AP Euro Unit 3: Absolutism and Constitutionalism
Seventeenth-Century Crisis and Rebuilding
Overall population trends (demographics) in the 17th century (1600s)
The Age of Crisis: a nickname for 1600s Europe due to climate change, religious divisions, increased government pressure, and the violence/dislocation of war.
Famine was caused by conditions similar to the ones seen during the Late Middle Ages.
Little Ice Age 🧊 → shorter farming season 🌽 & lower yields → malnutrition + exhaustion + disease [smallpox, typhoid, bubonic plague] = death 💀 → significant population decrease in Europe
Moral economy: community needs predominate over competition and profit.
When the price of bread 🍞 rose beyond their capacity to pay, women attacked convoys taking grain to the cities and invaded bakers’ shops to sell bread at a ‘just price’.
Greater central control established by both absolutist and constitutional governments resulted in:
Greater taxation 💸
Growth in armed forces ⚔
Larger and more efficient bureaucracies 🏢
Increased ability to compel obedience from subjects 👑
Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648)
Ferdinand II promised to respect the religious liberties of the Bohemian nobles if they elected him the king of Bohemia 🤝.
Upon his crowning, he voted himself for and became the Holy Roman Emperor.
Ferdinand II demanded Catholicism, lands, and control, violating his deal with the Bohemians.
Defenestration of Prague: the princes met in Prague, threw the royal messengers out the window 🪟, and selected a new king.
Catholic League: Spain, Austria (Habsburgs), and Bavaria (+ other Catholic German states)
Protestant Union: Denmark, Sweden, Protestant German states, the Netherlands, and (Catholic!!!) France
Bohemian Phase (1618-1625): a civil war in Bohemia between the Catholic League and the Protestant Union.
After a decisive Catholic victory at the Battle of White Mountain, new German princes were brought in to replace the Bohemian ones 🔄.
French support of the Protestants during the war proves that religion is not the only factor!
Cardinal Richelieu identifies the opportunity to:
Stop/halt 🛑 Habsburgs and Spanish dominance and Europe [balance of power!]
Make France the greatest power in Europe.
After the Peace of Westphalia 📜, conflicts fought over religious faith receded.
The two treaties recognized the independent authority of more than 300 German princes (including Switzerland and the Dutch Republic), reconfirming the emperor’s severely limited authority.
The Augsburg Agreement of 1555 became permanent, adding Calvinism to Catholicism and Lutheranism as legally permissible creeds.
Historians view the Treaty of Westphalia as the final nail in the coffin ⚰ of the Middle Ages because it recognized the sovereignty of each nation over its religious affairs and ended any hopes of religious unity in Europe.
France was the dominant power in Europe following the Thirty Years’ War.
Absolutism in France and Spain
What steps did Henry IV (Henry the Great) take in laying the foundation of absolutism in France?
Ends the French Civil War (War of Three Henrys)
Passes the Edict of Nantes (right to worship for Protestants)
“A chicken 🐔 in every pot 🍲”
Builds extensive local bureaucracy (Paulette)
Lowers taxes on peasants ⬇💸
Centralized the economy
The government monopolized gunpowder 💣, mines ⛏, and salt 🧂
Built canal and road system 🛣
Corvée: the peasant draft system
Never calls the Estates General ❌
Doesn’t go off to war
What were Cardinal Richelieu (advisor to Louis XIII)’s goals regarding shaping the institution of the monarchy in France?
Power to the crown! 👑
Intendants: a system that divided France into 32 districts administered by Richelieu’s appointees.
After the siege of La Rochelle, Protestants had to pay their taxes 💸, abandon their private militias ⚔, and offer the Catholics liturgy. BUT they get to keep practicing their faith.
Raison d’ état: interest of state outweighed religious considerations.
Louis XIV:
The Fronde: the robe nobility encouraged violent protest by the common people because they disagreed with the Crown (Cardinal Jules Mazarin and Queen Mother Anne of Austria)’s autocratic measures.
Frondeur: originally a street urchin who threw mud at the passing carriages of the rich. The many individuals and groups who opposed the policies of the government.
