UNIT 3 + 4 MASTER CARDS

Henry XIV

• king of France who used the divine right of kings to try and calm the angry aristocracy that was mad at the king’s centralized power

  • built the palace of Versailles where all the nobles stayed with the kind and listened in on the gossip and got distracted from their actual problems, but were also exempt from taxes

Jean Baptiste Colbert

• minister of Henry XIV

• implemented mercantilism in France to try and increase their national wealth by exporting more than importing

• regulated colonies in Canada and tried to compete with the success of the Dutch in India and created the Dutch East India Company

Revocation of Edict of Nantes

• Henry XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes to further consolidate his absolutist power and took away the religious toleration that Calvinists were granted

Wars of Louis XIV

• His goal was to gain more territory for France and weaken the Habsburgs

• WAR OF SPANISH SUCCESSION → Charles II of Spain died without an heir and Louis XIV’s grandson was the named heir (Philip V), which meant that the Spanish and French nations could be combined and create a huge imbalance in power across Europe

  • Treaty of Utrecht at the end of the war declared that Philip V was the heir to Spain, but that the same ruling family could not rule Spain and France at the same time after that

• Increased taxes to pay for these wars severely angered the peasants

Causes of the English Civil War

• Charles I continued to abuse the Parliament and asked them for money, which Parliament responded with the Petition of Rights, which listed provisions that the Parliamentarians wanted the king to follow

  • Ex) P must be called frequently, no quartering, every citizen must be promised due process of law, etc

• Well Charles didn’t give a shit so he started the Personal Rule of Charles and governed without Parliament for 11 years

  • Made ppl in land pay ship money, which was only smth that ppl living on the coasts who were preparing naval defenses needed to pay and lived off of these taxes

• Until he decided to impose principles of the Anglican Church (Catholic in practice) onto Scotland, who was not having that and so Charles needed money and called up Parliament, to which they said no bc Charles didn’t respond to their PoR. So Charles dissolved P again → Short P

• Long P → Charles went to that Scottish battle by himself and lost and Scotland made him pay reparations, so now Charles doesn’t have any money and calls P again, and they meet for a long time to settle this issue

English Revolution In Action

• Oliver Cromwell and his New Model Army made of Puritans defeated the king and

• England became a military dictatorship led by Oliver Cromwell named The Commonwealth

  • Had to deal with resistance from groups like the Levellers and the Diggers, who wanted to completely revamp English society

• Cromwell couldn’t control the P to do what he wanted so he dismissed them and eventually gave up power

• Restoration period: England brings back the monarch, this time King Charles II, who faced the same problems as his father with Parliament, and was succeeded by James II

• James repealed the Test Act, which said that Catholics couldn’t serve in the military or in gov, so it showed that James favored Catholics, and also passed the Declaration of Indulgence, which rid religious tests for office holders and allowed freedom of worship

Glorious Rev

• James II’s actions to create a Catholic England angered the Protestants and Parliament eventually invited James II’s Protestant daughter Mary and William of Netherland, who overtook the throne when James fled

• Bill of Rights published and outlined the laws that the monarch had to follow and mandated that they work with P and that monarchs could not be Catholic

Dutch Golden Age

• creation of joint-stock companies such as the Dutch East India Company

• very wealthy and were successful ship builders

• Amsterdam became the economic center of Northern Europe at this time

Dutch Political De-Centralization

• Rejected monarchy bc of previous oppression by the Spanish Habsburgs

• Provincial government = Estates had more power than the federal government = Estates General

Emergence of a new social class

• Gentry = rich ppl who owned large amounts of land but were not part of the aristocracy

  • Gentry began the enclosure system and began to privatize lad that was communally used before for animals and farm land

The view of the world before the Scientific Revolution

• Ptolemy’s geocentric views of the universe

• Many ppl believed in alchemy and the common form of education was scholasticism, popularized by Thomas Aquinas

View of the world after the Scientific Revolution

• Copernicus heliocentric model but said that Earth’s orbit around the sun was circular, not elliptical

• Tycho Brahe believed that the Moon and Sun orbited Earth, but that all other planets orbited the Sun

