Deck 16: Absolutism, Constitutionalism, and the Search for Order, 1640-1700

Question 1

What was the Fronde, what were its goals, why was it unsuccessful, and what were its consequences?

Answer 1

Answer would ideally include the following. When the five-year-old Louis XIV became king in 1643, his mother, Anne of Austria, and her adviser, Cardinal Mazarin, ruled in his name. After five years under this regency, opponents of Mazarin gave him a charter of demands that would have given more power to France's parlements, or local high courts; Mazarin responded by arresting the leaders of the parlements. His response sparked the revolts that came to be known as the Fronde. When Mazarin and Anne made it clear that they would prefer to reach a compromise rather than risk civil war, aristocrats and local officials saw this as an opportunity to regain some of the power they had lost to the monarchy when the French Wars of Religion ended in 1598. However, the Fronde did not attain its goals because the government's opponents were too self-interested to put aside their differences long enough to make the monarchy capitulate and share power with them. In the long run, the Fronde helped to convince Louis XIV that a stronger monarchy was needed to prevent such revolts in the future.

Question 2

What was the doctrine of divine right as expressed by Bishop Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, and how did it fit in with Louis XIV's political goals?

Answer 2

Answer would ideally include the following. Bossuet believed that kings were God's surrogates on earth and that they were to act as fathers to their people, just as God was the father of humankind. He further stated that the first idea of power that existed was paternal power: kings were modeled on fathers, who had a duty to correct and educate their children. This approach fit in with Louis's political goals because it made clear that the king's power was not only divinely inspired but also natural, suggesting that the monarch's decisions could not be questioned, only obeyed.

Question 3

Why did Louis XIV revoke the Edict of Nantes in 1685, and what impact did this have on international politics?

Answer 3

Answer would ideally include the following. Louis XIV believed that the toleration embodied in the edict was a temporary measure, never intended to remain in force forever. He further believed that it was his duty to reconvert the Huguenots protected by the edict and to enforce Catholic orthodoxy, which he attempted to do by closing all Protestant churches, banning any public Protestant activities, and exiling thousands who refused to convert. This intolerance shocked Europe's Protestant countries, and they used this religious oppression as justification for their participation in wars against Louis XIV.

Question 4

In what ways was the government of Oliver Cromwell even more absolutist than that of Charles I?

Question 5

Why can the English Bill of Rights be seen as the culmination of fifty years of parliamentary struggle for increased constitutionalism?

Question 6

How did the prosperity of the Dutch Republic affect women and their position in society?

Question 7

What was the significance of Barbados's slave code of 1661?

Question 8

How did Austria's "liberation" of Hungary hasten the decline of Ottoman influence in Europe?

Question 9

What factors contributed to the spread of the "new science" in the West?

Question 10

How and why were women significant in the cultivation of manners and the promotion of the arts?

Question 11

Using the examples of Louis XIV of France, Frederick William of Brandenburg-Prussia, and Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I, discuss the principles of European absolutism. How were these monarchies similar, and in what ways did they differ?

Question 12

While European rulers were embracing absolutism in the late seventeenth century, how did people in their American colonies react to the attendant economic, racial, political, and social changes?

Question 13

Compare the English civil war and its aftermath to Louis XIV's persecution of the Jansenists and his revocation of the Edict of Nantes. To what extent were these conflicts actually about religious belief? Explain how religious questions could also become debates about the nature of sovereign power, obedience, and loyalty; draw examples from both England and France.

Question 14

Outline the basic political theories of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. To what degree did they agree about the basis of political authority? How did their visions of the best form of political authority differ?

Question 15

What role did women of the upper classes play in society during the seventeenth century? Were women granted more or fewer freedoms during this time? How was this received by others in society?

Question 16

Seventeenth-century absolutism was a political response to which of the following French developments?

A) Louis XIV's elaborate rule and attempts to conquer western Europe
B) The fear of disorder and breakdown that was the legacy of the Fronde revolts
C) The rise of the middle classes, who threatened to seize power from monarchs and aristocrats
D) The Catholic church's renewed efforts to assert its control over northern France

Question 17

When he reportedly uttered the phrase "L'état, c'est moi" ("I am the state"), Louis XIV demonstrated his attachment to what form of rule?

