Transcript Enlightened Despots

Enlightened Despots
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Rooted in Louis XIV, Peter the Great
Drained marshes, built roads, codified the laws, repressed provincial autonomy, curtailed the
independence of nobles and the church, develop and salaried officialdom
(In response to war) augmented taxes, devised new taxes, taxed people or regions previously
untaxed, limited the autonomy of outlying political bodies, centralized and renovated political
systems
Differed in attitude; uncompromising, rational, reformist, usefulness to society, use of reason
Secular, little said of a divine right of kings, religious toleration
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1760s the Society of Jesus banned
Differed in tempo; impatient of customs and feudalism; acted abruptly and desired quicker
results
Arose from the writings of philosophes and war, led to concentration and rationalizing
government power
Idea of the state changed, a newer notion of an abstract and impersonal authority exercised by
public officer of whom the king was the highest
An acceleration of the old centralizing institutions
18th Century
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Enlightened Despots: France
‫ ﺣ‬France had the least success
‫ ﺣ‬Main problem: methods of raising revenue, wealthy class was exempt, thus
government was chronically poor
‫ ﺣ‬Cycles of war, debts, new projects of taxation, resistance from the
parlements
‫ ﺣ‬Nobles and bourgeoisie thought taxation was degrading and felt no political
responsibility, because they were kept out of policymaking
‫ ﺣ‬Increase in aristocratic power since Louis XIV
‫ ﺣ‬Louis XIV
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Capitation or poll tax, dixieme, was a failure, because it was widely evaded
Sale of offices and privileges (perverse effect of building up vested interest)
Taille, land tax, paid only by peasants.
Church granted a periodic “free gift”
1643 – 1715
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Louis XV
‫ ﺣ‬Louis XV
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Indifferent to most serious questions
Absorbed in Versailles
Disinclined to make trouble with close people
Après moi le deluge
‫ ﺣ‬Maupeou
‫ ﻣ‬Maupeou abolished parlements and proposed to make the laws uniform
‫ ﻣ‬Maupeou parlements run by salaried officials are the farthest step;
arbitrary, but enlightened, because previous parlements were
strongholds of aristocracy and had for decades blocked reforms
‫ ﻣ‬Vingtieme, five percent income tax on everyone; tried to increase but
faced opposition from parlements, pays d’etats, and church
1715 – 1774
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Louis XVI
‫ ﺣ‬Louis XVI
‫ ﻣ‬Lacked will power and could not bear to offend close people
‫ ﻣ‬Tried to please everyone
‫ ﻣ‬Pacified privileged classes
‫ ﺣ‬Abolished Maupeou parlements and recalled old parlements;
made reform impossible
‫ ﺣ‬Turgot, a philosophe, physicorat, government administrator
‫ ﺣ‬Suppressed guilds (privileged monopolies), greater freedom to
the internal commerce in grain, abolished the royal corvee
replacing it by a money tax, reviewed the whole system of
taxation and religious matters
1774 – 1792
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Maria Theresa
‫ ﺣ‬Maria Theresa
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Patient
Practical sense
Devoted to family life; sixteen children
Schonbrunn Palace
‫ ﺣ‬Aided by notable team of international ministers including Count Kaunitz
‫ ﺣ‬Prevented dissolution by enlarging and guaranteeing flow of taxes and soldiers
‫ ﺣ‬Broke the local control of nobles in diets
‫ ﺣ‬Cameralism (mercantilist doctrine) policies increased production to augment
economic strength
‫ ﺣ‬Checked guild monopolies, suppressed brigands, created a tariff union
‫ ﺣ‬Attacked serfdom (peasant belonged to more to the landlord than to the state) out of
human, military, political motives
‫ ﺣ‬Laws passed against peasant abuse, regularized labor obligations; often evaded
1740 – 1780
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Joseph II
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Joseph II
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Abolished serfdom
Decreed absolute equality of taxes
Equal punishment for equal crimes (Count Podstacky); less cruel
Religious toleration, freedom of the press
Equal civil right to Jews (army, noble)
Demanded increased powers in the appointment and supervision of Catholic bishops
Used church property to finance secular hospitals
Built the port of Trieste, Ostend Company
