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Despotism

Despotism

Despotism is government by a singular authority, either a single person or tightly knit group, which rules with absolute power. The word implies tyrannical rule; it suggests a form of government which exercises exacting and near-absolute control over all of its citizens. A related term is benevolent despotism, which refers specifically to a form of rulership that came to prominence in the 18th century. In this instance, the absolute monarchs ruling certain nations used their authority to institute a number of reforms in the political and social structures of their countries. This movement was probably largely triggered by the ideals of the Enlightenment. Even though the word has modern pejorative meaning, it was once a legitimate title of office in the Byzantine Empire. Just as the word "Byzantine" is often used in a pejorative way (for specific reasons by certain Enlightenment authors wishing to express disapproval of that period in history), the word Despot was equally turned around for negative meaning. In fact, a Despot was an Imperial title, first used under Manuel I Komnenos (1143-1180) who created it to his appointed heir Alexius-Béla. According to Gyula Moravcsik this title was a simple translation of Béla's Hungarian title 'úr', but other historians beleive it comes from the old Roman title 'dominus'. It was typically bestowed on sons-in-law and later sons of the Emperor, and beginning in the 13th century it was bestowed to foreign princes. The Despot wore an elaborate costume similar to the Emperor's and had many privileges. Despots ruled over parts of the empire called Despotates. In the Orthodox Liturgy, if celebrated in Greek, the priest is addressed by the deacon as "despot" even today.

External links

- [http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-local/DHI/dhi.cgi?id=dv2-01 Dictionary of the History of Ideas:] despotism
- [http://www.archive.org/details/Despotis1946 Archive.org - Despotism Video - 1946]

Government

A government is the body that has the power to make and enforce laws within an organization or group. In its broadest sense, "to govern" means to administer or supervise, whether over an area of land, a set group of people, or a collection of assets. The word government is derived the Greek Κυβερνήτης (kubernites), which means "steersman", "governor", "pilot" or "rudder".

Definitions

One approach is to define government as the decision-making arm of the state, and define the latter on the basis of the control it has over violence and the use of force within its territory. Specifically, the state (and by extension the government) has been considered by some to be the entity that holds a monopoly on the legitimate use of force within a territory. This view has been taken by the political economist Max Weber and subsequent political philosophers. The exact meaning of it depends on what is understood by “legitimate”. If we use the term in an ethical sense, then this definition would suggest that an organisation might be considered a state by its supporters but not by its detractors. An alternative definition is to take "legitimate" violence to be simply that which has active or tacit acceptance by the vast majority of the population. In this view, the presence of insurrection or civil war against an entity would jeopardise its claim to be a state, provided the insurrection enjoyed significant popular support. Similarly, an entity that shared military or police power with independent militias and bandits could be considered to have a monopoly on “legitimate” violence but to be failing to enforce it, reducing its claim to statehood. In practice, such situations are often described as "failed states". Government can also be defined as the political means of creating and enforcing laws; typically via a bureaucratic hierarchy. Under this definition, a purely despotic organization which controls a territory without defining laws would not be considered a government. Another alternative is to define a government as an organisation that attempts to maintain control of a territory, where "control" involves activities such as collecting taxes, controlling entry and exit to the state, preventing encroachment of territory by neighbouring states and preventing the establishment of alternative governments within the country. In Commonwealth English, the word "Government" can also be used to refer only to the executive branch, in this context being a synonym for the word "administration" in American English (e.g. the Blair Government, the Bush Administration). In countries using the Westminster system, the Government (or party in Government) will also usually control the legislature. The French use of the word gouvernement covers both meanings, whereas Canadian French generally uses it to mean the executive branch. The German word Regierung refers only to government as the executive branch; the wider meaning of the word, government as a system, can be translated as Staatsgewalt.

Forms of government

Various forms of government have been implemented. A government in a developed state is likely to have various sub-organisations known as offices, departments, or agencies, which are headed by politically appointed officials, often called ministers or secretaries. Ministers may in theory act as advisors to the head of state, but in practice have a certain amount of direct power in specific areas. In most modern democracies, the elected legislative assembly has the power to dismiss the government, but in those states that have a separate head of government and head of state, the head of state generally has great latitude in appointing a new one.

Theories

There are a wide range of theories about the reasons for establishing governments. The four major ones are briefly described below. Note that they do not always fully oppose each other - it is possible for a person to subscribe to a combination of ideas from two or more of these theories.

Greed and oppression

Many political philosophies that are opposed to the existence of a government (such as Anarchism, and to a lesser extent Marxism), as well as others, emphasize the historical roots of governments - the fact that governments, along with private property, originated from the authority of warlords and petty despots who took, by force, certain patches of land as their own (and began exercising authority over the people living on that land). Thus, it is argued that governments exist to enforce the will of the strong and oppress the weak.

Order and tradition

The various forms of conservatism, by contrast, generally see the government as a positive force that brings order out of chaos, establishes laws to end the "war of all against all", encourages moral virtue while punishing vice, and respects tradition. Sometimes, in this view, the government is seen as something ordained by a higher power, as in the divine right of kings, which human beings have a duty to obey.

Natural rights

Natural rights are the basis for the theory of government shared by most branches of liberalism (including libertarianism). In this view, human beings are born with certain natural rights, and governments are established strictly for the purpose of protecting those rights. What the natural rights actually are is a matter of dispute among liberals; indeed, each branch of liberalism has its own set of rights that it considers to be natural, and these rights are sometimes mutually exclusive with the rights supported by other liberals.

Social contract

One of the most influential theories of government in the past two hundred years has been the social contract, on which modern democracy and most forms of socialism are founded. The social contract theory holds that governments are created by the people in order to provide for collective needs (such as safety from crime) that cannot be properly satisfied using purely individual means. Governments thus exist for the purpose of serving the needs and wishes of the people, and their relationship with the people is clearly stipulated in a "social contract" (a constitution and a set of laws) which both the government and the people must abide by. If a majority is unhappy, it may change the social contract. If a minority is unhappy, it may persuade the majority to change the contract, or it may opt out of it by emigration or secession.

Operations

Governments concern themselves with regulating and administering many areas of human activity, such as trade, education, medicine, entertainment, and war.

Enforcement of power

Governments use a variety of methods to maintain the established order, such as police and military forces, (particularly under despotism, see also police state), making agreements with other states, and maintaining support within the state. Typical methods of maintaining support and legitimacy include providing the infrastructure for administration, justice, transport, communication, social welfare etc., claiming support from deities, providing benefits to elites, holding elections for important posts within the state, limiting the power of the state through laws and constitutions (see also Bill of Rights) and appealing to nationalism. Different political ideologies hold different ideas on what the government should or should not do.

Territory

The modern standard unit of territory is a country. In addition to the meaning used above, the word state can refer either to a government or to its territory. Within a territory, subnational entities may have local governments which do not have the full power of a national government (for example, they will generally lack the authority to declare war or carry out diplomatic negotiations).

Scale of government

Main articles: government ownership, government spending The scale to which government should exist and operate in the world is a matter of debate. Government spending in developed countries varies considerably but generally makes up between about 30% and 70% of their GDP.

18th century

As a means of recording the passage of time, the 18th century refers to the century that lasted from 1701 through 1800 in the Gregorian calendar. European history scholars will sometimes specifically refer to the 18th century as 1715-1789, denoting the period of time between the death of Louis XIV of France and the start of the French Revolution.