• His student Johannes Kepler believed that orbits around the sun were elliptical

• Galileo’s ideas were condemned by the Catholic Church

• Isaac Newton’s scientific principles explained the reason behind the elliptical orbit of patterns. He was a devout Christian still, but published his findings of gravity

Scientific Rev impact on Philosophy

• Francis Bacon’s idea of Inductive reason/empiricism challenged the previous way of thinking and said that you had to gather evidence and then come to a conclusion, rather than only work with existing knowledge, which was what had been going on

• Rene Descartes idea was the opposite of Bacon ad he believed in deductive reasoning/rationalism, which used reason to go from a general principle to specific principle

Scientific Rev impact on Politics

• Thomas Hobbes after living thru the English Rev believed that all humans were sinful and were animal-like, which led him to publish his Leviathan, which said that the monarch needed to have absolute power to control his subjects

• John Locke believed that all humans have three rights: life, liberty, and property — and that these could not be taken away by the government, even though humans engaged in a “social contract” with the government, these are rights that could never be taken away, and if they were, the ppl could rebel

  • He also believed in the tabula rasa, which said that one’s experiences mold a person bc they are not born with original sin from the start

Developments and the changes of the 18th century

• Increased urbanization and technology that began replacing farmers

• Terrible hygiene and sewer systems led to developments in medicine, which extended the lifespan of children

Enlightenment values & philosophes

• challenged tradition and previous knowledge and encouraged use of reason

• Enlightenment ideas often called for democratic governments, individual rights, and liberal systems

• Voltaire → religious tolerance, freedom of speech, criticized the French Catholic Church for forcing their religion

  • believed in Deism → “God exists but he doesn’t interfere with humanity”

• Montesquieu → governments need to have checks and balances and separation of powers thru multiple branches

• Adam Smith → division of labour, capitalism, laissez-faire

• Mary Wollstonecraft → advocated for women to have political rights

• Rousseau → governments should prioritize the greater good of its ppl rather than individuals

  • unlike others, he didn’t highly prioritize reason as much as he did relying on one’s emotions

• Diderot → created the Encyclopedia

• David Hume → believed that physical experiences mold human knowledge and because God isn’t physically “experienceable,” He isn’t real

• Beccaria → called for less cruel and reasonable criminal punishments and justice system

How did these ideas spread?

• salons for the wealthy, where they could congregate and talk w philosophes

• coffeehouses for the average ppl where they read newspapers and debated popular ideas

Applications of Enlightenment ideas in politics

• “Enlightened absolutism”

• monarchs often were open to Enlightenment ideas and collaborated w philosophes to find ways to increase their power

Prussia

• Frederick William, the Great Elector → created a large army and worked w Junker nobility for their money and in exchange allowed them to have control over the serfs

  • Junker nobles became loyal to Frederick William bc they could gain better jobs thru the military

• His son Frederick I became the King after making Prussia a kingdom

• The son of Frederick I was Frederick the Great and he increased Prussia’s power by implementing some Enlightenment ideas such as reducing overwhelming criminal punishments

Austria

• Maria Theresa → removed hardships on serfs

• Her son Joseph II created Edicts of Toleration to allow more religious toleration of Lutherans, Calvinists, and Jews to decrease the power of the Catholic Church in the HRE

• Experienced the War of the Austrian Succession which the HRE created the Pragmatic Sanction to allow a female heir to have the Habsburg lands, which became MT

  • Although Prussia agreed to the PS, he attacked and gained Silesia and MT worked w the Hungarians to protect Bohemia

  • Resulted in Traty of Aiz-la-Chapelle and Austrian throne was secured for Habsburgs

Wars of Austria During This Time

• War of Austrian Succession

  • Sides: Austria, Britain, Russia

  • Enemies: Prussia, France, Spain

• Diplomatic Revolution

  • France and Britain switches sides

• Seven Years War

  • Prussia launches an attack on their enemies to prevent themselves from being attacked, win

  • The French and Indian War between Britian and France + indigenous ppl in North America resulted in a British victory, leading Prussia and their allies to an overall win

