Political and Governmental Structures 1450 to 1750 - AP World History: Modern

In historical terminology when you see the word “pax” it means “period of relative peace and prosperity.” The Pax Romana refers to the period of relative peace associated with the longevity of the Roman Empire; the Pax Mongolica refers to the growth of global trade and interaction during the short lived Mongol Empire; the Pax Tokugawa refers to the relative peace that descended over Japanese society following the unification of the country by Tokugawa Ieyasu.

When trying to answer this question, it is first useful to know what a nation-state is. A state is a political entity, whereas a nation is a cultural or ethnic identity. So, Basque might be a nation in Spain, but Spain is the state that Basque is within. In Europe throughout the late Medieval period, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment, nation-states began to emerge. Nation-states are political bodies unified with a cultural or ethnic identity. They primarily emerged in countries like England, France, Spain, the Netherlands, and Sweden in the early Renaissance period, and this system of nation-states was then exported around the world as the Western European powers continued to expand their influence. It is now the dominant political entity in the world and its significance has not waned in the twentieth or twenty-first centuries.

The concept of Shari'a Law outlines a list of codes and laws drawn directly from the Qu'ran and the teachings of Mohammed. Because of their religious basis they are an example of a theocracy. Shari'a law still remains a governing force in most Islamic nations.

The Tsars' power largely rested on the support of the Orthodox Church and the military.

The sans-culottes were a social group in revolutionary France.

Certain nomadic groups, such as the Cossacks, were oftentimes allied with the Tsar but they were not indigenous to Central Asia.

Although throughout history, certain Muslim fighters from Chechnya and Dagestan may have fought for the Russian Tsar, they were the exception rather than the rule.

Throughout history merchants from all over the world have traded in Russia, but they were never a main pillar of support for the Russian Tsars.

Over the course of the 16th century, French royal power became increasingly centralized, with the French monarch becoming an absolute monarch.

Although both firearms and longbows decreased the need for mounted knights in full plate armor, the French monarch was adept at raising loyal armies composed of both musketeers and longbow men.

The French Revolution did not occur until the 18th century.

The Viking invasion and sack of Paris occurred in 845, centuries before the 16th century.

Due to the fragmented nature of the Italian region at the time of the Renaissance, every single city-state (with the exceptions of the papal state of Rome and Venice) was governed under despotism. According to this system, the most powerful (aka the richest and most socially-connected) men in each city-state selected a despot to act as the city’s governing figure. This despot was charged with upholding the principle known as “podesta:” the maintenance of strict law and order, by any and all means (judicial, economic, military, political) necessary. Each city-state’s elite circles relied upon the despot’s iron social control so that they could conduct their trade and economic business unimpeded, with as little societal and governmental obstruction as possible. This system of government ensured that while, the elites and despots themselves were quite happy with their lofty positions, the majority of the citizens were resentful, if not openly hostile, and so political conflict became the norm. Before too long, many city-states became hotbeds of political intrigue, as various individuals, powerful or otherwise, vied to influence or remove despots, often through underhanded, even violent, means.

Martin Luther’s posting of his Ninety-five Theses on the door of the Wittenberg Church on October 31st, 1517 soon launched him into regional fame. As Luther’s prominence grew and his ideas spread, the popularity of the Protestant Reformation correspondingly increased. Naturally, this attracted the notice of high-level governmental and religious officials, many of whom considered Luther, not to mention the growing number of self-proclaimed Reformation adherents, as a potential threat to the reigning sociopolitical order. These concerns were not just confined to native German princes and rulers, but many other heads of state contemplated making moves against the Reformation as well – these included Pope Leo X, King Francis I of France, and many of the various Italian despots. Fortunately for the Reformation (and Luther himself), a dire political distraction soon occurred – namely, the death of the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian I, in 1519. The Emperor’s death threw the various European heads of state into a mad scramble to appoint a successor, with opposing regional forces backing different candidates. The conflict appeared to be teetering right on the edge of open warfare, especially between France, Spain, and the Papal State, and in the ensuing chaos, no one had time to deal with the Reformation anymore. Consequently, Luther’s ideas were free to continue their spread throughout the German, Switzerland, and Western European cultures – essentially, the Reformation gained valuable time in which to grow unimpeded.

