The emergence of the national dynastic state in modern times was first manifested in the case of England, due to the appearance 'n 1485 of a shrewd and vigorous monarch in ti e person of Henry VII, and to the fact that n England alone had the feudal nobility been gracious and self-effacing enough to prepare their destruction by a war of self-extermination — the War of the Roses (1455-85). Henry VII filled the royal coffers by taxing the feudal nobles through the use of "Morton's Fork* and other ingenious devices, haled recalcitrant and rebellious feudal lords before the Court of the Star Chamber, and encouraged the new com merce by treaties such as the "Intercursus Magnus" and by subsidizing such explorers as the Cabots. His son, Henry VIII, broke with Rome and gave a religious basis to the growing English nationalism. Elizabeth profited by the labors of her father and grandfather, and her reign witnessed the first great cultural expres sions of English nationalism, as well as the emergence of England as a leading naval and colonizing nation. By the close of the Tudor period (1603) England had become a highly centralized dynastic national state. Fedualism in its political aspects had passed. and the mid dle class had so developed its political strength that a half-century later it was able to demon strate its superiority over the Crown. After brief but brilliant development of Portuguese nationalism (1498-1580), Spain was next in the order of national development. Charles V had been an imperialist rather than a nationalist and had hoped to revive the Medieval Empire, but his son and heir in Spain, Philip II (1555 98), was a true Spanish nationalist and pro ceeded to attempt to bring unity not only to Spain but to the Spanish possessions in the Netherlands. His over-ardent nationalism, however, brought disruption rather than cen tralization, and in 1567 the Dutch, led by Wil liam the Silent, broke into active revolt. The new Dutch national state declared its inde pendence in 1581 and secured the European confirmation of its action at Westphalia in 1648. A century after England had emerged from civil war with a strong national monarch at the head of the state, Henry IV, the founder of the French Bourbon dynasty, came forth victorious over his opponents in the civil wars and was crowned king in 1589. Capturing not only Paris but France by a °mass,* he began with his great minister, Sully, the building of the dynastic national state in Frai ce. His work was cut short by his untimely death at the hand of the assassin, Ravaillac, but his work and plan was carried on with vigor and determination by the great ecclesiastics and statesmen, Richelieu and Mazarin, until, by the time of die suppression of the Fronde in 1651, the feudal system as a dominating political power in France had passed away. The fruit of the work of Henry, Sully, Richelieu and Mazarin was appropriated by Louis XIV, in whose reign France reached not only the height of her dynastic centralization, but at tained to the cultural primacy of Europe. The Thirty Years' War (1618-48) brought with it a multitude of nationalistic movements and demonstrated the fundamental political nature of the Protestant revolt. The stirrings of national ambitions in Bohemia (1618-20) and in Denmark (1625-29) were speedily repressed, but Sweden forged to the front as a great national state (1630-32) and maintained her position until it was lost through the insane ambitions of her warrior king, Charles XII (1697-1718). The Treaty of Westphalia first gave general European recognition to the grow ing national state system and to the existence of independent national sovereignty. It brought diversity rather than unity, however, to Ger many and necessitated the postponemet t of German unification until the latter part of the 19th century, when this anachronistic and be lated process was to disturb the peace of the world. But if a unified national German state was not the product of this general period of the development of dynastic national states, there appeared the dynasty and the state which were ultimately to bring centralization and unity to Germany-Prussia under the Hohen zollerns. After having developed from robber barons into wealthy city magnates of Nurem berg in southern Germany, the Hohenzollerns appeared upon the north European stage through the purchase of the mark of Branden burg by Frederick Hohenzollern from the bank rupt Emperor Sigismund in 1415. Through fortunate marriage arrangements they secured the possession of Prussia in 1618. The basis of the Prussian bureaucracy and military sys tem was laid by Frederick William the Great Elector (1640-88) and the process was carried to completion by Frederick William I (1713 40). Starting with these contributions of his ancestors, Frederick the Great (1740-85) was able by diplomatic duplicity and military genius to raise Prussia to the rank of a first rate European power and to create that German political dualism which erected a final barrier to German national unification until Austria had been humiliated and ousted in 1866. In the latter part of the 17th century Poland had attained to a degree of power which enabled her to save Christendom from the Turk in 1683, but unfavorable geographical situation, ethnic, religious and social diversity, and unrestrained feudal anarchy prevented Poland from attain ing permanent national unity and condemned her to a steady decline and then to a century and a half of dismemberment and servitude. Even semi-Asiatic Russia did not remain im mune in this general European process of national differentiation and centralization. Under her barbarous and brutal, but able, Tsar, Peter the Great (1696-1725), political power was centralized, a national royal army was es tablished, European manners and customs in troduced and Russian foreign policy given a westward orientation. By 1721 the Baltic provinces had been taken from Swe 'en and the all-important °window to the west* secured.
