Absolutism & Constitutionalism: every key term you need (+ practice quiz)
64 flashcard terms for AP European History Unit 3, written to match the course framework. Study them here, then drill them as interactive flashcards, or test yourself with the 25-question quiz — free, no account needed.
A system of government in which the monarch holds supreme, unchecked authority — claiming power from God (divine right) rather than from nobles, parliaments, or the people. Louis XIV's France was its model.
Divine Right of Kings
The doctrine that monarchs derive their authority directly from God and are accountable to God alone. Bishop Bossuet articulated it for Louis XIV; James I of England championed it in Britain — with less success.
Louis XIV — The Sun King (r. 1643–1715)
France's absolute monarch for 72 years, the longest reign in European history. He centralized power, built Versailles, fought near-constant wars, and made France the dominant power and cultural model of Europe. Attributed motto: 'L'état, c'est moi' (I am the state).
Cardinal Richelieu (1585–1642)
Louis XIII's chief minister who laid absolutism's foundations: crushing Huguenot political power, subduing rebellious nobles, and guiding France into the Thirty Years' War against the Habsburgs — all under the principle of raison d'état (reason of state).
Cardinal Mazarin (1602–1661)
Richelieu's successor who governed during Louis XIV's childhood. His heavy taxation and centralization provoked the Fronde — the noble and popular revolts that taught young Louis to distrust Paris and the aristocracy.
The Fronde (1648–1653)
A series of revolts by French judges, nobles, and Parisian crowds against royal centralization during Louis XIV's minority. Its chaos convinced Louis that only absolute royal authority could guarantee order.
Palace of Versailles
Louis XIV's enormous palace outside Paris — simultaneously royal residence, seat of government, and political theater. By requiring great nobles to attend court, Louis domesticated them: they competed for ritual honors instead of plotting rebellion.
Intendants
Royal officials sent to govern France's provinces — collecting taxes, supervising justice, and enforcing royal policy. Drawn from the middle class and new nobility, they answered directly to the crown, bypassing the old aristocracy.
Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619–1683)
Louis XIV's brilliant finance minister who applied mercantilism: building royal manufactures, subsidizing industry, improving infrastructure, expanding the navy and colonies — all to make France economically self-sufficient and fund the king's wars.
Mercantilism (Colbertism)
The economic policy of maximizing exports, minimizing imports, and accumulating bullion to strengthen the state. Colbert's version — state-directed industry and trade — became the model other monarchies imitated.
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685)
Louis XIV outlawed Protestantism in France, demolishing Huguenot churches and closing their schools. Around 200,000 Huguenots fled, taking skills and capital to England, the Dutch Republic, and Prussia — a self-inflicted economic wound.
Wars of Louis XIV
Louis fought four major wars seeking territory and glory, climaxing in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714). A Europe-wide coalition repeatedly formed to check him — the balance of power in action — leaving France dominant but exhausted and indebted.
War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714)
Fought to prevent the union of the French and Spanish crowns after Charles II of Spain willed his empire to Louis XIV's grandson. Ended by the Peace of Utrecht: Philip V kept Spain but the crowns stayed separate, and Britain gained Gibraltar and trade concessions.
Peace of Utrecht (1713)
The settlement ending the War of the Spanish Succession. It enshrined the balance of power as a treaty principle, checked French expansion, partitioned Spanish holdings, and marked Britain's rise as a maritime and commercial power.
English Civil War (1642–1649)
The armed conflict between King Charles I and Parliament, rooted in disputes over taxation, religion, and royal prerogative. Parliament's New Model Army won; Charles I was tried and beheaded in 1649 — a European first.
Charles I (r. 1625–1649)
Stuart king whose belief in divine right, rule without Parliament (1629–1640, the 'Personal Rule'), forced levies like ship money, and imposition of Anglican forms on Scotland triggered the English Civil War. Executed for treason in 1649.
Puritans
English Calvinists who wanted to 'purify' the Church of England of Catholic remnants. Their conflict with the Stuart kings' High-Church policies fused with Parliament's constitutional grievances to fuel the Civil War.
Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658)
Puritan general who led the New Model Army to victory, approved the king's execution, and ruled the republican Commonwealth as Lord Protector — a quasi-military dictatorship. His death led to the Restoration of the monarchy.
Petition of Right (1628)
A parliamentary document Charles I was forced to accept, asserting that the king could not tax without Parliament's consent, imprison without cause, or quarter troops in private homes — a milestone of constitutionalism.
The Restoration (1660)
The return of the monarchy under Charles II after Cromwell's Commonwealth collapsed. Parliament restored the king but kept the powers it had won — the crown never again taxed without consent.
