Mr.
Dunbar
AP
European History
Chapter
13: European State Consolidation in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
Chapter Overview
·
From the early seventeenth century through World
War II, no region so dominated the world politically, militarily, and economically
as Europe.
·
During this period, power shifted from the
Mediterranean area—where Spain and Portugal had taken a lead in the conquest
and early exploitation of the New World—to the states of northwest and later
north-central Europe.
·
Five major states, Great Britain, France,
Austria, Prussia, and Russia were the leading powers in Europe.
Section One: The Netherlands: Golden Age to Decline
·
Section
Overview
o
The United Provinces of the Netherland gained
independence from Spain in 1572 but continued to battle other European powers
like England and France throughout the second half of the 17th
century.
o
Prince William III of Orange (1650-1702), the
chief executive, or stadtholder, of
Holland which was the most important of the provinces, led the Dutch to victory
against France.
o
The Netherlands maintained a republican system
of government in which each of the provinces maintained a certain degree of
autonomy. The central government in the
Netherlands was known as the States General and met in the Hague but the Dutch
distrusted monarchy and honored the freedoms of the provinces.
o
Although the official religion of the
Netherlands was the Reformed Calvinist Church, the Dutch tolerated people of
all faiths including Roman Catholics and Jews.
·
Urban
Prosperity
o
The prosperous Dutch economy stemmed from high
urban consolidation, transformed agriculture, extensive trade and finance, and
an overseas commercial empire.
o
The Dutch drained and reclaimed land from the
sea which became very fertile and highly profitable soil for farming.
§
The Dutch imported grain which allowed farmers
to produce dairy products and beef and cultivate products like tulip bulbs.
o
Dutch fishermen caught and sold herring and
dominated the dried fish market in Europe.
o
Dutch manufacturers supplied textiles to the
people throughout Europe
o
Overseas trade and shipbuilding were the
foundations of the Dutch economy.
§
The Dutch East India Company (chartered in 1602)
sailed to areas of East Asia—like Java, Moluccas, and Sri Lanka—to participate
in the profitable trade of spices.
§
Although the Dutch initially only had commercial
interests in this region, they came to dominate the production of the spices
themselves which led them to colonize many of the islands that now form
Indonesia of which they maintained possession until after World War II.
·
Economic
Decline
o
When William III died in 1702, the provinces
resisted the rise of a strong stadtholder
and consequently unified political leadership vanished.
o
The Dutch lost naval supremacy which was passed
to Great Britain.
o
Countries between which the Dutch once carried
goods began trading directly with each other as other states developed
sophisticated shipbuilding technology.
o
The Dutch banks, however, maintained an
important position in the financing trade and the Amsterdam stock exchange
remained an important financial institution.
Section Two: Two Models of European
Political Development
·
Section
Overview
o
The United Provinces, like Venice and the Swiss
Confederacy, was a republic governed without a monarchy.
o
Elsewhere in Europe, monarchs ruled with varying
degrees of power.
·
Political Absolutism--France
o
Due to changes in warfare and increased expenses
of commercial centralized states, only monarchies that succeeded in building a
secure financial base that was not dependent on the support of nobles or
assemblies achieved absolute rule.
o
As we saw with the French Wars of religion,
noble families in France like the Bourbon, Valois, and Montmorency-Chatillons,
had significant military forces at their disposal but that drastically changed
when Louis XIII took power.
·
Parliamentary
Monarchy—England
o
Queen Elizabeth had established a strong central
monarchy in England and the Stuart monarchs who followed her sought to
establish the autocracy achieved by Louis XIV in France.
o
However, through the course of several events
like the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution, Parliament gained tremendous
power in England by the beginning of the eighteenth century.
Section Three: Constitutional Crisis and
Settlement in Stuart England
·
James I
o
King James IV of Scotland—the son of Mary, Queen
of Scots, succeeded the childless Elizabeth to the throne of England in 1602.
o
He strongly believed in the divine right of
kings and expected to rule with little consultation beyond his own royal court.
o
In place of parliamentary approved revenues,
James gained a new source of income when he levied new custom duties known as
impositions which Parliament felt violated their power of the purse.
o
Puritans wanted to destroy the hierarchical
organization of the Anglican Church and do away with the Episcopal system of
church governance under bishops appointed by the king with a more
representative Presbyterian form, but James refused to consider their ideas and
sought to enhance the Anglican episcopacy.
o
Many religious dissenters left England during
James’s reign and founded Plymouth Colony in North America where they could
freely practice.
o
The court of James had a scandalous reputation
due to the authority wielded by the duke of Buckingham who was not only rumored
to be James’s homosexual lover but also sold positions of rank to the highest
bidder which annoyed the nobles who believed this undermined their rank.
o
Many believed that James sought to
re-Catholicize England due to the peace he established with Spain, the fact
that he relaxed penal laws against Catholics, he did not rush to send troops to
defend the German Protestants at the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War, and he
arranged the marriage of his son, Charles, to Henrietta Maria, the Catholic daughter
of Henry IV of France.
o
In 1624, shortly before James’s death, England
again went to war with Spain largely in response to parliamentary pressures
·
Charles I
o
Although pressure from Parliament plunged Europe
into war with Spain, its members refused to allow Charles to raise taxes that
were needed to finance the war.
o
Charles decided to levy new tariffs and duties
and added a tax on property owners—which was called a forced loan which the
monarchy was theoretically supposed to repay—and imprisoned those who refused
to pay.
o
People in England were outraged when troops were
quartered in private homes.
o
Parliament met in 1623 and agreed to grant new
funds to Charles if he agreed to sign the Petition of Right that required no
forced loans or taxes without Parliament’s consent, that no freeman should be
imprisoned without due cause, and troops should not be quartered in private
homes.
o
Charles agreed to it but then dissolved
Parliament the next year in 1624 and did not recall it until 1640.
o
Years of Personal Rule
§
Charles ended his wars with France and Spain in
order to conserve money
§
His chief advisor, Thomas Wentworth, worked to
centralize the power of the monarchy and exploited every means possible to
impose new taxes.
§
In 1637, Charles—with the help of Archbishop
William Laud--attempted to impose the English episcopate system and prayer book
on Scotland in order to establish religious uniformity.
·
The Scots rebelled and Charles was forced to
call Parliament into session in 1640 in order to raise revenue to suppress the
rebellion.
·
Parliament refused to allocate more funds to
Charles and he immediately dissolved Parliament.
·
When the Scots defeated the English at the
Battle of Newburn, Charles reconvened Parliament for a long duration.
·
The Long
Parliament and Civil War
o
Enemies of Charles in Parliament
§
Landowners and merchants did not agree with his
financial measures and paternalistic rule.
§
Puritans in Parliament resented his religious
policies and distrusted his Catholic wife.
o
Parliament forces Charles to meet with them
continuously from 1640-1660
§
During this session the House of Commons
impeached Strafford and Laud and both were executed.
§
Parliament abolished the royal courts used to
enforce royal policy and prohibited the levying of new taxes without its
consent.
§
Religious issues divided Parliament
·
Both moderate Puritans (the Presbyterians) and
more extreme Puritans (the Independents) wanted to abolish bishops and the Book
of Common Prayer.
·
Religious conservatives, however, wanted to
preserve the Church of England in its current form.
§
Civil War Erupts
·
In 1641, Parliament was asked to raise revenue
in order to suppress the Scottish rebellion.
·
Parliament feared what the king would do if he
had an army at his disposal so they discussed making Parliament commander –in
–chief of the armed forces.
·
In January 1642, Charles invaded a meeting of
Parliament intent on arresting certain members who opposed his policies. Charles then left London to raise an army to
suppress the rebellious members of Parliament.
·
The House of Commons passed the Militia
Ordinance which gave Parliament the authority to raise an army of its own.
·
Fighting between the Roundheads (those who
supported Parliament) and the Cavaliers (those who supported the king) waged
war from 1642-1646.
·
Oliver
Cromwell and the Puritan Republic
o
Two factors led to Parliament’s victory over the
king
§
Parliament established an alliance with Scotland
in 1643 that committed Parliament to a Presbyterian system of church
government.
§
Oliver Cromwell, a country squire known for
discipline and his devout Puritan beliefs, took charge of the Roundhead army.
o
The Cavaliers were defeated militarily by June
of 1645, members of Parliament known to be sympathizers of Charles were
expelled from Parliament in December 1648, then on January 30—after a “special”
trial—Charles was executed.
o
Parliament abolished the monarchy, the House of
Lords, and the Anglican Church.
o
Cromwell rules England
§
From 1649 to 1660, England was a Puritan
republic although Cromwell dominated it.
§
Cromwell’s army brutally conquered Scotland and
Ireland where they carried out atrocities against Irish Catholics.
§
When the House of Commons suggested that
Cromwell disband his army of 50,000 men because it was expensive to maintain,
he disbanded Parliament and named himself Lord Protector of England which he
ruled by means of a military dictatorship.
§
The English people hated the strict Puritan
regulations against drunkenness, theatergoing, and dancing as political liberty
vanished for the sake of religious conformity.
§
When Cromwell died in 1658, the people of
England were ready to restore Anglicanism and the monarchy.
·
Charles
II and the Restoration of Monarchy
o
Charles II—the son of the beheaded Charles—was
asked by the leaders of England’s armed forces to return and take the throne.
o
Charles II took the throne in 1660 and
immediately restored England to the normalcy of 1642 with a hereditary monarch,
a Parliament of Lords and Commons that met only when summoned by the king, and
the Anglican Church.
o
Charles advocated religious toleration but
Parliament passed the Clarendon Code between 1661 and 1665 that excluded Roman
Catholics, Presbyterians, and the Independents from the official political and
religious life of the nation.
o
The Treaty of Dover (1670)
§
England and France formally entered an alliance
against the Dutch, their chief commercial competitor.
§
In a secret part of the treaty, Charles II
promised to announce his conversion to Catholicism as soon as conditions in
England allowed for it.
§
Louis XIV—the king of France—promised to pay
Charles II a substantial subsidy for his conversion to Catholicism.
o
Test Act
§
Parliament passed this measure to exclude Roman
Catholics from public service and, more importantly, to prevent the ascension
of James, duke of York and brother of Charles II, to the throne.
o
Popish Plot
§
In 1678, Titus Oates claimed that Charles’s
Catholic wife was plotting with Jesuits and Irishmen to kill the king so James
could assume the throne.
§
Parliament believed Oates and anti-Catholic
sentiment in Parliament, a group that became known as the Whigs who were led by
the earl of Shaftesbury, made an unsuccessful effort to exclude James from
succession to the throne.
o
Charles II grew suspicious of Parliament and was
able to rule from 1681 to 1685 without calling it into session.
§
He drove Shaftesbury into exile, executed
several Whig leaders, and bullied local corporations into electing members of
Parliament who would be submissive to the royal will.
§
When Charles II died in 1685—after a deathbed
conversion to Catholicism—he left James the prospect of a Parliament filled
with royal friends.
·
The
Glorious Revolution
o
King James II works to gain rights for Catholics
in England
§
He
immediately demanded the repeal of the Test Act.
§
James II issued the Declaration of Indulgence
·
permitted free worship in England
§
He imprisoned seven Anglican bishops who refused
to publicize his suspension of laws against Catholics.
§
These
actions attacked the local authority of nobles, landowners, the church, and
other corporate bodies whose members believed they possessed particular legal
privileges.
o
People of England hoped that James II would be
succeeded by Mary, his Protestant and eldest daughter.
§
Mary was the wife of William III of Orange, the
leader of European opposition to Louis XIV.
§
James II’s Catholic second wife gave birth to a
son and there was now a Catholic male heir to the throne.
§
Those opposed to James II—and Catholicism—in
Parliament invited William to invade England to preserve its “traditional
liberties” of Anglicanism and parliamentary government.
o
Glorious Revolution
§
William of Orange arrived with his army in
November 1688 and was received by the English people without significant
opposition.
§
James fled to France and in 1689 Parliament
named William III and Mary II the new monarchs, thus completing the bloodless
“Glorious Revolution.”
§
William and Mary agreed to recognize the Bill of
Rights that limited the powers of the monarchy and guaranteed the civil
liberties of the English privileged classes.
