The Development of Eastern Europe

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The Development of Eastern Europe

• Serfdom had declined in Eastern Europe at the end
  of the Middle Ages.

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• However, in Eastern Europe, the nobles remained
  strong. We have seen how in France, England,
  Holland, and Germany, monarchs encouraged towns
  and took power from their nobility. In the East,
  there were no strong monarchs, so the nobles
  gradually rolled back any gains that the peasants
  had made. By 1650 serfdom was re-established.

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• As weve seen, in the east there were few strong
  monarchs from 1300-1700, so the nobility remained
  in power.

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Prussia

• This was actually the name of a small territory
  on the Baltic. The origin of this Empire begins
  in the small state of Brandenburg, which was
  ruled by the Hohenzollern from the small town of
  Berlin. They had held little power since the
  Middle Ages.

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Growth of Prussia
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The Great Elector

• However, the Thirty Years War had greatly
  weakened the HRE. This presented a tremendous
  opportunity for young Frederick William (the
  Great Elector). He aspired to unite his familys
  scattered lands and to increase his power in
  North Europe. He basically bullied the middle
  class and the local parliaments until he got his
  way. Thus, absolutism began to rear its head in
  Germany. It would not be ended until 1945.

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Frederick William

• Frederick expanded the military, forced permanent
  taxation without consent, and undercut the
  medieval rights of the towns (burgs).
• The losers in all this were clearly the middle
  class and to some degree the Junkers (nobility).
  They were always to be dominated in Germany by
  the middle class.

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Brandenburg

• Brandenburg had a very poor strategic position,
  wide open to the east and west to invasion, with
  no natural defenses, and no outlet to the sea.
  The Thirty Years War had ravaged the area. To
  compensate for all this, the Hohenzollerns had
  stressed a strong military. Also, since
  Hohenzollern territory was unconnected, war and
  force were the only means of unifying these
  scattered lands.

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Frederick William I the soldier king

• Frederick Wilhelm I, the soldier king, had done
  the most to promote militarism. He loved the
  military life, and believed that force was the
  only way to earn respect in international
  affairs. He demanded that everything in society
  except eternal salvation belonged to him for
  the good of the nation This had profound effects

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to Keep Quiet is the first Civic Duty

• The noble class (the Junkers) were eventually
  co-opted by being drawn into the army as the
  officer caste.
• The middle class was slowly conditioned to accept
  the dominance of the officer class.
• The country became a modern Sparta, where good
  citizenship was equated with unquestioning
  obedience.
• Also, this philosophy fit well with Lutheranism,
  which instructed its members to be obedient to
  the state.

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Frederick the Great
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The Austrian Habsburgs

• The failed attempt to conquer Germany in the
  Thirty Years War had forced the Habsburgs to
  turn their ambitions to the East and South. They
  had managed to retain Bohemia by rooting out
  Calvinism.

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• When the Ottomans attacked Europe in 1683, the
  resulting Christian counter-offensive enabled the
  Austrian Habsburgs to seize a lot of Ottoman
  territory, most notably Hungary and Transylvania.

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Pragmatic Sanction

• It was an attempt by Habsburg Emperor Charles VI
  to insure that the Austrian Habsburg possessions
  were always inherited by the same person. He
  worked hard to get the various European states to
  agree with it, fearing another war like the
  Spanish Succession.

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• Obviously, Bohemians and Hungarians did not want
  their lands to be tied to the fate of Austrian
  Succession. In Hungary especially, there was a
  strong feeling of nationalism which was ahead of
  its time.

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• War played an obvious role. People constantly at
  war needed a strong centralized government to
  defend them. The book points out that England was
  really the only country to develop
  constitutionalism not coincidentally, they were
  the only ones not directly invaded during the
  1500 and 1600s.

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The Rus

• The Vikings had come down the waterways of Russia
  to found Kiev, the first important Slavic state.
  They ruled the local Slavic population. The
  slavic word for the Vikings was rus
• It was the princes of Kiev who had adopted Greek
  Orthodoxy

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Russias Background

• Russia in the Middle Ages was truly Eastern, and
  non-European. It was dominated by trade rates to
  Persia and China. It had no warm water ports,
  limiting trade. Its sheer size made it isolated
  and distant from the West. Its people wore
  Eastern dress, long beards, and were way behind
  the West in science and technology. Because they
  were Orthodox, they did not look to Rome, thus
  the Renaissance had not affected them.

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The Mongols

• The Mongol horde swept across the steppes and
  conquered the Kievan state in the 13th century.
  They were brutal rulers. They used the Russian
  nobility as their servants and tax collectors
  (the Mongol Yoke)

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Muscovy

• The Princes of Muscovy became particularly adept
  at serving the Mongols. They were willing to put
  down other Russian rebellions in exchange for
  favoritism from the Mongols. In return, the
  Mongols allowed the prince of Muscovy to become
  hereditary position. In this way was built up the
  power of Moscow.

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The Princes of Muscovy

• Alexander Nevsky, 1252
• Ivan I (the moneybag). He crushed an uprising in
  1327, gaining more power from the Mongols in the
  process.
• Ivan III in 1480 he stopped acknowledging the
  Mongols as supreme rulers. He also married the
  daughter of the last Byzantine Emperor. When
  Constantinople was overrun in 1453, the center of
  Orthodoxy moved to Moscow.

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Ivan the IV (the Terrible)

• He expanded the territory of Moscow, crushing the
  remains of Mongol power. Most importantly, he
  subdued the Russian nobility (the boyars) and
  confiscated much of their land. Artisans and
  merchants were consigned to their jobs, stifling
  what middle class there was. Some peasants
  escaped to Southern Russia, where they formed
  nomadic groups called the Cossacks.

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The Time of Troubles

• The Time of Troubles (1598-1613) was a period of
  civil war between the nobility. From this
  struggle young Michael Romanov emerged as tsar,
  establishing his family as the last tsarist
  dynasty.
• The Romansovs finished the complete enserfment of
  the people and brought the Russian Church farther
  under the control of the monarchy.

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Peter the Great

• Peter was the most influential of all Russian
  monarchs. He was a dynamic figure. He greatly
  desired to Westernize Russia. To achieve this, he
  instituted several innovations

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Peters Reforms

• He expanded the Russian army to 200,000 men.
• He forced the nobility to serve in the army.
• He expanded Russian territory to capture an ice
  free Baltic port (St. Petersburg)
• He forced the Russian aristocracy to shave their
  beards and adopt Western dress. He imported
  German artisans and craftsmen.
• He forced his aristocrats to live in St.
  Petersburg
• He built the first Russian Navy
• He expanded Russian influence south into the
  Black Sea.

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• Expansion became paramount to the power of the
  tsars. New revenue was needed to propel the
  state. Also, by focusing on territory, the tsars
  could conveniently ignore the people.

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