Glorious Revolution (1688)
The nearly bloodless overthrow of Catholic James II. Parliament invited William of Orange and Mary (James's Protestant daughter) to take the throne — establishing that monarchs rule by parliamentary consent, not divine right.
English Bill of Rights (1689)
The constitutional settlement of the Glorious Revolution: the crown cannot suspend laws, tax, or keep a standing army without Parliament; elections and parliamentary debate must be free; subjects have rights to petition and jury trial. Foundation of constitutional monarchy.
Habeas Corpus Act (1679)
English law requiring that a prisoner be brought before a court to determine whether detention is lawful — a fundamental protection against arbitrary imprisonment.
Constitutionalism
Government limited by law, in which rulers share power with representative institutions. England after 1688 and the Dutch Republic were the 17th century's two great constitutional states — both prosperous, commercial, and Protestant.
Thomas Hobbes — Leviathan (1651)
Writing amid civil war, Hobbes argued that life in the state of nature is 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,' so people contract to surrender their rights to an absolute sovereign who guarantees order. Absolutism justified by social contract, not divine right.
John Locke — Two Treatises of Government (1690)
Locke argued that people possess natural rights to life, liberty, and property; government exists by consent to protect them; and a government that violates them may rightfully be overthrown. The philosophical defense of the Glorious Revolution — and later, the American Revolution.
Jean Bodin — Sovereignty
French theorist who, amid the chaos of religious civil war, defined sovereignty (1576) as the absolute, indivisible, supreme power to make law — a concept underpinning both absolutism and the modern state.
Dutch Republic — Government
A decentralized federation of seven provinces governed by the States-General and provincial elites (regents), with the House of Orange providing stadtholders (executives/military commanders). An oligarchic republic in an age of kings.
Dutch Golden Age
The 17th-century peak of Dutch power: Amsterdam was Europe's financial capital, the Dutch merchant fleet outnumbered all rivals combined, and Dutch science, art (Rembrandt, Vermeer), and toleration flourished.
Dutch East India Company (VOC)
Chartered in 1602, the world's first great joint-stock corporation. It monopolized the spice trade, ran its own armies and fleets in Asia, and paid dividends for nearly two centuries — capitalism's first multinational.
Bank of Amsterdam & Tulip Mania
The Bank of Amsterdam (1609) made Dutch finance Europe's most sophisticated; the tulip mania (1637), when tulip bulb prices soared and crashed, was history's first famous speculative bubble.
Rembrandt and Vermeer
Masters of Dutch Golden Age painting. Rembrandt's portraits and group scenes (The Night Watch) and Vermeer's quiet domestic interiors (Girl with a Pearl Earring) reflected a middle-class, Protestant art market — merchants, not monarchs, bought paintings.
Peter the Great (r. 1682–1725)
Russian tsar who traveled west incognito, then forced westernization on Russia: reorganizing the army and bureaucracy, building a navy, taxing beards, subordinating the church, and dragging Russia into European power politics.
St. Petersburg
Peter the Great's 'window on the West' — a new capital built at enormous human cost on Baltic marshland seized from Sweden. Its Western architecture embodied Peter's program of forced modernization.
Great Northern War (1700–1721)
Russia's war against Sweden for Baltic supremacy. Peter's victory at Poltava (1709) broke Swedish power; the Treaty of Nystad gave Russia its Baltic coastline and made it a great European power.
Table of Ranks (1722)
Peter the Great's merit-based hierarchy for military and civil service — officials rose by service rather than birth alone, binding the nobility to the state.
Catherine the Great (r. 1762–1796)
German-born empress who expanded Russia (partitions of Poland, Black Sea coast from the Ottomans), corresponded with Voltaire and Diderot, and flirted with Enlightenment reform — until Pugachev's Rebellion (1773–75) pushed her to strengthen serfdom and noble privilege.
Serfdom in Eastern Europe
While Western European peasants were largely free, Eastern lords bound peasants to the land ('second serfdom') to produce export grain. Russian serfdom, hardened under Peter and Catherine, approached slavery — lasting until 1861.
Frederick William, the Great Elector (r. 1640–1688)
Ruler of Brandenburg-Prussia who built a standing army and efficient taxation from scattered territories devastated by the Thirty Years' War — trading noble (Junker) control over serfs for their service to the state.
Frederick William I of Prussia (r. 1713–1740)
The 'Soldier King' who doubled Prussia's army, instituted rigid discipline and thrift, and made the military the core of the Prussian state — 'Prussia was not a country with an army, but an army with a country.'
Frederick the Great (r. 1740–1786)
Prussian king who seized Silesia from Austria, survived the Seven Years' War against overwhelming odds, and styled himself 'first servant of the state' — an enlightened absolutist who tolerated religions and reformed law while deepening serfdom and noble privilege.
