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The involutionary stage (considering its results) was most productive for the South, which significantly lagged behind the North in social and economic development. These regional distinctions remain till the present moment. The Norman invasion of the Southern Italy and Sicily (1130) and transition of control over these territories to Aragon (Hispanic) dynasty also may be included to that involutionary period. Later it became the reason for Italic wars of the XVI century.
The most important events in the history of the Northern Italy at the given stage are as follows:
1250 – Florence became a republic. The abolition of serfdom. 1378 - the revolt of ciompi (pre-proletariat). 1339 - Venice – lifelong rule of Doges. The control over trade in East Mediterranean is established. 1378 – Popes returned to Rome when «the Avignon imprisonment» came to its end.
The co-evolutionary stage of the second epochal cycle began in the early Renaissance period. 1365-1321 Dante Alighieri; 1304-1374 Francesco Petrarca; 1313-1375 Jiovanni Boccaccio. The tyrants of Florence: 1434-1468 Cosimo Medici. 1469-1492 – Lorenzo the Glorious.
The evolutionary stage is identified with the high Renaissance. 1494-1559 – «Italian wars» with the French and Spaniards. 1469-1527 – Machiavelli; 1452-1519 – Leonardo da Vinci; 1483-1520 Raffaello Santi; 1475-1564 – Michelangelo; 1487-1576 – Tiziano Vecellio; 1568-1639 – T. Campanella – the ideas of utopian communism; 1548-1600 – Jiordano Bruno; 1564-1642 – Galileo Galilei. The economic decline of Italy. Delayed unification of the country divided by controversial interests of Vatican, neighboring countries, and civil discord. 1648-1799 – deepening the gap in the social-economic development between the North and South of Italy.
The development of the fourth epochal cycle is connected with the revolutionary tendencies in Europe, initiated by the Great French Revolution (1799-1815 – the wars of Napoleon). And though Italy did not demonstrate the single act of social revolution, the results of this process appeared to be achieved in the chain of events – the organization of revolutionaries «Young Italy» (1831), activating the struggle for independence and national unity (1848-1849). And finally, since the moment of creation of the Italian Kingdom – Italy enters the involutionary period of history, marked by the political activity of Garibaldi (1848-1871), the final unification of the country (1871), the seizure of Eritrea (1891) and stirring up its colonial policy.
The transformational stage of the cycle was practically realized during the rule of Italian fascists (1922-1943) under the guidance of B. Mussolini, who made an effort to realize the idea of the «Corporate» state, giving a new quality to the colonial policy, turning the Mediterranean Sea into the «Italian lake» in that period. The tendencies of the evolutionary stage of the cycle gathered momentum with the defeat of Italy in the World War II along with development of the democratic lines of the political process (1946 – proclamation of the Republic; 1957 – the Rome Treaty on creation of the European Economic Union; 1992 – «clean hands» operation, that transformed the political system of Italy, and so on).
Modern Italy is sure to be before the door of the revolutionary stage of the fifth epochal cycle.
8.3. Germany
The hypothetical scheme of epochal cycles in the history of Germany may be presented as follows. I-III centuries – the origin of a new subject of history in Europe (the revolutionary phase of the first epochal cycle), which is identified with the onset of Germanic tribes on the Roman Empire. IV-VII centuries – the involutionary stage of development, with the content of feudalization of Germanic tribes, their political subordination to the Empire of Carolus Magnus.
The co-evolutionary stage of development comprises the period of disintegration of the Empire of Carolus Magnus (772-804) which included most Germanic lands within its limits. Verdun (843) – the formal agreement on the division of Carlovingian empire – became the symbol of the new geopolitic situation. Ludwig the German and the Saxon dynasty (919-1024), in fact, closed the transient process, and the country entered the evolutionary period of its history, that takes its beginning since the proclamation of the «Holy Roman Empire» by Otto I (962). The most important historic events are connected with the fight between Germanic emperors of the Franken dynasty (1024-1125) and the dynasty of Staufens (1138-1254) for control over the Northern Italy, and exercising the policy of «push to the East». The foundation of knightly orders (Teutonic, the Order of Sword-bearers), as the instruments of exercising the colonial policy against the Slavic lands in the East, occurred in the same period. These events became the beginning of the second epochal cycle of development of the country.
The following involutionary period of the cycle is connected with a certain decline of the economy of Germanic lands, caused by the flood of Italian goods from the centers of rapid pre-capitalistic development in North-Italian towns.
