2. Absolutism
Absolutism a political theory that claims:
•Rulers have complete sovereignty within their
territories.
•An absolute monarch can make law, dispense
justice, create and direct a bureaucracy,
declare war, and levy taxes, without the
approval of any other governing body.
•Divine Right: legitimizes absolute power
under the theory that God granted power and
authority to rulers in order to protect the faith.
3. Purposes of Absolutism
• Stability
• control over army, legal system, financial resources
• Success of absolutism requires:
• controlling special interests
• nobility
• church
• representative assemblies
• Can a ruler’s power ever be absolute?
4. Enlightened Absolutism
• Ruler accepted many principles of the enlightenment
• Emphasis on education
• Support for the merchant class
• Support for exploration
• Many absolutist monarchs supported the intellectual
movement known as the Enlightenment
• Paradox: “enlightened rulers” supported the
Enlightenment but not limits on monarchial power
6. Who Were the Absolutist
Monarchs?
• Louis XIV of France
• Frederick William of Prussia
• Maria Theresa of Austria
• Peter the Great and Catherine the Great of Russia
• Philip II of Spain
9. Cardinal Richelieu & the Rise of France
•Cardinal Richelieu’s goals:
•Centralize political power around the
monarchy—not the church;
•Make France the leading power in
Europe.
10. Louis XIV(1643-1715) of France
• Ruled for 72 years
• Personified France: “I am the State”
• Performing Royalty at Versailles (Sun King)
• Controled nobility
• No Taxes on Nobility
• Require Nobility to reside at Versailles for 6 months each year
• Recruited Bourgeois as royal administrators
• Bourgeois: educated professionals who were not born into the
aristocracy
• Collected taxes and Administered laws
• Undermined Parliamentary Power– Estates General did not
meet during Louis’s Reign
15. Remaking of Central and Eastern Europe
• Decline of Ottoman Empire and rise of the Austro-
Hungarian Empire
• 1683 Ottoman’s failed to capture Vienna
• 1713 Austria reconquered Hungary, Transylvania and Serbia from
Ottomans
• Vienna—cultural and political capital
• Hungary—buffer between Austria and Ottomans
• Territories were contiguous but deeply divided by ethnicity, language
and religion
16. MariaTheresa (r. 1740-1780) & Joseph II (r. 1765-1790)
• Enlightened absolutism (?)
• Centralized administration
• Increased taxation
• Professional standing army
• Control over Church
• System of primary education
• Relaxation of censorship
• Liberalized criminal code
19. Prussia
• Became a powerful Protestant state.
• North German Princes (Hohenzollern) united lands after
the Peace of Westphalia (1648).
• Hohenzollerns took power from weaker lords (Junkers),
but gave them powerful jobs in the army.
• Government centralized as absolute monarchy under
Frederick William, who formed one of the fiercest
militaries ever seen…
• “Prussia is not a a state which possesses an army,
rather an army that possesses a state.”
20. Prussia (continued)
• Frederic William’s son,
Frederick II, a brilliant
military leader, given the title
“Frederick the Great.”
• Austria and Prussia had
both arisen as powerful
states, and competed with
each other for power over
central Europe for a long
time to come.