Applied equal measures on Hungary to centralize the empire
German as the single language for administration
Modern bureaucracy
Secret police, instrument of enlightenment and reform
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Limitations of despotic enlightenment
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Impatient (fast tempo), he would “end” existing conditions; solemn, earnest, good
Detested feudalism, nobility, church
A pure representative of the Age of Enlightenment; use of right and reason
Failed because he could not be everywhere and do everything; man without a party; lacked support from powerful groups
Suggested that drastic and abrupt reform could perhaps only come with a true revolution
“The revolutionary emperor”
“What was right must be right everywhere”
“The state means the greatest good for the greatest number”
1780 – 1790
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Frederick II
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Frederick II
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Friend of Voltaire, son of Frederick William I
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Played the flute, French authors, French prose, age of 18
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Docile Lutheran church, few burghers, Junker independence curtailed; not many sweeping reforms
Simplified and codified many laws; cheaper, faster, more honest law courts
Religious freedom
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Peasant abuse less known in Prussia
Ended serfdom in crown domains
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Social stratification in Prussia; nobles, peasants, burgers paid different taxes owed different duties; serfs are “hereditary
subjects” – not actually serfs anymore?? =/
Property and people legally classified; little social flexibility
Above served a military purpose; soldiers from peasant class, officers from noble class
No king could antagonize the army, because it is run by nobles
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Political system centralized in Potsdam and in his head; to give others responsibilities seemed wasteful
Government by a mastermind working in isolated superiority does not work
Trained no successor
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“No one reasons, everyone executes” (the king reasons)
“My chief occupation is to fight ignorance and prejudices in this country”
“First servant of the state”
“Old Fritz”
1740 – 1786
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Catherine II
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Catherine II
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German by birth, husband of Peter III; easily assimilated
Practical sense and great energy (five in the morning); corresponded with Diderot
Trained Alexander on the Western Model; Swiss La Harpe
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continued Westernization, modernization started by Peter I
Estrangement of upper class from their own people
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Summoned a Legislative Commission from which obtained valuable information
Legal codification, restrictions on the use of torture, religious toleration except Old Believers
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Unscrupulous foreign policy but accepted practice of the day, main builder of modern Russia
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Eastern Question
Greek Project
Defeated the Turks but checked by balance of power
Three Partitions of Poland
Black Sea, Odessa
Potemkin villages
“You write only on paper but I have to write on human skin”
1762 – 1796
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Catherine II
‫ ﺣ‬Failure to reform serfdom; peasant rebellion discouraged further efforts
‫ ﺣ‬Pugachev’s rebellion (1773)
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Worked upon by Old Believers
Recalled Stephen Razin
Class antagonism profound
Emelian Pugachev, dubbed Peter III, headed an insurrection in the Urals
Imperial manifesto proclaimed end of serfdom, taxes, and military consription
Famine dispersed rebels
Betrayed, body drawn and quartered
‫ ﺣ‬Catherine responded with repression
‫ ﺣ‬Conceded more powers to the landlords; shook off Peter I’s compulsory state
service
‫ ﺣ‬Culmination of serfdom,; Moscow Gazette “For sale, two plump coachmen”
‫ ﺣ‬Russian Empire with the consent of the serf-owning gentry
1762 – 1796
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Limitations of Enlightened Despotism
‫ ﺣ‬Foreshadowed an age of revolution… How?
