AP European history prose readings
Absolutism – Napolean
Absolutism & Constitutionalism in Western Europe
I. France & Absolute Monarchy
Absolutism—the concept of the monarch having unquestioned power—grew out of the desire of the French
people to achieve domestic order after the chaos of the religious civil wars of the 16th and 17th centuries.
The Protestant Henry IV (1589-1610) brought religious peace to France by converting to Roman
Catholicism and by imposing the Edict of Nantes (1598) on France. Gradually a political theory developed
to maintain domestic peace. It rested on two main concepts: the divine rights of kings and sovereignty.
The doctrine of divine rights asserted that kings received their power directly from God, and that in their
use or abuse of that power they were responsible to no earthly authority. In theory, no subject had the right
under any circumstances to disobey the ruler whom God had set over him. In reality, the French monarch
ruled through a series of contracts made with the different units of which France was composed: provinces,
cities, ecclesiastical foundations, social classes, and economic groups such as trade guilds. All these
contracts left to each group its own liberties and privileges and no one saw anything out of the way in their
existence side by side with submission to the king.
According to the doctrine of sovereignty the king did not merely judge, enforce, and administer the law, he
also made it, and any law made by a rightful sovereign (like the Edict of Nantes) was binding on every
subject. In theory, the king was above the law, not under it. If his decrees violated the laws of nature, God
would punish him, but on earth no subject had the right to pass judgment on the king’s decrees.
After the assassination of Henry IV by a crazed fanatic in 1610, the child king Louis XIII (1610-1643)
ascended to the throne. Cardinal Richelieu, Louis XIII’s chief minister from 1624 to 1642, initiated policies
that eventually strengthened the power of the monarchy. Richelieu’s policy was the total subordination of
all groups and institutions to the French monarchy. Richelieu developed an efficient network of spies to
uncover noble plots and then crushed the conspiracies and executed the conspirators, thereby eliminating a
major threat to royal authority.
Huguenots numbered perhaps 10 percent of the total French population, most of them concentrated in the
southwest. In 1627 Louis XII decided to end the Protestant military and political independence granted by
the Edict of Nantes, because, he said, it constituted “a state within a state.” According to Louis, Huguenots
demanded freedom of conscience, but they did not allow Catholics to worship in their cities, which he
interpreted as political disobedience. In 1628 the Huguenot city of La Rochelle fell to royal forces. The
military fall of La Rochelle weakened the influence of aristocratic adherents of Calvinism and was one step
in the evolution of a unified French state.
To reform and strengthen the central administration Richelieu sent out royal officials called intendants to
execute the orders of the king. As the functions of the intendants grew, they came in conflict with
provincial governors. Since the intendants were victorious in most of these disputes, they further
strengthened the power of the crown. Unfortunately for France, the basic system of state finances was
corrupt and so many people benefited from the system’s inefficiency and injustice, that the state’s debt
continued its upward spiral under Richelieu.
Richelieu died in 1642, followed five months later by King Louis XIII, who was succeeded by his 4 year
old son Louis XIV. This necessitated a regency under Anne of Austria, wife of the dead king. Cardinal
Mazarin, Richelieu’s trained successor, dominated the government. An Italian who had come to France as a
papal legate and then became naturalized, Mazarin attempted to carry on Richelieu’s policies until his death
in 1661.
As a foreigner, Mazarin was greatly disliked by all elements of the French population. The nobles, who
resented the centralized power of the monarchy, temporarily allied with the members of the people of Paris,
who were angry at additional taxes imposed to pay the costs of the Thirty Years’ War. These nobles led a
rebellion called the Fronde (1648-1652) against the king (a frondeur was originally a person who threw
mud at the passing carriages of the rich). The nobles were crushed, and with the end of the Fronde, the vast
majority of the French concluded that the best hope for stability in France lay with the crown. The Fronde
has a traumatic effect on the young Louis XIV. The king and his mother were frequently threatened and
sometimes treated as prisoners by aristocratic factions. Louis never forgot such humiliations. The Fronde
convinced him that the sole alternative to anarchy was absolute monarchy.
The day after Cardinal Mazarin’s death, Louis XIV (1643-1715), at the age of 23, expressed his
determination to be the sole ruler of France: “It is now time that I govern the affairs of France myself. You
[secretaries and ministers] will assist me with your counsels when I ask for them. I request and order you to
seal no orders except by my command. . . .I order you not to sign anything, not even a passport . . . without
my command; to render account to me personally each day and to favor no one.” His mother, who was well
aware of Louis’s proclivity for fun and games and getting into the beds of the maids in the royal palace,
laughed aloud at these words. But Louis was quite serious.
Eager for glory, Louis created a grand and majestic spectacle at the court of Versailles. Louis set up the
royal court to serve three purposes simultaneously: it was the personal household of the king, the location
of central governmental machinery, and the place where powerful subjects came to find favors and offices
for themselves and their clients as well as the main arena where rival aristocratic factions jostled for power.
Louis eliminated the threat to his personal rule from the very high nobles and princes by removing them
from the royal council, the chief administrative body of the king, and enticing them to his court where he
could keep them preoccupied with court life and out of politics.
Instead of the high nobility and royal princes, Louis relied for his ministers on nobles who came from new
aristocratic families. His ministers were expected to be subservient. When his superintendent of finance,
Nicholas Fouquet, began to flaunt the enormous wealth and power he had amassed in the king’s service,
Louis imprisoned him for life. Louis was able to exercise control over the provinces and the people by
carefully bribing the important people to ensure that the king’s policies were executed. Nevertheless, local
officials could still obstruct the execution of policies they disliked, indicating clearly that a so-called
absolute monarch was not always absolute.
Louis XIV did not want to allow Protestants to practice their faith in largely Catholic France. Perhaps he
was motivated by religion, but it is more likely that Louis, who believed in the motto, “one king, one law,
one faith,” believed that the existence of this minority undermined his political authority. In 1685 Louis
issued the Edict of Fontainebleau. In addition to revoking the Edict of Nantes, the new edict provided for
the destruction of Huguenot churches and the closing of their schools. Although they were forbidden to
leave France, an estimated 200,000 Huguenots left for shelter in England, the Netherlands, and the German
states.
In 1660, Louis, who disliked Paris as a result of his humiliating experiences at the hands of Parisian mobs
during the Fronde, decided to convert a hunting lodge at Versailles into a chateau. Not until 1688, after
untold sums of money had been spent and tens of thousands of workers had labored incessantly, was most
of the construction completed. Versailles became a symbol for the French absolutist state and the power of
the Sun King. As a visible manifestation of France’s superiority and wealth, this lavish court was intended
to overawe subjects and impress foreign powers.
Life at Versailles became a court ceremony with Louis XIV at the center of it all. The only privacy the king
had was when he visited his wife or mother or mistress or met with his ministers. Most daily ceremonies
were carefully staged, such as those attending Louis’s rising from bed, dining, praying, attending mass, and
going to bed. A mob of nobles aspired to assist the king in carrying out these activities. Active involvement
in the activities at Versailles was the king’s prerequisite for obtaining offices, titles, and pensions that only
he could grant.
French became the language of polite society and the vehicle of diplomatic exchange, international
scholarship and learning. The royal courts of Sweden, Russia, Poland, and Germany all spoke French.
Russian aristocrats were more fluent in French than Russian. The Russian tsar Peter the Great and the
Prussian emperor, Frederick, both imitated Versailles in the construction of their palaces. The French today
revere Louis XIV as one of their greatest national heroes because of the culture that he inspired and
symbolized.
Louis XIV had a great appetite for war. He desired to achieved the prestige and military glory befitting a
Sun King as well as his dynastic ambition, his desire to ensure the domination of his Bourbon dynasty over
European affairs. During Louis XIV’s 54 year reign, France was at war for 33 years. Alarmed at his
expansion, England led the opposition to Louis. The fighting was world wide and exhausted the French
army and treasury. Constant war disrupted trade, which meant the state lost revenue from taxes.
Unnaturally poor weather also caused widespread starvation in the provinces which provoked peasant
revolts. By the time of Louis’s death in 1715, France hovered on the brink of bankruptcy. Louis XIV had
treated his people as subjects with few rights rather than as citizens with civil, political, and social rights.
As a result, 74 years after his death, a bloody revolution took place in France.
II. Russia Under Peter the Great (1689-1725)
Peter the Great was an unusual character. A strong man, towering 6’9’’ tall, Peter was coarse in his tastes
and rude in his behavior. He enjoyed a low kind of humor—belching contests, crude jokes—and vicious
punishments including floggings, impalings, roastings, and beard burnings. After a visit to the West in
1697-98 he returned to Russia with a firm determination to Europeanize the country. Peter’s primary
objective was to use European technology to make Russia a great military power. Employing both Russians
and European officers, he conscripted peasants for 25 year stints of service to build a standing army of
210,000 men. To further his administrative aims, Peter demanded that all members of the landholding class
serve in either military or civil offices.
