reached in the Roman Empire and the ages since have been a period of social rot which he labeled the Dark Ages. Petrarch saw history as social, art and literary advancement, and not as a series of set religious events. Re-birth meant the rediscovery of ancient Roman and Greek Latin heritage through ancient manuscripts and the humanist method of learning. These new ideas from the past (called the "new learning" at the time) triggered the coming advancements in art, science and other areas.
Another possible starting point is the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453. It was a turning point in warfare as cannon and gunpowder became a central element. In addition, Byzantine-Greek scholars fled west to Rome bringing renewed energy and interest in the Greek and Roman heritage, and it perhaps represented the end of the old religious order in Europe.
Italian Renaissance
gunpowder past with the features of his Renaissance contemporaries. School of Athens (above) is perhaps the most extended study in this.]]
The Italian Renaissance was intertwined with the intellectual movement known as Renaissance humanism and with the fiercely independent and combative urban societies of the city-states of central and northern Italy in the 13th to 16th centuries. Italy was the birthplace of the Renaissance for several reasons.
The first two or three decades of the 15th century saw the emergence of a rare cultural efflorescence, particularly in Florence. This 'Florentine enlightenment' (Holmes) was a major achievement. It was a classical, classicising culture which sought to live up to the republican ideals of Athens and Rome. Sculptors used Roman models and classical themes. This society had a new relationship with its classical past. It felt it owned it and revived it. Florentines felt akin to 1st century BC republican Rome. Rucellai wrote that he belonged to a great age; Leonardo Bruni's Panegyric to the City of Florence expresses similar sentiments. There was a genuine appreciation of the plastic arts—pagan idols and statuary—with nudity, expressions of human dignity, etc.
Leonardo Bruni circa 1494.]]
A similar parallel movement was also occurring in the arts in the early 15th century in Florence—an avant-garde, classicising movement. Many of the same people were involved; there was a close community of people involved in both movements. Valla said that, as they revived Latin, so was Latin architecture revived, for example Rucellai's Palazzo built by Leone Battista Alberti. Of Brunelleschi, he felt that he was the greatest architect since Roman times.
Sculpture was also revived, in many cases before the other arts. There was a very obvious naturalism about contemporary sculpture, and highly true to life figures were being sculpted. Often biblically-themed sculpture and paintings included recognizable Florentines.
This intense classicism was applied to literature and the arts. In most city-republics there was a small clique with a camaraderie and rivalry produced by a very small elite. Alberti felt that he had played a major part, as had Brunelleschi, Masaccio, etc. Even he admitted he had no explanation of why it happened.
There are several possible explanations for its occurrence in Florence:
1. The Medici did it—the portrait and solo sculpture emerged, especially under Lorenzo. This is the conventional response:
Renaissance Florence = The Medici = The genius of artisans = The Renaissance
Unfortunately, this fails to fit chronologically. 1410 and 1420 can be said to be the start of the Renaissance, but the Medici came to power later. They were certainly great patrons but much later. If anything, the Medici jumped on an already existing bandwagon.
2. The great man argument. Donatello, Brunelleschi and Michelangelo were just geniuses.
This is a circular argument with little explanatory power. Surely it would be better, more human and accessible to understand the circumstances which helped these geniuses to come to fruition.
3. A similar argument is the rise of individualism theory attributable to Burckhardt. This argues for a change from collective neutrality towards the lonely genius. Goldthwaite says it was part of the emergence of the family and the submersion of the clan system.
However, the Kents (F.W. and Dale) have argued that this was and remained a society of neighborhood, kin and family. Florentines were very constrained and tied into the system; it was still a very traditional society.
Dale, Kraków]]
4. Frederick Antal has argued that the triumph of Masaccio et al. was the triumph of the middle class over the older, more old-fashioned feudal classes, so that the middle class wanted painters to do more bourgeois paintings.
This does not make sense. Palla Strozzi commissioned old fashioned paintings whereas Cosimo de' Medici went for new styles in art.
5. Hans Baron's argument is based on the new Florentine view of human nature, a greater value placed on human life and on the power of man, thus leading to civic humanism, which he says was born very quickly in the early 15th century. In 1401 and 1402, he says Visconti was narrowly defeated by republican Florence, which reasserted the importance of republican values. Florence experienced a dramatic crisis of independence which led to civic values and humanism.
Against this we can say that Baron is comparing unlike things. In a technical sense, Baron has to prove that all civic humanist work came after 1402, whereas many such works date from the 1380s. This was an ideological battle between a princely state and a republican city-state, even though they varied little in their general philosophy. Any such monocausal argument is very likely to be wrong.
Kent says there is plenty of evidence of preconditions for the Renaissance in Florence.
In 1300, Florence had a civic culture, with people like Latini who had a sense of classical values, though different from the values of the 15th century. Villani also had a sense of the city as daughter and creature of Rome.
Petrarch in the mid-14th century hated civic life but bridged the gap between the 14th and 15th centuries as he began to collect antiquities.
The 1380s saw several classicising groups, including monks and citizens. There was a gradual build-up rather than a big bang. Apart from the elites there was already an audience for the Renaissance. Florence was a very literate audience, already self-conscious and aware of its city and place in the political landscape.
The crucial people in the 14th and 15th century were
- Manuel Chrysoloras: increased interest in the grammar of ancient architecture (1395)
- Niccoli: a major influence on the perception of the classics.
Their teachings reached the upper classes between 1410 and 1420 and this is when the new consciousness emerged. Brucker noticed this new consciousness in council debates around 1410; there are increased classical references.
Florence experienced not just one but many crises; Milan, Lucca, the Ciompi. The sense of crisis was over by 1415 and there was a new confidence, a triumphant experience of being a republic.
Between 1413-1423 there was an economic boom. The upper class had the financial means to support scholarship. Gombrich says there was a sense of ratifying yourself to the ancient world, leading to a snobbishness and an elite view of education, and a tendency for the rich wanting to proclaim their ascendancy over the poor and over other cities.
The early Renaissance was an act of collaboration. Artisans and artists were enmeshed in the networks of their city. Committees were usually responsible for buildings. There were collaborations between patricians and artisans without which the Renaissance could not have occurred. Thus it makes sense to adopt a civic theory of the Renaissance rather than a great man theory.
Northern Renaissance
:Main article: Northern Renaissance
Northern Renaissance, painted 1434]]
Northern Renaissance]
The Renaissance spread north out of Italy being adapted and modified as it moved. It first arrived in France, imported by King Charles VIII after his invasion of Italy. Francis I imported Italian art and artists, including Leonardo Da Vinci and at great expense he built ornate palaces. Writers such as Rabelais also borrowed from the spirit of the Italian Renaissance.
Italians brought the new style to Poland and Hungary in the late 15th century. The first Italian humanist, who came to Poland in the middle 15th century was Filip Callimachus. Many Italian artists came with Bona Sforza of Milano to Poland, when she maried Zygmunt I of Poland in 1518. The Polish Renaissance is the most Itatian like branch of the Renaissance outside of Italy.