Russia

• Peter the Great westernized Russia

  • Created the Table of Ranks which allowed commoners to rise up the ranks like a meritocracy

  • Established St. Petersburg

  • Enlisted serfs for his army which he used to increase territory

• Catherine the Great didn’t really do that much, but she did try to codify Russian law

Spain

• Charles III → king of Naples, but Pope does not recognize that

• Lowered power of Catholic church and utilized free trade

The 3 Partitions of Poland

• Initially Poland-Lithuania, weak bc of non-centralized gov and power hungry nobles

• First Partition → lost territory to RUS PRUS AUSTRIA when

  • Led to creation of Poland’s constitution which made a parliament called sejm

  • Centralization of power angered many nobles

• RUS and PRUS partitioned Poland again, resulting in a loss of territory

• The last partition wiped Poland off the map

Britain

• King: George II, ruled in Germany bc he’s German

• Creation of a “prime minister”: Robert Walpole

• Creation of Tories and Whigs

Preface to the French Revolution

• Parlements → courts made of nobles who limited the king’s political power

• Terrible economic conditions due to France’s loss in Seven Year’s War and no economic gains from supporting the American Rev

• Louis XV abolished parlements, but Louis XVI brought them back to work w the nobles

• Nobles and clergy were exempt from taxes

Calling of Assembly of Notables

• Louis XVI’s calling of the nobles and aristocrats was an attempt to rid their tax exemption privileges

• Nobles wanted the king to call the Estates General (3 estates, each w one vote) so that they could easily veto against the king’s desire to take away their privileges

• Tennis Court Oath → Third Estate pledges to meet until a constitution is written

Storming of Bastile

• Parisians heard rumours that the king would deploy his armies → made Parisians scared and they stormed the Bastile to arm themselves

• Creation of Paris Commune → Parisian revolutionary gov that ruled Paris

• Led to the Great Fear that nobles were going to attack the peasants → later on nobles renounce some of their privileges

Creation of Const. Monarchy (1789-1792)

• Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen promised the citizens individual rights

• Olympe De Gouges asked for an inclusion of women in these rights

• National Assembly seizes Church property

• Forces king to accept Civil Constitution of the Church → subjugated Church under the State and clergy had to sign an oath of loyalty

• Pope denounces the CCC

• 1791 → creation of a constitutional monarchy

  • Reduced power of monarch; can only veto so many times

  • “Active” vs “Passive” citizens → voting system est and only those w a certain amount of money could vote

• Many nobles known as emigres fled the country and the king tried as well, but was caught

• Development of Jacobins → political club more represented in the National Assembly

  • Girondins were a faction and supported freeing ppl living in absolutist nations

• Led to France’s wars in Europe

French Wars in Europe

• Didn’t have a strong start for French, esp b/c internal issues w the sans-culottes (working class of Paris) protesting and storming palaces bc they had no food since the wars were making their situations harder

End of Constitutional Monarchy — Moderate & Radical Republic (1792-1794)

• Paris Commune tells National Assembly to have elections for a new body → creation of the Convention

• France successfully defeated the countries they were at war with and killed the king → creation of a republic

• Jacobins and Girondins, both republican, had different goals for the republic

  • Girondins wanted a republic w dispersed localized power, complete laissez faire, and wanted to limit power of sans-culottes

  • Jacobins wanted the complete opposite and worked w the sans-culottes

• Vendeé → counter-revolutionary rev that occurred bc of restrictions put on Catholic Church’s powers

• Reign of Terror 1793 → creation of Committee of Public Safety created by the Convention and included members of Jacobin club

  • Supported the Sans-Culottes by creating the Law of Maximum which capped prices for them

  • Included mass conscription called the levee en masse and called for all genders to help in the wars

  • Believed that all suspected traces of royalists or monarchy supporters had to be gone, so they killed a bunch of ppl without fair trials and banned political gatherings

  • Robespierre ended up killed by Thermidorians (ppl opposed to R)

The Directory 1795-1799

• end of Paris Commune and Committee of Public Safety

• Creation of the Directory w five leaders

• Accomplishments During Directory