The 18th Century

in this lecture we're looking at the 18th century Ben Marin pull the lens back and look at the entirety of the century all the changes that occurred all the kingdoms all of the fights as well as the advancements that are made so that when we explore this century and the church within it we can then have a better sense of all the things that occur during this century and I think for most folks the 18th century is one of the most obscure and difficult to understand centuries while on the other hand it is one of the better-known in terms of some of the landmarks that occur here the 18th century is the century of revolution in particular it's the age of the French Revolution as well as the American Revolution as it fought for independence from the British Empire it's also the age of the radical enlightenment as we called it in a previous lecture the age where all kinds of changes and some of the more radical whether it's deistic or atheistic conclusions are made by those claiming to be part of the Enlightenment the 18th century is a time of scientific advancement that builds dramatically on the advancements made in the 17th century as we saw in our second lecture on the Enlightenment the change is made as we move into the age where the Newtonian synthesis is now more or less established and therefore has a chance to flourish in this new age but for all we know about this century identify that most folks or relatively anemic when it comes to some of the more broad contours as to why things are happening in the century the way that they're happening for most of us in the modern world the Revolutionary era is just a given it only makes sense to us that these movements would all seemingly erupt at the exact same time however with all the familiarity that we have with the century the way it feels as if it is suddenly moving Europe and America into a modern world the not as many names and figures and authors and cultural leaders that we are on a let's say first name basis with now historians who tend to see the Scientific Revolution as more or less utopian as the ever-increasing advancement from the medieval world to the world that we know and love today they tend to find this age as the most pivotal and important time ever suddenly the radical enlightenment is moving us finally into an age that is post faith post Christian though not fully in terms of the culture but certainly in terms of the intellectual world but when you compare the sixteenth century just as an example we could go through all kinds of names that we are familiar with Michelangelo da Vinci Erasmus Luther Calvin Cranmer so on and so forth the cultural and literary connections between our world and so much of the 16th century sometimes pale in comparison to our awareness of those same cultural leaders in the 18th century however in the end when we pull this lens back then we discuss the 18th century many students will find that this is such a pivotal age that so much is changing here in the 18th century that sets the stage or the 19th and 20th centuries but they will find that it is perhaps one of the more important missing links in their understanding of history and we can begin with some of the cultural and intellectual elements that are in play here and on the rise as we saw on our second lecture on the Enlightenment this is an age where a number of inventions and discoveries are really beginning to take shape it's not necessarily yet an age that feels modern maybe that's why the 18th century is such a misunderstood century when we look at it culturally we see lots of powdered wigs colonial and Revolutionary era folks who dress differently than us who act differently than us who seemed so much removed and remote from us and yet it's still on at least an intellectual and cultural level feels very much like it's becoming an age that we are familiar with well of course in this century the changes the discoveries the inventions in the Scientific Revolution as well as in the development of expansion in trade and travel particularly on the high seas forms the backdrop of so much of what is in play here we mentioned before of course that the steam engine is eventually introduced and as a result England is launched during the 18th century into the first Industrial Revolution of the entirety of Europe in fact do I say that the 18th century is really the century were England and what would become known as the British Empire finally begins to take shape all throughout the century so much of Europe was dominated by France in 1750 in fact louis xiv the son king the man who founded and built the palace of versailles which you can still go and see today as well as the monarch who ushered in the real heyday in the later 17th century of French might died not only that but the Habsburg dynasty the dynasty that from Charles v all the way until the 18th century finally began to spasm and contract in all these areas and countries that we know today in modern Europe began to take pretty significant shape and in some cases began to look very much like the countries that we know today so in both cases you're seeing the erosion of Spain as the dominant power and you're seeing France beginning to slide just a bit during at least the majority of the century and it will only recover at the end of the 18th century with the rise of Napoleon after the French Revolution so France just in general following the magnanimous and important reign of louis xiv could really you might say almost do nothing but decline Loie had reigned for 72 years in fact he is the record holder for the longest single reign of any monarch in European history 72 years simply unbelievable as a result France begins to decline his successors really were unable to fill his shoes the more important dynasty though that began crumble was the Habsburg dynasty the focus of much of European consideration and concern was on Spain a lot of this actually goes back to the Reformation itself through a number of Stratego CA shion's Spain and Portugal had dominated all of South America Portugal had gotten essentially Brazil in a lot of the eastern areas which is why today the language that is spoken in Brazil is Portuguese the other areas went to Spain which is of course why Spanish is the native language of all these other countries from roughly the midpoint of the sixteenth century right in the heart of the Reformation all the way until this point now in the early 