CTH Virtual World Tour Part 3

Birth of Democracy, Free Commerce, Art, Exploration, and Innovation

This segment of the World Tour in development of human history spans a thousand years of thought, writing, arts, and invention. The first half of this millennium, often portrayed as the Dark Ages, were times of bright lights in democratic organization and free enterprise. Wealth and freedom of thought enabled Renaissance of Art in the 15^th century, world exploration in the 16^th century, the first modern novel and great theater in the 17^th century, and inventions of the 18^th and 19^th century. 

This survey of ports is a world cruise brochure, a brief signposting of events in world history. Travel to experience indicia of great human events. Rather than count countries or World Heritage Sites visited, consider counting visits to stepstones in societal development, port to port. How many ports on this World Tour have you visited?

As in this entire project, choice of ports is subjective. Comments are welcome. 

To begin Part 3 —

10^th Century Birth of Democracy & 3-Tier Organizational Management

Vikings, popularly depicted as marauders of the nineth to eleventh century, rivaled engineers of ancient pyramids with skill in design of long-range sail craft. Their lesser recognized contribution to human evolution was in devising democratic society. Viking democratic government and a 3-tier decision making structure became models for the world almost a millennium prior to 3-tier decision-making taught in expensive business college programs.

Vikings left Norway for Iceland for land to farm and to escape domination of lords. Their 10^th century meetings in annual All-Things, at the crest of the geological world, accessed from Port Reykjavik, (CTH#12) offered social and market interaction, as well as a time for recitation of the laws, opportunity for new laws and amendments. The cycle began in local villages, literal grass roots sources of requests and from which representatives were appointed to regional meetings, aka Things, in preparation for the All-Thing. Eventually world traveling Vikings domesticated and settled in Port Dublin. (CTH#10) 

13^th Century Free Commerce of the Hansa League

A renaissance in world commerce and lifting of feudal ages began with the 1226 Law of Lubeck, the original international commercial code, accessed from Port Travemunde. Royals still controlled land, but merchants built ships of commerce, crossing lines of feudal rule, responsible to no lord. In Lubeck merchants formed a Hanseatic League, using herring as currency. Member ports from London and Brugge, Danzig (Gdansk), to Riga and Visby founded ports, such as Port Tallinn, beginning private wealth. (CTH#11, Law)

15^th Century Renaissance of Art

Renaissance in art, music, and architecture evokes thoughts of Florence, where a constellation of artists, notably da Vinci and Michelangelo, fostered by patrons Medici and d’ Este, clashed with stoic priest Savonarola, in his Bonfire of the Vanities, and dilatant Caesar Borgia, the inspiration for Machiavelli’s heartless Prince. Florence is accessed through Port Livorno.   

Evidence of change is seen in Michelangelo’s David in the Accademia Gallery, and the final painting in the Uffizi Gallery of Birth of Venus by Botticelli, which follows innumerable paintings of the crucifixion and wedding portraits. Botticelli was besotted with Simoneta Vespucci, married to Vespucci sailors, sent by Medici to the New World, affording Guiliano Medici an affair with Simoneta, and to commission the painting. Simoneta died young, Botticelli was buried at her feet, and they washed away in a city flood. 

Savonarola was burned at the stake in 1498, on Palazzo Signoria, yards from reinstallation of the David from the Medici estate, and Florence transitioned to a Republic. Michelangelo went to Rome, to paint a chapel ceiling for the pope, and da Vinci designed war machinery for Caesar Borgia.(CTH#1)

16^th Century Age of Discovery

In 1453 a major shift in world commerce was compelled when Ottoman Turks captured Constantinople, toppling the Byzantine Empire and cutting off Europe from trade with the Far East. There was a spice crisis, shifting focus from the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic. Columbus, born in 1452 spent his youth at docks in Port Genoa, dreaming of crossing the Atlantic Ocean.