During the first of several riots, the queen mother fled Paris with Louis XIV.
Louis was declared king and much of the rebellion died away.
The King must be God-like.
Louis = Apollo/Sun God ☀
Revives classicalism
French Academy of Arts 🎨
French Academy of Sciences 🔬
The King must be in control.
Tireless worker
Continues to use the Intendants
Versailles Court Culture
Divine Right Rule of Kings (supporters: Bishop Bossuet, his court preacher and son’s tutor, and Jean Domat, author of "On Social Order and Absolute Monarchy")
The King must be wealthy. 🤑
Jean-Baptise Colbert: Louis’s controller general and a financial genius.
Mercantilism ✨: 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 brought.
The King must impose religious conformity on his subjects.
“One King, One Law, One Faith”
Revokes the Edict of Nantes.
The King must have an army.
Expands the military and makes it devoted to him.
The king controlled immense resources and privileges; access to him meant favored treatment for government offices, military and religious posts, state pensions, honorary titles, and a host of other benefits.
33/54 years of reign at war
War of Spanish Succession (1701-1714): Louis sought to have his grandson inherit the Spanish throne. The Grand Alliance (England, Netherlands, Austria, and Prussia) formed in 1701 to check France.
Peace of Utrecht: confirms the decline of Spain as a great power, the British Empire's continued expansion, and the French expansion's end. Also ✨ international cooperation ✨
The Decline of Spain:
Spanish trade with its colonies fell 60%.
Slaves who toiled in the silver mines suffered epidemics of disease.
The Crown repeatedly devalued the coinage 🪙 and declared bankruptcy.
Expelled ~3,000 Moriscos (former Muslims) and lost many skilled workers/merchants.
Those working in the textile industry 👕 were forced out of business by steep inflation 📈 that pushed their production costs to the point where they could not compete with international markets.
The elite condemned moneymaking 💰 as vulgar and undignified.
Gaspar de Guzmán, Count-Duke of Olivares believed that the solution to Spain’s difficulties rested in a return to the imperial tradition of the sixteenth century.
Thus, they fought the Dutch and then the French over Mantua (ended by the Treaty of Pyrenees).
Also, Portugal became re-independent.
Absolutism in Austria and Prussia
Out with the HOP and in with the RAP
Three aging states dominated central Europe in the 17th century:
Holy Roman Empire
Ottoman Empire
Poland
The weakness of these ‘soft states’ – so-called because of their loose organization – allowed for the emergence of a new constellation of powers.
Russia
Austria
Prussia
In exchange for their growing political authority, monarchs allowed nobles to remain as unchallenged masters of their peasants.
“Serf’s up!” 🌊 in the east but not the west.
Commercial agriculture 🌽
Habsburgs in Austria
Now that the Thirty Years’ War ended, the Austrians focused their attention on southeastern Europe in expanding and building their empire.
Hohenzollerns in Prussia
Frederick William the Great Elector
He receives: support for his stronger centralizing power, including the ability to tax 💸
The Junkers (nobility and landowning classes) receive: high ranking positions in the military and government + hereditary subjugation of serfs (peasants bound to lords + land from one generation to the next)
Frederick William I (the Soldier King): doubled the size of the army yet almost never used it (spooky! 👻), removed the last of parliamentary estates + self-government, and promoted based on merit. 🏅
“Prussia is not a state with an army, but an army with a state.”
The Development of Russia and the Ottoman Empire
Land of the Russe (Scandinavian for river)
Mongol Yoke: the period of Mongol rule.
The princes of Moscow forced renderings of payments of goods, money, and slaves to centralize power.
Ivan IV (Ivan the Terrible) began a campaign of persecution against those he suspected of opposing him after the sudden death of his wife.
He executed members of leading boyar (high-ranking nobles) families and created a new service nobility whose loyalty was guaranteed by their dependence on the state for land and titles.
Cossacks: warrior bands of peasants resisting Ivan IV
Times of Trouble: the Romanovs make everyone serfs and they rebel and stuff.
