Enlightenment and European
Power
Mark Philp
Gestalt
Enlightenment Gestalt I c 1775
European Gestalt II (18th C)
Contenders
• Portugal: Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Bukhara, Goa, Java, Timor,
Cape Verde, Malacca
• Spain: Central and South America, Kingdom of the two Sicilies,
Philippines, Spanish Netherlands, Canary Islands
• Denmark: Norway, Greenland, Iceland
• Netherlands: Dutch East Indies, Batavia, West Timor, Cape Colony,
Guiana
• Venice: Dalmatian Coast, Morea
• Holy Roman Empire see map
• Prussia see map
• France: French Canada, Louisiana, St Domingue, French West Indies
• Britain: East Coast America, West Indies
Holy Roman Empire c 1550
Prussia
France: French Canada, Louisiana, St
Domingue, East Indies, French West
Indies
British Empire c. 1750
Russia
Peter the Great 1672-1725
Catherine II 1729-96 (r.1762)
St Petersburg – ‘window onto Europe’
(Pushkin)
St Petersburg f. 1703 by Peter the
Great
Winter Palace 1732
Enlightened Russia
• Under Peter I: developed state bureaucracy and
centralised control.
• Building St Petersburg; Modernising czar.
– Peter III m Catherine in 1745 (minor German Princess)
– He took throne in 1761 – ousted after 6 months
• Under Catherine III: expansionism re Ottoman
Empire and Poland/Lithuanian lands
• Est.of governing provinces
• Civil code (1774) and criminal code c 1778
• Remained v. autocratic
Sir George Macartney (British
diplomat, 1764)
• ‘to despotism Russia owes her greatness and
dominion; so that if ever the monarchy
becomes more limited, she will lose her power
and strength, in proportion as she advances in
moral virtues and civil improvement.’
Absolutism and the language of
Enlightenment
• Catherine II’s Nakaz [Instruction] (1767):
- Goal = ‘Supreme Good’ of the nation and the
‘Equality of the Citizens’, that ‘they should all be
subject to the same laws’.
But - ‘The sovereign is absolute… every other
form of government whatsoever would not only
be prejudicial to Russia, but would even have
proved its entire ruin’.
Austria
• Joseph II (1741-1791) Holy Roman Emperor, 1764.
• Conflicts with his mother Maria Theresa d. 1780 –
architect of a series of pragmatic reforms centralising
the state before 1760s.
• Partition of Poland in 1770s; attack on feudal and
church privilege; religious toleration; plans to
emancipate serfs; required education of children;
planned elimination of service and replacement by tax.
• Reforms revoked towards end of reign because of
domestic unrest.
Joseph II of Austria (1741-1790)
Austrian state vs the aristocracy
• Joseph II (1763) desired; ‘to humble and
impoverish the grandees, for I do not believe it is
very beneficial that there should be little kings
and great subjects who live at their ease, not
caring what becomes of the state’.
• Joseph von Sonnenfels on serfdom : ‘Despotism
of oppressive princes over people is a horror. Yet
the most noxious, the most intolerable despotism
is the one which citizens exercise over their fellow
citizens’.
Frederick II of Prussia (1712-86)
Philosopher King
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1730 – break for freedom –
Corresponding with Voltaire;
composing with J S Bach
1733 – political marriage to Elizabeth of Brunswick
1739- published a philosophical refutation of
Machiavelli
• Took throne in 1740 an attacked Silesia in Austria (now
SW Poland) – triggering 8 yr War of Austrian
Succession. Annexed Silesia. Attacked Bohemia. Force
Austrian capitulations.
• Renewal of War ag. Austria in 1756 – 7 Years war.
Prussian Enlightenment
• Re-organiation of Justice – banning torture, uniform
criminal code (i.e., before Beccaria)
• Liberalised control of the press; moderate levels of
religious toleration
• Economic reforms to unite the country with canals and
rods; removing internal tariffs;
• Berlin est. as cultural capital; Belin scientific academy
rejuvenated.
• After 1763 re-org of Ministries, allowing rational
direction of tasks
• Introduced potato and turnip as major food crops.
Est-il utile de tromper le peuple? 1780
• Can the people think for themselves?
• Perreau, because the people had not the leisure to
think and were easily led astray ‘it is necessary to think,
to observe for them, and to show them clearly the
route they should take and that which they should
avoid.’
• Contingent inegalitarianism/elitism: educational
reform
• Developing alliance between elites – aristocratic,
military, bureaucratic, administrative
• Dangers of enlightenment misleading the people –
stubbornness, egoism, irreligion and anarchy
Chalottenburg Palace
Schloss Sanssouci, Potsdam
commissioned 1744, compl.1747
12 rooms
Berlin 1790s
A century of journalists:
C G Hoffman (1715)
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Rapid spread of newspapers in German states, journals
reviewing scientific and practical reforms
Communicating discoveries
Contributions from protestant clergy, but also rulers,
nobles, diplomats, functionaries, officers, scholars, and
artists.