Events

- 1701-14: War of the Spanish Succession
- 1703: Saint Petersburg founded by Peter the Great. Russian capital until 1918.
- 1707: Act of Union passed merging the Scottish and the English Parliaments, thus establishing The Kingdom of Great Britain.
- 1707: After Aurangzeb's death, the Mughal Empire enters a long decline.
- 1715: Louis XIV dies
- 1718: City of New Orleans founded by the French in North America
- 1720: The South Sea Bubble
- 1721: Robert Walpole becomes the first Prime Minister of Great Britain (de facto).
- 1721: Treaty of Nystad signed, ending the Great Northern War.
- 1722: Afghans conquer Iran, ending the Safavid dynasty.
- 1722: Kangxi Emperor of China dies.
- 1733-38: War of the Polish Succession
- 1735-99: The Qianlong Emperor of China oversees a huge expansion in territory.
- 1736: Nadir Shah assumes title of Shah of Persia and founds the Afsharid dynasty. Rules until his death in 1747.
- 1739: Nadir Shah defeats the Mughals and sacks Delhi.
- 1740: Frederick the Great crowned King of Prussia.
- 1740-48: War of the Austrian Succession
- 1741: Russians begin settling the Aleutian Islands.
- 1747: Ahmad Shah founds the Durrani Empire in modern day Afghanistan.
- 1750: peak of the Little Ice Age
- 1755: The Lisbon earthquake
- 1756-63: Seven Years' War fought among European powers in various theaters around the world.
- 1757: Battle of Plassey signals the beginning of British rule in India.
- 1760: George III becomes King of Britain.
- 1762-96: Reign of Catherine the Great of Russia.
- 1763-66: Pontiac's Rebellion in North America
- 1766-99: Anglo-Mysore Wars
- 1767: Burmese conquer the Ayutthaya kingdom.
- 1768: Gurkhas conquer Nepal.
- 1768-1774: Russo-Turkish War
- 1769: Spanish missionaries establish the first of 21 missions in California.
- 1772-95: The Partitions of Poland end the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and erase Poland from the map for 123 years.
- 1775-82: First Anglo-Maratha War
- 1775-83: American Revolution
- 1779-1879: Cape Frontier Wars between British and Boer settlers and the Xhosas in South Africa
- 1785-95: Northwest Indian War between the United States and Native Americans
- 1787: Freed slaves from London found Freetown in present-day Sierra Leone.
- 1788: First European settlement established in Australia at Sydney.
- 1789: George Washington elected President of the United States. Serves until 1797.
- 1789-99: The French Revolution
- 1791-1804: The Haitian Revolution
- 1792-1815: The Great French War starts as the French Revolutionary Wars which lead into the Napoleonic Wars.
- 1792: New York Stock & Exchange Board founded.
- 1793: Upper Canada bans slavery.
- 1795: Pinckney's Treaty between the United States and Spain grants the Mississippi Territory to the US.
- 1796: British eject Dutch from Ceylon.
- 1796-1804: White Lotus Rebellion in China.
- 1797: Napoleon's invasion and partition of the Republic of Venice ends over 1,000 years of independence for the Serene Republic.
- 1798: Irish Rebellion against British Rule
- 1798-1800: Quasi-War between the United States and France.
- 1799: Napoleon stages a coup d'état and becomes dictator of France.
- 1799: Dutch East India Company is dissolved.

Significant people

- Ueda Akinari (Japanese writer)
- Queen Anne (British monarch)
- Marie Antoinette (French royalty and symbol of anti-Revolutionary ire)
- Benedict Arnold, considered a traitor by many people on both sides (United States and Britain) of the American Revolutionary War.
- Johann Sebastian Bach (composer)
- Pierre Beaumarchais (French writer)
- Jeremy Bentham (English jurist, philosopher, and legal and social reformer)
- Napoleon Bonaparte (general and first consul of France)
- François Boucher (French painter)
- Edmund Burke (British statesman and philosopher who supported the American Revolution)
- Robert Burns (Scottish poet)
- Catherine the Great (Russian Tsaritsa)
- James Cook (British navigator)
- Denis Diderot (French writer and philosopher)
- Leonhard Euler (mathematician)
- Jean-Honoré Fragonard (French painter)
- Benjamin Franklin (American revolutionary, inventor, printer, and diplomat)
- Frederick the Great (Prussian monarch)
- Thomas Gainsborough (painter)
- King George III (British monarch)
- Christoph Willibald Gluck (German composer)
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German writer)
- Thomas Gray (British writer)
- George Frideric Handel (German composer)
- Alexander Hamilton (American revolutionary, lawyer, and statesman)
- Joseph Haydn (Austrian composer)
- William Hogarth (painter and engraver)
- David Hume (philosopher)
- Thomas Jefferson (American revolutionary, philosopher, and statesman)
- Samuel Johnson (British writer and literary critic)
- Immanuel Kant (philosopher)
- Wolfgang von Kempelen (Hungarian scientist, pioneer in experimental phonetics)
- John Law (Scottish economist)
- Louis XIV of France (monarch)
- Louis XV of France (monarch)
- Louis XVI of France (monarch)
- James Madison (American revolutionary, writer, and statesman)
- Maria Theresa of Austria (Holy Roman Empress, Queen of Hungary and Bohemia)
- Michikinikwa (Miami tribe chief and war leader)
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (composer)
- Thomas Paine (British intellectual and philosopher who advocated for the American Revolution)
- Philip II, Duke of Orléans (Regent of France)
- Alexander Pope (British poet)
- Francis II Rákóczi (prince of Hungary and Transylvania, leader of the Hungarian freedom war)
- Jean-Philippe Rameau (French composer and music theorist)
- Sir Joshua Reynolds (painter)
- Maximilien Robespierre (French Revolutionary leader and dictator)
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau (French writer and philosopher)
- Friedrich Schiller (German writer)
- John Small, Sr (Hambledon cricketer; the first great batsman)
- Adam Smith (Scottish economist and philosopher)
- Laurence Sterne (British writer)
- Edward "Lumpy" Stevens (Surrey cricketer; the first great bowler)
- Jonathan Swift (Anglo-Irish satirist)
- Tecumseh (Revolutionary)
- Voltaire (French writer and philosopher)
- George Washington (American revolutionary general and first president)
- John Wesley (Founder of Methodism, Anglican clergyman, English reformer, scholar, theologian and writer) See Founding Fathers of the United States

Inventions, discoveries, introductions

List of 18th century inventions
- Industrial Revolution begins
- The Encyclopédie by the Encyclopedists
- The English Dictionary by Samuel Johnson
- Economics by Adam Smith
- Rosetta stone discovered by Napoleon's troops.
- Vitus Bering discovered Alaska.
- James Cook mapped the boundaries of the Pacific Ocean and discovered many Pacific Islands.
- Wahhabism by Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab

Decades and years

- Category:Centuries Category:Industrial Revolution Category:Romanticism ko:18세기 ja:18世紀 th:คริสต์ศตวรรษที่ 18

The Enlightenment

The Age of Enlightenment refers to the 18th century in European philosophy, and is often thought of as part of a larger period which includes the Age of Reason. The term also more specifically refers to a historical intellectual movement, "The Enlightenment." This movement advocated rationality as a means to establish an authoritative system of ethics, aesthetics, and knowledge. The intellectual leaders of this movement regarded themselves as courageous and elite, and regarded their purpose as leading the world toward progress and out of a long period of doubtful tradition, full of irrationality, superstition, and tyranny (which they believed began during a historical period they called the "Dark Ages"). This movement also provided a framework for the American and French Revolutions, the Latin American independence movement, the Polish Constitution of May 3 as well as leading to the rise of capitalism and the birth of socialism. It is matched by the high baroque era in music, and the neo-classical period in the arts, and receives contemporary application in the unity of science movement which includes logical positivism. Another important movement in 18th century philosophy, which was closely related to it, was characterized by a focus on belief and piety. Its proponents attempted to use rationalism to demonstrate the existence of a supreme being. In this period, piety and belief were integral parts in the exploration of natural philosophy and ethics in addition to political theories of the age. However, prominent Enlightenment philosophers such as Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau questioned and attacked the existing institutions of both Church and State. The 18th century also saw a continued rise of empirical philosophical ideas, and their application to political economy, government and sciences such as physics, chemistry and biology. According to scholarly opinion, the Age of Reason preceded the Enlightenment (if it is thought of as a short period), and the Renaissance and Reformation preceded it (if it is thought of as a long period). Furthermore, Romanticism followed the Enlightenment. Romanticism