·
English monarchs would now be subject to the law
and would be ruled by the consent of Parliament which would be called into
session every three years.
·
The Bill of Rights prohibited Roman Catholics
from occupying the throne.
·
The Toleration Act of 1689 permitted worship by
all Protestants and outlawed only Roman Catholics and those who denied the
Christian doctrine of the Trinity.
o
Act of Settlement
§
This law sanctioned that the English crown be
passed to the Protestant House of Hanover in Germany if Anne, the second
daughter of James II and heir to the childless William III, died without issue.
§
At Anne’s death in 1714, the Elector of Hanover
became King George I of Great Britain since England and Scotland had been
combined in the Act of Union in 1707.
·
The Age
of Walpole
o
George I confronted an immediate challenge to
his title when James Edward Stuart, the Catholic son of James II, landed in
Scotland in December 1715 but met defeat in less than two months.
o
This conflict put the legitimacy of the Hanover
monarchy in flux until Sir Robert Walpole took over the helm of government.
o
Walpole was supported by George I and
experienced great success from 1721 to 1742 due to his ability to handle the
House of Commons and his control of government patronage.
o
Walpole maintained peace abroad and expanded
Great Britain’s commercial interest from New England to India.
o
Walpole’s policies encouraged nobles and other
landowners to serve as local government administrators, judges, military
commanders, and to collect and pay taxes to support a strong navy that would
protect Great Britain’s world empire.
o
Free speech and religious toleration
flourished during this period and British political life became the
model for all progressive Europeans who questioned absolutism.
Section Four--Rise of Absolute Monarchy in France: The World of Louis
XIV
·
Section
Overview
o
The French monarchy, which had faced numerous
challenges from strong, well armed nobles and discontented Protestants during
the first half of the seventeenth century, gradually gained firm authority by
the eighteenth century.
o
Two powerful chief ministers, Cardinal Richelieu
and Cardinal Mazarin, laid the groundwork for political absolutism in France.
o
Richelieu revoked many of the privileges that
had been granted to French Protestants through the Edict of Nantes.
o
A series of widespread rebellions among the
French nobles between 1649 and 1652 known as the Fronde was push back against the centralizing efforts of the
monarchy.
·
Years of
Personal Rule
o
When Mazarin died in 1661, Louis XIV took
personal control of France at the age of twenty-three and ruled until 1715.
o
Louis devoted tremendous personal energy to his
political tasks.
o
Louis ruled through councils that controlled
foreign affairs, the army, domestic administration, and economic regulations.
§
Louis appointed members of families who had long
histories of royal service and people just beginning to rise in the social
structure as they did not have the power base in the provinces—and present a
potential threat—like the ancient nobles.
o
Louis managed the nobility well by conferring
with regional judicial bodies, called parlements,
and consulting opinions before making rulings that would affect them.
§
Louis clashed with the Parlement of Paris in 1673 and required that it register laws
before raising questions about them.
·
Versailles
o
Louis and his advisors became masters of
propaganda and political image creation.
§
he dominated the nobility by proving he could
outspend them on social displays
o
Louis used the palace of Versailles to exert
political control.
o
Versailles, built between 1676 and 1708 on the
outskirts of Paris, was designed and decorated to proclaim the glory of the Sun
King, as Louis was known.
o
The palace housed thousands of the more
important nobles, royal officers, and servants; the nobles, in theory, grew
dependent upon the king.
o
Ritual and etiquette were very important at
Versailles and moments near the king were important to most court nobles who
were excluded from the real business of government.
·
King By
Divine Right
o
Louis was tutored as a child by the political
theorist Bishop Jacques-Benigne Bossuet who defended the notion of the “divine
right of kings.”
§
Medieval popes argued that only God could judge
a pope and Bossuet argued that only God could judge a king.
o
Louis allegedly once declared, “L’etat, c’est moi (“I am the state.”)
o
Louis’ absolutism applied to national interests
like the making of war or peace, the regulation of religion, and the oversight
of economic activity. Local institutions
retained their administrative authority.
o
Unlike the Stuart monarchs of England, Louis
firmly prevented the intervention of nobles and legislative bodies from
interfering with his authority on the national level.
·
Louis’s
Early Wars
o
Jean-Baptiste Colbert
§
Economic minister to Louis XIV
§
His financial programs made it possible for
Louis to raise and maintain a large and powerful army.
o
Louis’s goal was to secure international
boundaries for France.
§
Early wars with the Netherlands and Spain
·
War of Devolution—this war was fought by Louis
in order to support his first wife—Marie Therese—to inherit the Spanish
Netherlands.
o
Louis’s armies invaded Flanders and the
Franche-Comte and faced stiff opposition from an alliance of England, Sweden,
and the United Provinces of the Netherlands.
o
By the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, Louis gained
control of certain towns bordering the Spanish Netherlands.
·
Louis invaded the Netherlands again in 1672 in
which he faced a coalition of Netherlands, the Holy Roman Empire, Spain,
Lorraine, and Brandenburg.
o
The war ended inconclusively with the Peace of
Nijmwegen, signed with different parties in successive years; France gained
more territory by the provisions of this treaty including the Franche-Comte.
·
Louis’s
Repressive Religious Policies
o
Section Overview
§
Louis believed that political unity and stability
required religious conformity.
o
Suppression of the Jansenists
§
Traditionally, the French Roman Catholic Church
enjoyed “Gallican Liberties” from papal authority in Rome but after the
conversion of King Henry IV to Catholicism, the Jesuits in France—who were
fiercely loyal to the Catholic Church—monopolized the education of French
upper-class men.
·
Jesuits served as confessors to Henry IV, Louis
XIII, and Louis XIV.
§
A Roman Catholic religious movement known as Jansenism arose in the 1630s in
opposition to the political influence of the Jesuits.
·
Jansenists followed the teachings of Saint
Augustine which had also influenced many Protestant doctrines.
o
They believed—like Augustine—that human beings
had been so corrupted by original sin and could do nothing good nor contribute
anything to their own salvation.
o
Jansenists, although devoutly Roman Catholic,
lived austere and pious lives quite like the Puritans in England, and like the
Puritans they became associated with opposition to royal authority.
§
Jansenists families were associated with the
Fronde.
o
Cornelius Jansen was the founder of the movement
and published Augustinius
which
condemned Jesuit teaching on grace and salvation as morally lax.
§
On May 31, 1653, Pope Innocent X declared
certain Jansenists teachings heretical and
banned Jansen’s Augustinius.
·
Louis permitted the papal bull banning
Jansenists and therefore turned his back
on the traditional Gallican Liberties of the French Church which fostered
opposition to royal authority within the French Church.
§
During the 18th century—after the
death of Louis XIV—the Parlement of Paris and other judicial bodies in France
reasserted their authority in opposition to the monarchy.
o
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes
§
Tension between the Catholic majority (90%) and Protestants
in France remained high in the years following the issuance of the Edict of
Nantes in 1598.
·
There were approximately 1.75 million Huguenots
out of a total population of 18 million
·
The French Catholic Church encouraged the
persecution of Huguenots claiming it was a patriotic duty.
§
Madame de Maintenon, mistress and eventually
second wife of Louis XIV, was a devout Catholic and expected the same from
Louis.
§
Louis started a systematic eradication of
Huguenots from public life by banning them from government office and excluded
them from certain professions like printing and medicine; furthermore, he
burdened them by quartering troops in their towns.
§
In October 1685, Louis revoked the Edict of
Nantes and significantly limited the rights of Protestants in France.
·
Protestant churches and schools were closed.
·
Protestant ministers were exiled.
·
Non-converting laity were condemned to be galley
slaves.
·
Protestant children were baptized by Catholic
priests.
§
Louis oppression of Protestants in France
signified that he was a fanatic and France became a symbol of repression in
contrast to England’s moderate –if not complete—religious toleration.
·
Louis’s
Later Wars
o
The League of Augsburg and the Nine Years’ War
§
Louis attempted to expand the national
boundaries of France and in 1681 sent his forces to occupy the free city of
Strasbourg on the Rhine River.
§
The League of Augsburg formed to stop French
aggression and was comprised of a coalition of English, Spanish, Swedish,
German, and Dutch troops who fought a series of battles against France between
1689 and 1697 in what was known as the Nine Years’ War.
§
The Peace of Ryswick ended the war and it
secured Holland’s borders and prevented Louis’s expansion into Germany.
o
War of Spanish Succession
§
Background
·
On November 1, 1700, the last Habsburg king of
Spain, Charles II, died without direct heirs but before he died, however, he
left his entire inheritance to Louis’s grandson Philip of Anjou, who became
Philip V of Spain.
·
Philip was the grandson of Charles’ sister Maria
Theresa and Louis XIV and it looked as though Spain had fallen into French
hands.
·
In 1701, England, Holland, and the Holy Roman
Empire assembled the Grand Alliance to preserve the balance of power in Europe.
§
War of Spanish Succession
·
France entered this war poorly equipped and
without adequate finances or skilled generals.
·
England, conversely, had advanced weapons
(flintlock rifles, paper cartridges, and ring bayonets) and superior tactics
(thin, maneuverable troop columns rather than traditional deep ones)
·
John Churchill, the English duke of Marlborough,
defeated Louis’s soldiers at every major battle.
·
France made peace with England at Utrecht in
July 1713.
o
Philip V remained king of Spain but renounced
his place in the line to the throne in France which prevented the union of the
two major powers.
o
England was given control of Gibraltar and the
island of Minorca.
o
Louis recognized the right of the House of
Hanover to the English throne.
·
France
After Louis XIV
o
Section Overview
§
Despite its loss in the War of Spanish
Succession, France remained a great power.
§
Louis XIV was succeeded by his five-year-old
great grandson Louis V whose uncle, the duke of Orleans, became regent and
remained so until his death in 1720.
§
The regency of the duke of Orleans was marked by
moral and financial scandals which decreased the prestige of the French
monarchy.
o
John Law and the Mississippi Bubble
§
John Law’s Economic Reforms
·
The duke of Orleans was a gambler and for a time
he turned over the financial management of France to John Law, a Scottish
mathematician and fellow gambler.
·
John set up a national bank in Paris and printed
money in order to increase the amount in circulation and stimulate the economy.
·
Law also organized a monopoly called the
Mississippi Company on trading privileges with the French colony of Louisiana.
·
The Mississippi Company took over the management
of France’s debt and issued shares of its own stock in exchange for government
bonds which had fallen sharply in value.
·
The stocks soared in value and investors sold them
for paper money which they wanted to exchange for gold but the French bank
lacked the gold to pay out.
·
Law was forced to flee France and this affair
became known as the Mississippi Bubble.
o
Renewed Authority of the Parlements
§
Orleans weakened the monarchy in France by
drawing the nobility back into the decision-making processes of the government.
·
He set up a system of councils on which nobles
served but the experiment proved to be a failure since the nobility seemed to
lack the talent and desire to govern.
·
Despite their inadequacies, the nobility
continued to assert their ancient privileges and local influence over the
monarchy.
§
Orleans reversed the policy of Louis XIV and
reinstituted the full power of the Parlement.
·
Parlement became a vehicle for resistance to the
monarchy in France and the general public became increasingly interested in
curbing royal authority.
·
Cardinal Fleury became a leader in Parlement and
worked to preserve the authority of the monarchy while also preserving the
local interest of the French nobility.
o
Fleury is often compared to Walpole in England
because he pursued economic prosperity at home and tried to avoid war abroad.
Section Five: Central and Eastern Europe
·
Section
Overview
o
Central and eastern Europe were economically
much less advanced than western Europe; except for the Baltic ports, the
economy was agrarian and rulers possessed large estates with a peasant
workforce.
o
Political authorities east of the Elbe River
were weak and constantly warring and shifting allegiances between princes and
aristocracies and refused to subordinate themselves to a central monarchical
authority.
o
During the last half of the seventeenth century,
three dynasties emerged in this area—the Hohenzollerns in Prussia, Russia under
the Romanov family, and the Habsburgs in Austria—and would dominate central and
eastern Europe until the end of World War I in 1919.
