Empire, chapter 4: The new colonial powers
In many ways, the War of Hispaniola was one of the most important events of the 40 Years War. Though it was only a tangential theatre in a massive war, the War of Hispaniola started a precedent of “small wars” which occurred only in the colonies while peace reigned in the continent of Europe. Because of this concept, outside of a few ‘conflict areas’ Europe remained a mostly peaceful place through the 17th century, even though colonial war was a constant through this time.
Furthermore, the War of Hispaniola broke the already fragile Portuguese empire in the Americas. The 1610s and 20s saw new colonial powers rise up to replace the Portuguese Empire in the Americas, and by 1625 the countries which rose and unified themselves over the 40 Years War had carved out regional niches for themselves.
From the Italian League to the Dictatorship of Modena
Niccolo Machiavelli’s rise to power in the 1520s was marked by another emerging trend in the periphery of the Italian League—the rise of Brentan Christianity. A Reformist theologian, Brenta surmised that if God was omnipotent, then life was essentially predetermined. This concept of predetermination allowed for the synthesis of two ideas which had been in conflict in Italy through the15th and 16th centuries—wealth and piety. If life was predetermined, Brenta argued, then wealth and frugality were gifts from God, not sins. This creed took a deep hold in the Italian merchant class, and by 1570 all of the major merchant families—the Borgias, the Sforzas and the newly returned Medicis, had all converted to the Brentan faith.
The simple means of dress used in Italy was later adopted in the Republic of the Netherlands
This domination exacerbated what had already been an ongoing conflict, between the nobility (who dominated the Duchy of Modena and the Counties of Lucca and Romagna) who supported the creation of a Kingdom of Italy under the Modenan aegis, and the merchant class (who dominated the republics of Genoa, Florence, and Siena), who favored a continued Republic. With the conversion of the merchantile faction to a heathen creed, the parliament ground to a standstill. Even the son of Nicollo Machiavelli himself was unable to get any legislation passed. There was a strong fear from the Duke of Modena that the Italian League would need to be held together by force, or worse, that it would fall apart regardless.
Piero di Machiavelli, the son of Niccolo Machiavelli and his successor as Chief Minister of the Senate, presided over a decades long deadlock in the Italian Senate and the creation of the ufficialia
It should be noted that at this point, the Italian League was a very loose federation. Only foreign affairs were decided by the center, and even then the three Brentan states (Siena, Genoa, and Tuscany) still largely made their own decisions as the parliament was incapable of even so much as censuring them.
This then explains why, through the 1560s, 70s, and 80s, the Italian League colonized three separate areas. The merchants of Florence had developed a strong trading relationship with the Mamluke Shahs, and in the 1560s used their access to the Red and Persian Seas to dominate the lucrative pearl market in the Persian Gulf. The Genoan traders began taking over the Portuguese trading network in northern Latin America and the Caribbean. And the city-state of Siena, with the help of the Modenans, became the first of the European slave traders, developing a loose trading network around Western Africa.
The 1570s saw the development of another powerful institution within northern Italy. Piero had started to develop a separate policy making body starting in the 1560s called the ufficialia. Composed of minor noblemen and merchant’s sons, the ufficialia (led by Augusto Machiavelli, the son of Piero) began administering the whole of the Italian League’s major cities starting in the 1570s. Filling the policy gap created by the deadlocked Senate, the ufficialia crafted inter-city trade legislation, led local militias, presided over granaries, and built schools and bridges.
A drawing made by the Anconan Catholic League, showing a group of Italian protestants stoning the Pope to death. Sectarian conflict was just under the surface in Italian politics in the late 16th century.
This bureaucratic organization eased the tension in the senate—since they were no longer expected to create policy, and since the Ufficias were evenly split between Reformists and Catholics, the fear of the domination of the nascent Italian state by heathens was weakened. The tension reemerged in the 1580s when the 40 Years War brought a massive question into the senate—who was the Italian League to support? The Ufficialia, which increasingly saw loyalty to Italy as more important than religious differences, argued that Italy should stay out of the conflict. This led to a conflict similar in tone to the French War of Religion. The Italian Civil War startedwhen Augusto Machiavelli ousted the Duke of Modena from his throne and declared himself Dictator, in charge of all Italian militias and militaries.
The Italian Civil War lasted until the early 1600s and ended with Augusto Machiavelli as undisputed ruler of the Dittatura of Modena. After this, Modena continued expanding into the New World and Africa, mostly by taking parts of Brazil by force. Despite the goods that the Modenans traded (gold, slaves, spices and liquor), the Italian colonies are notable for being run as a loose, Portuguese style trading empire through their whole existence. Even in the 19th century, Florence did not set up state-directed companies to do the work of managing the colonies, instead leaving the running of colonial enterprises to private individuals. This likely came out of the structure of the Italian government—although the bureaucracy took over in 1604, this bureaucracy ruled over a set of almost independent city-states. Italy would not ‘unify’ for centuries.