Russian society was dominated by an upper class of landed aristocrats who, in the 17th century, managed to
bind their peasants to the land. An abundance of land and a shortage of peasants made serfdom desirable to
the landowners. Under a law of 1625, the penalty for killing another’s serf was merely to provide a
replacement. Towns-people were also stratified and controlled. Artisans were sharply separated from
merchants, and many of the latter were not allowed to move from their cities without government
permission or to sell their business to anyone outside their class. To raise the money for his military needs
Peter relied on the old Russian expedient of simply raising taxes, imposing additional burdens upon the
hapless peasants who were becoming ever more oppressed in Peter’s Russia.
Since westerners did not wear beards, Russian beards had to be shaved, a reform that Peter personally
enforced at court by shaving off his nobles’ beards. Outside the court, barbers planted at city gates enforced
the edict by cutting the beards of those who entered or left. Anyone who failed to conform was to be
“beaten without mercy.” For the nobles, who were already partly westernized, this change was hardly
earth-shattering. But to many others who believed that shaving the beard was a “defacement of the image
of God,” the attack was actually blasphemous.
Women greatly benefited from Peter’s reforms. Peter shattered the seclusion of upper-class Russian women
and demanded that they removed the traditional veils that covered their faces. He decreed that social
gatherings be held three times a week in the large houses of St. Petersburg where men and women could
mix for conversation, card games, and dancing, which Peter had learned in the West. The tsar also insisted
that women be allowed to marry of their own free will.
The object of Peter’s domestic reforms was to make Russia into a great state and military power. His
primary goal was to “open a window to the west,” meaning an ice-free port easily accessible to Europe.
This could only be achieved on the Baltic, but the Baltic coast was controlled by Sweden. Peter attacked
Sweden in 1700. The Great Northern War lasted until 1721. In the Peace of Nystadt Peter acquired the
Swedish Baltic coastal area, and Sweden became a second-rate power. Russia was now the great European
state Peter had wanted.
III. England and the Emergence of Constitutional Monarchy
Constitutionalism, as opposed to absolutism, is the limitation of the government by its subjects. In a
constitutional monarchy, a king or queen serves as head of state, but sovereignty rests with the electorate. A
constitutional government is not the same as democratic government. In a complete democracy all adults
have the right to participate through the vote. Most men and all women could not vote during this period.
Consequently, full democracy was not achieved in any country until the 20th century.
With the death of the “Virgin Queen” Elizabeth in 1603, her cousin, King James IV of Scotland, became
James I (1603-1625) of England, and the United Kingdom came into being. James understood little about
the laws, institutions, and customs of the English. He believed in the divine right of kings. This viewpoint
alienated Parliament which refused his requests for additional money. Puritan members of Parliament were
also alienated by James pro-Catholic beliefs. Many of England’s gentry, mostly well-to-do landowners
below the level of the nobility, had become Puritans, and they formed a substantial part of the House of
Commons. They also held important local positions and it was not wise for the king to alienate them.
When James’ son, Charles I (1625-1649), became king the conflict came to a head. In 1628, Parliament
passed a Petition of Right that prohibited taxes without Parliament’s consent, arbitrary imprisonment, the
quartering of soldiers in private houses, and the declaration of martial law in peacetime. Charles decided
that since he could not work with Parliament, he would not summon it to meet. From 1629 to 1640, Charles
pursued a course of “personal rule,” which forced him to find ways to collect taxes without the support of
Parliament. One method Charles used was a tax called Ship Money, a levy on seacoast towns to pay for
coastal defense. Charles used this money for general expenditures and it aroused opposition from people
who believed the king was attempting to tax without Parliament’s consent.
In 1640 Charles tried to impose the Anglican Book of Common Prayer upon the Scottish Presbyterian
church and the Scots rose up in rebellion. Charles did not have the necessary funds to fight the Scots, and
he was forced to call Parliament into session. Eleven years of frustration welled up to create a Parliament
determined to deal with the king. In its first session the so-called Long Parliament (because it lasted in one
form or another from 1640 to 1660) took a series of steps that placed severe limitations upon royal
authority. These included the abolition of taxes the king had collected without Parliament’s consent, such
as the Ship Money, and a law which specified that Parliament must meet at least once every three years.
When the king arrested some of the more radical members of Parliament in 1642 England slipped into civil
war.
Under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell the king was defeated and captured. In 1649 Charles was
beheaded. Parliament abolished the monarchy and the House of Lords and proclaimed England a republic
or Commonwealth. Cromwell brutally crushed a Catholic uprising in Ireland, and an uprising in Scotland
on behalf of the son of Charles I. Cromwell found it difficult to work with Parliament and he dismissed it in
1653. With the certainty of one who is convinced he is right, Cromwell had destroyed both king and
Parliament. From that time on Cromwell ruled as a military dictator (the Lord Protector). The country was
divided into eleven regions, each ruled by a military governor.
After Cromwell’s death in 1658 the country floundered along for 18 months before it reestablished the
monarchy. In 1660, after 11 years of exile in France, Charles II (the son of Charles I) returned to England.
The restoration of the monarchy and the House of Lords did not mean that the work of the English Civil
War was undone. Parliament kept much of the power it had won. Charles was sympathetic to, and perhaps
even inclined to, Catholicism. Moreover, Charles’s brother James, heir to the throne, did not hide the fact
that he was a Catholic.
Gradually, two groups developed in Parliament. The Whigs, who wanted to exclude James from inheriting
the throne, and establish a Protestant king with tolerance of Dissenters, and the Tories, who supported the
king, despite their dislike of James as a Catholic, because they did not believe Parliament should tamper
with the lawful succession to the throne. Propelled by a strong anti-Catholic sentiment, Parliament passed
the Test Act in 1673, specifying that only Anglicans could hold military and civil offices. In 1681 Charles
dismissed Parliament, relying on French subsides to rule alone. When he died in 1685, his Catholic brother
came to the throne.
In spite of the Test Act, James II named Catholics to high positions in the government, army, navy, and
universities. Parliamentary outcries against James’s policies stopped short of rebellion because members
knew that he was an old man and his successor was his Protestant daughter Mary, born to his first wife. But
in 1688, a son was born to James II’s second wife, also a Catholic. Suddenly the specter of a Catholic
hereditary monarchy loomed large. A group of seven prominent English noblemen invited William of
Orange, husband of Mary, to invade England. The English people welcomed William and Mary and James
II and his family fled to France. With almost no bloodshed, England had undergone a “Glorious
Revolution.”
In accepting the throne from Parliament, William & Mary agreed to the provisions of a Bill of Rights. The
Bill of Rights affirmed Parliament’s right to make laws and levy taxes and made it impossible for kings to
oppose or do without Parliament by stipulating that standing armies could be raised only with the consent
of Parliament. Elections and debates of Parliament had to be free, meaning that the king could not interfere.
The rights of citizens to petition the sovereign, keep arms, have a jury trial, and not be subject to excessive
bail were also confirmed. The Bill of Rights helped to fashion a system of government based on the rule of
law and a freely elected Parliament, thus laying the foundation for a constitutional monarchy. In 1689
Parliament passed the Toleration Act which granted Puritans the right of free public worship (Catholics
were still excluded).
IV. The Dutch Republic in the 17th Century
This period is often called the “golden age of the Netherlands.” Dutch ideas and attitudes played a profound
role in shaping a new and modern world-view, and the development of the modern constitutional state. The
Netherlands was a confederation of seven provinces, with Holland being the most powerful. Within each
province, an oligarchy of wealthy merchants handled domestic affairs. The federal assembly, or States
General, handled matters of foreign affairs. The States General had to refer all issues back to the local
Estates for approval.
The Dutch were fiercely republican. The Government was controlled by wealthy merchants and financers
with middle-class values that emphasized thrift, hard work, religious toleration, and simplicity in living.
The political success of the Dutch rested on the phenomenal commercial prosperity of the Netherlands. As
long as business people conducted their religion in private, the government did not interfere with them.
This toleration attracted a great deal of foreign capital and investment.
The fishing industry was the cornerstone of the Dutch economy. Profits from herring stimulated
shipbuilding, and the Dutch merchant marine was the largest in Europe. In 1650 the Dutch had about
16,000 merchant ships, half the European total. All the wood for these ships had to be imported: the Dutch
bought whole forests from Norway. They also bought entire vineyards from French growers before the
grapes were harvested. They controlled the Baltic grain trade. Because the Dutch dealt in bulk, nobody
could undersell them.
In 1602 the Dutch East India joint stock Company was formed. Within half a century, the Company had cut
heavily into Portuguese trading in East Asia. In the 1630s the Company was paying its investors about a
35% annual return on their investments. The Dutch West India Company, founded in 1621, traded with
Latin America and Africa. In the 17th century the Dutch enjoyed the highest standard of living in Europe.
Amsterdam and Rotterdam built massive granaries where the surplus of one year could be stored against
possible shortages the next. The low price of bread meant that, compared to other places in Europe, a
higher percentage of the worker’s income could be spent on fish, cheese, butter, vegetables, even meat. A
historian has described the Netherlands as “an island of plenty in a sea of want.” Consequently, the
Netherlands experienced very few of the food riots that characterized the rest of Europe.