Frederick the Great of Prussia
21. Autocracy in Russia
• Peter the Great
• Westernization
• Social and Cultural Reforms
• Make Russia a great military power
• New tax system
• Table of Ranks
• required nobility to serve the state or be reduced in rank
• Peasants as tools of war
• By 1750 one half of the serfs were state peasants
• State peasants could be drafted into the military
• State peasants could be drafted into factories
• Peasants had no bargaining power over wages or working conditions
• Peasants could not leave jobs for a better job
22. Autocracy in Russia
• Peter the Great replaced the Duma (a “representative”
assembly of nobles) with a hand-picked Senate of 9
administrators
• Assumed direct control of the Russian Orthodox Church
by appointing an imperial official who managed its affairs
• The Communists would do the same in the 20th century but
contrary to Cold War propaganda, state control over the Russian
Orthodox Church did not originate with the Communists
23. Russian Foreign Policy Goal
• Secure a warm water (year-round) port on the Black Sea
and the Baltic Sea
• Without a warm water port, Russia was landlocked for at least 6
months out of the year
• Swedes and Ottoman Empire opposed Russian warm
water port
• Peter the Great failed to gain a warm water port
25. Catherine the Great
• German not Russian
• May have participated in the palace coup that deposed
and then executed her husband Peter III
• Social Reforms
• Hospitals
• Primary schools for children of rural nobility
• In 1769, renewed Peter the Great’s goal of obtaining a
warm water port
• Defeated Ottoman Turks and gained control of the North Coast of
the Black Sea
• Won independence for the Crimea and safe passage of Russian
ships through Bosporus into the Mediterranean
• Gained control of Ottoman provinces in the Balkans
27. England’s Limited Monarchy
• Church of England entangled with English Nationalism
• Reduced political and social rights for Roman Catholics
• Limited rights for Protestant Dissenters (Calvinists: Puritans,
Separatists and Quakers)
• Charles II (1660-1685)
• Accepted the Magna Carta
• Agreed to follow the Petition of Right
28. James II of England
• James II (1685-1688)
• Roman Catholic Convert
• Decree of Religious Toleration for Catholics
• Declared in 1688 that newborn son would be raised
Roman Catholic
29. The Glorious Revolution
• 1688—Delegation of Whigs and Tories invited William of
Orange and his wife Mary Stuart to invade England to
preserve Protestantism
• 1689 William & Mary accepted the English Bill of Rights
which affirmed the following as “Rights of Englishmen”:
• Habeas Corpus
• Trial by Jury
• Petition the Monarch through Parliament
• Monarchy subject to the laws of England
• Act of Toleration granted Protestant dissenters the right to worship
freely but not to hold office
• Act of Succession (1701): every future monarch must be a member
of the Church of England
30. William & Mary
James II was Mary’s father and William’s Uncle/Father in Law. William and Mary were
Childless and when William died in 1702, Mary’s Sister, Anne, ascended the throne of
England as Queen Anne.
31. Who Benefitted Most from the Glorious Revolution?
• Consolidated positions of local control by large property
owners
• Patronage
• War contracts
• Oppressed the Roman Catholic Minority
• Another source of the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland that
continue to the present day
32. John Locke and the Contract Theory of Government
Two Treatises of Government (1690):
•State of Nature
•Individual enforcement of Rights
•All humans endowed with Natural Rights to life,
Liberty and property
•Government established to arbitrate disputes
•All rights not expressly granted to government were
reserved to the people
•Government authority is both contractual
and conditional
•If Government abuses or exceeds its authority,
society has the right to dissolve it and
replace it
34. The Balance of Power System
• Diplomatic Goal: To preserve the balance of
power
• Lasted from 1661 until collapsing with the
outbreak of WWI
• Proponents were England, Holland, Prussia,
Austria
• Purpose: limit the power and expansion of
France through military and diplomatic alliances
• Louis hoped to control the throne of Spain
• Spanish colonies in Americas
37. War of the Spanish Succession: 1702-1713
• Who would succeed King Charles II of Spain in 1700?
• France and Austria wanted members of their monarchy on the
thrown
• England opposed partition of Spain
• Phillip V (King Louis XIV grandson) proclaimed King of Spain
• England, Netherlands, Prussia Austria declared war on France,
Spain and Bavaria
38. Treaty of Utrecht
• Philip V: retained Spain and its empire
• Louis XIV: agreed that Spain and France would never be
united under 1 ruler
• Austria: gained control over territories in Netherlands and
Milan and Naples
• Great Britain:
• retained Gibraltar and Minorca
• gained French territory in North America and Caribbean
• gained right to transport and sell slaves in Spanish colonies in the
Americas
39. Catherine the Great and Balance of Power
Politics
• Russia’s gains in the war with the Ottoman Turks
threatened the Balance of Power in Eastern Europe
• Monarchs agreed to settle territory disputes
• Russia proposed that Austria-Hungary; Prussia and Russia
partition Poland
• Russia agreed to give up conquests in the Balkans in return for the
grain fields of eastern Poland
• Austria-Hungary obtained Galicia
• Prussia obtained coastal regions (Gdansk/Danzig)
• Poland ceased to exist as a sovereign territory until
after WWI
In 1939 Hitler and Stalin again divided Poland
41. War and Empire
• War of Austrian Succession (1740-1748)
• Austria, Britain and Dutch Republic vs. Prussia and France
• Prussia: argued that Maria Theresa could not succeed to the
Hapsburg throne because she was a woman
• A series of smaller wars
• Prussia seized Silesia (for coal, copper, zinc, lead, gold, iron, silver)
• French and Prussians attempted to invade Austria and further enter
Poland
• French declared war on Britain and prepared an invasion in 1744 but
were thwarted by storms on the English Channel
• French turned toward Dutch Republic
• Spain entered the war to invade Austrian territory in Italy
• Treaty of Aix-la Chapelle (1748)
• Only Prussia retained territory (Silesia)