1700s Spain had become the dominant power and the dominant financier of so much of Europe Spain shipped gold and silver and all kinds of trade back into the European system the gold supply of Europe therefore went dramatically up in the influx of so much gold actually led to inflation and a number of economic crises along the way still though Spain was preeminent there were a lot of fears actually in countries that were predominantly Protestant or that were overtly Protestant England looked with horror as Spain seemed to gobble up so much of the new world as we move into the 17th century then just after the Reformation during the time of Elizabeth and James the first you see this real spasm this desire by the English monarchy to race over to the new world before all is lost the real turning point for England was in 1588 when the Spanish Armada sailed up to the British Isles and was eventually defeated during Elizabeth's reign that victory propelled Elizabeth and the English conscience you might say into maritime warfare and trade Elizabeth actually licensed a number of ship owners to begin raiding and plundering Spanish ships that were bringing gold and silver and all kinds of things back to the new world if you could find them you could take them a lot of the pirating and maritime stories actually that the English world has come to know as so much of the heritage in term of our literature stories of swash buckling in pirates and brigands and all this kind of stuff begins to actually emerge in real history in in real time in space as a result of this new move during Elizabeth and subsequently during the reign of James it's during James rain of course that the first English colony is founded in the new world Jamestown and of course during James and his son Charles the first as well as during the restoration of Charles the second so many English families set sail for the new world so by the time you arrive in 1700 England is poised finally to make its push into the British Empire as we would come to know it the push to race across the Atlantic Ocean needed a number of technological and cultural developments in order to secure a safe passage across the sea ships during this day were actually really pray to the wind should you have a favourable wind the route from England to the New World actually was unable to be all that direct you sailed down essentially all the way to roughly Virginia maybe a bit south of there and then if you needed to make your way up to New England very often you had to then follow the coast up you see by the time of elizabeth by the dawn of the 17th century you rarely in the stand age sailed more than a day maybe two days beyond sight of land they did not have navigation equipment or real serious broad-based boats with multiple sails that could carry along on a number of different patterns of wind you see because Europeans during this day could ascertain they could measure the latitude that they were traveling they knew roughly according to the horizon and the pattern of the Sun how far north or south they had traveled the great mystery the great problem was how to determine longitude and this is a problem for which a solution will be discovered actually during the 18th century itself and it's an Englishman that actually cracks the code you might say mathematically in terms of measurement as it stood throughout the 17th century and into the early 18th century a trip across Atlantic might take as short as 21 twenty two days or it could take as long as three months there was no telling how long it might take depending on the winds depending on the patterns etc well by the time you get to the eighteenth century a lot of these changes are beginning to be ironed out by in particularly English their skill and shipbuilding in a trade not only in the new world but down in the area of Bengal and eventually establishing a foothold in India which they will hold all the way until the time of Gandhi in the 20th century England was really beginning to flex its muscle for the first time in fact Britain the British Empire during the 18th century will become the world's first superpower as we call it today two main things begin to really push this in 1707 you have what's known as the Act of Union which brought together not just the kingdoms of Scotland and England that had been brought together during James but now in 1707 you have the Act of Union which brings together the two Parliament's essentially uniting the two countries in a far more deeper way than was ever realized during the reigns of James or any of those who came after him not only that but in the early 1700s you have what's known as the war of Spanish Succession in the war of Spanish Succession is a bit Mis named it's not simply about Spain and it's not simply about Spain itself succeeding rather the war of Spanish Succession is about the ongoing destruction and breakup of the Habsburg dynasty the Habsburg King and Spain died and a number of areas throughout Europe began to fight to try to rip some of these lands out from Habsburg control in order to establish them as their own political or national identity so it's during this war of Spanish Succession that Belgium finally removes itself from Habsburg rule that the southern ten provinces of what was formerly Netherlands actually breaks away from the Hapsburgs and out of it you have formed Luxembourg and Belgium now with that but as Europe began to again pull away Britain which had been poised to launch its own interests in all kinds of areas throughout the known world finally begins to do so it's during the 18th century for example that you see enormous interest in the spice trade out in particular along the Indian Ocean as well as the fern cotton trade from the 18th century now both can be surprising to the modern person what in the world are spices for why is that such a big deal and why are cotton infers such a driving force of the economy of the new world well the answer to both lies in the fact this is an age before the invention or the use of electricity there is no refrigeration and therefore spices become almost mandatory B in particular to preserve things and also England then and actually all the way down until today had a real massive role to play in the textile industry English cloth for example one al from England into most of Europe so much so that you might even say that England clothes a significant percentage of Europeans in their