This is the assignment page for the topic "War and Changing Political Institutions" for J. B. Owens's sections of the lower-division undergraduate course, History 101, Foundation of Western Civilization. The sole purpose of this page and all of the pages linked to it is to provide an orientation for those students enrolled in History 101.


War and Changing Political Institutions

ID: Trastámara, Valois, Habsburg, Ottoman Empire, Lutheran Reformation, Calvinism, Emperor Charles V (1500-1558), French Wars of Religion (1562-1598), Eighty Years' War [Dutch Revolt] (1565-1648), Mary-Queen of Scots, Puritans, Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), Estates General, Parliament, Philippe du Plessis-Mornay (1549-1623), Vindiciae contra tyrannos (1579), Jean Bodin (1530-1596), Six Books of the Commonwealth (1577), Henry VIII of England (r. 1509-1547), Elizabeth I of England (r. 1558-1603), Richard Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (1590), The Fronde (1648-1653), The English Civil War (1642-1646), Cardinal Richelieu (1585-1642), Louis XIV of France (r. 1643-1715), Versailles, Charles I of England and Scotland (r. 1625-1649), Archbishop William Laud (1573-1645), War of the Solemn League and Covenant/or The Bishops' War (1638-1640), Long Parliament (1640-1660), New Model Army, Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658), Commonwealth, Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), Leviathan (1651), James II of England and Scotland (r. 1685-1688), The Glorious Revolution (1688-1689), John Locke (1632-1704), Second Treatise on Government (1690)

  1. What were the major sources of conflict among European governments throughout the world in the period 1490 to 1650?
  2. What were the major elements of the "western way of war" (quoting Geoffrey Parker) that allowed Europeans to dominate global affairs from the British victory at the Battle of Plassey (1757) until 1914?
  3. Why were the 1640s a period of rebellion and political disorder throughout much of Europe?
  4. Why had France and England developed such different political systems by the late 17th century?
  5. Why did the idea of republican government gain in popularity between 1380 and 1700?
  6. Why did questions of sovereignty replace questions about the proper uses of political authority in the theoretical disputes of the late 16th and 17th century?
  7. Why did Jean Bodin argue that supreme authority or sovereignty must be absolute and undivided in a well-ordered commonwealth?
  8. Why did Thomas Hobbes employ the mechanistic view of the Scientific Revolution to justify the idea of an absolute sovereign as essential in human society?
  9. Why did John Locke deny that absolute monarchy was properly a form of civil government?


Owens, ch 18; Kishlansky, chapters 14 and 16; The Declaration of Right , at the URL [].

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Revised: 29 May 2006