Empires: Administration [AP World History Review] Unit 3, Topic 2

hi and welcome back to homeless turn in the last video we learned about how land based empires expanded their territory in this video we're going to talk about how the rulers of those empires legitimized and consolidated their power from 1450 to 1750 that's just a fancy way of saying that rulers during this period were very concerned to communicate one message I'm in charge and here's how you know I'm in charge so if you're ready I'm ready let's get to it so how did rulers consolidate and legitimize their power from 1450 to 1750 what an insightful

question let's start in Europe in Europe we can see three ways first is the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings we have a good example of this in England and the rule of King James the first now James is a big believer that Kings ruled because the Almighty Himself put that king in power and under this kind of thinking the king was the vise region of Jesus his self that's a pretty good way to consolidate power because if the people believe in the Divine Right of Kings like the King believes in the Divine Right

of Kings then that means to challenge the king is to challenge God and no good Christian wants to find themselves in the position of challenging God now the ugly underbelly of this doctrine is that Kings could and often did consider themselves outside the law because what the King did was if so facto the will of God another way Kings consolidated power in England specifically was the establishment of the justices of the peace under the Tudor dynasty justices the peace were sent out to the various counties of England when they arrived they settled legal disputes and

generally carried out the will of the monarch in the places where the monarch wouldn't go however since we're talking about England I should also mention that this consolidation of power did not go unchecked in 1689 Parliament passed the English Bill of Rights which guaranteed civil liberties to the people these included liberties like freedom to petition the king and protections from cruel and unusual punishment but back to the consolidation of power over in France during this time we see the rise of absolutism which is a monarchical system that puts absolute power into the hands of one

man namely the king and there was something of a progression here Henry the fourth began the process by insisting like King James in England on the Divine Right of Kings louis xiii established a group of folks called in tendons which are a lot like england's justices of the peace these were folks posted all throughout France to execute the will of the king and to collect taxes and sometimes you'll hear them referred to as tax farmers because of this latter respond ability and then the absolutist flame was cranked to its hottest in the rule of louis

xiv who consolidated so much power that he was a virtual dictator he combined both the legislative and the judicial systems in his own person not only that but in order to seal his power he built the Magnificent Palace at Versailles or if you're from Georgia like I am Versailles once this palace was complete Louis decreed that the French Nobles must take up residence there and made it very difficult for them to oppose ok enough about Europe let's see how the Ottomans consolidated and legitimized their power to control their Empire the Ottoman Sultans used a system

called dev Shearman basically this is a system in which the Ottoman Sultans took in slaves people from the tribute states of their empire and once they had these people they made them serve in the military or turn them into administrators of the Empire now since islam teaches that a muslim couldn't enslave a fellow muslim they took these slaves from the southern European and Balkan Christian population and they were in large part young boys anywhere from 8 to 20 years old now to be fair these boys received an exquisite education and philosophy and politics and the

arts and this made them capable of being wise and just administrators in the name of the Sultan there's a group of these folks that I want to mention by name the Janissaries these enslaved boys were trained to be an elite squad in the Ottoman army kind of like the Rangers in the United States Army and after all this training and education the Christian slaves whether they were fighting for the Sultan or administering his reign grew fiercely loyal to the Sultan ok let's check out how the consolidation of power is going on in East and Southeast

Asia now I mentioned the last video that the yuan dynasty which was established by the mongols was overthrown in the late 14th century by the Ming Dynasty and one of the main goals of the Ming rulers was to erase every vestige of Mongolian rule therefore they reintroduced the civil service examination and beefed up the bureaucracy to make things nice and Chinese again let's see what's happening in Japan prior to this period and a little bit into this period Japan was organized a lot like feudal Europe you had the daimyo which was the land owning aristocracy

and the daimyo employed a clan of paid warriors to protect their land called the samurai and in the time before the period we're considering there was lots of conflicts between various daimyo over territory and that left Japan fractured socially and politically but over time a few of these daimyo grew more and more powerful and unified more and more of Japan and the of this consolidation of power came in the tokugawa shogunate under the leadership of Tokugawa Ieyasu who himself was a former land owning aristocrat the government was reorganized so as to remove power from the

daimyo and transfer to the hands of the Shogun and Tokugawa Ieyasu apparently took a page out of the louis xiv playbook and required the daimyo to have a double residence one on their land and the second in the capital city of tokyo so the Shogun could keep an eye on them now over in india much of the same thing is going on akbar who was arguably the greatest ruler of the Mughal Empire worked hard to extend his king and as he did he established a very efficient system for managing and much like other empires did

during this time Akbar created a group of people who went out into all the places of his territory and collected taxes and carried out his will and in India these folks were called zamindar's so far we've talked a lot about how rulers consolidate their power how they communicate I'm in charge but now let's look at some examples of how they legitimize their power which is to say I'm in charge and here's how you know I'm in charge in the three main ways that rulers legitimize their power was through religion art and architecture in Africa the

song a ruler Askia the great claimed Islam as the official religion of his Empire and doing so created a sense of cultural continuity throughout the Empire in India Shah Jahan commissioned the Taj Mahal as a tomb for his wife the Ottomans after conquering Constantinople and changing it to Istanbul built magnificent mosques including the most magnificent of them all the Suleymaniye mosque can I already mention what louis xiv did in france he built the palace of versaille they might be wondering how does all that convince the people that this person is in charge let me say

it this way laws work on people's wills religion art and architecture work on people's imaginations in general when people see such magnificent buildings or they believe in a new religion or it seems wonderful art it has a way of working in their guts to say whoever made this must be the one in power ok that's what you need to know about how rulers consolidated and legitimize their power from 1450 to 1750 if you want to consolidate my power as the undisputed absolute YouTube overlord of all things AP World History then subscribe and come along and

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