Short history of Enlightenment philosophy

left The boundaries of the Enlightenment cover much of the 17th century as well, though others term the previous era "The Age of Reason." For the present purposes, these two eras are split; however, it is equally acceptable to think of them conjoined as one long period. Throughout the 1500s and half of the 1600s, Europe was ravaged by religious wars. When the political situation stabilized after the Peace of Westphalia and at the end of the English Civil War, there was an upheaval which overturned the notions of mysticism and faith in individual revelation as the primary source of knowledge and wisdom—perceived to have been a driving force for instability. Instead, (according to those that split the two periods), the Age of Reason sought to establish axiomatic philosophy and absolutism as the foundations for knowledge and stability. Epistemology, in the writings of Michel de Montaigne and René Descartes, was based on extreme skepticism, and inquiry into the nature of "knowledge." This goal in the Age of Reason, which was built on self-evident axioms, reached its height with Benedictus de Spinoza Ethics, which expounded a pantheistic view of the universe where God and Nature were one. This idea became central to the Enlightenment from Newton through to Jefferson. The Enlightenment was, in many ways, influenced by the ideas of Pascal, Leibniz, Galileo and other philosophers of the previous period. There was a wave of change across European thinking, which is exemplified by the natural philosophy of Sir Isaac Newton, a mathematical genius and brilliant physicist. The ideas of Newton, which combined his ability to fuse axiomatic proof with physical observation into a coherent system of verifiable predictions, set the tone for much of what would follow in the century after the publication of his Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. But Newton was not alone in the "systematic revolution" in thinking; he was merely the most visible and famous example. The idea of uniform laws for natural phenomena mirrored the greater systematization in a variety of studies. If the previous era was the age of reasoning from first principles, the Enlightenment saw itself as looking into the mind of God by studying creation and deducing the basic truths of the world. This view may seem over-reaching to some in the present-day, where the belief that human beings apprehend a truth that is more provisional, but in that era it was a powerful notion, which turned on its head the previous basic notions of the sources of legitimacy. For those that divide the "Age of Reason" from the "Enlightenment," the precipitating figure of Newton offers a specific example of the importance of the difference, because he took empirically observed and codified facts, such as Kepler's planetary motion, and the "opticks" which had explained lenses, and began to create an underlying theory of how they functioned. This shift united the pure empiricism of Renaissance figures as Sir Francis Bacon with the axiomatic approach of Descartes. The belief in a comprehensible world, under an orderly Christian God, provided much of the impetus for philosophical inquiry. On the one hand, religious philosophy focused on the importance of piety, and the majesty and mystery of God's ultimate nature; on the other hand, ideas such as Deism stressed that the world was accessible to the faculty of human reason, and that the "laws" which governed its behavior were understandable. The notion of a "clockwork god" or "god the watchmaker" became prevalent, as many in the time period saw new and increasingly sophisticated machines that kept order as a powerful metaphor for a seemingly orderly universe. Central to this philosophical tradition was the belief in objective truth independent of the observer, expressible in rigorous human terms. The quest for the expression of this truth would lead to a series of philosophical works which alternately advanced the scepticist position that it is impossible to know reality in the realm of experience, and the idealist position that the mind was capable of encompassing a reality which lies outside of its direct experience. The relationship between being and perception would be explored by George Berkeley and David Hume, and would eventually be the problem that occupied much of Kant's philosophy. The focus on law, involving the separation of rules from the particulars of behavior or experience, was essential to the rise of a philosophy which had a much stronger concept of the individual; according to this concept, his rights were based on ideals other than ancient traditions, or tenures, and instead reflected the intrinsic quality of a person as defined by the philosophers of the age. John Locke wrote his [http://www.lonang.com/exlibris/locke/ Two Treatises on Government] to argue that property was not a family right by tenure, but an individual right brought on by mixing labour with the object in question, and securing it from other use. This focus on process and procedure would be honoured, at times, in the breach, as England's own "Star Chamber" court would attest to. However, once the concept established that there were natural rights, as there were natural laws, it became the basis for the exploration of what we would now call economics, and political philosophy. In his famous 1784 essay "What Is Enlightenment?", Immanuel Kant defined it as follows:

Enlightenment is man's leaving his self-caused immaturity. Immaturity is the incapacity to use one's own understanding without the guidance of another. Such immaturity is self-caused if its cause is not lack of intelligence, but by lack of determination and courage to use one's intelligence without being guided by another. The motto of enlightenment is therefore: Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own intelligence!