• Maria Theresa survived with most of her territory intact
43. What is Mercantilism?
• An economic theory and the policy directing the economy
of monarchial European states between 1600-1800
• Assumed that wealth and power depended on a favorable balance
of trade (exports exceeding imports) and the accumulation of
precious metals (gold and silver)
• Advocated forms of protectionism to protect dominance of
domestic production and wealth accumulation
• Monarchs and Nobility attempted to retain control of wealth through
granting monopolies to favored nobles or as rewards for service to
wealthy merchants.
• Competition was for monopoly and contracts—not based on free
markets
• Each monarch sought to restrain the trade of rival monarchs by
closing markets and colonies to competition
44. Spanish Colonialism
• Colonial governments in the Americas were controlled by
Madrid
• Only Spanish merchants permitted to trade with Spanish
colonies
• All colonial exports and imports had to pass through a Spanish port
• Seville and Cadiz
• Dominated by mining
• Outpost in Manila to trade South American bullion for
Asian silk
46. Social Structures in Spanish Colonies
• Replaced existing elites with Spanish administrators and
churchmen
• Did Spanish uproot or eliminate existing cultures?
• Focused on controlling and exploiting native labor
• Didn’t this control and exploitation of native labor and usurpation of
existing social structures uproot and eliminate existing culture?
• High degree of intermarriage
• Complex social hierarchy: Spanish, Mestizos, slaves, tribal
indigenous people
47. English Colonialism
• North America
• 1607 Jamestown
• North American colonies had little material wealth
• By 1647: 80,000 English emigrants settled in 20 settlements in New
World
• English colonists had little interest in converting the Native peoples
• Colonies were private ventures (proprietary or joint-stock companies)
• Attempt to recreate life in England
• Navigation Acts of 1651 and 1660 required colonies to ship exports on
English ships through English ports and denied direct importation of certain
products (sugar and tobacco) from other colonies
• Did not seek to control large native labor force –wanted exclusive control
over land
• Expulsion
• Massacre
• Was this what we would call genocide today?
• Little intermarriage
• Rigid racial distinctions
48. Dutch Colonialism
• Until 1670, Dutch had most prosperous commercial
empire of the 17th century
• Fort and Factory Model
• Based on The Portuguese "feitorias"
• Fortified trading posts settled in coastal areas
• Centralize and dominate the local trade of products
• Served simultaneously as market, warehouse, navigation support
(light house), and customs
• Governed by a "Feitor" (Factor)
• Managed trade (buying and trading products on behalf of the king)
• Collected taxes (usually 20%).
49. French Colonialism
• Sugar producing colonies in West Indies
• African slaves in St. Dominguez (Haiti) produced 40% of
world’s sugar
• Fur trade in North America did not amount to much
• French Colonial Society
• Elites of French colonial society were plantation owners, officers
and administrators from Paris
• Peoples of mixed descent were in the middle
• Slaves were at the bottom
• Monarchy controlled prices that Planters could charge
• Room for merchants in middle to make money
• Historians estimate that perhaps 1 million of France’s 20 million
inhabitants lived off the proceeds from the sugar plantations
50. Triangular Trade in Sugar and Slaves
• Refers to trade routes in the Atlantic
• Response to European demand for sugar and tobacco
• Demand for slaves to work sugar and tobacco plantations
in the Americas
• Britain dominated
51.
52. "New Perspectives on the
Transatlantic Slave Trade,"
Special Issue, William and
Mary Quarterly, vol. 58 (2001),
between pp. 16 and 17.
As shown on
www.slaveryimages.org,
compiled by Jerome Handler
and Michael Tuite,
and sponsored by the
Virginia Foundation for the
Humanities
and the University of Virginia
Library.