War with France and England in the 1670s hurt the United Provinces. The long War of the Spanish
Succession was a costly drain on Dutch labor and financial resources. The peace signed in 1713 to end the
war marked the beginning of Dutch economic decline.
The Scientific Revolution & the Enlightenment
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------I. The Scientific Revolution
The breakdown of Christian unity during the Reformation and the subsequent religious wars created an
environment in which Europeans became accustomed to challenging both the ecclesiastical and political
realms—a challenge to intellectual authority soon followed.
The Scientific Revolution brought Europeans a new way of viewing the universe and their place in it. The
shift from an earth-centered to a sun-centered cosmos had an emotional as well as an intellectual effect.
Thus, the Scientific Revolution, popularized in the 18th century Enlightenment, stands as the major force in
the transition to the largely secular, rational, and materialistic perspective that has defined the modern
Western mentality since its full acceptance in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Historians have had a difficult time explaining the causes of the Scientific Revolution. The rediscovery of
Greek as well as Latin works by Renaissance humanists made it apparent that the unquestioned authorities
of the Middle Ages, Aristotle and Galen, had been contradicted by other thinkers. The desire to discover
which school of thought was correct stimulated new scientific work that sometimes led to a complete
rejection of the classical authorities. Copernicus, for example, had read in Plutarch (discovered by the
Renaissance) that Philolaus and a number of other ancients had believed that it was the earth and not the
sun that moved.
Renaissance artists have also been credited with making an impact on scientific study. Their desire to
imitate nature led them to rely upon a close observation of nature. At the same time, the “scientific” study
of the problems of perspective and correct anatomical proportions led to new insights.
Mathematicians, military engineers, naval architects, and navigators were having to deal with such practical
problems as how to navigate in unknown seas, how to compute the trajectories of cannonballs for more
effective impact, and how to calculate the tonnage of ships accurately. These technical problems served to
stimulate scientific activity because all of them required careful observation and accurate measurements.
The invention of new instruments and machines often made new scientific discoveries possible. The
printing press had a crucial role in spreading innovative ideas quickly and easily.
Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543)—In 1543, shortly before his death, Copernicus published his famous
book On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres. Using elaborate astronomical and mathematical
calculations, Copernicus argued that the planets revolved around the sun and that the moon revolved
around the earth. Copernicus’s ideas created uncertainty about the human role in the universe as well as
God’s location. Protestant reformers, adhering to a literal interpretation of the Scripture, were the first to
attack the new ideas.
Johannes Kepler (1571-1630)—Kepler was a brilliant mathematician and astronomer and took over the
position of imperial mathematician to the Holy Roman Emperor from Tycho Brahe. Using detailed
astronomical data that Brahe had collected over a 20 year period, Kepler arrived at his three laws of
planetary motion. These laws confirmed Copernicus’s heliocentric theory while modifying it in some ways.
Above all, they drove another nail into the coffin of the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic system.
Kepler’s first law showed that the orbit of the planets around the sun were not circular but elliptical in
shape with the sun at one focus of the ellipse rather than at the center. In his second law, he demonstrated
that the speed of a planet is greater when it is closer to the sun and decreases as its distance from the sun
increases. Kepler’s third law established that planets with larger orbits revolve at a slower average velocity
than those with smaller orbits.
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)—Galileo was a professor of mathematics and the first European to make
systematic observations of the universe by means of a telescope. Galileo’s great achievement was the
elaboration and consolidation of the modern experimental method. Rather than speculate about what might
or should happen, Galileo conducted controlled experiments to find out what actually did happen. He
showed that a uniform force—gravity—produced a uniform acceleration. He formulated the law of
inertia—an object continues in motion forever unless stopped by some external force. Aristotelian physics
was in a shambles.
Using his telescope, Galileo made a remarkable series of discoveries: mountains and craters on the moon,
four moons revolving around Jupiter, the phases of Venus, and sunspots. Galileo’s revelations, published in
The Starry Messenger in 1610, stunned his contemporaries and probably did more to make Europeans
aware of the new picture of the universe than the mathematical theories of Copernicus and Kepler. The
traditional world-view, which rested on determining and accepting the proper established authority, was
beginning to give way in certain fields to a critical, scientific method. This new method of learning and
investigating was the greatest accomplishment of the entire scientific revolution, for it proved capable of
great extension.
In The Starry Messenger, Galileo revealed himself as a firm proponent of Copernicus’s heliocentric system.
The Roman Inquisition of the Catholic church condemned Copernicanism and ordered Galileo to reject the
Copernican thesis. The report of the Inquisition stated “That the doctrine that the sun was the center of the
world and immovable was false and absurd. . .and contrary to Scripture, whereas the doctrine that the earth
was not the center of the world but moved, and has further a daily motion, was philosophically false and
absurd. . . .” As one cardinal commented, “the intention of the Holy Spirit is to teach us not how the
heavens go, but how to go to heaven.” The Inquisition attacked the Copernican system because it
threatened not only Scripture, but also an entire conception of the universe. The heavens were no longer a
spiritual world, but a world of matter. Humans were no longer at the center and God was no longer in a
specific place.
The condemnation of Galileo by the Inquisition seriously hampered further scientific work in Italy, which
had been at the forefront of scientific innovation. Leadership in science now passed to the northern
countries.
Isaac Newton (1642-1727)—Newton’s major work was his Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy,
known simply as the Principia by the first word of its Latin title. In this work, the last, highly influential
book in Europe to be written in Latin, Newton spelled out the mathematical proofs demonstrating his
universal law of gravitation. Newton’s work was the culmination of the theories of Copernicus, Kepler, and
Galileo. Though each had undermined some part of the Ptolemaic-Aristotelian cosmology, until Newton no
one had pieced together a coherent synthesis for a new cosmology. Newton did this by means of a set of
mathematical laws that explain motion and mechanics. The key feature of the Newtonian synthesis was the
law of universal gravitation—every object in the universe is attracted to every other object with a force
(gravity) that is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square
of the distances between them. With this law—even though it took another century to understand the
implications—Newton had demonstrated that one universal law could explain all motion in the universe,
from the movements of the planets to an apple falling from a tree. The universe was one huge, regulated,
and uniform machine that operated according to natural laws in absolute time, space and motion. Newton’s
concepts dominated the Western worldview until the 20th century, when the Einsteinian revolution based
on a concept of relativity superseded the Newtonian mechanistic concept.
II. The Enlightenment
In the 18th century a group of intellectuals know as the philosophes popularized the ideas of the Scientific
Revolution and used them to undertake a dramatic reexamination of all aspects of life. For most of the
philosophes, “enlightenment” included the rejection of traditional Christianity. The religious wars and
intolerance of the 16th and 17th centuries had created an environment in which intellectuals had become so
disgusted with religious fanaticism that they were open to the new ideas of the Scientific Revolution.
Intellectuals of the Enlightenment advocated the application of the scientific method to the understanding
of all life. All institutions and all systems of thought were subject to the rational, scientific way of thinking
if only people would free themselves from the shackles of past, worthless traditions, especially religious
ones. This belief led them to hope that they could progress toward a better society.
John Locke (1632-1704)—In 1690 Locke wrote his Second Treatise of Civil Government. In this work
Locke maintained that people set up civil governments to protect life, liberty, and property. A government
that oversteps its proper function—protecting the natural rights of life, liberty, and property—becomes a
tyranny. (By “natural” rights Locke meant rights basic to all men because all have the ability to reason).
Under a tyrannical government, the people have the natural right to rebellion. Such rebellion can be
avoided if the government carefully respects the rights of citizens and if people zealously defend their
liberty. Locke linked economic liberty and private property with political freedom. His idea, inherited from
ancient Greece and Rome, that there are natural rights equally valid for all peoples and societies played a
powerful role in Enlightenment thought. His ideas on liberty and tyranny were especially popular in
colonial America.
Montesquieu (1689-1755)—Montesquieu wrote that there are three basic kinds of governments: republics,
suitable for small states and based on citizen involvement; monarchy, appropriate for middle-sized states
and grounded in the ruling class’s adherence to law; and despotism, apt for large empires and dependent on
fear to inspire obedience. Montesquieu used England as an example of the second category, and it was his
analysis of England’s constitution that led to his most important contribution to political thought—the
importance of checks and balances created by means of a separation of powers. In large part, Montesquieu
misread the English situation and insisted on a separation of powers because he wanted the nobility of
France (of which he was a member) to play an active role in the running of the French government. The
translation of his work into English ensured that American philosophes like James Madison and Thomas
Jefferson would read it and incorporate its principles into the U.S. Constitution.
Voltaire (1694-1788)—Although he touched on all of the themes of importance to the philosophes, Voltaire
was especially well know for his criticism of traditional religion and his strong attachment to the idea of
religious toleration. Voltaire was a deist, as were most other philosophes. Deism was built upon the
Newtonian world-machine, which implied the existence of a mechanic-like God who had created the
universe. To Voltaire and most other philosophes, God had no direct involvement in the world he had
created and allowed to run according to its own natural laws. God did not extend grace or answer prayers as
Christians liked to believe. Jesus might be a “good fellow,” as Voltaire called him, but he was not divine.