·
Poland:
Absence of Strong Central Authority
o
In 1683, King John III Sobieski led a Polish
army to rescue Vienna from a Turkish siege but following this event Poland
became a symbol for the dangers of aristocratic independence.
o
The Polish monarchy was elective but distrust
among themselves usually led to the election of an outside power to the throne.
o
The Polish central legislative body was known as
the Sejm, or diet, and included only
nobles and specifically excluded representatives from corporate bodies like
towns.
§
The Sejm
followed a practice known as liberum veto
in which one member who staunchly opposed a piece of legislation could prevent
it from passing; this created a major block to effective governing.
o
The price of noble liberty and the absence of a
strong central government led to the disappearance of Poland from the map of
Europe in the late eighteenth century.
·
The
Habsburg Empire and the Pragmatic Sanction
o
The end of the Thirty Years’ War marked a
turning point in the history of the Austrian Habsburgs who had previously been
aligned with the Spanish Habsburgs—their cousins.
§
The Austrian Habsburgs hoped to bring all of the
German states under their control and back to the Catholic fold in which they
failed and could no longer rely on the Spanish Habsburgs for support since
Spain’s power dropped significantly in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries.
o
Austrian Habsburg’s land and power
§
Retained hold of the title Holy Roman Emperor
due to their network of connections and skill in diplomacy.
§
Began to consolidate their power outside the
Holy Roman Empire which included the kingdom of Bohemia and the duchies of
Moravia and Silesia; and the crown of Saint Stephen which ruled Hungary,
Croatia, and the Transylvania.
§
The Treaty of Rastatt (which was part of the
Treaty of Utrecht) gave the Austrian Habsburgs control of part of the
Netherlands and Lombardy in northern Italy.
o
Habsburg lands were so diverse and included
people of so many different cultures and language that it was difficult to
establish any sort of unity.
o
Despite the disunity, Leopold I—the Habsburg
Holy Roman Emperor and King of Bohemia—was able to defend Habsburg lands
against Turkish aggression and defeated the Turks when they laid siege on
Vienna.
§
Following this victory, the Habsburgs took
control of much of the Balkan Peninsula and made gains in Romania at the
expense of the Ottoman Empire.
o
The Habsburgs developed the port of Trieste on
the northern coast of the Adriatic Sea and turned it in to a profitable port
for trade.
o
The grandson of Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor
Charles VI, feared for the dynastic survival of the Habsburg power because he
did not have a son, and therefore worked to pass legislation to ensure that
local nobles did not swallow up Habsburg lands when he died.
§
Pragmatic Sanction
·
This was Charles VI’s plan to have his daughter,
Maria Theresa, inherit his land and title.
·
Charles worked vigorously throughout his life to
get his family, other European monarchs, and nobles to recognize Maria Theresa
as his rightful heir.
o
Despite the Pragmatic Solution, less than two
months after the death of Charles VI, Frederick II of Prussia invaded the
Habsburg province of Silesia in eastern Germany.
·
Prussia
and the Hohenzollerns
o
Section Overview
§
The Hohenzollern family had ruled the
principality of Brandenburg since 1415 and in the seventeenth century added the
duchy of Cleves, and the counties of Mark and Ravensburg, East Prussia, and
Pomerania.
·
By the end of the seventeenth century, only the
Habsburgs possessed more territory than the Hohenzollerns within the Holy Roman
Empire.
§
Frederick William—who became known as the Great
Elector—established himself as the central unifying power in central Europe by
breaking down local noble estates, establishing an efficient bureaucracy, and
building a strong army.
§
Frederick’s relationship with the nobility
·
Frederick William demanded obedience from the Junkers—as the German landlords were
known—but in exchange allowed them to demand obedience from serfs.
·
He appointed nobles to positions in which they
administered the collection of taxes and thereby co-opted potential rivals into
his service.
·
Junkers
were also appointed to leadership positions in the military and were required
to pledge an oath of loyalty directly to Frederick.
§
Frederick I was the son of Frederick William who
was known for being the least “Prussian” of the Hohenzollerns because he built
palaces, founded Halle University, patronized arts, and lived luxuriously.
·
Frederick I sent his army to assist the
Habsburgs during the War of Spanish Succession and was rewarded by Holy Roman
Emperor Leopold I who allowed Frederick I to take the title “King in Prussia.”
§
Frederick William I—successor to Frederick
I—worked tirelessly to build the Prussian military which grew from about 39,000
in 1713 to over 80,000 in 1740, making it the third or fourth largest army in
Europe.
·
The officer corps became the highest social
class in the Prussian state.
·
Military priorities and values dominated
Prussian society, government, and daily life.
·
Frederick William I used his powerful army to
symbolize the power of Prussia but rarely put it to use.
§
Frederick II—the son of Frederick William I—took
control of Prussia and immediately upset the Pragmatic Sanction by invading
Silesia which fostered the Austrian-Prussian rivalry for control of Germany
that would dominate central European affairs for more than a century.
Section Six: Russian Enters the European Political Arena
·
Section
Overview
o
Russia did not emerge as a power in Europe until
the late seventeenth century.
o
Politically and geographically, it lay on the
periphery and never emerged as a major commercial power because it lacked
consistent access to warm-water ports.
·
The
Romanov Dynasty
o
Background
§
Ivan IV (1533-1584)—later known as Ivan the
terrible—underwent a personality change that transformed him from a sensible
political leader into a tyrant who ruled through violence and oppression.
§
A period
known as the “Time of Troubles” followed the death of Ivan.
o
Romanov Dynasty
§
Michael Romanov
·
In an effort to end the “Time of Troubles”, in
1613 a group of Russian nobles elected as tsar a seventeen-year-old boy named
Michael Romanov whose dynasty would rule Russia until 1917.
·
Michael Romanov and his two successors—Aleksei
and Theodore—brought some centralization to Russia but the boyars, the old nobility, still retained a lot of bureaucratic
power and the streltsy, or guards of
the Moscow garrison remained a threat to mutiny against the tsar.
§
Peter the Great
·
Problems with succession
o
He and his half brother, Ivan V, were appointed
co-rulers of Russia and there rise to leadership was supported by the streltsy who expected to be rewarded for
their support.
o
Violence and bloodshed surrounded their
succession.
o
Sophia, sister of Ivan and Peter, was named
regent temporarily as Peter’s followers overthrew her power.
·
Peter took personal control of Russia in 1689
and established two goals.
o
First, to rid the tsar of the threat of the
jealousy of the boyars and the greed
of the streltsy.
o
Second, increase Russian military power.
·
Peter traveled to northwestern Europe in 1697.
o
He inspected shipyards, docks, and warehouses
where weapons were produced.
·
Peter returned to Russia to find that the streltsy had rebelled.
o
Peter surpressed the rebellion by murdering and
torturing an estimated one thousand conspirators.
·
Building a powerful military
o
He drafted about 130,000 men into the Russian
army during the first half of the eighteenth century and nearly 300,000 by the
end of his reign.
·
Peter tames the boyars by personally shaving of their long beards and the long
sleeves of their shirts and coats which made them the target of jokes
throughout the royal courts of western Europe.
§
Peter developed a navy starting in the 1690s
·
The purpose of a navy was to defend Russia’s
interests in the Black Sea against the Ottoman Empire.
o
Russia and the Ottoman Empire went to war in
1695 and Peter’s navy captured the Ottoman port of Azov on the Black Sea.
·
The navy was also used to fight against Sweden
in the Baltic Sea that went on for many years.
§
Russian Expansion in the Baltic Sea: The Great
Northern War
·
Following the Thirty Years’ War, Sweden
consolidated its power in the Black Sea which prevented Russia from having a
port on it and also only allowed Germany and Poland access to it on Swedish
terms.
·
The Great Northern War tool place between 1700
and 1721 between Sweden—led by King Charles XII—and Russia.
·
Sweden won many of the early battles including
the Battle of Narva in 1700.
·
By 1709, momentum had shifted to Russia as
Peter’s military defeated Sweden at the Battle of Poltava in Ukraine after
which Russia dominated the war.
·
The Peace of Nystad ended the war in 1721 which
confirmed that Russia’s conquest of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania which
secured it access to warm water ports.
§
Founding St. Petersburg
·
Peter constructed St. Petersburg—a new capital
city of Russia—on the Gulf of Finland where he built structures for government
affairs and encouraged the boyars to
construct townhouses.
·
St. Petersburg symbolized a new western
orientation for Russia and Peter’s determination to hold his possession of the
Baltic coast.
§
The Case of Peter’s Son Aleksei
·
Aleksei had been born to Peter’s first wife whom
he divorced in 1698.
·
In 1716, Aleksei traveled to Vienna where he met
with Habsburg emperor Charles VI and discussed a plot to overthrow Peter.
·
Peter’s informants learned of the planned
conspiracy and Peter personally carried out the interrogation of his son in
1718.
·
Aleksei died under mysterious circumstances on
June 26, 1718.
§
Reforms of Peter the Great’s Final Years
·
Due to fears that emerged as a result of
Aleksei’s failed conspiracy, Peter worked to bring the nobility and the Russian
Orthodox Church more closely under the authority of persons loyal to the tsar.
§
Administrative Colleges
·
Peter copied the Swedish system of
administrative colleges which were bureaus of several persons operating
according to written instructions rather than departments headed by a single
minister.
·
He created eight colleges to oversee matters
such as the collection of taxes, foreign relations, war, and economic affairs.
§
Table of Ranks
·
This system equated a person’s social position
and privileges with rank in the bureaucracy or military, rather than with his
lineage among the traditional landed nobility.
§
Achieving Secular Control of the Church
·
After some bishops had sympathized with Peter’s
son, in 1721 Peter simply abolished the Patriarch, the bishop who had been the
head of the Russian Orthodox Church.
·
Peter established a government department called
the Holy Synod which consisted of
several bishops headed by a layman, called the procurator general.
·
The Holy Synod
was expected to rule the church in accordance with the tsar’s secular
requirements.
§
Peter died without a successor which caused
soldiers and nobles to determine who ruled Russia for the next thirty years
after his death.
Section Seven: Religious Toleration and the Ottoman Government
·
Section
Overview
o
The Ottoman Empire dominated politics in the
Muslim world as it controlled much of the Middle East including the important
cities of Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem.
o
The Ottoman Empire granted subjects like Roman
Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and Jews much religious toleration.
o
The government was ruled through units called
millets of officially recognized religious communities.
o
Dhimmis were non-Islamic people who were
tolerated by law could practice their religion and manage their internal
communities through their own religious officials but they were considered
second class citizens and were generally unable to rise in the service of the
empire.
§
Dhimmis paid a special poll tax, could not serve
in the military, and were prohibited from wearing certain clothes.
§
Many dhimmis achieved economic prosperity
through commerce but the Ottomans never developed skills required to nurture a
growing commercial economy because the government discouraged interaction among
the different groups within the empire.
o
The practice of devshirme called for Ottoman sultans to rely on people who would be
loyal directly to them in order to serve as elite troops in the military. Therefore, sultans systematically recruited
many young men and boy Christians from the Balkans.
§
There young men were raised as Muslims and were
organized into elite military infantry units; the most famous of these units
were called Janissaries.
o
In contrast to Europe, few people from the
socially leading families gained military, administrative, or political
experience in the central institutions of the empire.
·
The Role of the Ulama
o
Islamic religious authorities played a
significant role in the political, legal, and administrative life of the
empire.
o
The dynasty saw itself as a defender of Shari’a, or Islamic law, and the Sunni
traditions of Islam.
o
Ulama and the Ottoman state administration
worked together to create policies and make decisions that were in accord with
Islamic law.
o
The Ulama encouraged the Ottoman sultans to
conform to traditional like even as the empire was confronted by a rapidly
changing and modernizing Europe.
·
The End of Ottoman Expansion
o
From the fifteenth century onward, the Ottoman
Empire had tried to push westward into Europe.
o
The Ottoman army launched its most aggressive
assault on Europe in 1683 when it unsuccessfully laid siege to Vienna.
o
Gradually squabbles between the vizier—second in
charge to the sultan—and sultans created a lot political instability throughout
the Muslim world.
o
Local political elites started to assert their
own authority over their regions which the Ottoman Empire allowed in
Transylvania, Wallachia, Moldavia, Egypt, Algeria, and Tunisia, but they were
required to pay tribute to the central government.
o
European merchants no longer used the Ottomans
as middlemen in trade with Asia which caused major economic recession by the
late seventeenth century.
o
The Ottomans battled a coalition of Austria,
Venice, Malta, Poland, and Russia to whom the loss a series of battles.
