European Statecraft, Strategy & Culture, c. 1470-c.1770: Personalities & Power

Europe or Western Christendom as it was more generally known underwent a major transformation following the fall of Constantinople – the capital of the Byzantine Empire or Eastern Christendom in 1453. It was a crucial time – a life or death moment for Europe. Faced with the real prospect of conquest by the overwhelming power of the Ottomans and their allies, European Society, riven by dissension and crippled by mediocrity faced an existential crisis. Yet against the odds, individual personalities at different times such as, for example, Isabel de Castilla, Pope Julius II, Armand Cardinal Richelieu of France, Friedrich-Wilhelm von Brandenburg, and Maria Theresa and Wenzel von Kaunitz of Austria emerged to give serious leadership in politics, culture, military strategy and diplomacy. The impact of the political and legal ideas of Machiavelli, Vittoria, Erasmus, Hotman de Villiers, Montesquieu, Lipsius and Spinoza for example, upon the exercise of power will be assessed. This module examines who the great personalities of the age were, and who and what formed their mindsets and inspired them to the significant achievements that reversed the rot, rescued their peoples and brought about the rise of the nation-states as great powers with political and cultural influence on the world stage from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries.