Examine a map of the 17th C HRE - identify 4 regions that were the main scenes of the initial stages of the 30YW, what do you remark?
Bohemia, Habsburg Austria, Moravia, Bavaria
What was the primary religious antagonism of the 30YW? Do you agree with the view that the 30YW was merely a religious conflict? 3 specific examples + table of the different parties involved
- Religious antagonism - Prot/Cath, territorial tensions between them soon turned into a dynastic war for dominance in Europe
- More complicated: Prot anticipated aid from Cath FR due to FR fear of Austrian expansion, fluidity of the religious allegiances (Wallenstein, powerful Catholic, convert from Lutheranism), adventure or economic motives caused enlistment
- Prot Union: Bohemia, Den, Neth, Swe, German Prot States (in the North), FR, Caths who undermined Wallenstein
- Cath League: HRE, Austria, SP, German Catholic States, Poland, Lutherans who preferred the Habsburgs
The era of the 30YW came to an end ith the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 - identify 3 positive outcomes of the Treaty, which 2 modern European states were confirmed by the Treaty, which European region was most heavily impacted by the war?
- Westphalia: ended the wars of the German states (historians: one of the most dreadful eras of European history), introduced religious tolerated (after a long period of persecution and exile of minorities in Europe), territorial/religious settlement endured until FR rev. 1789
- Treaty confirmed the existence of the Dutch United Provinces (ind. from Spain) and Switzerland
- War devastated German cities and Central Europe villages, contributed to a huge population decline of the states of HRE
In the aftermath of the 30YW, absolutism emerged as the predominant form of ruling - name 3 things absolute rulers could do, how did Bodin differ from Bossuet and Hobbes from Bossuet?
- Could proclaim laws and levy taxes
- Could appoint more officials to carry out the details of governance
- Could multiply fiscal demands on their subjects
Bossuet: kings ruled by ‘divine right’, the virtue of the will of God, ruler’s authority stemmed from God alone
Bodin: the principal point of sovereign majesty and absolute power is to consist principally in giving laws unto the subjects without their consent
Hobbes: absolutism alone could prevent society from lapsing into war, people would only obey if afraid of the consequences of not doing so, social contract where subjects surrendered their rights in exchange for protection
Absolute rule shaped decisively the early modern European states between 1650-1720 - identify 1 novelty corresponding to 1. relationship between monarchs/nobles, 2. State structures, 3. new realities on warfare, 4. religion, and 5. monumentalism that dominated artistic expression in general and for france
- Noble privileges now granted by monarchs - could select associates and silence dissent by removing titles of opposition
- Rulers expanded the structure of the state - states were essentially centralised by acquiring full control over not only admin but tax and military conscription, no of govt officials ++
- Regular collection of taxes and rise of capital accumulation through variant sources of income allowed absolute rulers to create expanded armies as well as the necessary fortifications to wage wars, wars now proclaimed for ‘reasons of the state’
- Cath absolute monarchs sought the support of Cath Church, expected their recognition by the church as legitimate and sacred rulers that served in God’s interests
- Absolute rulers employed monumental architexture due to its emotional appeal, aimed at guaranteeing the consent of the population to the absolute rulers
- FR became the strongest absolute state during this period, monarchical authority expanded, taxes increased, while the revolt of both th epeasants and nobility was suppressed by Louis XIV
This period is marked by a shift in the balance of power in the Germanic lands - what was the weak spot of the Habsburgs and what was the one element that favoured Prussia’s rise under Frederick-William I?
- Weak spot of the Habsburgs: contained territories of different nationalities
- Prussia: had all the essential components of absolutism - a proud, ambitious dynasty, privileged but loyal nobles, an increasingly centralised and efficient bureaucracy, and the emergence of a large standing army
A change in the balance of power also happened in the NE and E fringes of Europe - which state rose to power and which states suffered from it? 3 characteristics that made this state different from western absolutist monarchies, which ruler tried to emulate the West 3 examples?
- Russia rose to power
- Peter the Great pushed back Sweden, Poland, and the Ottoman Turks
- Orthodox Christianity, serfdom, lack of capital and absence of a sizable merchant class
- Peter the Great tried to emulate the West: ordered nobles to become education, told his guards and officials to shave their beards, encouraged the use of glasses, bowls, and napkins at meals, ordered nobles to build Western-style palaces
For most of his life Louis XIV waged wars - what was his grand strategy? By the time of the Treaty of Utrecht had he succeeded? 3 territorial changes of the Treaty of Utrecht aand why was it more of a turning point than Westphalia?
