Chapter+18+(The+Eighteenth+Century--European+States)

//Note: This is taken straight from the Study Guide!//

While Europe experienced the scientific and intellectual revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth Centuries, its various states moved from early modern absolutism to the verge of republican revolution. Across the continent, the Old Regimes experienced a set of crises in what can now be seen as preparation for the convulsions that later ushered in the modern age. It was a time of what has been called "enlightened absolutism," although how enlightened the rulers were depends on the nation being studied. In Britain and Holland kingship gave way to representative government, even if those being represented were primarily members of the upper classes, while in France and Eastern Europe various forms and degrees of absolutism continued. IN Prussia, for example, the Hohenzollerns gave their people efficiency and military glory without granting them civil rights, while in Austria the Emperor Joseph II tried to make Philosophy his lawmaker--but in the end believed he had failed. Warfare became ever more efficient and deadly during the eighteeth century; and wars defined the future even more than they had in the century before.Prussia earned the right to stand among the strong nation-states because of its several victories over France in the Seven Years' War. Meanwhile populations continued to grow, and most European nations prospered. Yet the gap between rich and poor grew ever more pronounced, and poverty virtually overwhelemed organizations and government agencies that tried to do something to remedy it. The stage was set for scoial revolution and the military strife.