Europe, Japan, and China

         A long time ago, on March 1st, I wrote about two kings. One was Ferdinand, the former king's brother, and one was Philip the second, the king's son. The former king, Charles the fifth, split his empire between the two of them. Ferdinand got his German land, and Philip got Spain and the Netherlands. This blog post is partly about Ferdinand and the 30 years war.
         When Ferdinand died, he gave his lands to his son, who gave them to his son, who gave them to his cousin. This was when a war began. At this time, Germany was full of little territories ruled by their own princes. Although each prince had to pay homage to the king, they got to decide whether their territories were Catholic or Protestant. However, Ferdinand the second, the new king, was a very devout Catholic. He wanted to have all his empire be Catholic, so he started to pass laws against Protestantism. The Protestant princes were not happy about this, and as the king wasn't even in Germany, this was a perfect time to start a rebellion. The king had left two officials in charge of the kingdom, and the army of Protestant subjects and princes welled into the palace where they were hiding and pushed the two out a window. Since the Latin word for "window" is "fenestra", the word "defenestration" is just a fancy way of saying "to push someone out a window." The rebelling Protestants stated that they were no longer under Ferdinand's rule. But when the king came back and convinced his allies in France and Spain to help him, the rebellion was crushed. Ferdinand also forced the princes to make him the Holy Roman Emperor. He took away the rebellious Protestant princes' land, and thought that would be the end of it. It wasn't.
         There were a few other Protestant princes that had not been part of the rebellion, but when they saw what had happened to the other territories, they got a little anxious. Would their land be next? England and Denmark, two other Protestant countries, were also worried. Germany had formed an alliance with Spain and France. Would the three Catholic countries also try to take control of their land?
          The king of Denmark gathered his forces and marched into Germany. Not only was he planning to help save the Protestants, it might be nice to have a little land in the bargain. But his plan failed. Ferdinand's forces crushed Denmark's, and then even took over the country itself.
          Denmark was right next to Sweden, and King Gustavus the second was getting worried, too. Would Ferdinand's forces try to attack Sweden? The king and his advisers all agreed it would be better to attack Ferdinand, then to have him attack them. The army joined forces with the other German Protestants. For awhile it looked like they would win the war, but then Gustavus was killed in battle and the army began to fall apart. Soon, the Protestants began to discuss peace. Slowly, a peace treaty was formed. But the war wasn't over yet. The Prime Minister of France declared war on Germany, seeking its land, and the war continued until finally, the heads of both sides died. A peace treaty, called the Peace of Westphalia, was cautiously declared. Even after that, Spain and France kept fighting for eleven more years. The 30 Years War was really the 41 Years War.

             Before the 30 Years War had even started, Europe was sending Catholic missionaries over to Japan. Some of the Japanese became Christians. Others hated the religion. They did not want to give up their Buddhist traditions. The emperor, Ieyasu, was puzzled by the new way of life. He did not know what to do. So he asked his Western advisor, who had come to Japan on a Dutch ship. William Adams was a Protestant, and he hated Catholicism. He told the emperor that he should watch out for the missionaries. When a Spanish ship docked in Japan, intending to make maps of the ports, he told Ieyasu that Spain was really trying to capture Japan. So Ieyasu made laws against Christian missionaries coming to Japan.
           When his son, Hidetada, came to the throne, he killed Christians and made more laws against them. His son, Ieymitsu  decreed that no Japanese person was allowed to travel farther than Korea, so as not to bring any foreign ideas back into Japan. Then, he closed Japan. No one could go out. No one could come in. No one could make ships big enough to sail across the ocean. Only the Protestant Dutch could trade with Japan. They could only send one ship each year. These laws caused a revolt, but it was soon crushed. A new kind of religion, Zen Buddhism, flourished. This religion believed that wisdom came from the inside.

