Week 3 Flashcards
How did Spain’s army impact its state authority?
Due to the silver at Potosi found in 1545, Spain had a momentous amount of wealth to allow it to dominate Europe militarily, which had produced momentous wealth for Spain, allowing it to dominate Europe militarily.
In Madrid, the expenses of war and imperial rule constantly exceeded income. Despite the efforts of Philip’s able chief minister, Gaspar de Guzman, it proved impossible to force the kingdoms of the empire to shoulder the cost of its defence. To meet state debt, the Spanish crown repeatedly devalued the coinage and declared bankruptcy, which resulted in the collapse of national credit and steep inflation.
How did Spain’s tax impact its state authority?
Inflation due to the devaluing of the coin meant Spanish aristocrats, attempting to maintain an extravagant lifestyle they could
no longer afford, increased the rents on their estates. High rents and heavy taxes drove the peasants from the land, leading to a decline in agricultural productivity.
How did Spain’s territorial expansion impact its state authority?
When Philip IV took the throne in 1621, he inherited a vast and over-stretched empire, combining different kingdoms with their traditions and loyalties. Spanish silver had created great wealth but also dependency.
Between 1610 and 1650, Spanish trade with the colonies in the New World fell
60 per cent due to competition from colonial industries and Dutch and English
traders.
1648: The Treaty of Westphalia recognised the Dutch independence, and in
1659: Territory given to France
1688: it recognised Portugal as independent. Spain no longer dominates Europe.
How did France’s army impact its state authority?
Richelieu’s main foreign policy goal was to destroy the Habsburgs’ grip on territories that surrounded France. Consequently, Richelieu supported Habsburg enemies, including Protestants, during the Thirty Years’ War
Louis XIV kept France at war for thirty-three of the fifty-four years of his personal rule. Under the leadership of Francois le Tellier, Marquis de Louvois, Louis’s secretary of state for war, France acquired a huge professional army. The French army almost tripled in size. Uniforms and weapons were standardised, and a training and promotion system was devised. As in many other matters, Louis’s model was emulated across Europe, resulting in a continent-wide military capability transformation that scholars called a “military revolution.”
How did France’s tax impact its state authority?
Henry IV raised revenue by selling royal offices instead of charging high taxes
Louis’s last war, the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1713), was endured by a French people suffering high taxes,
During Colbert’s tenure as controller general, Louis was able to pursue his goals without massive tax increases and without creating a stream of new offices. However, the constant pressure of warfare after Colbert’s death undid many of his economic achievements.
Mercantilism is a collection of governmental policies for regulating economic activities by and for the state, aiming to increase state power. It derives from the idea that a nation’s international power is based on its wealth, specifically its supply of gold and silver. To accumulate wealth, a country always had to sell more goods abroad than it bought from foreign countries. Colbert supported old industries and created new ones to increase exports. He enacted new production regulations, created guilds to boost quality standards, and encouraged foreign craftsmen to immigrate to France. He abolished many domestic tariffs and raised tariffs on foreign products to encourage the purchase of French goods. In 1664, Colbert founded the Company of the East Indies with hopes of competing with the Dutch for Asian trade. Colbert also sought to increase France’s control over and presence in New France (Canada) (see “Colonial Empires of England and France”
How did France’s territorial expansion impact its state authority?
Louis aimed to expand France to what he considered its natural borders and win glory for the Bourbon dynasty. His results were mixed. During the 1660s and 1670s, French armies won several important victories. However, the 1680s and 1690s wars brought no additional territories and placed unbearable strains on French resources.
War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1713) was the result of Louis’s unwillingness to abide by a previous agreement to divide Spanish possessions between France and the Holy Roman Emperor upon the death of the childless Spanish king Charles IH (r. 1665-1700). In 1701, the English, Dutch, Austrians, and Prussians formed the Grand Alliance against Louis XIV. War dragged on until 1713 when it was ended by the Peace of Utrecht
The Peace of Utrecht marked the end of French expansion. Thirty-three years of war had given France the rights to all of Alsace and some commercial centres in the north. But at what price? At the time of Louis’s death in 1715, an exhausted France hovered on the brink of bankruptcy.
The French formed trade and military alliances with several tribes, including the Montagnais, Hurons, and Algonquins, which allowed them to acquire valuable furs throughout the Great Lakes region.
How did France’s bureaucracies impact state authority?
Cardinal Richelieu (1585-1642) became the first minister of the French crown on behalf of Henry’s young son Louis XIH (r. 1610-1643). Richelieu designed his domestic policies to strengthen royal control. He extended the use of intendants, commissioners for each of France’s thirty-two districts appointed by and responsible to the monarch. By using the intendants to gather information and ensure royal edicts were enforced, Richelieu reduced the power of provincial nobles. Richelieu also viewed France’s Huguenots as potential rebels and laid siege to La Rochelle, a Protestant stronghold.
