Chapter 15: Absolutism and Constitutionalism, ca. 1589-1725

Questions/Terms

Notes

1) What explains the rise of
absolutism in Prussia and Austria?

• Serfdom

• Holy Roman Empire

• Hapsburg (Austrian) Empire

• Bohemia

• Ferdinand III

• Hungary

• Vienna

• Schönbrunn

• Hohenzollern
  dynasty

• Frederick William
  (the “Great Elector)

• Prussia

• Junkers

• King in
  Prussia

• Frederick William
  I (the “Soldiers’
  King”)

• Prussian military

2) What were the distinctive
features of Russian and Ottoman absolutism?

• Russia

• Mongols

• Boyars

• Muscovy (Muscovite princes)

• Russian tsar

• Ivan IV (“the Terrible)

• Cossacks

• Romanov dynasty

• Peter the Great

• Great
  Northern War

• St.
  Petersburg

• Westernization/
  modernization

• Ottoman
  Empire

• Sultan

• Janissary
  corps

• Millet system

• Constantinople

• Suleiman
  the Magnificent

Intro/Context: 

• The most successful states with absolutism as the form of monarchical rule were Austria and Prussia → the rulers built on social and economic foundations different from how other rulers in Europe did. 

• Monarchs in Austria and Prussia allowed nobles to retain control over their peasants, a deal that left serfs at the mercy of lords.

The Return of Serfdom  

• Economic and social differences for peasants significant between western and eastern Europe → Black Death allowed peasants from western Europe to escape from serfdom, whereas in eastern Europe, noble lords restricted the right of their peasants to move away during the Black Death. 

• Declining productivity during the wars/crises of the 17th century led to worsening conditions for serfs → 1) regulations placed on serfs to stop them from running away, 2) lords took more of their peasants’ land and imposed harsher labor obligations, and 3) serfs required permission to marry.

1) Serfdom: a system of unfree labor in which serfs were bound to a lord’s land and had to provide labor, produce, and services in exchange for protection and the right to cultivate small plots for their own use → system used by eastern European lords that provided the basis for a successful absolutist monarchy. 

The Austrian Habsburgs 

1) Holy Roman Empire: Habsburgs attempted to turn this area into a real state, failed. 

1) Hapsburg (Austrian) Empire: emerged from the Thirty Years’ War impoverished and exhausted. Occupied the elected imperial throne from 1438-1740; motivated to turn away from imperial dominance to focus on inward/eastward unity. 

• Habsburgs made significant achievements in state-building by forging consensus with the church and nobility → a sense of common identity and loyalty to the monarchy grew among elites in Habsburg lands

1) Bohemia: Habsburgs won over this area during the Thirty Years’ War; → their victory allowed them to start to focus on unity than imperial dominance. 

• Habsburgs established direct rule over Bohemia with the Bohemian support of their new nobility → serfs/peasantry conditions worsened under their rule

• Serfs/peasants forced to work 3 days a week of unpaid labor. 

• Protestantism stamped out of this region due to the new Habsburg influence. 

1) Ferdinand III: (r. 1637-1657); continued to build state power for the Hapsburg Empire.

• He centralized the government in the empire’s German-speaking provinces

• Created a permanent standing army 

1) Hungary: a region where the Habsburg monarchy turned to so they could expand their absolutist power/unify the region; previously divided between the Ottomans and the Habsburgs in the early 16th century. 

• Habsburgs pushed the Ottomans out of Hungary into Transylvania 

• The former kingdom of Hungary was completed in 1718 

• Their military effectively prevented the full development of Habsburg absolutism → Hungarian nobles rose in revolt against attempts to impose absolutism. 

• With the Habsburgs bogged down in the War of Spanish Succession, the Hungarians rebelled against their attempt to enforce absolutism under Prince Francis Rakoczy → Defeated, but Habsburgs agreed to restore many traditions of the aristocracy if the Hungarians accepted hereditary Habsburg rule. 

• Hungary was never fully integrated into a centralized, absolute Habsburg state. 

1) Vienna: became the political and cultural center of the Habsburg empire; a thriving city with a population of 100,000 by 1700; had its own version of Versailles, the royal palace of Schönbrunn. 

1) Schönbrunn: Vienna’s version of the palace of Versailles → symbol of Vienna’s prosperity and success due to the Habsburg empire. 