In China, the Ming Dynasty was ruling, and failing. This dynasty came from southern China, where people called the Han Chinese lived. But not everybody was happy with this. A group of rowdy warriors, called the Manchu, set out to attack the Ming Empire. There was also another threat that was making China weak. There were over 160 million people in China, and there simply was not enough food to feed them all. One man, a post man, decided to set up his own government instead of the Ming government. He gathered an army of the discontented Chinese and marched up to the castle. However; he didn't need to fight. All the soldiers had either deserted or die of a plague. The Ming emperor killed himself, and the Ming Dynasty was over. But not all the Ming realized that. One Ming general sent a message to the Manchu, asking to form an alliance against " this rebel peasant and his army." The Manchu were happy to form an army against the peasants, but for a different reason. When they had defeated the mailman and his army, they set their own leader on the throne. The Manchu thought of themselves as better than the Han Chinese. They separated themselves from the Hans, and made them shave their heads as a sign of the authority of the Manchu. Finally, one Manchu emperor, K'ang-hsi, realized, right from the start, that there were more Han Chinese than Manchu Chinese, and so he made friends with them. He lowered their taxes, and even put some of them into his government. China became stronger and prospered under his rule.

Tobacco, Slavery, and Nzinga

      The colonies in North America were all in the control of the English, now. They were prospering, and had made their mother country prosperous, too. One of the main products of the colonies was "green gold," or tobacco. John Rolfe, the man who was said to have married Pocahontas, knew that the Indians grew their own kind of tobacco, but the colonists who had tried it did not like it. They said that it was weak and bitter. Rolfe had a few tobacco seeds from Europe and he  planted them in a fertile patch of land. When it was ready to be tried, it smoked wonderfully. Rolfe sent some tobacco over to England, and it was instantly popular, because, up until this point, the English had had to buy their tobacco from the Spanish, who they were at war with. Although there were many smokers of tobacco in England, King James did not approve of it. He wrote an essay about the harmful effect of smoking. As might have been expected, no one listened.
      The tobacco was a valuable crop for the colonies, but it took a lot of work to raise. First, the seeds had to be planted, pruned, and weeded by hand. Caterpillars, worms, and slugs had to be picked off the leaves. Then, when the plants were fully grown, the leaves had to be picked and hung to dry for a long time. Next, the stems had to be taken off and thrown away. The leaves needed to be packed into barrels and shipped to Europe. All the work was done by hand.
       In the beginning, the farmers used indentured servants to work in the tobacco fields. Indentured servants were people who had their voyage to America paid for by a company in Europe. Then, when they were in the New World, they had to work for the company for a certain amount of time for the company. After that,  they would be free to start a life of their own. But as the tobacco became an increasingly important export, plantation owners needed more workers. They started making their war prisoners  slaves. They also got slaves from other African countries which sold them their prisoners.
      Soon, however, the colonies wanted more slaves, and so the country of Portugal invaded a small country of Africa called Ndomba. The king of this country fought a war against the Portugese. Soon, his son became king in his place. Nzinga, the prince's sister, fought in the war. But then the prince refused to fight any longer. Soon after, he mysteriously died. Nzinga became queen. She made a treaty with the Portugese king to leave the African kingdom alone as long as they returned all the Portugese captives, but it was not kept for very long. They forced her out of her country. When this happened, Nzinga simply invaded the nearby country of Matamba. Her soldiers would not let the Portugese take slaves from any other West African kingdom, either. The Portugese finally gave up. They told the queen she could rule in peace. When Nzinga died, she was remembered as the queen who saved her country from slavery, but the country of Portugal was not impressed. After she died, they invaded Ndomba and two other African countries. These remained under their rule until 1975.

