Consolidated World History - the 1400s

The Fourteen Hundreds – A Historical Overview

The year 1453 produced a host of important developments.  It marked the collapse of the Byzantine Empire.  This successor to the ancient Roman Empire fell with the success of Islamic Ottoman Turkey in taking control of Constantinople.  For many historians, the end of the Byzantine Empire also marks the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the modern era.  The argument that 1453 ends the Middle Ages is closely tied to the economic consequences of the fall of Constantinople and, incidentally, the implications of those economic consequences for Columbus’s later voyages of discovery.  The victory by the Turks meant that they were able to cut European traders off from directly exploiting land routes to the spice trade with India and beyond.  The increased costs and risks of the overland routes to Asia contributed to the search by European powers for a sea route to India, China, and Japan.  Thus, Spain’s decision to back Columbus in his quest for such a path to Asian trade followed directly from the heightened costs of overland trade brought about by the defeat of overland trade brought about the defeat of the Byzantine Empire by the Ottoman Turks.  Spain was motivated by Ferdinand and Isabella’s interest in securing their personal hold on power and by their desire to enrich and strengthen themselves by enriching and strengthening their kingdom.  Indeed, one of the characteristics of monarch that sets it apart from modern autocracy is the closer link between the monarch’s personal welfare and the welfare of the ‘the state,’ a link that is largely absent in rigged-election autocracies. 

Other events in Europe at the time set the stage for future developments and conflicts over the next several centuries and even into our own time.  Germany – then a loose confederation of princely states – had been ruled by the Habsburg dynasty since 1273.  Habsburg rule, however, took a great leap forward in power when Frederick III became the Holy Roman Emperor in 1452.  The Holy Roman Empire was probably the most powerful secular authority in Europe at the time, with only the Catholic Church being at least as powerful.  The Habsburgs maintained their control over the Holy Roman Empire until 1806, when it ceased to exist.  Still, in the intervening centuries, German political, cultural, and military influence waned and waxed, helping to set the stage for Germany ambitions in the First and Second World Wars and perhaps even contemporary Germany’s great influence within the European Union. 

The years 1452-1453, then, witnessed the emergence of critical new powers in northern Europe and the development of southeastern Europe’s ties to Asia through Turkey.  Still other events were unfolding that helped redefine the political map and interest of Europe’s leading powers.  In the west, England and France finally resolved the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453).  At the war’s onset, England held vast territories in what today is called France.  English kings claimed the French throne just as French kings – harking back to France’s William, Duke of Normandy, who as William the Conqueror took control of England in 1066 and became its ruler – made claims on the English crown.  The French emerged victorious from the Hundred Years’ War, expelling England from almost all of its continental territories and helping to solidify France’s borders along lines close to those of modern France.  The French victory also helped define the French nationality and nationalism, a process that was already underway by 1302, when the French king, Philip the Fair, launched a war against Pope Boniface VIII and called upon the people of France to die for their country (pro patria mori).  Similar consequences for England emerged from the Hundred Years’ War.  In the process of losing the war, modern England began to take form. 

None expressed better the profound change in national self-awareness in England than did William Shakespeare in writing two centuries later about Henry V and the English success in the Battle of Agincourt (1415):

                                This day is called the feast of Crispian:

                                He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,

                                Will stand a-tiptoe when this day is named,

                                And rouse him at the name of Crispian….

                                And gentlemen in England now a-bed

                                Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,

                                And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks

                                That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

The Hundred Years’ War secured English national consciousness and the gradual development of an English ‘culture’ that is distinctly different from that of France.  Although England was already well on the way to establishing its common law and parliamentary government, 1453 and its aftermath mark a crucial turning point in English and French history.  The merging political institutions in England served to strengthen the Crown both at the expense of external interests – especially the Catholic Church – and internal rivals, most notably the wealthiest earls and dukes.  These institutional developments were, in other words, the product not of chance ideas but of strategic maneuvers by England’s king (and France’s as well) to make secure is own political position. 

In the northeastern part of Europe equally momentous events unfolded a quarter of a century later.  Modern Russia was born in 1480, when Ivan III, having defeated Asia’s Mongols – the heirs of Genghis Khan, created an independent Russian state.  His successor, Ivan the Terrible, then set about building a Russian empire that would make the country a major competitor for political influence throughout Europe, a position Russian maintains to this day. 

Halfway across the world other pivotal events were taking place.  Developments in modern-day Mexico in 1430 helped set the stage for some of the most significant events in the sixteenth century.  During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the then nomadic Aztecs encountered and eventually overtook the Toltec civilization in the Valley of Mexico.  The Aztecs elected their first king, Tenoch, in 1349.  He ruled for more than forty years.  During this time, control of Mexico was divided among numerous competing tribes, but in 1430 a league of three Aztec cities formed (Tenochtitlan, Texcuco, and Tlacopen) to build an empire.  The three-city league fought wars with its political rivals and fairly quickly established Aztec controls over an empire that ranged from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico.  In less than a century, this empire and the imperial pursuits of Spain would clash, leading to the conquest of Mexico by Hernan Cortes in 1518 and, together with the destruction of Peru’s Inca Empire, the beginning of the European colonization of the Western Hemisphere.