Fortunately, not every Western European ruler believed in the necessity of religious conflict – some genuinely believed that every person should be free to practice their chosen religion, while other monarchs endorsed religious toleration out of more pragmatic means (civil unrest was always a threat to a ruler’s continued reign). Monarchs who enforced religious toleration and kept their country out of religiously motivated conflicts were known as “politiques.” The most successful “politique” was Queen Elizabeth I of England. Elizabeth took over the country after the death of her half-sister, Mary I, whose violent hatred of Protestantism had led her to institute a brutal repression of all English Protestants. Mary had hundreds of Protestants imprisoned, tortured, and executed, despite the increasingly horrified opposition of her Catholic subjects. These policies earned her the nickname “Bloody Mary.” When Elizabeth came to power, she immediately knew that she had to heal the social strife and wounds that her sister’s repression had caused throughout England, especially since there were grumblings of a potential dynasty change or even a revolt. So, Elizabeth adopted the principles of “politique,” endorsing religious toleration for all English citizens, ending government-sanctioned persecution of Protestants, and thereby strengthening social and political unity.

When Elizabeth I became Queen of England in 1558, she assumed control over a country which, under her sister Mary I’s reign, had been torn apart by brutal anti-Protestant persecution. Elizabeth I knew that if she wanted to make her nation both politically and socially successful, she needed to devise some sort of compromise between England’s Catholic and Protestant citizens. In 1559, Elizabeth I and Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy, which established the Queen as the ultimate arbiter of religious (as well as all other) matters and discarded all of Mary I’s anti-Protestant laws. Using the Act of Supremacy as her first step, Elizabeth established a climate of religious tolerance. Using her father King Henry VIII’s creation of his own national church, Elizabeth turned the Anglican Church – aka England’s official religion – into a sort of modified Catholic and Protestant mashup. Anglicanism combined Catholic rituals (such as rich church decorations and solemn processions) with more Protestant doctrines, such as those contained in the Common Book of Prayer (the national prayer book). Catholics and Protestants were thus free to worship, publically or privately, as they chose, so long as they didn’t engage in any sort of extremist speech or activity which threatened the nation’s religious balance.

This is a tricky question– in reality, Queen Elizabeth I never married. This was extremely unusual for the time period; because women were seen as the inferior gender, every woman was placed under considerable familial and societal pressure to find a husband and make a good match. As Queen, Elizabeth was under near constant pressure from her advisors and allies to marry, many of whom doubted her intellectual ability – as a woman – to effectively govern. Several of England’s allies also hoped that Elizabeth would choose one of their noblemen as her husband; this move would bring prestige and shared wealth and power to both nations. Many of Elizabeth’s advisors felt the same way; they worried that as a lone Queen without a King beside her, Elizabeth – and by extension her country – would not be taken seriously by foreign powers. But Elizabeth, who was known for her remarkably strong will, insisted that she could govern England perfectly well without a husband, a fact which her prosperous forty-five-year reign definitively proved. Throughout her time as monarch, Elizabeth astutely used the possibility of her marriage as a bargaining tool in her negotiations with other countries. In a truly masterful strategy, she was able to persuade foreign leaders to make favorable alliances with England by holding out the tantalizing prospect of her hand in marriage – an offer which she graciously but swiftly revoked as soon as the ink on the treaties dried.

By the middle of the eighteenth century, the power structure of the European continent had begun to settle and coalesce. Five countries would emerge as the dominant players – England, France, Russia, Prussia, and Austria (while the United Provinces of the Netherlands, Spain, and Sweden all fell from power). These top five nations achieved their high status thanks to their military prowess and prosperous economies; a few of these countries also gained in prestige due to their establishment of overseas colonial empires. For the duration of the century, the successive leaders and/or governments of these five nations would engage in near-constant competition against one another. Quite often, these struggles took place through economic means, such as the accumulation of new wealth or the cultivation of new foreign businesses or lands. These rulers also believed that having a strong national military force was absolutely essential (the better to intimidate the opposition), and so they engaged in massive recruitment campaigns and tried to obtain the latest weapons and supplies.

When studying seventeenth and eighteenth century Europe, the United Provinces of the Netherlands stand out as completely unique amongst all other countries. What set the Netherlands apart was its governmental structure – unlike most of its European counterparts (which favored monarchy or some similar sort of centralized power), the Netherlands was a republic. This was no accident – generally speaking, the Dutch despised monarchy (which they associated with the Spanish King Phillip II’s brutal invasion of their land) and they didn’t want to give up their independent ways. So, while a central government, called the States General, was established in The Hague, all decisions were made in cooperation with each of the seven provinces, which retained quite a few freedoms. Only in severe times of military distress would the Netherlands ever depart from this system: central authority would temporarily be ceded to a few military commanders but their power was always revoked as soon as the fighting stopped.