Above all, Voltaire and most of the philosophes, hated all forms of religious intolerance, which they
believed often led to fanaticism and savage, inhuman action. Simple piety and human kindness—as
embodied in Christ’s great commandments to “love God and your neighbor as yourself”—were religion
enough.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)—According to Rousseau, humans originally lived in a state of nature
where they were happy. There were no laws, no judges; all people were equal. In order to preserve their
private property, people adopted laws and rulers. In so doing, they rushed not to liberty, but into chains.
Since mankind could not “return again to the forest to live among bears” government was a necessary evil.
In the Social Contract (1762) Rousseau argued that the social contract was basically an agreement on the
part of an entire society to be governed by its general will. If any individual wished to follow his own selfinterest, then he should be compelled to abide by the general will. “This means nothing less than that he
will be forced to be free,” wrote Rousseau, because the general will represented a community’s highest
aspirations, that which was best for the entire community. Thus, liberty was achieved through being forced
to follow what was best for all people because what was best for all was best for each individual. True
freedom is adherence to laws that one has imposed on one’s self.
To Rousseau, because everybody was responsible for framing the general will, the creation of laws could
never be delegated to a parliamentary institution: “Any law which the people has not ratified in person is
void; it is not law at all. The English people believes itself to be free; it is gravely mistaken; it is free only
during the election of Members of Parliament; as soon as the Members are elected, the people is enslaved;
it is nothing.” During the French Revolution radicals used the Social Contract to justify democratic politics,
but dictators have used it claiming that they, rather than some momentary majority of the voters, represent
the general will (citizens are “forced to be free”) and thus the true interests of democracy and the sovereign
masses.
Adam Smith (1723-1790)—Mercantilism dominated economic thought in the 17th century. According to
mercantilists, the prosperity of a nation depended upon a plentiful supply of specie. For this reason, it was
desirable to achieve a favorable balance of trade in which goods exported were of greater value than those
imported, promoting an influx of gold and silver payments that would increase the quantity of bullion.
Furthermore, to encourage exports, governments should stimulate and protect export industries and trade by
granting trade monop9lies, encouraging investment in new industries through subsidies, importing foreign
artisans, and improving transportation systems. By placing high tariffs on foreign goods, they could be kept
out of the country and prevented from competing with domestic industries. Colonies were also deemed
valuable as sources of raw materials and markets for finished goods.
In 1776 Smith published The Wealth of Nations in which he attacked the mercantilist theory. Smith argued
that the natural economic forces of supply and demand made it imperative that individuals should be left
free to pursue their own economic self-interest. In doing so, all of society would ultimately benefit.
Consequently, the state should in no way interrupt the free play of natural economic forces by government
regulation of the economy, but leave it alone, a doctrine that subsequently became known by its French
name, laissez-faire (to let alone).
Smith condemned the mercantilist use of protective tariffs. A tailor, he argued, does not try to make his
own shoes, nor does a shoemaker try to make his own clothes. Following this line of reasoning, if one
country can supply another country with a product cheaper than the latter can make it, it is better to
purchase than to produce it. Each nation then, should produce what it did best without the artificial barriers
of tariffs. To Smith, free trade was a fundamental economic principle. Smith believed that government
should not interfere in economic matters; indeed he wrote that the only role of government was the army,
police, and keeping up certain public works, such as roads and canals, that private individuals could not
afford. Thus, in Smith’s view the state should be a kind of “passive policeman” that stays out of the lives of
individuals. The Wealth of Nations helped lay the foundation of 19th century economic liberalism.
Pre-revolutionary Europe (c. 1715-1789)
I. The European States
France—Louis XIV had left France with enlarged territories but also an enormous debt, an unhappy people,
and a five-year-old great-grandson as his successor. Louis XV (1715-1774) was both lazy and weak, and
ministers and mistresses—especially Madame de Pompadour—influenced the king undermining the
prestige of the monarchy. The loss of an empire in the Seven Years’ War, accompanied by burdensome
taxes, an ever mounting public debt, more hungry people, and a court life at Versailles that remained
frivolous and carefree forced even Louis to realize the growing disgust with his monarchy. “Things will last
my time at any rate,” he prophetically remarked.
Louis XVI (1774-1792), knew little about the operations of the French government and lacked the energy
to deal decisively with state affairs. His wife, Marie Antoinette, was a spoiled Austrian princess who
devoted much of her time to court intrigues. As France’s financial crises worsened, neither Louis nor his
queen seemed able to fathom the depths of despair and discontent that soon led to violent revolution.
Great Britain—Power was shared between king and Parliament, with Parliament gradually gaining the
upper hand. The king chose ministers responsible to himself who set policy and guided Parliament;
Parliament had the power to make laws, levy taxes, pass the budget, and indirectly influence the king’s
ministers. Parliament was dominated by the landed aristocracy. Because the aristocracy was divided by
family rivalries, the kings could take advantage of the divisions to win aristocratic supporters through
patronage, awarding them titles, government posts, and positions in the church and household staff.
Members of the House of Commons were chosen from the boroughs and counties but not by popular vote.
Of the almost 500 deputies in the House, about 400 were chosen from boroughs. Past history rather than
population determined the number of delegates from each borough. In one borough six people might
choose two representatives whereas new cities like Manchester had no delegates at all. Landed aristocrats
tended to dominate the selection of deputies through patronage and bribery; the result was a number of
“pocket boroughs.” The duke of Newcastle, for example, controlled the representatives from seven
boroughs. It has been estimated that out of 405 borough deputies, 293 were chosen by fewer than 500
voters. This aristocratic control also extended to the two delegates from each of England’s forty counties.
In 1714 the Hanoverian dynasty was established when the last Stuart ruler, Queen Anne, died without an
heir. The crown was offered to the Protestant rulers of the German state of Hanover. Both George I (17141727) (who could not speak English) and George II (1727-1760) relied on their chief ministers to handle
Parliament and dispense patronage. This exercise of ministerial power was an important step in the
development of the modern cabinet system in British government.
Prussia—Under king Frederick William I (1713-1740), the rigid class stratifications that had emerged in
17th century Prussia persisted. The nobility, known as Junkers, who owned large estates with many serfs,
still played a dominating role in the Prussian state. The Junkers had a complete monopoly over the officer
corps of the Prussian army. Though tenth in physical size and 13th in population among the European
states, Prussia had the 4th largest army after France, Russia, and Austria.
Rank-and file-soldiers were usually peasants who served a long number of years. Discipline in the army
was extremely rigid and cruel—so cruel, that the king advised his generals not to take troops through a
forest on maneuvers because it offered too many opportunities for soldiers to desert. By using nobles as
officers, Frederick William ensured a close bond between the nobility and the army and, in turn, the loyalty
of the nobility to the absolute monarch. As officers, the Junker nobility became imbued with a sense of
service to the king or state. “Prussian militarism” became synonymous with the state. One Prussian minister
remarked around 1800 that “Prussia was not a country with an army, but an army with a country which
served as headquarters and food magazine.”
Prussian peasants spent most of their lives on their lords’ estates or in the army. They had few rights and
even needed their Junker’s permission to marry. For the middle class, the only opportunity for any social
prestige was in the civil service. Frederick William encouraged men of nonnoble birth to serve in important
administrative posts. At his death, only three of his 18 privy councilors were of noble birth.
Frederick the Great (1740-1786) was a social conservative who made Prussian society even more
aristocratic than it had been before. He reversed his father’s policy of allowing commoners to rise to power
in the civil service and reserved the higher positions in the bureaucracy for members of the nobility.
Frederick embroiled Prussia in two major wars—the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years
War. After the wars, the partition of Poland with Austria in 1772 gave him Polish territory that created
greater unity for the scattered lands of Prussia. By the end of his reign, Prussia was recognized as a great
European power.
Russia—Peter the Great was followed by a series of six successors who were made and unmade by the
palace guard. The last of these six was Peter III, whose German wife Catherine learned Russian and won
the favor of the palace guard. Peter was murdered by a faction of nobles, and Catherine II the Great (17621796) emerged as autocrat of all the Russians.
Catherine’s policies strengthened the landholding class at the expense of all others, especially the serfs.
Catherine divided Russia into fifty provinces, each of which in turn was subdivided into districts whose
ruling officials were chosen by the nobles. In this way, the local nobility became responsible for the day-to-
day governing of Russia. Moreover, the gentry were now formed into corporate groups with special legal
privileges, including the right to trail by peers and exemption from personal taxation and corporal
punishment. In 1767, serfs were forbidden to appeal to the state against their masters. Beginning in 1773 a
Cossack, peasant revolt rebellion across southern Russia. More than 1,500 estate owners and their families
were killed. After initial successes, the rebellion collapsed completely, and Catherine responded with even
greater repression of the peasantry.
Under Catherine, Russia spread southward by defeating the Turks in 1774. The Russians gained some land,
the privilege of protecting Greek Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire, and the right to sail in
Turkish waters. The Polish king was elected by the Polish nobles and forced to accept drastic restrictions
upon his power, including a standing army of no more than 20,000 soldiers. For Poland’s powerful
neighbors, this was an invitation to meddle in its affairs. To maintain the balance of power in central and
eastern Europe, Austria, Prussia, and Russia between 1772 and 1795 divided Poland into three roughly
equal portions. Many historians have pointed to Poland’s demise as a reason why building a strong,
absolutist state was essential to survival in the 17th and 18th centuries.
