The Rise of Russia and Prussia: Crash Course European History #17

hi I'm John Green and this is crash course European history so in our last episode we saw the Hapsburgs with the help of Romanians and some others drive the Ottomans out of large swaths of Eastern Europe which started the Habsburg expansion eastward but there were some other important States making big moves during the 17th century today we're gonna focus on two of them Russia which sought stability after a Time of Troubles and the house of brandenburg-prussia a small state that within two centuries would grow to become extraordinarily powerful [Music] in the huge Russian Empire Tsar Peter the first became an outsized monarch literally he was six feet nine inches tall which is uh like three meters yeah just say with authority green he was three meters tall don't write that on your tests now early in Peters life his future didn't look particularly promising he was born in 1672 and he was not first in line to the Russian throne his half-sister Sophia was ruling Russia at the time as regent for the young Romanov brothers of whom Peter was the youngest Sophia wanted to become the permanent ruler but Peter and his supporters had other ideas at the time many interest groups in Russia helped shape who ended up with political power including the Orthodox Church the army the aristocracy and wealthy traders and as Peter and his brothers came of age these groups negotiated to arrive at a consensus candidate for Tsar and then the Russian people had to seal the deal so to speak via public demonstrations of acclaim and approval which developed the sacred trust between the ruler and the ruled and short political power in this monarchy was not as simple as the Tsar has all of it and Peter only became Tsar with the help of his advisors and the support of powerful interest groups in Russia he became an autocratic ruler but the autocracy was intertwined with widespread if certainly not universal public support from the Russian people what I'm getting at is that the relationship between the government and the governed is always complex and the example of the Russian monarchy is important partly because it helps us to see that even absolutist governments could only retain their power by having support from outside institutions and individuals now Peter tackled every facet of state building he reorganized both the military and the nobility and in doing so also reorganized who had political power and how they could wield it for the nobility he created a precise table of ranks with each promotion to a higher rank depending on the aristocrat performing service to the state this reform aimed to end older political practices based on network nepotism and favoritism and instead make the aristocracy more of a meritocracy Peter also eliminated the power of the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church by leaving the post vacant and setting up a council or Synod of lay people as overseers headed of course by the Tsar Peter was also curious and adventurous he liked to tinker and build focusing on clocks and military machinery and the deployment of his toy soldiers and he was fascinated by Western Europe in fact he set off in 1697 to see what Western rulers were up to the Dutch in particular attracted him you may remember that they were advanced in canal building and fire control and architecture and urban lighting and also had lots of money from trading and having seen all these enterprises in action Peter returned from Western Europe full of determination to modernize and westernize Russia while Peter was still in Western Europe in the spring of 1698 the Streltsy a band of infantry men first initiated by ivan the terrible' / awesome rose up against the bad conditions that they faced they had hopes of reviving the administration of the regent Sophia who at the time was imprisoned Peter ordered them crushed and when he returned to Russia in August of 1698 he had hundreds of the Streltsy tortured exiled or executed the purge of the Streltsy actually helped clear the way for the modern fighting force that Peter envisioned a major innovation was giving Russia a standing army that ultimately included some 200,000 recruits which was a massive number for Europe at the time and serious training of that army as well as modernization of weaponry ultimately paid off when it came to battling Sweden at first during an early battle of the great northern war the ambitious and land-hungry ruler of Sweden Charles the 12th defeated Russian forces at narva in 1700 hold on a second Sweden had 12 Kings named Charles history never ceases to surprise my friends right so Swedish Charles the 12th also defeated Poland in the war but then Peter fortified his army even more informed an important alliance he built a coalition of Denmark and Pole that ultimately conquered Sweden in 1721 and ended its continental influence as a result of this victory Russia obtained Sweden's continental territory including Estonia and Latvia Sweden had gone from being a rescuer in the 30 Years War to being almost entirely stuck in Scandinavia where they would go on to engage in fewer Wars and instead build a state with among the world's lowest poverty rates and highest life expectancy the fools all right back to Russia let's go to the thought-bubble during these years Peter was also building a european-style city with an outlet to the Baltic called you'll never guess it st. Petersburg tens of thousands of serfs were commandeered from aristocrats workforces to build the new city at a great cost in lives the marshy site needed to be entirely reclaimed through the building of canals you'll remember Peters admiration for Amsterdam and he ordered museums and libraries and universities and stately government buildings to adorn the city his aristocratic subjects were ordered to build lavish houses and to hold social events like dances Peter also saw the city as the backdrop for the reform of women's role in society they were to leave seclusion and appear at public events Peter decreed the end too veiling for women and an end to dresses or caftans for boyars that is men in the old aristocracy further reforms aimed to develop his middle and upper-class subjects as modern thinkers especially in math and the sciences to remain in the aristocratic ranks for instance sons had to study math science or engineering also requirements for serving as officers in the military Peter founded schools including military schools to teach these subjects and additional schools to teach women reading and writing and other skills and unlike earlier Russian rulers Peter embraced foreigners not just their canal building and lamp lighting but also their manners and fashion thanks thought-bubble so Peter also ended the practice of men wearing beards did the center of the world just elephant they weren't easy to see back there but it stands favorite joke the old stick on mustache movie magic how do I look Stan you would say that I once tried to do this and when I was shaving my beard and I came downstairs to show my wife she said and I'm gonna quote her directly no so in Peters Russia you had to shave your beard so that you could be like a modern proper European person but just as in Elizabeth the first and Henry the eighth's England you could pay a tax to keep your beard and listen I don't like to get political on this show but if we reinstituted that tax the cities of New York and Portland would pay for health care for everyone so despite