‫ ﺣ‬Enlightened Despotism is the culmination of the
historic institution of monarchy; a centralizing but
progressive institution that set itself against the feudal
and ecclesiastical powers; after the French Revolution
became nostalgic, backward-looking, supported by
the church and aristocrats – wasn’t new enough,
feudal yet not feudal =/
18th Century
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Partitions of Poland
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Failed to develop modern organs of government
Without army, revenues, administration, prone to foreign interference
Polish movement lacked deep popular strength
Liberum veto; elections became an object of regular international interference (Stanislas Poniatowski)
Polish resistance earliest European example of modern revolutionary nationalism in Europe
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1772 Russia’s overwhelming victory against the Turks encourages Prussia and Austria first partition of
Poland
1791 Reform party with King Poniatowski draft a new constitution
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Kingship hereditary, gave more powers to the burghers
1793 Second Partition; Catherine the Great “fight Jacobinism and bet it in Poland,” destroyed the
constitution the same year
1794 Thaddeus Kosciusko even proposed to abolish serfdom
1795 Third partition
Many advanced thinkers saw the partitions as triumphs of enlightenment, but a great shock to the old
system of Europe
Edmund Burke, “crumbling of the old international order"
The principle of balance of power invoked to preserve independence of states; to survive a country needs a
strong government
Blow to France
18th Century
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The British Reform Movement
‫ ﺣ‬Atlantic Revolution, Democratic Revolution
‫ ﺣ‬A middle-class movement, bourgeois revolution
‫ ﺣ‬Revolutionary movements announced itself as a demand for liberty and equality;
general liberty of opinion, necessary to progress
‫ ﺣ‬Favored declaration of right and explicit written constitution
‫ ﺣ‬Proclaimed the sovereignty of the people
‫ ﺣ‬Formulated the idea of national citizenship; “people” were essentially classless
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According to the French Declaration of Rights socials distinctions are based on common
utility; elites of talent or function
‫ ﺣ‬Frequent elections; representation by numbers instead of representation of social
classes
‫ ﺣ‬Everything associated with absolutism, aristocracy feudalism, or inherited right
repudiated; any connection between religion and citizenship rejected
‫ ﺣ‬Undermined the special position of church; secularization; secularism from
scientific revolution spills into political spheres
18th Century
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The British Reform Movement
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General contentment with the arrangements that followed the Glorious Revolution and the
unwritten constitution; nothing is so conservative as a successful revolution
Enlightenment scholars: David Hume, Edward Gibbon
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Parliament had supreme power; to do all things except change a man into a woman
More sovereign, because less feudalism remained in England
Control of House of Commons was assured by patronage, giving of government jobs (places),
awarding contracts, having infrequent general elections; distribution of seats bore no relation
to numbers of inhabitants, no new borough created after 1688
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George III hoped to heighten the influence of the crown and to overcome factionalism
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Press was freer than elsewhere; undercurrents of discontent; Debates in parliament reported
by London press
Dissenters (Protestant not accepting the Church of England)
Commonwealth men (looked back nostalgically at Cromwell and Republican era, Saxon)
Parliamentary reformers (more diverse group)
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He had to work through Parliament; King’s Faction with Lord North
1832 First Reform bill at last they began to accomplish their goals)
18th Century
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The British Reform Movement
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American Revolution, civil struggle in the English-speaking world
English reformers blamed King George III; less than fair
Wilkes and Burke were sympathetic to American colonials
The radical reformers consistently supported America
Americans had been reading works of Dissenters about the despotism of the king
and corruption of Parliament
The result was to make Americans suspicious of all actions by the British
government, to sense tyranny everywhere, magnify such things as the Stamp Act
British Empire was decentralized in mid 17th century (31 governments)
Parliament to extend its powers in a general centralization of the empire
Much like the continent
Issues from the great war of the mid century
The charter of Massachusetts parallel to the revocation of a constitution charter in
Bohemia
Disputes in Brittany parallel to British parliament provincial assemblies of New
York Virginia
18th Century
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John Wilkes
‫ ﺣ‬John Wilkes
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A journalist, a member of Parliament, a political hero
Attacked King George III
His followers founded the Supporters of the Bill of Rights (1769)
Raised the questing of whether the House of Common should be
dependent on the electorate add on the propriety of mass agitation “out
of doors” on political questions
‫ ﻣ‬Regained his parliamentary seat (1774)
‫ ﻣ‬Introduced reforms none
‫ ﺣ‬As control passed to George III, Whig leaders sensed
corruption in election methods
1727 – 1797
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Edmund Burke
‫ ﺣ‬Edmund Burke
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Spokesmen for the Whig Party
Founder of philosophical conservatism
Did not favor: annul parliaments, wider universal male suffrage, and dissolution of some
boroughs
Concerned with the independence of the House of Commons rather than mathematically
represented
Thought landowning interests should govern
Pleaded for a strong sense of party in opposition to royal encroachments
Argued that members should follow their own best judgment of the country’s interest
Objected to placemen or jobholder dependent on their ministerial patrons
Objected to the use made for political purposes of a bewildering array of pensions,
sinecures, honorific appointments, ornamental offices
Economic Reform of 1782 curtailed crown patronage got many of these abolished
‫ ﺣ‬Reform movement remained strong, supported by William Pitt
‫ ﺣ‬Conservatism, satisfaction with the British constitution, patriotism, though, delayed
reforms
1729 – 1797
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Scotland
Ireland
India