Chapter 15 European History Notes: Successful and Unsuccessful Paths to Power (1686-1740)
Shifting Balances of European Power (1686–1740)
Ascendant vs. Declining European States:
The late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries experienced a major realignment of international power and political influence across Europe.
Rising Powers: Great Britain, France, Austria, Russia, and Prussia consolidated central authority and emerged as dominant international powers that dictated European diplomacy through World War I.
Declining Powers: Spain, the United Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, and the Ottoman Empire lost military and economic dominance or failed to build effective central political institutions.
Structural Requirements for State Success:
Nations that successfully achieved or maintained great power status imitated the centralized administrative and military organization established by Louis XIV in France.
Central Monarchical Authority: Strong central monarchy was necessary to impose unity of purpose, guarantee domestic tranquility, and overcome aristocratic revolts or civil strife.
Standing Armies and Conscription: Successful states built large, permanent standing military forces capable of defending borders and projecting power.
Taxation and Bureaucracy: Maintaining military strength required establishing predictable tax structures and professional bureaucracies to collect revenue efficiently.
Conversion of Noble Loyalty: Political classes—especially the aristocracy—had to be redirected away from regional interests toward service and loyalty to the central state.
Causes of Political and Military Decline:
States failed when central political authority could not control competing internal institutions, such as the nobility, autonomous cities, trade guilds, and religious bodies.
Inability to mobilize domestic human, economic, and political resources prevented weak states from resisting external military aggression or curbing internal dissolution.
The Dutch Republic: Political Structure, Religious Toleration, and Economic Decline
Dutch Political Organization:
Unlike the absolute monarchies of continental Europe, the United Provinces of the Netherlands operated as a decentralized republic.
Each of the seven provinces preserved a significant degree of local autonomy and political authority.
The central legislative body, the States General, met at The Hague and exercised limited authority.
Executive influence centered around the House of Orange and the office of the stadtholder; however, when William III of Britain died in 1702, local provincial interests prevented the appointment of another strong stadtholder, causing unified political leadership to vanish.
Dutch Religious Toleration and Culture:
The Dutch Republic was defined by exceptional religious tolerance compared to contemporary European states.
The Calvinist Reformed Church served as the official state church and enrolled most of the political elite, but it was not coercively enforced.
Significant populations of Roman Catholics and various Protestant sects lived unmolested within the republic.
The Netherlands served as an international safe haven for Jews fleeing persecution in other European lands.
Cultural life flourished alongside urban wealth; artist Rachel Ruysch achieved international renown by specializing in elaborate, highly detailed floral painting arrangements.
Economic Dominance and Factors of Decline:
Commercial Peak: Penetration into Asian markets was driven by the Dutch East Indies Company (chartered in 1602), whose shares traded on the Amsterdam Bourse. The company displaced Portuguese control over the East Asian spice trade and established domination over modern Indonesia.
Causes of Economic Decline: Following the death of William III in 1702, domestic economic stagnation set in:
The Dutch fishing industry experienced severe contraction.
Technological superiority in Dutch shipbuilding was lost to rival states.
Former trading partners developed their own merchant fleets and began trading directly with one another, bypassing Dutch intermediaries (e.g., British vessels taking control of Baltic trade routes with Russia).
Domestic industries such as papermaking, textile finishing, and glassblowing stagnated due to internal disunity and a lack of assertive national leadership.
Financial Persistence: Despite commercial and political decline, Dutch financial institutions retained dominance well past the mid-eighteenth century. The Amsterdam Bourse and Dutch commercial banks continued to finance European trade, as disasters in French and English stock markets made international investors cautious.
France After Louis XIV: Regency, Financial Collapse, and Governance
Status of France in 1715:
Despite military setbacks in the War of the Spanish Succession, France remained a premier European power with the continent's largest population, an advanced economy, and a sophisticated administrative system.
French resources were heavily drained by Louis XIV's prolonged wars, requiring economic consolidation, political wisdom, and a restrained foreign policy.
Louis XIV was succeeded in 1715 by his five-year-old great-grandson, Louis XV.
The Regency of the Duke of Orléans:
The Duke of Orléans, uncle to Louis XV, governed as regent until his death in 1720.
The regency was compromised by financial missteps and moral scandals that undermined royal prestige.
To gain political support, the Duke reinstated the full power of the French parlements—judicial courts dominated by the nobility—to approve or veto royal edicts before they became law.
John Law and the Mississippi Bubble:
To solve royal debt, the Duke of Orléans turned over financial management to Scottish gambler and economic theorist John Law.
Law believed that expanding the supply of paper currency would stimulate French economic recovery.
In 1716, Law established a bank in Paris that issued paper money and organized the Mississippi Company (Company of the West), which held a monopoly on trading privileges with the French territory of Louisiana.
The Mississippi Company assumed responsibility for managing the French national debt and issued shares of stock in exchange for government bonds.
A wave of speculation drove share prices extraordinarily high; investors then sought to convert paper stock profits into gold and silver specie.
In 1720, Law's bank lacked sufficient gold and silver reserves to honor redemption demands, causing the bank to suspend specie payments and the