THE ANCIENT REGIME

WHAT IS THE ANCIENT REGIME?

•The Ancient Regime

• We understand The Ancient Regime as the political, social and economical system that preceded the decomposition of the Medieval feudalism.

• The Ancient Regime started in the Renaissance and finished with the French Revolution.

• This term was used for the first time by the French revolutionaries, to just designate the period they had put into an end.

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What were its characteristics?

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CHARACTERISTICS

• A STAGNANT POPULATION.• ABSOLUTE MONARCHY• FEUDAL SOCIETY• SURVIVAL OF THE FEUDAL SYSTEM IN

STRUGGLE WITH AN EMERGING CAPITALISM.

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DEMOGRAPHY: The Ancient Demographic Cycle:

• Low Demographic Growth due to:

• a. High birth rates but with high mortality rates too and a short life expectancy due to:– Poor hygiene - Archaic medical

techniques

• b. Periodic demographic crisis due to:– Famines - Epidemics (Black Death, smallpox, influenza, etc.)

– Illnesses - Wars

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ECONOMY: Rural Economy

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Feudal Society

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PRIVILEGED

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NOT PRIVILEGED97% OF THE POPULATIONALL OF THEM PAY TAXES

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ABSOLUTE MONARCHY

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ABSOLUTE MONARCHY

• The medieval systems of government, in which the king’s power was limited by the feudal rights of the nobility, weren’t any more the political, social and economical reality in the XVIII century.

• Development of the idea of a centralized state.

• This type of monarchy was established in great part of Europe. Specially in France, Russia or Spain.

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DIVINE RIGHT THEORY• The royal authority was an expression of God’s

wish.

• It was understood that the king always acted for the benefit of the people, as an agent of God.

• The Divine Right set out the principle that the king’s subjects didn’t have any right superior to that of the king (the subjects don’t delegate their power to the king). Therefore they had no right to revolt against the king.

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THE ABSOLUTE MONARCHIES

Louis XIV “the Sun King”

• The means the kings used for the exercise of their ilimited command were: the Cabinet, the Army, the Bureaucracy and the Diplomacy .

•The Absolute Monarchy in France reached its peak with Louis XIV. His person was completely identified with the state with the sentence “I am the state”.

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THE ABSOLUTE MONARCHIES

•The kings Charles V and his son Philip II represented the height of the monarchy and of the Spanish empire. Both of them followed the Absoulte Monarchy but delegated their power to their favourite advisers.

Charles V of Spain

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THE ABSOLUTE MONARCHIES

The reigns of Henry VIII and his daughter Elisabeth I, managed to relegate the role of the parlament as a mere consultive institution, which led to internal problems with the parlament.

Henry VIII

Oliver Cromwell

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MOVEMENT AGAINST THE ABSOLUTISM: THE ENLIGHTENMENT

• The Enlightenment was a social, scientific and cultural movement of intellectuals during 18th Century for the reason and the social reform, and against superstition, intollerance and abuses in church and nobility.

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Forerunners of the Enlightenment

– Montaigne (1533-1592)About European colonization of America: “Why is it okay for Europe to impose its values on other lands? These foreign cultures had their own complex set of customs, laws and beliefs. Who was to say if Christian Europe was right and these

people were wrong?”

-Descartes (1596-1650)

Author or the statement “I think, therefore I am”. In other words, if people start from the point acknowledging their very existence, then they can prove the existence of God, with mathematics and reason, not just with faith.

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The Age of Enlightenment (18th Century)

While early thinkers such as Descartes and Pascal helped build a framework for enlightened thought, later philosophers are best known for spreading the Enlightenment throughout Europe and beyond.

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Main figures of Enlightenment

• Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755) (real name: Charles Louis de Secondat).

Montesquieu wrote two important books: Persian letters (1721), that described how fictional Persian travelers viewed France and its government, and The spirit of laws (1748), by means of which he proposed his theory about the separation of powers. Maybe we owe him the way of government that all the democratic governments have nowadays.

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• Voltaire (1694-1778) (real name: François-Marie Arouet).

Writer, historian and philosopher famous for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, freedem of expression, free trade and separation of church and state. Although he constantlly mocked the aristocracy, he was a frequent guest in French salons. We owe him statements such as “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”, “It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong” or “As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities”.

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• Jean-Jacques Rosseau (1712-1778)Swiss writer, philosopher and musician.

Author of The Social Contract, where he

says that the people must own the

sovereignty of a country and delegate it in

the assembly, also chosen by the people.

He also thought that humans are good by

nature, and that society is what makes us

bad.

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• Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès (1748-1836) (“Abbé” Sieyès)

He was a clergyman and, though actually he wasn’t an abbott, people used to call him “Abbé”. He was the author of the 1789 panphlet “What is the third estate?”, where he wrote: “What is the Third Estate? Everything. What has it been hitherto in the political order? Nothing.

What does it desire to be? Something."

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