Japan and Thanksgiving

              Today we know that there was really no "Northwest Passage" through America to China and Japan. But what if there was? You could sail straight through North America and come to the "Land of the Rising Sun." You would have reached Japan.
             While explorers were still searching for the "Northwest Passage" and setting up colonies in the new world, Japan was having a civil war. The emperor no longer had power over the land. Instead, noblemen called "Daimyo" ruled over different parts of Japan. Groups of Japanese soldiers called "Samurai" roamed around the countryside, fighting for whoever would pay them the most. The empire of Japan was divided. Then, a man named Toyotomi Hideyoshi united the country once again.
               Hideyoshi was no one important. He was a peddler with little money or possessions. He wasn't even handsome, and his wife called him "The Bald Rat." But then, Hideyoshi became a soldier in the army of an important nobleman, Nobunaga, who wanted to put all the pieces of Japan together under his rule. Hideyoshi was a loyal soldier, and he became Nobunaga's sandalbearer. Eventually, Hideyoshi was granted the title of "General", and he soon became the nobleman's favorite. But Nobunaga was killed in battle, and four different samurai stated that they would help his young grandson to rule. Each of them really only wanted the throne for himself. Hideyoshi gathered an army of 200,000 soldiers and smashed the rebellious samurais' armies to bits. He then went on to reunite all of Japan, but when he tried to take control of China, he failed, and died not long afterwards.
                While Hideyoshi was still alive, a man named Tokugawa Ieyasu was one of his most trusted helpers. However, he was trying to accumulate loyalty for himself, and when Hideyoshi died, he fought against Hideyori, the five year old heir to the throne. He won the fight, and established himself as "shogun." His capital city was named Edo, and now it is called Tokyo. He encouraged art, literature, and sumo wrestling. He took great measures to make sure the people in his kingdom were loyal to him. Eventually, Ieyasu captured and destroyed the fortress where Hideyori was hiding. Now the whole of Japan was under the rule of the "Tokugawa Shogunate," the family of Ieyasu.

                Imagine that you are a separatist in England, during the early1600's. You believe that the church of England should be purified from all that is Catholic - the candles, the priests, and the prayerbooks,- but it is not happening. You now have given up all hope that the church of England will ever be fully purified. So you separate yourself from the English Church and go to your own services. But King James makes you pay high taxes, and he doesn't let you use real church buildings. You have to meet in barns or stables. One man you know, named William Bradford, is so angry about this, that he and the other separatists have decided to go and live in Holland, where the Dutch welcomed the Protestants. However; when you get to Holland the children are starting to become Dutch! They forget their beliefs, and some go off to war while others go off to sea. The parents want their children to grow up to be good little English boys and girls, but here in Holland, that is near impossible.



William Bradford



                    So everyone gathers onto a ship named the Mayflower and you sail off to find a new life in the New World. The journey is long and hard, but the land is well worth the trip. All the colonists sign a contract called the Mayflower Contract, and then the men go off to explore. They find the perfect place, near cornfields, and next to a stream. All the colonists, including you, work hard, building log houses, but still the food is running low. Sometimes several colonists die in one day. But, soon, the Indians take pity on your starving colony. You make a treaty with the Indians that neither party will hurt the other. Squanto, a friendly native, who can speak English, teaches you how to plant corn. Thanksgiving is celebrated, with lots of food, contests, and peace. Life in America looks like it is off to a good start.

The English, Spanish, and the French were in the New World, but the Dutch were not. Instead, their country was prospering in Europe, with many schools, artists, and traders. One big Dutch company, The Dutch East India Company, sent ships to Asia, which came back with spices, silks, and many other rare items. Soon the Dutch became the most important sea traders in the world. But when they heard of the pelts and furs that could be found in the New World of America, they set up another big company, The Dutch West India Company. This company sent 30 families to live on the banks of the Hudson River and start a colony. The colonists traded beads, cloth, and knives in exchange for Manhattan Island. The Indians thought that the colonists would live on the island for a few years and then move somewhere else. They were wrong. The Dutch had no intention of moving now that they were setting up "New Amsterdam." The town flourished. People from everywhere on the globe came to trade with the Dutch. Imports from India and Africa helped the town grow into a big trading port. But the town was not in the best condition. It was falling apart. The Dutch West India Company tried sending other governors to try and control the town, but it was not use. Finally, they made one last effort. A man named Peter Suyvesant made new laws and enforced them. He repaired the town and ordered ministers to preach more on Sundays. Despite his wooden leg, Stuyvesant was a model governor. But the English colonies were pressing in on New Amsterdam, and eventually he had to surrender to the English soldiers that had surrounded his colony. Now all of the North American colonies were English. The English renamed the colony "New York", a name that has stuck to this day.

Another King, Another Colony, And More Explorers

Do you remember Mary Queen of Scots? She had a son named James who became the king of Scotland after she died. (He is the king in the title.) James also inherited England, because Elizabeth the First left her throne to him. So now James was the king of two countries. What is the first thing you would do if you became king? You might want to fortify your kingdom against attack or start educating your people. But what did James do? He did not do those things. He made enemies of the Protestants, the Catholics, and the Parliament.