Prussia in the Seventeenth Century

1) Hohenzollern dynasty: originated in the eastern portions of Charlemagne’s Frankish empire; rose to prominence in the 15th and 16th centuries. 

1) Frederick William (the “Great Elector):  one of the electors of Brandenburg; from the Hohenzollern family → had the privilege of being one of only 7 princes/archbishops entitled to elect the HRE emperor. 

• Determined to unify his 3 provinces and enlarge his holdings → these provinces were Brandenburg, Prussia, and scattered territories along the Rhine. 

• Profited from ongoing European war 

• Persuaded Junkers in the estates to accept taxation without consent in order to fund an army → Junkers agreed only if they had authority over the serfs 

• Tripled state revenue and expanded the army drastically during his reign. 

1) Prussia: inherited by the Hohenzollern dynasty in 1618; had its own estate and taxes could not be levied by the dynasty without their consent → dominated by the nobility and the landowning classes (Junkers). 

1) Junkers: landowning classes that dominated the estates of Brandenburg and Prussia. 

1) King in Prussia: Frederick I, the son of the “Great Elector” received permission to name himself this; NOT king OF Prussia, just king IN Prussia so that the supremacy of the emperor would not. be threatened. 

The Consolidation of Prussian Absolutism 

1) Frederick William I (the “Soldiers’ King”): (r. 1713-1740); completed his grandfather’s (The “Great Elector”) work by eliminating the last traces of parliamentary estates and local self-government.

• Truly established Prussian absolutism and transformed Prussia into a military state 

• Attracted to military life → always wore an army uniform and lived a highly disciplined life

• Built an efficient bureaucracy to administer the country and foster economic development 

1) Prussian military: great focus on military due to the “Soldiers’ King” and his efforts to improve the army; Prussia had the 4th largest army by 1740 despite only being 12th in European population size → considered one of the best in Europe due to its precision, skill, and discipline. 

• Prussians paid a heavy price for the obsessions of the “Soldiers’ King” → army expansion was achieved through forced enlistment, which was declared lifelong in 1713. 

• Prussian society became rigid and highly disciplined due to all of the men harnessed to the war effort. 

___________________________________________________

Intro/Context: 

• The expansion of Russia eastward was a result of the weakening Mongol Empire → after gaining independence from them, the rulers were able to create a vast empire.

• State-building and territorial expansion occurred under the reign of Peter the Great.

• The Ottoman Empire was more tolerant than its Western counterparts because it provided protection and security to other religions while still maintaining the Muslim faith. 

Mongol Rule in Russia and the Rise of Moscow

2) Russia: nation in eastern Europe; the long period of rule by the Mongol khan greatly influenced the rise of absolutist Russia. 

2) Mongols: a group of nomadic tribes from present-day Mongolia; established an empire that stretched from Korea to eastern Europe; forced the Slavic princes to submit to their rule for 200 years. 

• Great wealth and power accumulated from Mongol patronage → allowed the prince of Moscow to surpass rival local rulers because the Mongols showed favor to the princes of the Grand Duchy of Moscow 

2) Boyars: the highest-ranking nobles in Moscow → their loyalty helped the Muscovite princes consolidate their power. 

2) Muscovy (Muscovite princes): princes from Moscow who were able to legitimize their position in many different ways; Moscow had claims to the political and religious legacy of the Byzantine Empire → the princes of Moscow saw themselves as the heirs of the Byzantine caesars and guardians of the Orthodox Christian Church

2) Russian tsar: Russian monarchial title that fulfilled claims to absolute power to a much greater extent than western European monarchs had. 

Building the Russian Empire

2) Ivan IV (“the Terrible”): (r. 1533-1584); ascended to the throne at age 3, became “tsar of all Russia'“ at age 16 (the first Muscovite ruler to use this term) → developments in Russia took a turn for the worse once he ascended to the throne. 

• His wife’s sudden death caused him to launch persecutions against those he suspected opposed him → executed many boyars and their families and then replaced them with a new service nobility.  

• His reign was successful in defeating Mongol power and laying the foundations for the vast Russian Empire.

• Conquered the Muslim khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan 

• Less successful with expanding the empire to the west → Tried to secure Livonia, but led to war with Sweden and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Lithuania now wanted to formalize its ties to Poland. 

• Following his death, Russia entered a chaotic period known as the Time of Troubles (1598-1613) → breakdown of dynastic succession, severe famine (decreased population), civil war, and an uprising of Cossacks. 

