Absolute Monarchs
- Who was Tokugawa Ieyasu and what was he known for?
- Who was Peter the Great and what was he known for?
- Who was Louis XIV and what was he known for?
Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543-1616), the first shogun of Japan, established a dynastythat ruled Japan for centuries. In Japan, the shogun is the title given to the military general who ruled Japan in the name of the Emperor from until 1868 when the shogun and the samurai class was abolished. Tokugawa’s dynasty endured for so long because heinstitutionalized/centralized his power in inheritable form and founded a dynastic military government, based upon the Samurai Bushido code,which endured for nearly three centuries. Tokugawa was undeniably a shrewd politician, an exceptional general, and an insightful administrator but he owed his lasting success not to superior ability in any of these areas but to personal longevity [he lived and held absolute power for a very long time] and judicious institutional borrowing [he copied any army or government that worked better than his]. Tokugawa instituted absolute monarchy in his country like Peter the Great and Louis XIV did in theirs.
Peter the Great was tsar [czar] of Russia from 1682 to 1725. His self-given title was Peter the Great though he was officially Peter I. Peter the Great is credited with dragging Russia out of medieval times to such an extent that by his death in 1725, Russia was considered a leading eastern European state. Peter was one of the first Russian tzars to visit the west. His travels abroad had convinced Peter that Russia was too backward. As tsar he wanted to apply western mercantilism to stimulate agriculture, industry and commerce.
He centralized government power, modernized the army, created a navy but, unfortunately, he increased the subjugation and subjection of the peasants. By centralizing government power, the state dominated all forms of industry. The state was the source of capital, raw materials and labor. The state was also the main purchaser of finished goods. He enlarged and established an army of professional soldiers and officers. Russia had no navy or merchant fleet before Peter the Great. Peter brought in foreign navy ship builders and naval officers and went so far as to fight wars to obtain warm water ports for his navy and merchant fleet to sail out of Russia year round.
Little was achieved in agriculture which simply remained medieval. The superstitious and conservative attitude of those in agriculture and the sheer size of the country, meant that government officials had great difficulty getting out to rural areas and imposing the will of the tsar on those who lived there. The supremacy of the local lord over his people was deeply entrenched. The state did what it could to encourage those in farming to use modern equipment such as harrows and ploughs but to little avail. Human labor doing the bulk of the work carried on into the Nineteenth Century and was an issue Stalin tried to deal with in the 1930's. For someone to successfully reform agriculture in the 1720's, the problem proved too great.
Louis XIV became king of France (1643-1715) upon the death of his father Louis XIII. Louis XIV, known as the Sun King, imposed absolute rule on France and fought a series of wars trying to dominate Europe.In four wars he displayed before all of Europe his prowess as a military leader. His reign, the longest in European history, was marked by a great flowering of French culture, the building of the magnificent palace of Versailles, and a series of building projects that made Paris the pearl of Europe.
Before Louis became king, two rebellions called The Fronde impressed upon Louis the need to bring order, stability, and reform to France and also fostered in him a deep suspicion of the nobility. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday he presided at a council meeting in which he and a select group of ministers formulated policies that affected the lives of his 20 million subjects. Louis developed two effective new instruments of power: a corps of professional diplomats and a standing, uniformed army. After 1682 the king spent most of his time at Versailles, near Paris, where he had built a magnificent palace that became the showplace of Europe.
Parallel to Louis's quest for glory in war was his patronage of glory in the arts. Like Lorenzo Medici of Florence during the Renaissance, the Sun King became a patron of the arts. Louis founded the academies of Painting and Sculpture (1655), Science (1666), and Architecture (1671), and in 1680 he established the COMÉDIE FRANÇAISE. His grand palace at Versailles afforded the ideal setting for his lavish court. Louis's interest in improving Paris made him embark upon a series of building projects. He razed the city's medieval walls, built the Invalides as a home for disabled veterans, planned the great avenue of the Champs-Élysées, and refurbished the Cathedral of Notre Dame.His personal example of long, dedicated rule, however, made France the bureaucratic model for 18th-century, absolutist Europe. Unfortunately Louis XIV was never able to resolve the tensions between a governing elite committed to efficiency and a society organized by rank, birth, and privilege. The gap between the rich nobility and the poor peasants grew to the point that his grandson Louis XVI could not reconcile thus leading to the French Revolution.