Chapter 18 Definitions

Bill of Rights of 1689

A bill passed by Parliameng and accepted by William and Mary that limited the powers of British monarchs and affirmed those of Parliament

constitutionalism

A form of government in which power is limited by law and balanced between the authority and power of the government, on the one hand, and the rights and liberties of the subject or citizen, on the other; it includes constitutional monarchies and republics

republicanism

A form of government in which there is no monarch and power rests in the hands of the people as exercised through elected representatives

Thirty Years' War

A large-scale conflict extending from 1618 to 1648 that pitted Protestants against Catholics in Central Europe, but also involved dynastic interests, notably of Spain and France

absolution

A political system common to early modern Europe in which monarchs claimed exclusive power to make and enforce laws, without checks by other institutions; this system was limited in practice by the need to maintain legitimacy and compromise with elites

Protestant Reformation

A religious reform movement taht began in the early sixteenth century and split the Western Christian Church

mercantilism

A system of economic regulations aimed at increasing the power of the state derived from the belief that a nation's international power was based on its wealth, specifically its supply of gold and silver

sovereignty

Authority of states that possess a monopoly over the instruments of justice and the use of force within clearly defined boundaries and in which private armies present no threat to central control; seventeenth-century European states made important advances toward sovereignty

Cossacks

Free groups and outlaw armies living on the borders of Russian territory from the fourteenth century onward. By the end of the sixteenth century they had formed an alliance with the Russian state

Puritans

Members of a sixteenth- and seventeenth-century reform movement within the Church of England that advocated purifying it of Roman Catholic elements, such as bishops, elaborate ceremonials, and wedding rings

Jesuits

Members of the Society of Jesus, founded by Ignatius Loyola and approved by the papacy in 1540, whose goal was the spread of the Roman Catholic faith though humanist schools and missionary activity

Navigation Acts

Mid-seventeenth-century English mercantilist laws that greatly restricted other countries' rights to trade with England and its colonies

divine right of kings

The belief propagated by absolutist monarchs that they derived their power from God and were only answerable to him

moral economy

The early modern European view that community needs predominated over competition and profit and that necessary goods should thus be sold at a fair price