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The Emergence of the Sovereign State:. Monarchy answered the needs of the 16 th century.
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The Emergence of the Sovereign State: Monarchy answered the needs of the 16th century. Years of civil war and religious warfare led many politicians to follow Machiavelli’s advice on how to be a successful prince. A king must try to be honest, just and good, but he had better be feared or he will not remain in power long. The good king must analyze the political circumstances and then do whatever is necessary to preserve the stability of the state. Elizabeth IPainted by John Bettes the YoungerHever Castle, Kent
Contest of Political Systems: Absolutism vs. ConstitutionalismFrance vs. England To secure stability at home and to raise the money required to project power around the world, a new form of government was needed. In England, a constitutional state emerged at the end of the 17th century which centralized power but also protected the rights of the taxpayer. In France, an absolutist state emerged which centralized power in the hands of the King. These two states would compete for domination of world trade and emerge as imperial powers.
The Contest for World Trade KEERE, Pieter van den.Nova Totius Terrarum Orbis Geographica Ac Hydrographica Tabula. Oxford: Jan Jansson à Waesberg & Sons, Moses Pitt and Stephen Swart, 1680.
James I – Absolutism & Divine Right Monarchy • Ruled England 1603-1625 • Trew Law of Free Monarchy • The ideological justification for absolute rule: the King answers only to God. • The Divine Hierarchy: • The King is a god to his subjects. • The King is a father to his family. • The King is the head to a natural body. • The King established the conception of the “king’s two bodies” and the right of “primogeniture”.
Parliament: Sovereignty of the People During the 17th century, Parliament, England’s legislature, achieved a breakthrough with a new definition of power. Sovereignty was the ultimate authority in civil society, and liberal political scientists insisted that this power belonged to the people. In England, Parliament claimed to possess the power of the people, and it moved towards a showdown with the king.
Charles I The Divine Right of Kings The drive for absolute power was at the center of the effort of the kings to gather the funds to modernize their military power. Would that James’ son Charles had better understood the nuances of Machiavellian vertu. His regal poise and air of absolute authority did not prevent his Puritan opponents from beheading him. During the next thirty years, England would be embroiled in civil war. Hobbes would write Leviathan during this time of crisis. Anthony Van Dyck, Charles Dismounted, ca. 1635. Louvre, Paris.
The Glorious Revolution (1688) England resolved decades of struggle between the King and Parliament by forming a government which shared power between the throne and the legislature. William of Orange, a province in the Netherlands, was invited to be King. However, he served in a government whose sovereign power belonged to the people. In the English Constitution of 1688, John Locke redefined the social contract between king and subject. The government’s primary responsibility was to protect the natural rights of the individual: life, liberty and property. This form of government would serve as the model for liberal government in the centuries to come.
Absolutism: The King’s Two Bodies In other European countries, a different path towards securing the sovereignty of the modern state was pursued: absolutism. Theorists reached back to the medieval concept of the divine hierarchy to justify concentrating power in the hands of one man. They reasoned that while the King as a man may be fallible, as King he is not. The sovereign source of power is unquestionable and invested by God himself. To avoid civil war, primogeniture was established to provide an orderly succession of power. An abstract convention supplants physical force to maintain order . (see Macbeth) Velazquez, DiegoPhilip IV in Brown and Silverc. 1631-32 OilNational Gallery, London
The Political Value of Pageantry The King’s court became the central playing field of politics. Elaborate rituals were devised by the royalty to glorify their power and establish a hierarchy of influential aristocrats and business people around them. Ritual not only impresses the populace, but it also reaffirms the traditional obligations to the nobility and the church which the King must recognize and preserve. Velazquez, Maria Teresa of Spain
The Development of Absolutism in France France had a tradition of political freedom in the feudal sense: feudal liberties for nobles; a legislative assembly, the Estates General, purporting to represent all of the people; provincial estates with powers over taxation, and parlements (supreme courts for different regions which could stand up to the king’s decree). Different towns possessed liberties that had been negotiated with the king. Import tariffs were levied by different provinces. The king’s taxes fell more heavily on some regions than others. France was really only a bundle of territories held together by allegiance to the King. (Palmer 178) Hyacinthe Rigaud, Louis XIV, 1701. Oil, approx. 9' 2" x 6' 3". Louvre, Paris.
Louis XIV “L’etat c’est moi.” During the long reign of Louis XIV (1638-1714) the modern French state came into being. The theory behind supporting absolute power argued that humans in the state of nature will do whatever they please, so peace and justice cannot exist without the threat of force. The idea that law and force should be monopolized by the lawful king was the essence of the 17th century doctrine of absolutism. Bishop Bousset, Louis’ principle political theorist, argued that royal power was absolute but not arbitrary. Rasion D’etatwasnot arbitrary because it must be reasonable and just like the will of God but royal power needed to be absolute, free from dictation by the regional parlements, the aristocracy, the church, or other subordinate elements within the country.
The Practical Application of Power: Arms and Bureaucracy The most fundamental step taken by Louis XIV to achieve sovereignty was to secure control of the army. Armed forces had formerly been private enterprises. Soldiers were mercenaries who worked for governments more or less as they chose. Louis XIV made war into the primary activity of the state. He saw to it that all armed persons in France worked only for him. These changes were made possible by the creation of a large civilian administration. Versailles, the King’s new palace, was created to awe the country with Louis’ wealth and power. To this center of patronage nobles swarmed to obtain positions in Louis bureaucracy. And once there, Louis could exert control over the aristocracy. Charles Le Brun. "Louis XIV." Oil on canvas. Ca. 1600.