2) Cossacks: a military class/group of warriors from Russia →More pressure placed on the serfs causing a growing number of peasants to flee toward recently conquered territories to the east and south, where they then joined the cossacks.

• Ivan responded by tying peasants ever more firmly to the land

• Ivan also ordered urban dwellers to be bound to their towns and jobs so that he could tax them more heavily. 

2) Romanov dynasty: started with Michael Romanov, grandnephew of Ivan’s wife, in 1613 who became the new hereditary tsar → this dynasty made several important achievements in territorial expansion and state-building

• Gained land to the west in Ukraine in 1667 

• Completed the conquest of Siberia and its people

• Basis of Russian wealth in Siberia was furs → state collected by forced annual tribute payments from locals; this profit funded expansion of Russian Empire

• Common people continued to struggle → 1649 law extended serfdom to all peasants in the realm and gave lords unrestricted rights over their serfs. 

The Reforms of Peter the Great

2) Peter the Great: heir to the Romanovs who reigned from 1682-1725; successfully created the Russian fiscal-military state → used military obligation and continued the tradition of territorial expansion. 

• Built Russia’s first navy base after conquering the Ottoman fort of Azov near the Black Sea (1696).

• He was interested by foreign technology, and wanted to create an anti-Ottoman alliance to strengthen Russia’s claims to the Black Sea 

• Engaged more than a hundred foreign experts to return with him to Russia to help him improve Russian infrastructure

• Allied with Denmark and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to wage war against Sweden so that Russian could gain access to the Baltic Sea → Sweden won the sudden war, marked the beginning of the Great Northern War

2) Great Northern War: war between Russia and Sweden from 1700-1721

• Peter increased Russian military power by 1) requiring all nobles to serve in the army/civil administration for life, 2) creating schools of navigation, mathematics, medicine, engineering, and finance, 3) establishing an interlocking military-civilian bureaucracy

• Peter also established a regular standing army of 200,000+ peasant-soldiers who were drafted for life 

• Peter funded the military by placing heavy taxes on the peasants 

• Peter’s new Russian army successfully crushed a Swedish army in Ukraine → Russian victory against Sweden in this war in 1721, Estonia and present-day Latvia now under Russian rule. 

2) St. Petersburg: a new Western-style capital on the Baltic that was the result of Russia’s victory in the Great Northern War → peasants constructed the city without pay, and many died in the process

• Merchants and artisans were required to settle here by command of Peter

2) Westernization/modernization: Peter encouraged the spread of Western culture along with technology and urban planning

• Peter required nobles to shave their beards and wear Western clothing (which was previously banned in Russia) 

• Peter ordered nobles to attend parties where young men and women would mix and freely choose their own spouses → new elite class of Western-oriented people emerging in Russia

• Peter’s reforms were disliked with many Russians → with that said, his modernization and westernizing of Russia paved the way for it to move closer to the European mainstream 

The Ottoman Empire

2) Ottoman Empire: Located in Anatolia (present-day Turkey); → one of the most powerful empires in the world in the mid-sixteenth century; stretched from western Persia across North Africa and into central Europe

• Built on the unique model of state and society 

2) Sultan: the ruler of the Ottoman Empire; he owned all the agricultural land of the empire and was served by an army and bureaucracy composed of highly trained enslaved people.

• Sultan’s agents obtained captives along the borders of the empire because Muslim law prohibited enslaving other Muslims → 1,000-3,000 male children on the conquered Christian populations from the Balkans were enslaved by the sultan; they were trained to become soldiers or government administrators 

• Claimed himself to be the leader of all Muslims

• Only had children with their concubines and not with their official wives so the elite families of their wives would not acquire influence over the government . 

2) Janissary corps: the core of the sultan’s army, composed of enslaved conscripts from non-Muslim parts of the empire; after 1683 it became a volunteer force.

• Ottomans now had a great advantage in war with western Europeans

2) Millet system: A system used by the Ottomans whereby subjects were divided into religious communities, with each millet (nation) enjoying autonomous self-government under its religious leaders.

2) Constantinople: (today’s Istanbul), the capital of the Ottoman Empire 

2) Suleiman the Magnificent: (1520-1566) undid the policies of the previous sultans when he married his concubine, a formerly enslaved woman from Ruthenia (today’s Ukraine) named Hurrem. → imperial wives beginning to take on more power