§
Treaty of Carlowitz: ended the wars between the
Ottomans and European powers that required the Ottomans to surrender most of
Hungary to the Habsburgs.
·
European intellectuals began to view the once
feared Ottoman Empire as a declining power and Islam as a backward-looking
religion.
Mr. Dunbar
AP European History
Chapter 15: Society and Economy Under the Old Regime in the
Eighteenth Century Outline
Chapter Overview
·
During the French Revolution and the turmoil
that spawned from it, it became common to refer to the patterns of social,
political, and economic relationships that had existed in France before 1789 as
the Old Regime.
·
The term Old Regime applies specifically to the
system of government known as political absolutism with the growing
bureaucracies and aristocratically led armies.
·
Economically, scarcity of food, the predominance
of agriculture, slow travel, a low level of iron production, comparatively
unsophisticated financial institutions, and, in some cases, competitive
overseas empires characterized the Old Regime.
·
Men and women of this time did not see
themselves as individuals, but rather as members of distinct corporate bodies
that possessed certain privileges or rights as a group.
Section
One: Major Features of Like in the Old
Regime
·
Section
Overview
o
Pre-revolutionary Europe can be described by
four distinct features
§
Aristocratic elites possessing a wide variety of
inherited legal privileges
§
Established churches intimately linked with the
state and aristocracy
§
an urban labor force usually organized in guilds
§
a rural peasantry subject to high taxes and
feudal dues
·
Maintenance
of Tradition
o
Social Traditions
§
Few people—other than those involved in finance
and government—considered change or innovation desirable in Europe during the
eighteenth century.
·
Nobles demanded the restoration of legal
privileges that they believed were being swept away by the growing monarchical
bureaucracies.
·
Peasants called for the restoration of their
customary rights—through petitions and revolts—that allowed them to access
particular lands, courts, or grievance procedures.
o
Economic Traditions
§
Except for early industrial development in
Britain, the eighteenth century economy was predominately traditional as it was
primarily based on agriculture.
·
Hierarchy
and Privilege
o
Medieval sense of rank and degree became more
rigid in the eighteenth century.
§
For example, in several continental cities, laws
regulating the dress of the different classes remained on the books.
o
Each state or society was considered a community
composed of several smaller communities.
§
People did not enjoy “individual rights” but
instead were given rights and privileges guaranteed to the particular community
of which he or she was a part.
·
The “community” might include the village, the
municipality, the nobility, the church, the guild, university, or parish and
the members of each group were granted certain “communal” rights.
Section Two: The Aristocracy
·
Section
Overview
o
The eighteenth century was the age of the
aristocracy as they constituted 1 to 5 percent of a given countries population
and were also the wealthiest sector of the population, had the widest degree of
social, political, and economic power, and set the tone for polite society.
o
Land provided the aristocracy with its largest
source of income, but aristocrats also participated in social and other areas
of economic life.
o
However, in Great Britain and France, the
nobility helped to foster innovation and embraced the commercial spirit which
helped protect their wealth and gave them common interest with the commercial
classes who were also eager to see the economy grow.
·
Varieties
of Economic Privilege—To be an aristocrat was a matter of birth and legal
privilege and the aristocracy throughout Europe held this in common; however,
in almost every other respect, the differed markedly from country to country.
o
British Nobility
§
Smallest, wealthiest best defined, and most
socially responsible aristocracy in Europe
§
Consisted of about 400 families and eldest male
members or each family sat in the House of Lords
·
“peerage”—the right to sit in the House of Lords
and to inherit a father’s land was reserved for the eldest son
·
Younger sons, therefore, worked in commerce, the
army, and the church
§
Nobles owned about one-fourth of the fertile
land in England but also invested in commerce, canals, urban real estate,
mines, and even industrial ventures.
§
Landowners, in both houses, levied taxes and
also paid taxes.
§
Although the British aristocracy technically had
few privileges, their direct or indirect control of local governments gave them
far-reaching political powers and influence.
o
French Nobility
§
The nearly 400,000 members of the French
nobility were divided into distinct groups
·
Nobles of the “sword”—those whose nobility was
derived from military service
·
Nobles of the “robe”—those who had acquired
their titles either by serving in the bureaucracy or by having purchased them.
§
French nobles were also divided between those
who held favor with the monarch’s court at Versailles and those who did not.
·
By the late 18th century,
appointments to the church, the army, and the bureaucracy tended to go to
nobles closely aligned with the king’s court.
§
Hobereaux,
or provincial nobility, in France were often little better off than wealthy
peasants.
§
All French aristocrats were exempt from taxes.
·
aristocrats did not pay the taille, or land tax
·
they were liable for the payment of the vingtieme, or the “twentieth”, which
resembled an income tax, but they rarely had to pay it in full
·
they were not liable for the corvees—forced labor on public works
o
Eastern European Nobilities
§
Poland
·
Military traditions of the aristocracy remained
significant
·
Polish nobles were called szlachta and they were entirely exempt from taxes after 1741.
·
Until 1768, the Polish nobility had the right of
life and death over their serfs.
·
Most of the Polish nobles were poor and the few
who had wealth exercised political power in the fragile Polish state.
§
Austria and Hungary
·
nobility possessed broad judicial authority over
the peasantry through manorial courts.
·
enjoyed varying degrees of exemption from taxes
·
Prince Esterhazy of Hungary was the wealthiest
who owned ten million acres of land.
§
Prussia
·
After the accession of Frederick the Great in
1740, the position of the Junker nobles became much stronger.
o
Frederick fought in several wars and recruited
his generals almost exclusively from the Junker nobles.
o
Prussian nobles were given extensive judicial
authority over the serfs.
o
Nobles increasingly made up the Prussian
bureaucracy.
§
Russia
·
Eighteenth century saw the creation of the
Russian nobility which was based on state service as outlined in the Table of
Ranks
·
Russian nobles developed a self-conscious class
identity that had not previously existed.
·
Russian nobles resist mandatory public service
o
In 1736, Empress Anna reduced state service to
25 years
o
In 1762, Peter III exempted the greatest nobles
entirely from service
o
In 1785, Catherine the Great legally defined the
rights and privileges of nobles entirely in exchange for the assurance that the
nobility would serve the state voluntarily
·
Russian noble privileges included:
o
transmitting noble status to a nobleman’s wife
and children
o
the judicial protection of noble rights and
property
o
considerable power over the serfs
o
exemption from personal taxes
·
Aristocratic
Resurgence
o
Aristocratic
resurgence is a term applied to
the European-wide reaction by the nobility to maintain their status amidst the
threat of expanding power of the monarchs.
§
Nobles did four major things to protect their
privileges
·
tried to preserve their exclusiveness by making
it more difficult to become noble
·
sought to reserve appointments to high positions
in the military, senior posts in the bureaucracies and government ministries,
and the upper ranks of the church exclusively for nobles.
·
Nobles used the authority of existing
institutions like British Parliament and French courts, or parlements, and provincial diets in Germany and the Habsburg Empire
to prevent the spread of absolutism.
·
Nobles worked to improve its financial position
by gaining further exemptions from taxation and also imposing long-forgotten
feudal dues on the peasantry.
Section Three:
The Land and Its Tillers
·
Section
Overview
o
Land was the basis of status and power of the
nobility
o
Other than the nobility, most of the rural
population was dreadfully poor.
·
Peasants
and Serfs
o
Rural social dependency
§
England’s agricultural work force was made up of
tenants, or a free peasantry.
·
All farmers and tenants in England had the legal
rights of citizens.
§
Most French agricultural workers were also tenants.
§
Serfs of Germany, Austria, and Russia were
legally bound to a particular plot of land and a particular lord and were also
subjected to high taxation.
o
Obligation of Peasants
§
French peasants
·
most owned land, but there were some serfs in
eastern France
·
banalties
were feudal dues that the French peasantry was forced to pay
o
peasants paid to use the lord’s mill to grind
grain and oven to bake bread
o
the corvee required peasants to labor a
certain number of days each year for the lord
§
Prussia and Austria
·
Although monarchs in the late eighteenth century
worked to improve the lives of the serfs, the local landlords in these regions
continued to exercise almost complete control over them.
·
In Habsburg lands, law and custom required serfs
to provide service, or robot, to the
lords.
§
Russia
·
Wealth and status in Russia depended largely on
the number of serfs one owned and, therefore, lords regarded serfs as
commodities.
·
barshchina—right
of Russian lords to demand six days of work from their serfs.
·
Lords had the right to punish serfs and even
exile them to Siberia
·
There was little difference between Russian
serfdom and slavery.
§
Ottoman Empire
·
peasants were free but landlords attempted to
assert authority over them
·
cift—Turkish
word used to describe the lord’s domain
·
Turkish landlords became more commercially
oriented and began to produce crops like cotton, vegetables, potatoes, and
maize that they could sell on the market.
·
scarcity of labor in Ottoman lands gave the
peasantry maneuverability to go from lord’s land to another demanding better
treatment and wages
·
Disorder in the 17 and 18th centuries
that originated in Constantinople gave the lords an opportunity to increase
their authority as peasants needed the fortified manor houses of the lords for
protection from raids by bandits.
·
Landlords owned all the housing and tools that
peasants needed to sow their crops.
o
Peasant Rebellions
§
Russia experienced a lot of peasant unrest and
there were over fifty peasant revolts between 1762 and 1769.
·
Pugachev’s Rebellion (1773-1775)
o
Emelyan Pugachev promised the serfs land of
their own and freedom from their lords
o
All southern Russia was in turmoil until the
government brutally suppressed the rebellion
§
Smaller peasant revolts occurred in Bohemia in
1775, in Transylvania in 1784, in Moravia in 1786, and in Austria in 1789.
§
There were almost no revolts in western Europe.
Section Four:
Aristocratic Domination in the Countryside—The English Game Laws
·
Section
Overview
o
Aristocrats in the English countryside
manipulated English legislation on hunting by claiming the exclusive right to
hunt game animals such as deer, and birds such as hares, partridges, pheasants,
and moor fowl.
§
Only persons possessing a particular amount of
property could hunt these animals
o
Reasons for excluding different social groups
from hunting
§
Nobles believed it would impact the work out-out
of peasants
§
City merchants were excluded because the nobles
wanted their exclusion to act as a visible sign of their social inferiority to
the landed aristocracy
o
Peasant response to game laws
§
many rural poor ignored game laws as they
believed the game belonged to the community
o
Demand for black market meat in the cities
§
Many poachers turned their hunting into a
business as the sold their game for sale.
§
higglers
were merchants who operated illegal enterprises by purchasing stolen meat from
the countryside and villages
Section
Five: Family Structures and the Family
Economy
·
Section
Overview
o
The household in pre-Industrial Europe was the
basic unit of production and consumption.
o
The household mode of organization predominated
on the farms, in artisan’s workshops, and in small merchant shops.
o
This system became known as the family economy.
·
Households
o
Households in northwestern Europe
§
Who comprised the household in northwestern
Europe?
·
Consisted of a married couple, their children
through the early teenage years, and their servants.
·
Households usually consisted of 5-6 members
·
Due to high mortality and late marriage,
grandparents rarely survived to live under the same roofs as their
grandchildren.
·
Family structure was nuclear, rather than
extended
§
Childhood
·
Children lived with their parents until their
early teens when they would typically leave home to find work as young servants
and would live in their master’s household.
·
A child of a skilled artisan may stay at home to
learn a valuable skill.
§
Neolocalism—the process of moving away from
home.
·
Young people married relatively late in the
eighteenth century as men were generally around the age of 26 , and women over
the age of 23
·
Couples usually had children soon after they
married.
·
Premarital sexual relations were common
§
Servants in pre-industrial Europe
·
A servant in the eighteenth century was a man or
woman, usually young, who was hired to work for the head of a household in
exchange for room, board, and wages.