From France the spirit of the age spread to the Low Countries and Germany, and finally to England, Scandinavia, and Central Europe by the late 16th century. In these areas the Renaissance became closely linked to the turmoil of the Protestant Reformation and the art and writing of the German Renaissance frequently reflected this dispute.
While Renaissance ideas were moving north from Italy, there was a simultaneous spread southward of innovation, particularly in music. The music of the 15th century Burgundian School defined the beginning of the Renaissance in that art; and the polyphony of the Netherlanders, as it moved with the musicians themselves into Italy, formed the core of what was the first true international style in music since the standardization of Gregorian Chant in the 9th century. The culmination of the Netherlandish school was in the music of the Italian composer, Palestrina. At the end of the 16th century Italy again became a center of musical innovation, with the development of the polychoral style of the Venetian School, which spread northward into Germany around 1600.
In England, the Elizabethan era marked the beginning of the English Renaissance. It saw writers such as William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, John Milton, and Edmund Spenser, as well as great artists, architects (such as Inigo Jones) and composers such as Thomas Tallis, John Taverner, and William Byrd.
In these northern nations the Renaissance would be built upon and supplanted by the thinkers of The Enlightenment in the seventeenth century.
The paintings of the Italian Renaissance differed from those of the northern Renaissance in some ways. The Italian Renaissance did not only focus on religious figures but they also produced portraits of well-known figures of the day, and they also put religious figures in Greek or Roman backgrounds. During the Italian Renaissance, artists learned the rules of perspective which shows how far the object is by its size which and made the paintings look three dimensional. The artists also used shading to make objects look round and real. The Italian Renaissance artists studied human anatomy and drew from the models so it would be possible for them to sketch the human body more accurately than before. At first, northern Renaissance artist still focused on religious drawings, like Albrecht Durer who portray the religious upheaval of his age. Later on, Pieter Bruegel’s works influenced later artists to paint scenes of daily life rather than religious or classical themes. During the northern Renaissance van Eycks also invented oil paint. With oil paint, artists could produce strong colors and a hard surface that could survive for centuries; these painters were called Flemish painters.
See also
- List of Renaissance figures
- Humanism
- Renaissance architecture
- Protestant Reformation
- Scientific Revolution
References
- Burckhardt, Jacob (1878), The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, trans S.G.C Middlemore (republished in 1990 under ISBN 014044534X)
- Ergang, Robert (1967), The Renaissance(ISBN 0442023197)
- Ferguson, Wallace K. (1962), Europe in Transition, 1300-1500 (ISBN 0049400088)
- Haskins, Charles Homer (1972), The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (ISBN 0674760751)
- Huizinga, Johan (1924), The Waning of the Middle Ages (republished in 1990 under ISBN 0140137025)
- Jensen, De Lamar (1992), Renaissance Europe (ISBN 0395889472)
- Lopez, Robert S. (1952), Hard Times and Investment in Culture
- Thorndike, Lynn (1943) Renaissance or Prenaissance?
Further reading
- Harold Bayley, [http://fax.libs.uga.edu/CB361xB3/ A New Light on the Renaissance], 1909. (searchable facsimile at the University of Georgia Libraries; DjVu & [http://fax.libs.uga.edu/CB361xB3/1f/new_light_on_renaissance.pdf layered PDF] format)
- Jakob Burckhardt, [http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/hst/european/TheCivilizationoftheRenaissanceinItaly/toc.html The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy]
- Nicolo Machiavelli, The Prince. numerous editions including ISBN 1-85326-306-0
External links
- [http://www.compart-multimedia.com/virtuale/us/florence/florence.htm Florence: Virtual travel in the city of Renaissance] (English/Italian)
- [http://http://www.yoyita.com/renaissance.htm Renaissance style contemporary Art] (English/ Italian/ Spanish/ French/ Chinese/ German)
Category:Renaissance
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Italian language
Italian (Italian: ) is a Romance language spoken by about 70 million people primarily in Italy. Standard Italian is based on Tuscan dialects and is somewhat intermediate between the languages of Southern Italy and the Gallo-Romance languages of the North. Like many languages it is written using the Latin alphabet, Italian has double consonants. However, contrary to, for example, French and Spanish, double consonants are pronounced as long (geminated) in Italian. As in most Romance languages (with the notable exception of French), stress is distinctive. Out of the Romance languages, Italian is generally considered to be the one most closely resembling Latin in terms of grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation.
History
The history of the Italian language is quite complex but the modern standard of the language was largely shaped by relatively recent events. The earliest surviving texts which can definitely be called Italian (as opposed to its predecessor Vulgar Latin) are legal formulae from the region of Benevento dating from A.D. 960-963. Italian was first formalized in the 14th century through the works of Dante Alighieri, who mixed southern Italian dialects, especially Sicilian, with his native Tuscan in his epic poems known collectively as the Commedia, to which Boccaccio later affixed the title Divina. Dante's much-loved works were read throughout Italy and his written dialect became the canonical standard that others could all understand. Dante is still credited with standardizing the Italian language.
Italian has always had a distinctive dialect for each city, since the cities were up until recently city-states. Italians generally believe that the best spoken Italian is lingua toscana in bocca romana - 'the Tuscan tongue, in a Roman mouth' (Tuscan dialects spoken with Roman inflection). The Romans are known for speaking clearly and distinctly, while the Tuscan dialect (supposedly derived from Etruscan and Oscan), is the closest existing dialect to Dante's now-standard Italian.
In contrast to the dialects of northern Italy, the older southern Italian dialects were largely untouched by the Franco-Occitan influences introduced to Italy, mainly by bards from France, during the middle ages. (See La Spezia-Rimini Line.)
The economic might and relative advanced development of Tuscany at the time (late middle ages), gave its dialect weight, though Venetian remained widespread in medieval Italian commercial life. Also, the increasing cultural relevance of Florence during the periods of 'Umanesimo' and Rinascimento (Renaissance) made its vulgare (dialect) a standard in the arts.
Classification
Italian is most closely related to the other two Italo-Dalmatian languages, Sicilian and the extinct Dalmatian. The three are part of the Italo-Western grouping of the Romance languages, which are a subgroup of the Italic branch of Indo-European.
Geographic distribution
Italian is the official language of Italy and San Marino, and is an official language in Ticino and Grigioni cantons of Switzerland. It is also the second official language in Vatican City and in some areas of Istria in Slovenia and Croatia with an Italian minority. It is widely used by immigrant groups in Luxembourg, Germany, Belgium, the United States, Canada, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, and Australia, and is also spoken in neighbouring Albania. It is spoken, to a much lesser extent, in parts of Africa formerly under Italian rule such as Somalia, Libya and Eritrea. It is also widely known and taught in Monaco and in the neighbouring island of Malta and served as an official language of the country until English was enshrined in the 1934 Constitution.
