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The View of Absolute Monarchies

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The View of Absolute Monarchies
The View of Absolute Monarchies

The extent to which rulers and their subjects viewed the role of an absolute monarch was different. The time of this political issue on absolute monarchies was around the 1600s. There were people for the absolute monarchies, people with their own monarchies and people against monarchies. Each one had there own idea for what the role of the monarchy was the people against it thought it was oppressive the people for it thought it was because people couldn’t rule on their own and the rulers viewed it as a chance to gain more power.

There were people in this time that did not like the idea of an absolute monarchy because they were being oppressed. An example of this would be The Twelve Articles a declaration of German peasants in 1524 (Doc 3). The article said that the peasants were enslaved basically and that it was wrong. There is no direct tie to an absolute monarchy anywhere in the article given but one may infer that the slavery of peasants in Germany can be tied to an absolute monarchy. Another person against the idea of absolute monarchy is Arthur Young an English agricultural scientist (Doc 5). While traveling France for three years he saw their monarchy was oppressive because of the heavy taxes. The poor must pay while a lot while the rich pay no taxes what so ever. This mans bias will obviously be against because he is from England where they have a constitutional monarchy and this person is significant because he sees the difference between constitutional and absolute monarchy first hand. Adam Olearius a German diplomat traveling to Moscow (Doc 6) says that their absolute monarchy is oppressive and that the common person lives as a slave under a “harsh yolk”. He also goes onto say “…the people have been much oppressed by them… and have not been protected by the higher authorities.” This source is pretty reliable because the man was a diplomat from Germany and even though his POV should have been for this monarchy he

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