As early as the Strassburg Oaths of 842 there could be detected the first beginnings in the differentiation of those vernacular languages which were to lay the literary basis for na tional diversity and rivalry. Moreover, it should not be forgotten that in a curiously in direct and obscure, but nevertheless real, man ner the medieval period furnished a psycho logical impulse to the growth of nationalism by its influence on the °Romanticists* many centuries later. It was in part from an im perfect understanding of the Medieval Age that this school obtained its sentimental impulse, which operated powerfully in the creation of the new nationalism during the French Revolu tion, and its notion of the unique and indige nous nature of national character, which formed the basis of much of 19th century nationalistic philosophy and historical literature. The re vival of Roman law in western Europe in the 12th and following centuries became a powerful instrument making for royal supremacy and the rise of the dynastic state. The new com merce with the East, which had been built up by the Italian cities in the period of the Cru sades, was to produce the Italian city-states, which first successfully defied the principle of imperial unity and were the harbingers of the repetition of thatprocess on a vastly greater scale in northern Europe, when the opening of the new trade routes with the East and West should usher in the °Commercial Revolutions and with it the dawn of the Modern Age.
- In October 1492 Co lumbus landed on San Salvador in the Bahamas and in May six years later Vasco de Gama reached Calicut on the coast of India, and the two most significant steps had been taken in bringing about that great revolution in com merce, thought and politics, which, in the totality of its dynamic reactions on European civilizaztion, was to produce thii modern world and to initiate that process of national develop ment, differentiation and rivalry which has since persisted without abatement and is not likely to be suspended until a supernational organization shall have been erected with power to curb aggressive nationalism and vested with a function for mutual service which will at tract the loyalty of the several component parts of the general world organization.
The older generation f historians, under the spell of the exaggerati ns and incomplete knowledge of Burckhardt a d Symonds, were wont to regard the origin of he modern state system as the product of the -called °Renais sance," or, guided by the enthu iasm of Ranke and Schaff for the Lutheran r volt, conven tionally dated the emergence of nationality from the Protestant revolt and 'its resulting political adjustments in the Peace of Augsburg and the Treaty of Westphalia. A more pro found study of modern history by s,ioh writers as Brandi, Cunningham. Shepherd Cheyney, Robinson, Abbott, Beard and Hayes has re vealed the fact that both °Renaissince and °Reformation," in their broadest am:Acts, were but phases or results of that great trsnsforma tion which marks the origin of the modern world and the national-state system — the °Commercial Revolutidn.» By this is meant not only the discoveries, the revival of trade and the "intervention of capital," but also the reactions of these innovations upon the whole basis of European civilization. The permanent intellectual progress which followed the so called "revival" of the 15th century was not so much the result of the resurrection of an antique culture as it was the product of the new psychic reactions which came from the contact of cultures and the intellectual curiosity stimulated by the discoveries. The modern in tellectual world grew out of the work of Gali leo, Kepler, Newton, Boyle and Lavoisie"nd not out of that of Petrarch, Bruni, Poggio and Boccaccio. Not less disruptive of older doc trines has been the result of more critical re search upon the deeper significance of the "Ref ormation." After three centuries of befogging the real issues at stake under the mask of theological controversy, scholars have at last come generally to accept the doctrines of Slei dan, the greatest of contemporary authorities, that the Protestant revolt was primarily the result of the political and nationalistic ambitions of the North German princes, who found Lu ther's theological rebellion a timely "moral and religious issue under which to hide their secular ambition to secure political independ ence from the Holy Roman Empire. The suc
cessful impulse to the religious wars that won the day for Protestantism came not from the zeal of the German princes for the triumph of "justification by faith," but from their eager ness to attain unto the "cuius regio eius reli gio" clause of the Peace of Augsburg (1555) and the recognition of their full political sover eignty by the Treaty of Westphalia (1648).
The chief impulse that the Commercial Rev olution brought to the growth of national states came from the rise of the middle class and their alliance with the monarchs in the attempt to destroy the anarchy and decentral ization of the feudal system. Hitherto the kings had been compelled to depend upon the feudal lords for the administration of law, the provisions of royal funds and the military pro tection of the realm. It can scarcely be sup posed that the feudal lords would render effec tive aid to any policy designed to limit their powers or terminate the political order to which they owed their existence. There was, there fore, no possibility of bringing about that all 'essential step in political progress, the destruc tion of medizval feudalism, until a new class had arisen with sufficient strength to furnish the kings with the loyal aid necessary to cope with the recalcitrant upholders of the old order, and until a source of royal income had been pro vided which would enable the kings to hire loyal officials and armies without relying for their financial support upon feudal taxes. Both of these all-important prerequisites for the growth of administrative centralization political concentration and the rise of the dy nastic national state were supplied by the Com mercial Revolution. A loyal officialdom, op posed to the feudal aristocracy, appeared in the new "Noblesse de la robe— the middle class merchants and lawyers that filled the royal offices, and, through the "intervention of capital" coming into the royal treasuries from the national share in the profits of the new commercial and industrial enterprises, the kings were provided with the all-essential financial power to hire their own officialdom and to support a national army independent of the feudal lords. Then began that relentless war of the national monarchs against their old feudal rivals which extended from the acces sion of Henry VII of England in 1485 to the dose of the last century. While this process involved a great development of royal absolu tism and tyranny, as an inevitable accompani ment of the growth of national and dynastic centralization, the movement as a whole was one of the most important in the history of the political development of humanity. All the horrors of the domestic tyranny and foreign wars which have accompanied the rise, of na tional states since 1500 have been the price which mankind has paid through the waste ful economy of nature in attaining to that stage of national independence and self-gov ernment which had to precede the ultimate goal of internal democracy and international con cert, alliance or federation. Expensive as the process has been, students of the history of civilization unanimously recognize that the evolution of the national state and of large political aggregates had to be brought about before the basis could be provided for an in telligent, amicable, just and nracticable ar rangement between the states of the world. An international order arising directly out of the feudal system is inconceivable.