Italian is widely taught in many schools around the world, but rarely as the first non-native language of pupils. In anglophone parts of Canada, Italian is, after French, the second most taught language. In the United States and the United Kingdom, Italian ranks fourth (after Spanish-French-German and French-German-Spanish respectively). Throughout the world, Italian is the fifth most taught non-native language, after English, French, Spanish and German.
Official status
Italian is an official language of Italy, the European Union, San Marino, Switzerland and Vatican City. It is also an official language in the Istria County (Croatia) and municipalities of Koper, Piran and Izola (Slovenia).
Dialects and regional languages of Italy
:See Italian dialects
The dialects of Italian identified by the Ethnologue are Tuscan, Abruzzese, Pugliese (Apulian), Umbrian, Laziale, Central Marchigiano, Cicolano-Reatino-Aquilano, and Molisan. On the contrary Ethnologue and the Red book on endangered languages of UNESCO consider Piemontese, Lombard, Ligurian, Emiliano-Romagnolo, Venetian, Friulian, Neapolitan-Calabrese or Tricalabro (a range including Neapolitan and Sicilian) and Sardinian as regional minority languages, structurally separated from Italian. Most Italians, however, refer to these simply as "dialect", with the exception of Sardinian, which is usually recognized language status.
Also the Corsican language has strong similarities to Italian and most linguists consider it as a Tuscany dialect, the closest to modern Italian.
Many of the so-called dialects of Italian spoken around the country are different enough from standard Italian to be considered separate languages by most linguists and some speakers themselves. Thus a distinction can be made between "dialects of (standard) Italian" and "dialects (or languages) of Italy".
A link to an Italian site with translation features between Italian dialects and Italian: [http://www.dialettando.com]
Cultural acceptance of dialects
The dialect of Tuscany became the basis for what would become the official language of Italy, by way of the famous Tuscan author Dante Alighieri. Alighieri and other Tuscan poets were inspired by the Sicilian koine wanted by the Sicilian School under holy roman emperor Frederick II. His project (in which Giacomo da Lentini invented the sonnet) was accomplished by enriching the Sicilian language with new words adapted from French, Latin, and Apulian. The Sicilians produced a collection of love-poems which can be considered the first standard Italian ever produced, though it was only used for literary purposes until Guittone d'Arezzo. When the Svevs dynasty ended the Tuscans and Dante re-discovered it (see De Divina Eloquentia and Vita Nova)and integrated the Sicilians into Florence's linguistic heritage.
Dolce stil novo, the platonic school of courtly love can be considered the link between the old southern school and Tuscan poetry which aimed to express the new intellectual sensibility and fervor of the newly-born city-states, as Florence. Dante's work, Divina Commedia was the first of its kind to be written in a dialect (though sensibly enriched compared with its spoken counterpart), as opposed to the traditional Latin. The success of his work spread the Florentine dialect, and gave it prestige and acceptance. For this he is referred to as the father of the Italian Language.
By the time Italy was unified 1861, and Rome was annexed (1870) the Italian standard had further been influenced by Florentine through the work of the Accademia della Crusca (Cardinal Pietro Bembo and followers). Bembo laid the foundation for what is today's modern standard. But Bembo was a purist and had accepted no other influence than that from Dante, Petrarca and Boccaccio. As time went on, the language was losing touch with linguistic change, and could not put up with technology and science. The much-needed update would have to wait a little longer until, in what is commonly regarded as the first modern novel of the Italian literature, I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed) (Alessandro Manzoni further refined its widely read novel by "rinsing" it in the waters of the Arno (Florence's river), as he states in his 1840 Preface.
However, Manzoni refused the Crusca's purist, written Florentine-only attitude and admitted a certain influence from other dialects, though he reduced it as compared to the first edition of (1821). After unification the huge number of civil servants and soldiers recruited from all over the country introduced many more words and idioms from their home dialects ("ciao" is Venetian, "panettone" is Milanese etc.), in fact confirming Manzoni's linguistic views.
Tuscan has thus become one of the twenty official dialects of Italy. Though technically speaking the division between dialect and language is purely conventional, it has been used by scholars, for eg. by Francesco Bruni, to distinguish between the languages that made up the Italian koine, and those which had very little or no part in it, as Albanian, Greek, Südtirolean, Ladino, Friulian and Occitan, still spoken by small ethnic or linguistic minorites.
Dialects are generally not used for general communication, e.g. on TV, but are limited to groups of people who can actually speak them and to informal contexts. Speaking dialect is often shunned upon in Italy as it is a sign of lacking education. Younger generations, especially those under 35 (though it may vary in different areas), speak almost exclusively standard Italian in all situations, usually with a slight local accent.
Dialects have their share of enthusiasts, but this is a small niche of the population. The promotion of dialects by some political forces as the Lega Nord has possibly damaged rather than promoted their status.
Dialects are often used in movies to provide comic relief or to produce stereotypes: northern dialects can be connected to greedy merchants; a Roman accent is associated with arrogant, simple-minded bullies; Neapolitan reminds of dishonest, cunning slackers, and, even in Italy, Sicilian is often associated with the mafia. However, many screenwriters also explore the more expressive and spontaneous features of a dialect, often to challenge the common cliches and present a richer, less explored reality.
Sounds
Vowels
Italian has seven vowel phonemes: , , , , , , . The 'couples' ( - ) and ( - ) get mixed up in spoken Italian, even though each variety of Italian employs both phonemes consistently: compare, for example: (because) and (you listen), employed by some northern speakers, with and , as pronounced by most central and southern speakers. As a result, the usage is strongly indicative of a person's origin. The standard (Tuscan) usage of these vowels is listed in vocabularies, and employed outside Tuscany mainly by the more educated people, especially actors and (television) journalists.
These are truly different phonemes, however: compare (fishing) and (peach), both spelled "pesca" (). Similarly (barrel) and (beatings), both spelled as "botte", discriminate and ().
In general, vowel combinations usually pronounce each vowel separately. Diphthongs exist, (e.g. "uo", "iu", "ie", "ai"), but are limited to the pattern:
(unstressed "u" or "i", or zero) + (stressed vowel) + (unstressed "u" or "i", or zero)
The unstressed "u" in a diphthong approximates the English semivowel "w", the unstressed "i" approximates the semivowel "y". E.g.: buono, ieri.
As a semivowel, "j" is an alternate spelling of i, currently obsolete but common until early 20th century and preserved in specific words like "Jesi" (a town) or "Jacopo" (a first name).
Triphthongs are limited to a diphthong plus an unstressed "i". (e.g. miei, tuoi.) Other sequences of three vowels exist (e.g. noia, febbraio), but they are not triphthongs; they consist of a vowel followed by a diphthong.
Consonants
Two symbols in a table cell denote the voiceless and voiced consonant, respectively.
The phoneme undergoes assimilation when followed by a consonant, e.g., when followed by a velar ( or ) it's pronounced , etc.
Italian plosives are not aspirated (unlike in English). Italian speakers hear the difference as a foreign accent.
Italian has geminate, or double, consonants, which are distinguished by length. Length is distinctive for all consonants except for , , , , which are always geminate, and which is always single.
