Dr Kat and the Elizabethan Trade in "Bell Metal"

hello and welcome back to the channel if you're new here hi you're very welcome this is reading the past and I'm dr. Kat so unless you have been purposefully avoiding interacting with the news over the last year or so and I can't say that I necessarily blame you you have probably heard the terms trade and trade deal being brought up quite frequently you've probably also noticed that when these things are talked about there seems to be mounting anxiety over what the future is going to look like and I think that the anxiety over our trading deals and our diplomatic relationships and also perhaps our militaristic relationships can feel brand new and therefore slightly more scary now I can't fix the problems that may or may not be on the horizon but what I can say is that all this has happened before and no doubt will happen again and hopefully it might bring some peace of mind or at least a distraction if we talk about something else so with that being said what I'd like to talk about in this video is Elizabethan England's desire to look east to find new relationships and how Elizabeth and her councillors and her nation started trading in something called Bell metal [Music] [Music] early Mont England's relationship with Catholic Europe had been strained ever since Henry the 8th took the decision to divorce his first wife Catherine to Mary Anne Boleyn in doing so he found that the only way out of his first marriage was also a secondary divorce that of England from the Holy Father in Rome no longer with the Pope the head of the English church instead Henry would take up that role in 1570 these particular birds came home to roost when pope pius v issued the regnant in excelsis against Henry and Anne's daughter Elizabeth the first the red mountain experience was a papal bull that excommunicated Elizabeth now I'm sure that Elizabeth wasn't particularly bothered about no longer being under the protection of the Holy Father in Rome she herself I'm sure was quite happy with being governor of the Church of England or it did mean was that for Catholics living in England their loyalty was now split they could be loyal to the Holy Father in Rome or they could be loyal to their queen and certainly this would have been how Elizabeth and her councilors may have seen it now the Pope had essentially said that it was the divinely ordained thing for them to disobey and remove their loyalty from their heretic Queen more than that it could also potentially push them to take physical action against her to remove her from her place and put a Catholic there instead similarly the Catholic states of Europe now are a greater threat to Elizabeth's England it is the Pope's will that Elizabeth no longer ruled England it is his will that England come back under the Holy See of Rome therefore for loyal Catholic nations trading with and also potentially protecting Elizabeth and her England with their military might is in direct contravention of the orders of the Holy Father so the Year 1570 is potentially a time of increasing tension and suspicion both at home and abroad who can Elizabeth and her Protestant nation trust can they trust the Catholics within their own realm can they trust the Catholic States to treat them fairly in trade but also to not launch an invasion force that would see Elizabeth dethroned and a Catholic put in her place around this time in the early 15 70s early modern England was also struggling under the effects of a disruption in trading the Ottoman Venetian was the fourth of their kind which ran from 1570 to 1573 was disrupting the capacity for England's to have access to the luxury wares of the East at this time Venice is a central hub for most of the global trading so the fine silks and spices that were elements of luxurious living in England were much harder to get hold of when this is coupled with the fact that in 1570 to Antwerp a friendly trading port for England for to the Spanish so for England to get hold of these luxury Eastern goods that have become the hallmark of English civilized living they're going to have to find another way around in 1578 Sir Francis Walsingham writes a consideration of the trade into turkey or a memorandum on the turkey trade the first line reads in all trades two things principally are to be considered profit and surety for if they be not joined together they are in no ways to be attempted later in the document he also talks about the way in which this new trading relationship cutting out a middleman could also be a benefit to Englishmen in their trading practices when he says you shall vent your own commodities with most profit which before did fall into strangers hands so he is saying that this new trade offers the Englishman the capacity to cut out a stranger merchants middleman and keep all of the profits for themselves in seeking to subvert the stranglehold that the Catholic states like Spain had over international trading Elizabeth and her councillors are seeking to go direct source they are going to try to engage with the biggest supplier of these fine silks and spices the Ottoman Empire what as interesting to me is the way in which Elizabeth the first shapes her faith in the diplomatic packages she sends when writing to the Emperor Muir at the third she positions herself almost as his co-religionist they are both iconoclasts destroyers of idolatry whereas for Murad he is of course attacking the idolatry of Catholic Spain as a Muslim leader Elizabeth is doing the same as a Protestant it's a well-worn adage and perhaps even a cliche but sometimes the enemy of my enemy is my friend and certainly as Bernadette Andrea explains early modern Protestantism and Islam held strong affinities both politically as allies against the Catholic Habsburg powers and ideologically as iconoclasts and rigorous monotheists indeed Sultan Murad the third praised the Lutheran sect of Flanders and Spain because they do not worship idols having banished the idols and portraits and bells from churches and declared your faith by stating that God Almighty is one and holy jesus is his prophet and servant and now with heart and soul are seeking