The co-evolutionary phase of the cycle (since 1356) is connected with the establishment of the powerful Hanseatic trade league in the Baltic region. This league can be in some way compared with the present European Union by monopolizing markets and establishing the control over the neighboring eastern lands. Hanseatic League exerted its influence on the policy of Karl IV (1347-1378). The evolutionary period of the second epochal cycle began with his rule. The period is politically characterized with the growing political fragmentation of Germany, that was reflected in the «Gold bulla» (1356), later referred to by K. Marx as the constitution of split of Germany. The emperor was then elected by the college of electors. This situation remained practically till the middle of the 19th century. One of the reasons for such a situation was the differentiation of economic and political interests of various German lands between the North (Baltic), the East (Slavic lands), and the South (Italy, Mediterranean region).
The new chapter of the history of Germany and the revolutionary phase of the third epochal cycle are associated with the Reformation. Erasmus Roterodamus (1466-1536), who changed the point of view on the inner world of a mediaeval Christian, may be considered the spiritual precursor of this process. The invention of printing by Johann Gutenberg in 1445 also favored this process. In 1517 Martin Luther (1483-1546) proclaimed his famous 95 theses, based on the absolution of faith. This event made the Catholic hierarchy unnecessary and practically established the direct link between the laymen and God.
The revolutionary sentiments quickly spread among the masses, and, already in 1524-1525, Germany was shaken with the Great Peasants' War. The involutionary period of the third epochal cycle, characterized by the leveling of the «patched-up» Germany in the European affairs, begins since 1555, when the Augsburg peace between religions did away with the open enmity between the Catholic and the Protestant based on the principle «whose land – whose faith». The Holy Roman Empire became the object of expansion of the external forces during the 30-year war (1618-1648) between the European coalitions of Catholic and Protestant states.
Since 1804, with the beginning of wars against Napoleon, Germany enters its co-evolutionary stage of development (1804-1834), illustrated by a rapid development of capitalist relations, particularly in the south of Germany, connected with the economic interests of France. The idea of the political unity of the country, the first step towards which was the creation of the German customs union (1834), is reviving again. However, no nationwide market was created till the unification of Germany (1871).
European bourgeois revolutions of 1848-1849 chronologically concurred with the beginning of the evolutionary period of the third epochal cycle of the German history. That is why, they were not taken up by the inner logic of development of the country and had a formally superficial influence on it. The creation of the National Convent in Frankfurt (1848), that gave a push to the development of democratic ideas in Germany, connected with the national unity, constututionalism, and other aspects, was put into practice only after 100 years during the creation of Federal Republic of Germany. The historical sense of the present evolutionary period in the history of the country was overcoming the historical inertia of the split of Germany, at first in the form of the German Empire (1871-1918), then in the Weimar republic (1919-1933), in the Third Reich (1933-1945), in the Bonn republic (1949-1990), and, at last, in the united Germany (since 1990).
Going by the programmed logic of development, Germany stimulated the European integration process. Especially, this line found its expression in its present status of leadership in European and transatlantic structures, in the «collective leadership in the contemporary world», as stated by Bill Clinton in 1997. It became the actually incontestable second world leader and the reliable ally of the USA both in the European and world policy. At the same time, according to Jurgen Habermas, since 1960’s, after the youth riots in May 1968, and particularly after the anschluss of German Democratic Republic, the tendency to augmentation of latent crisis phenomena is becoming more and more apparent: in the sphere of politics – the extinction of traditional political parties; in the economy – the growth of devastative globalization tendencies, difficulties of restructuring national industrial sectors, the problems of education and unemployment; in the social sphere – the problems of the European identity of the Eastern Germany, and the responsibility of Germany for forming a common defense and foreign policy of the European Union.
All this strengthens the assumption that Germany is approaching the commencement of the revolutionary phase of the fourth epochal cycle.
8.4. Great Britain
The peculiarities of the national historical process of Great Britain are connected with insularity of the country, its partial isolation from the European problems and the readiness to be the «Queen of seas», which have formed the peculiar national character of Great Britain.
The first epochal cycle began from the revolutionary events of liberation of the British Isles from the Roman rule and the entrance of Celtic tribes to the way of independent development (407 AD). Since the 5th century, Britain entered the involutionary period, the most important events were the permanent struggle for hegemony between its seven kingdoms: Wessex, Sussex, Essex (Saxon kingdoms), Kent (Jutes’ tribes), Mercia, Northumbria (Angles’ tribes). The internal situation was complicated by the struggle against Normans (Vikings). All that created conditions for the unification of kingdoms under the rule of Alfred the Great (871-899).
