4/27/02
His. 467
Prof. Ikaolewski
Centralization of Scandinavian States
During the mid-17th century, wars between the Scandinavian states caused several changes to take place within each Nordic country. These changes restructured the legislative authority of the Monarchial rulers. In several Scandinavian states, the Monarchy became very powerful and had the utmost authority on most governmental decisions. Why did these Scandinavian nations change their rule to basically an absolute monarchy? What transpired throughout these wars to warrant such a change? The answer can be drawn from the different circumstances, which the war's caused. Simply, the war's caused each nation to reevaluate their government and their structure of power. To properly observe these legislative changes, which occurred throughout Scandinavia in the mid 1600's, one must examine the happenings of the two most powerful Scandinavian nations; Denmark, and Sweden.
The first nation, which will be examined, is Denmark and it lost semblance of democracy after the wars of the mid 17th century. In the coming years, the monarchy was strengthened and the burghers also achieved certain formal improvements. One the other hand, the nobility effectively
lost the greater part of their political and economic privileges. These changes were due to a lengthy political crisis and an acute state of emergency, which resulted from the last of the Karl Gustav wars against Sweden in 1657...
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... did, to his sole rule, then they were playing into his hands. They ultimately agreed. With the reduction of the power of the nobility, Sweden returned to the political structure of the early Vasa kings. The King was by the grace of God the all-powerful ruler and commander of Sweden and it's territories.
The wars of the mid- 17th century led the Scandinavian states to centralize monarchial power by creating problems within each society. These dilemmas included; Discrepancy in regards to power, economic stability, and military authority. The Scandinavian monarchs recognized these problems and decided that it was in their best interest to lay the blame on the semi-democratic nature of their governments. Nobles and other officials were deemed an
impediment to functional society. Therefore, the Monarch's gained absolute authority decreeing that their actions were based on god's will.
Due to the unstable political environment of the period 1399-1509, royal power varied from monarch to monarch, as parliament’s ability to limit this power fluctuated. There are several factors in limiting royal power, including the king’s relationship with parliament, royal finances and a king’s popularity, often due to military success. The most significant of these factors, however is the king's finances, as one of parliament's primary roles was to consider the king’s requests for taxation, and thus denying these requests would have been one of the few ways to effectively limit royal power.
Absolute monarchs ruled though the policy of absolutism. Absolutism declared that the king ruled though divine right with a legitimate claim to sole and uncontested authority (French State Building and Louis XIV). On this basis, Louis XIV of France and Suleiman I of the Ottoman Empire were both absolute monarchs. Each ruler believed that his power belonged to him and him alone due to divine right. They showed their absolute power by living lavishly, increased their power by waging wars, and kept their power by ensuring complete loyalty of their subjects.
The period 1550 to 1660 was a period of extreme dislocation and major change, within which saw periods boom and bust in various regions across Europe. This was followed by a much quieter period in the later 17th century that most economic historians would call recessionary. Along with the religious consequences of the Reformation and Counter Reformation came deep and lasting political changes. Northern Europe’s new religious and political freedoms came at a great cost, with decades of rebellions, wars and bloody
While most of Europe had develop strong central governments and weakened the power of the nobles, Russia had lagged behind the times and still had serfs as late as 1861. The economic development that followed the emancipation of peasants in the rest of Europe created strong industrial and tax bases in those nations. Russian monarchs had attempted some level of reforms to address this inequality for almost a century before, and were indeed on their way to “economic maturity” (32) on par with the rest of Europe. But they overextended themselves and the crushing defeats of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905 and the First World War in 1917 lost them the necessary support from their subjects and created “high prices and scarcity” which were by far “the most obvious factors in the general tension”
This was highly demonstrated throughout the Holy Roman Empire during the 16th and parts of the 17th century, where the polygot of cultures, religions, and languages lead Charles V to have to rely on the nobles, confederacy, and a decentralization of government to rule. Because of these sacrifices, Charles V never really ruled his country, nor did he achieve any of his goals. He died a white haired old man, giving his domains to his son and brother. Louis XIV actually achieved his goal in a very different way, by defeating the power of the noble class, while strengthening the middle class, or the bourgeois. Louis built an internal bureaucracy within France, and believed that a country’s power came from it’s unification and military prowess.
decided to change their forms of government. The idea that life would be better if things
A second piece of evidence that supports the argument in the passage that the New Monarchs of Western European states during the 16th and 17th centuries consolidated their power by centralizing their government is Philip II’s creation of an effective bureaucracy. In the mid 16th century, Philip II organized the nobility in
In contrast in Germany, kings seem unable to keep a reign on their crown as well as their nobles and other officials. ("HISTORY OF FEUDALISM." HISTORY OF FEUDALISM. ) The structure seems to fall over due to the nobility’s places as second in the Feudalism structure. But in some cases the nobility actually had more money and power than the king himself. This and as well as the other problems discussed would eventually lead to taxing and ruling from a central place, slowly becoming the norm. But, although the system seems to fall apart its customs seem to be made use to other places.