Versailles Aerial view of palace at Versailles, France, begun 1669, and a portion of the gardens and surrounding area.
The New Nobility For positions in government, as distinguished from his personal entourage, Louis preferred to use men whose upper-class status was recent. These men could not aspire to independent political influence of their own. Louis never called the Estates General. He temporarily destroyed the influence of the parlements, stifled the old liberties, and created a strong system of administrative coordination under intendants throughout the country. These royal governors supervised tax collection and recruitment of soldiers, kept an eye on the local nobility, controlled hereditary officeholders, and enforced the law.
Economic and Financial Policies To support the reorganized army, the administrative center at Versailles, and his growing civil administration, Louis needed money and lots of it. The sovereign modern state came into existence in order to provide a country with a tax collecting machine of such size that the state could project armed force in the competition for world trade. In France only the “unprivileged” classes paid taxes, and those taxes were collected by many different intermediaries, all of whom took their cut. Louis and his ministers were able to reform this process and force a larger cut for the king, but they were never able to force the wealthy to pay taxes.
Colbert’s Economic Reforms Colbert used tariff laws to support French businesses in a mercantilist policy designed to make the country into a self-sufficient economic unit. (Mercantilists believed that economics is a zero sum gain: there are winners and losers. Wealth is defined by the amount of gold bullion that a person or state can accumulate. A nation’s wealth grew by exporting more than it imports.) Colbert promulgated a commercial code which eliminated local laws; he built roads and canals to encourage trade; he gave subsidies to factories to encourage the development of manufactured goods for export. He helped to found colonies and built up the army and navy. Government contracts to equip the armed forces became major deals for business. He also tried to eliminate the middlemen in the tax process. Colbert succeeded in creating a large tariff union in central France which the King could control, but the more peripheral provinces proved too strong. And Colbert was never able to force the aristocracy to pay its fair share. So the lives of the poor during the 17th century became even more miserable.
The Contest for Continental Supremacy Europe in 1700
The Slave-ship Brookes (1788) Alaudah Equiano
The Origins of Racism and the Rise of Nation States During the late 17th century Europeans began to change the notion of their origins. Rather than thinking of themselves as the sons and daughters of the ancient Romans, the idea of different races replaced that of a single common lineage. Race serves political purposes: it both unites and separates: We and They Race added the secular idea of inborn difference to the theological one of infidel and Christian. (Barzun, 108) A Sugar Plantation in 1823
War of the Spanish Succession1702-1713 France vs. England, Holland, Holy Roman Empire, and Portugal
The Treaty of Utrecht1713 France gets Spain, but Austria gets Milan and Naples; England gets Gibralter, Minorca, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, as well as the asiento: control of the slave trade.
Robert Walpole and The South Sea Bubble The wars had been financed by private companies which were given in return monopolies in colonial trade. These companies lent the government the huge funds needed to finance war. In England, speculation in the stock of the South Sea Company sent share prices sky rocketing. Similarly, in France, the Compagine d’Occident saw its shares as well go way up after the war. However, these companies’ potential for profit rested on unrealized business projects, and when public confidence in them wavered, the bubble burst: people pulled out, share values collapsed, and in turn the national governments were threatened with insolvency. In France, much of the war debt was repudiated, and from then on, financiers were unwilling to lend the government money. Ironically, because the absolute monarch had no check on his power to make policy yet could not collect taxes from the richest property owners, the king could obtain little credit. In England, none of the debt was repudiated. The government, under Finance Minister Robert Walpole, set aside funds to pay interest and gradually to reduce the principal of its obligations. The credit of the British government remained firm. In England because of the parliamentary system, the debt was considered a national responsibility. The political freedom of England gave it economic strength. (Palmer, 261-63) Robert Walpole, England’s first Prime Minister
The Great Wars of the Mid-Eighteenth Century The War of the Austrian Succession, 1740-1748 The Seven Years’ War, 1756-1763 The wars involved the same two principle issues: the duel between Britain and France for colonies, trade, and sea power, and the duel between Prussia and Austria for territory and military power in central Europe. Battles would be fought in Central Europe, in India, and in the New World. This was truly the first world war. Again France was at a disadvantage from the outset, forced to support a huge continental army as well as a navy able to compete with the British for colonial prizes.
The War of the Austrian Succession, 1740-48 Prussia challenges Austria for ascendancy in central Europe, and France enters the conflict trying to pry Naples, Sicily, and Belgium from the Hapsburgs. The British and the Dutch come in on the side of the Austrians. Winners: Prussia and France, but England had revealed French weakness at sea and in New World.
The Seven Years War in Europe France and Austria vs. Prussia and Russia. Winner: Prussia Shockwave Map
Terms of the Peace of Paris The Peace of Paris was signed in 1763 by Grenville's government although the terms were the work of the ministry of the Earl of Bute. The terms were as follows: Britain gained from France the entire province of Canada, all Louisiana east of the Mississippi river, Cape Breton , all the islands in the St Lawrence , Tobago, Dominica, St Vincent and the Grenadines (all in the West Indies) , Senegal on the African coast , and Minorca Britain gained from Spain Florida, the logwood forests of Honduras Spain also had to restore to Portugal all conquests made during the war France gained or regained fishing rights in the St Lawrence with the islands of St Pierre and Miquelon as bases; Guadaloupe, Martinique, Marie Galante, Desirade and St Lucia (in the West Indies); Gorée (on the coast of Africa) ; all the "factories" - trading stations - in India on condition that France admitted the supremacy of the British East India Company. France could not fortify any point in Bengal and had to recognise the British- supported rulers in the Carnatic and Deccan ; Belle Isle (in exchange for Minorca) France had to demilitarise Dunkirk