However, the successes of Anglo-Saxon in the struggle against Vikings appeared to be temporary. In 1017, the Dutch king Knud den Store establishes the Norman domination over Britain. This event symbolizes the co-evolutionary changes in the country that lasted to the battle of Hastings (1066), when almost all Anglo-Saxon aristocracy was exterminated and William the Conqueror established a new aristocracy of the Norman origin in Britain. Being connected, the historical destinies of France and Britain showed themselves during the rule of Henry II Plantagenet (1154-1189). The beginning of the invasion of Ireland (1171) is connected with his name. At the same time, one could observe growing social-political contradictions between landowners during that period, the inheritors of the Conqueror, and a new urban trade-craft elite striving for the political independence.
The mentioned social-political contradiction found its solution in the following revolutionary events, opening the beginning of the second epochal cycle – the Great Charter (1215), the creation of the first parliament (1236), the peripetias of the civil war (1236-1267), the actual defeat of the royal power which allowed one to preserve the idea of parliamentarism as a backbalance to the regality. Since the end of the 13th century, the involutionary period, that lasted to the War of the Red and White Roses (1445), receives its normative background. The most important events of the involutionary period were as follows: the creation of the House of Lords (the representatives of the aristocracy, knightage) and the House of Commons (the representation of urbanites), the epidemic of plague, «the black death» (1349), Peasants' Revolt (1381), the activity of propagandist and Reformer John Wyclif (1320-1384).
The change of the dynasties of Plantagenets and Lancasters on the king’s throne of Britain and the dynastic war of Red (Lancaster) and White (York) roses (1455-1485) symbolized the transitional co-evolutionary phase of the epochal cycle. The political transformation from the limited monarchy to the absolutist monarchy occurred in this period, the process of primary capital accumulation was growing, and the conditions for the first overseas invasions were created.
The evolutionary development is identified mainly with the Tudor’s absolutism (1485-1603) and lasted to 1648. The most important social-historical events are connected with the agrarian revolution, secularization, that stimulated the development of textile industry, with the «bloody» law aimed to create the free labor market for the naissant capitalist structure of the economy. As for the spiritual sphere, the Reformation and the process of creation of the Anglican Church took place at that moment. The most significant figures of the period were Thomas More (1478 - 1535), William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Francis Bacon (1561-1626). The joint-stock East India Company which organized external trade with colonies and stimulated the establishment of the British Empire, was created in 1600.
The revolutionary events (1648-1649), which marked the beginning of the third epochal cycle, were connected with the execution of King Charles I, the proclamation (1654) of Oliver Cromwell as the Lord Protector. In fact, the latter meant the establishment of a radical republican system which became an abnormal event, opening a radical break with the monarchy traditionalism and paving the way to the Great French revolution. The normative involutionary period was virtually established after Cromwell’s death (1658) and confirmed with the restoration of constitutional monarchy (1689) and confirmation of the Great Charter and primary human rights and freedoms.
The main historical events of the involutionary period were as follows: the fight of Great Britain for preserving the empire (the War of Independence of the USA, 1775-1783), the competition with the revolutionary France for the hegemony in Europe and for the repartition of colonies – Trafalgar battle (1805), the continental blockade organized by Napoleon (1806-1814).
The co-evolutionary transitional phase of development, which began in the first quarter of the 19th century, is connected with the transformation of Great Britain into the «world’s workshop», the industrial revolution, the first parliamentary reform which extended the categories of people who had a right to vote (1832).
The evolutionary period takes its beginning since the middle of the 19th century and is marked by the following significant events: in political history – the classic confrontation between the Liberals (William Gladstone, 1809-1898) and the Conservatives (Benjamin Disraeli, 1804-1881), the concession of the dominion status to Canada (1867); the colonial Boer War (1899-1902), which virtually opened a new historical period of redistribution of spheres of the colonial influence and forestalled the First World War (1914-1918). In fact, it was the fight for preserving status quo of the British Empire. The main internal political event was the foundation of the Labour Party (1900). Its activity created an alternative to the liberals and Tories at the beginning of the 20th century. When this party came to power (1924), the accents of political struggle shifted from the confrontation «liberals-conservatives» to «labourites-conservatives».
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