Politics and Protest Flashcards
Empire Definition:
An extensive territory or number of territories under single domination or control
Republic Definition:
A government in which supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives responsible to them governing according to law
Politics and Institutions:
Emergence of state
Set up of modern political practise
Federalism:
Increasing centralisation
Feudal systems to state systems
Diffusion of power
England:
Richard II onwards – led to War of the Roses
The Tudors – ended the War of the Roses
Henry VII + Henry VIII = greater centralisation of power
Trend across Europe
Monarchs:
Personal Monarchy – monarch directly involved in ruling e.g. Henry VII + Henry VIII reign
Absolute Monarchy – all authority and sovereignty vested in a single individual
Constitutional Monarchy – Monarch shares power with a constitutionally organised government
France:
Valois – increased unification, centralisation + bureaucracy, separation between hereditary nobles and other nobles
Louis XIV – known as the “Sun King”, associated himself as the state
British Isles:
Marriage alliances e.g. Tudors
Henry VIII switched alliances – more Protestant countries
Stuarts – Absolutism, led to the Civil War + Restoration, Glorious Revolution + Constitutional Monarchy
Iberian Peninsula (c. 1300):
Lots of states before Charles V reign
1492 – conquered – making Spain Christian
Charles V ruled over united Spain
Charles ruled vast amounts of Europe – Hapsburg Empire 1526 – Charles later abdicated empires
Holy Roman Empire:
Unified in 1871
Germany and Austria
Republic Definition:
A government in which supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives responsible to them governing according to law
Joseph Strayer (1970) ‘On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State’ argued a state is:
Persistent in time
Fixed in spaced
Having permanent, impersonal institutions
Having agreement on the need for an authority with power to make final judgements
Having acceptance of the idea that subjects should give loyalty to that authority
State emerged as most useful
Early Modern Communities:
Shepard + Withington = “An expression of collective identity by a group of people”
Community linked to common people by end of the 17th century
Community linked to communications in 18th century
The Church:
Corporate identity which to most people would have mattered the most
Most were Christians
Parish – territorial unit within Church
Community of Parish got stronger throughout period
Cities and Guilds:
Cities could gain individual charters
City of London given charter in 1067
Awarding of citizenship often provided by Guilds
Guilds had political power (to a point city officials)
Networks:
Networks of patronage
Women played a central role in social networks
Popular Protest:
Usually in support of traditional ways and traditional political structures e.g. The Pilgrimage of Grace
Usually an attempt to save the monarch from innovators
Lots of popular protest throughout the Early Modern Period
Protest Issues - Economic:
Period saw lots of economic changes
Argument period was the start of a capitalist economy
Those that lived off the land could no longer – issue for protest
Urbanisation and Industrialisation ended the importance of Guilds
Widespread poverty due to economic changes – often led to protest
Protest Issues - Political:
Greater centralisation meant the breaking down of local level politics – led to protest
Protest Issues - Religion:
Changes to religion and tradition led to protest
Petitions, marches and riots –
Mainly directed at the monarch
Women often central to these means of protest
Characteristics of the Community in the Early Modern Period:
Solidarity
Corporate identity
Non-geographic
Family ties/ social relations
Role for women
Religion
Tradition/Conservative
Local
Key historians on Communities in Early Modern England:
Phil Withington and Alexandra Shepard
Community definition =
Been appropriated by historians to denote sets of organic, hierarchal and consensual social relations with implicitly conservative undertones
Nature of communities in the Early Modern Period:
Between 1450 to 1750 ‘communities’ unravelled and congealed into something more approximate to a stratified, commercialised, rational and centralised society.
David Undertone argument:
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries communal ideas and important unifying bonds of still functioning communities were compromised by profoundly unsettling social and economic changes
What was particular about the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was an intensified interaction between the locality and the larger society, which drew together provincial communities into a more closely integrated national society and at the same time introduced a new depth and complexity to their local patterns of social stratification
1604: Robert Cawdrey =
Community and communion, partake in communities “community was something done as an expression of collective identity by groups of people
1616: John Bulloker =
Community as “fellowship in partaking together”
Examples of popular protest:
- Bullying and intimidation
- Civil disturbances in the form of riots: localised collective violence of limited duration
- Rebellions: collective violence transcending one locale and enduring for more than a few days
- Local protest: could escalate into rebellion when it gained the leadership of social
