Enlightened and Other Approaches to Power

By the end of this lesson, students will be able to:

• Account for how Enlightenment thought shaped different forms of European political power between 1648 and 1815 (LO G; Skill 2.B; KC-2.1.I.C, KC-2.3.IV.C).
• Account for how political and religious developments challenged or reinforced the idea of a unified Europe between 1648 and 1815 (LO H; KC-2.1.III.A).
• Account for KC-2.1.I.C: how eighteenth-century rulers in central and eastern Europe (Frederick the Great, Maria Theresa, Joseph II, Catherine the Great) experimented with enlightened absolutism, identifying specific reforms each pursued.
• Account for KC-2.3.IV.C: how most western and central European governments extended toleration to Christian minorities and (in some states) civil equality to Jews by 1800, citing specific edicts (Joseph II's Toleranzpatent, the French Edict of Versailles).
• Use Skill 2.B (Sourcing and Situation) to identify the point of view, purpose, historical situation, and audience of foundational eighteenth-century state documents such as the Anti-Machiavel and the Edict of Toleration.

Topic 4.6 covers two related but distinct developments. The first, captured by KC-2.1.I.C and KC-2.3.IV.C, is enlightened absolutism: the eighteenth-century practice by which absolute monarchs combined absolutist authority with selective Enlightenment-influenced reform. The second, captured by KC-2.1.III.A, is the structural reorganization of central Europe that the Westphalian limitation of imperial sovereignty produced. Topic 4.6 connects the two: enlightened absolutist rulers (Frederick the Great in Prussia, Maria Theresa and Joseph II in Habsburg Austria) were the principal beneficiaries of the post-Westphalia central European order.

KC-2.1.I.C captures the central case: eighteenth-century rulers in eastern and central Europe experimented with enlightened absolutism. The principal cases were three. Frederick II of Prussia (Frederick the Great, r. 1740-1786) called himself “the first servant of the state,” corresponded with Voltaire across decades (Voltaire visited Frederick at Potsdam from 1750 to 1753), wrote the 1740 Anti-Machiavel (drafted with Voltaire's editing) attacking Machiavellian power politics in favor of a duty-of-care theory of monarchy, codified Prussian law in the Allgemeines Landrecht (drafted under his reign, promulgated 1794), promoted the cultivation of potatoes to address rural food shortage, and granted limited religious toleration. The reforms coexisted with traditional absolutist instruments: Frederick personally supervised the Prussian army, the Junker noble class retained its monopoly on officer commissions, and serfdom remained the legal status of most Prussian peasants.

Maria Theresa (r. 1740-1780) and her son Joseph II (r. 1765-1790, sole rule from 1780) of Habsburg Austria pursued the most ambitious enlightened-absolutist reform program in eighteenth-century Europe. Maria Theresa's reforms after the loss of Silesia in 1740-1748 (Topic 3.6) included a centralized administrative council, a standing army of roughly 200,000 troops, new fiscal arrangements taxing previously exempt nobility and clergy, and (with her chancellor Wenzel Anton von Kaunitz) a restructured foreign policy. Joseph II's reforms after his mother's death in 1780 were more radical: the 1781 Edict of Toleration (Toleranzpatent) granted Lutherans, Calvinists, and Greek Orthodox Christians the right to private worship; the 1781 patent abolished serfdom in the Habsburg lands; the 1782 patent granted limited rights to Jews; the 1786 Allgemeines Burgerliches Gesetzbuch codified Habsburg civil law; and Joseph II suppressed roughly 700 Habsburg contemplative monasteries (which he considered economically unproductive). Joseph's reforms produced sufficient noble, clerical, and Hungarian-Belgian regional opposition that much of the program was reversed under his successor Leopold II (r. 1790-1792).

Catherine the Great of Russia (r. 1762-1796) was the third major enlightened absolutist, covered in Topic 3.7 from the Russian-westernization perspective. From the enlightened-absolutist perspective: Catherine corresponded with Voltaire and Diderot (Diderot visited Catherine in St. Petersburg in 1773), assembled a substantial European art collection at the Hermitage, founded the Smolny Institute as Russia's first state school for girls, and issued the 1767 Nakaz (Instruction) attempting to apply Montesquieu's and Beccaria's principles to Russian legal reform. But her reform impulse weakened sharply after the 1773-1775 Pugachev Rebellion: the 1785 Charter to the Nobility formalized noble privileges (including the privilege of owning serfs), and Russian peasants remained in serfdom (which actually intensified under her reign). Catherine's combination of Enlightenment intellectual interests with absolutist domestic policy made her the canonical example of late-eighteenth-century enlightened absolutism in its limits as much as its reforms.

