Episode 479: Storm on the Horizon

a global conflict at the time of unprecedented scale. But to understand the causes of that war, I want us to look back a little bit, a few decades earlier, to a time when great empires jockeyed for influence, ideologies were colliding, and the climate itself seemed to conspire against stability.

This is the story of the world between seventeen twenty and seventeen fifty, a world in motion, with battle drums echoing from Persia to the Caribbean, and sermons thundering from New England, Pulpits to the palaces of Europe, all the way across the American colonies. These are the years that will lay the scaffolding for World War We begin our

story in Russia again in seventeen twenty two. Czar Peter the Great Launch who have become known as the Russo Persian War, a swift and brutal campaign to seize Persian territory in the Caucaus Mountains and across the Caspian Sea. Persia from recent Afghan invasions and internal collapse, offered almost

no resistance. Russian forces seized the critical cities of Bayerbant and Baku, and the Treaty of Constantinople in seventeen twenty four Russia and the Ottoman Empire essentially agreed to divide Persia between the two of them. Now, the war itself might seem a little peripheral to the great European rivalries of the era, but it was part of a bigger transformation. The Treaty of Constantinople really signaled the arrival of Russia as a diplomatic player, a major actor in the Eastern

Mediterranean and the Islamic world beyond. More importantly, it drew the Ottomans and the Russians into a shared orbit of competition, one that would soon echo in Austrian and French concerns about bulk and hegemony. Russia's new imperial posture demanded domestic consolidation in the seventeen thirties and seventeen forties, under the reign of Empress Anna and Empress Elizabeth, Peter's reforms reached

their crescendo. Serfdom expanded in law and brutality, but one significant deviation occurred in the region of Livonia and parts of Ukraine, where in a series of edicts in the seventeen forties, a partial manumission of certain state owned serfs, particularly those employed in mining in frontier military service, took place. Wow, this was huge. This is usually in history books called the freeing of the serfs. Now it's a lot more

limited than that, but in true it was important. The limiting of serfs, though, was not a humanitarian gesture, it was a strategic one, an effort to stimulate economic productivity and military colonization. It also foreshadowed a broader imperial trend that the Empires of Europe, in their race for dominance, would begin experimenting with their domestic institutions, sometimes liberalizing, sometimes tightening control, all in the service though, of global expansion

global warfare. So what we're seeing now is foreign needs dictating domestic concerns, and honestly, to a large extent, that is going to be the driving force behind European politics all the way through the Great War that will erupt in nineteen fourteen, and some would argue beyond certainly in my opinion, through the French Revolution, in the Napoleonic Wars to come. But regardless, in Russia, what we can say is the military state was expanding both in scope and ambition. Now. Meanwhile,

the natural world itself was turning hostile. Between seventeen twenty five and seventeen forty, Europe and North America endured what many climatologists regards the coldest decades of the Little Ice Age. Crop yields across France, England, the Holy Roman Empire fell dramatically in the seventeen thirties. In Sweden and Norway, glaciers advanced all the way into relatively save farmland. The Sene

River froze in Paris in seventeen thirty nine. In Ireland, the famine of seventeen forty to seventeen forty one, triggered by brutal winters and summer floods, killed hundreds of thousands. And this is well before the Potato Famine. Cold Weather wasn't just a pure inconvenience. Then it destabilized economies, Its spurred peasant revolts. It hardened governments resolve to assert tighter controls over food prices and grain storage, and France in

particular saw its rural unrest simmering. One Frenchman wrote in seventeen forty quotes the people grow more discontented than hungry, for they no longer believe that their misery is natural. In colonial New England, harsh winters and short growing seasons contributed to migration Inland, particularly amongst dissenting Protestant sects. This dispersal would feed directly into another movement, a spiritual rebellion

already shaking the British Atlantic world. While kings were forging treaties and armies were shivering in snow, a different kind of fire caught hearts of men and women across the Protestant Atlantic. This is the first Great Awakening. A wave of evangelical revivals that began in the seventeen thirties tore through New England and spread into the Middle Colonies and beyond.

Jonathan Edwards, in his famous seventeen forty one sermon, Sinners in the hands of an angry God thundered that quote, there is nothing that keeps wicked men, at any one moment out of hell but the mere pleasure of God. George Whitefield, a charismatic preacher from England, drew tens of thousands to open air revivals from Boston to Georgia. The crowd's wep, they shook, they fainted when Field wrote in seventeen forty, the world is in flames. Wherever I go,

God is at work. Revival breaks out. The political ramifications of this religious fervor were profound. Colonists who had once submitted quietly to both church and crowns started to question their allegiance to both. Young Men, particularly those in the back country, started to defy their elders and reject hierarchical control. This spirit of dissent did not directly cause the war with France, but it did prime the Anglo American colonies

for later resistance to British authority. Eight religious rivalry with Catholic France all the more urgent. Indeed, Protestant revivals in England and Germany took on a nationalist hue, identifying Catholic monarchs as enemies of God's word and framing global power struggle as spiritual warfare. In seventeen forty four, one English

pamphlet cautioned, quote popery creeps where our armies falter. This was an age of conflict, no single conflict, though better exemplified the bizarre intersection of economics, imperial rivalry, and farce than the stupid war of Jenkins's ear. This Israel, by the way. In seventeen thirty one, a Spanish patrol boarded a British smuggling vessel in the Caribbean and allegedly, as a result of a scuffle, sliced off the ear of

the captain of the ship, Robert Jenkins. So this guy, Robert Jenkins, throughout the seventeen thirties just kept showing up in British Parliament with in a jar his preserved ear. By seventeen thirty eight, it had gotten to be too much, and in the following year Parliament and Britain declared war on Spain. Yeah to an act revenge for some dude