·
Normally, a servant sat with the family at
dinner and became an integral part of the family.
·
Working as a servant for 8-10 years gave young
men and women an opportunity to save their wages to start their own households.
o
Households in Eastern Europe
§
Early marriage
·
Both men and women usually married before the
age of twenty.
·
Often, the wife was older than the husband
·
In Russia, marrying did not involve starting a
new household but rather expanding one already established.
§
Who comprised an Eastern European household?
·
Frequently, a rural Russian household would
consist of more than nine people and sometimes nearly twenty.
·
There were sometimes more than four generations
living together in a household as a result of the young age of marriage.
§
Landlords influence over the institution of
marriage
·
Lords wanted to ensure that their lands would be
cultivated so they insisted that serfs marry only those on their lands in order
to keep the labor force strong
·
Sometime lords required widows and widowers to
marry.
·
In Russia, landlords ordered families of young
people in their villages to arrange marriages within a set amount of time.
·
The
Family Economy
o
Village and Rural Households
§
Almost everyone was part of a household in pre-industrial
Europe as it was difficult to survive on your own and those who lived out on
their own were viewed as suspicious.
§
The need to survive poor harvest, winters, and
economic slumps required that everyone in the household contribute.
§
Few families in western Europe had enough land
to support their families from farming alone.
o
Skilled Artisans
§
Skilled craftsmen typically worked out of their
homes
§
The father usually served as the head artisan.
§
Fathers usually trained their eldest son in
their craft
§
Wives of merchants frequently ran the business
while the husband was away on business purchasing supplies or other goods.
o
Death of a father
§
A father’s death often brought disaster to a
family.
§
The widow might take over the farm or the
business, or his children may do so.
§
Widow’s sought to remarry quickly.
§
High mortality rates meant that many households
were reconstituted second families that included stepchildren and family widows
who became dependent on relatives.
§
Children became dependent and therefore entered
the workforce at an earlier age
o
Eastern Europe Family Economy
§
Functioned in the context of serfdom and
landlord domination
§
Far fewer merchant and artisan households
§
Dependence on the available land was the chief
fact of life
·
Women and
the Family Economy
o
A women’s life experience was dependent on how
well she was able to establish and maintain a household.
o
Outside a household, women were rarely able to
support themselves by their own efforts.
o
Bearing and rearing children were subordinate to
a woman’s need to remain part of a household.
o
The life of a young girl
§
At age seven begins to care for the household of
her parents
§
A girl would continue to work in her own
household unless her labor elsewhere was not remunerative to the family.
§
An artisan’s daughter wouldn’t likely leave home
until marriage.
§
A girl who was a member of a large family—whose
labor wasn’t vital to maintaining the family’s household—left home around age
12-14.
§
If a teenage girl left home, her goal was to
raise enough capital for a dowry.
§
A wife was expected to make an immediate
financial contribution to starting a household at marriage, and, as a result,
age of marriage was late as it often took ten years for a young woman to
accumulate the necessary wealth.
o
Life as a married woman
§
Earning enough money or producing agricultural
products was the primary concern
§
Birth control was common as couples tried to
limit the number of children through the of coitus
interruptus—the withdrawal of the male before ejaculation.
·
Children and the World of the Family Economy
o
Concerns over childbirth
§
Women and infants were vulnerable to contagious
diseases.
§
Perpetual
fever was common
§
Some midwives were unskilled
o
Wet-nursing was common among the poor and
wealthy
§
Most women had too many responsibilities in the
household to nurse their own children and therefore relied on a wet-nurse.
§
Wealthy women wet-nursed for convenience.
§
Wet-nursing industry was well organized and
children from the cities were often transported to the country for months, or
even a year, to live with their assigned wet-nurse.
o
Illegitimate children
§
Increased during the eighteenth possibly because
increased migration of the population led to fleeting romances.
§
Often led to infanticide among the poor.
o
Institutions develop committed to preserving
lives of abandoned children
§
Number of foundling hospitals grows
·
Paris Foundling Hospital (1670)
·
London Foundling Hospital (1739)
§
Despite these efforts, in Paris only about 10%
of abandoned children lived to the age of 10
o
New interest arose in educating children during
the eighteenth century
§
Primarily upper-class children
§
As economic skills became more demanding,
literacy became more valuable, and as a result literacy rates rose.
Section Six: The Revolution
in Agriculture
·
Section
Overview
o
Food supply was never certain and the farther
east one traveled, the less stable it was.
o
People in the countryside were more concerned
with the food supply than city-dwellers, as municipal city governments
frequently stored emergency reserves of grain.
o
Limited supply of food caused a rise in prices
that the poor couldn’t withstand and had to rely on charity for survival.
o
Bread prices rose throughout the eighteenth
century because of the growing population which benefitted the landlords.
o
With better financial situations, landlords in
western Europe began a series of innovations in farm production that became
known as the Agricultural Revolution.
·
New Crops
and New Methods
o
Agricultural Revolution began in the Netherlands
§
started here due to shortage of land required to
nourish a growing population
§
landlords and farmers constructed advanced dikes
and methods to drain land
§
experimented with new crops like turnips and
clover that increased the supply of animal fodder and restored the soil quickly
§
Cornelius Vermuyden, a Dutch engineer, was hired
by England in the seventeenth century to drain thousands of acres of land
around Cambridge.
o
Four British men who made key contributions to
the Agricultural Revolution
§
Jethro Tull (1674-1741)
·
Conducted and financed experiments himself to
improve farming methods
·
Improved farming by first using iron plows to
turn the earth more deeply and planting wheat by drill rather than just casting
seeds
·
His methods permitted land to be cultivated for
longer periods without having to leave it fallow.
§
Charles “Turnip” Townshend (1674-1738)
·
Taught farmers how to cultivate sandy soils with
the correct combinations of fertilizers
·
Instituted the practice of “crop rotation” using
wheat, barley, turnips, and clover; and there was no longer a need to leave a
fallow field.
o
This increased the amount of fodder and thus
more livestock could be raised.
§
Robert Bakewell (1725-1795)
·
Pioneered new methods of animal breeding that
produced more and better animals and more milk and meat
§
Arthur Young (1741-1820)
·
Edited Annals
of Agriculture which was a collection of essays on cutting edge
agricultural methods.
o
Enclosure Replaces Open-Field Method
§
England’s communities of cultivators made
communal decision regarding what crops to plant and shared common pastures for
the grazing of livestock.
·
This system discouraged improvement and favored
the poorer farmers who needed the common pastures.
·
The village method did not allow for the
expansion of pastureland to produce more animals that would, in turn, produce
more manure for fertilizer.
§
By the second half of the eighteenth century,
rising wheat prices led landlords to systematically enclose their land in order
to use the land more rationally and to achieve greater commercial profits.
§
Enclosure brought turmoil to the countryside.
·
Landlords fenced the common land which had
previously functioned as common pastures.
·
Riots often ensued.
§
Since most members of Parliament were larger
landowners, they were able to enact legislation that granted legal right to
enclose lands.
§
The enclosure movement exemplifies the
introduction of entrepreneurial or capitalistic attitude of the urban merchant
into the countryside.
o
Limited Improvements in Eastern Europe
§
In Prussia, Russia, Austria, and Poland, agricultural
improvement was limited.
§
Landlords or their agents directed farm
management rather than the villages in an effort to squeeze more labor from the
serfs.
§
The only notable achievement was the
introduction of maize and the potato.
·
Expansion of the Population
o
Beginning in the eighteenth century, the
population began to increase steadily.
§
Population in 1700 was roughly 110,000,000 and
by 1850 260,000,000
o
Positive process that developed due to a rising
population
§
Need to feed population caused food prices to
rise
§
This spurred innovation in agriculture to meet
the demand.
o
Death rate drastically declined in urban and
rural areas
o
Few wars and little disease in the eighteenth
century
o
Introduction of the potato—a crop found in the
New World
§
On a single acre, a peasant family could produce
enough potatoes to sustain itself for a year.
o
Population explosion created new demands for
food, jobs, and services and left many rural people with employment; this led
to a migration to cities.
Section Seven: The Industrial Revolution of the Eighteenth Century
·
Section
Overview
o
The term “Industrial Revolution” describes an
era which instituted change and ideas that caused the sustained economic growth
of the western world through the present.
o
Industrialization made possible the production
of more goods and services than ever before in human history.
o
Human ability to manipulate and impact nature
led to sudden environmental concerns
·
A
Revolution in Consumption
o
The ever-increasing demand for goods sparked the
ingenuity of designers and inventors.
o
Dutch prosperity led the way in new forms of
consumption and were followed by the English and French who seemed to have more
disposable income by the eighteenth century.
o
Producers developed new methods of marketing.
§
Josiah Wedgewood first attempted to find
customers among the royal family and the aristocracy to set a trend; after they
purchased his products, he made an inexpensive version of the chinaware for the
middle-class consumers.
o
Brewing industry became completely commercialized.
o
Style was impacted as fashion magazines widely
circulated so the poor and middleclass were more aware of the latest trends
which they could imitate by purchasing less expensive versions.
·
Industrial
Leadership of Great Britain
o
Why did industrialization begin in England?
§
London was the center of the world of fashion
and taste.
·
People learned what to want while on business
trips or pleasure excursions to London.
§
Social structure of Britain encouraged people to
imitate the lifestyle of their social superiors
§
The British had good roads and waterways which
did not charge tolls.
§
British taxes—unlike most of the Continent—were
legally approved through Parliament and all social classes and regions paid the
same rate.
§
British society offered social mobility through
hard work and making wise decisions.
·
New
Methods of Textile Production
o
Domestic, or putting out, system of textile
production
§
Basic unit of production in rural environments
§
Those who farmed in the spring, summer, and fall
often spun thread or wove in the winter.
§
The process
·
Merchants took wool or un-spun fibers to peasant
homes
·
Peasants spun it into thread
·
Merchant transported the thread to other
peasants who wove it into textiles
·
The merchant sold the wares.
§
The merchant capitalist usually owned the
machinery as well as the raw material.
o
The Spinning Jenny
§
The problem solved by the Spinning Jenny
·
Cotton textile weavers had the technical
capacity to produce the quantity of fabric demanded; however the spinners did
not have the equipment to produce as much thread as the weavers needed.
§
In 1765, James Hargreaves invented the spinning
jenny that could allow up to 120 spindles of thread to be spun.
o
The Water Frame
§
Invented by Richard Arkwright
§
Water-power device designed to permit the
production of a purely cotton fabric,
rather than a cotton fabric containing linen for durability
§
The water frame brought production out of the
home as factories pooped up in the countryside along waterways.
o
Power Loom
§
Invented by Edmund Cartwright
§
It supplied a power source for machine weaving.
o
Steam Engine
§
Perfected by James Watt in 1769
§
It used steam power to run textile machinery and
factories could be easily located in urban areas.
·
The Steam
Engine
o
Steam engine provided the first source of steady
and essentially unlimited supply of inanimate power ever in human history
o
Steam power relied on mineral energy that never
got tired.
o
Thomas Newcomen (1663-1729) had invented the
first practical engine to use for steam power but it did not use coal resources
efficiently.
o
James Watt
§
Scottish engineer who experimented with the
Newcomen engine at the University of Glasgow
§
He discovered that it increased efficiency by
separating the condenser from the piston and cylinder.
§
Matthew Boulton, a toy and button manufacturer,
along with John Wilkinson, a cannon manufacturer, provided the precise metal
work needed to support Watt’s design.
·
Iron
Production
o
Iron is the chief element of all heavy industry
and of land or sea transport.
o
British ironmakers began to substitute coke for
charcoal, derived from wood, to smelt their iron.
o
In 1784, Henry Court (1740-1800) created a new
method for melting and stirring molten ore which extracted more impurities from
the molten metal, and in turn led to a higher quality of iron.
§
Court also created a rolling mill that shaped
the still molten metal into bars, rails, and other forms.
·
The
Impact of the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions on Working Women
o
Industrialization decreased the significance of
women in the workforce.
§
Prior to industrialization, women were important
in agricultural production but machines, operated by men, replaced their
contributions.
