Enlightened Absolutism (Frederick the Great, Catherine the Great, Joseph II)

hey there students let's talk a little bit about enlightened absolutism this goes out to Kristen who asked me to talk about the enlightenment or enlightened absolutism so I'm going to go ahead and talk about the enlightened absolutist and these are monarchs in the 18th century they tried to apply the principles of the Enlightenment to the administration of Their Kingdoms a lot of philosophes such as vol and dero and Kant were supportive of this development because they believed that monarchy was going to be the best way to topple those institutions of the church and the nobility

and to further Enlightenment ideals of religious toleration and freedom of expression and all those other things they didn't think that this was going to go from the bottom up uh somewhat of an elitist approach they believed in a top down approach to enlightening society that Enlightenment could not happen without the intervention of a strong ruler a philosopher king so to speak now Frederick the great really captures this in a letter that he wrote to the philosopher voler he wrote let us admit the truth the Arts and philosophy extend to only the few the vast Mass

the common people in the bulk of the nobility remain what Nature has made them that is to say Savage beasts wow elitism anyone but keep in mind that this can be a trap okay because it's something that you know you want government to do something but it doesn't always do what you want in fact Ronald Reagan once said that the nine most terrifying words in the English language are I'm from the government and I'm here to help think about it now take a look at this acronym here of trap uh because it really brings to

mind all of the features of enlightened absolutism now first of all toleration of religious minorities one of the key features here is that all of these monarchs are trying to increase religious toleration which is one of the key values of the Enlightenment reform of Institutions uh each of these monarch marks is going to try to take a stab at reforming political and social institutions now Katherine the Great is kind of an exception but at least there's a goal there of Reform keep in mind that it is still absolutist duh okay I mean yeah of course

enlightened absolutism is going to be absolutist but do keep that in mind and then finally patronage of the philosop so we're looking at Toleration reform Absol absolutism and patronage our three most prevalent enlightened absolutist are Katherine II of Russia Frederick II of Prussia and Joseph II of Austria so all three of them are the second keep in mind though that Katherine and Frederick also have the add-on the great as a title so a lot of times you'll see Katherine the Great Frederick the great Joseph the not so great we'll see why in a second so

I'm going to go ahead and talk about each of these individually let's go ahead and start off with Frederick the great of Prussia who is in a lot of cases seen as the most successful of these enlightened absolutists now Frederick defined himself as the first servant of the state he believed that his King his job was not just to rule over his country but to be a benefactor that he should be concerned about his subjects in fact early in his Reign he published a track against makavelli he believed that makavelli was wrong in saying that

you know basically the prince should do whatever he needs to do to shore up his power Frederick believed that a prince or a king should be chiefly concerned about the wellbeing of his subjects and Frederick patronized the philosophes in fact uh Volta was a regular correspondent uh for a while voler lived at his court we see in this picture here Volta sitting at the table with Frederick and his cers and having a great time well that was a lot of fun until it wasn't voler eventually got tired of Frederick CU Frederick had a lot of

these features of traditional absolutism that Vol became disillusion with and so for a while it was nice but then it wasn't now Frederick is also concerned about the well-being of his people about the advancement of Science and Agriculture and that sort of thing here's a picture of Frederick inspecting a potato Harvest he's like what you got there peasant o I've got a potato uh oh that's really cool now keep in mind potatoes were introduced as a new crop during Frederick's Reign keep in mind that potatoes are good for you because they have a lot of

calories they're packed with calories in fact that is why when people are going on a diet a lot of times they're told don't eat potatoes you need to stay away from those because that is high in calories but for people who otherwise wouldn't have anything to eat that's great religious toleration Frederick has one of the best most generous religious toleration policies in all of Europe at this time although Protestants were still favored for key governmental posts now keep in mind that Frederick was somewhat of a religious skeptic himself so this was easy for him to

do he wasn't really tied back by a lot of Devotion to a particular religion Frederick did reform his State reformed the Civil Service how people were going to be selected to serve in his administration over a hundred years before the United States had a civil service exam a test that people had to take to serve in government positions Frederick is already instituting this reform so that people get promoted on basis of Merit what we call a meritocracy that it doesn't matter quite as much what Noble family you come from if you want to serve in

the Civil Administration now keep in mind that Frederick was not leveling Society all out the military ranks were still reserved for that Prussian aristoc y but it was becoming possible for people of middle class backgrounds to serve at least in civil Administration so Frederick's not going all the way but he is making some progress when it comes down to it Frederick is not fully an Exemplar of the Enlightenment because he is still a champion of Prussian militarism Prussia still exists at this point as a militaristic state which is contrary to the principles of the enlightenment