Geminate plosives and affricates are realized as lengthened closures. Geminate fricatives, nasals, and are realized as lengthened continuants. Geminate is realized as the trill .
Assimilation
Italian has few diphthongs, and so most unfamiliar diphthongs heard in foreign words (in particular, those with a first vowel that is not "i" or "u", or a first vowel that is stressed), will be assimilated as the corresponding dieresis (i.e., the vowel sounds will be pronounced separately: "strive" and "hive" will rhyme with "naïve").
Grammar
see Italian grammar.
Writing system
Italian grammar
Italian is written using the Latin alphabet. The letters J, K, W, X and Y are not part of the standard Italian alphabet, but are seen in imported words (such as jeans, whiskey, taxi). J may also appear in many words from different dialects. Each of these foreign letters had an Italian equivalent spelling: gi, ch, u, cs or s, and i, but these are now obsolete.
- Italian uses the acute accent over the letter E (as in perché, why/because) to indicate a mid-close vowel, and the grave accent (as in tè, tea) to indicate a mid-open vowel. The grave accent is also used on letters A, I, O, and U to mark the stress position when it is on the last letter of a word (for instance gioventù, youth). Typically, the penultimate syllable is stressed. If other syllables are stressed, no accent is marked, as is instead done in Spanish.
- The letter H is always silent when it begins a word, and is only used to distinguish ho, hai, ha, hanno (present indicative of avere, to have) from o (or), ai (to the), a (to), anno (year). H is otherwise used for some combinations with other letters (see below), but the /h/ sound does not exist in Italian.
- The letter Z is pronounced , or sometimes , depending on context, though there are few minimal pairs. The same goes with S, which can be pronounced or . However, these two phonemes are in complementary distribution everywhere except between two vowels in the same word, and even in such environment there are extremely few minimal pairs, therefore this distinction is being lost in most accents.
- The letters C and G are affricates: as in "chair" and as in "gem", respectively, before the front vowels I and E. They are pronounced as plosives , (as in "call" and "gall") otherwise1. But, the normally silent H is added between CI, CE, GI or GE if the consonant is to be a plosive. For example:
:
:1(Front/back vowel rules for C and G are similar in French, Romanian, and to some extent English (including Old English). Swedish and Norwegian have similar rules for K and G. See also palatalization.)
- There are two special digraphs in Italian: GN and GL. GN is always pronounced , and GL is pronounced ) but only before i, and never when at the beginning of the word, except in the plural form gli of the masculine definite article. (Compare with Spanish "ñ" and "ll", Portuguese "nh" and "lh".)
- In general all letters are clearly pronounced, and always in the same way. (The only notable allophonic variations in the pronunciation of phonemes in standard Italian are the assimilation of /n/ before consonants, and vowel length (vowels are long in stressed open syllables, and short elsewhere) — compare with the enormous number of allophones of the English phoneme /t/. Spelling is clearly phonetic and difficult to mistake given a clear pronunciation. Exceptions are generally only found in foreign borrowings. There is less dyslexia than in languages like English.
Usage among Younger Generations
Some variations in the usage of the writing system may be present in practical use. Most scholars consider these to be mistakes, but they are so common that knowledge of these may be useful to read an Italian text.
- Usage of x instead of per: this is very common among teenagers and in SMS abbreviations. Since per means "to", "for you" becomes x te, similar to the English 4 U. Words containing per can also have it substituted with x, and once an university student allegedly pronounced the surname of Italian revolutionary Nino Bixio as Biperio at an oral exam[http://pacs.unica.it/rassegna/rassegna0905.txt]. Perché (both "why" and "because") is often shortened as x`.
- Usage of foreign letters such as k, j and y, especially in nicknames and SMS language: ke instead of che, Giusy instead of Giuseppina. This is curiously mirrored in the usage of i in English names such as Staci instead of Stacey, or in the usage of c in Northern Europe (Jacob instead of Jakob). The letter k also appears to give words a certain strenght and threatening aspect, possibly because it is associated with Germany. Politician Francesco Cossiga used to be nicknamed Kossiga by rioting students as early as 1968, because of his role as minister of internal affairs.
- Accents are often substituted by apostrophes, such as in perche instead of perché. È is particularly rare, as it is absent from the Italian keyboard layout. Few are aware of the distinction between grave and acute accents.
Examples
- cheers (generic toast): salve
- English: inglese
- good-bye: arrivederci
- hello: ciao (informal); buongiorno (good morning/good afternoon), buonasera (good evening)
- Yes: sì /si/
- No: no
- Sorry: scusi //
- Again: ancora //
- Always: sempre //
- When: quando /kwando/
- Why? / Because: perché /per'ke/
- how much?: quanto (masculine); quanta (feminine)
- thank you!: grazie!
- you're welcome!: prego!
Sample texts
You can hear a recording of Dante's Divine Comedy read by Lino Pertile at http://etcweb.princeton.edu/dante/pdp/.
From the Holy Bible, Luke 2, 1-7
(for an English version see http://www.gnpcb.org/esv/search/?q=luke+2)
You can listen to a rendition of this text as recorded by an Italian native speaker from Milan.
2:1 In quei giorni, un decreto di Cesare Augusto ordinava che si facesse un censimento di tutta la terra. 2 Questo primo censimento fu fatto quando Quirino era governatore della Siria. 3 Tutti andavano a farsi registrare, ciascuno nella propria città. 4 Anche Giuseppe, che era della casa e della famiglia di Davide, dalla città di Nazaret e dalla Galilea si recò in Giudea nella città di Davide, chiamata Betlemme, 5 per farsi registrare insieme a Maria, sua sposa, che era incinta. 6 Proprio mentre si trovavano lì, venne il tempo per lei di partorire. 7 Mise al mondo il suo primogenito, lo avvolse in fasce e lo depose in una mangiatoia, poiché non c'era posto per loro nella locanda.
See also
- Italian phonology
- Sicilian School
- Veronese Riddle
External links
-
- [http://www.ielanguages.com/italian.html Italian Language Tutorial at ielanguages.com]
- [http://www.ilm.it/ Italian Language School]
- [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/Italian-english/ Italian English Dictionary] from [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org Webster's Online Dictionary] - the Rosetta Edition
- [http://www.garzantilinguistica.it A free Italian-English Dictionary, Italian Dictionary, and Thesaurus] from Garzanti Linguistica (in Italian, requires free registration)
- [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=ita Ethnologue report on Italian]
- [http://www.applelanguages.com/en/learn/italian/italy.php/ Learn Italian in Italy]
- [http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/e/languages/italian/index.html A profile of the Italian language]
- [http://www.dicts.info/dictlist1.php?k1=53 All free Italian dictionaries]
- [http://italian-language-test.scuolaleonardo.com/ Test your Italian - Free Italian language test]
- [http://www.centropuccini.it/ Learn Italian in Italy by the sea]
- [http://www.locuta.com/ Centro Studi Italiani]
- [http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/modlang/carasi/site/pageone.html Online Italian language course]
- [http://www.loecsen.com/travel/discover_pop.php?lang=en&to_lang=8&learn-Italian/ Learn and listen to useful expressions in Italian]
-
Category:Languages of Italy
Category:Languages of Switzerland
Category:Languages of Vatican City
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ko:이탈리아어
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simple:Italian
Cultural movementA cultural movement is a change in the way a number of different disciplines approach their work. This embodies all art forms, the sciences, and philosophies. Long ago, different nations or regions of the world would go through their own independent sequence of movements in culture, but as world communications have accelerated this geographical distinction has become less noteworthy. When cultural movements go through revolutions from one to the next, genres tend to get attacked and mixed up, and often new genres are generated and old ones fade. These changes are often reactions against the prior cultural form, which typically has grown stale and repetitive. An obsession emerges among the mainstream with the new movement, and the old one falls into neglect - sometimes it dies out entirely, but often it chugs along favored in a few disciplines and occasionally making reappearances (sometimes prefixed with "neo-").
