Zusammenfassung der Ressource
The Old Regime
- Systems of goverment
- Absolutism
- Was the system of government in most Europe in the 18th Century
- Monarchs held legislative, judicial and executive power
- Merchantilism was the economic policy absolute monarchs were based on
- English parlamientarism
- In the 17th Century, Britain was tried to be ruled by an absolute monarchy by the King of the Stuart dynasty
- This caused conflicts which ended in the English Civil War
- Royalities were defeated and Charles I executed
- Under the new parliamentary monarchy system, the monarch was not above the law
- The Bill of Rights in 1689 , declared certain rights and liberties, including the separation of powers
- The Dutch Republic
- In 1648, 7 provinces in northern Netherland were named independent, this was the Dutch Republic
- They held most of the political power in Europe
- Each province had its own parliament
- Representatives joined together at the Estates
General
- Main
characteristics
- Society
- Clergy
- High clergy and low clergy, archbishops,bishops,monks...
- Nobility
- High nobility and low nobility, wealthy people, vats lands, special judgements...
- Commoners
- Bourgeoisie and the commoners, include doctors, merchants,artisans, pesants... they payed lots of taxes
- The agrarian sector
- Crop agriculture and livestock farming were the main economic activities of the 18th Century.
- Peasants practice subsistence farming
- Most of the land belonged to the Nobility and the Clergy
- Artisanal activity and trade
- Guilds controlled most of the artisanal activities.
- The domestic system was a new system of production
- Royal factories produced luxury products
- Foreign trade increased and some companies were granted trade monopolies
- The triangular trade was developed between Africa, Europe and America
- The Enlightenment
- Enlightenment thinkers
- Rousseau
- Defended freedom and equaiity
- Voltaire
- Defended a strong monarchy with respect for civil liberties
- Montesquieu
- Defended the separation of powers
- Reason should be applied to all areas of life
- Enlightenment despotism
- Reformed
- Land: to improve the economy they started using unused lands
- Goverment: modernised bureaucracies, strenghtened the central administration....
- Education: founding new educational institutions
- Natural rights belonged to allhuman beings
- Knowledge was the key to happiness, great importance to education
- Tolerance was the basis of existence
- Enlightened despotism in Spain
- The enlightened despotism of Carlos III
- Carlos III started a wide-ranging reform that made him the greatest spaniard enlightened despot
- He tried to modify Spanish traditional clothing which led to the Esquilache Riots
- Esquilache was deposed and Carlos III appointed several spanish ministers which attempted to
reform:
- The church
- Economic development
- Education
- Economic Societies of Friends of the Country
- Carlos IV and the end of the reform
- Carlos IV became king in 1788.
- The counts of Carlos III were replaced by Manuel Godoy
- Spain was in war with revolutionary France and in 1795 they agreed to make peace
- In 1805 the British army destroyed the Spanish fleet in the Battle of Trafalgar
- He abdicated in 1808 in favour of his son Fernando VII
- The War of the Spanish Succession
- Early Bourbon rule
- Felipe V
- He centralized the Spanish administration following the French model
- He issued the Nueva Planta decree because the opposition of the Crown of Aragon
- Imposed Castillian institutions throughout the country
- He tried to recover territories in Utrech
- Also recovered italian dukedoms
- Spain recovered Naples and Sicily
- He created a new figure which was the "Minister"
- Fernando VI-1746-1759 (Felipe V successor)
- In 1749 the Catastro of Ensenada was a large scale census
- Continued with Felipe V reforms
- Began in 1701 and finished in 1713 by the Utrecht treaty
- Habsburg King Carlos II died without children
- Bourbon candidate Philippe, Duke of Anjou
- Habsburg candidate, Archduke Charles