day as a result cotton was almost required and for this reason that you have inventions like the cotton gin as well as the rapid increase of slavery in the new world in order to manufacture all of this lucrative trade back with the motherland so the 18th century you might say is both the rise of England as a superpower and that's a power that really will not be checked until you get to the world wars the British Navy the British maritime fleet as well as the expansion around all parts of the known world both in the Far East and in the new world means that England finally eclipses Spain as the big kid on the block the other countries the Hapsburgs in particular begin to really break apart now the Habsburg dynasty and the Holy Roman Empire will not be deposed and be removed for some time still in fact it will not be until the next century but you begin to see their erosion as a power france takes a dip and then eventually by the end of the century comes roaring back with the french revolution and the rise of Napoleon culturally intellectually philosophically the 18th century was in some ways very detrimental and yet also very renewing for the church in terms of the detriment of it as we've already said the Enlightenment movement begins to radicalize during the 18th century we see men like David Hume and Immanuel Kant both began to assert their philosophies in both the writings of human count you might say are at the high-water mark of enlightenment philosophy you also have the writings of Voltaire who loved to mock and to scourge the age of faith in the role of the church it's during the 18th century then that at least at the level of those who were the intellectual elites of Europe began to see the Enlightenment project not as an extension of a religious impulse to know or to study the natural world but instead it came to see itself as antithetical to faith or to the church itself so there were some destructive elements within the church people began to lose faith you see rise things like deism or unitarianism or any of these alternative understandings of either faith in general or even of the Christian faith that attempt to jettison the entire core of it while yet keeping the ethics and the values of say a Christian worldview alive as we'll see of course over the next several centuries attempting to maintain a certain high-water mark of Christian virtue you might say while also not having much of a religious bent for doing so eventually leads to an erosion of the belief that there should be these imposed virtues at all particularly by the end of the 19th in the 20th centuries you begin to see people asking why are we even trying to live according to a specific enlightenment quasi Christian ethic after we've already gotten rid of the very foundation of that ethic but here in the Enlightenment you might say that having run up the ladder of Reason and empiricism and all these new philosophical ideas there now for the first time kicking the ladder of the church or a faith away in a very aggressive way there had always been people before here and there who had rejected faith or who had come up with alternative positions but as during the 18th century that you see a more widespread understanding of the radical and so this heady optimism of the Enlightenment begins to take on new tones that are relatively anti-christian or at least anti traditional faith if those are the challenges to the church there were a number of revival istic in new movements that began to empower in to enliven Christianity in particular in the english-speaking world it's during the 18th century in particular from roughly 1730 to 1735 that the Wesley brothers begin to found what would become known as the Methodist movement it's also during this time from again 1732 roughly seventeen sixty or so just prior to the American Revolution that you have the first Great Awakening in the new world all kinds of preachers tent revivals conversions and a number of things that we call the evangelical awakening begin to emerge now these are not evangelicals in the exact same way as they will be known in later centuries but you see emerging here in the 18th century the first real impulse towards Evan Jellicle ISM which is relatively multi-denominational or at least interdenominational and that begins to pack a real powerful punch when it comes to attempting to convert the masses who had slipped away from the faith and you really can't underestimate the Methodist movement or the teachings of John Wesley in many ways Wesley is you might say the apostle of angelical ISM and the new world his preaching and his impact as well as the impact of the early Methodist Church is simply staggering and we'll look at this in a later lecture Wesley of course was an Arminian but he was not the only major theologian during these early days there was also Jonathan Edwards Jonathan Edwards according to both Christians who loved his writings as well as historians who are simply looking at it through a cultural lens tend to agree that Jonathan Edwards is one of the most staggering intellect that America has ever produced we'll have a lecture on him later of course so we'll go into that in detail but we have to realize that Edwards is writing and preaching and conducting his ministry here in the new world all during these same years in fact Edwards is pretty tied up with the first Great Awakening so in the end you might say that the 18th century begins with this heady optimism as the Scientific Revolution and enlightenment began to really pick up steam and by the end of the century you have all kinds of revolutions and breakups the formation of the British super power dynasty as well as the erosion of some elements of the traditional understanding of the faith and the emergence of some new things that would give rise to a new quintessentially American understanding of Christianity that we today know as EV angelical ism

Channel: Ryan Reeves

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Keywords: 18th Century (Event), Age Of Enlightenment (Literature Subject), Scientific Revolution (Event), John Wesley (Founding Figure), Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (College/University), Ryan M. Reeves, United Kingdom (Country), War of Spanish Succession, House Of Habsburg (Royal Line), Napoleon Bonaparte (Military Commander)

Id: sLSiw1c8ayc

Length: 21min 18sec (1278 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 24 2015