The Enlightenment began then, from the belief in a rational, orderly and comprehensible universe—then proceeded, in stages, to form a rational and orderly organization of knowledge and the state, such as what is found in the idea of Deism. This began from the assertion that law governed both heavenly and human affairs, and that law invested the king with his power, rather than the king's power giving force to law. The conception of law as a relationship between individuals, rather than families, came to the fore, and with it the increasing focus on individual liberty as a fundamental right of man, given by "Nature and Nature's God," which, in the ideal state, would encompass as many people as possible. Thus The Enlightenment extolled the ideals of liberty, property and rationality which are still recognizable as the basis for most political philosophies even in the present era; that is, of a free individual being mostly free within the dominion of the state whose role is to provide stability to those natural laws. The "long" Enlightenment is seen as beginning the Renaissance drive for humanism and empiricism. It was built on the growing natural philosophy that espoused the application of algebra to the study of nature, and the discoveries brought about by the invention of the microscope and the telescope. There was also an increasingly complex philosophy of the role of the state and its relationship to the individual. The turbulence of religious wars had brought about a desire for balance, order, and unity. Two good examples which help illustrate why many historians split the Age of Reason from the Enlightenment are the works of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. Hobbes, whose ideas are a product of the age of reason, systematically pursues and categorizes human emotion, and argues for the need of a rigid system to hold back the chaos of nature in his work Leviathan. While John Locke is clearly an intellectual descendant of Hobbes, for him the state of nature is the source of all rights and unity, and the state's role is to protect, and not to hold back, the state of nature. This fundamental shift, from a rather chaotic and dark view of nature, to a fundamentally orderly view, is an important aspect of the Enlightenment. A second wave of Enlightenment thinking began in France with the Encyclopédists. The premise of their enterprise was that there is a moral architecture to knowledge. Mixing personal comment with the attempt to codify knowledge, Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert sought liberation for the mind in the ability to grasp knowledge. The Enlightenment was suffused with two competing strains. One was characterised by an intense spirituality, and faith in religion and the church. In opposition to this, there was a growing streak of anti-clericalism which mocked the perceived distance between the supposed ideals of the church, and the practice of priests. For Voltaire « Écrasez l'infâme! » ("Crush Infamy!") would be a battle cry for the ideal of a triumphant, rational society. By the mid-century, what was regarded by many as the pinnacle of purely Enlightenment thinking was being reached with Voltaire—whose combination of wit, insight, and anger made him the most hailed man of letters since Erasmus. Born Francois Marie Arouet in 1694, he was exiled to England between 1726 and 1729, and there he studied Locke, Newton, and the English Monarchy. Voltaire's ethos was that "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities"—that if people believed in what is unreasonable, they will do what is unreasonable. This point is, perhaps, the central point of contention over the Enlightenment: whether the construction of reason and credibility creates, inherently, as many problems as it deals with. From the perspective of many crucial figures of the Enlightenment, credible reports, viewed through the lens of reason annealed knowledge, empirical observation, and knowledge should be compiled into a source which stood as the authoritative one. The opposing view, which was held with increasing force by the Romantic movement and its adherents, is that this process is inherently corrupted by social convention, and bars truth which is unique, individual and immanent from being expressed. The Enlightenment balanced then, on the call for "natural" freedom which was good, without a "license" which would, in their view, degenerate. Thus the Age of Enlightenment sought reform of the Monarchy by laws which were in the best interest of its subjects, and the "enlightened" ordering of society. The idea of enlightened ordering was reflected in the sciences by, for example, Carolus Linnaeus' categorization of biology. In mid-century Germany, the idea of philosophy as a critical discipline began with the work of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Johann Gottfried Herder. Both argued that formal unities that underlie language and structure hold deeper meaning than a surface reading, and that philosophy could be a tool for improving the virtue, political and personal, of the individual. This strain of thinking would influence Kant's critiques, as well as subsequent philosophers seeking an apparatus to examine works, beliefs and social organization, and it is particularly notable in the history of later German philosophy. These ideas became volatile when it reached the point where the idea that natural freedom was more self-ordering than hierarchy, since hierarchy was the social reality. As that social reality repeatedly disappointed the fundamentally optimistic ideal that reform could end disasters, there became a progressively more strident naturalism which would, eventually, lead to the Romantic movement. Thinkers of the last wave of the Enlightenment—Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant as well as Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson and the young Johann Wolfgang von Goethe adopted the increasingly used biological metaphor of self-organization and evolutionary forces. This represented the impending end of the Enlightenment: which believed that nature, while basically good, was not basically self-ordering—see Voltaire's Candide for an example of why not. Instead, it had to be ordered with reasoning and maturity. The impending Romantic view saw the universe as self-ordering, and that chaos was, in a real sense, the result of excesses of rational impositions on an organic world. Candide of 1788–1792 adopts the May 3rd Constitution at Warsaw's Royal Castle.]] This boundary would produce political results: with increasing force in the 1750s there would be attempts in England, Austria, Prussia, Poland and France to "rationalize" the Monarchical system and its laws. When this failed to end wars, there was an increasing drive for revolution or dramatic alteration. The Enlightenment idea of rationality as a guiding force for government found its way to the heart of the American Declaration of Independence, and the Jacobin program of the French Revolution, as well as the American Constitution of 1787 and the Polish Constitution of May 3, 1791. The French Revolution, in particular, represented the Enlightenment philosophy through a violent and messianic lens, particularly during the brief period of Jacobin dictatorship. The desire for rationality in government led to the attempt to end the Catholic Church, and indeed Christianity in France, in addition to changing the calendar, clock, measuring system, monetary system and legal system into something orderly and rational. It also took the ideals of social and economic equality further than any other major state to that time. But with Napoleon the Enlightenment and its style breathed its last, and longest breath. Napoleon reorganized France into departments, and funded a host of projects. One example of the Enlightenment at work in Revolutionary and Imperial France was the metric system. In a uniform system of weights and measures, based on axiomatic units—the radius of the earth, the weight and thermodynamic properties of water—prices would float based on measurable quantities, rather than price being fixed. It was thought that this would liberate industry from the tyranny of old production laws, and hence from Medieval structure.

Key conflicts within Enlightenment-period philosophy

As with most periods, the individuals present within the Enlightenment were more aware of their differences than their similarities; within the period there were schools of thought, which saw themselves as widely, divergent, even as later perspective has come to consider them similar. One key conflict is on the role of theology - during the previous period, there had been the splintering of the Catholic Church, not, as with previous schisms, largely along political control of the papacy, but along doctrinal lines between Catholic and Protestant theologies. Consequently, theology itself became a source of partisan debate, with different schools attempting to create rationales for their viewpoints, which then, in turn, became generally used. Thus philosophers such as Spinoza searched for a metaphysics of ethics. This trend would influence pietism and eventually transcendental searches such as those by Immanuel Kant. Religion was linked to another feature which produced a great deal of Enlightenment thought, namely the rise of the Nation State. In medieval and Renaissance periods, the state was restricted by the need to work through a host of intermediaries. This system existed because of poor communication, where localism thrived in return for loyalty to some central organization. With the improvements in transportation, organization, navigation and finally the influx of gold and silver from trade and conquest, the state began to assume more and more authority and power. The response against this was a series of theories on the purpose of, and limits of state power. The Enlightenment saw both the cementing of absolutism and counter-reaction of limitation advocated by a string of philosophers from John Locke forward, who influenced both Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Within the period of the Enlightenment, these issues began to be explored in the question of what constituted the proper relationship of the citizen to the monarch or the state. The idea that society is a contract between individual and some larger entity, whether society or state, continued to grow throughout this period. A series of philosophers, including Rousseau, Montesquieu, Hume and ultimately Jefferson advocated this idea. Furthermore, thinkers of this age advocated the idea that nationality had a basis beyond mere preference. Philosophers such as Johann Gottfried von Herder reasserted the idea from Greek antiquity that language had a decisive influence on cognition and thought, and that the meaning of a particular book or text was open to deeper exploration based on deeper connections, an idea now called hermeneutics. The original focus of his scholarship was to delve into the meaning in the Bible and in order to gain a deeper understanding of it. These two concepts - of the contractual nature between the state and the citizen, and the reality of the "nation" beyond that contract, had a decisive influence in the development of liberalism, democracy and constitutional government which followed. At the same time, the integration of algebraic thinking, acquired from the Islamic world over the previous two centuries, and geometric thinking which had dominated Western mathematics and philosophy since at least Eudoxus, precipitated a scientific and mathematical revolution. Sir Isaac Newton's greatest claim to prominence came from a systematic application of algebra to geometry, and synthesizing a workable calculus which was applicable to scientific problems. The Enlightenment was a time when the solar system was truly "discovered": with the accurate calculation of orbits, such as Halley's comet, the discovery of the first planet since antiquity, Uranus by William Herschel, and the calculation of the mass of the Sun using Newton's theory of universal gravitation. The effect that this series of discoveries had on both pragmatic commerce and philosophy was momentous. The excitement of creating a new and orderly vision of the world, as well as the need for a philosophy of science which could encompass the new discoveries would show its fundamental influence in both religious and secular ideas. If Newton could order the cosmos with "natural philosophy," so, many argued, could political philosophy order the body politic. Within the Enlightenment there were two main theories contending to be the basis of that ordering: "divine right" and "natural law." It might seem that divine right would yield absolutist ideas, and that natural law would lead to theories of liberty. The writing of Jacques-Benigne Bossuet (1627-1704) set the paradigm for the divine right: that the universe was ordered by a reasonable God, and therefore his representative on earth had the powers of that God. The orderliness of the cosmos was seen as proof of God; therefore it was a proof of the power of monarchy. Natural law, began, not as a reaction against divinity, but instead, as an abstraction: God did not rule arbitrarily, but through natural laws that he enacted on earth. Thomas Hobbes, though an absolutist in government, drew this argument in Leviathan. Once the concept of natural law was invoked, however, it took on a life of its own. If natural law could be used to bolster the position of the monarchy, it could also be used to assert the rights of subjects of that monarch, that if there were natural laws, then there were natural rights associated with them, just as there are rights under man-made laws. What both theories had in common, however, was the need for an orderly and comprehensible function of government. The "Enlightened Despotism" of, for example, Catherine the Great of Russia is not based on mystical appeals to authority, but on the pragmatic invocation of state power as necessary to hold back chaotic and anarchic warfare and rebellion. Regularization and standardization were seen as good things because they allowed the state to reach its power outwards over the entirety of its domain and because they liberated people from being entangled in endless local custom. Additionally, they expanded the sphere of economic and social activity. Thus rationalization, standardization and the search for fundamental unities occupied much of the Enlightenment and its arguments over proper methodology and nature of understanding. The culminating efforts of the Enlightenment: for example the economics of Adam Smith, the physical chemistry of Antoine Lavoisier, the idea of evolution pursued by Goethe, the declaration by Jefferson of "inalienable" rights, in the end overshadowed the idea of "divine right" and direct alteration of the world by the hand of God. It was also the basis for overthrowing the idea of a completely rational and comprehensible universe, and led, in turn, to the metaphysics of Hegel and the search for the emotional truth of Romanticism.

