Absolutism and Constitutionalism

In much of Europe, absolute monarchy was established over the course of the 17th and 18th centuries. Absolute monarchies limited the nobility’s participation in governance but preserved the aristocracy’s social position and legal privileges. Ferdinand III of Austria, Habsburg Frederick William I of Prussia, Hohenzollern Peter the Great of Russia, Romanov Louis XIV and his finance minister, Jean-Baptiste (master of mercantilism), extended the administrative, financial, military, and religious control of the central state over the French population. Peter the Great “westernized” the Russian state and society, transforming political, religious, and cultural institutions. The inability of the Polish monarchy to consolidate its authority over the nobility would eventually led to Poland’s partition by Prussia, Russia, and Austria.

Challenges to absolutism resulted in alternative political systems. While France, Russia, Austria, and Prussia developed absolutism states, England and Holland evolved toward constitutionalism. Constitutionalism is a form of government in which power is limited by law and balanced between the authority & power of the government and the rights & liberties of citizens. The outcome of the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution protected the rights of gentry and aristocracy from absolutism through assertions of the rights of Parliament. English Bill of Rights Parliamentary sovereignty The Dutch Republic developed an oligarchy of urban gentry and rural landholders to promote trade and protect traditional rights. The Dutch states remained a loose confederation of seven independent states, each with its own provincial assembly or estate. They unified in a States General on foreign policy issues, where they also appointed a chief executive for each province, the stadholder. Holland, because of its extraordinary wealth, was the dominant state of the seven.