KC-2.3.IV.C captures the religious side of enlightened absolutism: by 1800, most western and central European governments extended toleration to Christian minorities and, in some places, civil equality to Jews. The principal example was Joseph II's 1781 Edict of Toleration. The Edict granted Lutherans, Calvinists, and Greek Orthodox Christians the right to practice their religion privately (in “non-public” chapels without bell towers or street-facing entrances), to build modest churches, to hold most public offices, and to attend Habsburg universities. A separate 1782 Patent of Toleration extended limited rights to Jews (who had previously been confined to specific Habsburg towns and prohibited from many trades) including university access and the lifting of clothing restrictions, but stopped short of full civil equality. France abolished Protestant disabilities in the 1787 Edict of Versailles, and the French Revolution granted Jews civil equality in 1791 (Topic 5.5). Britain had granted Protestant Dissenters limited toleration in 1689 (the Toleration Act, Topic 3.2) but maintained legal disabilities on Catholics until 1829 and on Jews until 1858. The trend was real but uneven.

KC-2.1.III.A captures the central European structural development: after Westphalia limited the Holy Roman Empire's sovereignty, Prussia rose to great-power status while the Austrian Habsburgs shifted their empire eastward. The 1648 Peace of Westphalia (Topic 2.4) had recognized the substantial sovereignty of the roughly 300 German territorial states within the Holy Roman Empire, leaving the imperial title held by the Habsburgs an honorific without much practical power. The Habsburgs concentrated their efforts on their own dynastic possessions: Austria proper, Bohemia, Hungary (after the 1683-1699 Great Turkish War, Topic 3.6), and the Italian and Netherlandish territories acquired at Utrecht in 1713 (Topic 3.6). The 1713 Habsburg Pragmatic Sanction (revised 1719 and 1723) regularized the dynastic succession across these territories, allowing Maria Theresa to inherit her father Charles VI's lands in 1740. Hohenzollern Brandenburg-Prussia rose simultaneously: territorial acquisitions at Westphalia, the Great Elector's seventeenth-century centralization (Topic 3.7), the 1701 royal title, and Frederick the Great's 1740 invasion of Silesia (Topic 3.6) made Prussia a great power. By 1815 the German political map was dominated by Prussia in the north and Habsburg Austria in the south, with the smaller German states (now consolidated to roughly 39 by Napoleon's reorganization) acting as their satellites or balancers.

The Habsburg eastward shift was driven by specific developments. The 1683 Habsburg defeat of the Ottoman siege of Vienna (Topic 3.6) opened Hungary, Croatia-Slavonia, and Transylvania to Habsburg conquest in the Great Turkish War. The 1713 Treaty of Utrecht (Topic 3.6) transferred the Spanish Netherlands and most Spanish Italian territories to Austrian Habsburg control, replacing the lost connection with the Iberian Habsburg branch. Maria Theresa's reforms after 1748 reorganized the Habsburg lands as a more integrated dynastic state, and Joseph II's centralizing reforms (which provoked Hungarian and Belgian resistance) attempted to push the integration further. The eastern and southern orientation of the Habsburg state distinguished it from the originally German-imperial Habsburg of the early modern period and laid the foundation for the nineteenth-century Austro-Hungarian Empire of Unit 7.

Topic 4.6 thus connects the Enlightenment intellectual movement covered in Topic 4.3 to the eighteenth-century political practice of central and eastern European monarchs. Enlightened absolutism produced real reforms (religious toleration, legal codification, limited peasant emancipation) but also limits (continued serfdom in Prussia and Russia, retained noble privilege, the reversal of much of Joseph II's program after 1790). The post-Westphalian reorganization of central Europe favored Prussia and the Habsburg eastward orientation. Both developments shape Unit 5's late-eighteenth-century revolutions and Unit 7's nineteenth-century nationalism.

Three sources documenting eighteenth-century enlightened absolutism: Frederick the Great's Anti-Machiavel, Joseph II's Edict of Toleration, and the Habsburg Pragmatic Sanction.

1. (Causation, Skill 2.B) Read Frederick the Great's Anti-Machiavel excerpt. What is the source's point of view (anonymous crown prince writing through Voltaire's editorial hand), purpose (to articulate an Enlightenment-influenced theory of monarchy), historical situation (1740 accession; eve of Silesian invasion), and audience (educated European readers, especially the philosophes)?
2. (Causation) Account for KC-2.1.I.C: how did Frederick the Great, Maria Theresa, Joseph II, and Catherine the Great experiment with enlightened absolutism? Identify two specific reforms each pursued and one specific limit each encountered.
3. (Causation) Account for KC-2.3.IV.C: how did Joseph II's 1781 Edict of Toleration extend religious freedom to Habsburg Christian minorities? What did the Edict permit, and what restrictions remained?
4. (Causation) Account for KC-2.1.III.A: how did the post-Westphalia limitation of Holy Roman Empire sovereignty produce the rise of Prussia and the Habsburg eastward shift? Cite specific developments (Westphalia, the Pragmatic Sanction, the 1740 invasion of Silesia, the partitions of Poland).
5. (Causation) Compare Joseph II's enlightened-absolutist program with the Bourbon French ancien regime under Louis XV and Louis XVI. Why did Joseph II's reforms produce more substantial change than Bourbon reform attempts, and why did much of his program nevertheless face reversal after 1790?

Draft alignment — pending educator review. AP European History codes correspond to the official College Board Course and Exam Description (Effective Fall 2023, V.1). Statements below are paraphrased in the CountryReports voice; refer to the College Board's published CED for verbatim wording.