In seventeenth and eighteenth century Europe, two methods of government emerged as the most popular amongst leaders: parliamentary monarchies and political absolutism (aka absolute rule). Both of these structures emerged as a consequence of the same factor – namely, changes in the evolution of warfare. During the late sixteenth and all through the seventeenth centuries, new innovations in weapons rapidly developed, which in term inspired the creation of new training and fighting tactics so that soldiers could make the best use of their new weaponry. Such expansive changes always carry a monetary cost and the price of many of these particular elements (especially new weapons) was very high indeed. Rulers knew that if they wanted to rise to international power – and then hold on to that power – they would need to obtain these new weapons, re-train their troops, and re-organize their armies. This required gaining new wealth, mainly through increased taxation and confiscation – which are never popular among any nation’s citizens. Consequently, those monarchs who were able to rule with an iron fist, by putting down their people’s resistance, turning a deaf ear to popular protests, and enforcing their will upon their population were able to amass enough money to properly equip their armies to meet the new challenges of warfare. In essence, more money made more wars possible, which in turn increased a country’s power. Countries which operated along parliamentary monarchial systems, like England, in which the ruler could make no big decisions without the consent of a Parliament, mostly failed in this task. It was the absolute monarchs, such as King Louis XIV of France, who succeeded most dramatically in this quest. These developments, successes, and failures would substantially impact the course of European history over the coming decades.

King James I of England (who came to the throne after the death of Elizabeth I) was immensely unpopular amongst both Parliament and the general mass of his own subjects. The King’s unpopularity was due to many factors, several of which stemmed from his overall attitude. As a monarch, James was a firm believer in the notion of divine right and so he had an intense dislike for any consultation or cooperation in his decision making process. This disdain extended directly to Parliament – as per English law, Parliament was only permitted to assemble if the monarch instructed it to, which James had absolutely no intention of doing. So, instead of obtaining money from Parliament, James chose to raise the necessary funds through “impositions,” which were customs taxes placed on trade items. Naturally, the members of Parliament did not at all appreciate being cut out of the nation’s legislative and economic processes. James also turned a blind eye to corruption within his tight circle of court friends, many of whom engaged in scandalous behavior that horrified the English citizenry. These problems were further compounded by the King’s harsh treatment of the Puritans, whom he firmly shunned from the Anglican Church (this led to religious dissenters leaving the country in droves). Throughout this whole process, James seemed either entirely ignorant or completely unconcerned by his people’s growing suspicion and dislike of him, which didn’t exactly endear him to them any further. Perhaps the final straw came in 1604, when James made a peace deal with the Spanish government. This agreement was followed by the arranged marriage of James’s son, Charles, to a prominent Spanish princess. These alliances with Catholic Spain, which had traditionally been England’s arch enemy, caused outrage amongst a great deal of the English population, many of whom began to doubt their King’s loyalty to both the Anglican faith and to the English crown.

In 1625, after his father’s death, Charles I became the new King of England. It quickly became apparent to both Parliament and the general English population that their new ruler was every bit as immune to popular opinion as his predecessor had been. When Parliament cut off any further funding to the new monarch, Charles foolishly resorted to the exact same method of fundraising once used by his father – he brought back the hated “impositions” and even raised these taxes beyond previous heights. Charles carried this tactic even further by reviving old tax laws that had expired decades previously, requiring citizens to pay them anyway even though these laws technically no longer existed. Any individuals who protested were promptly thrown into prison. Charles once again followed in his father’s footsteps by making peace deals not only with Spain but with France as well, which increased his people’s suspicions that he was too favorable to Catholic powers (a charge further compounded by his wife’s Spanish descent and Catholic faith). Yet Charles continued blindly on, expanding his military and forcing private citizens to allow soldiers to live and operate out of their homes. Finally, in 1628, Parliament attempted to rein in the King – it informed him that it would deny him any funds unless he signed the Petition of Right, a document which placed restrictions on his powers. Charles agreed and did sign the Petition but he soon began to ignore it.

The year 1714 was a very important year for the Habsburg’s Austrian Empire. It was in during this year that Austria concluded the Treaty of Rastatt with France, finally ending their longstanding quarrel over the Spanish Succession. The terms of this peace deal were extremely favorable to Austria – the Habsburgs gained control over both Lombardy (a region in northern Italy) and the entire Spanish Netherlands, which thereafter became known as the Austrian Netherlands. By that time, the Austrian Empire already covered a vast swathe of territory, including Hungary, Croatia, Transylvania (modern Romania), Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, and Wenceslas. With the treaty’s new additions, the Austrian Empire expanded even more dramatically, far beyond their original few possessions in the German states. The Habsburg rulers took these new acquisitions as a favorable sign and quickly began consolidating their power over their new territories and citizens.