and desirous of the true faith certainly Queen Elizabeth the first was keen to play on this notion of herself and her nation being one of iconic lasts when writing a diplomatic letter to her counterparts Alton we're out the third on the 25th of October 1579 her opening lines originally in Latin but now translated say the following Elizabeth by the grace of the most mighty God and only creator of heaven and earth of England France and Ireland Queen the most invincible and most mighty defender of the Christian faith against all kind of idolatries of all that live among the Christians and falsely professed the name of Christ unto the most Imperial and most invincible Prince Sultan Murad Khan the most mighty ruler the kingdom of Turkey soul and above all and most sovereign monarch of the East Empire greeting and many happy and fortunate years with abundance of the best things in addition to being able to directly access the fine silks and spices of the east through this new Anglo ottoman relationship Elizabeth England is also able to export things that it no longer needs in the iconoclastic plundering of England's Catholic churches and Abbey's Elizabeth had caused her nation to have an abundance of broken bells and images this bell metal was exported from England to the Ottoman Empire alongside iron steel led copper muskets sword blades brimstone saltpeter and gunpowder although neither correspondence between Elizabeth and Murad mentions an arms trade Elizabeth is conspicuously advertising herself as an iconoclast and an enemy of Catholic Europe in these letters in doing so she employs religious rhetoric to validate her own religious policy and to emphasize a shared idol free ruse practice between praten ISM and Islam and to remind Murad of their shared enemy Catholic Europe the term Bell metal soon came to note the prohibited goods england would ship furtively to turkish territories where they could be used to create ordnance what is happening here is that england's Ottoman trading partners are receiving her Bell metal once Catholic religious objects now little more than papal trash and they are recycling them into munitions that may be used to threaten the idolatrous Catholic States of Europe states like Spain which were acting as both a threat to early modern England but also the Ottoman Empire at this time thus England's papal trash is being recycled by the Ottoman trading partners into weapons that may literally trash its Catholic Spanish enemies between 1580 and 1580 one is the period known as the Anglo Ottoman trading capitulations in May of 1580 a treaty was signed that secured the rights of English merchants when trading with the Ottoman Empire in the next decades 15 96 or 97 depending upon when the play is actually written William Shakespeare stages The Merchant of Venice and in the Merchant of Venice the noble Prince of Morocco appears as a suitor for Porsha's hand now he is unsuccessful and loses the casket game but what this points to is the fact that it's not just a trading and diplomatic relationship England looking east is also happening culturally men like Shakespeare and his contemporaries are staging these new relationships because they are being inspired by them in 1600 Elizabethan England is still pursuing a extended and strengthened relationship with the Ottoman Empire which is now being wrought by Mehmed the 3rd however in the same year this gentleman arrives in England he is the ambassador of the moroccan sultan ahmed al mem sewer and he has been sent to Elizabeth Court with the express hopes of developing a trade and also military alliance between England and Morocco around four years later so circa 1604 William Shakespeare stages the figure of a fellow the more a fellow is a complex contradictory difficult to grasp character whose nobility is also evident he is a figure for whom academics and theatre directors and actors constantly strive to grasp some meaning or understanding of and one way they have sought to find that meaning is by looking at this portrait and the figure that is represented within it did Shakespeare see this image or perhaps meet the man or see him as he moved around London while I was embassy is that what convinced him or inspired him to create the figure of a fellow or like the moroccan prince in the Merchant of Venice was Shakespeare just drawn to look east because that's the way that his nation was looking was he inspired by the diplomatic and trading a minute stick gaze of the Queen and her councilors and his fellow Englishmen well I don't think we're ever going to know for sure but I am interested to know how you read this and what you think how much do you think the socio-political economic diplomatic negotiations and relationships of the nation affect the cultural production that is created by it how much do you think Shakespeare would have been inspired by the political dealings of the Queen and her counselors if I was going to shape a character this is the sort of face I'd have in my mind but do you think that Shakespeare was similarly inspired I do hope you've enjoyed this video and found it interesting if you have enjoyed it please click the like button please also subscribe to the channel and click the bell icon next to it so you know when I've next uploaded also if you've got any comments perhaps you want to answer the questions that I asked please let me know in the comment section down below or you can come and find me over on my social media I'll be leaving those links in the description box as well I hope you're gonna have a great day whatever you're doing and I look forward to seeing you all next time take care bye bye for now [Music] [Music]

Channel: undefined

Views: 2,564

Rating: 4.98524 out of 5

Keywords: History, Literature, Education, Elizabeth I, Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, Othello, Early Modern, Renaissance, Henry VIII, Katherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Reformation, Protestant, Catholic, Ottoman Empire, History of Trade, Economic History, European History, Conflict

Id: j81AnZtLueE

Length: 13min 57sec (837 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 07 2018