Role of the Enlightenment in later philosophy

The Enlightenment occupies a central role in the justification for the movement known as modernism. The neo-classicizing trend in modernism came to see itself as being a period of rationality which was overturning foolishly established traditions, and therefore analogized itself to the Encyclopediasts and other philosophes. A variety of 20th century movements, including liberalism and neo-classicism traced their intellectual heritage back to the "reasonable" past, and away from the "emotionalism" of the 19th century. Geometric order, rigor and reductionism were seen as virtues of the Enlightenment. The modern movement points to reductionism and rationality as crucial aspects of Enlightenment thinking which it is the inheritor of, as opposed to irrationality and emotionalism. In this view, the Enlightenment represents the basis for modern ideas of liberalism against superstition and intolerance. Influential philosophers who have held this view are Jürgen Habermas and Isaiah Berlin. This view asserts that the Enlightenment was the point where Europe broke through what historian Peter Gay calls "the sacred circle," where previous dogma circumscribed thinking. The Enlightenment is held, in this view, to be the source of critical ideas, such as the centrality of freedom, democracy and reason as being the primary values of a society. This view argues that the establishment of a contractual basis of rights would lead to the market mechanism and capitalism, the scientific method, religious and racial tolerance, and the organization of states into self-governing republics through democratic means. In this view, the tendency of the philosophes in particular to apply rationality to every problem is considered to be the essential change. From this point on, thinkers and writers were held to be free to pursue the truth in whatever form, without the threat of sanction for violating established ideas. With the end of the Second World War and the rise of post-modernity, these same features came to be regarded as liabilities - excessive specialization, failure to heed traditional wisdom or provide for unintended consequences, and the "romanticization" of Enlightenment figures - such as the Founding Fathers of the United States, prompted a backlash against both "Science" and Enlightenment based dogma in general. Philosophers such as Michel Foucault are often understood as arguing that the "age of reason" had to construct a vision of "unreason" as being demonic and subhuman, and therefore evil and befouling, whence by analogy to argue that rationalism in the modern period is, likewise, a construction. Alternatively, the Enlightenment was used as a powerful symbol to argue for the supremacy of rationalism and rationalization, and therefore any attack on it is connected to despotism and madness, for example in the writings of Gertrude Himmelfarb and Robert Nozick. This is not to be confused with the role of specific philosophers or individuals from the Enlightenment, but the use of the term in a broad sense by writers in the present of varying points of view.

Precursors of the Enlightenment

- Polish brethren
- Louis XIV
- Henry VIII
- René Descartes
- Blaise Pascal
- Thomas Hobbes
- Francis Bacon
- Nicolaus Copernicus
- Galileo Galilei
- Algebra
- Analytic Geometry

Important figures of the Enlightenment era

- French Encyclopédistes | Voltaire | Jean-Jacques Rousseau | Condorcet | Helvétius | Fontenelle | Olympe de Gouges | Ignacy Krasicki | Francois Quesney | Benedict Spinoza | Cesare Beccaria | Adam Smith | Isaac Newton | John Wilkes | Antoine Lavoisier | G.L. Buffon | Mikhail Lomonosov | Mikhailo Shcherbatov | Ekaterina Dashkova
- Jean le Rond d'Alembert (1717-1783) French. Mathematician and physicist, one of the editors of Encyclopédie
- Thomas Abbt (1738-1766) German. Promoted what would later be called Nationalism in Om Tode für's Vaterland (On dying for one's nation).
- Pierre Bayle (1647-1706) French. Literary critic known for Nouvelles de la république des lettres and Dictionnaire historique et critique.
- James Boswell (1740-1795) Scottish. Biographer of Samuel Johnson, helped established the norms for writing Biography in general.
- Edmund Burke (1729-1797) Irish. Parliamentarian and political philosopher, best known for pragmatism, considered important to both liberal and conservative thinking.
- Denis Diderot (1713-1784) French. Founder of the Encyclopédie, speculated on free will and attachment to material objects, contributed to the theory of literature.
- Ignacy Krasicki (1735-1801)Polish. Outstanding poet of the Polish Enlightenment, hailed by contemporaries as "the Prince of Poets." After the election of Stanisław August Poniatowski as king of Poland in 1764, Krasicki became the new King's confidant and chaplain. He participated in the King's famous "Thursday dinners" and co-founded the Monitor, the preeminent periodical of the Polish Enlightenment, sponsored by the King. Consecrated Bishop of Warmia in 1766, Krasicki thereby also became an ex-officio Senator of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American. Statesman, scientist, political philosopher, author. As a philosopher known for his writings on nationality, economic matters, aphorisms published in Poor Richard's Alamanac and polemics in favor of American Independence. Involved with writing the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of 1787.
- Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) English. Historian best known for his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
- Johann Gottfried von Herder German. Theologian and Linguist. Proposed that language determines thought, introduced concepts of ethnic study and nationalism, influential on later Romantic thinkers. Early supporter of democracy and republican self rule.
- David Hume Scottish. Historian, philosopher and economist. Best known for his empiricism and scepticism, advanced doctrines of naturalism and material causes. Influenced Kant and Adam Smith.
- Immanuel Kant German. Philosopher and physicist. Established critical philosophy on a systematic basis, proposed a material theory for the origin of the solar system, wrote on ethics and morals. Influenced by Hume and Isaac Newton. Important figure in German Idealism, and important to the work of Fichte and Hegel.
- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American Statesman, political philosopher, educator. As a philosopher best known for the Declaration of Independence and his interpretation of the Constitution which he pursued as president. Argued for natural rights as the basis of all states, argued that violation of these rights negates the contract which bind a people to their rulers and that therefore there is an inherent "Right to Revolution."
- Hugo Kołłątaj (1750-1812) Polish. He was active in the Commission for National Education and the Society for Elementary Textbooks, and reformed the Kraków Academy, of which he was rector in 1783-1786. An organizer of the townspeople's movement, in 1789 he edited a memorial from the cities. He co-authored the Polish Constitution of May 3, 1791, and founded the Assembly of Friends of the Government Constitution to assist in the document's implementation. In 1791-1792 he served as Crown Vice Chancellor. In 1794 he took part in the Kościuszko Uprising, co-authoring its Uprising Act (March 24, 1794) and Połaniec Manifesto (May 7, 1794), heading the Supreme National Council's Treasury Department, and backing the Uprising's left, Jacobin wing.
- Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781) German Dramatist, critic, political philosopher. Created theatre in the German language, began reappraisal of Shakespeare to being a central figure, and the importance of classical dramatic norms as being crucial to good dramatic writing, theorized that the center of political and cultural life is the middle class.
- John Locke (1632-1704) English Philosopher. Important empricist who expanded and extended the work of Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes. Seminal thinker in the realm of the relationship between the state and the individual, the contractual basis of the state and the rule of law. Argued for personal liberty with respect to property
- Leandro Fernández de Moratín (1760-1828) Spanish. Dramatist and translator, support of republicanism and free thinking. Transitional figure to Romanticism.
- Nikolay Novikov (1744-1818) Russian. Philanthropist and journalist who sought to rise the culture of Russian readers and publicly argued with the Empress.
- Thomas Paine (1737-1809) American. Pamphleteer and polemicist, most famous for Common Sense attacking England's domination of the colonies in America.

