Interesting comments below about the clash between Muslim and Progressive values, but need I point out that it is completely off-topic? The whole thrust of this post (and, more generally, the series) is that religion was _not_ a fundamental cause of the (misnamed) Wars of Religion. If you need further proof, just consider how easily most Protestant leaders switched to Catholicism, when it suited their pragmatic goals. Henry of Navarre switched twice. "Paris is worth a mass", indeed.
I did not expect people to react so heatedly to my answer, sorry about that. I'm actually not even a progressive at all. I just wanted to highlight how even in contemporary France the religious topic is used by politicians to agitate crowds and reach their political goals.
They indeed could switch tomorrow to any other discourse if it helped them stay in power or gain power.
What major leader other than Henri IV switched to Catholicism?
Were the many thousand he died (and murdered) in the name of religion only motivated by practical material benefits? Even when Henri converted, 120 members of the Catholic League chose banishment from the capital rather than accepting someone they viewed as a Protestant.
The Protestant reformation led to armed conflicts all over Europe. Was everyone suffering from a Structural-Demographic crisis?
If religion is out of the question when we talk about these issues, then I understand that what the Germans did to the Jews in World War II must be interpreted as intra-elite competition. Am I right?
Thanks for this article. Indeed I learned a lot about the history of France from your books, which although being French, I did not know.
It would be great if you could some day write about the current situation in France. It's not per se a war of religion, but the role anti Muslim rethoric takes in current French politics has been incredible for decades. I do not know of another country where debates can be has heated about where women could be allowed to wear hijab or not. In France for eg mothers who want to help teachers on a school event are not allowed to wear hijab, nor girls at school, they are not even allowed to wear anything ressemling a Muslim dress at school. Some years ago there was a huge debate about burkinees on the beach, and they were forbidden too. There seems to be a sort of obsession in France about what Muslim women can wear or not, very disproportionate, because women should be able to wear what they please.
In short, French politics seems obsessed with religion, which is strange in a country where probably almost half of the population is actually atheist...
“Women should be able to wear what they please, which is why I support a culture which forces women to cover their faces and withdraw from the public sphere under threat of rape or even murder.”
Twenty-first-century progressives truly are beyond parody.
Not all muslim women cover their faces and not all muslim women cover their heads. In fact you can see that in Muslim countries themselves, usually after a revolutionary islamist phase, mannerisms relax (takes times) and people move on and go about their daily lives.
I seem to recall Bernadette Devlin wrote a book about the troubles in Ireland with the same thesis - - that the religious conflict was merely the surface manifestation. (She has written several books, at this distance I can no longer remember which title it was.)
Seems to me talk about religion and religious motives should remember....When most people go to a church, in a society with essentially no newspapers, the church is mass media. And control of the church is roughly equivalent to today's ownership/censorship of mass media..
The role of the church which was also a feudal landlord raises issues about who gets the administrative positions in churches, who pays the tithes and rents and privileges, who collects them and where they get sent, especially when dissidents aim to expropriate church lands.
Also, things like the number of holidays (versus working days,) pilgrimages, the occasional sumptuary customs (or even laws,) diet, marriage and inheritance, the liberties and privileges and immunities of clergy, all make the religious motives in reformation hard to distinguish from economic ones. If a church festival coincided with a trade fair, is this religious or economic?
On a more speculative note, the role of religious identity as a marker of nationality in an era with so many roots of modern nations is a provocative question, in my opinion.
Frankly, I'm confused by this: "The French Kingdom in the sixteenth century was an overwhelmingly agrarian state and agricultural productivity couldn’t keep up with such massive population growth. As a result, food prices exploded". The vast majority of the population were peasants and therefore produced food for themselves. I don't think there is any evidence of a dramatic change in the proportion of urban to rural populations.
I agree, blaming it on population increase looks shoddy unless he is going to show a larger N cross country analysis that population increase = conflict, which I don’t think exists. In 16th century France you have stating you in the face the drastic increase in direct land taxes paid by peasants, and what do you know, the provinces that leaned Protestant just happened to be places where nobles were also required to pay land taxes on newer-acquired lands (in other provinces they were exempt). I don’t believe he can make a reasonable case that this is due to population when it seems very obvious that the overproduction of elites resulted in increased state spending which required a dramatic increase in tax farming which spilled over into an unequal treatment of some nobility vs others who are then rebelled against what they perceived as a corrupt system by turning Protestant.
As an aside, I’m very familiar with pre-modern farming techniques and food production and whenever someone says that landed peasants couldn’t feed themselves, they don’t know what they are talking about. The difficulty is in growing enough of a cash crop to earn specie to meet state-imposed financial obligations, or in land use restrictions imposed by the state. Left alone, the average peasant family in a moderately supportive agricultural peasant community had no problem feeding themselves. Your comment about urban vs rural population makes me think you also understand this.