There is continual argument over the precise definition of each of these periods, and one historian might group them differently, or choose different names or descriptions. As well, even though in many cases the popular change from one to the next can be swift and sudden, the beginning and end of movements are somewhat subjective, as the movements did not spring fresh into existence out of the blue and did not come to an abrupt end and lose total support, as would be suggested by a date range. Thus use of the term "period" is somewhat deceptive. "Period" also suggests a linearity of development, whereas it has not been uncommon for two or more distinctive cultural approaches to be active at the same time. Historians will be able to find distinctive traces of a cultural movement before its accepted beginning, and there will always be new creations in old forms. So it can be more useful to think in terms of broad "movements" that have rough beginnings and endings. Yet for historical perspective, some rough date ranges will be provided for each to indicate the "height" or accepted timespan of the movement.
Cultural movements
- Graeco-Roman
- The Greek culture marked a departure from the other Mediterranean cultures that preceded and surrounded it. The Romans adopted Greek and other styles, and spread the result throughout Europe and the middle east. Together, Greek and Roman thought in philosophy, religion, science, history, and all forms of thought can be viewed as a central underpinning of Western culture, and is therefore termed the "Classical period" by some. Others might divide it into the Hellenistic period and the Roman period, or might choose other finer divisions.
:: See: Classical architecture — Classical sculpture — Greek architecture — Hellenistic architecture — Ionic — Doric — Corinthian — Stoicism — Cynicism — Epicurean — Roman architecture — Early Christian — Neoplatonism
- Romanesque (11th & 12th centuries)
- A style (esp. architectural) similar in form and materials to Roman styles. Romanesque seems to be the first pan-European style since Roman Imperial Architecture and examples are found in every part of the continent.
:: See: Romanesque architecture — Ottonian Art
- Gothic
:
:: See: Gothic architecture — Gregorian chant — Neoplatonism
- Nominalism
- Rejects Platonic realism as a requirement for thinking and speaking in general terms.
- Humanism (1500s)
- Renaissance
- The use of light, shadow, and perspective to more accurately represent life. Because of how fundamentally these ideas were felt to alter so much of life, some have referred to it as the "Golden Age". In reality it was less an "Age" and more of a movement in popular philosophy, science, and thought that spread over Europe (and probably other parts of the world), over time, and affected different aspects of culture at different points in time. Very roughly, the following periods can be taken as indicative of place/time foci of the Renaissance: Italian Renaissance 1450-1550. Spanish Renaissance 1550-1587. English Renaissance 1588-1629.
- Mannerism
- Anti-classicist movement that sought to emphasize the feeling of the artist himself.
- See: Mannerism/Art
- Baroque
- Emphasizes power and authority, characterized by intricate detail and without the "disturbing angst" of Mannerism. Essentially is exaggerated Classicism to promote and glorify the Church and State. Occupied with notions of infinity.
- See: Baroque art — Baroque music
- Rococo
- Neoclassical (17th–19th centuries)
- Severe, unemotional movement recalling Roman and Greek ("classical") style, reacting against the overbred Rococo style and the emotional Baroque style. It stimulated revival of classical thinking, and had especially profound effects on science and politics. Also had a direct influence on Academic Art in the 1800s. Beginning in the early 1600s with Cartesian thought (see René Descartes), this movement provided philosophical frameworks for the natural sciences, sought to determine the principles of knowledge by rejecting all things previously believed to be known about the world. In Renaissance Classicism attempts are made to recreate the classic artforms - tragedy, comedy, and farce.
- Also: Cartesian — French neoclassicism 1630-1680.
- Romanticism (1770–1830)
- Began in Germany and spread to England and France as a reaction to Neoclassicism. The notion of "folk genius", or an inborn and intuitive ability to do magnificent things, is a core principle of the Romantic movement. Nostalgia for the primitive past in preference to the scientifically minded present. Romantic heroes, exemplified by Napoleon, are popular. Fascination with the past leads to a resurrection of interest in the Gothic period. It did not really replace the Neoclassical movement so much as provide a counterbalance; many artists sought to join both styles in their works.
- See: Symbolism
- Realism (1830–1905)
- Ushered in by the Industrial Revolution and growing Nationalism in the world. Began in France. Attempts to portray the speech and mannerisms of everyday people in everyday life. Tends to focus on middle class social and domestic problems. Plays by Ibsen are an example. Naturalism evolved from Realism, following it briefly in art and more enduringly in theater, film, and literature. Impressionism, based on 'scientific' knowledge and discoveries concerns observing nature and reality objectively.
- See: Fauvism — Post-impressionism — Pre-Raphaelite
- Art Nouveau (1880–1905)
- Decorative, symbolic art
- See: Transcendentalism
- Modernism (1880–1965)
- Also known as the Avant-garde movement. Originating in the 19th century with Symbolism, the Modernist movement composed itself of a wide range of 'isms' that ran in constrast to Realism and that sought out the underlying fundamentals of art and philosophy. The Jazz age and Hollywood emerge and have their hey-days.
- See: Cubism — Futurism — Suprematism — Dada — Constructivism — Surrealism — Expressionism — Existentialism — Op Art — Art Deco — Bauhaus — Neo-Plasticism — Precisionism — Abstract expressionism — Pop Art — Photorealism — Minimalism — Situationism
- Postmodernism (since 1965)
- A reaction to Modernism, in a way, Postmodernism largely discards the notion that artists should seek pure fundamentals, often questioning whether such fundamentals even exist - or suggestion that if they do exist, they may be irrelevant. It is exemplified by movements such as deconstruction, conceptual art, etc.
- See: Postmodern philosophy — Postmodern music
See alsoExternal links
- [http://worldhistorytimeline.net/en/about/listed_entries Alphabetical list of some movements, styles, discoveries and facts on the World History Timeline chart]
Category:Cultural movements
History of Europe
This article gives an account of the history of the continent of Europe.
The origins
Homo erectus and Neanderthals settled Europe long before the emergence of modern humans, Homo sapiens.
