Renaissance

Renaissance
=**The Renaissance is considered "the rebirth" or "the early modern period." This period in history was a time of enlightenment, where some of the greatest poetry, medicine, discovery, art, and many other achievements were accomplished during this time. In general, the world became a new place, but still some ideas or beliefs stayed the same however, many new improved ideas and beliefs formed.** = =**The Medieval period was not a good time to live. This period was rattled with plagues, darkness, and malicious acts of inhumanity. Then the world began to change it began to grow, and the diseases, the darkness, and the harshness started to crumble and disappear into nothingness. However, it did take time to spread across all of Europe, but when the darkness receded people saw the world in a new light and they felt "reborn."** = =**Humanism is the proper study of humankind. In the Medieval period, humanism was not as important, but now in the Renaissance it is. Being more humanistic made them more individuals, which was another movement during this time. They started to think about themselves not as a whole, but as individuals. The art become more individualistic in that they painted more pictures of individuals and the techniques and colors improved making them not so plain and impressionable.** = =**Poetry of the Renaissance is not longer a primary occupation. During the Medieval period, to write poetry was a good source of income, but in the Renaissance, its not even good to publish work under a real name or even a false name. Poetry became more individualized in technique, which was a great improvement. The overall style or fashion of clothes stayed relatively the same, except for the colors began to change. The patterns and the designs stayed the same, but how they were made, the fabric, and the colors radically changed. The fabrics and the colors of the clothes showed status. One such example of color is in the //Le Concert// tapestries. All the people in that tapestry were of high class, but the lady near the clergy man, was the highest because she was in black, and during that time black sign of the highest class, a "gothic" look. This piece on the other hand is borderline piece between the two periods, so it shows features from both periods.** = =**The Renaissance changed the world for the better. The renaissance brought the world out of the dark ages and into the light. Today we still use advancements that came out of this period. The Renaissance taught us many great ideas that if they had not been found, I do not think that we would be living the same world, that is how much the Renaissance affected us.** =

The time period known today as the Renaissance was, as its name means, a “rebirth” of Greco-Roman values. It was a reaction against the Dark Ages and stood in stark contrast to the medieval time period before it. The practice of slavery was no exception. Whereas slavery had fizzled out during the Dark Ages, it was instituted again during the Renaissance. Slavery in the Renaissance began in Spain, and for a while the Spanish played the primary part in the slave market. Soon, though, slavery spread to the other parts of Europe. This was especially true with the case of the Italian city-states in which the Renaissance boomed. As the Renaissance grew in Italy and as the city-states expanded, slavery became more and more widespread until Italy became a main user of slaves.

In contrast to slavery in the later periods of the Industrial Revolution and the two World Wars which is explained later in this essay, slavery in the Renaissance was not solely based on race, but mostly religion (at least in Europe; another type of slavery was practiced in America during the Renaissance, as explained later). Europe and Africa at that time was divided between Christians and Muslims, and so slavery in nations dominated by either religion was based on captured people from the other religion. In other words, in the Renaissance, Christians mostly enslaved Muslims and Muslims mostly enslaved Christians. In the case of the Italian Renaissance, Muslims slaves came from “Spain, North Africa, Crete, the Balkans, and the Ottoman Empire”.

The vast majority of slaves at the beginning of the Renaissance were white. But as the Renaissance progressed, black slaves began to be used more and more widely. In the beginning of the Renaissance, these African slaves were acquired through Arabs in North Africa, who also held them as slaves. When the Portuguese started exploring the African coast, they participated in a black slave market, shipping slaves to the Americas and back to Europe (Guild). El Mina was the first slave trading post set up by the Portuguese on the West Coast (“Gold Coast”) of Africa (Guild). Thanks to enslaved Africans, the Portuguese were especially successful in their plantations in the islands off the west coast of Africa known as the Cape Verde, where they transported many of the Africans they enslaved to work in plantations there (Gascoigne).

While most slaves in the Industrial Revolution did hard labor in fields, most slaves in the Renaissance were domestic slaves. This means that they did work in the home, doing duties for their masters around the house. Rich people in the cities almost always had one or more slaves. Instead of the brutal, inhumane treatment of slaves common in the Industrial Revolution, slave-owners during the Renaissance commonly integrated their slaves into the family. In both the Industrial Revolution and the Renaissance, masters claimed all rights for their slaves; they did with them what they willed. Therefore, there arises the similarity between all three time periods in that commonly the slaves were used as sex slaves, although sex slaves in the World Wars were used mostly just for sex, not for hard labor. When masters in the Renaissance had an illegitimate child with a slave, the child was not a slave but was free. However, when a child was born to a slave and its master in the Industrial Revolution, the child became a slave like its mother (“Master-Slave…). While most slaves were domestic in the Renaissance, another form of slavery was surfacing, slaves used for cheap labor in plantations.

In the Renaissance, slaves were starting to be used in plantations, mostly in America, but also in plantations in Italy and off the coast of Africa (Gascoigne). So, in both the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution, at least some slaves were used for hard labor. The Portuguese were the first to put slaves to work in plantations, and slaves soon came to be used on plantations in the Americas by nations such as Spain, Holland, France, England, and the Netherlands. The first slaves they enslaved in these colonies were the native peoples, but soon, the native population began to dwindle. Since Portugal had been exploring the coast of Africa and since Africa had a booming population of people, Africans became the people they predominantly enslaved (Guild). Thus, racial slavery was started. Blacks came to be viewed as lower than human, and this view spread to all the nations which came to have plantations in America. Millions of blacks were imported to plantations for sugar, spices, tobacco, coffee, etc. during the span of the Renaissance (Hornsby).