Above: “stating you in the face” = “staring”. Good God in heaven autocorrect just tried to “correct” that again…
From what I understand, France at the time had enough land to farm for the population of the time. As for Normandy, I believe that the rise in food prices could have been caused by exporting food to the neighboring Low Countries where urban growth was occurring at this time.
As for the overproduction of elites, I don't yet understand the connection between it and the rise in government spending. Let's look at it in dynamics. Western European elites in the Middle Ages lived on their estates and did not require any public spending. Then kings started to change the order and impose taxes and payments for service in the army and bureaucracy. But in principle, the elite could continue to live on their estates. In itself, the overproduction of elites does not necessarily have to cause an increase in government spending. Another thing is that overproduction of elites can cause problems if the population stays the same or shrinks so that there are fewer peasants to feed every nobleman. Or I'm just not seeing the connection here. I would appreciate it if you could explain this point to me.
As for state spending, I think the answer lies in Italy's wars with Spain, which Turchin writes about in the second part of the post, The French Wars of Religion II. I believe that the French were unlucky because the Spanish began bringing in large amounts of silver and gold from the Americas, and the French state had no chance at that time in competing with the Spanish state in terms of monetary expenditures.
The claim about an increase in "dueling" among elites is problematic. The paragraph that begins with "After 1560..." cites statistics but does not cite a credible source.
Instead, it employs the vague expressions "it was believed..." and "it is said..." Why should anyone accept these numbers?
This is a blog and I am allowed more latitude. I cite the sources in my formal (academic) writings. In any case, the difference between the first half and the second half of the sixteenth century in the frequency of duels was three orders of magnitude. It's hard to miss.
<i>The Three Musketeers</i> is a title known even in the Anglophone world. Was also written by Alexandre Dumas and takes place around 1629 under Louis XIII during the wars between the Catholics and the Huguenots, and the wars between the king and the rebellious nobility, and involves Richelieu (also known in Anglophone world). This fits into both patterns, the favorited booklist and the battles between elites.
Three Musketeers take place at the very end of the wars of religion. Queen Margo and books that followed - Le Dame de Monsoreu and The Forty Five - take place at the beginning.
Interesting comments below about the clash between Muslim and Progressive values, but need I point out that it is completely off-topic? The whole thrust of this post (and, more generally, the series) is that religion was _not_ a fundamental cause of the (misnamed) Wars of Religion. If you need further proof, just consider how easily most Protestant leaders switched to Catholicism, when it suited their pragmatic goals. Henry of Navarre switched twice. "Paris is worth a mass", indeed.
I did not expect people to react so heatedly to my answer, sorry about that. I'm actually not even a progressive at all. I just wanted to highlight how even in contemporary France the religious topic is used by politicians to agitate crowds and reach their political goals.
They indeed could switch tomorrow to any other discourse if it helped them stay in power or gain power.
Which raised serious questions about the elite conversions to Christianity, starting with the Romans
What major leader other than Henri IV switched to Catholicism?
Were the many thousand he died (and murdered) in the name of religion only motivated by practical material benefits? Even when Henri converted, 120 members of the Catholic League chose banishment from the capital rather than accepting someone they viewed as a Protestant.
The Protestant reformation led to armed conflicts all over Europe. Was everyone suffering from a Structural-Demographic crisis?
Yes. I will provide details over the next year.
The structural-demographic issues you raise are an important insight, but it is not everything. "To a man with a hammer, everything is a nail".
If religion is out of the question when we talk about these issues, then I understand that what the Germans did to the Jews in World War II must be interpreted as intra-elite competition. Am I right?
Yes. National socialist elites vs communist elites. Nothing to do with religion as both sides were practical atheists.
Thanks for this article. Indeed I learned a lot about the history of France from your books, which although being French, I did not know.
It would be great if you could some day write about the current situation in France. It's not per se a war of religion, but the role anti Muslim rethoric takes in current French politics has been incredible for decades. I do not know of another country where debates can be has heated about where women could be allowed to wear hijab or not. In France for eg mothers who want to help teachers on a school event are not allowed to wear hijab, nor girls at school, they are not even allowed to wear anything ressemling a Muslim dress at school. Some years ago there was a huge debate about burkinees on the beach, and they were forbidden too. There seems to be a sort of obsession in France about what Muslim women can wear or not, very disproportionate, because women should be able to wear what they please.
In short, French politics seems obsessed with religion, which is strange in a country where probably almost half of the population is actually atheist...
“Women should be able to wear what they please, which is why I support a culture which forces women to cover their faces and withdraw from the public sphere under threat of rape or even murder.”
Twenty-first-century progressives truly are beyond parody.