A) Constitutional monarchy
B) Socialism
C) Absolutism
D) Fascism

Question 18

The series of revolts in France known as the Fronde (1648-1653) broke out when Cardinal Mazarin

A) persuaded Anne of Austria not to sign the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle.
B) arrested his opponents for demanding that the parlements be given the right to approve new taxes.
C) announced the conscription of one hundred thousand men between the ages of seventeen and thirty.
D) forced government creditors across France to extend payment deadlines by two years.

Question 19

What was one of Louis XIV's first goals when he assumed direct control as king of France?

A) Making a good marriage alliance
B) Reining in France's unruly nobles
C) Redistributing the tax burden
D) Reactivating the parlements

Question 20

Why did Louis XIV place such immense importance on court ritual at the palace of Versailles?

A) After his experience with the Fronde, he sought to domesticate the warrior nobles by replacing violence with court ritual.
B) He saw court ritual as a means of demonstrating that he had better manners than the other rulers in Europe and therefore deserved more political power.
C) He believed that court ritual was a means of attracting a beautiful wife from one of the other ruling families of Europe.
D) He had no real political ambition and saw the royal court at Versailles as his major sphere of influence in Europe.

Question 21

What was the role of the arts in Louis XIV's regime?

A) The arts served as a diversion from the hardships of everyday life because they allowed ordinary people to engage with beauty.
B) The arts were a means to glorify God, as Louis invested large amounts of state money in religious art.
C) The arts helped finance his European wars, as he sold off the royal collection after the state went bankrupt.
D) The arts were used as a political tool to enhance Louis's prestige and were even treated as a branch of the government.

Question 22

What did Louis XIV's palace at Versailles symbolize both to his subjects and to foreigners during his reign?

A) Louis's decadent lifestyle and the excesses of the French court
B) An outmoded style of architecture and court ritual that was overshadowed by the growing popularity of English manners
C) Louis's success in reining in the nobility and dominating Europe
D) Louis's lack of success in leading France and his need to flee Paris and hide out in the countryside

Question 23

Why did Louis XIV persecute the Jansenists and drive them underground?

A) They were leaders of an underground constitutionalist movement.
B) They criticized his lavish and self-indulgent lifestyle.
C) They were sworn to put loyalty to the pope ahead of all other loyalties.
D) They prioritized individual conscience over the requirements of the church hierarchy.

Question 24

What were the consequences of Louis XIV's revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685?

A) A period of great religious toleration commenced during which Protestants and Jews enjoyed complete freedom of religion in France.
B) The Calvinists lost all their rights, their churches and schools were closed, and they were forced to convert to Catholicism, leading thousands to flee the country.
C) Protestants were deported en masse to France's colonies in the New World so that they would no longer disrupt political affairs in France.
D) Catholics began to massacre Protestants throughout France, forcing Louis XIV to imprison all Protestants to keep the peace.

Question 25

Which of the following did Louis XIV employ as a counter to the parlements, provincial estates, aristocratic governors, and hereditary officials, many of whom had purchased their offices?

A) Regents
B) Mobile royal courts
C) Intendants
D) Royal militias

Question 26

Which of the following characterizes the French government's implementation of the new economic doctrine of mercantilism in the mid-seventeenth century?

A) Arguing that governments must intervene to increase national wealth by whatever means possible, mercantilists rescinded internal customs fees and enacted high foreign tariffs.
B) Arguing that governments should stay out of trade completely, mercantilists supported free trade and fought to remove all tariffs and customs fees.
C) Arguing that France could not compete with Britain and the Netherlands in trade, mercantilists sought to remove France from overseas trade and change its focus on agriculture.
D) Focusing on increasing national wealth through taxation, mercantilists sought to limit foreign travel and trade and encourage internal production.

Question 27

What was the purpose of Louis XIV's expansion and professionalization of the French military?

A) To keep domestic peace in the wake of new religious conflicts between Protestants and Catholics
B) To expand France's overseas empire, specifically in North America and the Caribbean
C) To pursue the conquest of the Holy Land and retake Jerusalem from the Ottoman Empire
D) To expand French power in Europe and increase France's territorial holdings on the continent

Question 28

When Louis XIV's wars with much of western and central Europe finally ended with the Treaty of Rijswijk in 1697, Louis

A) had increased French territory in the west and northwest by 10 percent.
B) was soon at war again, this time with Spain over territories in the New World.
C) returned much of what he had seized since 1678, with the exception of Strasbourg.
D) had lost territory along France's borders with the Dutch and Austrian Habsburgs.