The Kingdom of the Netherlands
The arrival of Willem de Valois to the Republic of Brabant coincided with a massive migration by exiled Protestants to the area. Italian Brentanists, Polish Lutherans, French Calvinists, and a massive amalgamation of Protestants from the Rhineland all traveled to Antwerp and Breda to live new lives in what was seen as the haven of Protestantism. This led to a massive conflict between the remaining Brabantese Catholics, who still controlled the city councils of many of Brabant’s cities and maintained a highly disciplined minority in the Brabant parliament.
Willem, who had developed a reputation for himself as a valiant and capable general (which was untrue at this point—he had only served as “the captain of the cavalry” in the Duke of Lorraine’s house guard, and he hadn’t served in any battle during the French War of Religion), soon became the Marshal of the Armies of Brabant. He used the Brabantese army as his personal fiefdom, mandating lessons in Lutheran theology as well as shooting and drills. By 1605, the Army of Brabant was comprised entirely of devout Lutherans, and had complete loyalty not to the Republic, but to their Marshal.
Willem de Valois, destroyer of Brabantese democracy and the father of the Dutch nation
This personal force was used to instigate conflicts with the Catholic community. Brabantese soldiers would start fights with Catholics, which would spur riots. These riots would be brutally put down, thus spawning more riots to be destroyed. In 1608, Valois used these riots to argue for a Public Security Act, which would give him more power to “hunt the enemies of the republic down”. This act met great opposition in the parliament, both from the Catholic faction and from the nobility.
In the end, the act was struck down in parliament. Valois used this event to argue that the parliament had turned against the (protestant) people, and increasing tensions between the Army and the Protestant migrants on one side and the parliament on the other led to the Battle of Breda in 1610, which ended when Valois’ soldiers slaughtered the parliamentarians and established a Kingdom of the Dutchmen.
”The Militia”, a Dutch painting from the 1620s. Valois’ attempt to create a specifically “Dutch” identity out of the massive palette of migrants from around Europe led to massive arts patronage programs, as well as a revived guild system structured similarly to the Dutch army. Like the army, the guilds reported straight to the King, which allowed for a far more controlled economy than ever before
The new Dutch nation was constructed as a specifically Protestant polity, and Willem van Valois made an effort through the 1610s and 20s to create a specifically Dutch identity, drawing on the mercantile and martial skills of the new Dutch migrants and designating several cities as “Havens of Reform”. By 1615, the Netherlands’ population had increased by 40%, and French was the most widely spoken language in Rotterdam and Antwerp.
But this population explosion facilitated another trend—many of the new migrants were fed directly into the army and navy, and the Netherlands was at war for three straight decades after the Treaty of Mayence (indeed in the Netherlands, the war of religion is known as the Seventy Years War). After the short War of the Union (which united all of the provinces of the Netherlands under the Valois crown), Willem looked to the East, and successive wars against the decaying Portuguese empire led to the capture of colonies in Brazilia, around the Caribbean, and one naval base at the mouth of the Mississippi River .
Dutch colonization was a highly state-directed affair. Springing from the cooperation between the guilds, the merchants, and the state, colonies were often populated by people from one single city, and each colony was directed to produce one specific good. Dutch naval superiority allowed the passing of the Navigation Acts in 1620, which disallowed the colonies from trading with their neighbors, forcing all of the Dutch colonial goods to go directly back to the Netherlands. By 1625 the Kingdom of the Netherlands was the richest country the world had ever known.
The Stockholm Union
Unlike the Netherlands and Italy, Sweden had little to no internal religious struggles to fight out during the 40 Years War—indeed it was one of the few major powers that did not have a religious civil war during the time. Even in the Middle Ages, Scandanavian Catholicism had been highly divergent from the Papal States, a product of its huge distance from the core of Europe (both physically and intellectually). When Calvin started the hard job of preaching in the Rhineland, his acolytes were already converting whole towns at a time in Scandinavia. Sweden was one of the first countries to convert to Protestantism, and was one of the major Protestant backers of the League of Stettin through the 40 Years War (though there was little direct Swedish intervention in Germany). Swedish-financed missionaries converted much of Norway and Denmark through this period as well.
By 1580, Scandinavia was a majority-Protestant region. However, the King of the Danish-Norwegian personal union was Francis der Wittelsbach, the son of the Duke of Bavaria. Francis was the champion of Imperial Catholics through the early 40 Years War (which featured numerous defeats of Hapsburg forces), and he saw the conversion of Scandinavia to Catholicism as his pathway to the Imperial Throne. In 1589 Francis called for a general riot by Swedish Catholics, and embarked on a war to “restore the Kalmar Union”. Taking command of the Army of Norway, Francis marched on Stockholm with full expectations of an easy war.
Francis Wittelsbach, King of Denmark-Norway and Prince of Bavaria, shown dressed as an Emperor, a title he very much wanted
Francis made numerous mistakes in his planning for the Swedish campaign. He overestimated the abilities of the small minority of Swedish Catholics to attack the Swedish kingdom (indeed nearly all Swedish Catholics were deported to Quebec at the end of the war). He underestimated the problems that his highly sectarian war would place on his country and his army, both of which were majority-Protestant. And he underestimated the abilities of Karl IX.