his move toward the rational and refined and clean shaven Peter himself could be brough crude heartless and violent that is the complete opposite of the kind of citizen he wanted to populate his kingdom and that is a lesson we keep learning over and over in history paradox is not unusual as for serfs their lives became more difficult as new regulations meant to attract aristocratic loyalty gave them fewer rights serfs were stripped of the right to move from the noble estate where they worked most lived precarious lives and were subjected to landowners brutality they had little recourse to protect themselves from abuse and were forced to work in extremely difficult conditions most serfs did manual or agricultural labour but some became highly skilled artisans to embellish life for the upper classes creating intricate cabinetry or music or paintings some noble families even rented out their artists serfs or symptom touring to bring in funds with their accomplishments these travelling serfs helped connect far-flung Russians to one another through paintings of distant cities or landscapes or notable people for example and peasant song also eventually found its way into Russian classical music as it developed in the 19th century but to be clear Peters modernization did not mean increased protection or power for the most vulnerable which raises a question does modernization generally result in protection or power for the most vulnerable should it then can we even generalize about what it means to be modern when there is so much variety just on this one continent or arguably subcontinent so the time of Tsar Peter had massively different effects depending on where you stood some people were learning more about science or art than they'd ever been able to before others were bound to land or lost their lives in the construction of st. Petersburg history is not just about what happened but also about where you sit are you a boy or son learning new mathematical discoveries or a peasant born to a fate of hard labor you can never escape the other rising Eastern Kingdom during this time was the house of brandenburg-prussia a bird with an arm stan informs me that brandenburg-prussia was actually headed by the Hohenzollern family it grew over the centuries from a tiny holding to an extensive Kingdom albeit one that was initially landlocked okay so I'm gonna need you to brace yourselves because many Frederick's are coming it's gonna be a little confusing but we will get through this together the first one to know about is the great elector Frederick William who was one of the seven electors of the Holy Roman Empire he worked to keep his territories together in the closing days of the 30 Years War and to protect them from attack by Sweden in the 1650s but as Sweden started to weaken Poland gave its dependent Prussia the status of Kingdom and the title of king of that new kingdom went to the affer mentioned great elector Frederick William and then later to his son Frederick the third at that point Frederick the third became known as King Frederick the first of prussia because you know wasn't already confusing enough anyway as a ruler Frederick the first was something of a connoisseur of all the fine things that were coming to characterize increasingly affluent and worldly European monarchs while his son King Frederick William the first I wish I was kidding was quite the opposite the Hohenzollern Kings who like the Romanovs of Russia ruled into the twentieth century created very strong institutions beginning with the great elector Frederick William in the 17th century the military was especially important to Prussia's survival and growth he understood that Brandenburg brush's lack of natural boundaries made it really vulnerable to those wanting to expand their territory which in the 17th century was everyone so state-building in prussia involved fortifying its borders a strong military isn't the only way to stabilize power but it certainly is a additionally the great elector Frederick William weakened at the representative bodies or estates-general through which the nobility had its say in the kingdoms running but to make up for it the monarchs allowed the nobility to intensify their grip on peasant lives very similar to what happened in Russia that by the way is called rien Feud a shin which means additional regulations that tighten serf obligations to their wards it happened often and in many places monarchs would give noble families greater power over ordinary people's labor in exchange for the nobles giving greater service to the kingdoms military and administration the strategy of power consolidation by the way still happens the most powerful placate the less powerful by giving them control over the least powerful the Great electors grandson King Frederick William the first made the Prussian army the most modern in Europe he created a branch of government called the general directory that oversaw the operation of the kingdom to the benefit of the army raising taxes and recruiting administrators and soldiers and Frederick William the first sought a certain kind of recruit specifically giant soldiers at least 6 feet in height from all across Europe he sold off his father's more luxurious possessions such as silver and works of art to boost military strength even more Prussia was called a large army with a small state attached kind of like Russia today he's back isn't he it's just he's very subtle but I could I could feel his presence one of the weirdnesses of building a state or an empire is that in order for it to work you must convince both those outside of your borders and those within them that your state is really real and also really powerful States do this partly through treaties partly through state building exercises like national anthems and national histories and partly by building structures within the state armies government apparatuses statewide laws that strengthen the state and make it less vulnerable to attack and the rising monarchies of Russia and Prussia were very effective at state building which would allow them to shape the future of Europe as a whole and also aid in the final demise of poland-lithuania over the 18th century Poland Lithuania failed in part because it's constitutional system failed the nobility wheeled and dealed instead of fortifying government institutions like Russia and Prussia had and because of the way is Prussia and Russia organized political power that wasn't as much of a problem in their kingdoms there were problems of course which would eventually prove catastrophic and we'll get there eventually but first things are about to get a bit brighter around here because next time we get to turn our attention to the Enlightenment thanks for watching I'll see you then crash course is filmed here in the Jaden Smith studio in Indianapolis if you'd like some other crash courses we've got lots of them in everything from chemistry to literature special thanks to all our patrons at patreon.com slash crash course for making all of this possible and to everybody who works on the show [Music]

Channel: CrashCourse

Views: 560,371

Rating: 4.9171858 out of 5

Keywords: John Green, Hank Green, vlogbrothers, Crash Course, crashcourse, education, history, European History, Euro, AP, WHAP, World History, Russia, Brandenburg, Prussia, Moscow, Peter the Great, Hohenzollern, German, Germany, 30 Years War

Id: FBzRaxLdjZE

Length: 14min 55sec (895 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 27 2019