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

Re: 1764-1772 Foreign policy: Poland: 1768-1772

[luzula]

Yeah, that makes sense with the serfs.

Re: the fabricated claims, I guess I had the impression that declaring war just because you wanted to conquer a piece of land was more okay in the 18th century than today? I mean, European countries definitely did it all the time in the colonies, but the rules are probably different when making war within Europe. Sweden grew enormously in the 17th century and then shrank again--I don't suppose they could have motivated that growth with prior claims. How about Russia taking Crimea, was that just pure conquest or did they motivate it with prior claims?

Perhaps this is something that changed with the growth of the public sphere, when it became more important with good PR?

Re: 1764-1772 Foreign policy: Poland: 1768-1772

[selenak]

I guess I had the impression that declaring war just because you wanted to conquer a piece of land was more okay in the 18th century than today? I mean, European countries definitely did it all the time in the colonies, but the rules are probably different when making war within Europe.

They sure were after the Thirty Years War. Part of the Treaty of Westphalia was saying that wars of conquest against another Christian monarch were just not cool and not to be done and both Sweden and France were supposed to guarantee these conditions were listened to in the HRE. Now, obviously the wars for a landgrab still happened (long before Fritz invaded Silesia), but even 800 Pounds I Do What I Want gorilla of European might Louis XIV bothered with the justifications - it's his inheritance via his Spanish wife, or he's only fighting to push his sister-in-law's claim on her inheritance (this made Liselotte furious because she certainly did NOT want him to invade the Palatinate) ; what he doesn't claim he's doing is invading because he wants some more glory and land. Even though obviously that's what he does. And less powerful monarchs than Louis XIV have to bother even more with justifications.

Re: 1764-1772 Foreign policy: Poland: 1768-1772

[mildred_of_midgard]

both Sweden and France were supposed to guarantee these conditions were listened to in the HRE

Foreign policy side note her: remember when I said Fritz kept offering mediation between Austria and Turkey for non-benevolent reasons? It's not only because mediating means you consider yourself militarily capable of intervening to support a treaty you guaranteed, it means you now have an excuse if you want to intervene in the future. If you can half-convincingly spin something another country does as a violation of a treaty (or constitution) you're supposed to guarantee, hey presto! you can invade and occupy and (attempt to) do whatever you want to enforce that treaty/constitution.

It's why Russia and at least some of the Poles are at odds over whether Russia should continue being the "guarantor" of Polish territorial integrity and the Polish constitution (i.e. can Russia invade any time it can find a convenient excuse, which not all the Poles want). It's why Catherine made Russia a guarantor of the Treaty of Westphalia in 1779, when she intervened to mediate in the War of the Bavarian Succession. Guaranteeing the Treaty of Westphalia gave Russia major intervention rights in Germany. Just add one semi-plausible excuse!

it's his inheritance via his Spanish wife

As flimsy an excuse as it gets, because the Spanish had required that she formal renounce her claims in the marriage contract specifically to avoid this scenario, but Louis XIV hand-waved it as "But the marriage contract also says they will pay X amount as her dowry, and they're so bankrupt they haven't managed that, so obviously the whole treaty is invalid, which means I can do what I want!"

Notice "The whole treaty was invalidated by them first!" is also the excuse Catherine used when annexing the Crimea. It's a popular one in our period.

Re: 1764-1772 Foreign policy: Poland: 1768-1772

[mildred_of_midgard]

How about Russia taking Crimea, was that just pure conquest or did they motivate it with prior claims?

Not prior claims, but there was definitely some handwaving of excuses! Prior claims was only one way of justifying conquest. Another was "the other side started it, and this is just war damages!" Another was "But the locals *want* us instead of their current rulers!"

The Ottoman Empire being an empire, the original detachment of the Crimea from the Ottoman Empire was justified as a war of "liberation" (sound familiar?). The Russians were just rescuing the Crimean khanate from Ottoman oppression and restoring it to a state of independence! Then for almost ten years, there was local infighting and revolts, and their puppet khan kept getting overthrown, and finally, in 1783, again quoting from Madariaga:

In March Potemkin returned to St Petersburg and threw his influence into the scales in favour of outright annexation. A trumped-up excuse was found--an alleged incursion by the Porte in Taman'--and on 8 April 1783, Catherine signed the manifesto proclaiming her intention of annexing the Crimea. She justified the decision on the grounds that Russia had already spent twelve million rubles in defending the khanate's independence, and that the Porte had destroyed the mutual treaty obligations between Russia and Turkey by its attack on Taman'. The manifesto undertook to respect the persons and property of the Tartars, to grant them the free exercise of their religion, and to extend to them the rights enjoyed by Russians.

So as you can see, even with a non-Christian monarch, you still need an excuse if you don't want such bad PR that all your neighbors gang up on you. You want at least enough plausible deniability that at least some of your neighbors can decide it's fine to care more about their own self-interest and about the balance of power.