Absolutism and the Age of Enlightenment Flashcards
Who were the three estates?
1) Catholic Church (1% of the population, didn’t pay taxes)
2) Aristocrats/Nobles (2% of the population, didn’t pay taxes)
3) Peasants (97% of the population, did pay taxes)
What did King Louis revoke?
The edict of nantes, the right for protestants to choose their religion
Who was Jean Baptiste Cobert?
The financial expert King Louis consulted with to make more money
What was King Louis’ plan to make more money and what was it called?
Their plan was called the four stages of recantism.
1) Go over seas and capture land
2) Take all the goods out of the colony and send back to France
3) Use goods/material to build product. Sell that product back to the colonies
4) All money winds up back in France’s pockets. France wins, colony loses
What were the problems with recantism?
Who would actually go over to cold North America to rip down trees? The third estate peasants, they were promised land, houses, opportunity, and wives.
- Louis blows all the money and Jean Baptist Cobert quits – the only person to ever quit on King Louis
What taxes did the third estate have to pay?
1) Aide - wine tax
2) Gabelle - salt tax
3) Tailles - land tax
4) Tithes - church tax
5) Corvee - physical labour tax
What two groups of people actually liked King Louis?
Patrons – Louis supported all kinds of artists, poets, etc. by employing them at his palace
Army – Louis supported them and used a lot of money on them, and he was the first king to have a professional army
Who were the five philosophers?
Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Baron de Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Jean Jacques Rousseau
Who was Thomas Hobbes?
- Believed in absolutism and people’s rights
- Wrote the Leviathan
- Main message: Theory of Human Nature
- Believed that people were motivated by fear of death and greed
- Hobbes says governments are created to protect us from our selfishness
Who was John Locke?
- Wanted power shared 50/50
- The “father of liberalism”
- Philosopher
- Believed people needed a system of government and laws to protect them
- Created Two Treatises of Government
- Most famous for developing the idea of the Social Contract:
Crown had a duty to defend the rights of ALL subjects equally
In return for protection and rights, subjects would agree to be ruled by the Crown and government
If the Crown broke the contract, the people had the right to revolt and get a new leader
What was John Locke’s theory also called?
Constitutional monarchy
Who was Baron de Montesquieu?
- Based on population, the less freedom/power
- Feared democracy – didn’t believe the masses could govern themselves properly
- Big population = absolutism
- Small population = Separation of Powers
- Wrote The Spirit of the Laws
- Believed in the Separation of Powers: King who enforced laws, an elected parliament who made the laws, and courts who interpreted the laws
Who was Voltaire?
- Most influential and popular amongst the elites
- Feared democracy and the rule of the masses, felt only an enlightened monarch could bring about change with the help of philosophers like himself
- This doesn’t work because there are hardly an uncorrupt enlightened monarchs
- Society should be religiously diverse
Who was Jean Jacques Rousseau?
- Felt that the common person should have rights
- Stated that “man is born free, yet everywhere he is in chains” – believed that prisons and taxes were ways to keep the weak from power
- Wrote his own version of the Social Contract
- Believed people were naturally good, society makes us evil
- Believed in government of the people, by the people, for the people
- His ideas were chiefly responsible for inspiring the French Revolution
What were the main ideas of the scientific revolution?
- Earth not the center of the universe
- Divine right of Kings was foolish
- Scientific revolution (gravity, etc.)
- Industrial revolution (farm equipment, etc)
- People began to question the existence of god
- The universe was understandable and governed by natural forces – not the supernatural
- The scientific method could be used to answer all questions in all areas of life
- Human beings can be educated so that they never stop learning. There is no limit to how much knowledge a person could have
