Video:
Audio:
Recommended Reading:
- Powerpoint presentation
- Jean Bodin’s Six Books of the Commonwealth
- Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan
- “Lepanto” by G.K. Chesterton
- Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote
- Henry Kamen’s Philip II is the most evenhanded biography of the king. (I neglected to mention in the lecture that in addition to the vast dominions inherited from his father, Philip also inherited the throne of Portugal from his mother’s side in the 1580s. The Spanish and Portuguese thrones were separated again in the mid-17th century.)
- Garrett Mattingly’s The Armada is probably still the best narrative of the events of 1588.
- Mack Holt’s The French Wars of Religion is a good survey of the period, although it downplays theological issues. It tilts toward the Catholic side somewhat.
- William Beik’s Louis XIV and Absolutism is an accessible collection of documents showing how Louis was able to further the process of centralizing begun by his ancestors.
Absolutism and Mercantilism – Quiz
- Identify two institutions kings successfully weakened in the early modern period.
- Identify the key tenets of absolutism.
- Political centralization in Iberia advanced considerably in the years following the marriage of King _________ of Aragon to Queen _________ of Castile.
- Charles V inherited the throne of Spain from his __________ and the title Holy Roman Emperor from his _____________.
- Following the abdication of Charles V, the Habsburg family was divided into __________ and ___________ branches.
- The __________ Dynasty ruled France for most of the 16th century.
- The ________________, issued by King ____________, granted Huguenots religious toleration and effectively ended the French Wars of Religion.
- King ____________ of France is usually identified as the full realization of absolutism.
- Identify at least three ways in which mercantilist officials attempted to increase inflows of precious metals to their kingdoms.
- Church, nobility
- kings have sovereignty, subjects have no right of resistance
- Ferdinand, Isabella
- mother’s side; father’s side
- Spanish, Austrian
- Valois
- Edict of Nantes, Henry IV
- Louis XIV
- tax imports, subsidize exports, subsidize domestic manufacturing, subsidize shipping