Four Threads Begin
Introduced| English |
|---|
| The struggle for sovereignty/ðə ˈstrʌɡl fɔː ˈsɒvərɪnti/ |
A change in how the world was viewed
- The rediscovery of works from ancient Greece and Rome and observation of the natural world changed many Europeans' view of their world.
- Two sources of change in one sentence: old texts and new observation.
- They are different methods, and the course will follow both — one into the Renaissance, one into the Scientific Revolution of unit 4.
Select both sources of changed worldview the CED names.
One leads to the Renaissance, the other toward the Scientific Revolution.
Europeans went overseas
- Europeans explored and settled overseas territories, encountering and interacting with indigenous populations.
- The CED's verbs are encountering and interacting — neutral words that leave the content of the encounter to be established by evidence.
- Subtopics 1.6 to 1.9 supply that content, and it is not uniform.
The word notwithstanding in the capitalism sentence signals that...
The period holds new and old at once.
Capitalism, alongside older structures
- European society and the experiences of everyday life were increasingly shaped by commercial and agricultural capitalism, notwithstanding the continued existence of medieval social and economic structures.
- Notwithstanding is the CED's own hedge, and it is the most important word in the sentence.
- So this period holds new and old at once — a fact the exam rewards you for noticing.
Which of the four threads is this?
Sort each development into the CED's opening statements.
The struggle for sovereignty ran ____ states as well as among them.
Rulers against nobles, towns, church courts and estates.
"Notwithstanding the continued existence of medieval social and economic structures" is part of the CED's sentence. Capitalism grew alongside manorial obligation, guild regulation and hereditary status, not in place of them — and an answer that describes a clean break contradicts the clause.
The CED says centralisation was complete across Europe.
Its verdict is varying degrees — centralisation was uneven.
And a struggle over sovereignty
- The struggle for sovereignty 主权 within and among states resulted in varying degrees of political centralisation.
- Within: rulers against nobles, towns, church courts and estates. Among: states against each other.
- Varying degrees is the CED's honest verdict — centralisation was uneven, and unit 3 will explain why.
A context answer names a condition and then says...
The same skill as World History's 8.1.
Context, as a skill
- The objective is the context in which the Renaissance and Age of Discovery developed.
- Four threads — ideas, exploration, capitalism, sovereignty — start here and run to 1648.
- So a context answer names a condition and says what it made possible, exactly as in World History's 8.1.
A Florentine banker lends at interest across three countries and owns land worked under obligations that would have been recognisable two centuries earlier. Both facts are true of the same man in the same year, which is exactly what notwithstanding records.
Four threads open the course: rediscovered classical works and observation of the natural world changed Europeans' view of their world; Europeans explored and settled overseas, encountering and interacting with indigenous populations; commercial and agricultural capitalism increasingly shaped life, notwithstanding continued medieval structures; and the struggle for sovereignty produced varying degrees of political centralisation.