Absolutism

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Absolutism
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Monarchies

• Definition a queen or king that inherits power
• Two Types - -
• Absolute Monarchy no limit to the Queen or
  Kings power
• Limited Monarchy Today most monarchies are one
  of two types of limited monarchies
• Parliamentary Monarchy
• Constitutional Monarchy
• Two European countries in the 1700s were not
  absolute monarchies the Dutch Netherlands
  England
• England had a parliamentary monarchy with the
  House of Lords and House of Commons

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Limits were placed on the monarchs power

• 1215 Magna Carta
• King was bound to the law
• King could not collect taxes without consent of
  the Great Council
• Right to trial by jury
• No freeman shall be taken, or imprisoned, or
  disseized, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any way
  harmednor will we go upon or send upon himsave
  by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law
  of the land.

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• 1628 Petition of Right (four limits)
• King could not collect taxes or force loans
  without Parliaments consent
• King could not imprison anyone without just
  cause
• Troops could not be housed in a private home
  against the owners will
• King could not declare martial law unless the
  country was at war

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• 1689 English Bill of Rights
• No suspending of Parliaments laws
• No levying of taxes without a specific grant from
  Parliament
• No interfering with a members freedom of speech
  in Parliament
• No penalty for a citizen who petitions the king
  about grievances
• No standing army to be kept in time of peace
• No posting of excessive bail in royal courts

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Four long-lasting dynasties where absolute
monarchies took hold were

• RUSSIA Romanov (1613-1917) 300 years
• AUSTRIA Hapsburg (1273-1918) 600 years
• PRUSSIA Hohenzollern (1417-1919) 500 years
• FRANCE Bourbon (1589-1792, interrupted,
  1814-1848)
• There was also one long-lasting dynasty that was
  NOT an absolute monarchy (it was a limited
  (parliamentary) monarchy ENGLAND (Hanover,
  Hanoverian today known as the Windsor dynasty)

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Enlightenment
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The Enlightenment was preceded by a SCIENTIFIC
REVOLUTION

• Francis Bacon
• Rene Descartes
• Isaac Newton
• Andreas Vesalius and William Harvey
• Robert Hooke
• Benjamin Franklin
• Robert Boyle, Joseph Priestly, Antoine Marie
  Lavoisier
• Their significance was to begin to question past
  assumptions and apply logic and REASON to
  scientific knowledge.
• Enlightened thinkers (philosophes) began to apply
  REASON to political and economic thought too.

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Major Ideas

• Reason (Voltaire considered this also the
  absence of intolerance, bigotry, or prejudice in
  ones thinking)
• Nature there were natural laws, what is natural
  was also good and reasonable
• Happiness they did not accept the medieval idea
  that people should accept misery in this world to
  find joy in the hereafter, they expected
  well-being on Earth
• Progress now that people used a scientific
  approach, society and humankind could be
  perfected
• Liberty through reason, the philosophes
  believed society could be free, they envied the
  liberties that the English people had

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Agree/Disagree

• Mankind is naturally selfish.
• People are born given natural rights of life,
  liberty and property.
• The only way to protect people from injuring each
  other is to give all power and strength to one
  person.
• When there is not a Power (government) to keep
  men under control they will go to war with each
  other.
• What all men know is derived from their
  experience.
• Men have the power to reason.
• The human mind at birth is a blank slate.

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Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)English philosopher,
scientist and political theorist.

• Leviathan
• The natural state of humans is to be constantly
  at war with each other.
• Peoples lives are solitary, poor, nasty,
  brutish, and short.
• Out of mans selfish interest, not to be killed,
  man delegates total power to a monarch.
• If people rebel against the state, they deserve
  whatever punishment the monarch gives them b/c
  they have broken societys basic contract. This
  is so they are protected from acting out their
  natural state.
• Absolute monarchy is the best form of government.

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John Locke (1632-1704)English philosopher and
political theorist

• Two Treatises of Government
• The state/government exists to preserve the
  natural rights (of life, liberty and property) of
  its citizens.
• When the government fails to preserve those
  rights, the citizens have the right, even the
  duty, to withdraw their support and rebel.
• An individual who breaks the law (breaks the
  social contract) may lose his liberty, property
  or even his life.
• Lockes theory benefited the elite better than
  the masses b/c of his emphasis on property.

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Hobbes/Locke?

• Mankind is naturally selfish.
• Hobbes
• People are born given natural rights of life,
  liberty and property.
• Locke
• The only way to protect people from injuring each
  other is to give all power and strength to one
  person.
• Hobbes
• When there is not a Power (government) to keep
  men under control they will go to war with each
  other.
• Hobbes
• What all men know is derived from their
  experience.
• Locke
• Men have the power to reason.
• Locke
• The human mind at birth is a blank slate.
• Locke

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Agree/Disagree?

• Man is born free, yet everywhere he is in chains.
• The conservation of liberty depends on the
  separation and balance of powers executive,
  legislative and judicial.
• Man was originally good but had been corrupted by
  society.
• Man needs to put the interests of the community
  before his own.
• Freedom means doing what one ought, now what one
  wants.

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Baron de Montesquieu (1688-1755)French political
theorist. He spent two years in London.

• On the Spirit of Laws
• Political liberty is the absence of one
  dominating power in the state.
• The conservation of liberty depends on the
  separation and balance of powers executive,
  legislative and judicial.
• If a single power controls all 3 functions then
  the state lives under despotism.