Peter the Great
Major goals: expansion, Westernization, and centralizing power
Went on an 18-month tour of western European capitals to learn shipbuilding and other technical skills from local artisans and experts. Impressed by the economic power of the Dutch and English.
Peter entered into a secret alliance with Denmark and Poland to wage a sudden war of aggression against Sweden with the goal of securing access to the Baltic Sea 🌊 and opportunities for westward expansion (Great Northern War).
Battle of Narva: Charles XII of Sweden attacked the Russians besieging the fortress of Narva and won.
Required all nobles to serve in the army or civil administration for life.
Established a regular standing army.
Reformed the Russian Orthodox Church to be essentially a department of state run by the Holy Synod.
Table of Ranks: an interlocking military-civilian bureaucracy with 14 ranks based on merit, allowing some people of non-noble origin to rise to positions of power.
Battle of Poltava: Russians crushed the Swedish army.
Like Louis XIV, he built a magnificent residence (St. Petersburg) and ordered the nobility to live there at least sometimes.
Taxes on peasants increased and serfs were forced to work on St. Petersburg.
Alternatives to Absolutism in England and the Dutch Republic
Gentry: wealthy landowners who dominated the House of Commons. Willing to pay taxes as long as they had a say in national expenditures.
Louis XIV to his nobles: no taxation, no representation!
James I: belief in the Divine Right Rule of Kings ideology
Desire to rule without Parliament, raise taxes, and control religion (which he has the right to do because of the Act of Supremacy).
The True Law of Free Monarchies: an attempt to ‘educate’ Parliament
King James Bible: written/framed to help demonstrate his valid authority as king
Charles I
High Anglican
Ship money: tax to help pay the costs of ships ⛵ for defense, but levied on landlocked counties too.
William Laud imposed a new prayer book 📕 onto Scotland, so they revolted.
Long Parliament: the Parliament that sat from 1640-1660. Limited the power of the monarch and made government without Parliament impossible.
Triennial Act: compelled the king to summon Parliament every three years.
The Commons impeached Archbishop Laud and then threatened to abolish bishops. King Charles, fearful of a Scottish invasion, reluctantly accepted these measures.
The Catholic gentry of Ireland led an uprising in response to a feared invasion by anti-Catholic forces of the British Long Parliament.
Parliament refused to give the king an army, so he made his own.
Cavaliers: royalist supporters of Charles I, composed of most landed nobility, high Anglicans, and eventually Irish Catholics.
Roundheads: Parliament’s New Model Army, composed of Puritans and Presbyterians, businessmen, and Scotland.
English Civil War: the king-Parliament conflict. Kinda bad.
Oliver Cromwell
The guy with the New Model Army who captured King Charles I
Pride’s Purge of the Parliament: the dismissal of all anti-Cromwell members of the Parliament
Rump Parliament: what’s left after the purge
King Charles I is put on trial for high treason and found guilty by Cromwell’s parliament.
Establishes a commonwealth (republican government) known as the Protectorate
Except sike, it was basically a military dictatorship, because the army controlled the government and Cromwell controlled the army.
12 military districts each governed by a major general.
Dismissed Parliament
Gave all Christians except Roman Catholics the right to practice their faith. Welcomed the immigration of Jews for their skills in business.
The English crushed a rebellion at Drogheda in Ireland and massacred the garrison before banning Catholicism, executing priests, and confiscating land from Catholics for English and Scottish settlers.
Navigation Act: required that English goods be transported on English ships, boosting the development of an English merchant marine. Puts the English in competition with the Dutch.
Creates a very Puritan society (like Geneva, but stricter)
The Restoration – Charles II (The “Merry Monarch”)
After Cromwell’s death, the Protectorate collapsed and Charles II returned to the throne + restored Parliament and the Anglican Church.
Test Act: denied non-Anglicans the right to vote, hold public office, preach, teach, attend the universities, or even assemble for meetings. [Impossible to enforce!]
The Cabal was a group of high councilors to Charles II seen as threats to the authority of the throne by many or subverting the power of Parliament. Would set a precedent of ministers becoming responsible to parliament.