External links

- [http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-local/DHI/dhi.cgi?id=dv2-10 Dictionary of the History of Ideas:] The Enlightenment
- [http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-local/DHI/dhi.cgi?id=dv2-11 Dictionary of the History of Ideas:] The Counter-Enlightenment

References

- Jonathan Hill, Faith in the Age of Reason, Lion/Intervarsity Press 2004
- Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, Princeton University Press 1992
- Mark Hulluing Autocritique of Enlightenment: Rousseau and the Philosophes 1994
- Gay, Peter. The Enlightenment: An Interpretation. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996
- Redkop, Benjamin, The Enlightenment and Community, 1999
- Melamed, Yitzhak Y, Salomon Maimon and the Rise of Spinozism in German Idealism, Journal of the History of Philosophy, Volume 42, Issue 1
- Porter, Roy The Enlightenment 1999
- Jacob, Margaret Enlightenment: A Brief History with Documents 2000
- Thomas Munck Enlightenment: A Comparative Social History, 1721-1794
- Arthur Herman How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of how Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World and Everything in It 2001
- Stuart Brown ed., British Philosophy in the Age of Enlightenment 2002
- Alan Charles Kors, ed. Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment. 4 volumes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003
- Buchan, James Crowded with Genius: The Scottish Enlightenment: Edinburgh's Moment of the Mind 2003
- Louis Dupre The Enlightenment & the Intellctural Foundations of Modern Culture 2004
- Himmelfarb, Gertrude The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments, 2004
- Stephen Eric Bronner Interpreting the Enlightenment: Metaphysics, Critique, and Politics, 2004
- Stephen Eric Bronner The Great Divide: The Enlightenment and its Critics
- Henry F. May The Enlightenment in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976)

External references

- [http://www.energybulletin.net/docs/RealisingTheEnlightenment.pdf D.Cevolatti and S.Maud (2004) Realising the Enlightenment: H.T. Odum’s Energy Systems Language qua G.W.v Leibniz’s Characteristica Universalis, Ecological Modelling, 178, pp. 279–292.] Category:Historical eras Category:Western culture Age of Enlightenment, The Category:The Enlightenment Enlightenment, The ko:계몽주의 ja:啓蒙時代 th:ยุคแสงสว่าง

Manuel I Komnenos

Manuel I Comnenus Megas (November 28, 1118? – September 24, 1180) was Byzantine Emperor from 1143 to 1180. He was the fourth son of John II Comnenus and Piroska, daughter of King Ladislaus I of Hungary.

Raymond of Antioch and the Second Crusade

At the beginning of Manuel's reign, in 1144, he marched for Antioch at the head of a huge army. He was furious, and rightly so: Raymond of Antioch had invaded the Byzantine province of Cyprus, and having ransacked the island and plundered all its wealth, his army had mutilated the survivors before forcing them to buy back their flocks at exorbitant prices with what little they had left. However, when he heard of the Emperor's approach, Raymond was terrified. Realising that he had no hope of defeating Manuel's formidable army, he decided on abject submission. He appeared before the Emperor, dressed in a sack and with a rope tied around his neck, and begged for forgiveness. The Latin historian, William of Tyre, commented that this ignominious scene continued for so long that all present were disgusted by it. Eventually, Manuel forgave Raymond on condition that he became a vassal of the Empire, effectively surrendering the independence of Antioch to Byzantium. This episode demonstrates that from the beginning, Manuel was not only interested in achieving the aim of his father and grandfather in restoring Antioch to the Empire, but was also interested in a broader sense in using the Latins and the West to bolster the Empire's position in the eastern Mediterannean as a whole. This interest was to involve him in Crusading adventures in Egypt later on, a region where the Byzantine Empire had not been active for many centuries. In the following year Manuel drove the Seljuk Turks out of Isauria. In 1147 he granted a passage through his dominions to two armies of the Second Crusade under Conrad III of Germany and Louis VII of France; but the numerous outbreaks of overt or secret hostility between the Franks and the Greeks on their line of march, for which both sides were to blame, nearly precipitated a conflict between Manuel and his guests. By 1148 Manuel secured his alliance with Conrad, whose sister-in-law he had earlier married. But Conrad died in 1152, and, despite repeated attempts, Manuel could not reach an agreement with his successor, Frederick I Barbarossa.

The Italian campaign and Pope Alexander III

In the same year the emperor made war upon Roger II of Sicily, whose fleet had captured Corfu and plundered the Greek towns, but in 1148 Roger was defeated with the help of the Venetians. In 1149 Manuel recovered Corfu and prepared to take the offensive against the Normans. With an army mainly composed of mercenary Italians he invaded Sicily and Apulia, and with the help of disaffected local barons including Count Robert of Loritello, achieved astonishingly rapid progress as the whole of southern italy rose up in rebellion against the Sicilian Crown. Apulia Several cities, including Bari which had been the capital of the Byzantine Catapanate of Southern Italy for centuries before being lost to the Normans in 1071, opened their gates to the Emperor's army. Although the progress of both these expeditions was arrested by defeats on land and sea, Manuel maintained a foothold in Southern Italy, which was secured to him by a peace in 1155, and continued to interfere in Italian politics. Encouraged by the success he dreamed of restoration of the Roman Empire at cost of union between Orthodox and Catholic Church, a prospect which would frequently be offered to the Pope during negotiations and plans for alliance. The union, however, would have to be accompanied by the general acceptance of the Byzantine emperor's ultimate secular authority over all Christians. To the Pope in Rome, it was he and he alone who had the ultimate authority over Christians everywhere. Thus the two cultures that had grown up around the Pope and the Emperor would have been very difficult to reconcile, perhaps ultimately impossible. In order for the agreement to have been reached on the Pope's conditions, Manuel would have had to accept the supremecy of the Pope in some form. Even to such a pro-western Emperor as Manuel, this would have been unacceptable, particularly in view of the Greek Orthodox population and their hostility to the west. It seems likely that they would have refused outright to acknowledge such a deal. Indeed this is precisely what happened about two hundred years later when, briefly, the Orthodox and Catholic churches were united under the Pope. However a defeat in 1156 at Brindisi put an end to the restored Byzantine reign in Italy, and by 1158 the Byzantine army had left Italy. After Manuel's death, the Normans of Sicily would invade Byzantium again in 1185, sacking Thessalonica, the second city of the Empire, and causing devastation in the western Balkans. The Norman kingdom of Sicily was one of the constant thorns in the side of the later Byzantine Empire, repeatedly launching invasions and encouraging other powers to attack the Empire. Had Manuel succeeded in restoring these long lost provinces (Sicily itself had succumbed to an Arab invasion in 902), one of the greatest threats to the Empire would have been removed. Manuel understood this, and he also knew that the situation in the central Mediterannean would change as a result. His influence over the Pope was one factor in the decision to invade Italy. In the early history of the Byzantine Empire, the Pope was actually arrested and brought to Constantinople by Imperial troops on more than one occasion. Although by Manuel's day things had changed to such an extent that this would have been almost impossible (the reaction of the other Western powers can scarcely be imagined), since the Pope dominated western Christendom, by gaining influence over the Pope Manuel would have changed the entire scope of the Empire's relations with the Western powers. Thus Manuel's intervention in Italy can be seen within the context of his broader strategy of attempting to influence the West. If there was ever a chance of reuniting the eastern and western churches, and reconciling the Pope permanently, this was probably the most favourable moment. The Pope was never on good terms with the Normans, except when under duress by the threat of direct military action. Having the 'Civilised' Eastern Roman Empire on its southern border was infinitely preferable to the Papacy than having to constantly deal with the troublesome Normans of Sicily. It was in Pope Alexander III's interests to reach a deal if at all possible, since doing so would greatly increase his own influence over the entire Orthodox Christian population. However, ultimately such a deal proved elusive, and the two churches have remained divided ever since. Such is the strength of feeling that these issues can arouse, that even when Pope John Paul II made a historic visit to Greece on 4 May 2001, he apologised to the Greek Orthodox community and the Patriarch of Constantinople for the sins of the Crusader attack on Constantinople in 1204, nearly 800 years earlier. In his endeavour to weaken the control of Venice over the trade of his empire Manuel made treaties with Pisa and Genoa; to check the aspirations of Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor he supported the free Italian cities with his gold and negotiated with Pope Alexander III. In spite of his friendliness towards the Roman church Manuel was ultimately refused the title of "Augustus" by Alexander. Manuel nowhere succeeded in attaching the Italians permanently to his interests. Nonetheless in a brief war with the Venetians Manuel not only held his ground in Italy but drove his enemies out of the Aegean Sea. The final results of the Italian campaign were limited in terms of the advantages gained by the Empire. The City of Ancona became a Byzantine base in Italy, accepting the Emperor as sovereign. The Normans of Sicily had been damaged, and now came to terms with the Empire, ensuring peace for the rest of Manuel's reign. The Empire's ability to get involved in Italian affairs had been demonstrated. However, given the enormous quantities of gold which had been lavished on the project, it also demonstrated the limits of what money and diplomacy alone could achieve, a lesson which Manuel would have done well to heed. The expense of Manuel's involvement in Italy must have cost the Treasury a great deal, and yet it produced only limited solid gains.

