The European States

• Enlightenment thought had some impact on the political development of European states in the eighteenth century. This is very similar to natural laws, or inevitable rights.

• As Europe started to develop, the European axis also started to shift from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic Seaboard.

• In the seventeenth century, the English and Dutch expanded as Spain and Portugal declined. By the eighteenth century, Dutch power had waned, and it was left to the English and French to build the commercial empires that created a truly global economy.

France

• In the eighteenth century, France experienced an economic revival as the Enlightenment gained strength. The French monarchy, however, was not overly influenced by the philosophes and resisted reforms even as the French aristocracy grew stronger.

Great Britain

• The success of the Glorious Revolution in England had prevented absolutism without clearly inaugurating constitutional monarchy. The eighteenth-century British political system was characterized by a sharing of power between the king and Parliament, with Parliament gradually gaining the upper hand.

Dutch Republic

• The dutch republic also declined in the eighteenth century. The dutch republic and the united Netherlands suffered a decline in economic prosperity. Local and national political affairs were dominated by the oligarchies that governed the Dutch Republic’s towns.

Prussia

• Frederick William I and Frederick II, two kinds of Prussia, developed the two major institutions—the army and the bureaucracy—that were the backbone of Prussia.

• Frederick William served as a chief administrative agent of the central government, supervising military, police, economic, and financial affairs.

• Fredrick the II(The Great) was one of the best-educated and most cultured monarchs of the eighteenth century. He grew to be a reliable beloved by his country.

Austrian Empires

• The Austrian Empire had become one of the great European states by the beginning of the eighteenth century.

• The city of Vienna, the center of the Habsburg monarchy, was filled with magnificent palaces and churches built in the Baroque style and became the music capital of Europe.

• Austria, a sprawling empire composed of many different nationalities, languages, religions, and cultures, found it difficult to provide common laws and a centralized administration for its people.

Destruction of Poland

• Poland did not have a monarchy, but a king elected by nobles. This king was easily overthrown and did not make the country strong

Portugal

• Portugal had been experiencing a decline since the 16th century. However, during Marquis de Pombal’s service, Portugal was temporarily revived.

Wars and Diplomacy

• By the eighteenth century, the Europeans had a system of self-governing, and each individual state was focused largely on self-interest.

• Because international relations were based on concerns of power, the eighteenth-century concept of a balance of power was predicated on how to counterbalance the power of one state by another to prevent any one state from dominating the others.

• This balance of power did not imply a desire for peace. It was instead very violent, and large armies created to defend a state’s security were often used for offensive purposes as well.

The War of Austrian Succession

• The male heir to the Austrian throne feared the consequences of his daughter taking the throne as he had no male heir to take it. He managed to make the European powers recognize her as a true heir.

• After Charles’s death, the Pragmatic Sanction was conveniently pushed aside. The new Prussian ruler took advantage of the new empress to invade Austrian Silesia.

• The vulnerability of Maria Theresa encouraged France to enter the war against its traditional enemy Austria; in turn, Maria Theresa made an alliance with Great Britain.

• The war was fought not only in Europe, where Prussia seized Silesia and France occupied the Austrian Netherlands, but in the East, where France took place in Chennai in India from the British, and in North America, where the British captured the French fortress of Louisbourg at the entrance to the Saint Lawrence River.

• By 1748, all parties were exhausted and agreed to stop. The peace treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle was signed, and all occupied territories except Silesia to their original owners.

Conflict in Europe

• This conflict consisted of British And Prussians against the Austrians, Russians, and the French. At the Battle of Rossbach in Saxony in 1757, Frederick the Great won a spectacular victory over combined French-Austrian forces that far outnumbered his own troops.

French and Indian War

• This was was fought in India and North America.

• The French had returned to Britain after their forces were defeated, the French and Indian war took place in North America. The 2 main areas of contention were the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and the first near the great lakes.

• The French had the initial success, but British fortunes were changed by William Pitt the Elder.

European Armies and Warfare

• The composition of these armies reflected the hierarchical structure of European society and the great chasm that separated the upper and lower classes.

• The size of armies in warfare increased drastically.

• This, however, did not result in more destructive warfare in Europe. Since generals were extremely reluctant to risk the destruction of their armies in pitched battles, they came to rely on clever and elaborate maneuvers, rather than direct confrontation.

Economic Expansion and Social Change

• Rapid population growth, expansion in banking and trade, and agriculture revolution: the stirrings of industrialization and an increase in worldwide trade and consumption characterized the economic patterns of the 28th century.

• Europe’s growth began around 1750 and had a slow but steady rise. The total European population rose from around 120 million in 1700 to 140 million by 1750, and then grew to 190 million by 1790; thus, the growth rate in the second half of the century was double that of the first half.

• Eighteenth-century agriculture was characterized by increases in food production that can be attributed to four interrelated factors: more farmland, increased crop yields per acre, healthier and more abundant livestock, and an improved climate.

• A decline in the supply of gold and silver in the seventeenth century had created a chronic shortage of money that undermined the efforts of governments to meet their needs. The establishment of new public and private banks and the acceptance of paper notes made possible an expansion of credit in the eighteenth century

• The most important factor to European industry in the 18th century was textiles. France and Britain were leaders in this field. There were many technological innovations, such as the weaving loom in this century that helped the textile industry, and soon the importance of raw cotton made by man-made labor was less expensive.

• Trade was another big thing in the 18th century. Overseas trade boomed in this century.

The Social Order of the Eighteenth Century

• Social status was still largely determined not by wealth and economic standing but by the division into the traditional ‘‘orders’’ or ‘‘estates’’ determined by heredity.

• This divinely sanctioned division of society into traditional orders was supported by Christian teaching.

• You could usually tell these social groups apart by the clothes they wore.

• There was the peasant that usually lived in rural Europe, and it went up to the nobility, which was 2-3% of the total population. The nobility had a lot of special privileges compared to the rest of Europe. They also played important roles in the military and government.