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Parliamentarianism and enlightened despotism - Coggle Diagram
Parliamentarianism and enlightened despotism
Absolutism and parliamentarianism
Absolute monarchies
ideology that supported the superiority of the king’s power over all others
Louis XIV (1643–1715)
was the most representative example of an absolute monarchy
parliamentary monarchies
Institutional and legal systems that controlled the monarch’s power through the action of the courts
the parliaments were made up of major landowners, local corporations and the wealthy classes
Great Britain
the parliament chose Mary II and her husband William III of Orange as the new monarchs
in exchange they had to sign the Bill of Rights, which limited the monarch's power and recognised individual rights
parliamentary republican political systems
They were governed by members of the nobility and wealthy middle class
they were common in the holy empire and the Italian peninsula
They achieved high levels of economic and cultural development and their inhabitants enjoyed certain individual freedoms
as they did not make up large states, they were weak against the military power of the great monarchies
The exception was the United Provinces, which formed its own colonial empire
Enlighted despotism
it was a variant of absolutism that incorporated reforms inspired by the Enlightenment
did not decrease the absolute power of the monarchs
Important Enlightenment thinkers worked as government advisers or ministers under absolutist monarch
France, Prussia, Spain and Russia, amongst others
they had to rationalise how monarchies functioned to make them more efficient.
Additional reforms
Economic reforms
Their aim was to increase income from the royal estate
Improvements
agriculture
crafts
communication routes
commerce were introduced
manual workers were taught skills
Political reforms
Parliaments or courts were no longer convened
provincial government was reorganised to strengthen the territorial power of the kings
Regalist reforms
These reforms were designed to gain privileges within the Church
bishops and abbots
tax exemptions enjoyed by the clergy
Catherin the great (1729–1796)
She was in contact with the most important Enlightenment thinkers of the period: Diderot, Voltaire and D’Alembert.
she only implemented the reformist ideas that strengthened her powers