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Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)Political
theorist. Born in Switzerland but spend his
adult life in France.

• The Social Contract
• Rousseau felt that one of the illnesses of modern
  civilizations was - - society - - that man was
  originally good but had been corrupted by
  society.
• The social arrangement involves consent,
  participation and subordination of individual
  self-interest to the commonwealth.
• Trusts the ability of the people to make good
  decisions.
• Man needs to put the interests of the community
  before his own.
• Freedom means doing what one ought, not what one
  wants.
• This is a struggle between ones conscience and
  the individuals passion, appetite and
  self-interest.
• He differed from Locke b/c Locke thought the only
  purpose of govt was to protect natural rights
  but Rousseau said govt must go further and carry
  out the interests of the community.

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Montesquieu/Rousseau?

• Man is born free, yet everywhere he is in chains.
• Rousseau
• The conservation of liberty depends on the
  separation and balance of powers executive,
  legislative and judicial.
• Montesquieu
• Man was originally good but had been corrupted by
  society.
• Rousseau
• Man needs to put the interests of the community
  before his own.
• Rousseau
• Freedom means doing what one ought, now what one
  wants.
• Rousseau

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Agree/Disagree?

• This is the best of all possible worlds.

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Francois Marie Arouet (Voltaire) (1694-1778)

• Sickly as a child and throughout his life,
  frequently said he was dying but lived until age
  84
• Imprisoned twice in the Bastille (criticized the
  French govt and the Christian religion)
• Spent some time in Britain between prison stays,
  read Locke
• Citizen of the world
• Spent three years at Frederick the Greats palace
  in Prussia, until they irritated each other
• Wrote Candide in 3 days
• Frequently ended his letters with Ecrasez
  Iinfame! Crush the infamous thing! became the
  battle cry of enlightened thinkers
• What government was most admired by Voltaire,
  Montesquieu, etc.?

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Enlightened Despots - Reading

• Absolute ruler who embraced the Enlightenment,
  but was not willing to give up their power
• 1) favored religious tolerance
• 2) made economic and legal reforms
• 3) justify his/her reign based on usefulness
  rather than divine right
• Frederick II of Prussia called himself the
  first servant of the state, invited Voltaire to
  come to Prussia, granted religious freedom to
  Catholics and Protestants, but discriminated
  against Polish and Prussian Jews, reduced (but
  did not abolish torture), acknowledged serfdom
  was wrong, but didnt end it b/c he needed the
  support of landowners

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Exploration The Age of Discovery
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Exploration Terminology

• Joint Stock Companies organizations that sold
  stock or shares, in the venture, enabling large
  and small investors to share the profits and
  risks of a trading voyage.
• Examples Dutch East India Company Dutch West
  India Company (later-1700 and 1800s) British
  East India Company French East India Company
• Mercantilism economic system that believed
• a nations real wealth was measured in its gold
  and silver treasure
• To build up gold and silver, a nation needed to
  export more than it imported
• Overseas colonies existed for the benefit of the
  mother country

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Columbian Exchange Map
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Social Classes

• Peninsulares people born in Spain
• Highest positions in colonial government and
  Catholic Church
• Creoles American-born descendants of Spanish
  settlers
• Owned most plantations, ranches and mines
• Mestizos Native American European
• Mulattoes African European
• Lowest class African Native American (zambos)

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• Castas
• http//faculty.smu.edu/bakewell/BAKEWELL/thinkshee
  ts/castas.html
• The idea that the Spanish and Portuguese focus so
  much on COLOR trying to breed out black and,
  even more so, Indian blood - - focus is on trying
  to get as white as you can

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• Due to the high death rate from smallpox, etc.
  labor shortages were acute. Several systems were
  attempted to bring in laborers
• Encomienda system began as a response to the
  shortage of Spanish workers in the Americas.
  Native Americans worked and the Spanish settlers
  agreed to look after workers health and welfare
  and their souls by converting them to
  Christianity
• Mita System forced villages to supply a quota of
  workers
• Debt peonage Spanish settlers agreed to give
  loans for seed, tools, etc. in exchange for labor
  but they kept wages so low, the loans would never
  get paid off
• Indentured servitude Europeans would pay the
  trans-Atlantic passage if the person agreed to
  work for a set number of years (4-7 years)
• Slavery

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Columbian Exchange

• Positive

• Central America got horses, cows, chickens, pigs,
  sheep, goats, donkeys, oxen, wheat, barley, rye,
  oats, rice, oranges, apples, bananas, apricots,
  peaches, pears, coffee, sugar cane, and olives
• Europeans got corn, potatoes, kidney beans, lima
  beans, squash, avocados, pineapples, melons,
  tobacco, quinine, and cacao

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• Negative

• Disease smallpox, measles, influenza
• In 1492, there were 250,000 Indians in
  Hispaniola. Seventy years later 500
• Slave Trade At least 10 million African slaves
  reached the Americas over a 400-year period
• Triangular Trade
• Came over on a ship called a slaver. Middle
  Passage lasted 10 or more weeks
• One out of five died on the journey (some
  estimates are 15-25 of every 100) by suffocation
  or disease
• Sharks routinely trailed the slave ships,
  enticed by the large number of dead or dying
  Africans who were tossed overboard during the
  Middle Passage.