Western Civilization

institutions that affected their lives: local courts, local

tax collectors, and local organizers of armed forces.

Kings and ministers might determine policies and issue

guidelines, but they still had to function through local

agents and had no guarantee that their wishes would

be carried out. A mass of urban and provincial privi-

leges, liberties, and exemptions (including from taxa-

tion) and a whole host of corporate bodies and interest

groups—provincial and national Estates, clerical offi-

cials, officeholders who had bought or inherited their

positions, and provincial nobles—limited what mon-

archs could achieve. The most successful rulers were

not those who tried to destroy the old system but

rather those like Louis XIV who knew how to use the

old system to their advantage. Above all other consid-

erations stood the landholding nobility. Everywhere in

the seventeenth century, the landed aristocracy played

an important role in the European monarchical system.

As military officers, judges, officeholders, and land-

owners in control of vast, untaxed estates, their power

remained immense. In some places, their strength

even put severe limits on how effectively monarchs

could rule.

Oc

ea

n

Ar

ctic

Moscow

Tomsk

(1604)

Okhotsk

(1649)

SIBERIA

CHINA

R.

Dnie

per

Ural^ R.

Volga

R.

Do

n

R.

Danube

R.

FINLAND

ESTONIA

LIVONIA

KARELIA

POLAND

LITHUANIA

Black Sea

Archangel

Saint Petersburg

Narva (1700)

Asov Astrakhan

Sevastopol

Odessa

Kiev

Smolensk Moscow

Minsk

Warsaw

Riga Kazan

Pskov

Poltava(1709)

CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCauc

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.
0 125 250 Miles
0 125 250 375 Kilometers
Russia in 1584
Acquisitions, 1584–1700
Acquisitions, 1700–1772 (primarily by
Peter the Great)
Battle site
MAP 15.4Russia: From Principality to Nation-State.Russia had expanded its territory since its
emergence in the fifteenth century. Peter the Great modernized the country, instituting
administrative and tax reforms and building up the military. He won territory on the Baltic from
Sweden, enabling Russia to have a port at Saint Petersburg.
Q Why would the westward expansion of Russia during Peter’s reign affect the
international balance of power in Europe?
CHRONOLOGYAbsolutism in Central and Eastern
Europe
Brandenburg-Prussia
Frederick William the Great Elector 1640–1688
Elector Frederick III (King Frederick I) 1688–1713
Austrian Empire
Leopold I 1658–1705
Ottoman siege of Vienna 1683
Russia
Ivan IV the Terrible 1533–1584
Time of Troubles 1598–1613
Michael Romanov 1613–1645
Peter the Great 1689–1725
First trip to the West 1697–1698
Great Northern War 1701–1721
Battle of Poltava 1709
Holy Synod 1721
Ottoman Empire
Suleiman I the Magnificent 1520–1566
Battle of Lepanto 1571
Ottoman defeat at Vienna 1683
Absolutism in Central and Eastern Europe 371
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