Economic Change and the Expansion of the State (^) ‹ 91
Key Individuals:
✪^ King Charles II (England)
✪^ King James II (England)
✪^ Cardinal Richelieu
✪ Cardinal Jules Mazarin
✪ King Louis XIV (France)
✪ Catherine the Great (Russia)
✪ Frederick II (Prussia)
✪ Oliver Cromwell
Introduction
In the second half of the seventeenth century and into the eighteenth century, Great Britain
and, to a lesser extent, France, surpassed Spain, Portugal, and Holland as the dominant
economic and political powers in Europe. As they did so, the political struggle among the
elites reached their respective climaxes.
Great Britain and France rose to prominence by controlling the majority of the
increasingly lucrative Triangular Trade Networks that connected Europe to Africa and the
Americas (see Chapter 12). The resulting wealth and prosperity set in motion a series of
innovations that radically changed European agricultural and manufacturing production,
which in turn produced changes in the social structure of Europe. Competition between
Great Britain and France, and the desire of their eastern European rivals to catch up, led
to innovations in diplomacy and war—the twin processes by which eighteenth-century
European rulers built and expanded their states.Great Britain: The Triumph of Constitutionalism
The Commonwealth (1649–1660) deteriorated into a fundamentalist Protestant dictator-
ship under the rule of the Parliamentary army’s leading general, Oliver Cromwell. Upon
Cromwell’s death in 1658, English Parliamentarians worked to establish a Restoration
(1660–1688) of the English monarchy, inviting the son of the king they executed to take
the throne as Charles II (1660–1685).
The relative peace of the Restoration period broke down when Charles’s brother, a
Catholic, ascended the throne as James II (1685–1688). James was determined to establish
religious freedom for Catholics, to avenge his father, and to restore absolute monarchy
to Great Britain. To thwart James’s plans, Parliament enlisted the aid of the king’s eldest
daughter, Mary, the Protestant wife of William of Orange of the Netherlands. The quick,
nearly bloodless uprising that coordinated Parliament-led uprisings with the invasion of a
Protestant fleet and army from the Netherlands led to the quick expulsion of James II in- This is known as the Glorious Revolution. The reign of William and Mary marks
the clear establishment of a constitutional monarchy, a system by which the monarch rules
within the limits of the laws passed by a legislative body. The text written by the leading
legal spokesman of the Parliamentary faction, John Locke’s Two Treatises on Government
(1690), is still read today as the primary argument for the establishment of natural limits
to governmental authority.
KEY IDEA14_Bartolini_Ch14_089-098.indd 91 27/04/18 1:54 PM