Editing Renaissance (section)

==Notes==
* For the average peasant in the Renaissance the changes were as a rule not so great and usually weren't even noticeable. As far as they were concerned beautiful paintings, fine statuary and magnificent architecture were all well and good and they'd admire them if they had the opportunity to see them, but for all of that the grain still needed to be harvested and the cows still needed to be milked just like in their grandfather's day and as their grandchildren would do after they passed. They were more likely to be conscripted into a new army if war came, but this was hardly a world-shattering event for most people and not something they would be inclined to see as an improvement.
* Infantry returned to prominence during this period. New weapons such as arbalest crossbows, matchlock arquebuses, and pikes played a role in this, as did cheap munitions plate, but more importantly than that, the process of making war became more centralized and systematic than the old feudal systems and professional standing armies began to take shape. The nobility generally resisted this when they could, since it meant that the crown could boss them around more, but the general trend was well underway because these forces were just better at fighting wars. Cannons also played a role in the process, as did navies, though artillery would take some time to come into its own.
*Cannons destroyed castles (literally and figuratively). Cities stopped extending their walls and started growing around them because there was no longer any point to sinking colossal amounts of time and resources into a wall when some yahoo with a sufficiently big cannon could blow it to pieces and walk right in. The sorts of walls needed to stop cannons meant that static defenses after this era would be purpose-built fortresses guarding key chokepoints.
*This was a golden age for mercenaries. Raising and maintaining a standing army was time-consuming and expensive, so if a king wanted extra soldiers for a war it was usually cheaper for him to hire out some companies of battle hardened troops for a campaign for a standing rate, rations and a cut of the plunder for the conflict. It was not uncommon for a single company to switch sides in a conflict depending on who could pay them more, and some mercenaries such as Francesco Sforza became major power players in their own right. 
*The decline of the lower nobility in Europe that had already set in in the later Middle Ages was in full swing by this period. Advances in administration made many petty lords more of a liability than a boon, most prominently evidenced in the Wars of the Roses, but also because many of them spent their fortunes and lives in pointless feuds between houses, greatly diminishing their importance to the social structure of the kingdoms they lived in. This resulted in most European countries becoming much more centralized as a result, with middle and upper-class commoners filling the economic gap left behind by the petty nobles. While they remained a part of the societal elite in most countries, their overall influence on the politics of their homeland was much more limited than before. 
*Production guilds and workshops begin using early mass-production techniques not seen since Rome, supporting larger militaries (with larger price tags). The legendary Venetian Arsenale is said to have been able to build new merchant ships in a day using prefabricated parts.  
*The beginnings of the financial industry began to take shape here. With the decline of the lower gentry in most of continental Europe, the downfall of the Knights Templar in 1311 and a multitude of trade barriers existing, demand arose for professionals who could accurately exchange the thousands of different currencies across the merchant empires of Venice, Genoa and the German Hansa. As demanding interest for borrowed money was deemed sinful by the church, this became the realm of Jewish merchants and goldsmiths based in countries where the church held less sway. Money became a much more important signifier of economical strength than owned land and the peasants working this land as a result. 
*The Dutch began their 500 year war to push back the sea using windmills. This inadvertently led to the invention of modern banking, insurance, and fractional share investing. They may also have invented speculative bubbles with the so-called "tulip mania" of 1634-1637, when people started buying rare tulip bulbs for absolutely stupid prices until the bottom fell out of the market. "Tulip mania" has since become shorthand for any speculative bubble where the price of a given asset outstrips its intrinsic value.
*Feudalism began to decline as the idea of the nation-state started to take root. Nationalism would become more prominent in the early modern period, coinciding with the Enlightenment, but for now, modern countries were starting to take shape, as people began to think of their homelands as distinct cultural-geographic regions instead of the property of ever-changing noble families. At the same time though, this was when the infamous Habsburg family would come to power throughout much of Europe thanks to having Habsburg butts parked on the thrones of Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, and Austria.
*While many classical texts had been lost in the West, many had been preserved in the East, with some advances in the sciences provided by scholars under Muslim rule (particularly math; the world's prevailing numerical system is fundamentally indo-arabic). These texts returned to Europe due to increased trade with the East, which started with the Crusades. If you wanted to be educated, you had to be well versed in Greek, Latin, and even Arabic. With the fall of Constantinople at the hands of the Ottoman Empire, many Byzantine scholars escaped to Italy (including some members of the last imperial dynasty) bringing the knowledge preserved in the Byzantine Empire to the West, which played a key role in the Renaissance.
* The printing press made its debut, ensuring that all those rediscovered classics spread very quickly throughout Europe as the first modern universities took shape.
* Cartography came into its own. Maps before the Renaissance were like subway maps: designed to show rough locations and routes. But as maritime trade improved, the need for accurate charts became increasingly important, and a cottage industry of skilled mapmakers set about creating accurate maps of the known world.
* Our modern forms of Science started around here. Various wisemen like Leonardo Da Vinci, Nikolaus Copernicus and Galileo Galilei laid the foundations of many scientific theories, based on their observations of the natural world, imported texts from China and Arabia and thoroughly testing the tolerance of the church (although this is often exaggerated by pop history, many scientists of that time were in fact priests and monks). Astronomy and Chemistry were particular favorites, since they didn't infringe on any popular taboos and would, later down the line, invent many new methods of navigation and production.