53. Slave Trade
• Run as monopoly in 16th and early 17th century by
European governments (English, Spanish, French)
• 18th century slave trade open to private entrepreneurs
• West African ports
• Exchange of Indian cloth, metal goods, rum and firearms in return
for human cargo
• Middle passage
54. Gate of No Return
Cape Coast Castle, Ghana (2007)
courtesy B. Pilgrim, accessed 1/27/2012
http://hitchcock.itc.virginia.edu/Slavery/index.php
55. Economic Growth in 18th Century Europe
• At the beginning of the 18th century ½ of all Europeans still died
of infectious disease
• New agricultural technologies made food production more
effective
• Immunities and better nutrition caused population boom in
major industrial cities like London, Amsterdam, Naples and
Paris
• Emerging mass market for consumer goods
• Golden age of the shopkeeper
• Consumer goods were products of a growing colonial empire in
Asia, Africa and the Americas
• England, France and Spain competed for control of colonial
territories, access to colonial resources and manpower
56. Economic Entanglement between
Government and Colonialism
• Value of colonial commerce tied interests of governments and
transoceanic merchants together
• Merchants depended on governments to protect their
investments
• Governments depended on merchants to create wealth that
drove their economies
• Ability to wage war depended on loans from wealthy investors
and ability to repay the loans with interest
• Bank of England (1690)
• Sold shares of English national debt to investors
• Ability of England to repay the debt resulted in moderate rate of
interest
• French did not have the same reputation
• French government was charged ruinously high rates of interest
• Based on size of debt
• Unsuccessful wars
57. Seven Years War (aka) French and Indian
War (1756-1763)
• A global war
• Europe
• North America
• Central America
• West Africa
• India
• The Philippines
• Driven by personal antagonisms between Europe’s ruling
families
• British House of Hanover vs. French and Spanish House of Bourbon
• Hohenzollerns of Prussia vs. Hapsburgs of Austria
• Between 900,000 and 1,400,000 people died
• British got Canada and India from France
• Set the stage for the American War for Independence and the
French Revolution
58. American Colonies vs. Intolerable Acts
• Acts interpreted as violating the basic rights of
Englishmen
• Quartering Act: required Colonial subjects to quarter British troops
• Boston Port Act: closed Port of Boston until the East India Tea
Company was repaid for losses sustained as a result of the Boston
Tea Party
• Massachusetts Government Act: Limited Town Hall Meetings and
allowed Crown to appoint most government officials in
Massachusetts
• Administration of Justice Act: allowed Colonial governors to remove
British officials accused of wrongdoing to England or another British
Colony if they believed they could not get a fair trial
• Quebec Act: limited frontier expansion and provided rights to
French Catholics
59. Taxes and the Revolutionary War
• Americans saw themselves first as Englishmen
• Colonial Governments not Parliament had always decided on
local taxes
• Prior to the French and Indian War, English government did not care
what was taxed as long as the required amount of money was raised.
• Americans willing to raise money for taxes but wanted a say in what
was taxed and how
• British government needed to pay for wars and the Bank of
England was having trouble raising the money
• British sentiment: American Colonies were expensive and
England should have more direct control over raising revenue
(no doubt to help British merchants obtain even higher profits).
• Colonists insisted that they should decide what should be taxed
not whether they should be taxed
60. Global Connections of the
Revolutionary War
• July 4, 1776 Americans declared independence
• 1778 France joined war on side of Americans
• Spain entered the war in support of France
• Britain declared war on the Dutch Republic because it
refused to recognize the trade embargo with the
rebellious North American Colonies
• 1781 British surrender
Treaty of Paris (1783)
Great Britain kept control of Canada and Gibraltar and recognized
independence of the 13 rebellious colonies
Spain kept possessions West of the Mississippi and recovered
Florida
France got the satisfaction of finally defeating Britain and a huge
war debt
61. Absolutism, Colonial Dominance and the
U.S. Constitution
• Seen in the context of the broader sweep of western
civilization history
• American Revolutionary War: the last war in a century-long conflict
for colonial dominance by European monarchies
• U.S. constitutional system of checks and balances:
• Based on colonial experience with wars of absolute monarchs who were
free to declare war for any reason or for no reason at all
• Intended to check lavish spending of absolutist monarchs who lived in
great palaces and spent taxes lavishly on themselves but not for the
good of their people
• Fight over the Bill of Rights was essential to some because it was
intended to safeguard the basic rights of Englishmen that American
colonists had fought for
• Sought to mediate individual rights with the needs of the nation
• Contradiction between system of slavery and rights of men
