European Empires 1400-1600

• New Monarchies


  Modern states were beginning to form, solidifying heredity monarchy
• New Monarchies


  • Brought unity and relative peace to their lands using tax money to build militaries
  • Improved military technology like long bow, pike, bombard
  • Created laws, using Roman Law, which gave power (at least symbolically) to the people, and took it away from the nobility and wealthy families
  • Monarchies called themselves "sovereigns," and the people began to address them as "majesty"
• The Tudors of England (1485-1603)


  • Henry VII took the throne forcibly at the end of the War of the Roses, a war of succession caused by the instability of the Hundred Years War
  • Passed laws against "livery and maintenance," the practice of lords maintaining private armies
  • Used his royal Council as a new court to deal with property disputes and other civil issues
• The Valois of France


  • Louis XI built up a royal army subdued nobles, and created security within France
  • Took extreme powers over taxation and over the clergy
  • The Church in France became relatively independent
  • Francois I and Pope Leo X signed the Concordat of Bologna, which gave the Church monies back to the Pope, but the king could appoint bishops and abbots
  • The French control over their clergy was a large part of why they did not become Protestant
• Spain


  • Became a loosely united nation only after Isabella of Castille and Ferdinand of Aragon married in 1469
  • The two nations remained separate entities, but both recognized the two monarchies
  • Isabella and Ferdinand finished the "Reconquista'" or "reconquering" and took Spain back from the Moors
  • Mounted a horrible attack on Spain's Jews, the Spanish Inquisition, torturing, expelling and exterminating Jews, and confiscating their property
  • The feeling of national identity deepened the feeling toward Jews as outsiders, and afterward Spain began an expulsion of the Moors, and later a new Inquisition
• Holy Roman Empire


  • Germany was made up of "princely states," hereditary monarchies, "ecclesiastic states," bishoprics and abbacies, "imperial free cities," about 50 small cities who largely controlled the commercial life of the empire, and thousands of imperial knights and manors which belonged to no state and whose loyalties went to the emperor
  • The emperorship was an elected office, allowing the states to maintain a good amount of independence locally
  • There were seven "electors" from the various territories
  • The Habsburgs dominated the office of Holy Roman Emperor until 1806
  • The Habsburgs were notorious for political marriages, and Charles V combined their vast inheritances and in 1519 became the Holy Roman Emperor as well, becoming the most powerful ruler of the time
• Conditions that led to the Reformation


  • Decline of the Church
  • Growth of secular/humanist feeling
  • Spread of lay religion
  • Rise of monarchs becoming increasingly absolutist
  • Resistance to feudalism
  • Negligence of the papacy
  • Papal fear of Church councils
  • Divided Germany
  • Turkish threat
  • Aggression of Spain
  • Preeminence of Charles V
  • Fear of further expansion of the Habsburgs
• Ivan IV the Terrible


  Ruled Russia from 1547-1584
• Ivan IV


  • Created a strongly centralized government
  • Expanded Russia's borders
• Ivan IV is believed to have become insane due to mercury poisoning
• The term "terrible"


  In Russian it means "awe-inspiring, formidable, or menacing"
• Ivan IV technically became tsar at age three, when his father died
• Early in his reign Ivan IV


  1. Worked to strengthen the central government

  2. Introduced the "Sudebnik" law code to curb judicial corruption and strengthen central government

  3. Took steps to strengthen government control over the Church

  4. Created "chanceries" - government agencies each dealing with single areas of government

  5. Created the "Streltsy" - a permanent force of musketeers

  6. Greatly increased the number of elected district judicial officials
• Due to the vastness of the country, ethnic diversity, and feudal system


  Ivan IV had more difficulty centralizing Russia's government than more modern Western countries
• Expansion under Ivan IV


  1. Captured Kazan and surrounding territory in 1552

  2. Wanted to control the entirety of the Volga to control trade

  3. Continued expanding eastward, including many more ethnicities and languages in his growing empire

  4. Attempted to take Livonia in the Baltics and gain control over Poland, but was unsuccessful
• Ivan IV's actions and mental state

  Began to become erratic
• While Ivan IV was sick in 1553, he asked the Boyars (high-ranking nobles) to swear support to his infant son, but he never trusted them again after they hesitated
• Differences of opinions on military policy added to Ivan IV's distrust of the Boyars, particularly when Russia suffered defeats in the Livonian War
• After Ivan IV's wife Anastasia died in 1560, he became more unstable and suspicious
• Ivan IV began taking harsher measures against those who angered him, including arrests, imprisonments, forced loyalty oaths, exile, and executions
• In 1564 Ivan IV


  1. Took his second wife and two sons to Alexandrovsk where he abdicated the throne

  2. Blamed the Boyars for being disloyal and absolved the common people

  3. Church leaders and Boyars panicked and rushed to convince him not to abdicate, which he agreed to on the condition of being given power to deal with "traitors"
• Ivan IV then


  1. Created the oprichnina, a secret police designed to "sweep" away treason

  2. The oprichnina terrorized all classes of Russian society

  3. When Novgorod was thought to have Polish sympathies, the oprichnina killed at least several thousand citizens
• In 1581 Ivan IV struck and killed his eldest son Ivan V in an argument
• Ivan IV died in 1584, leaving Russia with his weak-minded son Fedor, who was largely controlled by his brother-in-law Boris Gudunov
• Fedor left no heirs, leading to the "Time of Troubles" from 1598-1613, after which Mikhail Romanov, a nephew of Anastasia, was chosen as tsar, beginning the Romanov dynasty