who was definitely smuggling his ear. Though it began as limited maritime skirmish in the Caribbean and along the Georgia Florida border, the war as wars do quickly escalated out of control. The British targeted Spanish ports in the Caribbean, the Spanish rated British plantations and encouraged slave revolts. In seventeen forty one, a massive British expedition against Cartagenia in modern day Columbia beautiful place. I've been there ended in disaster,

with over nine thousand British troops dying of disease. More importantly, the War of Jenkins's Ear did not remain confined to the Atlantic. By seventeen forty two, Britain and Spain's European allies began sliding into a wider conflict, the War of Austrian Succession. Thus, a colonial ear severed by Spanish sailors helped spark apan European war, and by the way, it's not going to get any better. The war also underscored a growing truth Britain and France, along with their allies,

could no longer fight a war in isolation. Colonial and European theaters were inseparable. It was only a matter of time before War in India, War in Canada, War in Silasia, and War on the Rhine would all be seen as fronts in one single global conflict, and that brings us to the War of Austrian Succession, also a dress rehearsal for the battles to come. When the Holy Roman Emperor Charles the sixth that died in seventeen forty, the fragile

balance of power in Europe shattered. Despite the Pragmatic Sanction, which was Charles's painstaking diplomatic effort to ensure his daughter Marre Teresa could inherit Habsburg lands, Prussia, France, Bavaria and Saxony all challenged her claim because she was spiler alert a female. The result was the War of Austrian Succession. At its heart, this was a war about legitimacy, power

and access to land. Prussia under Frederick the Second, later the Great, who I'm going to talk about in the next episode in great detail see is the rich province of Silatia, setting the stage for the Austrio Prussian rivalry that would come to dominate Central Europe really until the rise of Germany under Bismarck. France, eager to weeke in the Habsburgs, supported anti Habsburg claimants and launched campaigns in the Austrian Netherlands Britain, seeking to check France and protect

Hanoverian interest, you know, sided with Maria Teresa. I'm gonna hope because she had a legitimate claim, but probably just to seek out their own interest. And so for eight years Europe fruitlessly fought back and forth. Battles ranged from deton g to fonten Roy. In India, British and French East India companies fought alongside local rival princes in a

proxy war for dominance in North America. This played itself out too as King George's war with New Englanders, famously capturing the French fortress of Louisbourg in seventeen forty five. In the end, the Treaty of ike Stay Chappelle in seventeen forty eight, I definitely they didn't pronounce that right ended the war, but resolved absolutely nothing. Sialatia remained in

Prussian hands, which was a humiliation for Austria. France regained louis Berg in exchange for his gains in the Austrian Netherlands, in raging New Englands, who had fought and died for it and ended up getting land in the Netherlands. Most importantly, the war exposed a new reality, but I hate to say it. It was a reality that Europeans didn't get yet. They were a little slow to study this. The reality was global conflict was here to stay. The major powers

were no longer fighting for dynastic prestige. Now they were fighting for trade routes, for colonies, the spheres of influence that could cross oceans and cover multiple consonants. The cost of war sure had been staggering, but the peace in this case would prove more precarious. In the aftermath of the War of Austrian Succession, the traditional alliances of Europe began to dissolve and recombine. Austria, long allied with Britain,

began drifting toward its old enemy France. Britain, increasingly wary of French naval ambitions, moved towards Prussia. The diplomatic realignment, known historically as the Diplomatic Revolution of the seventeen fifties. It was not merely the product of courtly negotiations. It reflected deep frustrations with the outcome of the previous war. Austria wanted revenge on Prussia. France was eager to counter

British commercial power. Britain worried about renewed conflict in North America and India, sought a land ally in Central Europe to offset French pressure elsewhere. These shifting alliances would culminate in the Treaty of Versailles in seventeen fifty six between France and Austria and the Treaty of Westminster same year between Britain and Prussia. Honestly, within mere months of those

treaties being signed, war would erupt. But it's important to point out how the seeds of that coming war have been sown decades earlier in Silasia, in the burning pulpits of New England, and in the jungles of Cartagenia. By the year seventeen fifty the world was a tinderbox. European armies were larger and better equipped. Frankly, probably okay, I'm going to be honest here, probably with if you think about supply chain. We haven't seen Europe this effectively mobilized.

Since the Roman Empire and Mercantile Empires now spanned the globe, backed by fleets and fortified outposts. Colonists both in India and the Americas chafed under distant control and were armed with new ideologies of liberty, with a new religious zeal and a new national pride. The environment too had a

role to plan all this. The Little Ice Age continued to strain agriculture and provoke famine in certain regions, environmental hardship, bread desperation, desperation bread revolt in Canada and New England. In Bengal and throughout the Rhineland, people saw signs of divine judgment or maybe opportunity. Most ominously, none of these old rivalries had been settled. The war over Silasia wasn't done.

The War for North America had only been paused. The Anglo French competition for India was accelerating, and the world's great powers had begun to view their imperial rivalries not merely as foes on a chessboard, but now as existential threats. In seventeen fifty four, the war would begin again, first on the frontier of Pennsylvania, then then the jungles of Bengal,

and then eventually across the plains of Saxony. The Seven Years War is going to last until seventeen sixty three, but its origins were deep and tangled, and we need to remember that now Next time before we jump into that war, I want to back up, and I do want to talk about Frederick the Great because it's important to recognize his contributions to European history and Western history as a whole, because the rise of Germany has a lot to do with the rise of Prussia, and he's

going to play a major force in the events to come. So next time we want to talk about Frederick the Great, and then we're going to launch into the Seven Years War. Ha