Review of Crisis, Absolutism, Revolution: Europe, 1648-1789 by Raymond Birn
An outstanding survey history of Enlightenment times
The book begins in the aftermath of the Thirty Years War, one of modern Europe's most devastating conflicts. In many ways the ultimate religious war, it also dealt a decisive blow to many feudal arrangements and customs, opening the way for the birth of the nation-state. Society was based on the triad of clergy, aristocrats, and an emerging bourgeoisie, as presided over by the king; the former groups benefited from a huge array of privileges, ensuring their advantages and living standards along with their loose obligations of service to the king. The bottom rung (the 90%) - the basis of the economy - was filled by the peasants, who paid most if not quite all of the taxes, often in the forms of corvée obligations or a significant portion of their production; their economy was only marginally monetized, they lived with ensured tenure, in communal cooperation with rights to common lands for pasture and some agricultural plots.
Up to 1715, economies were in dire straits with low agricultural productivity, plagues, and incessant petty wars. Nonetheless, following the examples of Holland and Venice, new kinds of economic logic were emerging. Most particularly, mercantilism was driving many of the decisions of monarchs: dominate certain international products, hopefully as a monopoly, the reasoning went, to pull in as much wealth as possible into the national economy.
Dutch merchant pirates concentrated on luxury goods or food necessities whose prices had risen precipitously in response to crop failures and other crises, i.e. both beyond and taking advantage of the subsistence economy. This required the development of trading ports, naval forces to protect ships and claim colonial territories, developmental agricultural improvement, and the establishment of some domestic industry. In contrast to Holland, England began to target mass consumption, a harbinger of what was to come.
Finally, the “triangle of trade” arose, generating enormous wealth: Europeans brought guns and manufactured goods to Africa, took slaves to the new world, and brought back molasses, sugar, and other raw materials to Europe; each leg could create a fortune. This was the basis of capital accumulation that financed the industrial revolution.
At the same time, private enterprise was beginning to rise. This required the further erosion of feudal privileges and practices. Common grazing areas began to be fenced off, wage labor under contract was growing at the expense of old (if arbitrary and uneven) guarantees, cottage industries were experimenting with new techniques, internal transport networks received attention and investment. Though much of it was inchoate, it set the stage for the development of industrial capitalism. The countries left behind, such as Spain, continued to rely on extraction industries in the Americas and Asia, the profits of which they did not invest productively. There were many other laggards, but clearly, many monarchs were paying attention.
The political corollary to mercantilism was the enlightened despot. At this time, some monarchs developed the apparati of the absolutist state, i.e. a professional bureaucracy, an education system to train the elite, and a military capability with new disciplines and theory of war. Louis XIV is the ultimate exemplar of this autocratic régime: he consolidated his power with the means to dominate all other actors in society to his purposes. Of course, he did so by co-opting the traditional elites - a very difficult balancing act that required much political skill, essentially convincing them with perks and careers to believe that serving him was in their own interest. Birn's exposition on these developments is among the best I have read for clarity and brevity. There were also Marie Therese of Austria, Peter the Great, and Frederick the Great, all of whom initiated a fundamental transformation of their respective societies. Of course, there were some limits placed on kings, such as in the Glorious Revolution of England.
The intellectual partners of the enlightened despots were the philosophes, e.g. Voltaire and Diderot, who corresponded with monarchs and offered new ideas. While they distrusted the great unwashed masses and were not advocates for direct democracy, they did promote reason and rationalist approaches to solving problems for the entire society. This was the weakest section of the book in my view, but is put into context in useful ways.
This was the most triumphant period of the ancien régime, i.e. the king operated through aristocrats, whose authority and reach were challenged only by the bourgeois. It was a corrupt and inefficient system that required great talent to manage, which subsequent generations of leaders seemed to lack when compared Peter, Frederick, and Louis XIV. The system began to erode, particularly in France with a series of catastrophic harvests, the pathetically inept Louis XVI, and a rush of new ideas that arose explosively from the American revolution and radical pamphleteers. The book ends with the last gasps of the ancien régime and the early stages of industrial capitalism.
Normally, I wouldn't enthusiastically recommend a college history textbook, let alone read one, but this is a wonderful book, a reasonably heavy read at the undergraduate level. Rather than a narrative, I wanted a good accounting and analysis of the basics, and this was absolutely perfect for that. It is also well written, succinct and dense, yet full of telling details to illustrate a point. There is a profusion of ideas on every page, and the range of countries covered is extremely wide. A fun read.
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