II. Wars & Diplomacy
The War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748)—When Maria Theresa came to the Austrian throne
Frederick II of Prussia took advantage of the new empress to invade Austrian Silesia. At the same time the
ruler of Bavaria seized some Austrian territory and had himself chosen as the new Holy Roman Emperor.
The vulnerability of Maria Theresa encouraged France to enter the war against Austria; in turn, Maria
Theresa allied with Great Britain who feared French hegemony over Europe. The war was fought in Europe
where Prussia seized Silesia, and France occupied the Austrian Netherlands, and in the East where France
took Madras in India from the British and in North America where the British captured the French fortress
of Louisbourg at the entrance to the St. Lawrence River. In the peace treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle all occupied
territory except Silesia was returned to their original owners. Prussia’s refusal to return Silesia guaranteed
another war.
The Seven Years’ War (1756-1763)—France, concerned about growing German power, abandoned Prussia
and allied with Austria. Russia, which saw Prussia as a major hindrance to Russian goals in central Europe,
joined the new alliance. In turn, Great Britain, in conflict with France over colonial empires, allied with
Prussia. The diplomatic revolution of 1756 led to another worldwide war.
There were three major areas of conflict: Europe, India, and North America. Europe witnessed the clash of
the two major alliances: the British and Prussians against the Austrians, Russians, and French. After bitter
fighting, the European conflict was ended by the Peace of Hubertusburg in 1763. All occupied territories
were returned, and Austria officially recognized Prussia’s permanent control of Silesia.
In India the British under Robert Clive ultimately won out. By the Treaty of Paris in 1763 the French
withdrew and left India to the British.
The greatest conflicts of the Seven Years’ War took place in North America. The war had actually started
in 1754 in the Ohio River Valley when French and British (including colonial Virginian troops under
George Washington) soldiers clashed over the control of what would become Pittsburgh. The war was
known as the French and Indian War to the Americans. Despite initial French successes, British fortunes
were revived by the efforts of William Pitt the Elder who was convinced that the destruction of the French
colonial empire was a necessary prerequisite for the creation of Britain’s own colonial empire.
Accordingly, Pitt decided to make a minimal effort in Europe while concentrating resources, especially the
British navy, on the colonial war. A series of British victories soon followed the defeat of French fleets in
major naval battles in 1759. On the night of September 13, 1759, British forces led by General Wolfe
scaled the heights outside Quebec and defeated the French under General Montcalm on the Plains of
Abraham. Both generals died in the battle. The British went on to seize Montreal, the Great Lakes area, and
the Ohio valley. In the Treaty of Paris the French ceded Canada and the lands east of the Mississippi to
Britain. By 1763, Great Britain was the world’s greatest colonial power.
European Armies and Warfare—The professional standing army became a standard feature of 18th century
Europe. The size of armies increased: between 1740 and 1780, the French army grew from 190,000 to
300,000 men; the Prussian from 83,000 to 200,000. Officers primarily from the landed aristocracy. Middleclass individuals were largely kept out of the higher ranks while being admitted to the middle ranks. Rankand-file soldiers came mostly from the lower classes. Since many states did not have the necessary
manpower 18th century armies were partially composed of foreign troops, many from Switzerland or the
petty German states. The maritime powers, such as Briton and the Dutch Republic, regarded navies as more
important than armies. In the second half of the 18th century, the British possessed 174 warships manned
by 80,000 sailors.
The costliness of 18th century armies as well as the technology and tactical traditions of the age created a
system of warfare based on limited objectives. Since generals were extremely reluctant to risk the
destruction of their armies in pitched battles, clever and elaborate maneuvers, rather than direct
confrontation, became fashionable. Nevertheless, despite the maneuvering and the sieges, European
warfare in the 18th century also involved many battles and considerable risk.
III. Economic Expansion and Social Change
Europe’s population began to grow around 1750 and continued a slow but irreversible upward movement.
The population of Europe was around 120 million in 1700 and it grew to 190 million by 1790. This
increase occurred during the same time that several million Europeans went abroad as colonists. This
growth was probably due to a falling death rate, especially among infants. Historians are not sure why the
death rate declined. Despite the increase in population, death was still a common feature of everyday life.
Diseases such as typhus, smallpox, influenza and dysentery, were rampant, especially since hygienic
conditions remained poor—little bathing, dirty clothes, and no systematic elimination of human wastes.
Despite improvements in transportation, famine and hunger could still be devastating.
Parents, especially the fathers, still generally selected marriage partners for their children based on the
interests of the family. One French noble responded to his son’s inquiry about his upcoming marriage:
“Mind your own business.”
Generally, lower-class women breast-fed their children. There were strong taboos in various parts of
Europe against sexual intercourse while a woman was breast-feeding. Mothers might avoid another
immediate pregnancy. Lower-class women also served as wet nurses for children of the aristocratic and
upper middle classes. Mothers from these higher social strata considered breast-feeding undignified and
hired wet nurses instead. For most Europeans, children were a source of considerable anxiety. They
represented more mouths to feed and in times of economic crisis proved such a liability that infanticide was
practiced and foundling homes were over crowded. It has been estimated that in the 1770s one-third of all
babies born in Paris were taken to foundling institutions. Mortality rates in foundling institutions ranged
from 50 to 90 percent (in a sense making foundling homes a legalized form of infanticide). Those children
who survived were usually sent to miserable jobs.
In order to save what they needed to establish their own households, both men and women (outside the
aristocracy) married quite late; the average age for men in northwestern Europe was about 28, for women it
was about 26. Late marriages might have been a natural form of birth control. The first child usually
appeared within one year of marriage, and additional children came at intervals of 2 or 3 years, producing
an average number of 5 births per family. For most people the family economy was often precarious. Bad
harvests in the countryside or a downturn in employment in the cities often reduced people to utter poverty
and a life of begging.
Eighteenth-century agriculture was characterized by increase in food production that can be attributed to
four interrelated factors: more land under cultivation, increased yields per acre, healthier and more
abundant livestock, and an improved climate. New crops, such as alfalfa, turnips, and clover, which stored
nitrogen in their roots and helped restore the soil’s fertility, were planted. These crops also provided winter
fodder for livestock.
The more numerous livestock increased the amount of protein in people’s diet and enhanced food
production by making available more animal manure. Increased yields were also encouraged by landed
aristocrats who shared in the scientific experimentation of the age. Jethro Tull discovered that using a hoe
to keep the soil loose allowed air and moisture to reach plants and enabled them to grow better. He also
used a drill to plant seeds in rows instead of scattering them by hand, a method that had lost much seed to
the birds.
The potato and maize (Indian corn) brought from the Americas increased food production. The potato
became a staple in Germany, the Low Countries, and especially Ireland. The potato took relatively little
effort to produce large quantities. High in carbohydrates and calories, rich in vitamins A and C, it could be
easily stored for winter use.
The new agricultural techniques were considered best suited to large-scale farms. Large landowners
enclosed the old open fields, combining the many small holdings that made up the fields into larger units.
In England, where small landholders resisted this process, Parliament, dominated by the landed aristocracy,
enacted legislation allowing agriculture lands to be legally enclosed. As a result of these enclosure acts,
England gradually became a land of large estates, and many small farmers were forced to become wage
laborers or tenant farmers. This early modernization of English agriculture with its noticeable increase in
productivity made possible the feeding of an expanding population about to enter a new world of
industrialization and urbanization.
The most important product of European industry in the 18th century was textiles. Woolen cloth made up
75% of Britain’s exports in the early 18th century. Most textiles were still produced by traditional methods.
In cities that were textile centers, master artisans employed timeworn methods to turn out finished goods in
their guild workshops. But textile production began to shift to the countryside in parts of Europe. In the
countryside, textiles were produced by the “putting-out” system in which an entrepreneur bought the raw
materials, mostly wool and flax, and “put them out” to rural workers who spun the raw material into yarn
and then wove it into cloth on simple looms. The entrepreneurs then sold the finished product, made a
profit, and used it to manufacture more. This system became known as the “cottage industry,” because
spinners and weavers did their work in their own cottages. Cottage industry was a family enterprise since
women and children could spin while men wove on the looms, enabling rural people to earn incomes that
supplemented their pitiful wages as agricultural laborers.
The importation of cotton from slave plantations in the Americas encouraged the production of cotton cloth
in Europe where a profitable market developed because of the growing demand for lightweight cotton
clothes that were less expensive than linens and woolens. The cottage industry proved incapable of keeping
up with the growing demand, leading English cloth entrepreneurs to develop new methods and new
machines. The flying shuttle sped up the process of weaving on a loom, thereby increasing the need for
large quantities of yearn. In response, Richard Arkwright invented a “water frame,” powered by horse or
water, which turned out yarn much faster than cottage spinning wheels. In America, Eli Whitney invented
the cotton gin, ensuring that the supply of cotton would keep up with demand. The abundance of yarn, in
turn, led to the development of mechanized looms.