§
Women who had operated milking and butter
industries were replaced as large corporation took over the production of these
goods.
o
It became difficult for women to earn a living
from the land.
§
Literature on improving the efficiency of
farming often encouraged the removal of women from the agricultural workforce.
o
Women who previously worked in textile
production from the home were replaced by the new machines and shift of textile
production from the home.
§
Some of these women turned to the cottage
industries such as knitting, button making, and glove stitching but made
significantly less profit.
o
Thousands of women became domestic servants.
o
Priscilla Wakefield wrote “Priscilla Wakefield
Demands More Occupation for Women” because she believed the number of jobs
available to women were limited.
o
Industrialization increasingly brought women
back to the home.
Section Eight: The Growth of Cities
·
Section
Overview
o
In 1500, only 156 cities had populations of over
10,000, and only four of those cities—Paris, Milan, Venice, and Naples—had
populations larger than 100,000.
o
By 1800, 363 cities had 10,000 or more
inhabitants, and 17 of them had populations larger than 100,000.
o
A major shift in urban concentration from
southern, Mediterranean Europe to the north had also occurred.
·
Patterns
of Preindustrial Urbanization
o
Major cities grow in population
§
London grew from about 700,000 in 1700 to over a
million in 1800.
§
By the time of the French Revolution (1789),
Paris had more than 500,000 inhabitants.
§
Berlin’s population tripled in the eighteenth
century and reached 170,000 in 1800.
§
Warsaw had a population of 30,000 inhabitants in
1730, but almost 120,000 in 1794.
§
St. Petersburg, founded in 1703, numbered more
than 250,000 a century later.
o
Between 1500 and 1750, major urban expansion
occurred in already established cities, but after 1750 the pattern changed as
new cities sprouted out of nowhere.
o
Growth of Capitals and Ports
§
Most rapid growth of cities occurred in capitals
and ports
·
Growth of capitals illustrates the development
and growth of government bureaucracies and strong central government.
·
The growth of ports shows the increase in European
overseas trade.
§
Cities with populations of fewer than 40,000
inhabitants declined between 1600 and 1750
·
Many of these cities were landlocked trading
centers, medieval industrial centers, and ecclesiastical centers.
o
The Emergence of New Cities and the Growth of
Small Towns
§
New pattern of urban population started in the
mid-eighteenth century as the rate of growth of existing larger cities
declined, new cities emerged, and existing smaller cities grew.
·
Jan De Vries calls this pattern “an urban growth
from below.”
§
In the early stages of the Industrial Revolution
occurred in the countryside and fostered the growth of smaller towns and
factories near factories.
§
Improved agricultural methods increased crop
production which led to the development of trading centers and the growth of
smaller cities.
·
Urban
Classes
o
Urban poor and rich were segregated in different
communities.
§
Aristocrats and members of the upper-middle
class lived in fashionable townhouses, often constructed around laid-out green
squares.
§
Poorest town dwellers usually congregated along
the rivers.
§
Small merchants and artisans lived above their
shops.
o
Urban conditions
§
Pure water was rare.
§
Cattle, pigs, goats, and other animals roamed
the streets.
o
Poverty in the cities
§
Many prostitutes, vagrants, begging, and
alcoholism
§
Little food, disease, poor housing, etc.
§
“gin age”—mid-eighteenth century London
·
Depicted in engravings by William Hogarth
o
Public executions were a common occurrence in
the cities of eighteenth century Europe.
o
The Upper Classes
§
At the top of urban social structure sat small
groups of nobles, large merchants, bankers, financiers, clergy, and government
officials.
·
They constituted a self-ruling oligarchy that
governed the cities.
§
A royal charter usually gave the city corporation
its authority and ability to select its own members.
§
Some guilds controlled the cities on the
continent but usually the wealthiest nobles in the area did.
o
The Middle Class
§
Bourgeoisie
·
Comprised of the prosperous merchants, trades
people, bankers, and other professionals.
·
Not always immensely wealthy
§
Division in the middle class as the many
lower-middle class people resented those of the upper-middle class
§
Characterized as willing to get involved in
entrepreneurial activities and investment unlike the idle nobility
§
Members of the middle-class were among Europe’s
leading consumers.
§
Relationship with the nobility
·
In England and France, the nobles increasingly
embraced the commercial spirit.
·
Wealthy members of the middle class tried to
imitate the lifestyle of the nobility.
·
Upper-middle class professionals found social
mobility frustrating since they frequently found their quest for prosperity and
social prestige blocked by the privileges of the nobility.
·
Monarchical bureaucracies—controlled by the
nobility—were viewed as ineffective by the bourgeoisie
·
Middle class viewed the lower urban classes as
violent and a threat to their property.
§
Artisans
·
Shopkeepers, artisans, and wage earners were the
largest group in any cities.
o
They included grocers, butchers, fishmongers,
carpenters, cabinet makers, smiths, printers, hand-loom weavers, and tailors.
·
Many tried to consume the same goods as the
upper middle class.
·
They were, indeed impacted, by bread prices.
·
Guilds only played a minor role in eighteenth
century cities.
o
They often determined who could pursue a craft
in order to prevent the flooding of the workforce and lessen competition.
·
Working in a guild
o
At an early age, a boy might become an
apprentice to learn a craft.
o
After several years he would become a
journeyman.
o
Still later, if he proves skillful, he may
become a master.
o
The Urban
Riot
§
Traditionally, artisans had a tradition of
rioting if what was economically “just” had been offended.
§
Bread riots—sparked by a baker or grain merchant
announcing a price that was considered unjust—often produced riots.
·
Artisan leaders often confiscated the bread,
sold it to the urban classes for a fair price, and gave the income to back to
the merchants and bakers from whom they had stolen.
§
Religious riots
·
In 1753, in London, Protestant mobs compelled
the government to withdraw an act to legalize Jewish naturalization.
·
Gordon riots
o
Lord George Gordon (1751-1793) announced an
imaginary plot by Catholics after the government relieved military recruits
from having to take anti-Catholic oaths.
§
Violence in riots was typically directed toward
property rather than individuals.
§
Political riots
·
Political riots became much more common near the
end of the eighteenth century but rarely had artisan leaders.
·
Political riots were often ignited by the upper
classes who relied on rowdy crowds to influence disputes they were having with
the monarchy.
·
In Geneva, middle-class citizens supported
artisan riots against the local oligarchy.
·
In Great Britain in 1792, the government incited
mobs to attack English sympathizers of the French Revolution.
Section Nine: The Jewish Population: The Age of the Ghetto
·
Although small Jewish communities in Amsterdam
and other Western European cities became famous for their intellectual like and
financial institutions, most European Jews lived in Eastern Europe.
o
Europe’s Jewish population was concentrated in
Poland, Lithuania, and Ukraine where no fewer than three million Jews lived.
o
About 150,000 Jews lived in Habsburg lands,
primarily Bohemia.
o
Fewer than 100,000 Jews lived in Germany.
o
France had approximately 40,000 Jews.
·
Catherine the Great specifically excluded Jews
from a manifesto that welcomed foreigners to settle in Russia.
o
After the first partition of Poland in 1772, the
Russian Empire included a large number of Jews.
·
Jews in most European nations did not enjoy the
rights of citizens.
·
Oftentimes Jews were segregated in communities
called ghettos but often times enjoyed a considerable degree of political
autonomy within their own ghettos.
·
Court Jews
o
During the seventeenth century some Jewish
financiers funded wars for major rulers and developed close professional
relationship with them and received the nickname “court Jews.”
§
Samuel Oppenheimer, a Jewish banker, financed
the Habsburg struggle against the Turks and the defense of Vienna.
·
Most European Jews lived in poverty.
Section Ten: In Perspective
·
By the close of the eighteenth century, European
society was on the brink of a new era, on in which the commercial spirit and
the values of the marketplace were permitted fuller play than ever before in
human history.
·
Commercial spirit led increasingly to a
conception of human beings as individuals rather than as members of a
community.
·
More people meant more labor, more energy, and
more minds.
·
Class structure and social hierarchy remained,
but the boundaries became more blurred.
Mr. Dunbar
AP European History
Chapter 16: The Transatlantic Economy, Trade Wars, and
Colonial Rebellions Outline
Chapter Overview
·
Two separate conflicts dominated European
affairs during the eighteenth century
o
Britain
and France
dueled for commercial and colonial supremacy
o
Prussia
and Austria fought for
dominance in central Europe
·
Creation of a new balance of power
o
Prussia
emerged as a great power
o
Great
Britain built a world empire
·
The expenses of these wars led every major European
government to reconstruct its policies of taxation and finance which, in turn,
led to the American Revolution, enlightened absolutism on the Continent, a
continuing financial crisis for the French monarchy, and a reform of the
Spanish Empire in South America .
Section One: Periods
of European Overseas Empires
·
Since the Renaissance, European contacts with
the rest of the world have gone through four distinct stages:
o
First stage was that of European discovery,
exploration, initial conquest, and the settlement of the New
World ; this stage closed by the end of the seventeenth century.
§
Portugal
and the Netherlands
penetrated Southeast Asian markets during this stage.
o
Second stage—that of mercantile empires—was one
of colonial trade rivalry among Spain ,
France , and Great Britain .
§
Empires during this period existed to promote
trade and commerce.
§
Competition for colonies led to the creation of
large navies to protect oversea interests.
·
England
and France
engaged in a series of naval wars throughout the eighteenth century.
§
Slaves were imported from African to the Americas to
sustain the plantation economy; with them, African slaves brought their
languages, customs, and ethnic associations which fused with European culture
to create a distinctly American heritage.
§
This stage witnessed the independence movements
of the 13 North American colonies from Great
Britain ’s control and the Spanish colonies in Mexico , Central, and South America from the
control of imperial Spain .
o
Third Stage—nineteenth century when European
governments carved out new formal empires involving the direct European
administration of indigenous peoples in Africa and Asia .
§
New nineteenth century empires included Australia , New
Zealand , South Africa ,
and Algeria .
§
Goals of empire-building included trade,
national honor, Christian missionary enterprise, and military strategy
o
Fourth Stage—mid to late 20th century
period of decolonization of peoples who had previously lived under European
colonial rule.
Section Two: Mercantile Empires
·
Section
Overview
o
The Treaty of Utrecht (1713) established the
boundaries of empire during the first half of the eighteenth century.
§
The Spanish Empire
·
Except for Brazil
(Portugal ) and Dutch Guiana , Spain
controlled all of mainland South America .
·
In North America, Spain
controlled Florida , Mexico ,
California , and the Southwest.
·
Spain also
governed Central America and the islands of Cuba ,
Puerto Rico, Trinidad, and the eastern part of Hispaniola (modern-day Dominican Republic ).
§
The British Empire
·
Colonies along the North Atlantic seaboard, Nova Scotia , Newfoundland ,
Bermuda , Jamaica ,
and Barbados .
·
A few trading stations on the Indian
subcontinent
§
The French Empire
·
The Saint Lawrence River valley and the Ohio and Mississippi River
valleys.
·
West Indian islands of Saint Domingue (modern Haiti ), Guadeloupe, and Martinique .
·
Stations in India
and the West Coast of Africa
§
The Dutch Empire
·
Surinam , or
Dutch Guiana in South America
·
Cape Colony in what is today South Africa
·
Trading stations in West
Africa , Sri Lanka , and Bengal in India .
·
Controlled trade with Java in what is now Indonesia
·
Mercantilist
Goals
o
Explanation of the term mercantilism
§
Economists of the eighteenth century believed
this system necessary for a nation to gain a favorable trade balance of gold
and silver bullion.
·
Bullion was regarded as the measure of a
country’s wealth, and a nation was truly wealthy only if it amassed more
bullion than its rivals.
§
Under this system, it was believed that the
wealth of one nation was assumed to grow or increase largely at the expense of
another nation.
§
This system promoted conflict as nations built
large armies and navies to invade its opponents colonies in order to gain
access to the profitable resources of that territory.
§
Led countries to seek trading monopolies over
certain areas and markets.