While neither Prussia nor Russia were seri ously affected directly by the Commercial Revolution, the growth of nationalism in these states during the 17th and 18th centuries was indirectly almost wholly a result of the political reactions of this great economic movement. In both states the nationalistic policies were adopted as a direct and obvious imitation of the ad ministrative and military methods of the monarchs of the new order of national states. The Great Elector aped the policies, methods and measures of Richelieu, Mazarin and Louis XIV, and Frederick I took as his model Wil liam III of England. Peter the Great learned from England and Holland the secrets of the new industry and commerce, while from Louis XIV he obtained his pattern for political cen tralization and military reorganization. By the middle of the 18th century, then, national states had been created in most of Europe. Only in Germany, Italy and the Balkans was this process postponed until the next century, with results so disastrous to humanity at large.
The growth of nationalism during the period of the Commercial Revolution was forwarded by other forces than political centralization. The narrow and selfish nationalistic commer cial policy, known as °Mercantilism,* which de veloped more or less universally after 1500 as the general body of economic and commercial doctrines which governed European trade and industry until the middle of the 19th century, operated strongly in the increasing national consciousness, self-interest and jeal ousy, and was a potent stimulant to interna tional friction._ Comnierce during this period became little better than a collective or national piracy, in which the °rights* of other nations were ignored or denied. In addition to this powerful economic impulse to nationalistic and militaristic policies, a strong intellectual in fluence arose in the remarkable development of vernacular literature after the spell of the classical revival, known as °Humanism,* had passed. Italy produced Machiavelli, Guicciar dini, Ariosto and Tasso; France, Rabelais, Montaigne, Corneille, Moliere and Racine; Spain, Cervantes, Lope de Vega and Calderon; Portugual, Camoens, Miranda and Ferreira; England, More, Spenser, Shakespeare, Jonson, Marlowe, Bacon and Milton; Germany, Sachs, Ayrer, Opitz and Fleming. Even Holy Scrip ture was no longer a unifying force in litera ture, but in the translation of Luther and the King James Version became a powerful vehicle in the development, popularization and im provement of the vernacular language and a subtle and effective force making for national istic divisions. The vernacular literature not only gave literary expression to the growing differentiation of national cultures, but con stituted a national possession of first-rate im poitance, which served as a patriotic inspiration for the generations to come. When the re ligious divisions created by the Reformation coincided with national boundaries they con stituted a formidable psychic force making for national cohesion and self-satisfaction. Before the end of the 18th century, then, Europe had ceased to be either feudal or imperial and had come to be primarily national in political organization, economic policy and intellectual tastes and expression. What was further needed to perfect the nationalistic system was the psychological thrill furnished by the French Revolution and its results, and the provision of a real nervous system for the new nationalism in the improved or revolutionized methods of communication and transportation which came as a part of the Industrial Revolution.
The Commercial Revolution was not only the thost potent force leading to the creation of the dynastic national state, but, curiously enough, it also contributed more than anything else before the Industrial Revolution to its ulti mate downfall. The middle class, which it created and advanced in power and prestige, in time turned against the kings in the more progressive countries of western Europe, destroyed the dynastic state and brought into being that control by the middle class which was to prepare the way for the growth of 19th century democracy. The nature and significance of this all-important revolt of the middle class against the dynastic state • is effectively set forth by Professor Hayes in the following illuminating citation: °Driven on by insatiable ambition, not content to be lords of the world of business, with ships and warehouses for castles and with clerks for retainers, the bour geoisie placed their lawyers in the royal serv ice, their learned men in the academies, their economists at the king's elbow, and with restless energy pushed on to shape state and society to their own ends. In England by the close of the 17th century they had helped to dethrone kings and had secured some hold on Parliament, but on the Continent their power and place was less advanced. For the 18th century was still the grand age of monarchs, who took Louis XIV as the pattern of princely power and pomp. 'Benevolent despots) they were, these monarchs meaning well to govern their people with fatherly kindness. But their plans went wrong and Their reforms fell flat, while the bourgeoisie became self-conscious and self reliant, and rose up against the throne of the 16th Louis in France. It was the bour geoisie that started the lutionary cry of 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. " and it was this cry in the throats of the which sent terror t the hearts of n bles and kings. Desperat( 1•.- the old order - he old regime— defended itself. First France, then all Europe was affected. Revolutionary wars convulsed the Continent. Never had the world witnessed wars so disastrous, so bloody.* Along with the destruction of the dynastic aspect of the early national state, there came an intensification and popularization of national sentiment quite unknown in the earlier autocratic form of political organization.