The Danube frontier: Hungary is defeated, Greece flourishes

On his northern frontier Manuel expended considerable effort to preserve the conquests made by Basil II over one hundred years earlier and maintained, sometimes tenuously, ever since. He forced the rebellious Serbs to vassalage (1150-1152) and made repeated attacks upon the Hungarians with a view to annexing their territory along the Sava. In the wars of 1151-1153 and 1163-1168 Manuel led his troops into Hungary and a spectacular raid deep into enemy territory yielded substantial war booty. In 1168, a decisive victory near Zemun enabled him to conclude a peace by which Dalmatia and other frontier territories were ceded to him. Efforts were made for diplomatic annex. The Hungarian heir Béla was sent to Constantinople to be educated in the court of Manuel, who intended the youth to marry his daughter, Maria, and to make him his heir, thus securing the union of Hungary with the Empire. In the court Bela assumed the name Alexius and received the title of Despot which had previously been applied only to the Emperor himself. However, when a son was born to the emperor this engagement was broken. Nevertheless, overall Manuel achieved considerable success in the Balkans, reducing Hungary to client status and even appointing its King late in his reign. He extended the frontiers of the Empire in this region, ensuring security for the whole of Greece and Bulgaria. This allowed the Western provinces to flourish in an economic revival which had begun in the time of his grandfather Alexius I, and which continued till the close of the century. Indeed it has been argued that Byzantium in the twelfth century was richer and more prosperous than at any time since the Persian invasion during the reign of Heraclius, some five hundred years earlier. There is good evidence from this period of new construction, and new churches even in remote areas strongly suggest that wealth was widespread. Although it is true that by the late ninth century the cities of the empire had begun to recover from the cataclysmic wars and dislocations of the Arab and Slavic invasions of Late Antiquity, progress had been interrupted by Manzikert and the civil wars that preceded the accession of Alexius I. It is only the success of the Comneni that prevented the complete collapse of the empire, and it was this success that allowed urban development to resume. The population of Constantinople was approaching half a million during Manuel's reign, making it by far the largest city in Europe. And it was a city undergoing expansion. The cosmopolitan character of the capital was being reinforced by the arrival of Italian merchants and Crusaders en route to the Holy Land. The Venetians and others opened up the ports of the Aegean to commerce, shipping goods from the Crusader kingdoms of Outremer and Fatimid Egypt to the west and trading with Byzantium via Constantinople. These martime traders stimulated demand in the towns and cities of Greece, Macedonia and the Greek Islands, generating new sources of wealth in a predominantly agrarian economy. Thessaloniki, the second city of the Empire, hosted a famous summer fair which attracted traders from across the Balkans and even further afield to its bustling market stalls. In Corinth, silk production fuelled a thriving economy, and there is far more evidence of urban life across the region in this period than in the 'Dark ages' of the seventh/eighth centuries. All this is a testament to the success of the Comneni Emperors in securing a 'Pax Byzantina' in these heartland territories.

Manuel's invasion of Egypt

In 1169 he sent a joint expedition with King Amalric I of Jerusalem to Egypt. The expedition was a dramatic demonstration of the power of the Empire, involving a large fleet and army which represented a substantial investment of resources by the Byzantines. EgyptOne Crusader historian was impressed in particular by the large transport ships which were used to transport the cavalry forces of the army. Although such a long range attack on a state far from the centre of the Empire may seem extraordinary (the last time the Empire had attempted anything on this scale was the failed invasion of Sicily over one hundred and twenty years earlier), it can be explained in terms of Manuel's foreign policy, which, as outlined above, was to use the Latins to ensure the survival of the Empire. This focus on the bigger picture of the eastern Mediterannean and even further afield thus led Manuel to intervene in Egypt, as it was believed that in the context of the wider struggle between the Crusader states and the Islamic powers of the east, control of Egypt would be the deciding factor: consequently, whoever controlled Egypt would have the edge over the opposing side. A successful invasion of Egypt would have several advantages for the Byzantine Empire. Firstly, it would prevent the Islamic powers of the region forming a cohesive alliance capable of expelling the Crusaders from the Holy Land. Secondly, Egypt was a rich province, and in the days of the Roman Empire had supplied much of the grain for Constantinople before it was lost to the Arabs in the 7th century. The revenues that the Empire could have expected to gain from the conquest of Egypt would have been considerable, even if these would have to be shared with the Crusaders. Furthermore, it would bind the Crusaders more closely to the Empire, a goal which Manuel would pursue with determination throughout his reign and which would be evident when King Amalric subsequently placed his whole kingdom under the protection of Manuel, effectively extending the agreement on Antioch by making the entire Kingdom of Jerusalem at least nominally part of the Empire. However, this was a personal arrangement, in the feudal tradition of Western Europe, and as such only applied for as long as Manuel and Amalric were the rulers of their respective states. The invasion of Egypt could even have expected some support from the native Coptic Christians, who had lived under Islamic rule for over five hundred years. However, due to the failure of the Crusaders and the Byzantines to co-operate fully, the chance to capture Egypt was thrown away. The Byzantine fleet sailed only with provisions for three months: by the time the crusaders were ready, supplies were already running out, and eventually the fleet retired after an ineffectual attempt to capture Damietta. Each side sought to blame the other for failure, but both also knew that they depended on each other: the alliance was maintained, and further plans were made, which ultimately were to come to naught. Overall, accounts of the reign of Manuel Comnenus have tended to pay only limited attention to the expedition against Egypt, due to the failure of the project and the importance of other issues such as the rise of the Republic of Venice and the Seljuk Turks. Seljuk Turks However, the consequences of failure were serious. Manuel invested a lot of time, money and manpower in the attack on Egypt, resources which might have been better used against the Turks in Anatolia. Seljuk Sultan Kilij Arslan II used this time to eliminate his rivals and build up his power in Asia Minor. Not long afterwards, the rise of a young Kurdish general, Saladin, was only made possible by his control of Egypt, and he was soon to reconquer Jerusalem from the Crusaders, thus dealing the death blow to the Latin kingdoms of the Holy Land and changing the balance of power in the eastern Mediterannean forever. In 1158-1159 Manuel fought with success against Raymond of Antioch and the Seljuk Turks, but in later wars against the latter he made no headway. On September 17, 1176 Manuel was decisively defeated by Kilij Arslan II in the pass of Myriokephalon, where he allowed himself to be surprised in line of march. This disaster, though partly retrieved in the campaign of the following year, had a serious effect upon his vitality; henceforth Manuel declined in health and in 1180 succumbed to a slow fever.

