Enlightened Absolutism and the Causes of the American Revolution

   “Enlightened absolutism” has to do with the countries and rulers of Prussia, Russia, Austria (the three -ias), and Spain.  These three rulers at that time were Frederick II, Catherine the Great, Joseph II, and Charles III.  Significant things happened on both sides that caused the American Revolution which ended with the Americans winning their freedom from the British.  Two of these significant happenings were the Boston Tea Party and the Stamp Act.

   King Frederick II of Prussia, Queen Catherine of Russia, Joseph II of Austria, and Charles III of Spain all believed in absolute power and whom exercised their absolute power.  However, they also believed in specific ideas of the Enlightenment thinkers.  Some even had friendships with some Enlightened people.  King Frederick II and Catherine the Great were friends with Voltaire.  Catherine had another friendship with Diderot.  

   However, some of the Enlightenment ideas that the rulers believed in were of the following: religious toleration, the idea of education, the idea of a god who was the creator, but that he didn’t deserve any other thought, and the idea of a different condition of the serfs.  These were just a few of the ideas the absolute rulers agreed with.

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   The people of America in the mid-1700s were being taxed heavily by England because England feared the people would try to separate from England and form a its own country.  England was already afraid when the people in America started having its own representatives.  Therefore, England started creating different acts.  

   Among them are the Sugar and Stamp Acts which had to do with one thing in particular: taxes.  Many Americans boycotted and didn’t buy anything from England that was taxed or they would find a way to smuggle those things in without having to pay for the heavy tax.  The Stamp Act was repealed because hardly anyone was buying documents, papers, newspapers, etc., because all of those items had taxes.

   As if the Stamp Act wasn’t enough, Britain went ahead and put taxes on tea, glass, lead, paint, paper, and other products similar to those.  This act was called the Townshend Act.  The Americans boycotted this as well, and the act was repealed except for the tax on tea.  This was the cause of the Boston Tea Party, when colonists dressed up as Indians and dumped the load of tea from Britain into the ocean from a ship.  However, the British continued to add more and more acts, such as the Quartering Act, where the colonists were forced to allow British soldiers into their homes to rest, eat whatever they wished, etc.  Eventually the Americans could take it no longer and declared war against England and wrote the Declaration of Independence which actually sparked the beginning of the war.

~Perrissa