A good overview of a series of major transformations in history that starts out great and then becomes a bit worse with each section. ( )

Professor Andrew Fix of Lafayette College teaches courses in 'Intellectual History', however this interesting course pulls in social, political and economic history to provide a survey of European History from roughly 1300 - 1700. Professor Fix summarises the major elements in the course title well. Interesting insights included the economic and political impact of the wars and plague of the thirteenth century, an excellent look at the Reformation and a look at the crises of the seventeenth century.
In the year where we commemorate the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther issuing his Ninety-Five theses, Prof Fix's coverage of the Reformation is excellent. I certainly gained a much greater understanding of its course, and the attention to the 'outliers' of religious non-conformity such as the Anabaptists was interesting. Fix's view of Luther's actions is to emphasise their gradual quality and the fact that he certainly wasn't looking to create a new church, or indeed even to seriously challenge the Pope's position at first. It was the church's decision to vehemently oppose Luther's challenges that Fix sees as the decisive factor. He highlights the other challenges to areas of the church that required reform that had not attracted the same attention, and the fact that Luther's challenge to indulgences certainly wasn't unique. Fix does adamantly state that the theses weren't nailed to a church door in Wittenberg, a fact that my reading suggests is still debatable.
Fix's account of the religious wars is sound, highlighting the significance early on of Luther's decision to 'politicize' his campaign (the so-called Magisterial Reformation).
The seventeen century is fascinating, with Fix adopting the famous "Crisis of the Seventeenth Century" historical debate to argue that there was a crisis which was both economic and political. The greatest crisis was the thirty years war. Fix argues that although the war ended religious wars and encouraged the separation of religion and state it also left Germany devastated, although the kernel of possibility for the future was left with the Prussian-Brandenburg state.
The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were quite 'German' in their focus, but once Fix begins looking at the 'Rise of Nations', comparing absolutism and other political structures, his geographic focus broadens to consider France, the Holy Roman Empire, Spain, England and the Dutch republic. His assessment of the Dutch republic is quite positive and I would like to read more on this topic as some books I have dipped into seem more equivocal about its effectiveness and how democratic it was. Fix states in the accompanying guide that the republic "evolved a system of checks and balances that worked well to provide a stable and representative government." That may be but the disunity of the Republic in terms of whether to continue the war with Spain after the truce generated much controversy. Thomas Munck writes in [book:Seventeenth-Century Europe: State, Conflict and Social Order in Europe 1598-1700|1800380] that “lacking central authority except for the loose confederal framework provided by the States General and the ill-defined rival authority of the stadholder in each province, the republic experienced recurrent crises of authority during the seventeenth century”. Certainly the structure of comparative lectures is useful however and provides greater clarity than a lot of histories of Europe.
Overall the course is extremely well structured, delivered and interesting. One minor quirk is that the lectures seem to end quite abruptly as though Professor Fix has run out of time. Overall however the material is interesting, well structured and the accompanying guidebook is also excellent. ( )