Analysis of the structural crisis in seventeenth century Europe
Callalli Pimentel.
Lima, Peru. Adelantecronopio@hotmail.com
http://cronopiocortazar.blogspot.com
One of the key steps to understand the positioning of English liberalism and the revolutionary explosion of the bourgeois class in France is undoubtedly the crisis that shook Europe during the seventeenth century. The historical theory allows us to understand that the crisis triggered a whole set of changes and transformations that mobilize social agencies and shaking the economic and political foundations of the establishment. The processes that occurred from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century are no exception to this reasoning, rather rigorously confirmed.
Among the antecedents of the crisis we can mention the unique feature of the monetary system, which circulated in the late sixteenth century, three types of coins, heavily dependent on supplies of precious metal brought from America. This dependence on mineral resources of the new world revealed the weakness of the European Monetary System about the rapid changes in supply and demand for gold and silver. The state monopoly of coinage and monetary circulation management mechanisms required sophisticated and carefully prepared in order to confront any threat that would place a stone's throw the economy of the system.
Another element to take into account as a background to the crisis was the decline of the population. Unlike the late sixteenth century where there was an increase and stabilization of demographic indicators, the early and mid seventeenth century shows the drop in the number of inhabitants as a result of the resurgence of armed conflicts, famine and epidemics. Wars was a need for consolidation of the states and the strengthening of the dominant classes. This is what the German sociologist Robert Michels called the iron law of oligarchy, the urgency to gain economic and political positions on the way to perpetuate the apparatchik, for the action of the war. Now, in the Marxist approach is just and unjust wars. Needless to say, in the processes that occurred during the seventeenth century, all wars were triggered by the old houses monarchist. The peasantry was a direct victim of the belligerent outbursts of the noble class. The agricultural crisis and seizures and the destruction of the fields led to a brutal famine. This is joined by recurrent attacks of diseases and epidemics that decimated the population lacks sufficient resources to meet them, as well as the lack of knowledge in the field of medical science able to design effective medicines and vaccines.
Then, without a doubt, one of the biggest problems faced seventeenth century Europe was the agrarian crisis. As at the time of the collapse of the fourteenth century the area was the hub of the dynamics of a spiral process, recurrent and long-term critic. This has its counterpart in the so-called Little Ice Age then shaking the old European civilization. With decreasing of agricultural production the peasant masses unleashed protests and demonstrations in support of their welfare. Rising prices of agricultural products is very noticeable in cities that generate excesses in the townspeople. However, the farm crisis was successfully overcome by the English and Dutch. Despite the fight that gave Thomas More in his book Utopia to the 'ogre' of nobility ranging livestock galore at the expense of the vast masses of peasants and farmers by taking away their jobs, the state planned their strategies for English address the agricultural crisis, free of a heterodoxy of his own time, from improving land and rotation, likewise developed its rangeland. A similar example found in the Dutch case through a lot of new clearing called polder. The mention of both England and the Netherlands brings us to the realization of an assertion quite plain that in every process from crisis sectors will collapse, but there will also be economic and political structures that are adapted and able to survive. During the seventeenth century crisis takes the brunt of not only the English monarchy, but the people of modest living conditions on their properties. The Italian political theorist Vilfredo Pareto said that in politics there was only place for foxes and lions. For in the seventeenth century, in the vast political machinery of the English metropolis had only mules. The successors to the throne after the death of Philip II was a concoction of absolute carelessness and inefficiency. Therefore, one of the causes of this structural crisis is also due to the ineffectiveness of the ruling class in Spain who failed to effectively manage their colonies, which in turn allowed the excessive increase of the heavy debt. Excessive state spending monarchy not only ensured the survival of a bureaucracy addicted and the provisioning of a standing army, but also the strengthening of the functional networks of corruption both in metropolis and in the colonies. In this dynamic caused the messes in the treasury was forced to resort to the mass tax. The increase in taxes generated a boomerang effect to the state apparatus to some extent as galvanized the public coffers, but social conflict followed an escalation of violence with no return to the realization of a malquerida independence.
The international scene is presented not only as a war for territorial consolidation, but also as a commercial-level direct combat between the young states and European monarchies. Thus, in the seventeenth century there is a business depression to be caused principally by the confluence of two negative processes in the European economy. First, the fall in silver production from the mines of America and second excess stocks in the eastern market. Thus two of the most important trade routes to Europe entered a process of open crisis. However, the tandem of these events both the English and Dutch establishment structured a package of effective measures that allowed them to wade through the crisis and strengthen their respective economies. Thus the inflationary process of the seventeenth century only harm the most vulnerable economies, including both the English monarchy, as the Italian state.
Sociologist Niklas Luhmann German to solidify the social systems theory, far removed from the view of Talcott Parsons and Ralph Dahrendorf, proposes the category of autopoiesis, limited to the creation of elements of the system to safeguard the continuity and integrity of same regardless of the stages of crisis, which gives a higher degree of functionality for systems claiming generating its own momentum and self-regulation. Intertextualizando this criterion we can say that modern monarchies of the seventeenth century, in the context of structural crisis urged prompt and effective solutions in order to avoid above all a social explosion similar to that of the peasant wars of 1525. Is and ideological program at a major change occurs to position the thesis of a greater state presence in the economy. Protective mechanisms enable the realization of a ruling class tends to produce outbreaks of industrial development, monetary control, and economic unity of the country's finances in order. At least the formula worked in the axis of the North Sea where the bourgeoisie of England and the Netherlands strengthened a commercial area capable of displacing the old commercial hub located in the Mediterranean. While in the field and in the times of the collapse of the Roman imperial aristocracy will be launched in search of land with a view to strengthen their social position under an absolute monarchy eager puppet act as levers of power in the dynamics of social control over the masses. In sum, the effects of the crisis of the seventeenth century will favor the process of strengthening of capitalism, especially in Holland and England, even the latter to make possible an industrial revolution that marked the history of the eighteenth century. Similarly, from the aftermath of this crisis can be explained by the financial meltdown of Spain who lay hold of the tax increase from a program led by the House of Bourbon without neglecting the crescendo of social conflicts France as a result of the clash between the interests of bourgeoisie and the nobility, which trigger the revolutionary processes of the eighteenth century. Aldo
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