The earliest appearance of anatomically modern people in Europe has been dated to 35,000 BC. Evidence of permanent settlement dates from the 7th millennium BC in Bulgaria, Romania and Greece. The Neolithic reached Central Europe in the 6th millennium BC and parts of Northern Europe in the 5th and 4th millennium BC. There is no prehistoric culture that covers the whole of Europe. For short introductions to the various cultures, see Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age.
The first well-known literate civilization in Europe was that of the Minoans of the island of Crete and later the Myceneans in the adjacent parts of Greece, starting at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. Around 400 BC, the La Tene culture spread over most of the interior as far as the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal), and later Anatolia. The Etruscans inhabited central Italy and Lombardy, where they were displaced by the Celts, who mingled with earlier residents of Iberia to produce a unique Celtiberian culture. As the Celts did not use a written language, knowledge of them is piecemeal. The Romans encountered them and recorded a great deal about them; these records and the archaeological evidence form our primary understanding of this extremely influential culture. The Celts posed a formidable, if disorganized, competition to the Roman state, that later colonized and conquered much of the southern portion of Europe.
The Greeks
At the end of the Bronze Age the older Greek kingdoms collapsed and a brilliant new civilization grew up in their place. The Hellenic civilization took the form of a collection of city-states (the most important being Athens and Sparta), having vastly differing types of government and cultures, including what are more-or-less unprecedented developments in various governmental forms, philosophy, science, politics, sports, theatre and music. The Hellenic city-states founded a large number of colonies on the shores of the Black Sea and the Mediterranean sea, Asia Minor, Sicily and Southern Italy in Magna Graecia, but in the 4th century BC their internal wars made them an easy prey for king Philip II of Macedon. The campaigns of his son Alexander the Great spread Greek culture into Persia, Egypt and India, but also favoured contact with the older learnings of those countries, opening up a new period of development, known as Hellenism.
Rome
Much of Greek learning was assimilated by the nascent Roman state as it expanded outward from Italy, taking advantage of its enemies' inability to unite: the only real challenge to Roman ascent came from the Phoenician colony of Carthage, but its defeat in the end of the 3rd century BC marked the start of Roman hegemony. First governed by kings, then as a senatorial republic (the Roman Republic), Rome finally became an empire at the end of the 1st century BC, under Augustus and his authoritarian successors. The Roman Empire had its centre in the Mediterranean Sea, controlling all the countries on its shores; the northern border was marked by the Rhine and Danube rivers; under emperor Trajan (2nd century AD) the empire reached its maximum expansion, including Britain, Romania and parts of Mesopotamia. The empire brought peace, civilization and an efficient centralized government to the subject territories, but in the 3rd century a series of civil wars undermined its economic and social strength. In the 4th century, the emperors Diocletian and Constantine were able to slow down the process of decline by splitting the empire into a Western and an Eastern part. Whereas Diocletian severely persecuted Christianity, Constantine declared an official end to state-sponsored persecution of Christians in 313 with the Edict of Milan, thus setting the stage for the empire to later become officially Christian in about 380 (which would cause the Church to become an important institution).
Early Middle Ages
Western Europe emerged as the site of a distinct civilization after the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century, as barbarian invasions separated it from the rest of the Mediterranean, where the Eastern Roman Empire (a.k.a. Byzantine Empire) survived for another millennium. In the 7th century the Arab expansion brought Islamic cultures to the southern Mediterranean shores (from Turkey to Sicily and Spain), further enlarging the differences between the various Mediterranean civilizations. Huge amounts of technology and learning were lost, trade languished and people returned to local agrarian communities. In the same century, Bulgarians created the first Slavic state in Europe - Bulgaria. Feudalism replaced the centralized Roman administration. The only institution surviving the collapse of the Western Roman Empire was the Roman Catholic Church, which preserved part of the Roman cultural inheritance and remained the primary source of learning in its domain at least until the 13th century; the bishop of Rome, known as the Pope, became the leader of the western church (in the east his supremacy was never accepted).
The Holy Roman Empire emerged around 800, as Charlemagne, king of the Franks, subdued western Germany, large parts of Italy and chunks of surrounding countries; he received substantial help from an alliance with the Pope, who wanted to cut the remaining ties with the Byzantine Empire; in this way the domains of the Pope became an independent state in central Italy.
In the late 9th century and 10th century, northern and western Europe felt the burgeoning power and influence of the Vikings who raided, traded, conquered and settled swiftly and efficiently with their advanced sea-going vessels such as the longships.
In the 10th century independent kingdoms were established in Central Europe, e.g. Poland and Hungary.
The subsequent period, ending around 1000, saw the further growth of feudalism, which weakened the Holy Roman Empire.
High Middle Ages
After the East-West Schism, Western Christianity was adopted by newly created kingdoms of Central Europe: Poland, Hungary and Bohemia.
The Roman Catholic Church developed as a major power, leading to conflicts between the Pope and Emperor.
Later Middle Ages
Roman Catholic Church
Early signs of the rebirth of civilization in western Europe began to appear in the 11th century as trade started again in Italy, leading to the economic and cultural growth of independent city states such as Venice and Florence; at the same time, nation-states began to take form in places such as France, England, Spain, and Portugal, although the process of their formation (usually marked by rivalry between the monarchy, the aristocratic feudal lords and the church) actually took several centuries. (See Reconquista for the latter two countries.) On the other hand, the Holy Roman Empire, essentially based in Germany and Italy, further fragmented into a myriad of feudal principalities or small city states, whose subjection to the emperor was only formal.
One of the largest catastrophes to have hit Europe was the bubonic plague, also known as the Black Death. There were numerous outbreaks, but the most severe was in the mid-1300s and is estimated to have killed a third of Europe's population. Since many Jews worked as money-lenders (usury was not allowed for Christians) and were generally more immune to disease (thanks to their kosher laws concerning hygiene), the Jews were often disliked by Europeans, so it was popular to blame them for the epidemic. This led to increased persecution of Jews in some areas. Thousands of Jews fled to Poland which, ironically, was spared by the plague.
Beginning in the 14th century, the Baltic Sea became one of the most important trade routes. The Hanseatic League, an alliance of trading cities, facilitated the absorption of vast areas of Poland, Lithuania and other Baltic countries into the economy of Europe.
The conventional end of the Middle Ages is usually associated with the fall of the city Constantinople and of the Byzantine Empire to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. The Turks made the city the capital of their Ottoman Empire, which lasted until 1919 and also included Egypt, Syria and most of the Balkans.
Renaissance and Reformation
Balkans]
In the 15th century, at the end of the Middle Ages, powerful nation states had appeared, built by the New Monarchs who had centralized power in France, England, and Spain. On the other hand the Parliament in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth grew in power, taking legislative rights from the Polish king. Contrariwise, the Church was losing much of its power because of corruption, internal conflicts, and the spread of culture leading to the artistic, philosophical, scientific and technological improvements of the Renaissance era.