·
home countries and its colonies were to trade
exclusively with one another
·
governments sought to forge trade-tight systems
of national commerce through navigation laws, tariffs, bounties to encourage
production, and prohibitions against trading with subjects or monarchs
§
In time, relationships between the mother
country and its children were shaken as colonies realized they could purchase
products cheaper from other colonies rather than their imperial master.
·
French-British
Rivalry
o
British and French colonists battled over
fishing rights, the fur trade, and alliances with Native Americans in the Lower
Saint Lawrence valley, upper New England, and the Ohio River Valley
o
West Indies—where tobacco, cotton, indigo,
coffee, and sugar were raised—were the jewels of the colonial empires and were
a major area of contention between Britain and France.
o
India was also
an area of French-British rivalry
§
Both the British and French traded through
privileged chartered companies that enjoyed a legal monopoly.
·
British East India Company
o
Robert Clive—an official in the company—seized
the opportunity to annex regions in India as
their local governments failed.
·
Compagnie
des Indes
o
Joseph Dupleix was the French equivalent to
Clive.
§
Europeans
viewed India as a springboard into the larger
market of China .
§
The original European footholds in India were trading posts called factories.
Section Three: The Spanish Colonial System
·
Colonial Government
o
Since Queen Isabella of Castile
had commissioned Columbus , the legal link
between the New World and Spain belonged to
the crown of Castille.
§
Castile
assigned the duties of governing the American colonies to the Council of the
Indies who, with the monarch, nominated the viceroys of New Spain (Mexico ) and Peru .
o
Viceroys
§
They acted as the chief executives in the New
World and carried out the laws issued by the Council of the Indies .
§
Each viceroyalties was divided into several
judicial councils known as audiencias.
§
There were also several local officers, the most
important of which were the corregidores
who presided over municipal councils.
·
Trade and
Regulation
o
Casa de
Contratacion (House of Trade) in Seville
regulated all trade with the New World .
§
The Casa
worked in tandem with the Consulado,
the merchant guild of Seville , and other
groups involved with American commerce in Cadiz .
o
Cadiz was the
only port authorized for use in trade with the Americas .
o
The Flota
System
§
Each year, a fleet of commercial vessels,
controlled by Seville merchants and escorted
by warships, carried merchandise from Spain to
a few specified ports including Portobello , Veracruz , and Cartagena
on the Atlantic coast.
§
Ships were then loaded with gold and silver for
transport back to Spain .
§
Trade outside the flota system was banned.
·
For example, Spanish colonists within the
American Empire were prohibited from establishing direct trade with each other.
·
Colonial
Reform Under the Spanish Bourbon Monarchs
o
Following the War of the Spanish Succession
(1701-1714) and the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), the Bourbon family replaced the
Spanish Habsburgs as the royal family in Spain
when Philip V took the throne.
§
Philip and his administrators used French
administrative skills to reassert the imperial trade monopoly which had decayed
under the last Habsburg rulers of Spain .
o
Philip institutes coastal patrol vessels to
suppress smuggling in American waters.
§
This led to war with England
in 1739.
o
The great mid-century wars exposed the
vulnerability of the Spanish empire to naval attack and economic penetration,
and as an ally of France , Spain
was considered a defeated power by 1763.
o
Charles III reforms Spain ’s
control of the empire.
§
Charles emphasized royal ministers rather than
councils; as a result, the role of both the Council of the Indies
and the Casa de Contratcion
diminished.
·
He instituted the intendant system which relied on loyal, royal bureaucrats to serve
as agents of the royal administration.
§
Charles abolished the monopolies of Seville and
Cadiz and permitted other Spanish cities to trade with America.
§
He opened more South American and Caribbean
ports to trade and authorized commerce between Spanish ports in America.
§
He organized a new viceroyalty in the region of
Rio de la Plata, which included much of present-day Argentina, Uruguay,
Paraguay, and Bolivia.
o
Two classes of Spaniards in the New World
§
Peninsulares: persons born in Spain who entered the New
World to fill posts, which were usually the most profitable jobs in the region.
§
Creoles:
persons of European descent born in the Spanish colonies who were often made to
feels as though they were second-class citizens.
Section Four: Black African Slavery, The
Plantation System, and the Atlantic Economy
·
Section
Overview
o
History of European slavery
§
It had existed since ancient times.
§
Slavery had a continuous existence in the
Mediterranean world, where the sources of slaves changed over time.
§
After the conquest of Constantinople in 1453,
the Ottoman Empire forbade the exportation of white slaves from their lands; as
a result, the Portuguese began to import African slaves to the Iberian
Peninsula from the Canary Islands and West Africa.
§
Slaves served Europeans in domestic work and
many royal courts imported them for the novelty of their color.
·
The
African Presence in the Americas
o
Initially, Spanish and Portuguese settlers in
the New World relied on Native Americans as laborers.
§
In time, disease dessimated the indigenous
populations and labor became scarce.
§
Spanish and Portuguese turned to imported
African slave labor and toward the end of the seventeenth century, English
colonists in the Chesapeaked Bay region of Virginia and Maryland slowly turned
to African slave labor as well.
o
European slave traders relied on Africans to
supply them with other Africans as slaves.
§
Internal conflicts in Africa often ended in the
victor taking their defeated enemies as slaves; some African groups, in turn,
sold their spoils of victory to European slave traders who then transported
them across the Atlantic.
o
The West Indies, Brazil, and Sugar
§
Transatlantic economy
·
The first slaves arrived on the Continent of
North America in 1619 when a Dutch ship delivered them to Jamestown,
Virginia. However, the West Indies and
Brazil had been using slave labor since the early 1500’s and African slaves had
become a major social presence in these areas.
o
One historian referred to the cultural
development in these regions as “a Euro-African phenomenon”.
·
Sugar industry and slavery
o
Whereas slavery decreased in many areas of
Spanish South America by the late seventeenth century, it steadily rose in
Brazil and the Caribbean throughout the eighteenth century to supply the
expanding sugar plantations with labor.
§
Early eighteenth century nearly 20,000 African
slaves a year arrived in the West Indies.
§
By 1725 it had been estimated that nearly 90% of
Jamaica’s population consisted of black slaves.
o
Brazil also used slave labor to produce tobacco
and coffee, and for gold mining.
§
Due to high mortality rates among slave
populations, reproduction rates of slaves were very low. Therefore, new slaves were constantly
imported from Africa to sustain a large labor force.
·
Consequently, newly arrived Africans with their
own languages, culture, and beliefs, constituted a high percentage of the slave
population.
·
Slavery
and the Transatlantic Economy
o
Different European nations dominated the slave
trade during different periods.
§
Portugal and Spain in the sixteenth century
§
The Dutch in the seventeenth century
§
Great Britain in the late seventeenth and
eighteenth century
o
Triangle Trade System
§
European goods—often guns—were carried to Africa
to be exchanged for slaves, who were then taken to the West Indies, where they
were traded for sugar and other tropical products which were then shipped to
Europe.
o
Trade between New England and the West Indies
§
New England fish, rum, and lumber were often
traded for sugar.
o
Political turmoil and division in Africa
increased the supply of slaves in the eighteenth century.
§
Civil war in the kingdom of the Kongo
·
A dispute broke out over the succession to the
throne created a situation in which captives of war were continually sold to
slave traders.
§
Similar political unrest plagues the Gold Coast
area in the eighteenth century.
·
The
Experience of Slavery
o
Section Overview
§
African slavery to the New World was the largest
intercontinental migration in human history.
§
Conditions on slave ships were cramped, quality
of food was poor, and disease was rampant.
§
Since many more men were enslaved than women, it
was difficult for Africans to preserve the tradition of an extended family.
§
Different types of slaves
·
Recently arrived Africans, old Africans who had
lived in the region for a number of years, and creoles who were descendants of
earlier generations of African slaves.
o
Plantation owners placed a higher value on the
latter two groups who were accustomed to slavery and the system.
§
Seasoning
was the process through which recently arrived Africans were indoctrinated with
the idea that they were no longer free.
·
Consisted of training in new work skills,
receiving new names, and learning the basics of the local European language
o
Language and Culture
§
Efforts to preserve African culture
·
Although slaves predominately lived in isolated
rural areas, they were able to visit their counterparts from other plantations
on market days.
§
It took nearly two generations to root out
African languages from slaves and even then the language spoken by slaves was a
hybrid of the local European language and their native African tongue.
·
For example, Coromantee was the predominant
language in Jamaica.
·
In South Carolina and on St. Domingue, most
African slaves spoke Kikongo.
§
Preservation of African languages in the New
World enabled slaves to organize themselves in nations with other slaves of
similar ethnic ties and also served as a sign of solidarity.
·
Many African nations in the Americas elected
their own kings and queens, who would preside over gatherings of the members of
the nation drawn from various plantations.
·
Shared language enable slaves to communicate
with eachother during uprisings like that in South Carolina in 1739, in Jamaica
in the early 1760s, and, most successfully, during the Haitian Revolution of
the 1790s.
o
Slave owners believed the rebels communicated by
playing drums and in the aftermath outlawed drum playing among slaves.
o
Daily Life
§
Conditions for slaves differed from colony to
colony.
·
Black slaves living in Portuguese areas had the
fewest legal protections.
·
In Spanish colonies, the Church attempted to
provide some protection for black slaves but devoted more attention to the
welfare of Native Americans.
·
British and French colonies adopted slave codes
but they offered only limited protections to slaves and asserted the dominance
of the master.
·
Slave laws always favored the master rather than
the slave.
o
Masters permitted to whip and use many varieties
of corporeal punishment
o
Sometimes
slaves were prohibited from gathering in large groups.
o
Law did not recognize slave marriages.
o
Conversion to Christianity
§
Most African slaves eventually converted to
Christianity as it preached to slaves to accept both their slavery and a
natural social hierarchy with their masters at the top.
·
In the Spanish, French, and Portuguese domains,
they became Roman Catholic.
·
In the English colonies, most became Protestant
of one denomination or another.
§
Organized African religion eventually
disappeared in the Americas although some practices—like their understanding of
nature and the cosmos, and the belief in withes and other people with special
powers such as conjurers, healers, and voodoo practitioners—remained.
§
Conversion to Christianity is another example of
Europeans crushing a set of non-European cultural values.
o
European Racial Attitudes
§
Europeans considered black Africans to be
savages and less than civilized.
§
European languages attached negative
connotations to “blackness”.
o
The end of slavery
§
Slave revolt of Saint Domingue in 1794
§
British outlawing of the slave trade in 1807
§
Latin American independence movements
§
Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 in the United
States
§
Brazilian emancipation of 1888.
Section Five: Mid-Eighteenth-Century Wars
·
Section
Overview
o
Internal relations in Europe during the
eighteenth century were unstable and lead major European powers into prolonged
wars.
o
Nations generally assumed that warfare could
promote their national interests.
o
War rarely touched the civilian populations of
western European nations, and therefore did not lead to domestic political or
social upheaval.
o
Two areas of power rivalry
§
Overseas empires
§
Central and Eastern Europe
·
The War
of the Jenkins’s Era
o
Conflict between Spain and Great Britain in the
Americas
§
Spanish officials routinely boarded English
vessels to search for contraband.
·
During one such boarding a fight broke out and
ended when the Spanish cut off the ear of an English captain named Robert
Jenkins who thereafter preserved his severed ear in a jar of brandy.
·
Jenkins and other British merchants lobbied
Parliament to relieve Spanish intervention in their trade
§
British Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole,
declared war on Spain in 1739.
·
This war may have been a minor event but due to
developments in continental European politics, it became the opening encounter
to a series of European wars fought across the world until 1815.
·
The War
of Austrian Succession (1740-1748)
o
In
December 1740, King Frederick II of Prussia Seized the Austrian province of
Silesia and shattered the provisions of the Pragmatic Sanction and disrupted
the balance of power in Central and Eastern Europe.
§
Through this action, Frederick II challenged the
dominance of the Habsburgs in Central Europe.
o
Maria Theresa Preserves the Habsburg Empire
§
Although just twenty three when Prussia seized
Silesia, Maria Theresa rallied her empire to resist pressure from the Prussians
and other rivals.
§
Theresa secured the loyalty of the nobility by
granting them new privileges and legal rights.