Not all muslim women cover their faces and not all muslim women cover their heads. In fact you can see that in Muslim countries themselves, usually after a revolutionary islamist phase, mannerisms relax (takes times) and people move on and go about their daily lives.
I seem to recall Bernadette Devlin wrote a book about the troubles in Ireland with the same thesis - - that the religious conflict was merely the surface manifestation. (She has written several books, at this distance I can no longer remember which title it was.)
Seems to me talk about religion and religious motives should remember....When most people go to a church, in a society with essentially no newspapers, the church is mass media. And control of the church is roughly equivalent to today's ownership/censorship of mass media..
The role of the church which was also a feudal landlord raises issues about who gets the administrative positions in churches, who pays the tithes and rents and privileges, who collects them and where they get sent, especially when dissidents aim to expropriate church lands.
Also, things like the number of holidays (versus working days,) pilgrimages, the occasional sumptuary customs (or even laws,) diet, marriage and inheritance, the liberties and privileges and immunities of clergy, all make the religious motives in reformation hard to distinguish from economic ones. If a church festival coincided with a trade fair, is this religious or economic?
On a more speculative note, the role of religious identity as a marker of nationality in an era with so many roots of modern nations is a provocative question, in my opinion.
Frankly, I'm confused by this: "The French Kingdom in the sixteenth century was an overwhelmingly agrarian state and agricultural productivity couldn’t keep up with such massive population growth. As a result, food prices exploded". The vast majority of the population were peasants and therefore produced food for themselves. I don't think there is any evidence of a dramatic change in the proportion of urban to rural populations.
I agree, blaming it on population increase looks shoddy unless he is going to show a larger N cross country analysis that population increase = conflict, which I don’t think exists. In 16th century France you have stating you in the face the drastic increase in direct land taxes paid by peasants, and what do you know, the provinces that leaned Protestant just happened to be places where nobles were also required to pay land taxes on newer-acquired lands (in other provinces they were exempt). I don’t believe he can make a reasonable case that this is due to population when it seems very obvious that the overproduction of elites resulted in increased state spending which required a dramatic increase in tax farming which spilled over into an unequal treatment of some nobility vs others who are then rebelled against what they perceived as a corrupt system by turning Protestant.
As an aside, I’m very familiar with pre-modern farming techniques and food production and whenever someone says that landed peasants couldn’t feed themselves, they don’t know what they are talking about. The difficulty is in growing enough of a cash crop to earn specie to meet state-imposed financial obligations, or in land use restrictions imposed by the state. Left alone, the average peasant family in a moderately supportive agricultural peasant community had no problem feeding themselves. Your comment about urban vs rural population makes me think you also understand this.
Above: “stating you in the face” = “staring”. Good God in heaven autocorrect just tried to “correct” that again…
From what I understand, France at the time had enough land to farm for the population of the time. As for Normandy, I believe that the rise in food prices could have been caused by exporting food to the neighboring Low Countries where urban growth was occurring at this time.
As for the overproduction of elites, I don't yet understand the connection between it and the rise in government spending. Let's look at it in dynamics. Western European elites in the Middle Ages lived on their estates and did not require any public spending. Then kings started to change the order and impose taxes and payments for service in the army and bureaucracy. But in principle, the elite could continue to live on their estates. In itself, the overproduction of elites does not necessarily have to cause an increase in government spending. Another thing is that overproduction of elites can cause problems if the population stays the same or shrinks so that there are fewer peasants to feed every nobleman. Or I'm just not seeing the connection here. I would appreciate it if you could explain this point to me.
As for state spending, I think the answer lies in Italy's wars with Spain, which Turchin writes about in the second part of the post, The French Wars of Religion II. I believe that the French were unlucky because the Spanish began bringing in large amounts of silver and gold from the Americas, and the French state had no chance at that time in competing with the Spanish state in terms of monetary expenditures.
The claim about an increase in "dueling" among elites is problematic. The paragraph that begins with "After 1560..." cites statistics but does not cite a credible source.
Instead, it employs the vague expressions "it was believed..." and "it is said..." Why should anyone accept these numbers?
This is a blog and I am allowed more latitude. I cite the sources in my formal (academic) writings. In any case, the difference between the first half and the second half of the sixteenth century in the frequency of duels was three orders of magnitude. It's hard to miss.
<i>The Three Musketeers</i> is a title known even in the Anglophone world. Was also written by Alexandre Dumas and takes place around 1629 under Louis XIII during the wars between the Catholics and the Huguenots, and the wars between the king and the rebellious nobility, and involves Richelieu (also known in Anglophone world). This fits into both patterns, the favorited booklist and the battles between elites.
Yes, I will be using this as an example in a later installment of this series
Three Musketeers take place at the very end of the wars of religion. Queen Margo and books that followed - Le Dame de Monsoreu and The Forty Five - take place at the beginning.
Patterns. Inescapable behavior patterns.