Cardinal Jules Mazarin (1602-1661) succeeded Richelieu as chief minister for the next child-king, the four-year-old Louis XIV, who inherited the throne from his father in 1643. Mazarin’s struggle to increase royal revenues to meet the costs of the Thirty Years’ War led to the uprisings of 1648-1653 known as the Fronde. In Paris, magistrates of the Parlement of Paris, the nation’s most important law court, were outraged by the Crown’s autocratic measures. These so-called robe nobles (named for the robes they wore in court) encouraged violent protest by the common people. As the rebellion spread outside Paris and to the sword nobles (the traditional warrior nobility), the civil order broke down completely, and young Louis XIV had to flee Paris. However, much of the rebellion faded when Louis XIV was declared king in his own right in 1651, ending the regency of his mother, Anne of Austria. The French people were desperate for peace and stability after the disorders of the Fronde and were willing to accept a strong monarch who could restore order. Louis pledged to do just that, insisting that only his absolute authority stood between the French people and a renewed descent into chaos
During the long reign of Louis XIV (r. 1643-1715), known as the Sun King, the French monarchy overcame weakness and division to become the most powerful nation in Western Europe. Louis based his authority on the divine right of kings: God had established kings as his rulers on earth, and they were answerable ultimately to him alone. However, Louis also recognised that kings could not simply do as they pleased. They had to obey God’s laws and rule for the good of the people. Louis XIV impressed his subjects with his discipline and hard work. He ruled his realm through several councils of state and insisted on taking a personal role in many of the councils’ decisions. Despite increasing financial problems, Louis never called a meeting of the Estates General, the traditional French representative assembly composed of the three estates of clergy, nobility, and commoners. The nobility, therefore, had no means of united expression or action. To further restrict their political power, he excluded them from his councils and chose capable men of modest origins instead. Although personally tolerant, Louis hated division. He insisted that religious unity was essential to the security of the state. In 1685, Louis revoked the Edict of Nantes. Around two hundred thousand Protestants fled France, including some of the king- dom’s most highly skilled artisans. Louis’s insistence on “one king, one law, one religion” contrasts sharply with the religious tolerance exhibited by Muslim empires in the Middle East and South Asia
1682 Louis moves court and government to Versailles The palace quickly became the center of political, social, and cultural life, and all
high-ranking nobles were required to spend at least part of the year in residence.
Louis established an elaborate set of etiquette rituals for courtiers that encompassed
every moment of his day, from waking up and dressing in the morning to removing
his clothing and retiring at night. These rituals were far from meaningless or trivial.
The king controlled immense resources and privileges; access to him meant favoured
treatment for government offices, military and religious posts, state pensions, honorary titles, and a host of other benefits.
A system of patronage—in which a higher-ranked individual protected a lower-ranked one in return for loyalty and services—flowed from the court to the provinces. Through this mechanism, Louis gained cooperation from powerful nobles.
Although they were denied public offices and posts, women played a central role in the patronage system. At court, the king’s wife, mistresses, and other female relatives recommended individuals for honours, advocated policy decisions, and brokered alliances between noble factions.
With Versailles as the centre of European politics, French culture grew in international prestige. French became the language of polite society and international diplomacy, and France inspired a cosmopolitan European culture in the late
How did Austria’s army impact its state authority?
Austrian Habsburgs need to turn away from a quest for imperial dominance and focus inward and eastward in an attempt to unify their diverse holdings. Habsburg’s victory over Bohemia during the Thirty Years’ War was an important step in this direction. Ferdinand II (r. 1619-1637) drastically reduced the power of the Bohemian Estates, the largely Protestant representative assembly.
Ferdinand III established a permanent standing army
The Habsburg monarchy then turned east toward Hungary, which had been divided between the Ottomans and the Habsburgs in the early sixteenth century. Between 1683 and 1699, the Habsburgs pushed the Ottomans from most of Hungary and Transylvania. The recovery of all the former kingdoms of Hungary was completed in 1718.
How did Austria’s bureaucracies impact its state authority?
Ferdinand III (r. 1637-1657) continued to build state power. He centralized the government in the empire’s German-speaking provinces, which formed the core Habsburg holdings.
Habsburgs agreed to restore many of the traditional privileges of the Hungarian aristocracy in return for the country’s acceptance of Habsburg rule.
How did Austria’s territorial expansion impact its state authority?
Defeat in central Europe encouraged the Austrian Habsburgs to abandon their quest for imperial dominance and focus inward and eastward to unify their diverse holdings.
