A History of Modern Europe - From the Renaissance to the Present

166 Ch. 5 • Rise of the Atlantic Economy: Spain and England

English vessels attack the Spanish Armada off Calais in the English Channel in

1588.

England, only 60 could now be accounted for. At least a third had been sunk
or wrecked, and many others were severely damaged.
Victory over the Spanish Armada accentuated England's rise to interna­
tional dominance. English armies then crushed an Irish rebellion in 1603,
ending fears of an effective Irish alliance with Catholic Spain. Despite the
defeat of the Spanish Armada, however, Philip did not make peace with
England, and the war between the two nations dragged on until 1604.

Economic Expansion

The rise of Spain, England, and the Netherlands must be seen in the context
of the sixteenth-century expansion of the European economy. By 1450, the
European population had begun to recover slowly from the Black Death, the
disastrous plague that had swept the continent a century earlier. In general,
the population continued to rise until the mid-seventeenth century, when
religious and dynastic wars and new plagues led to such devastation that the
period has become known as “the age of crisis.” These cataclysms particu­
larly struck Central Europe. But the Mediterranean region, too, suffered
population decline, and the European population of the Turkish Ottoman
Empire remained extremely sparse, about half that of France and Italy in
1600.
During the sixteenth century, the commercial and manufacturing center
of Europe shifted from the Mediterranean to northwestern Europe. Eng­
land and France established colonies in North America, and English and