the european renaissance and the new world 361
countries of Europe found themselves convulsed in wars of religion
between Catholics and Protestants in which theological difference in the
interpretation of Christian creeds and liturgy led to division both
between states and within their boundaries, with a degree of bloody
violence not previously known in the history of Christianity.
The three centuries from 1500 to 1800 saw the expansion of Euro-
pean civilization across the globe as a result of the discovery of new
worlds and general improvements in sea transport which enabled the
growth of immensely lucrative intercontinental trade. In 1500, western
Europe was still an economic and political backwater in comparison
with the Ottoman and Safavid empires of the Middle East. Islam was
still being diffused in central and south- east Asia and sub- Saharan
Africa, and Christianity was largely confined to Europe. By 1800, Chris-
tianity had been spread by European imperialists across the Americas
and to trading stations in west Africa and south- east Asia.
The varied forms of Christianity brought by the imperialists to the
ends of the world reflected the disunity of Christendom within Europe.
Western Europe in the sixteenth century was riven with protest at the
perceived inadequacies of the Roman Catholic Church. Almost 40 per
cent of the inhabitants of Europe observed a reformed theology in the
footsteps of Luther, Zwingli and Calvin. The response of the Catholic
hierarchy was both Counter- Reformation, to deal with the worst of the
abuses which had brought the Church into disrepute, and the military
aid of sympathetic rulers, especially the Holy Roman Emperor. The
peace of Münster– Westphalia in 1646, which established for a century
the religious and political frontiers of Europe – with most of the inhab-
itants of France, Bohemia, Austria and Poland Catholic, and northern
Europe, including much of Germany, mostly Protestant – came at the
end of more than a hundred years of political as well as religious strife.
Within Europe, only the Orthodox Christians in the sprawling and
expanding territories ruled by the Russian tsars remained immune to
this religious turmoil. Russia itself was transformed from an isolated
position as a backward country on the edge of Europe in the fifteenth
century to become a powerful participant in European politics by the
end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, fuelled by rapid economic growth
in the eighteenth century and territorial expansion to the west into
Estonia and Lithuania.
The emerging global economy, from the fur trade in the north which
proved so lucrative to Russia to the transatlantic trade and imports
from India and China which benefited western Europe, gradually shifted