Habsburg’s victory over Bohemia during the Thirty Years’ War was an important step in this direction. Ferdinand II (r. 1619-1637) drastically reduced the power of the Bohemian Estates, the largely Protestant representative assembly. He also confiscated the landholdings of Protestant nobles and gave them to his supporters. After 1650, a large portion of the Bohemian nobility was of recent origin and owed its success to the Habsburgs. Habsburgs also successfully eliminated Protestantism in Bohemia. These changes were important steps in creating absolutist rule.
How did England’s army impact its state authority?
Charles was forced to summon Parliament to obtain funding for an army to put down the revolt. Angry with the king’s behaviour and sympathetic to the Scots’ religious beliefs, the House of Commons passed the Triennial Act in 1641, which compelled the king to call Parliament every three years.
In 1641, the Catholic gentry of Ireland led an uprising in response to a feared invasion by British Anti-Catholic forces. Without an army, Charles I could neither come to terms with the Scots nor respond to the Irish rebellion. After a failed attempt to arrest parliamentary leaders, Charles left London and began to raise an army. In response, Parliament formed its own army, the New Model Army.
How did England’s tax impact its state authority?
Charles avoided direct confrontation with his subjects by refusing to call Parliament into session from 1629 to 1640, instead financing the realm through extraordinary stop-gap levies considered illegal by most English people.
How did England’s bureaucracy impact its state authority?
Like Louis XIV, James believed that a monarch had a divine right to his authority and was responsible only to God. James I and his son Charles I (r. 1625-1649) considered any legislative constraint on their power a threat to their divine-right prerogative. Consequently, at every meeting of Parliament between 1603 and 1640, bitter squabbles erupted between the Crown and the House of Commons.
English Civil War (1642-1649) pitted the power of the king against that of Parliament. After three years of fighting, Parliament’s army defeated the king’s forces at the Battles of Naseby and Langport in the summer of 1645. Charles refused to concede defeat, and both sides waited for a decisive event. This arrived in the form of the army under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell, a member of the House of Commons and a devout Puritan. In 1647, Cromwell’s troops captured the king and dismissed members of the Parliament who opposed Cromwell’s actions. In 1649, the remaining representatives, known as the Rump Parliament, put Charles on trial for high treason. Charles was found guilty and beheaded on January 30, 1649.
The glorious revolution in England represented the final destruction of the idea of divine right monarchy.
How did England’s territorial expansion impact its state authority?
Cromwell had long associated Catholicism in Ireland with sedition and heresy, and he led an army there to reconquer the country in August 1649.
After an unsuccessful first colony at Roanoke (in what is now North Carolina), the English colony of Virginia, founded at Jamestown in 1607, gained a steady hold by producing tobacco for a growing European market. Indentured servants obtained free passage to the colony in exchange for several years of work and the promise of greater opportunity than could be found in England. In the 1670s, English colonists from the Caribbean island of Barbados settled in Carolina, where conditions were suitable for large rice plantations. During the late seventeenth century, enslaved Africans replaced indentured servants as labourers on tobacco and rice plantations, and a harsh racial divide was imposed.
Navigation Acts in 1651, and the restored monarchy of Charles I extended them in 1660 and 1663.
hereas the Spanish established wholesale dominance over Mexico and Peru
and its indigenous inhabitants, English settlements hugged the Atlantic coastline and expelled indigenous people from their lands, leading to attacks by displaced groups
and wars of reprisal and extermination. In place of the unified rule exerted by the
Spanish crown, English colonization was haphazard and decentralized in nature,
leading to greater colonial autonomy and diversity. As the English crown grew more
interested in colonial expansion, efforts were made to acquire the territory between
New England in the north and Virginia in the south. The goal was to unify English
holdings and minimize French and Dutch competition on the Atlantic seaboard.
The results of these efforts were the mid-Atlantic colonies: the Catholic settlement of
Maryland (1632); New York, captured from the Dutch in 1664; and the Quaker
colony of Pennsylvania (1681).
How did the Dutch bureaucracy impact its state authority?
Rejecting the rule of a monarch, the Dutch established a republic, a state in which power rested in the people’s hands and was exercised through elected representatives.
Elected Estates (assemblies) held supreme power instead
The provincial Estates
held virtually all the power. A federal assembly, or state general, handled foreign affairs and war, but all issues had to be referred back to the local Estates for approval, and each of the seven provinces could veto any proposed legislation. Holland, the province with the largest navy and the most wealth, usually dominated the republic and the state general.
In each province, the Estates appointed an executive officer, known as the stadholder. Although, in theory, the Estates freely chose the stadholder, in practice, the reigning prince of Orange usually held the office of stadholder in several of
the seven provinces of the republic. Tensions persisted between the House of Orange supporters and those of the staunchly republican Estates, who suspected the princes of harbouring monarchical ambitions.