Karl IX, King of Sweden and (challenged) Elector of Bohemia
Duke Karl of Oberlitz had been a major Bohemian general during the beginning of the 40 Years War, leading the Protestant Army of Moravia in defense against a Hapsburg invasion that ended the existence of the Kingdom of Bohemia. This treaty occurred while the Army of Moravia was mostly intact, and Karl chose to march north and pledge his allegiance to the League of Stettin. He then became one of the great Protestant generals of the 40 Years War, fighting numerous campaigns in his native Bohemia, and stopping five counterattacks into Silesia and Brandenburg.
His great reputation is what led to his being anointed King by the Swedish Regency council in the 1580s, and as King he reformed the Swedish army upon French lines, focusing on a highly maneuverable force that relied on back-breaking cavalry charges and destructive pursuits. So when Karl discovered that Francis was trying to outmaneuver him to Stockholm, he saw an opportunity to crush the Norwegian army and take huge amounts of territory.
The religious divisions of the Norwegian Army (and the generally poor organization of the army) led to multiple conflicts of command and a slow advance, thus even though the Army of Sweden rested and foraged more through the day, they advanced quicker than their foes and succeeded in forcing the larger Army of Norway further north.
The first part of the War of Kalmar involved an intensive strike into the Swedish center. The far larger and better led Swedish Navy made a naval attack an impossibility
Karl was able to force the Norwegian Army to do battle with him with their backs to the Baltic Sea. With his soldiers well fed, well supplied and well-disciplined and with his foes half-starved and in disarray the outcome of the battle was a foregone conclusion. The death of Francis, however, was not. Shot through with an artillery shell, Francis died on the spot, leaving Denmark-Norway without a king and his army without a general. The Army of Norway collapsed, with its Catholic regiments routing and its Protestant ones defecting. Furthermore Norway and Denmark were racked by revolts by Calvinists who killed their Catholic administrators and defected to the Kingdom of Sweden. By the end of the War of Kalmar, the ‘kingdom’ of Denmark was reduced to an enclave in Sjaeland ruled by the Copenhagen garrison. By 1610 Sjaeland too fell to Protestant unionists, exiling the Danish council to Iceland and leaving Karl IX as the Emperor of Scandinavia.
The War of Kalmar at its end. Note the Protestant revolts around the Norwegian coast and in Denmark. (and ignore the weird colors in Sweden-occupied Norway)
The Scandinavian kingdom then turned to its colonies. Swedish merchants and admirals had already set up a colony on the island of Hainan in the Gulf of Tonkin, but Karl advocated for a more aggressive ‘indirect administration’ strategy, by which Swedish civil servants and merchants extracted a ‘minor’ tariff from the areas they indirectly administrated on behalf of the Ming Emperor. All the same, this minor tariff provided more cash then all of England’s colonies combined in 1580, and Karl IX created a Scandinavian East India Company to manage these profits.
The Scandinavian East India Company was unique at the time because unlike the other European colonizing companies, the SEIC was ‘exploring’ and colonizing lands already settled by established states. This situation led to the development of a new form of colonial government. Scandinavia’s “Tolerant Rule” policy involved simply placing the Scandinavian state above whatever states had been there before. For instance, Swedish Bengal was ruled by the Deva Shah, a local prince who had allied with the Swedes, while the China colony was still technically a part of Ming China and was ruled over by the magistrate of Guangzhou. This allowed Swedish control to be asserted without too much disorder and was allowed the Swedes to take a tariff from their China colony without upsetting the Emperor (after all he still controlled it, and the ‘far south’ had never been well managed anyway).
The one exception to this ‘tolerant rule’ policy was the South Africa colony; set up to protect the ships traveling from the Indian Ocean. Originally a series of naval bases, the colony was expanded after gold was discovered deeper inland. Soon enough the colony was expanded to the size of modern Sudafrika, and Kapstaden (the colonial capital) was a roaring boomtown of 8,000, the center of the SEIC, and the largest European city in Africa.
Kapstaden, center of the Scandinavian East India Company
French colonization in the regency period
The new colonizing powers all found their own way to colonize, but they specialized in a particular form of governance and in particular regions. This made their colonies more defensible and profitable than the amalgamation of governances and regions under French control. Most importantly though, the Modenans and Scandinavians were the first colonizers to move into the East Indies in force, which gave them far larger profits than the New World ever could—the Scandinavian Emperor often boasted that the province of Guangzhou alone gave him a larger profit than all of the Portuguese colonies combined at the Portuguese empire’s height.
But the Modenan pearl operation in the Persian Gulf was also highly profitable, as was the slave trade. The wealth of the East Indies and of Africa led France to start two colonies on the West African coast—Gabon and Angola. These were both slaving centers which ended up populating much of the French Caribbean, and ports on the way to the Indian Ocean. But this was all that the French could do—legally, the Regent was not allowed to declare war or set up state owned corporations. So by 1625, with the inauguration of Henri II, France was ready to expand into the Indian Ocean, and beyond.
The colonies of the great European powers, 1625