Character

Manuel was a brave general and an even more skillful diplomat and statesman. Famous for his charisma and his love of the West, he became a personal friend of the Western Emperor Conrad III, and even treated his injuries after the failure of the Second Crusade. Indoctrinated with the idea of a universal Empire, and with a passion for theological debate, he was also perhaps the only chivalrous Emperor-Knight of Byzantium. He is a representative of a new kind of Byzantine ruler who was influenced by the contact with the western crusaders. The customs kept in his court were not inspired by the traditional Byzantine opulence. He loved western customs and arranged jousting matches, even participating in them, an unusual and discomforting sight for the Byzantines. Less intensely pious than his father, John I Comnenus, he would prove to be an energetic and bright Emperor who saw possibilities everywhere, and whose optimistic outlook shaped his approach to foreign policy. Some commentators have criticised some of his aims as unrealistic, in particular citing his involvement in Egypt as proof of dreams of grandeur on an unattainable scale. However, to Manuel, such initiatives were merely ambitious attempts to take advantage of the circumstances that presented themselves to him. Having distinguished himself in his father's war against the Seljuk Turks, he was nominated emperor in preference to his elder surviving brother. Endowed with a fine physique and great personal courage, he devoted himself whole-heartedly to a military career. He endeavoured to restore by force of arms the predominance of the Byzantine Empire in the Mediterranean countries, and so was to be involved in conflict with his neighbours on all sides.

Assessment

In spite of his military prowess Manuel achieved but in a slight degree his object of restoring the Byzantine Empire. In fact he succeeded in unifying many of his neighbours in common hatred as enemies, rather than playing one foe against the other. His victories were counterbalanced by defeats, some of them costly not just in terms of lost opportunities, but also in terms of the expense to the Imperial Treasury. Manuel was criticised for raising taxes: the money thus raised was spent lavishly at the cost of his citizens. The expenses incurred by his expansive foreign policy and generous attitude to money combined with the sumptuous magnificence of his court put a severe strain upon the financial resources of the state. taxes The problems this created were counterbalanced to some extent by his successes, particularly in the Balkans, but in view of the subsequent rapid collapse of the Byzantine Empire, it might have been better to deploy the available resources more carefully, either by building up a strong treasury or by concentrating on less risky ventures. His pro-western policy caused much resentment in the Empire and backfired in the reaction led by Andronicus I Comnenus whose arrival was celebrated by a massacre of the Latins in Constantinople. These events among others ultimately led to the capturing of the Empire in the Fourth Crusade. Manuel would be remembered in France, Genoa and the Crusader states as the most powerful sovereign in the world. During his reign he consistently defeated all attempts by outside powers to attack his Empire: however, in the east, his gains were compromised by the defeat at Myriokephalon in 1176. At his death, the Empire was a great power, economically prosperous, secure on its frontiers, but also there were serious problems. Internally, the Byzantine court required a strong leader to hold it together, and after Manuel's death stability was seriously endagered from within. Some of the foreign enemies of the Empire were lurking on the flanks, waiting for a chance to attack, in particular the Turks in Anatolia, whom Manuel had ultimately failed to defeat, and the Normans in Sicily, who had already tried but failed to invade the Empire on several occasions. It would have taken a strong Emperor to rebuild the Imperial Treasury and secure the Empire against the foreign threats it now faced. Unfortunately for Byzantium, such a man was not forthcoming.

Family

Manuel married, firstly in 1146, Bertha of Sulzbach, a sister-in-law of Conrad III of Germany. She died in 1159. Children: # Maria Comnena (1152-1182), wife of Renier of Montferrat. # Anna Comnena (1154-1158). Manuel married secondly in 1161 a daughter of Raymond and Constance of Antioch, Maria (renamed Xena upon their marriage). His successor, Alexius II Comnenus, was their son.

External links

- Manuel coinage: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/byz/manuel_I/t.html Category:Comnenid dynasty Category:Byzantine emperors Category:Crusades Category:1118 births Category:1180 deaths ja:マヌエル1世コムネノス

Béla III of Hungary

Béla III of Hungary (Hungarian: III. Béla, Slovak: Belo III), born in 1148, was the King of Hungary from 1172-1196. He was the son of King Géza II and Euphrosyne, the daughter of Grand Duke Mstislav of Kiev. In 1164, the Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Comnenus concluded a treaty with Béla's brother, Stephen III, by which Béla was given the Croatian and Dalmatian territories and sent to Constantinople to be educated in the court of the emperor. Manuel, who had no sons of his own, intended the youth to succeed him and thus betrothed him to his daughter, Maria Comnena. Béla received a Greek name, Alexius, and the title of despot. When a son was born to the emperor this engagement was broken, but another marriage was arranged between Béla and Agnes de Chatillon, a princess of Antioch. She was also the half-sister of Empress Maria. Béla succeeded his brother King Stephen III and was crowned under the influence of Emperor Manuel. As the new king, Béla adopted Catholicism and selected his son Emeric as his successor. He was a powerful ruler, and his court was counted among the most brilliant in Europe. Béla was a warrior by nature and training, and the death of Emperor Manuel in 1180 left him free to expand Hungarian power in the Balkans. His attempt to recover Dalmatia led Hungary into two wars against the Republic of Venice which ultimately faltered. He also aided the Serbs against the Byzantine Empire. At the time of his death Béla was assisting Emperor Isaac II Angelus in a war against Bulgaria. He was succeeded by both of his sons in turn, Emeric and Andrew. His remains were the only to be identified by archeologists exactly after the excavations at the ruins of the former crowning and burial cathedral of the Árpáds in Székesfehérvár in the late XIXth century, due to his enormous body height documented by contemporary sources. Based on the examination of his skeleton he must have been over two meters tall, a really outstanding height at that time. After this he has been reinterred at the Mathias Church in Budapest, with his second wife Agnes. Through his son Andrew II, he is the ancestor of Edward III of England through Isabella of France. He is therefore an ancestor to the present-day British royal family including Queen Elizabeth II.

Family

Béla III was engaged once and married twice.
- Maria Porphyrogenita Comnena, daughter of Emperor Manuel I Comnenus, with no issue. They were engaged in 1163, separated in 1169.
- Agnes de Chatillon (1154-1184), daughter of Raynald of Chatillon and Constance of Antioch (joint princes of Antioch). They married in 1172 with issue: # King Emeric of Hungary (1174-1204) # Margareta of Hungary (1175-1223), married Emperor Isaac II Angelus and Boniface of Montferrat. # King Andrew II of Hungary (1176-1235) # Salamon, died young # István, died young # Konstancia of Hungary (1180-1198), married King Otakar II of Bohemia
- Marguerite of France, daughter of King Louis VII of France, married in 1186, with no issue.

Sources

- Ostrogorski, Georgjie. History of the Byzantine State, 1986 Categor

Despotism

External links

See also

Government

Definitions

Forms of government

Theories

Greed and oppression

Order and tradition

Natural rights

Social contract

Operations

Enforcement of power

Territory

Scale of government

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Relevant lists

18th century

Events

Significant people

Inventions, discoveries, introductions

Decades and years

The Enlightenment

Short history of Enlightenment philosophy

Key conflicts within Enlightenment-period philosophy

Role of the Enlightenment in later philosophy

Precursors of the Enlightenment

Important figures of the Enlightenment era

See also

External links

References

External references

Manuel I Komnenos

Raymond of Antioch and the Second Crusade

The Italian campaign and Pope Alexander III

The Danube frontier: Hungary is defeated, Greece flourishes

Manuel's invasion of Egypt

Character

Assessment

Family

External links

Béla III of Hungary

Family

Sources