At the end of the 15^th century Prince Henry of Portugal, known as The Navigator, although he went nowhere, held a school for navigators, which refused admission to Columbus. From the 1511 Tower of Belem in Port Lisbon, kings launched ships to ports of Africa, India, and the Far East. Columbus sailed for Spain from Port Seville, where a tomb purports to hold his remains. His trajectory across the Atlantic launched from Gran Canaria, Port Las Palma, to catch trade winds, setting precedent for future sailors. (CTH#1 & 5) 

From Port St Malo (CTH#1) Jacques Cartier sailed to claim Canada for France in 1534. Samuel Champlain sailed from Port Honfleur in 1608, claiming Port Quebec (CTH#6) as home. Later Bougainville sailed the South Seas of Port Papeete (CTH#14) and Port Falkland Islands (CTH#9)in 1764, beginning a controversy leading to 20^th century war. Less noble French Corsairs sailed under Letters of Marque, prior to a French navy. What Corsairs lacked in scruples, plundering ships of the Indian Ocean, they compensated with great style in silk shirts and grand mansions.  

English sailors seeking a passage through the Arctic in 1553 chanced upon Port Archangel (CTH#11) beginning a relationship in trade with Moscow only eviscerated by Britain’s entry into the Crimea in 1853. At this time Commodore Perry left home in Port Newport,(CTH#6) to open trade with Japan in Port Yokohama (CTH#15). Norwegian Fram sailed toward the North and South Pole from Port Oslo, (CTH#12) and in 1878 a Finnish-Swedish academic, Adolf Erik Nordenskjöld, became a Russian hero when he traversed the Northeast Passage, Barents Sea to Bering Strait in the Vega, in just over one season, beginning in Port Tromsø. (CTH#11)

17^th Century Literature

Miguel Cervantes published stories gleaned while a traveling tax collector and written while in La Mancha prison outside Port Seville, (CTH#1) accused of misdirecting tax payments. He published Don Quixote, regarded as the first modern novel, in 1605, by giving rights to the work to the publisher. The real life of Cervantes was a wild adventure tale, yet he chose to remain an enigma and write of an errant knight. Meanwhile, in Port London (CTH#10)William Shakespeare was prolific in penning plays spanning basic plots of modern literature. The two writers died on the same date, April 23, 1616, yet not on the same day, given Spanish Gregorian and English Julian calendars.  

18^th Century Innovation and Invention

Part 3 concludes at Port Edinburgh, (CTH#10) which experienced an Age of Enlightenment in medicine, technology, arts, philosophy and economics from 1750 to 1850, enhancing human existence throughout the world in its diaspora. After slaughter of Highlanders at Culloden in 1746, Britian enacted laws forbidding expressions of Scottish culture. Internal drive, resilience and ingenuity of Scottish people ran much deeper than banned acts of wearing tartan and speaking Gaelic. 

 Thomas Muir was martyred testing old values of Henry Dundas. Scotland’s place in history was assured by Edinburgh historian Reverend “Jupiter” Carlyle, sociologist Adam Ferguson and philosophers Dugald Stewart and David Hume. Adam Smith contributed a view of the world from the perspective of political economics, in which government is an outlier.  

Painters and poets of Edinburgh looked introspectively at people and legacy. Robert Fergusson died in poverty at age 25, but not before he gave a sense of beauty to the city that was his haunt. James Hogg wrote his Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner in 1824, focusing the world on Edinburgh and its favorite storyteller of Scotland’s history, Sir Walter Scott.  The list of inventors, researchers in medicine, public health and natural sciences is too long for a cruise brochure. Note: Joseph Black- Thermodynamics; James Watt-Horsepower in Watts; Joseph Lister-Antiseptic surgical theater; Alexander Fleming-Penicillin; Alexander Grahm Bell- Telephone and fiber optic cable; James Clerk Maxwell-Radio waves; and authors of barbed wit Margaret Oliphant and Susan Ferrier. (CTH#10)

Ports listed in Part 3, and historic features reached from these ports, are not exhaustive of sites within reach of the port. The attempt is a world tour of notable steps in human history.

Next, the CTH World Tour of ports in human history continues to Part 4: Aesthetics & Existence – Architecture, City Planning, Preservation

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