when you look up Frederick on Google something like this comes up that Frederick II of Prussia not enlightened absolutist but military commander let's move on to Katherine the Great of Russia now Katherine came onto the scene uh as the wife of the Russian Zar and this guy had a very mysterious death and died less than a year after he took the throne and it's very likely almost a given that he was assassinated and equally almost a given that Catherine had something to do with this plot to assassinate her husband okay that she was helping out

with this sort of thing kind of like shake and assassinate or something like that and this is going to kind of dictate things for Katherine because there's not going to be a whole lot of reform during her Reign uh because she's really dependent on the nobility now Katherine was really the least ambitious of the enlightened absolutist in terms of Reform and that sort of thing but she was awesome at patronizing the philosophes captain found out that Dennis Deo the editor of the encyclopedia had run on hard times and she decides to purchase Dennis deo's library

now you might be thinking hey he's a philosopher he needs that library after all what's a philosopher that a li library but then she says hey Dennis why don't you hold on to that library and Be My Librarian and I'll pay you a salary to look after my library you can't beat that I mean that's that's a pretty mad patronage D is like all right let's uh let's do it and she corresponded also with voler who as we know voler had a really big ego and imagine this queen is corresponding with him telling him how

great he is well voler is going to reciprocate by talking about how great she is um so really Katherine's got a great PR machine going on because she's being so good to these philosophes who are in turn being very good to her because anybody appreciates flattery and then there is pugachev's rebellion which really shows how Catherine was not extremely ambitious in her program reform uh in fact this Rebellion the way she put it down uh was much more absolutist than enlightened here is a Soviet era stamp with pugachev on it now of course for Catherine

and the zarus regime pugachev would be a villain but for these Communists who overthrew the zarus regime pugachev becomes sort of a Working Class Hero so depending on what side you're on pachev could be a villain or pugachev could be someone who is a freedom fighter someone who stands up to tyranny now partly due to pev's rebellion and partly due to Katherine's dependence on the nobility there wasn't a whole lot of Reform uh under Katherine's Reign okay so she did not abolish surom or make any Le serious legal changes or anything like that so that's

very important to note that Catherine was very light on the reform very heavy on the patronage of the philosop and defending her absolute rule in case you're wondering whether Catherine died committing a lud act with a horse that's not true I don't know where that came from sorry to disappoint you and finally let's talk about Joseph II of Austria now in Remembering Joseph II of Austria we need to keep in mind that he was the most radical and the least effective of the enlightened absolutist of course there's a reason for that a lot of times

when your goals are overly ambitious you don't uh make sure people are on board with you you're not going to be as effective as somebody who has more modest goals and inlist cooperation of people that matter so most radical least effective and for the first 15 years of his Reign he is reigning with his mother Maria Teresa of Austria then after that for 10 years he's ruling on his own one of the things Joseph is most famous for is a very generous religious toleration policy which even included private worship for Jews Joseph wanted to try

to bring the Jews into the Austrian Nation now keep in mind that is also a feature of this enlightened absolute ism is to centralize the state and of course increase that absolute power now Joseph was presiding over a multiethnic Empire when we get to World War I we'll talk more about all the problems that come from this from the Austrian Empire having no less than 10 different ethnic groups all kinds of languages and that sort of thing now Joseph tried very hard to centralize Administration which of course is good for the main of the state

but then again there are going to be some people who are not going to be happy about that sort of thing uh when they think about giving up their local power so Joseph is challenging the power of the local Nobles but the local Nobles are going to push back with Vigor and that's what's going to compromise Joseph's Effectiveness Joseph was a reformer unlike Katherine the Great Joseph did abolish serfdom as a legal Institution and granted more rights to peasants now this didn't mean that everything was gone about the hierarchy of the old regime in Austria

but it was a step uh he was trying to give peasants more rights than they had had before but then again Joseph was the most radical the least effective after he died his successor undid a lot of these reforms to try to please the established nobility so remember with Joseph most radical least effective Joseph kind of knew that he was a bit ineffective uh in achieving his goals and he suggested for his Epitaph that it read here lies Joseph II who failed in all he undertook so finally let's remember our acronym for enlightened absolutism it's

a trap toleration of religious minorities reform of Institutions absolutism and patronage of the philosophes and keep in mind that each of these enlightened absolutists was more successful in some of these than others and are enlightened absolutist being Katherine the Great Frederick the great and Joseph II and remember if you want to know a little bit more about them take a look at my video on the partitions of Poland and and of course I've got all kinds of other videos that you are welcome to subscribe and see when those come up check out my channel otherwise

until next time