Question 29

Which region did Louis XIV acquire following the Treaty of Rijswijk in 1697?
​
​
​

A) Franche-Comté
B) Alsace
C) Flanders
D) Savoy

Question 30

Which of the following statements is supported by this map?
​
​

A) Louis XIV was not interested in expanding France's territorial controls during this time.
B) The territory controlled by France dramatically decreased by 1697.
C) Louis XIV was able to expand France by acquiring territory through the passage of treaties.
D) France maintained a clear and strictly defined border with the Holy Roman Empire.

Question 31

Why do some historians view the English civil war of 1642-1646 as the last great war of religion?

A) It was fought between the Catholic clergy and Huguenot refugees who had fled the French Wars of Religion a century before.
B) It pitted Puritans against those trying to push the Church of England toward Catholicism.
C) It ended when all Protestant sects were forced to convert to Catholicism under threat of torture and death.
D) It had no political element but was merely a theological conflict between Puritans and Catholics.

Question 32

By agreeing to Parliament's demand for a Petition of Right in 1628, Charles I

A) promised not to levy taxes without Parliament's consent.
B) consented to restrictions on the king's powers to conscript and station troops.
C) accepted new constitutional restraints on his ability to direct foreign policy and wars.
D) promised to call Parliament into session at least once every year.

Question 33

What compelled Charles I to call a session of Parliament in 1640 after refusing to do so for eleven years?

A) The formation of representative governing bodies in the North American colonies
B) The conversion of his brother and heir, James, to Catholicism
C) The monarchy's desperate need to raise tax revenues to put down a rebellion in Ireland
D) The Scots' invasion of northern England over being forced to use the Book of Common Prayer

Question 34

The English civil war of the 1640s led to the emergence of which new religious sects in England?

A) Deists, Adventists, and Agnostics
B) Anglicans, Lutherans, and Calvinists
C) Baptists, Quakers, and Diggers
D) Missionaries, Apostles, and Crusaders

Question 35

How did the Rump Parliament respond to the execution of Charles I on January 30, 1649?

A) It abolished the monarchy.
B) It appointed Oliver Cromwell Lord Protector.
C) It acknowledged the king's son, Charles II, as the new king.
D) It disbanded in the face of popular outcry against the execution.

Question 36

Between 1649 and his death in 1658, Oliver Cromwell

A) became extremely popular for saving England from despotism and preserving its representative institutions.
B) transformed England into a Puritan state that resembled the Dutch Republic in its toleration of both Catholics and Jews.
C) became highly unpopular for his dictatorial behavior, which included abolishing Parliament, raising taxes, and persecuting dissenters.
D) mostly kept England out of foreign wars while he focused on expanding the government's bureaucracy.

Question 37

The Tories and the Whigs invited the Dutch ruler William of Orange and his wife, James II's daughter Mary, to invade England in 1688 after

A) Cromwell dissolved Parliament and adopted the title Lord Protector.
B) Cromwell declared war on the Dutch over the objections of Parliament.
C) James converted to Catholicism in exchange for French military aid.
D) James produced a male heir whom Parliament feared would be reared as a Catholic.

Question 38

Parliament offered the throne jointly to William (r. 1689-1702) and Mary (r. 1689-1694) on the condition that they accept which of the following?

A) A bill of rights making Parliament a full partner in state governance
B) Anglican Protestantism as the official religion of England
C) Parliamentary control over taxation
D) A bill of reform securing important political and civil liberties for all Catholic citizens of England

Question 39

Why did Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan (1651) enrage both royalists and supporters of Parliament?

A) Hobbes championed the concept of "divine right," but only for Catholic monarchs who received the blessing of the pope.
B) Hobbes argued in favor of pluralism, a maximizing of the social classes and religious sects represented in the House of Commons.
C) Hobbes favored a social contract as the basis for governmental legitimacy while championing absolutist rule (by either king or Parliament).
D) Hobbes called for a confederation of England and France as a correction to the "unsatisfactory" settlement of the Thirty Years' War.

