2.1
Different models of political sovereignty affected the relationship among states and between states and individuals.
In much of Europe, absolute monarchy was established over the course of the 17th and 18th centuries.
Absolute monarchies limited the nobility’s participation in governance but preserved the aristocracy’s social position and legal privileges.
Louis XIV and his finance minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert extended the administrative, financial, military, and religious control of the central state over the French population. In the 18th century, a number of states in eastern and central Europe experimented with “enlightened absolutism.
The inability of the Polish monarchy to consolidate its authority over the nobility led to Poland’s partition by Prussia, Russia, and Austria, and its disappearance from the map of Europe. Peter the Great “westernized” the Russian state and society, transforming political, religious, and cultural institutions; Catherine the Great continued this process. |
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After 1648, dynastic and state interests, along with Europe’s expanding colonial empires, influenced the diplomacy of European states and frequently led to war.
As a result of the Holy Roman Empire’s limitation of sovereignty in the Peace of Westphalia, Prussia rose to power and the Habsburgs, centered in Austria, shifted their empire eastward.
After the Austrian defeat of the Turks in 1683 at the Battle of Vienna, the Ottomans ceased their westward expansion. Louis XIV’s nearly continuous wars, pursuing both dynastic and state interests, provoked a coalition of European powers opposing him.
Rivalry between Britain and France resulted in world wars fought both in Europe and in the colonies, with Britain supplanting France as the greatest European power. |
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Challenges to absolutism resulted in alternative political systems.
The outcome of the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution protected the rights of gentry and aristocracy from absolutism through assertions of the rights of Parliament.
The Dutch Republic developed an oligarchy of urban gentry and rural landholders to promote trade and protect traditional rights. |
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The French Revolution posed a fundamental challenge to Europe’s existing political and social order.
The French Revolution resulted from a combination of long-term social and political causes, as well as Enlightenment ideas, exacerbated by short-term fiscal and economic crises.
The first, or liberal, phase of the French Revolution established a constitutional monarchy, increased popular participation, nationalized the Catholic Church, and abolished hereditary privileges.
After the execution of the Louis XVI, the radical Jacobin Republic led by Robespierre responded to opposition at home and war abroad by instituting the Reign of Terror, fixing prices and wages, and pursuing a policy of de-Christianization.
Revolutionary armies, raised by mass conscription, sought to bring the changes initiated in France to the rest of Europe. Women enthusiastically participated in the early phases of the revolution; however, while there were brief improvements in the legal status of women, citizenship in the republic was soon restricted to men. Revolutionary ideals inspired a slave revolt led by Toussaint L’Ouverture in the French colony of Saint Domingue, which became the independent nation of Haiti in 1804. While many were inspired by the revolution’s emphasis on equality and human rights, others condemned its violence and disregard for traditional authority. |
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Claiming to defend the ideals of the French Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte imposed French control over much of the European continent that eventually provoked a nationalistic reaction.
As first consul and emperor, Napoleon undertook a number of enduring domestic reforms while often curtailing some rights and manipulating popular impulses behind a façade of representative institutions.
Examples of curtailment of rights under Napoleon such as the following:
Napoleon’s new military tactics allowed him to exert direct or indirect control over much of the European continent, spreading the ideals of the French Revolution across Europe. Napoleon’s expanding empire created nationalist responses throughout Europe. After the defeat of Napoleon by a coalition of European powers, the Congress of Vienna (1814-15) attempted to restore the balance of power in Europe and contain the danger of revolutionary or nationalistic upheavals in the future. |
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