The new nation states were frequently in a state of political flux and war. In particular, after Martin Luther started the Reformation in 1517, wars of politics and religion ravaged the continent: the schism of the dominant western church was to have major political, social and cultural implications for Europe. What became the split between Catholicism and Protestantism was particularly pronounced in England (where the king Henry VIII severed ties with Rome and proclaimed himself head of the church), and in Germany (where the Reformation united the various Protestant princes against the Catholic Habsburg emperors).
Unlike Western Europe, the countries of Central Europe, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Hungary, resolved religious questions by adopting religious tolerance. Central Europe was already split between Eastern and Western Christianity. Now it became divided between Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox and Jews.
Colonial expansion
The numerous wars did not prevent the new states from exploring and conquering wide portions of the world, particularly in Asia (Siberia) and in the newly-discovered America. In the 15th century, Portugal led the way in geographical exploration, followed by Spain in early 16th century, were the first states to set up colonies in South America and trade stations on the shores of Africa and Asia, but they were soon followed by France, England and the Netherlands. In 1552 Russian tsar Ivan the Terrible conquered Kazan and the Yermak's voyage of 1580 led to the annexion of Siberia into Russia.
Colonial expansion proceeded in the following centuries (with some setbacks, such as the American Revolution and the wars of independence in many South American colonies). Spain had control of a great deal of South America, the Caribbean and the Philippines; Britain took the whole of Australia and New Zealand, most of India, and large parts of Africa and North America; France held parts of Canada and India (nearly all of which was lost to Britain in 1763), Indochina and large parts of Africa; the Netherlands gained the East Indies (now Indonesia) and islands in the Caribbean; Portugal obtained Brazil and several territories in Africa and Asia; and later, powers such as Germany, Belgium, Italy and Russia acquired further colonies.
This expansion helped the economy of the countries owning them. Trade flourished, because of the minor stability of the empires. The European countries fought wars, that were largely paid for by the money coming in from the colonies.
The Reformation had profound effects on the unity of Europe. Not only were nations divided one from another by their religious orientation, but some states were torn apart internally by religious strife, avidly fostered by their external enemies. France suffered this fate in the 16th century in the series of conflicts known as the French Wars of Religion, which ended in the triumph of the Bourbon Dynasty. England avoided this fate for a while and settled down under Elizabeth to a moderate Anglicanism. Germany, divided into numerous small states under the theoretical framework of the Holy Roman Empire, was also divided along internally drawn sectarian lines, until the Thirty Years' War seemed to see religion replaced by nationalism as the motor of European conflict. The single exception to this was the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, an entity created by the agreement between the nobility of those two countries, highly valuing the religious tolerance.
Throughout the early part of this period, capitalism was replacing feudalism as the principal form of economic organization, at least in the western half of Europe. The expanding colonial frontiers resulted in a Commercial Revolution. The period is noted for the rise of modern science and the application of its findings to technological improvements, which culminated in the Industrial Revolution. New forms of trade and expanding horizons made new developments in international law necessary.
After the Treaty of Westphalia which ended the Thirty Years War, Absolutism became the norm of the continent, while parts of Europe experimented with constitutions foreshadowed by the English Civil War and particularly the Glorious Revolution. European military conflict did not cease, but had less disruptive effects on the lives of Europeans. In the advanced north-west, the Enlightenment gave a philosophical underpinning to the new outlook, and the continued spread of literacy, made possible by the printing press, created new secular forces in thought. Again, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth would be an exception to this rule, with it's unique quasi-democratic Golden Freedom.
Eastern Europe was an arena of conflict for domination between Sweden, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Ottoman Empire. This period saw a gradual decline of these three powers which were eventually replaced by new enlightened absolutist monarchies, Russia, Prussia and Austria. By the turn of the 19th century they became new powers, having divided Poland between them, with Sweden and Turkey having experienced substantial territorial losses to Russia and Austria respectively. Numerous Polish Jews emigrated to Western Europe, founding Jewish communities in places where they had been expelled from during the Middle Ages.
The English Civil War and Unification with Scotland
Main article: English Civil War
The first and foremost cause of the War was religion. When Charles became King in 1625 his Arminian style of Anglicanism and French Catholic wife seemed to herald a slide back toward Catholicism and popery. Additionally, he did not get along with Parliament, and unproductive sessions in the 1620s resulted in the closure of Parliament for 11 years. However, following the Scottish invasion in 1640 Charles was forced to call Parliament to raise money for an army. Parliament was furious and wanted its grievances addressed. The Petition of Right, pushed through by John Pym, forced Charles to agree that the English people had rights and liberties and that he had been undermining them. Charles attempted to arrest Pym and five others in February 1642 after they attempted to impeach the Queen, claiming she had been attempting to control Charles and impose a French style tyranny on them.
The King and his family left London in May 1642 and the raising of the royal standard at Nottingham started war. Charles's side were called the Cavaliers; Parliament's side were the Roundheads. In spite of initial successes, Charles's defeat was assured by 1644, when Pym signed an agreement with the Scots. Charles was defeated and captured at Marston Moor in 1647, but he fled to the Isle of Wight and enlisted the help of the Scots, as Parliament had reneged on their agreement. However, his hopes came to naught when the Roundheads defeated them at Naseby.
English Commonwealth
Pym had since died and the Grandees in the New Model Army and Parliament, including Oliver Cromwell, reluctantly came to the conclusion that they would have to kill Charles. He was found guilty by fifty nine Commissioners (Judges) of high treason and executed. With the abolition of the Monarchy Britain entered a period known as the English Commonwealth, Government by a Council of State with a Rump Parliament as the legislator. Real power rested with the Grandees of the New Model Army and in 1653 Oliver Cromwell became Lord Protector. After Cromwell died in 1658 his son Richard Cromwell inherited the title but not the power. After a short return of the Commonwealth, the Interregnum came to an end with the restoration of the Monarchy under Charles’ son King Charles II.
Act of Union
The Act of Union 1707 united the parliaments of the Kingdoms of England and Scotland to create a United Kingdom of Great Britain. Subsequently, the Act of Union 1800 united the kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
Having gone through a political revolution 100 years early, Great Britain entered the 18th century in a stronger position than her continental rivals who were still controlled by absolute monarchs.
The French Revolution
Main article: French Revolution
French Revolution
By the late 18th century France's finances were in disarray, lavish royal expenditure and costly wars, such as the French intervention in the American war of Independence bankrupted the state, after repeated failed attempts at financial reform Louis XVI was persuaded to convene the Estates-General, a representative body of the country made up of three estates, the clergy, the nobility and the commoners, respectively. The members of the Estates-General assembled in Versaille in May 1789, but the debate as to which voting system should be used soon became an impasse. In June the third estate, join by members of the other two declared itself to be a National Assembly and swore an oath not to dissolve until France had a constitution and created, in July the National Constituent Assembly. At the same time the people of Paris revolted, famously storming the Bastille prison on 14 July.