Unlike his father, who had largely left the nation’s province of Scotland alone, King Charles I decided to force the Scottish people to declare allegiance to the Anglican Church. This was a deeply foolish move, because Scotland was infamous throughout English history for its unwillingness to conform to demands and its dislike of authoritarian requirements. Sure enough, the Scots swiftly rose up in armed rebellion against the King. Desperate for money to properly equip his army and put down the revolt, Charles was forced to summon Parliament and ask for funding. But the members of Parliament were in no mood to humor their unpopular ruler and so they warned that before they would turn over any money, Charles would first have to take several steps to address his subject’s numerous complaints. Instead of agreeing or even trying to negotiate, instead the infuriated King dissolved Parliament, immediately forcing the legislative body to close (an act which could only be reversed with the King’s express approval). This Parliament therefore became known as the Short Parliament, because it was only in session for two months (April and May) of 1640.

Following the disastrous Battle of Newburn, in which the Scottish rebels completely routed the English Army, King Charles I of England had no other choice but to summon Parliament to meet once again. This new session, known as the Long Parliament, reconvened in 1640. Riding high on a wave of massive public approval and calls for change, the Long Parliament immediately began to change the course which Charles had set for the country. They quickly ordered the impeachment and execution of two of the King’s closest and most corrupt advisors, the earl of Strafford and Archbishop Laud. Next, Parliament passed a series of sweeping reforms which placed many limits on the monarchy’s control over the legislative body. These new laws prevented the King from instituting any new taxes without Parliamentary approval, prohibited the King from dissolving Parliament without its consent, and required that Parliament meet every three years at a minimum. The members also agreed that, due to the King’s poor leadership, it would be best if Parliament took over as Commander-in-Chief of England’s war against the Scottish rebels. All these decisions were reached with widespread support from both sections of Parliament. The one issue on which the body could not agree was the matter of religion – Parliament soon became divided into religious factions, with conservatives attempting to preserve the status quo while moderate and radical Puritans advocated for varying degrees of change. This one area of disagreement would prove pivotal in the events soon to come.

After Parliament’s army won the English Civil War in 1645, it decided that the country needed to undergo some radical changes. Yet Parliament’s leadership didn’t operate independently; its dependence on Oliver Cromwell, who had led the Roundheads to victory, ensured that Cromwell would be real voice behind the new government. In the first of a broad series of transformations, Cromwell and Parliament abolished the entire monarchy, Parliament’s House of Lords (which was filled with nobles and aristocrats), and the Anglican Church. At the same time, in a shocking twist, Cromwell began to call for the execution of King Charles I. Never before had any English monarch been killed by his own people but Cromwell’s influence was unstoppable. On January 30th, 1649, Charles was convicted in court as a criminal and was put to death. After the King’s execution, Cromwell moved to seize power. He created what he referred to as a Puritan republic but his government actually operated as a dictatorship, with the Puritan general wielding absolute power. Cromwell forced all English citizens to live according to his own set of religious morals – all dancing, singing, and consumption of alcohol was banned. Any protestors or nonconformists were brutally attacked by his fifty-thousand man army. These assaults were most ruthless in Ireland and Scotland, where Cromwell’s army crushed all resistance and violently persecuted Catholics. When Parliament’s remaining members in the House of Commons attempted to intervene, Cromwell dissolved Parliament as well. He ruled as the massively unpopular but incredibly feared Lord Protector until his death (from natural causes) in 1658.

After the English dictator Oliver Cromwell died in 1658, England was both relieved and quite desperate. Motivated by the numerous sufferings, restrictions, and deprivations which they had endured under Cromwell, the English people decided that their best course of action would be return to their previous form of government: parliamentary monarchy. To that end, in 1660, the monarchy, both Houses of Parliament, and the Anglican Church were officially restored. As their new ruler, Parliament and the army asked Charles II, the son of the executed Charles I, to return to the country (he had fled after his father’s death) and become King. Charles II agreed and he became the new King of England in 1660. The original conditions of political life were all restored: England was once again a Parliamentary monarchy, with hereditary rulers, an official Anglican Church, and a Parliament which served at the king’s pleasure.