(^92) › STEP 4. Review the Knowledge You Need to Score High
France: The Triumph of Absolutism
The policies of Cardinal Richelieu were continued by his successor, Cardinal Jules Mazarin,
and perfected by Louis XIV (r. 1643–1715) when he took full control of the government
upon Mazarin’s death in 1661. To the intimidation tactics practiced by Richelieu and
Mazarin, Louis added bribery. Building the great palace at Versailles, 11 miles outside of
Paris, Louis presented the nobility of France with a choice: oppose him and face destruc-
tion or join him and be part of the most lavish court in Europe. In choosing to spend most
of their time at Versailles, French nobles forfeited the advantages that made their English
Parliamentary counterparts so powerful: control of both the wealth and loyalty of their local
provinces and districts. As a result, Louis XIV became known as “the Sun King,” because all
French life seemed to revolve around him as the planets revolved around the sun.Russia: Tsarist Absolutism
The seventeenth-century kingdom farthest to the east proved to be an exception to the rule,
as its monarchs, the tsars, managed to achieve a high degree of absolutism despite an agri-
cultural economy based on serfdom and the lack of an alliance with a thriving middle class.
Beginning in 1613 and reaching its zenith with the reign of Peter the Great (1689–1725),
the Romanov tsars consolidated their power by buying the loyalty of the nobility. In return
for their loyalty, the Romanov tsars gave the nobility complete control over the classes of
people below them. A prime example is the Law Code of 1649, which converted the legal
status of groups as varied as peasants and slaves into that of a single class of serfs. Under the
Romanov tsars, the Russian nobility also enjoyed the fruit of new lands and wealth acquired
by aggressive expansion of the Russian empire eastward into Asia.
With the nobility firmly tied to the tsar, opposition to the tsar’s power manifested itself
only periodically in the form of revolts from coalitions of smaller landholders and peasants
angered by the progressive loss of their wealth and rights. Such revolts, like the revolts of the
Cossacks in the 1660s and early 1670s, were ruthlessly put down by the tsar’s increasingly
modern military forces. The smaller landholders and peasants were controlled thereafter by
the creation of a state bureaucracy modeled on those of western Europe, and by encourag-
ing the primacy and importance of the Russian Orthodox Church, which taught that the
traditional social hierarchy was mandated by God.Breaking the Traditional Cycle of Population
and Productivity
The enormous wealth generated by the British and French colonies and the Triangular Trade
Networks created pressure for social change that eventually affected the whole populations
of both Great Britain and France. The effects were felt more strongly in Great Britain and
led to changes that, taken together, constituted the first phase of the Industrial Revolution,
which began in Great Britain and then spread eastward throughout Europe. This Industrial
Revolution broke the traditional cycle of population and productivity.
The traditional cycle of population and productivity worked like this:
• Population and productivity rose together, as an increase in the number of people work-
ing in an agricultural economy increased the agricultural yield.
• Eventually, the agricultural yield reached the maximum amount that could be produced
given the land available and the methods in use.14_Bartolini_Ch14_089-098.indd 92 27/04/18 1:54 PM