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The Development of Eastern Europe

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Title: The Development of Eastern Europe


1
The Development of Eastern Europe
  • Serfdom had declined in Eastern Europe at the end
    of the Middle Ages.

2
  • However, in Eastern Europe, the nobles remained
    strong. We have seen how in France, England,
    Holland, and Germany, monarchs encouraged towns
    and took power from their nobility. In the East,
    there were no strong monarchs, so the nobles
    gradually rolled back any gains that the peasants
    had made. By 1650 serfdom was re-established.

3
  • As weve seen, in the east there were few strong
    monarchs from 1300-1700, so the nobility remained
    in power.

4
Prussia
  • This was actually the name of a small territory
    on the Baltic. The origin of this Empire begins
    in the small state of Brandenburg, which was
    ruled by the Hohenzollern from the small town of
    Berlin. They had held little power since the
    Middle Ages.

5
Growth of Prussia
6
The Great Elector
  • However, the Thirty Years War had greatly
    weakened the HRE. This presented a tremendous
    opportunity for young Frederick William (the
    Great Elector). He aspired to unite his familys
    scattered lands and to increase his power in
    North Europe. He basically bullied the middle
    class and the local parliaments until he got his
    way. Thus, absolutism began to rear its head in
    Germany. It would not be ended until 1945.

7
Frederick William
  • Frederick expanded the military, forced permanent
    taxation without consent, and undercut the
    medieval rights of the towns (burgs).
  • The losers in all this were clearly the middle
    class and to some degree the Junkers (nobility).
    They were always to be dominated in Germany by
    the middle class.

8
Brandenburg
  • Brandenburg had a very poor strategic position,
    wide open to the east and west to invasion, with
    no natural defenses, and no outlet to the sea.
    The Thirty Years War had ravaged the area. To
    compensate for all this, the Hohenzollerns had
    stressed a strong military. Also, since
    Hohenzollern territory was unconnected, war and
    force were the only means of unifying these
    scattered lands.

9
Frederick William I the soldier king
  • Frederick Wilhelm I, the soldier king, had done
    the most to promote militarism. He loved the
    military life, and believed that force was the
    only way to earn respect in international
    affairs. He demanded that everything in society
    except eternal salvation belonged to him for
    the good of the nation This had profound effects

10
to Keep Quiet is the first Civic Duty
  • The noble class (the Junkers) were eventually
    co-opted by being drawn into the army as the
    officer caste.
  • The middle class was slowly conditioned to accept
    the dominance of the officer class.
  • The country became a modern Sparta, where good
    citizenship was equated with unquestioning
    obedience.
  • Also, this philosophy fit well with Lutheranism,
    which instructed its members to be obedient to
    the state.

11
Frederick the Great
12
The Austrian Habsburgs
  • The failed attempt to conquer Germany in the
    Thirty Years War had forced the Habsburgs to
    turn their ambitions to the East and South. They
    had managed to retain Bohemia by rooting out
    Calvinism.

13
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14
  • When the Ottomans attacked Europe in 1683, the
    resulting Christian counter-offensive enabled the
    Austrian Habsburgs to seize a lot of Ottoman
    territory, most notably Hungary and Transylvania.

15
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16
Pragmatic Sanction
  • It was an attempt by Habsburg Emperor Charles VI
    to insure that the Austrian Habsburg possessions
    were always inherited by the same person. He
    worked hard to get the various European states to
    agree with it, fearing another war like the
    Spanish Succession.

17
  • Obviously, Bohemians and Hungarians did not want
    their lands to be tied to the fate of Austrian
    Succession. In Hungary especially, there was a
    strong feeling of nationalism which was ahead of
    its time.

18
  • War played an obvious role. People constantly at
    war needed a strong centralized government to
    defend them. The book points out that England was
    really the only country to develop
    constitutionalism not coincidentally, they were
    the only ones not directly invaded during the
    1500 and 1600s.

19
The Rus
  • The Vikings had come down the waterways of Russia
    to found Kiev, the first important Slavic state.
    They ruled the local Slavic population. The
    slavic word for the Vikings was rus
  • It was the princes of Kiev who had adopted Greek
    Orthodoxy

20
Russias Background
  • Russia in the Middle Ages was truly Eastern, and
    non-European. It was dominated by trade rates to
    Persia and China. It had no warm water ports,
    limiting trade. Its sheer size made it isolated
    and distant from the West. Its people wore
    Eastern dress, long beards, and were way behind
    the West in science and technology. Because they
    were Orthodox, they did not look to Rome, thus
    the Renaissance had not affected them.

21
The Mongols
  • The Mongol horde swept across the steppes and
    conquered the Kievan state in the 13th century.
    They were brutal rulers. They used the Russian
    nobility as their servants and tax collectors
    (the Mongol Yoke)

22
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23
Muscovy
  • The Princes of Muscovy became particularly adept
    at serving the Mongols. They were willing to put
    down other Russian rebellions in exchange for
    favoritism from the Mongols. In return, the
    Mongols allowed the prince of Muscovy to become
    hereditary position. In this way was built up the
    power of Moscow.

24
The Princes of Muscovy
  • Alexander Nevsky, 1252
  • Ivan I (the moneybag). He crushed an uprising in
    1327, gaining more power from the Mongols in the
    process.
  • Ivan III in 1480 he stopped acknowledging the
    Mongols as supreme rulers. He also married the
    daughter of the last Byzantine Emperor. When
    Constantinople was overrun in 1453, the center of
    Orthodoxy moved to Moscow.

25
Ivan the IV (the Terrible)
  • He expanded the territory of Moscow, crushing the
    remains of Mongol power. Most importantly, he
    subdued the Russian nobility (the boyars) and
    confiscated much of their land. Artisans and
    merchants were consigned to their jobs, stifling
    what middle class there was. Some peasants
    escaped to Southern Russia, where they formed
    nomadic groups called the Cossacks.

26
The Time of Troubles
  • The Time of Troubles (1598-1613) was a period of
    civil war between the nobility. From this
    struggle young Michael Romanov emerged as tsar,
    establishing his family as the last tsarist
    dynasty.
  • The Romansovs finished the complete enserfment of
    the people and brought the Russian Church farther
    under the control of the monarchy.

27
Peter the Great
  • Peter was the most influential of all Russian
    monarchs. He was a dynamic figure. He greatly
    desired to Westernize Russia. To achieve this, he
    instituted several innovations

28
Peters Reforms
  • He expanded the Russian army to 200,000 men.
  • He forced the nobility to serve in the army.
  • He expanded Russian territory to capture an ice
    free Baltic port (St. Petersburg)
  • He forced the Russian aristocracy to shave their
    beards and adopt Western dress. He imported
    German artisans and craftsmen.
  • He forced his aristocrats to live in St.
    Petersburg
  • He built the first Russian Navy
  • He expanded Russian influence south into the
    Black Sea.

29
  • Expansion became paramount to the power of the
    tsars. New revenue was needed to propel the
    state. Also, by focusing on territory, the tsars
    could conveniently ignore the people.

30
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