The Reformation and the Rise of the Nation State
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TM – So you don’t believe that the long ‘wars of religion’ in France and the suppression of Protestantism were major factors handicapping the development of capitalism and bourgeois ideology? Is this not one of the reasons that the capitalist class turned to the enlightenment as an ideology that promoted their revolutionary cause? The capitalism that existed in many Catholic countries was merchant capitalism which only evolved into industrial capitalism and the procurement of surplus value in England. This was helped or, indeed, caused by the favorable legal and financial systems that came about after the English Revolution of the 1640s.
Definitely the breaking of the royal monopoly in England was of benefit to those capitalists of the ports and towns heavily invested in foreign trade, including spices and slaves. It is wrong to call it the English Revolution, as if it stood alone. It was a political, economic and financial victory for the urban bourgeoisie over the Henrician (still capitalist) aristocracy whose interests lay with the monarch. The English Revolution had begun with the decimation of population brought by the Black Death and then a century later by the victory of Henry VII at Bosworth, continuing through the turmoil of the 16th century enclosures and further consolidation of central state power. The civil war was part of the process of revolution. It did not stand alone and the revolution was not completed until the final settlement of 1688.
As for France and the Wars of Religion, you seem to think that all the bourgeoisie were Huguenots. This would fit with your over-simplistic view of Catholic = feudal and Protestant = bourgeoisie. There is no doubt that Calvinism’s appeal was to the bourgeoisie, but nobles also supported Henri IV, a eulogy to whom became the state anthem of the Kingdom of France for the next 200 years.
No doubt the Wars of Religion did, by their disruptive nature, delay things in France, supposing, as your anglocentrism would have it, that England is the yardstick of social development which all must have necessarily followed; but France followed Henri’s victory with a century of state and church centralisation, cowering its regional feudals into compliance, and further establishing itself as a world power.As to the 18th century Enlightenment, I could quote the French Revolution’s most famous spokesman, Robespierre, with regard to a scientist he sent to the guillotine, “The Revolution has no need of scientists!” Likewise of poets (Chenier), philosophers (Sade), fellow revolutionaries (Tom Paine), &c., all condemned to die.
TM – ‘As for France and the Wars of Religion, you seem to think that all the bourgeoisie were Huguenots. This would fit with your over-simplistic view of Catholic = feudal and Protestant = bourgeoisie.’
I really wish that you’d stop creating these straw men – when did I say or even intimate what you’re claiming here? I’m well aware of the complexities and changing alliances of the Reformation. If you don’t stop doing this, as my patience has its limits, I will have to stop my part in this debate – and that would be a shame since I’m really enjoying it..The Puritans were also a tiny minority of the English population during and after the Civil War.
Most English folk continued to follow the rites of the banned Anglican Church in their homes. Catholics used theirs.Had any of the great French Enlightenment Encyclopédistes lived beyond 1791, they would have been guillotined, or torn to shreds by Danton’s thugs.
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