Question 40

In opposition to Hobbes, John Locke in his Two Treatises of Government (1690) used the concept of a "social contract" to

A) support his argument for constitutionalism.
B) argue in favor of democracy based on universal suffrage.
C) argue against the institution of slavery.
D) call into question the notion of a state or "established" religion.

Question 41

Who was the titular head of the Dutch Republic's decentralized constitutional state?

A) The stadholder
B) The lord governor
C) The first regent
D) The lord protector

Question 42

According to this map, South American territories primarily exported which good to the Dutch Republic during the seventeenth century?
​
​
​

A) Sugar
B) Cinnamon
C) Tobacco
D) Tea

Question 43

Why did the philosophy of the Jewish scholar Benedict Spinoza (1633-1677) alarm so many people?

A) He claimed that there was no God.
B) He argued that kings were no better than ordinary people.
C) He proposed that democracy was the form of government truest to nature.
D) He wrote that God was not influenced by any human action or prayer.

Question 44

During the upheavals of the civil war in England in the mid-seventeenth century, the fledgling English colonies in North America

A) were as divided as those in Europe and ended up fighting their own version of the civil war, pitting colonies against one another.
B) nearly disappeared due to starvation and disease after the English government stopped supplying the colonies.
C) developed their own representative governments and consistently resisted English attempts to reaffirm royal control.
D) unsuccessfully attempted to secede from England with the support of France and the Dutch Republic.

Question 45

Historians have advanced several different ideas about the increase in the slave trade during the seventeenth century. Which of the following factors might explain this increase?

A) More Europeans began using slaves as household servants and as factory labor, doubling the demand for slave labor.
B) Africans stopped resisting European slave traders, making it much easier to capture and transport slaves.
C) Improvements in muskets, the rising price of slaves, and growing conflict between African tribes made slave capture easier and more profitable.
D) European governments instituted an international law legalizing the slave trade, making it much easier for traders to buy and sell slaves.

Question 46

What was the name given to runaway serfs and poor nobles who formed outlaw bands in the no-man's-land of southern Russia and Ukraine?

A) Sejms
B) Chechens
C) Cossacks
D) Muscovites

Question 47

How did the breakdown of constitutionalism, the violence of the Cossack revolts, and a Russo-Polish war affect religious toleration in Poland-Lithuania?

A) The citizens of Poland-Lithuania generally became more tolerant of Jews and Protestants who had suffered under Russian repression.
B) Religious toleration ended, as Jews fled to shtetls and Protestants fled Catholic reprisals for their support of Sweden during the war.
C) There was mass discrimination against Catholics and Russian Orthodox Christians, who had supported the uprising against the constitutional government.
D) All of the major religious groups of the region signed on to a new peace treaty that guaranteed religious freedom to all.

Question 48

What did Frederick William of Hohenzollern give his nobles in Brandenburg-Prussia in exchange for allowing him to collect taxes in their provinces?

A) Complete control over their enserfed peasants and personal exemption from taxation
B) Exemption from dues as well as all military and civil service
C) A monopoly on foreign trade and the taxes collected from commerce
D) Greater influence in government through representative assemblies

Question 49

What institution did Frederick William of Hohenzollern expand dramatically in Brandenburg-Prussia?

A) The army
B) The Prussian Estates system
C) Government-run newspapers
D) A network of suggestion boxes outside public buildings

Question 50

How did the absolutist monarchy of Frederick William of Hohenzollern differ from that of Louis XIV?

A) While warfare and expansion were top priorities for Louis, Frederick William had no interest in military affairs.
B) In addition to focusing more on arts and culture, Frederick William had less interest in consolidating the state bureaucracy and centralizing state power than Louis.
C) Frederick William allowed his nobles more independence than Louis, and he rebuffed the ostentation of the French court, welcoming Huguenot refugees from France.
D) While Louis promoted himself as the Sun King, Frederick William modeled his reign after Ivan the Terrible.

Question 51

Which territory did the Austrian Habsburgs take from the Turks between 1683 and 1699?
​
​
​

A) Ravensburg
B) Styria
C) Hungary
D) Eastern Pomerania

Question 52

For more than 150 years, the Austrian Habsburgs and the Ottoman Turks fought over what territory?

A) Italy
B) Hungary
C) Lithuania
D) Spain

Question 53

The 1699 Treaty of Karlowitz marked the beginning of the decline of what empire?