At the time the assembly wanted to create a constitutional monarchy and over the following two years, passed various laws including the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the abolition of feudalism and a fundamental change in the relationship between France and Rome. At first the king went along with these changes and enjoyed reasonable popularity with the people, but as anti-royalism increased along with the threat of foreign invasion the king, now stripped of his power decided to flee along with his family. He was recognised and bought back to Paris, on 12 January 1793, having been convicted of treason he was executed.
On 20 September 1792 the National Convention abolished the monarchy and declared France a republic. Due to the emergency of war the National Convention created the Committee of Public Safety, controlled by the Jacobin Robespierre, to act as the country's executive. Under Robespierre the committee initiated the Reign of Terror, during which up to 40,000 people were executed in Paris, mainly nobles, and those convicted by the Revolutionary Tribunal, often on the flimsiest of evidence. Elsewhere in the country counter-revolutionary insurrections were brutally suppressed. The Robespierre was overthrown in the coup of 9 Thermidor (27 July 1794) and executed. The regime which followed ended the Terror and relaxed Robespierre's more extreme policies.
Napoleonic Wars
Napoleon Bonaparte was France's most successful general in the Revolutionary wars, having conquered large parts of Italy and forced the Austrians to sue for peace. In 1799 he returned from Egypt and on 18 Brumaire (9 November) overthrew the government, replacing it with the Consulate, in which he was First Consul. On 2 December 1804, after a failed assassination plot he crowned himself Emperor.
In 1805 Napoleon planned to invade Britain, but a renewed British alliance with Russia and Austria (Third Coalition), forced him to turn his attention towards the continent, while at the same time failure to lure the superior British fleet away from the English Channel, ending in a decisive French defeat at the Battle of Trafalgar on 21 October put an end to hopes of an invasion of Britain. On 2 December Napoleon defeated a numerically superior Austro-Russian army at Austerlitz, forcing Austria’s withdrawal from the coalition and dissolving the Holy Roman Empire.
In 1806 a Fourth Coalition was set up, on 14 October Napoleon defeated the Prussians at the Battle of Battle of Jena-Auerstedt, marched through Germany and defeated the Russians on 14 June 1807 at Freidland, the Treaties of Tilsit divided Europe between France and Russia and created the Duchy of Warsaw.On 12 June 1812 Napoleon invaded Russia with a Grande Armée on nearly 700,000 troops. After the measured victories at Smolensk and Borodino Napoleon occupied Moscow, only to find it burned by the retreating Russian Army, he was forced to withdraw, on the march back his army was harassed by Cossacks, and suffered disease and starvation. Only 20,000 of his men survived the campaign.
By 1813 the tide had began to turn from Napoleon, having been defeated by a seven nation army at Battle of Leipzig in October 1813. He was forced to abdicate after the Six Days Campaign and the occupation of Paris, under the Treaty of Fontainebleau he was exiled to the Island of Elba. He returned to France on 1 March 1815 (see Hundred Days, raised and army, but was comprehensively defeated by a British and Prussian force at Waterloo on 18 June.
Congress of Vienna
The Congress of Vienna was a conference between ambassadors from the major powers in Europe. It was held in Vienna from 1 October 1814, to 9 June 1815. The discussions continued despite Napoleon's return and the Congress's Final Act was signed nine days before his final defeat at Waterloo. The Congress was concerned with determining the entire shape of Europe after the Napoleonic wars, with the exception of the terms of peace with France, which had already been decided by the Treaty of Paris in May 1814.
The Congress's principal results, apart from its confirmation of France's loss of the territories annexed in 1795 - 1810, were the enlargement of Russia, (which gained most of the Duchy of Warsaw) and Prussia, which acquired Westphalia and the northern Rhineland. Germany was consolidated from the ~300 states of the Holy Roman Empire (dissolved in 1806) into 39 states. These states were formed into a loose German Confederation under the leadership of Prussia and Austria.
Poland was again divided by Russia, Prussia and Austria. The Polish Kingdom became part of Russia, while western Poland became Prussian and southern Poland was made Austrian. Only the Republic of Cracow stayed independant until 1846.
Representatives at the Congress agreed to numerous other territorial changes. Norway was transferred from Denmark to Sweden. Austria gained Lombardy-Venetia in Northern Italy, while much of the rest of North-Central Italy went to Habsburg dynasts (The Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the Duchy of Modena, and the Duchy of Parma). The Pope was restored to the Papal States. The Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia was restored to its mainland possessions, and also gained control of the Republic of Genoa. In Southern Italy the Bourbon Ferdinand IV was restored to the throne.
A large United Kingdom of the Netherlands was created for the Prince of Orange, including both the old United Provinces and the formerly Austrian-ruled territories in the Southern Netherlands.
There were other, less important territorial adjustments, including significant territorial gains for the German Kingdoms of Hanover and Bavaria, and the Portuguese rights to the Territory of Olivenza were recognized.
The countries involved with the Congress also agreed to meet at intervals and this led to the establishment of the "Congress system". This system was frequently criticized by 19th century historians for ignoring national and liberal impulses associated with the French Revolution. However, in the twentieth century many historians began to admire the work of the statesmen at the Congress of Vienna, whose work appeared to have prevented another large-scale European war for nearly one hundred years (1818-1914).
After the defeat of revolutionary France, the other great powers tried to restore the situation which existed before 1789. However, their efforts were unable to stop the spread of revolutionary movements: the middle classes had been deeply influenced by the ideals of democracy of the French revolution, the Industrial Revolution brought important economical and social changes, the lower classes started to be influenced by Socialist, Communist and Anarchistic ideas (especially those summarized by Karl Marx in the Manifesto of the Communist Party), and the preference of the new capitalists became Liberalism (a term which then, politically, meant something different from the modern usage). Further instability came from the formation of several nationalist movements (in Germany, Italy, Poland etc.), seeking national unification and/or liberation from foreign rule. As a result, the period between 1815 and 1871 saw a large number of revolutionary attempts and independence wars. Even though the revolutionaries were often defeated, most European states had become constitutional (rather than absolute) monarchies by 1871, and Germany and Italy had developed into nation states. The 19th century also saw the British Empire emerge as the world's first global power due in a large part to the Industrial Revolution and victory in the Napoleonic Wars.
The first revolution to occur in Europe after the French Revolution was the Serbian Uprising of 1804, and the Second Serbian Uprising of 1815, which resulted in the proclamation of autonomous Serbia by the Ottoman Empire. The political dynamics of Europe changed three times over the 19th century - once after the Congress of Vienna, and again after the Crimean War. In 1815 at the Congress of Vienna, the major powers of Europe managed to produce a peaceful balance of power among the empires after the Napoleonic wars (despite the occurrence of internal revolutionary movements). But the peace would only last until the Ottoman Empire had declined enough to become a target for the others. (See history of the Balkans#Rise of Independence.) This instigated the Crimean War in 1854 and began a tenser period of minor clashes among the globe-spanning empires of Europe that set the stage for the first World War. It changed a third time with the end of the various wars that turned the Kingdom of Sardinia and the | | |