- Louis XIV’s grand strategy was to wage a series of wars against the Habsburgs and Spain in order to expand FR’s territories
- Louis XIV’s ambitions were not successful - by the time of his death, FR was not anymore the dominant state in Europe, also the state had accumulated a huge debt due to the costly and long-lasting conflict
- The Treaty of Utrecht established a balance of power, new balance was officially recognised for the first time and remained unchallenged for most of the 18th C
British nationalism began to develop in the 18th C surrounding pride over its relative high degree of freedom and parl. as a Prot insitution - which factors are given that account for the rise of British nationalism in the 18th C?
- Fear of Catholicism: faced with the threat of French invasion during the Anglo-French wars, BR patriots embraced the British Isles as the chosen land of God
- Lure of commercial profit and empire helped define BR nationalism: the financial community of investors in London closely followed the ups and downs of BR warfare
- Generally harmonious relationship between landed elite/commercial community was a source of rising BR nationalism: joined togehter in the pursuit of empire
- Anglo-Irish, Scottish, and Welsh landowners became more integrated into a national BR elite
While the FR parlements were tecgnically part of the absolutist state apparatus, in the 18th C they came to exercise power often in opposition to the authority of the King - what precise political leverage did the parlements have within the FR absolutist state?
- Parlements are law courts staffed primarily by the nobility
- They register royal edicts and thereby give them the force of the law
- Are said to have the power of remonstrance (refusing to register laws, decrees, or edicts with which they may disagree)
- Would largely occur when they perceived that royal laws were not in the interest of the fractions of the nobility
- In practice, had the ability to delay laws they did not like
- Institutions are significant, namely in determining the initial causes of the FR Rev., as the parlements come to represent opposition to monarchical overreach, feud between Louis XVI and the parlement of Paris plays a considerable role in the calling of the Estates General in 1789
How many stages can the ENL be roughly divided into? What is one key feature of each stage?
- first half of 18th C and reflects the influence of the scientific revolution
- ‘high englightenment’, begins with the publication of ‘the spirit of laws’ by charles-louis de montesquieu and ends in 1778 with the deaths of voltaire and rousseau
- late enlightenment, marks a shift from an emphasis on human reason to a greater preoccupation with the emotions and passions of mankind, also new ideas relating to the concept of freedom to the working of economies
What group did the ‘republic of letters’ refer to? Who were 4 of its members?
- Long-distance intellectual community in the 17th and 18th C in Europe and Americas, informal international community of philosophes
- Voltaire, Montesquieu, Diderot, Newton
What were 3 organisations, most centrally in FR, which helped ot spread ENL thought?
- Salons - brought together people of means, noble and bourgeois alike, in private homes for sociability and discussion
- Academies - formal gatherings taking place about every 2 weeks of people interested in science and philosophy, meetings consisted of reading minutes and correspondence, followed by lectures and debates
Masonic lodges - brought together freethinkers and others who opposed the influence of the established churches in public life
What were 4 examples of relg. intolerance in the 18th C?
- Jesuits were expelled from several countries (FR 1764) due to their direct allegiance to the Pope in Rome, rumours of involvement in plots
- Jews across Europe could not hold noble titles or municipal officers, could be excluded from agricultural occupations and certain trades
- Prots could be uprooted from or deprived of rights in Catholic monarchies (e.g. Austria)
- ENG Catholics and Dissenters could not vote or be elected ot the House of Commons, or go to uni
‘Enlightened Absolutism’ referred to absolutist monarchs who imposed reforms which would benefit their sujects - who were 3 enlightened rulers who sought to implement reforms in jurisprudence/education/rural life?
- Catherine the Great RUS: educational reform (school for daughters of nobles), encouraged the pub. of more books
- Frederick II PRUS: social reform (freed the serfs of the royal domains 1763, abolished seignorial right of lords to physically punish their own serfs), judicial reform (ended some abuses by magistrates, abolished capital punishment except army, relaxed censorship)
- Joseph II HRE + Archduke Austria: Religious reform (Edict of Toleration 1781-2, first to promote religious tolerance and civil rights for non-Cath Christians and Jews, reduced ind. of Cath Church, taxed Church property, abolished some monastic orders), social reform (abolished serfdom 1781), political reform (reorganised imperial bureaucracy), educational reform (established a structured, centralised system of education from primary school to uni), doubled no of elementary schools in Bohemia)
What were the 4 main orders which made up early modern European society?
- Nobles (2-3% population, privileges, owned land)
- Clergy (FR + SWE technically 1st Order, lower + upper clergy, highest drawn from nobility and lower from ‘middling sort’)
- ‘Middling sort’ (FR ‘bourgeoisie’, those involved in commerce, trade, and manufacturing)
- Peasants (vast majority of population in every state, concentrated in villages where they mostly worked the land or rural industry, state/nobles/clergy extracted taxes, produce, and labour from the peasantry)
The FR Rev. was the first challenge to absolutism on behalf of popular sovereignty, what were 3 long-term causes that set the stage for the rev.?