Powell wrote, “…the feudal age is most important for the development of Western Europe: this importance lies chiefly in the process of state-building which had its origins here” (Powell 1). The monarch of this feudal society was responsible for state-building, centralization, and maintaining unity. Therefore, the throne was heredity, so that a single family maintained political power throughou...
During the late 17th and early 18th century, many European nations such as France and Russia were absolute monarchies. Even countries such as England had kings who at least attempted to implement absolutism. Indeed the concept of absolutism, where the monarch is the unquestionably highest authority and absolute ruler of every element in the realm, is certainly appealing to any sovereign. However, this unrestricted power was abused, and by the end of the 18th century, absolutism was gone. Absolutism failed because the monarchs' mistreatment of the population caused the people to revolt against their rule and policies. There are many factors which caused this discontent. For one, there was a great loss of human lives. Louis XIV of France participated in four wars, while Peter of Russia ruthlessly executed anyone who stood against his will. Secondly, monarchs attempted to change religious beliefs. This was notable in England where rulers such as James II desired to convert the Anglican nation into Catholicism. Finally, the burden of taxation was more than the population could support. France was brought into huge foreign debt, English kings constantly attempted to raise money, and Peter of Russia increased taxes by 550 percent. These are some of the key reasons why absolutism failed in Europe.
All over Europe and Asia the collapse of the absolute monarchies was occurring. The times were changing, the lower classes were revolting. It was time for a new form of government other than the absolute monarchy. The lower class became fed up with the complete power of King Louis XVI and the uselessness of his aristocratic court and style. Sadly, for Vatel this did not come about soon enough. The rule of the absolute monarchy, while it did leave its mark on the world with all grandeur and aristocratic style, it also demonstrated how detrimental it was to society and placed one class of people above another. The world was changing, with the enlightenment of the newly growing middle class, the structure of government and society changed with it. The absolute rule with its aristocratic style became a thing of the past.
The main goal of new and absolute monarchies was the centralize the state. War, civil war, class war, feudal rebellion, and banditry afflicted a good deal of Europe in the middle of the fifteenth century. Various rulers now tried to impose a kind of civil peace. They thus laid the foundations for the national states. Similarly, in the early part of the 17th century, wars pertaining now to religion and dynasty had a profound impact upon the western European states. As military spending increased, monarchs realized the importance unifying their state possessed.
One of the chief theorists of divine-right monarchy in the seventeenth century was the French theologian and court preacher Bishop Jacques Bossuet (1627-1704), who expressed his ideas in a book entitled Politics Drawn from the Very Words of Holy Scripture. Bossuet argued first that govemment was divinely ordained so that humans could live in an organized society. Of all forms of gov ernment, monarchy, he averred, was the most general, most ancient, most natural, and the best, since God established kings and through them reigned over all the peoples of the world. Since kings received their power from God, their authority was absolute. They were re sponsible to no one (including parliaments) except God. Nevertheless, Bossuet cautioned, although a king's au thority was absolute, his power was not since he was limited by the law of God. Bossuet believed there was a difference between absolute monarchy and arbitrary monarchy. The latter contradicted the rule of law and the sanctity of property and was simply lawless tyranny. Bossuet's distinction between absolute and arbitrary gov emment was not always easy to maintain. There was also a large gulf between the theory of absolutism as ex pressed by Bossuet and the practice of absolutism. As we shall ...
The term ‘absolute” defines the singular power of the monarch to control every aspect of governing without the aid of the aristocracy or parliamentary forms of governance. The example of Louis XIII defines the rise of absolute monarchy in the 17th century, which eliminated agreements, such as the edict of Nantes, which enabled to aristocracy rights and powers in governmental decisions., however, Louis XIII dissolved these laws in order to gain total dominance over governmental affairs through military and financial might. In this example. Louis XIII defines the role of absolute monarch and the individual powers that the king welled over the government in 17th century