What do you understand by the seventeenth-century European crisis? Discuss the origins of the crisis.

 The General Crisis is a term used by some historians to describe the period of widespread global conflict and instability that occurred from the early 17th century to the early 18th century in Europe and in more recent historiography in the world at large.

The term Were coined by Eric Hobsbawm in his pair of 1954 articles. “The Crisis of the 17th Century, published in Past and Present. As a historiographic concept, the place of the general crisis was cemented by Hugh Trevor-Roper in a 1959 article entitled “The General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century published in the same journal.

Hobsbawm discussed an economic crisis in Europe: Trevor-Roper saw a wider crisis. “a crisis in the relations between society and the State”. Trevor-Roper argued that the middle years of the 17th century in Western Europe saw a widespread breakdown in politics, economics and society caused by a complex series of demographic, religious, economic and political problems.

In the “general crisis”, various events such as the English Civil War, the Fronde in France, the climax of the Thirty Years’ War in the Holy Roman Empire and revolts against the Spanish Crown in Portugal, Naples and Catalonia were all manifestations of the same problem. 

The most important cause of the general crisis”, in TrevorRoper’s opinion, was the conflict between “Court” and “Country”: that is between the increasingly powerful centralising, bureaucratic, sovereign princely states represented by the court, and the traditional, regional, land-based aristocracy and gentry representing the country.

He saw the intellectual and religious changes introduced by the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation as important secondary causes of the general crisis”. There were various controversies regarding the “general crisis” thesis between historians. Some simply denied the existence of any such crisis.

For instance, Hobsbawm saw the problems of 17th-century Europe as being social and economic in origin, an emphasis that Trevor-Roper would not concede. Instead, he theorised that the General Crisis’ was a crisis of state and society, precipitated by the expansion of bureaucratic offices in the Sixteenth century.

Many historians have argued the 17th century was an era of crisis. Today there are historians who promote the crisis model, arguing it provides an invaluable insight into the warfare, politics, economics, and even art of the seventeenth century. The Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) focused attention on the massive horrors that wars could bring to entire populations. The 1640s in particular saw more state breakdowns around the world than any previous or subsequent period. 

The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the largest state in Europe, temporarily disappeared. In addition, there were secessions and upheavals in several parts of the Spanish Empire. In Britain there were rebellions in every part of the Stuart monarchy (Kingdom of England, Kingdom of Scotland, Kingdom of Ireland, and British America).

Political insurgency and a spate of popular revolts seldom shook the foundations of most states in Europe and Asia. More wars took place around the world in the mid-17th century than in almost any other period of recorded history. The crises spread far beyond Europe-for example Ming China, the most populous state in the world, collapsed. China’s Ming dynasty and Japan’s Tokugawa shogunate had radically different economic, social, and political systems.

However, they experienced a series of crises during the mid-17th century that were at once interrelated and strikingly similar to those occurring in other parts of the world at the same time. Frederic Wakeman argues that the crisis which destroyed the Ming dynasty was partly a result of the climatic change as well as China’s already significant involvement in the developing world economy.

Bureaucratic dishonesty worsened the problem. Moreover, the Qing dynasty’s success in dealing with the ‘grisis made it more difficult for it to consider alternative responses when confronted with severe challenges from the West in the 19th century.

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