New Monarchies
Four powers a centralised state claimed
- New monarchies laid the foundation for the centralised modern state by establishing monopolies on tax collection, employing military force, dispensing justice, and gaining the right to determine the religion of their subjects.
- Four powers: tax, force, justice, religion — and each had previously been shared with nobles, towns or the Church.
- So centralisation is a transfer of specific functions, which makes it measurable rather than vague.
Select all four monopolies the CED names.
Each had previously been shared with nobles, towns or the Church.
Reform from the top down
- Monarchs and princes, including the English rulers Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, initiated religious reform from the top down in an effort to exercise greater control over religious life and morality.
- The CED's phrase from the top down distinguishes this from the popular reform movements of unit 2.
- So a ruler's reformation is a sovereignty story before it is a theological one.
The CED's phrase for monarchs' religious reform is from the ____ down.
That distinguishes it from the popular movements of unit 2.
New people in politics
- Across Europe, commercial and professional groups gained in power and played a greater role in political affairs.
- A monarch who needs revenue and trained administrators will find both outside the nobility.
- So centralisation and the rise of commercial groups are the same process seen from two sides.
Which power is being claimed?
Sort each development by the CED's four monopolies.
Commercial and professional groups gained power partly because a monarch...
Centralisation and their rise are the same process from two sides.
A ruler's reformation is a sovereignty story first. The CED says monarchs initiated reform from the top down in an effort to exercise greater control over religious life and morality — the theology matters, but the objective here is about the power the reform transferred.
New concepts of the secular state emerged where centralisation succeeded most.
The CED locates them in Italy's continued political fragmentation.
Italy went the other way
- Continued political fragmentation in Renaissance Italy provided a background for the development of new concepts of the secular state.
- Where no monarch could centralise, thinkers analysed power as it actually worked between competing states.
- So the theory of the secular state emerged where centralisation failed, which is a useful irony to be able to state.
Match each cause to the institution it produced.
Centralisation is a transfer of specific functions, which makes it measurable.
Causes and effects of institutions
- The objective is the causes and effects of the development of political institutions from 1450 to 1648.
- Causes: war finance, the need for administration, and the opportunity religious reform created.
- Effects: standing revenue, professional officials, and the varying degrees of centralisation from 1.1.
Before, a subject could be taxed by a lord, tried in a church court and told what to believe by a bishop appointed abroad. Afterwards, one authority claims all three. Nothing about daily life need look different on the first morning, and the constitutional change is total.
New monarchies laid the foundation for the centralised modern state by claiming monopolies on tax collection, military force, justice and the right to determine subjects' religion. Monarchs initiated religious reform from the top down to control religious life and morality. Commercial and professional groups gained political power, while Italy's continued fragmentation produced new concepts of the secular state.