Agreed to a deal in which Louis XIV would give Charles £200,000 annually in exchange for Charles re-Catholicizing England. Caused a wave of anti-Catholicism when the details were leaked.
James II: the Catholic brother of Charles II. Violated the Test Act by appointing Roman Catholics to various positions and opening Catholic Churches. Yet, also granted religious freedom to all.
The Glorious Revolution
Called so because it replaced one king with another with barely any bloodshed.
James’s opponents in Parliament and the Church of England offered the English throne to his heir and Protestant daughter Mary + her Dutch husband Prince William of Orange.
James and his queen fled to France, so William and Mary were crowned.
Jacobites: supporters of James who rebelled in Scotland.
Battle of Boyne and Treaty of Limerick: sealed James’s ascension to power.
English Bill of Rights: Parliament made the law, and those laws couldn’t be suspended by the crown. They had to be called at least once every three years. The independence of the judiciary was established and there was to be no standing army during peacetime. No Catholic could ever inherit the throne. Protestants had freedom of worship, but not Catholics.
Thomas Hobbes: an English, secular Machiavellian and author of the Leviathan, advocating for a social contract in which all members of society placed themselves under the absolute rule of the sovereign, who would maintain peace and order. [Absolutist!]
John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government: a response to Thomas Hobbes. People had unalienable rights to life, liberty, and property. The government was to help protect those rights, and if it didn’t, then people had the right to rebel.
The Golden Age of the Dutch
The ‘Republic of the United Provinces of the Netherlands’, but it was more of an oligarchy.
The moral and ethical bases of the Dutch’s commercial success were thrift, frugality, and religious toleration.
They accepted Jews and put profit from their original industry – herring fishing – into shipbuilding. [Amazon Prime before Amazon Prime]
Radical thinkers found a home for their unorthodox philosophies in the Netherlands where they couldn’t elsewhere.
The powerful House of Orange usually held the office of stadholder (executive officer) in several of the seven provinces.
Dutch realism: reflected the interests of their burgher (business) society – portraits of themselves, group portraits of their military companies and guilds, landscapes, seascapes, genre scenes, still lives, and the interior of their residences (windows! 🪟)
Jan Vermeer: known for his intimate genre scenes—paintings that depict ordinary people and everyday life—and quiet cityscapes. [Girl with a Pearl Earring]
Rembrandt van Rijn: his portraits of his contemporaries, self-portraits, and illustrations of scenes from the Bible are regarded as his greatest creative triumphs. His 40 self-portraits form an intimate autobiography. [The Night Watch]
Baroque Art and Music
The word may have originated from a Portuguese word for an ‘odd shaped, imperfect pearl’ and was commonly used as an expression of scorn.
Dramatic, colorful, emotional, and monumental in size.
Originated from the Catholic Reformation – wanted art to appeal to the senses and touch the souls of the faithful + to proclaim power and confidence of the new & reformed Catholic Church.
Patrons (starting the papacy and the Jesuits) wanted artists to go beyond the Renaissance focus on pleasing a small, wealthy cultural elite.
Peter Paul Rubens: glorified monarchs such as Queen Mother Marie de’ Medici of France, painted Christian subjects, and also created ‘fleshy, sensual nudes’ of figures from Roman mythology and ‘remarkably voluptuous’ saints and angels.
Michelangelo Caravaggio: bad-boy 4th wall breaker who un-idealized various figures, notably religious ones.
Artemisia Gentileschi: known for her Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting and its feminist themes, namely its lack of a gag when everything else followed Cesare Ripa’s abstract idea of ‘painting’.
Diego Velázquez: unconventional, like literally everyone else at the time (???) [Las Meninas (POV: you are the king)]
Johann Sebastian Bach: organ music that ‘combined the baroque spirit of invention, tension, and emotion in an unforgettable striving toward the infinite’
Antonio Vivaldi: ‘pioneered many developments in orchestration, violin technique, and programmatic music’
George Frideric Handel: ‘well known for his operas, oratorios, anthems, concerti grossi, and organ concertos’