IV. The Social Order of the 18th Century
Social status was largely determined by heredity. The peasantry constituted the largest social group,
making up as much as 85% of Europe’s population. The most important distinction among peasants—at
least legally—was between the free peasant and the serf. Peasants were not free from compulsory services.
Most owed tithes, often one-third of their crops. Although tithes were intended for parish priest, in France
only 10% of the priests received them. Instead the tithes wound up in the hands of towns and aristocratic
landowners. Local aristocrats claimed hunting rights on peasant land and had monopolies over the flour
mills, community ovens, and wine and oil presses needed by the peasants. Hunting rights, dues, fees, and
tithes were all deeply resented.
The nobles, who constituted about 2 or 3 percent of the European population, played a dominate role in
society. Their legal privileges included judgment by their peers, immunity from severe punishment,
exemption from many forms of taxation, and rights of jurisdiction. By convention nobles were expected to
live off the yields of their estates, but many nobles were also involved in the exploitation of raw materials
found on their estates; as a result many nobles were involved in mining, metallurgy, and glassmaking. Their
diet also set them off from the rest of society. Aristocrats consumed enormous quantities of meat and fish
dishes accompanied by cheeses, nuts and sweets.
Nobles played important roles in military and government affairs. The gap between rich and powerful
nobles and poor nobles could be enormous. In France, where there were about 350,000 nobles, only 4,000
noble families had access to court. As the 18th century progressed poor nobles sometimes sank into the
ranks of the unprivileged masses of the population. It has been estimated that the number of European
nobles declined by one-third between 1750 and 1815. Although the nobles clung to their privileged status
and struggled to keep others out, almost everywhere a person with money found it possible to enter noble
ranks. Rights of nobility were frequently attached to certain lands, so purchasing the lands made one a
noble; the acquisition of government offices also often conferred noble status.
Except in the Dutch Republic, Britain, and parts of Italy, townspeople were still a distinct minority of the
total population. By 1800 about 20% of the French population lived in towns of 2,000 or more. The biggest
city in Europe was London with its 1 million inhabitants while Paris numbered around 575,000. Wealthy
families dominated city politics. Just below the patricians stood an upper crust of the middle classes:
nonnoble officeholders, financiers and bankers, merchants, and lawyers. Another large urban group was the
petty bourgeoisie or lower middle class made up of master artisans, shopkeepers, and small traders. Below
them was the working class. Urban communities also had a large group of unskilled workers who served as
servants, maids, and cooks for pitifully low wages. Despite an end to the ravages of the plague, death rates
were still high, especially among children, because of unsanitary living conditions, polluted water, and a
lack of sewerage facilities.
Poverty was a highly visible problem both in cities and in the countryside. In some cities beggars made up
as much as 30% of the population. Prostitution was often an alternative to begging. In France and Britain
an estimated 10% of the people depended on charity or begging for their food. Prior to the 18th century the
general view in Europe was that assisting the poor was a Christian duty. By the 18th century charity to poor
beggars was thought to encourage their idleness and lead them to vice and crime. The government did little
to alleviate poverty, and vagrancy and begging were criminal acts. People were arrested and incarcerated
for as long as 18 months for these activities in some countries.
The Industrial Revolution in Great Britain
The Industrial Revolution had its beginnings in Britain in the second half of the 18th century. By 1850,
Great Britain was the wealthiest country in the world; by that time industrialization had also spread to the
European continent and North America. By the end of the 19th century, both Germany and the United
States would surpass Britain in industrial production.
The agricultural revolution of the 18th century played a major role in allowing Britain to be the first
country to industrialize. The significant increase in food production allowed British agriculture to feed
more people at lower prices with less labor. Britain had the highest standard of living in Europe and even
ordinary British families did not have to use most of their income to buy food, giving them the potential to
purchase manufactured goods. At the same time, a rapid growth of population provided a pool of surplus
labor for the new factories.
Britain had a ready supply of capital for investment. Britain also possessed an effective central bank and
well-developed, flexible credit facilities. Many early factory owners were merchants and entrepreneurs who
had profited from the cottage industry. Britain was richly supplied with important mineral resources, such
as coal and iron ore, needed in the manufacturing process. By 1780, roads, rivers, and canals linked the
major industrial centers of the country. Parliament contributed to the favorable business climate by
providing a stable government and passing laws that protected private property. Moreover, Britain placed
fewer restrictions on private entrepreneurs than any other European state.
Finally, a supply of markets gave British industrialists a ready outlet for their manufactured goods. British
exports quadrupled from 1660 to 1760. Great Britain had a vast colonial empire, and a well-developed
merchant marine. A crucial factor in Britain’s success was its ability to produce cheaply those articles most
in demand abroad. And the best markets abroad were not in Europe, where countries protected their own
incipient industries, but in the Americas, Africa, and the East, where people wanted sturdy, inexpensive
clothes rather than costly, highly finished, luxury items. Britain’s machine produced textiles fulfilled that
demand. The demand from both domestic and foreign markets and the inability of the old system to fulfill it
led entrepreneurs to seek and adopt the new methods of manufacturing that a series of inventions provided.
In so doing, these individuals produced the Industrial Revolution.
In the 1770s and 1780s, the cotton textile industry took the first major step toward the Industrial Revolution
with the creation of the modern factory. Inventions increased yarn production and the weaving of cloth. In
the 1820s there were still 250,000 hand-loom weavers in Britain; by 1860, only 3,000 were left. The new
machinery made it more efficient to bring workers to the machines and organize their labor collectively in
factories located next to rivers and streams, the sources of power for many these early machines, than to
leave the workers dispersed in their cottages. The concentration of labor in the new factories also brought
the laborers and their families to live in the new towns that rapidly grew up around the factories.
The invention of the steam engine played a major role in the Industrial Revolution. The steam engine was
initially developed to pump water from deep mines. In 1782, James Watt improved the steam engine when
he developed a rotary engine that could turn a shaft and thus drive machinery. Steam power could now be
applied to spinning and weaving cotton. By 1850 almost 90% of the power available to the entire British
cotton industry came from steam. Since steam engines were fired by coal, they did not need to be located
near rivers; entrepreneurs now had greater flexibility in their choice of location.
In 1760, Britain imported 2.5 million pounds of cotton, which was farmed out to cottage industries. By
1840, 366 million pounds of cotton were imported annually, much of it from the American South where it
was grown by plantation owners using slave labor. Between 1720 and 1812 the price of cotton yarn fell by
90%. Cheap cotton cloth made it possible for poor people to wear undergarments, long a preserve of the
rich who alone could afford underwear made with expensive linen cloth. New work clothing that was
tough, comfortable to the skin, and yet cheap and easily washable became common.
One of the most important applications of steam took place in transportation. The development of railroads
and steamships contributed more to the opening of new markets than any other invention of the age. In
1700 it took a stagecoach leaving London three days to reach Dover (75 miles) and two weeks to reach
Edinburgh (450 miles). Under these circumstances, merchandise could scarcely move from one part of the
country to another on land. Britain, like every other nation, consisted of a multitude of small, self-contained
economies, each of which satisfied its own needs. Canals modified this situation somewhat—one tow horse
could pull as much merchandise on a canal barge as could 40 horses on land—but canals were slow,
expensive to build, and limited by topography to certain areas.
The Era of the French Revolution & Napoleon
I. The Background to the French Revolution
The American Revolution had an important impact on Europeans. It proved to many Europeans that the
ideas of the Enlightenment could actually be put into practice. The Americans had created a new social
contract, embodied it in a written constitution, and made concepts of liberty and representative government
a reality.
Europeans obtained much of their information about America from returning soldiers, especially the
hundreds of French officers who had served in the American war. Many of these men, like the marquis de
Lafayette, were influential in the early stages of the French Revolution. The Declaration of the Rights of
Man and the Citizen were also influenced by the Declaration of Independence. Yet, the American
Revolution proved in the long run to be far less important to Europe than the French Revolution. The
French Revolution was more complex, more violent, and far more radical with its attempt to construct both
a new political order and a new social order. The French Revolution provided a model of revolution for
Europe and much of the rest of the world; to many it has remained the political movement that truly
inaugurated the modern political world.
Before the Revolution, French society was grounded in the inequality of rights or the idea of privilege. The
population of 27 million was divided into legal categories known as the three estates. The first estate
consisted of the clergy and numbered about 130,000 people. The church owned about 10 % of the land.
Clergy were exempt from the taille, France’s chief tax. The higher clergy stemming from aristocratic
families, shared the interests of the nobility while the parish priests were often poor commoners.
The second estate was the nobility, composed of no more than 350,000 people who nevertheless owned
about 25 to 30% of the land. They held many of the leading positions in the government, the military, the
law courts, and the higher church offices. Much heavy industry in France was controlled by the nobles.
