Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 46

[cahn]

Background: The kids' school has a topic for "Unit" every trimester that a lot of their work (reading, writing, some math) revolves around. These topics range from time/geographic periods ('Colonial America') to geography ('Asia') to science ('Space') to social science ('Business and Economics'). (I have some issues with this way of doing things, but that's a whole separate post.) Anyway, for Reasons, they have had to come up with a new topic this year, and E's 7/8 class is doing "World Fairs" as their new topic.

Me: I know E's teacher is all about World Fairs and I know she is great and will do a good job. But I feel like if we had a different teacher who wasn't so into World Fairs, they wouldn't do such a good job and another topic would be better.
Me: Like... the Enlightenment!
D: Heh, you could teach that! But you'd have to restrain yourself from making everything about Frederick the Great.
Me: But that's the thing! Everyone does relate to each other in this time period! Voltaire -- and his partner Émilie du Châtelet, who was heavily involved in the discourse of conservation of energy and momentum -- well, I've told you Voltaire had a thing with Fritz -- and then there's Empress Maria Theresa, who went to war with him a few times -- and Catherine the Great --
D, meditatively: You know --
Me: *am innocently not warned even though this is the same tone of voice that is often followed by, say, a bad pun*
D: -- it's impressive how everyone from this 'the Great' family is so famous!
Me: *splutters*
D, thoughtfully: But of course there's probably selection bias, as the ones who aren't famous don't get mentioned. You never see 'Bob the Great' in the history books...
Me: *splutters more*

Comments

[selenak]

Peter the Great and Fritz actually met! Well, at least I think it's likely, because Wilhelmine describes meeting Peter's wife Catherine (the Livonian serf rising to Czarina) as a child during Peter the Great's last big European tour, and I'm assuming if kid Wilhelmine was presented, kid Fritz also would have been.

Maria Theresa does, but I think the "Great" criteria is that you need to have expanded your territory by war. Which she didn't. Her Empire was expanded during her rule, but via the first Partition of Poland, not by a war of conquest.

[cahn]

but I think the "Great" criteria is that you need to have expanded your territory by war.

Ugh! Not a fan :P

[mildred_of_midgard]

She not only expanded it during the First Partition of Poland, but she got much less valuable territory than she had lost in Silesia. It was almost more of a liability to have those disparate pieces of Poland than not to; and iirc, Kaunitz eventually regretted it (and we know how MT felt).

Joseph, of course, was like: "Look! More territory to reform! I will visit it on my travels and take extensive notes."

There was also the prestige loss of MT having to give up territories in Italy in the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, at the same time as confirming her loss of Silesia. The War of the Austrian Succession was a major victory in many ways for MT, compared to the expectation of "lose everything", but also a significant loss compared to what the Habsburgs had controlled before 1740.