• ‘The emergence of this group was one of the most
significant phenomena of 18th C Germany. Including both
nobles and non-nobles it constituted the single most
dynamic element in German society…An inherently
conservative nobility n Germany could be enlightened
because the ‘true enlightenment’ posed no threat to its
position.’ Whaley in Porter and Teich, Enlightenment in NC
Dresden: Augustus I:
tolerance of Protestantism, despite Catholicism
solving of how to make a European porcelain – est. of production at Meissen
from 1708
large scale public entertainments
new opera house
development of new Catholic repertoire of sacred works
Occupation by Frederick II in 1744
Grosses vollständiges Universal-Lexikon (Great Complete Univrsal Dictionary,
68 Volumes). Halle, Leipzig: Johann Heinrich Zedler, 1733.
Dresden 1748
18th Century Dresden
• J. S. Bach 1730: ‘…one need only go to
Dresden and see how the musicians are paid
by His Royal Majesty [the King of Poland and
Elector of Saxony, Frederick Augustus I].It
cannot fail, since the musicians are relieved of
all concern for their living, free from chagrin
and obliged each to master but a single
instrument; it must be something choice and
excellent to hear.”
Johann Gottlieb Kirchner 1730
Meissen Porcelain Saxony/Poland
Denmark: Christian VII
reign 1776-1808
• Married Caroline
Matilda sister of George
III.
• Under direction of his
doctor, Johann Friedrich
Struensee, introduced
range of reforms
Johann Fredrich Struensee
1737-1772
• German Doctor –
trained at the University
of Halle
• Position of power with
the King from 1768
Reforms initiated by Struensee
included:
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abolition of torture
abolition of unfree labor (corvée)
abolition of the censorship of the press
abolition of the practice of preferring
nobles for state offices
abolition of noble privileges
abolition of "undeserved" revenues for
nobles
abolition of the etiquette rules at the
Royal Court
abolition of the Royal Court's
aristocracy
abolition of state funding of
unproductive manufacturers
abolition of several holidays
introduction of a tax on gambling and
luxury horses to fund nursing of
foundlings
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ban of slave trade in the Danish
colonies
rewarding only actual achievements
with feudal titles and decorations
criminalization and punishment of
bribery
re-organization of the judicial
institutions to minimize corruption
introduction of state-owned grain
storages to balance out the grain
price
assignment of farmland to peasants
re-organization and reduction of the
army
university reforms
reform of the state-owned medical
institutions
abolition of capital punishment for
theft,
Caroline Matilda 1751-1775
Stella Tillyard, A Royal Affair
Rer Olov Enquist, The Visit of the Royal Physician
Italian and German 18th C artists and builders
Italy
German, Swiss, Austrian
• Giovanni Paolo Pannini
1691-1765
• Giovanni Battista Tiepolo
1696-1770
• Pompeo Batoni 1708-87
• Carlo Marchioni 1702-1786
• Giovanni Battista Piranesi
1720-78
• Giacomo Quarenghi 17441817
• Antonio Canova 1757-1802
• Johann Joachim
Winckleman 1717-68
• Anton Raphael Mengs
1728-79
• Henrich Füslli 1741-1825
• Angelica Kauffman 17411807
• Jacob Philip Hackert 17371807
• Johann Zoffany 177-1810
• Wilhelm Tischbein 17511829
Music
Antonio Vivaldi 1678-1741
J S Bach 1685-1750
George Frederic Handel 1685-1759
Joseph Haydn 1732-1809
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 1756-91
Beethoven 1770-1827
• Court patronage
• Public display and public
buildings
• Opera Houses and Concert
Halls
• Wider public participation
• Grand tour
• Interconnections between
south, east and North
through royal dynasties
and lines
Back to gestalt
• Rather than seeing Enlightenment as
spreading out from France, need to recognize
that it is multi-centred
• Also that it involves extensive traffic around
the courts and cities of Europe
• And that the interactions are cultural and
intellectual, but also military and dynastic
Is the Enlightenment then uniform?
• Need to distinguish horizontal relationships and
vertical ones.
• Court culture rests on patronage, hierarchy and
authority; market culture on free exchange,
equality, and consensus – in arts, goods and ideas
– and important not to rank those
• Enlightened absolutism models itself on the first,
and the dirigiste and expansionist state
• Enlightenment commercial republicanism models
itself on the second, the open society
• Critique of empire uses the latter against the
former
Enlightenment critique of empire (1)
• American Declaration of Independence:
- Citizens can: dissolve the political bands which
have connected them with another, and to
assume among the powers of the earth, the
separate and equal station to which the Laws
of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them.
Enlightenment critique of empire (3)
• Paine, Common Sense (1776): Society in every
state is a blessing, but government even in its
best state is but a necessary evil in its worst
state an in tolerable one ... Government, like
dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the
palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the
bowers of paradise.
Enlightenment critique of empire (2)
• Kant, Perpetual Peace (1795):
- Peril of empire - each state places its majesty ...subject to
no external juridical restraint, and the splendour of its
sovereign consists in the fact that many thousands stand at
his command to sacrifice themselves for something that does
not concern them and without his needing to place himself in
the least danger.
- By contrast, under republics if the consent of the citizens is
required in order to decide that war should be
declared…nothing is more natural than that they would be
very cautious in commencing such a poor game, decreeing for
themselves all the calamities of war.
European Absolutism vs American
republicanism
A conflict over the meaning of the ‘Enlightenment’ ?
Key question – was Enlightened Absolutism a distortion or
an equally authentic expression of ‘the age of reason’?
Is the key issue increasingly one of how far the public
sphere is dependent on the court as against a ‘free-market
of ideas’ – and what determines whether that’s the case –
America/Scotland vs England vs absolutisms of Europe ? It
is related to the extent to which commerce develops – and
to the extent that it focusses on meeting court needs, or
developing a wider urban, more egalitarian market?