Nobles were exempt from paying the taille. The French nobility was also divided. The nobility of the robe
derived their status from office holding, a pathway that enabled commoners to attain noble rank. The
nobility of the sword claimed to be descendants of the original medieval nobility. As a group, the nobles
sought to expand their privileges at the expense of the monarchy and to maintain their monopolistic control
over positions in the military, church, and government. Although there were many poor nobles, on the
whole the fortunes of the wealthy aristocrats outstripped those of most others in French society.
The third estate, or the commoners of society, were divided by vast differences in occupation. level of
education, and wealth. Peasants constituted about 75-80% of France’s total population. They owned about
35 to 40% of the land. French peasants had to pay fees for the use of village facilities, such as the flour
mill, community oven, and winepress, as well as tithes to the clergy. The nobility also maintained the right
to hunt on peasants’ land.
Another part of the third estate consisted of skilled artisans, shopkeepers, other urban wage earners, and
large groups of often unemployed unskilled workers. Ninety percent of French towns had fewer than
10,000 inhabitants; only nine cities had more than 50,000. In the 18th century, consumer prices rose faster
than wages, with the result that these urban groups experienced a noticeable decline in purchasing power.
Sudden increases in the price of bread, which constituted three-fourths of an ordinary person’s diet and cost
up to one-half of his income, immediately affected public order. People grew desperate when prices rose,
and their only recourse was mob action to try to change the situation.
About 8 percent of the population constituted of the bourgeoisie who owned about 20-25% of the land.
This group included professional people, merchants, industrialists, and bankers who controlled the
resources of trade, manufacturing, and finance and benefited from the economic prosperity after 1730. This
group were often excluded from the social and political privileges of the nobility. Yet, between 1774 and
1789, 2,500 wealthy bourgeoisie entered the ranks of the nobility. Over the 18th century as a whole, 6,500
new noble families were created. Viewed in terms of economic function, many members of the bourgeoisie
and nobility formed a single class. Both aristocratic and bourgeois elites, long accustomed to a new
socioeconomic reality based on wealth and economic achievement, were increasingly frustrated by a
monarchical system resting on privileges and an old and rigid social order. The opposition of these elites to
the old order led them to take drastic action against the regime, although they soon split over the question
of how far to proceed in eliminating traditional privileges.
Bad harvests in 1787 and 1788 and the beginnings of a manufacturing depression resulted in food
shortages. The number of poor, estimated to be as high as one-third of the population, reached crisis
proportions on the eve of the Revolution. The ideas of the Enlightenment circulated widely among the
elites of France. The impact of these ideas is difficult to prove, but once the Revolution began, the
revolutionary leaders frequently quoted Enlightenment writers, especially Rousseau.
The immediate cause of the French Revolution was the near collapse of governmental finances. French
governmental expenditures continued to grow due to costly wars and royal extravagance. Since the
government responded by borrowing, by 1788 the interest on the national debt constituted half of the
government’s spending. On the verge of a complete financial collapse, the government was finally forced
to call a meeting of the Estates-General, the French parliamentary body that had not met since 1614. By
calling the Estates-General, the government was virtually admitting that the consent of the nation was
required to raise taxes.
II. The French Revolution
The Estates-General consisted of representatives from the three orders. Since the Third Estate constituted
97% of the population, the commoners had almost 600 representatives while the First and Second Estates
had 300 delegates each. The activists of the Third Estate and reform-minded individuals among the First
and Second Estates had common ties in their youth, urban background, and hostility to privilege. The
Estates-General opened at Versailles on May 5, 1789. It was divided from the start over the question of
whether voting should by order or by individual. On June17, 1789 when the Third Estate could not get the
first two estates to agree upon individual voting, it voted to constitute itself a “national Assembly,” and
decided to draw up a constitution. On June 20th, the deputies of the Third Estate arrived at their meeting
place, only to find the doors locked; thereupon they moved to a nearby indoor tennis court and in the
Tennis Court Oath they swore that they would continue to meet until they had produced a French
constitution. These actions constitute the first step in the French Revolution since the Third Estate had no
legal right to act as the National Assembly. Louis XVI threatened to use force to restore the status-quo.
The king’s attempt to take defensive measures by increasing the number of troops in Paris inflamed public
opinion. Parisian leaders formed a Permanent Committee to keep order. Needing arms, they organized a
popular force to capture weapons. On July 14, 1789 they attacked the Bastille. The Bastille was a royal
armory and prison. After three hours of fighting the 114 defenders were overcome. Angered by the loss of
98 of their members, the victorious mob beat the commander of the Bastille to death, cut off his head, and
carried it aloft in triumph through the streets of Paris. Although it only contained seven prisoners, the fall of
the Bastille quickly became a popular symbol of triumph over despotism. The king abandoned Paris to the
insurgents and lost control of the army. At the same time, independently of what was going on in Paris,
popular revolutions broke out in numerous cities and the countryside.
The agrarian revolts served as a backdrop to the Great Fear, a vast panic that spread like wildfire through
France between July 20 and August 6. Fear of invasion by foreign troops, aided by a supposed aristocratic
plot, encouraged the formation of more citizens’ militias. Influenced by the Great Fear, the National
Assembly destroyed aristocratic privileges. On August 26, the assembly provided the ideological
foundation for its actions by adopting the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen.
In the meantime, Louis XVI had remained inactive at Versailles. On October 5, after marching to the Hôtel
de Ville, the city hall, to demand bread, crowds of Parisian women numbering in the thousands set off
Versailles, twelve miles away, to confront the king and the National Assembly. The crowd insisted that the
royal family return to Paris. On October 6, the king complied. The king now accepted the National
Assembly’s decrees. The king became a virtually a prisoner in Paris.
The Catholic church, an important pillar of the old order, was also attacked. Most of its lands were
confiscated and the church was secularized. Both bishops and priests were to be elected by the people and
paid by the state. All clergy were also required to swear an oath of allegiance to the Civil Constitution.
Since the pope forbade it, only 54 percent of the French parish clergy took the oath, and the majority of
bishops refused. With this action the Catholic church now became an enemy of the Revolution, and it gave
counterrevolutionaries a popular base from which to operate.
By 1791, the National Assembly had completed the new constitution that established a limited,
constitutional monarchy. The Legislative Assembly, in which sovereign power was vested, was to consist
of 745 representatives chosen by an indirect system of election that preserved power in the hands of the
more affluent members of society. In June Louis XVI and his family sought to flee France. He almost
succeeded before being recognized, captured and brought back to Paris. In addition, the government was
still facing severe financial difficulties due to massive tax evasion. In this unsettled situation, with a
discredited and seemingly disloyal monarch, the new Legislative Assembly held its first session in October
1791.
When Emperor Leopold II of Austria urged other European monarchs to support the French king, the
Legislative Assembly declared war on Austria in April 1792. Many people in France wanted war.
Reactionaries hoped that a preoccupation with war would cool off the Revolution; French defeat, which
seemed likely in view of the army’s disintegration, might even lead to the restoration of the old regime.
Leftists hoped that war would consolidate the Revolution at home and spread it to all of Europe.
The French fared badly in the initial fighting, and a frantic search for scapegoats began. Defeats in war
coupled with economic shortages in the spring led to renewed political demonstrations, especially against
the king. A mob attacked the royal palace and Legislative Assembly in August 1792, took the king captive,
and forced the Assembly to suspend the monarchy and call for a National Convention, chosen on the basis
of universal male suffrage, to decide on the future form of government. With this move the French
Revolution entered a more radical stage as power passed from the Assembly to the new Paris Commune,
composed of many who proudly called themselves the sans-culottes, ordinary patriots without fine clothes.
Before the National Convention met, the Paris Commune, led by the newly appointed minister of justice,
Georges Danton, the sans-culottes sought revenge on those who had aided the king and resisted the popular
will. Thousands of presumed traitors were arrested and executed. In September 1792, the National
Convention began its sessions. Although it was called to draft a new constitution, it also acted as the ruling
body of France. The Convention voted to abolish the monarchy, and by a very narrow margin, Louis XVI
was commended to death. He was executed on January 21, 1793.
After the king had been executed, much of Europe—an informal coalition of Austria, Prussia, Spain,
Portugal, Britain, and the Dutch Republic—was pitted against France. By late spring some members of the
anti-French coalition were poised for an invasion of France. If successful, both the Revolution and the
revolutionaries would be destroyed and the old regime reestablished. To meet the crisis, the program of the
National Convention became one of curbing anarchy and counterrevolution at home while attempting to
win the war by a great national mobilization. To administer the government, the convention gave broad
powers to a 12 man Committee of Public Safety which was initially dominated by Danton. Maximilien
Robespierre eventually became one of its most important members.
By September 1794 the French army numbered 1,169,000. The Republic’s army was the largest ever seen
in European history. It pushed the allies back across the Rhine and even conquered the Austrian
Netherlands. Previously, wars had been fought by relatively small armies of professional soldiers. The new
French army was the creation of a “people’s” government; its wars were now “people’s” wars. The entire
nation was to be involved in the war. Buy when dynastic wars became people’s wars, warfare increased in
ferocity and lack of restraint. The wars of the French revolutionary era opened the door to the total war of
the modern world.