Junkers
The Prussian landed nobility who officered the army and administered the state in exchange for absolute control over their serfs — the social bargain underpinning Prussian absolutism.
Habsburg Austria
After failing to centralize the Holy Roman Empire, the Habsburgs consolidated a multiethnic monarchy of Austria, Bohemia, and Hungary — held together by dynasty and Catholicism rather than nationality.
Maria Theresa (r. 1740–1780)
Habsburg empress who survived Frederick the Great's seizure of Silesia (War of the Austrian Succession), then reformed Austria's administration, army, and finances — a pragmatic centralizer and devout Catholic.
Joseph II (r. 1780–1790)
Maria Theresa's son and the most radical enlightened absolutist: he abolished serfdom, granted religious toleration (including to Jews), curtailed the Church, and reformed law — but his rushed decrees provoked revolt and were largely reversed.
Enlightened Absolutism
18th-century monarchs (Frederick the Great, Catherine the Great, Joseph II) who justified absolute power by reason and reform rather than divine right — modernizing law, education, and administration while conceding nothing of their authority.
Balance of Power
The principle that no single state should dominate Europe. Coalitions repeatedly formed against would-be hegemons — Louis XIV's France, later Napoleon — making it the organizing logic of 18th-century diplomacy.
Standing Armies
Permanent professional forces maintained in peacetime — a hallmark of absolutism. They required the taxation and bureaucracy that built the modern state, and they freed kings from dependence on feudal levies.
Military Revolution
The transformation of European warfare (16th–17th centuries): gunpowder weapons, drilled infantry, massive fortifications, and armies growing tenfold — driving states to expand taxation and administration to pay for them.
Seven Years' War (1756–1763)
A global war: Prussia (backed by Britain) survived against Austria, France, and Russia in Europe, while Britain crushed France overseas — winning Canada and dominance in India. Called the 'first world war.'
Diplomatic Revolution (1756)
The stunning reversal of alliances before the Seven Years' War: France allied with its centuries-old Habsburg enemy Austria, while Britain backed Prussia — proof that state interest trumped tradition.
Partitions of Poland (1772, 1793, 1795)
Russia, Prussia, and Austria carved up the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in three stages until it vanished from the map — the balance of power's cynical extreme: preserving equilibrium by devouring a weaker neighbor.
Baroque Architecture and Absolutism
Monumental Baroque palaces — Versailles, Schönbrunn (Vienna), the Zwinger (Dresden) — projected royal power through scale, symmetry, and splendor. Architecture was politics in stone.
French Classicism & Court Culture
Louis XIV harnessed culture to glorify monarchy: the Académie Française policed language, Molière and Racine wrote for the court, Lully composed royal operas, and the king himself danced as the sun in court ballets.
Stadtholder
The executive officer of Dutch provinces, traditionally from the House of Orange, commanding the army. Tension between Orangist stadtholders and republican merchant regents defined Dutch politics.
Gallicanism
The French tradition asserting royal control over the Catholic Church in France — the king appointed bishops and limited papal authority — showing that even Catholic absolutists subordinated church to state.
Robert Walpole
Britain's first 'prime minister' (1721–1742), who managed Parliament for the Hanoverian kings — developing the cabinet system in which ministers govern with parliamentary support, the machinery of constitutional monarchy.
Test Act (1673)
English law requiring officeholders to take Anglican communion — excluding Catholics and Protestant Dissenters from public office. James II's attempts to bypass it helped trigger the Glorious Revolution.
Absolutism vs. Constitutionalism — The Core Contrast
Two 17th-century answers to disorder: France concentrated all power in a divine-right king; England and the Dutch Republic subordinated rulers to law and representative bodies. Both created stronger states — by opposite means.
Pugachev's Rebellion (1773–1775)
A massive Cossack and serf uprising against Catherine the Great, led by Emelyan Pugachev claiming to be the murdered Tsar Peter III. Its brutal suppression ended Catherine's reformist phase and tightened serfdom.
Proto-Industrialization
The expansion of rural cottage manufacturing (especially textiles) organized by merchants through the putting-out system — spreading market production across the countryside before factories existed.
Atlantic Economy — 18th Century
Trade among Europe, Africa, and the Americas — sugar, slaves, tobacco, and manufactures — enriched port cities (Bordeaux, Liverpool, Amsterdam) and shifted Europe's economic center from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic.
Agricultural Revolution (Britain/Netherlands)
Innovations — crop rotation with clover and turnips (no fallow fields), selective breeding, enclosure of common lands — raised yields, freed labor from farming, and fed the population growth behind industrialization.
Growth of the Middle Class
Commerce, finance, and professions expanded the bourgeoisie, who bought gentility, filled state offices (French 'nobility of the robe'), consumed newspapers and novels — and would eventually demand political power to match their wealth.