- Increasing prevalence of the language of the Enlightenment. placed the monarchy and its government under the closer scrutiny of public opinion
- The social lines of demarcation between nobles/wealthy commoners had become less fixed over the course of the 18th C
- Nobles exempted from most kinds of taxes
- Older noble families resented the fact that the provincial parlements had filled up with new nobles, who had purchased offices, and that power had shifted within the nobility from the oldest noble families to those recently ennobled
What was the chain-reaction of events that caused the FR rev.?
- Third Estate: 95% of the population, during the period of the Estate-General, revolt due to the behaviour of the king and becomes the National Assembly, openly challenged the authority of the absolutist monarchy in FR
- Storming of the Bastille: July 14th 1789, crown of tradesmen, artisans, and wage earners stormed and captured the Bastille, significance = it annulled the forthcoming attack of the king’s troops against the National Assembly and, in addition, forced the monarch to accept reforms as well as the tricolore symbol of the FR Rev. for a national flag
- The Great Fear: a period during the initial years of the FR Rev. when peasants rebelled in sigtnificant number due to rumours of an upcoming attack from the nobility, generated the estalishment of new local govts and National Guard units to restore order, this period mobilised large segments of the population towards active participation in politics
What were 2 important contributions of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen to contemporary polity? Were there any problematic aspects of the declaration?
- It places sovereignty in the FR nation by proclaiming universal principles and rights stemming from membership in a nation
- It helped make wealth the foundation of the social and political order in FR
- It excluded women altogether
What was the role of the Jacobins and the sans-culottes in the radicalisation of the FR Rev. after 1791?
- National assembly’s radical members split off to start new clubs including the Jacobin Club
- Parisian revolutionaries became known as sans-culottes who stood against those people who had too much property or didn’t work for a living
- FR declaration of war against Austria led to the second revolution, the formation of a republic, a Jacobin-dominated dictatorship which imposed the terror
- Army of sans-culottes stopped the Prussian and Austrian advance
- Jacobins wanted a significant degree of local political power
- Backed by the sans-culottes, the Jacobins insisted on the necessity of further centralising authority in the capital to save the revolution from internal subversion and foreign armies
- Jacobins saw those who did not support them as against the revolution, sense of vulnerability and insecurity heightened by defeats in the field
Briefly describe the terms counter-revolution, terror, Thermidor, and eighteenth Brumaire
Counter-revolution: began in regions where religious practie still seemed strong, a full-scale insurrection against the rev began in March 1793
Terror: a period of the FR Rev. when, following the creation of the 1st Republic, a series of massacres and public executions took place in response to revolutionary fervour, anticlerical sentiment, and accusations of treason
Thermidor: the name taken from the period in the revolutionary calendar in which Robespierre fell
Eighteenth Brumaire: 9th November 1799, the day of the coup that brought Napoleon to power and ended the French Revolution
Describe Napoleon’s itinerary from Corsica → Paris and his allegiances during the rev.
- Sept 1789 Napoleon returned to Corsica, helped organise the National Guard and drew up a position to the National Assembly in Paris asking that Corsica formally become part of France
- Commanded a volunteer force that fired on rioters in 1792
- December 1793 planned the successful artillery siege of Toulon
- Paris of Thermidor, Napoleon helped put down a royalist uprising on Oct 6th 1795
- 1796 became director of Army of Italy
- Arranged a peace with Austria at Campo Formio in October 1797
- 1798 set off to Egypt
- Paused to capture Malta, then defeated Egyptian forces at the Battle of the Pyramids in July 1798
- French defeated by British 1st Aug 1798
- Set off to Syria, stopped at Jaffa, retreated to Egypt, final victory over Turks, then returned to France
- Helped Sieyes overthrow the Directory
What were 4-5 major institutions that Napoleon instaured in his attempt to pursue centralisation and homogenisation?
- Council of State, the most prestigious and important administrative body of the empire, oversaw finance, interior affairs, and war
- Established the Bank of France in 1800, facilitated the state’s ability to borrow money
- Established state secondary schools (lycees)
- Created France’s first public university system
What were the 3-4 main events that changed the tide against Napoleon?
- Peninsular war in Spain: Napoleon instaured his brother as King of Spain, but the Spanish people resisted and by 1810, about 350,000 FR troops were tied up in the Iberian Peninsula
- Russian invasion: disease, heat and hunger took a toll on Napoleon’s army, forced to retreat back to France, of the over 600,000 men who had set out, only about 40,000 returned to France in December
- Prussia-Austria military reforms: eforms improved the loyalty of peasant-soldiers to the state, enhanced troop morale