To meet the domestic crisis, the Committee of Public Safety established the “Reign of Terror.” Victims of
the Terror ranged from royalists, such as Queen Marie Antoinette, to former revolutionaries, and even
included thousands of peasants. Many victims were persons who had opposed the radical activities of the
sans-culottes. In the course of nine months, about 50,000 people were killed. The Committee justified the
Terror by explaining that “Since the French people has manifested its will, everything opposed to it is
outside the sovereign. Whatever is outside the sovereign is an enemy,” and therefore the state has the right
to protect itself by killing those who oppose “the will of the people.”
In its attempt to create a new order, the National Convention also pursued a policy of dechristianization.
The world “saint” was removed from street names, churches were closed, and priests were encouraged to
marry. Dechristianization backfired because France was still overwhelmingly Catholic.
In 1794 the Committee of Public Safety turned against its radical Parisian supporters, executed the leaders
of the Paris Commune, and turned it into a docile tool. In suppressing the people who had been its chief
supporters, the National Convention alienated an important group. The military successes of the French
meant that the Terror no longer served much purpose. But the Terror continued because Robespierre had
become obsessed with purifying the body politic of all the corrupt. Many deputies in the National
Convention feared that they were not safe while Robespierre was free to act and they moved against him.
Robespierre was guillotined in July 1794 and the radical stage of the French Revolution was brought to an
end.
After Robespierre’s death revolution fervor gave way to the Thermidorean Reaction (named after the
revolutionary month of July). Churches were allowed to reopen for worship, and a decree gave freedom of
worship to all. Economic regulation was dropped in favor of laissez-faire policies. A new constitution was
created in August 1795 that reflected a more conservative republicanism that did not sacrifice the ideals of
1789. A national assembly was created that consisted of two chambers, elected by about 30,000
Frenchmen. The upper house (the Council of Elders) elected five directors to act as the executive or
Directory. The members of the National Convention ruled that two-thirds of the new members of the
National Assembly must be chosen from their ranks. This decision produced an insurrection in Paris in
October that was dispersed after fierce combat by an army contingent under the artillery general Napoleon
Bonaparte. This was the last time in the French Revolution that the city of Paris would attempt to impose
its wishes on the central government. The use of the army made it clear that the Directory from the
beginning had to rely upon the military for survival.
The period of the Directory was an era of stagnation, corruption, and graft. Neither the right, who wanted to
restore the monarchy, nor the left, who wanted a more radical change in society, were satisfied with the
government. Finally, in 1799, exactly ten years after the outbreak of the Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte
staged a coup d’etat and seized power.
III. The Age of Napoleon
Napoleon was born in Corsica in 1769, only a few months after France annexed the island. The son of a
lawyer whose family stemmed from the Florentine nobility, Napoleon obtained a royal scholarship to study
at a military school in France, and he was commissioned as a lieutenant in 1785. At the age of 25 he was
appointed to the rank of brigadier general. After saving the National Convention from the Parisian mob in
1795 he was made commander of the French army in Italy in 1796. There in a series of stunning victories,
he defeated the Austrians and dictated peace to them in 1797. Throughout his Italian campaigns, Napoleon
won the confidence of his men by his energy, charm, intelligence, and the ability to make decisions rapidly.
These qualities combined with his ease with words, and supreme confidence with himself, enabled him
throughout the rest of his life to influence people and win their firm support.
In 1797 Napoleon led a French army into Egypt with the idea of threatening India. But the British
controlled the seas and, by 1799, had cut off supplies to his army. Napoleon abandoned his army and
returned to Paris where he participated in the coup d’etat that ultimately led to his virtual dictatorship of
France. He was only 30 years old at the time. With the coup d’etat executive power was vested in the hands
of three consuls although the constitution stipulated that “The decision of the First Consul shall suffice.” As
first consul, Napoleon directly controlled the executive authority of government. In 1802, Napoleon was
made consul for life, and in 1804 he returned France to monarchy when he crowned himself as Emperor
Napoleon I. The revolutionary era that had begun with an attempt to limit arbitrary government had ended
with a government far more autocratic than the monarchy of the old regime. As his reign progressed and
the demands of war increased, Napoleon’s regime became ever more dictatorial.
Napoleon saw the necessity to come to terms with the Catholic church in order to stabilize his regime and
in 1801 he singed a Concordat with the pope. The pope gained the right to depose French bishops, but the
state retained the right to nominate them. Seminaries were allowed to reopen. The pope agreed not to raise
the question of the church lands confiscated during the Revolution. While Napoleon recognized
Catholicism as the religion of a majority of the French people, Catholicism was not reestablished as the
state religion—both Catholic and Protestant clergy were paid by the state. As a result of the Concordat, the
Catholic church was no longer an enemy of the French government. At the same time, the agreement
reassured those who had acquired church lands during the Revolution that they would not be stripped of
them, and assurance that made them supporters of the Napoleonic regime.
Before the Revolution, France did not have a single set of laws, but rather 300 different legal systems.
Under Napoleon seven codes of law were completed. The most important was the Civil Code (the Code
Napoleon). This code recognized the principle of the equality of all citizens before the law, the right of
individuals to choose their professions, religious toleration, and the abolition of serfdom and feudalism.
Property rights continued to be protected while the interests of employers were safeguarded by outlawing
trade unions and strikes. Under the Code a wife caught in adultery could be divorced and even imprisoned.
A husband, on the other hand, could only be accused of adultery if he moved his mistress into his home.
Married women’s property was brought under the control of their husbands. In lawsuits they were treated
as minors, and their testimony was regarded as less reliable than that of men.
Under Napoleon, tax collection became systematic and efficient. No tax exemptions due to birth, status, or
special arrangement were granted. In 1802 the government balanced the budget. Promotion, whether in
civil or military offices, was based not on rank or birth but only on ability. Napoleon, however, also created
a new aristocracy based on merit in the state service. He created 3,263 nobles between 1808-1814.
Napoleon shut down 60 of France’s 73 newspapers and insisted that all manuscripts by subjected to
censorship before publication. The mail was opened by government police. Although equality was
preserved in the law code and the opening of careers to talent, the creation of a new aristocracy, the strong
protection accorded to property rights, and the use of conscription for the military make it clear that much
equality had been lost. Liberty was replaced by despotism.
After a brief peace, in 1803 war was renewed with Britain, which was soon joined by Austria, Russia, and
Prussia. In a series of battles, Napoleon defeated the continental members of the coalition. He created a
Grand Empire that was composed of three major parts: the French empire, a series of dependent states, and
allied states. The French empire consisted of an enlarged France. Dependent states included Spain,
Holland, Italy the Swiss Republic, the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, and the Confederation of the Rhine. Allied
states were those defeated by Napoleon and forced to join his struggle against Britain; they included
Prussia, Austria, and Russia.
Within his empire, Napoleon demanded obedience. But as a child of the Enlightenment and Revolution,
Napoleon also sought acceptance of certain revolutionary principles, including legal equality, religious
toleration, and economic freedom. The spread of French revolutionary principles was an important factor in
the development of liberal traditions in Eastern Europe.
As long as Britain had naval supremacy it was invulnerable to military attack and it continued to harass
France on the seas. A second important factor in the defeat of Napoleon was nationalism. The French
aroused nationalism in two ways: by making themselves hated oppressors and by showing the people of
Europe what nationalism was and what a nation in arms could do. A Spanish uprising against Napoleon’s
rule, aided by British support, kept a French force of 200,000 pinned down for years. The beginning of
napoleon’s downfall came in 1812 with his invasion of Russia, when Russia refused to continue to support
Napoleon’s plans against Britain. In June 1812, a Grand Army of more than 600,000 men entered Russia.
Napoleon’s hopes for victory depended on quickly meeting and defeating the Russian armies, but the
Russian forces refused to give battle and retreated for hundreds of miles while torching their own villages
and countryside to prevent Napoleon’s army from finding food and forage. When the French army arrived
in Moscow, they found the city ablaze. Lacking food and supplies, Napoleon abandoned Moscow late in
October and made the “Great Retreat” across Russia in terrible winter conditions. Only 40,000 men
managed to straggle back to Poland in January 1813. This military disaster led to a war of liberation all
over Europe, culminating in Napoleon’s defeat in April 1814.
Napoleon was allowed to play ruler on the Island of Elba, while the Bourbon monarchy was restored to
France in the person of Louis XVIII, brother of the executed king. The new king had little support, and
Napoleon slipped back into France. The troops sent to capture him went over to his side, and Napoleon
entered Paris in triumph on March 20, 1815. Napoleon raised an army and moved to attack the nearest
allied forces stationed in Belgium. At Waterloo on June 18, Napoleon met a combined British and Prussian
army under the duke of Wellington and suffered a bloody defeat. This time the victorious allies exiled him
to Saint Helena.
The French Revolution created a modern revolutionary concept. After 1789 “revolutionaries” knew that the
proper use of mass uprisings could succeed in overthrowing unwanted governments. The French
Revolution became the model for revolution. At the same time, the liberal and national ideals created by the
Revolution and spread through Europe by Napoleon’s conquests dominated the political landscape of the
19th and early 20th centuries. A new European era had begun and Europe would never again be the same.