A) The Ottoman Empire
B) The Habsburg Empire
C) The Russian Empire
D) The Holy Roman Empire

Question 54

How did Ottoman attempts at state consolidation differ from European attempts at state consolidation?

A) Ottoman attempts at state consolidation consisted mainly of economic pressure placed on outlying provinces to join with the center.
B) The Ottomans relied on Turkish settlement of new territories, backed up by military control.
C) The Ottomans set up a system of local absolutists who were loyal to the ultimate absolutist, the sultan.
D) The Ottomans relied on several key naval victories against outlying provinces.

Question 55

Why was the code of 1649 critical to Russia's political and social development?

A) It rejected Catholicism in favor of strict adherence to Greek Orthodox beliefs.
B) It opened civil service positions to people on the basis of merit rather than family connections.
C) It impeded social change by imposing a fixed, inherited, and hierarchical social structure.
D) It reduced the domestic power of the nobles in exchange for lucrative foreign campaigns.

Question 56

In 1667, Stenka Razin led a legendary rebellion in Russia against what social and political practice?

A) Polygamy
B) Military conscription
C) Jewish pogroms
D) Enserfment

Question 57

Tsar Alexei of Russia's model of absolutism was marked by

A) close regulation of the Orthodox church and the persecution of "Old Believers."
B) the adoption of a thoroughly secular constitution.
C) complete disinterest in military affairs and its desire to scale back the size of the Russian army.
D) insistence on a more democratic form of absolutism in which nobles participated directly in state decisions.

Question 58

Although John Milton's Paradise Lost explores the fall of Adam and Eve, it can also be seen as

A) a condemnation of the Test Acts, which barred Puritans from public office.
B) praising Charles II for his toleration of Catholics.
C) a commentary on the new dissenting sects such as the Quakers and Baptists.
D) a response to the turmoil of the English civil war.

Question 59

Seventeenth-century painters, sculptors, and architects developed what style of art that came to be preferred by French artists as well as their patron Louis XIV?

A) Baroque
B) Impressionism
C) Classicism
D) Realism

Question 60

The work of Maria Sibylla Merian (1646-1717) is characteristic of what development in seventeenth-century art?

A) The growing emphasis on religious sculptures
B) The use of art for scientific purposes, including realistic illustrations of nature
C) The development of political cartoons as a tool for protest and propaganda
D) The popularity of family portraits and especially portraits of children

Question 61

In what ways did governments become involved in the sciences during the seventeenth century?

A) Seeing the sciences as a threat to their power, they condemned scientific practices and banished scientists to the New World.
B) They saw science as a means to enhance their prestige and invested monetary and social resources in scientific research.
C) They ordered scientists to conform to principles of absolutist rule and established laws governing scientific practices and discoveries.
D) They made science the top priority of all government investment, far above the military and other domestic concerns.

Question 62

What does Molière's play The Middle-Class Gentleman (1670) reveal about seventeenth-century manners?

A) That middle-class upstarts had no interest in aristocratic manners
B) That the aristocracy's refined manners were grotesque and elitist
C) That the aristocracy had begun to treat the middle classes with more respect
D) That the middle classes were imitating the aristocracy's manners and tastes

Question 63

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the poor were no longer perceived as deserving of charity but as

A) dangerous degenerates in need of moral reform through harsh discipline.
B) sinfully lazy outcasts who were to be refused any form of assistance.
C) merely unlucky citizens who were to be treated like any other member of the community.
D) godless sinners to be driven out from among the elect into the countryside.

Question 64

How did European peasants and colonized subjects resist attempts to reform popular religious rituals?

A) They formed armed bands and looted churches to steal money and valuable artworks.
B) They reinterpreted religious festivals and combined Christian symbols with their own.
C) They refused to attend official churches and formed their own unsanctioned religious organizations.
D) They petitioned local and national rulers for the right to worship as they pleased, often meeting with success.

Question 65

Which of the following statements about Europe at the end of the seventeenth century is supported by this map?
​
​
​

A) By this time, most of the Holy Roman Empire was French territory.
B) Austria expanded its territory by acquiring lands from the Ottoman Empire.
C) Brandenburg-Prussia united its territories by seizing land from Poland-Lithuania.
D) Spain lost a considerable amount of territory to the Ottoman Empire.