Week 4: Absolutism, Mercantilism, and Colonialism

Main Point:

Competition between states led to two independent but related developments:
- Centralization & Colonialism
Rise of Centralized States designed to prevent internal conflict by vertically aligning the military and political elite.
- For France and Spain and Holy Roman Empire, this meant creating virtically aligned bureaucracies that could enforce the will of the monarch.
- For England, this meant the rise of Parliament that
- When the agreement between monarch and elites broke down, civil war took place: Fronde, English Civil War.
- Outcome: centralization of state power to make war.
Merchant trade became centralized among monopolies that created a circular trade system.
- Centralization of international trade into monopolies who received their charters from the courts.

Secondary Sources:

These tie together because Weisner-Hanks discusses the limits on absolute power (in the second half) and Brewer discusses the support of the state as a preservation of the Glorious Revolution and their Protestant religion. Then limiting power of the government by limited the power of the purse to parliament.

Mary Weisner-Hanks, “Absolutism in Theory and Practice,” in Early Modern Europe 1450–1789, 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 317–20. (On Zotero).

Listen:

“Mercantilism,” In Our Time, BBC, accessed July 8, 2023, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001k0zv.

Watch:

Virginia Smith Presenting

Sources:

Jean Domat, “On Social Order and Absolute Monarchy,” Internet History Sourcebooks: Modern History, accessed September 15, 2023, link here.
“Extracts from Bossuet’s Work on Kingship,” accessed September 15, 2023, link here.
“The Bill of Rights, 1689,” Internet History Sourcebooks: Modern History, accessed September 15, 2023, link here.
Jean-Baptiste Colbert, “Memorandum on Trade, 1664,” Internet History Sourcebooks: Modern History, accessed August 2, 2023, link here.
Thomas Mun, “England’s Treasure By Forraign Trade, 1664,” Internet History Sourcebooks: Modern History, accessed August 4, 2023, link here.
“Warrant for William Ussling to Establish a General Company for Trade to Asia, Africa, America and Magellanica; December 21, 1624,” Avalon Project, accessed August 4, 2023, link here.