European Monarchs In The 17th And 18th Century

The European monarchs and rulers of the 17th and 18th centuries wanted to increase their power both domestically and globally by adding to their territories and populations so they used the three features of state-building: control, extraction, and integration. In the late 1700s, both the Industrial revolution and French revolution of 1789 strengthened the idea that Europeans were different from the rest of the world. It also strengthened that “Europeans were “progressing” rapidly while the rest of the world appeared to be stagnating, that Europeans were somehow exceptional—better--, even than the rest” as Robert Marks puts it in his words. (Robert Marks, Origins of the world, p-4).

However, even though the west was expanding in the 17th and

These include the trading system, the economy and most importantly the Industrialization and the competitive state system. The two major factors that contributed to Europe’s rise were the competitive state system (early

The war consisted of many small German states, the Austrian Empire, France, Sweden, and Spain. Regardless of a fierce war, the Catholics were unable to overturn Protestantism. The treaty, Peace of Westphalia, ended the war. The modern notion of an independent state was born. During the 17th and 18th centuries, Peter the Great of Russia and Louis XIV of France used their strategies towards mercantilism to not only advance their economic resources but also to justify their royal supervision of their colonies. In addition, they used these mercentalic goals to strengthen their central power through specific strategies in their interests at their home countries. Through passing domestic policies, they strived to assimilate national networks of powerful individuals who would work for the benefit of the state and would then be rewarded with privileges. Abroad, they both tried to expand their territories as means of enhancing their economic benefits, which would eventually add to their centralized political powers at home. The formation of Prussia and Russia, during the seventeenth century, marked a development for the modern Western world as it would later lead to the formation of powerful states. “Absolutism,” was a process by which kings Peter the great and Louis XIV, tried to expand their powers, through ways that