                   First, he made the Puritan Protestants angry. They came to him with a petition to purify the English church of all Catholic ideas. Even though James was Protestant, he rejected all their ideas and sent them home. He decided that whatever he wanted was what God wanted. He also made Puritan church services illegal.

               Next, he made the Catholics angry. He ordered all the Catholic priests to go out of the country. He made a law that if anyone went to a Catholic service, he would have to pay a fine. But not all the people agreed with this law, as you can probably guess. Two men, Robert Catesby and Guy Fawkes, dug a tunnel under the building where Parliament had meetings. They would smuggle barrels of gunpowder into the house. But before the explosion could take place, Fawkes was discovered holding a match, and he was put to death.

          But soon, Parliament got angry at James, too. Because James insisted that whatever he wanted was the will of God, he fired all of the Parliament.

            Even though James made many people angry at him, he also did something that changed the world. He had many scholars make a new translation of the Bible so that all the people in his country could read it. The King James Version is still used today,

               James saw how rich Spain was becoming because of the gold they were finding in South America. Soon, he, too, sent off three ships to find gold and to start a colony, this time in North America. When the colonists got there, they thought the land was lush and perfect- and it was, but they spent all their time looking for gold,  instead of farming or finding food. Many colonists were dead by the time October came around. In Winter, it was even worse. The cold only helped to exaggerate the hunger the few men that were left felt. Around Christmas time, John Smith, one of the colony's leaders, went with a few other men to search for food. But Smith was captured by the Indians. He was taken to the chief, and eventually became friends with the tribe. The colony got strong again, in their friendship with the Indians. (That was the colony.)

There once was an explorer, sent by the king of France, and named Samuel Champlain. He set off with some ships and got to North America. The land was beautiful, and Champlain knew it would be perfect for a colony. When he returned to France, the king agreed to let him make a colony there. The first try failed, for the colonists nearly starved to death during the long winter. But finally supply ships came, and the colony prospered. But then, the king of France decided that he had spent enough money on the colony, and he sent a ship over to take the colonists back home. Once back in France, Champlain did all he could to get the king of France to let him try again. Finally, the king agreed. The brave explorer started a colony near the St. Lawrence river in what is now Canada. The winters were unbearably hard, but the colony survived, with only about a fourth of the original inhabitants. But the colony prospered, slowly growing. Now it is called Quebec, and most of the people who live there speak French.

Many people who went to the Americas wanted gold, furs, or land. But there were some explorers who were looking for the "Northwest Passage," a passage through North America which would lead them straight to India or China. One such English explorer was Henry Hudson. He knew that all the explorers who had gone looking for this way had failed. But he had a different idea. He wanted to sail way up north and over Asia, then, he would sail down into China. The sun shines all day and night at the North Pole in the summer, so Hudson figured that would melt the ice to let his ships get through. But he was wrong, and because of the immense cold, he and his ship were forced to turn around and sail back to England. Hudson did not give up, though. He decided to try another route around the Northern coast of Russia. But as they sailed along their route, it started to get cold. He couldn't find a way through the ice, so he turned around. But he didn't go back to England this time. He sailed straight towards North America. When the crew saw that he was not giving up, they threatened mutiny if he did not turn around. So Hudson was forced to go back to Europe anyway. Hudson tried again, this time along  a different route. It was a hard route, and the sailors begged to go back, but Hudson would not be moved. Finally, the crew did what they had threatened to do on the second voyage. They set Hudson, his son, and some of the sickest sailors in a small life boat with no food or water. The rest of the crew had very hard time finding England again without their captain. No one ever saw Hudson again.

Two Kings, A Queen, and William Who Was Quiet

In my last post, I wrote that I have finished my history book by Susan Wise Bauer. Today, I read the first two chapters of the next book in the series. This book is titled Volume 3: Early Modern Times. It covers the time from Queen Elizabeth the First until the Forty-Niners in California. Today, I read about two kings, one queen, and a Dutch man named William the Silent.