·
She recognized Hungary as the most important of
her crowns and promised the Magyar nobility local autonomy.
§
Maria Theresa’s policies weakened the power of
the central monarchy but ensured the survival of her empire.
o
France Draws Great Britain into the War
§
Cardinal Fleury, first minister of Louis XV, was
pressured into supporting the Prussian aggression toward Austria—the
traditional enemy of France.
·
This decision would have major implications for
the future of France.
o
First, it strengthened the growing central
German state of Prussia that would later significantly endanger France.
o
Second, the French move against Austria brought
Great Britain into the conflict because Britain wanted to ensure the Low
Countries remained in the hands of friendly Austria and not France.
§
In 1744, the British-French conflicted expanded
into the New World when France began to support Spain’s efforts against
Britain.
·
This decision over-expanded France as it could
not sustain a war against Austria on the Continent while simultaneously
fighting Britain in the New World.
o
The war ended in a stalemate in 1748 with the
Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle.
§
Prussia retained Silesia.
§
Spain renewed Britain’s privilege from the
Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 to important slaves to the Spanish colonies.
·
The
“Diplomatic Revolution” of 1756
o
Following the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle had
brought peace in Europe, France and Britain continued the struggle in the Ohio
River Valley and upper New England.
§
These clashes were the prelude to what became
known in history as the French and Indian War, which formally erupted in 1755.
o
Dramatic shift in European alliances
§
British king, George II, who was also the
Elector of Hanover in Germany, thought the French might attack Hanover in
response to the conflict in America.
§
Convention of Westminster
·
Prussia and Britain agreed to a defensive
alliance aimed at preventing the entry of foreign troops into the German
states.
·
Frederick II of Prussia feared an alliance of
Austria and Russia.
·
The convention meant that Britain, ally of
Austria since the Wars of Louis XIV, joined forces with Prussia, Austria’s
major eighteenth century enemy.
§
In May 1756, Maria Theresa’s foreign minister,
Wenzel Anton Kaunitz singed a defensive alliance with France, Austria’s
long-standing enemy.
·
The Seven
Years’ War (1756-1763)
o
Frederick the Great Opens Hostilities
§
Prussian king Frederick II ignited the Seven
Years’ War when he invaded Saxony in August 1756.
·
Frederick attacked preemptively in order to
prevent a conspiracy by Saxony, Austria, and France to destroy Prussia.
·
In response, France and Austria made an alliance
with Russia, Sweden, and a number of smaller German states dedicated to the
destruction of Prussia.
§
Two factors saved Prussia from destruction
·
First, Britain furnished Prussia with
considerable financial aid.
·
Second, in 1762, Empress Elizabeth of Russia
died and her successor Tsar Peter II had long admired Frederick II and
immediately sought peace with Prussia.
§
Treaty of Hubertusburg of 1763
·
Frederick was able to withstand Austria and
France, and the continental conflict ended with no significant changes in
prewar borders.
·
Silesia remained Prussian and Prussia clearly
stood among the ranks of the great powers.
o
William Pitt’s Strategy for Winning North
America
§
British secretary of state William Pitt
orchestrated Britain’s victories in every theater during the eighteenth
century.
·
In Europe
o
He pumped enormous sums of money to Frederick II
in Prussia in order to divert France’s attention from its struggle against the
British in the New World.
·
In the New World
o
His goal in the New World was to secure all of
North America east of the Mississippi for Great Britain which he met by sending
40,000 troops against the French in Canada.
§
In September 1759, in the Saint Lawrence River
Valley near Quebec, the British army under James Wolfe defeated the French
under Louis Joseph de Montcalm which marked the end of the French Empire in
Canada.
o
Pitt launched attacks on major islands of the
French West Indies which fell to Britain and used the profits from seized sugar
to finance the war effort.
·
In India
o
British forces under the command of Robert Clive
defeated France and its Indian allies in 1757 at the Battle of Plassey.
o
This victory opened the door for the British
conquest of Bengal in northeast India and later all of India by the British
East India Company.
o
The Treaty of Paris of 1763
§
This peace settlement was crafted by the earl of
Bute who took over for Pitt after a quarrel with George II led to the release
of Pitt from office.
§
Britain received all of Canada, the Ohio River
Valley, and the eastern half of the Mississippi valley.
§
Britain returned Pondicherry and Chandernagore
in India and the West Indian sugar islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique to the
French.
Section Six: The American Revolution and
Europe
·
Resistance
to the Imperial Search for Revenue
o
Following the Treaty of Paris of 1763, Britain
sought revenue to pay for the continual maintenance of its empire.
§
Since the American colonies had benefitted most
from the victory, Britain felt it was rational for the colonies to bear part of
the cost of their protection and administration.
§
Britain also had to pay for the organization and
administration of the new lands acquired in the Saint Lawrence area to the
Mississippi area which was populated by French and Native Americans.
o
Different taxes used to raise revenue
§
Sugar Act of 1764
·
Enacted by Prime Minister George Grenville
§
Stamp Act in 1765 put a tax on legal documents
and other items such as newspapers which the British saw as legal since it had
been approved by Parliament.
o
Colonies form the Stamp Act Congress in October
1765 in order to draw up a protest to present to the crown.
§
Groups like the Sons of Liberty in Massachusetts
rallied colonist to refuse to import British goods.
·
Consequently, Parliament repealed the Stamp Act
in 1766.
o
Stamp Act Crisis established a pattern of
British colonial relations with their mother-country
§
First, Parliament would approve revenue or
administrative legislation.
§
Next, the colonists would resist by reasoned
argument, economic pressure, and violence.
§
Then, the British would repeal the legislation
and the process would begin anew.
o
With each encounter, Americans more fully
developed their own thinking about political liberty.
·
The
Crisis and Independence
o
Events of 1767
§
British finance minister, Charles Townshend, led
Parliament to pass as series of revenue acts pertaining to the colonial
imports.
§
When the colonist resisted, Parliament sent
customs agents to administer the law and troops to protect these officers.
o
Boston Massacre of 1770
§
British troops killed five citizens during
protests against the Townshend revenues.
§
To diffuse the situation, Parliament repelled
all the revenues except the one on tea.
o
Intolerable Acts 1774
§
Under the ministry of Lord North, Parliament was
determined to assert its authority over the colonies and instituted a series of
laws known in American history as the Intolerable Acts.
§
The new laws did the following:
·
shut down the port of Boston
·
reorganized the government of Massachusetts
·
allowed troops to be quartered in private homes
·
removed the trials of royal customs officials to
England
o
Quebec Act 1774
§
extended the boundaries of Quebec to include the
Ohio River Valley
§
Americans regarded the Quebec Act as an effort
to prevent their mode of self-government from spreading beyond the Appalachian
Mountains.
o
Steps Toward Independence
§
Citizens arranged committees of correspondence
throughout the colonies to make different areas aware of the problems in their
regions and they encouraged united action.
§
In 1774, the First Continental Congress met in
Philadelphia
·
This body hoped to persuade Parliament to
restore self-government in the colonies.
§
Battles of Lexington and Concord in 1775
·
The colonists suffered defeat at the Battle of
Bunker Hill.
·
Although defeated, assemblies of colonists began
viewing themselves as autonomous of the British crown.
§
The Second Continental Congress gathered in May
1775
·
Sought conciliation with Britain, but the
pressure of events led it to begin to conduct the government of the colonies.
§
King George II declared the colonies in
rebellion in August 1775.
§
During the winter, Thomas Paine’s Common Sense widely circulated and
galvanized public opinion in favor of separation from Great Britain.
§
A colonial army and navy were organized.
§
In April 1776, the Continental Congress opened
American ports to the trade of all nations.
o
On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress
adopted the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution began.
§
France and Spain support the colonists
·
Early in 1778, the war widened into a European
conflict when Ben Franklin persuaded France to support the rebellion.
·
In 1779, the Spanish joined the war against
Britain.
o
The War of the American Revolution continued
until 1781 when the forces of George Washington defeated those of Lord Cornwallis
at Yorktown.
§
The Treaty of Paris in 1783 concluded the
conflict, and the thirteen American colonies finally established independence.
·
American
Political Ideas
o
The political ideas of the colonists were
borrowed from the English Revolution of 1688 which was launched by the
aristocracy against the political absolutism of the Stuart monarchs.
§
Due to the measures taken by George III from
1763-1776, the colonists reasoned that the British were attacking many of their
fundamental liberties, and, therefore the two should not be united.
o
Influences on American political heritage
§
John Locke and Whig political ideas were one
influenced the Americans.
§
British political writers known as the
Commonwealtmen, who were intellectually rooted in republican political views
that first developed in the radical thought of the Puritan revolution.
·
John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon wrote a
collection of essays known as Cato’s
Letters that criticized the British government for undermining liberty.
·
Events in
Great Britain
o
Section Overview
§
George III sought to strip a few powerful Whig
families of their power because he believed they bullied his two predecessors.
·
When George appointed the early of Bute to
secretary of state when Pitt resigned, he sought the aide of a politician that
the Whigs hated.
·
George tried several ministers between 1761 and
1770 to see who could gain the crown support in the House of Commons.
·
In 1770, George turned to Lord North, who the
Whigs hated, who remained the king’s first minister until 1782.
§
Powerful Whig families believed the king was a
tyrant for trying to curb the power of one particular group of the aristocracy.
o
The Challenge of John Wilkes
§
Wilkes was a London political radical, member of
Parliament, and publisher of a newspaper called The North Briton.
·
In issue number 45, Wilkes vehemently criticized
Lord Bute’s handling of the peace negotiations with France.
·
Bute had Wilkes arrested but he was released
soon thereafter.
§
The House of Commons ruled that issue number 45
was libel and it expelled Wilkes who then fled the country; Wilkes was
popularly supported by the British people throughout the ordeal.
§
In 1768, Wilkes returned to England and was
elected to Parliament but the House of Commons—under the influence of George
III’s friends—refused to seat him.
§
Wilkes was reelected four more times before the
House of Commons just gave the seat to the candidate they supported.
§
Uprisings of artisans, shopkeepers, and small
property owners supported Wilkes as did aristocrats who wanted to humiliate
George III.
§
Wilkes was finally seated in 1774 after having
become the lord mayor of London.
§
The American colonists closely followed the
affair as they saw George III regarded as a tyrant by supporters of Wilkes, it
reaffirmed their feeling regarding the new taxes.
o
Movement for Parliamentary Reform
§
British citizens and colonist question the power
of a self-selected aristocratic political body.
·
British subjects at home who were no more
directly represented in Parliament than were the Americans adopted the colonial
arguments.
·
Both the colonial leaders and Wilkes appealed
more to popular opinion in Britain than the legally constituted political
authorities.
§
The colonial leaders established revolutionary,
but orderly, political bodies—the congress and the convention—who’s power lied
in the consent of the governed.
o
The Yorkshire Association Movement
§
Discontentment in Britain resulted from the
mismanagement of the American war, high taxes, and Lord North’s ministry.
§
In 1778, Christopher Wyvil—a landowner and retired
clergyman—organized the Yorkshire Association Movement.
·
Property owners, or freeholders, met in a mass
meeting to demand moderate changes in the corrupt system of Parliamentary
elections.
·
The association examined and suggested reforms
for the entire government.
·
The association collapsed in the early 1780s but
it provided many British citizens with a new civic consciousness.
§
Parliament was aware of the reforms called for
by the association and in April 1780, the House of Commons passed a resolution
that called for lessening of the power of the crown.
§
George III continued to appoint his allies as
ministers.
·
Parliament did force Lord North to share the
position with James Fox, a longtime critic of George III.
·
In 1783, George appointed William Pitt the Younger
to prime minister at the age of 24.
o
Pitt constructed a House of Commons favorable to
the monarch.
o
Pitt sought to formulate trade policies that
would make him popular with the British people.
§
With the help of Pitt, George managed to
reassert the monarchs power in political affairs.
·
Broader
Impact of the American Revolution
o
The Americans—through state constitutions, the
Articles of Confederation, and the federal Constitution—had demonstrated to
Europe the possibility of governments without kings and hereditary nobilities.
o
Americans demonstrated that natural law, rather
than divine right or hereditary, was the highest political authority.
