1. Absolutism and the Enlightenment
The Formation of Modern Thought and Government

2. What is Absolutism?
- “Enlightened Despot” - Holy - Paternal - Absolute - Reasonable - Educated
Catherine the Great of Russia – the epitome of an enlightened despot. She collected artistic masterpieces in her palace, the Hermitage, while raising taxes on Russian peasants.

3. Why Absolutism Arose
- Modern Armies - Instability - Centralization - Decline of the Nobility - Mercantilism - Divine Right of Kings - It Worked!
Gustavus Adolphus’ model revolutionized European government.

4. Louis XIV
Cardinal Richelieu - The Fronde - Versailles - Huguenots - Effective Bureaucracy

5. Peter the Great
St. Petersburg
“A Warm-Water Port” - Military and Navy - “A Window on the West” - The New Nobility - Economic Growth - Modern, but unstable

6. The Scientific Revolution
-“Nature and Nature’s laws lay hidden by night; God said ‘Let Newton be,’ and all was light.” – Alexander Pope
-Occurred mostly in the 16th and 17th Centuries.
-Nicholas Copernicus
-Isaac Newton
-Gottfried Leibnitz
-Galileo Galilei
-Francis Bacon
-Protestant vs. Catholic
-Technology

7. The Enlightenment -Secularism -Logic.
-Optimism: Belief that people could change.
-Print Culture
-Salons, Scientific Societies

8. Enlightenment Thinkers
Rene Descartes
Adam Smith
Montesquieu

9. Enlightenment Thinkers
Thomas Hobbes
John Locke
Jean Jaques Rosseau
Voltaire

10. Voltaire: Severus Snape
“ ‘I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death – if you aren’t as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach.’ ” (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, p 137)
"I would rather obey one lion than 200 rats of [my own] species." (Voltaire, in reference to the superiority of enlightened absolutism over democracy)

11. Procession of English Leaders
James I
Charles I
Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell

12. Procession of English Leaders
Charles II
James II
William III

13. The Rise of Prussia - The Thirty Years War - A Standing Army
- Religious Toleration
- Education
- High Taxes and Economic Growth
- Seven Years War

14. Causes of the French Revolution
-Excess at Versailles
-Foreign Wars
-Bad Harvests
-Incompetent Monarchy
-Rise of the Bourgeoisies
-The Enlightenment