        The two kings were related to each other.They were, in fact uncle and nephew. The nephew was Charles the Fifth's son, Philip, and he ruled some of his father's land. The rest was given to his uncle, King Charles's brother, Ferdinand, a little before King Charles died. Bauer doesn't say much about him in this chapter.

      Philip was the ruler of Spain, the country where Christopher Columbus had gotten his money to go to South America from. When Columbus claimed "India", he claimed it for Spain. So now, King Philip was trying to use that land to his advantage. He sent other explorers there, and they discovered that the land was not India, it was a different continent. From India, merchants bought spices, cloth, and many other things. These things were not found in South America, but the "conquistadors" found something even better. Gold. The Native Americans wore gold jewelry, and they told stories of a king called El Dorado, who was so rich he could take baths in gold dust. King Philip wanted this gold, so he sent miners to mine South America. Soon, Spain became rich. Gold and silver poured out of the mines. Philip became the richest king in the world, and his people became rich, too. But the miners who did the actual mining, were not rich. They were South American slaves, and they were treated badly in their own country. So now you know the story of the two kings. Now, onto William the Silent.

But first, we have to go back in time a little ways. William the Silent came into the world when Philip was only around six years old. The boys were only a few years apart, but they were brought up in very different cultures and religions. Philip was brought up to be a devout Catholic, however, William's German parents taught him to stick to the Protestant faith. When William was only a teenager, he inherited two huge provinces from his cousin. This could make him a very important man when he grew up, and Charles the Fifth knew that it would not be good if he was a Protestant and opposed Catholics. So, he had William brought to court and taught him all the things that an important man should know, especially how to be a good Catholic. Soon, William became the King's favorite page, and then, his trusted adviser.

When Charles left his throne to Philip, the new king put Willaim in charge of a big portion of the Netherlands. But William didn't always agree with the ways Philip governed his kingdom. He made laws against Protestantism, and didn't ask the leaders of Netherlands their opinion. Even though, William was now a Catholic, he understood how the Protestants felt.

William the Silent got his nick-name when he was visiting the court of a French king . The king did not realize that William had not always been a Catholic, and he told him that Philip was planning to kill all the Protestants in Netherlands. William was very mad, but he didn't show his anger or any emotion to the king. He did not even answer back. That is why he is called William the Silent.

After William got back to the Netherlands, he still pretended to obey Philip. But in secret he helped raise a small army against Philip. They went to the castle and asked Philip to take back the laws against the Protestants. But Philip would not. The group called themselves the Beggars, and they went through the country destroying Catholic churches and smashing their statues. William became an enemy of the king. A great war followed. Finally, seven provinces in the Northern Netherlands announced their independence from Spain, and they made William the Silent their king. William was eventually assassinated on the orders of the king, but the provinces became their own country, Holland. Bauer says that the Queen Beatrix who now rules Holland is William's great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great granddaughter.

You remember Queen Mary of Scots, (the cousin of Queen Elizabeth,) who was the queen of Scotland. She inherited the crown when she was less than a week old, so her mother became her regent and ruled for her. But Mary's mother was Catholic, and many Protestant noblemen didn't want a Catholic ruler, so they put themselves in charge of ruling the country until Mary was old enough. Mary's mother wanted her to be a good Catholic, so she sent her to France, where there were many other Catholics. Mary never saw her mother again.

When Mary was 18, she traveled back to Scotland to begin her rule. She said that she would not make people change their religions, and she even married a Protestant, but despite Mary's peacefulness, her husband, Lord Darnley, wanted more power. He didn't like that Mary was still a Catholic, so he and some other lords began to plan to overthrow his wife and make Catholicism illegal. But Mary found out about this secret, and she ran away from the castle to make an army for herself. When Mary came back, the others in her husband's plot had fled, but Darnley, who was still there, blamed it all on the absent lords. Mary pardoned him, but only for the time being. Later, the house in which Darnley was in blew up, and many blamed it on Mary.

Queen Mary of Scots became less and less popular, and finally, she was forced to sign a paper making her son, James, the king of Scotland. (You remember that when Elizabeth the First died, James also became the king of England.) Mary fled to Elizabeth's court, but after a while, her own cousin had her executed. What a tragic end to her story!