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In the mid-18th century, Germany struggled in European politics, overshadowed by powerful nations like France, Britain, and Spain, while its fragmented states faced provincialism and a weakening central government. As small regional governments led by aristocrats and local elites operated independently, they focused on self-interest rather than national unity, resulting in a lack of political cohesion and economic development.

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Peter John Heather Lecturer in Modern History, University of Oxford. Author of Goths and Romans, 332–489.

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History of Germany - Germany from c. 1760 to 1815 | Britannica

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History of Germany - Germany from c. 1760 to 1815: Germany in the middle of the 18th century was a country that had been drifting in the backwaters of European politics for more than a hundred years. The decisive roles in the affairs of the Continent were played by those great powers—such as France, Britain, and Spain—whose economic resources and commercial connections provided a solid foundation for their military might. The German states, on the other hand, floundered in a morass of provincialism and particularism. All the forces that had contributed to the rise of powerful national monarchies west of the Rhine were lacking in the east. In the Holy

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The unification of the German states from the Holy Roman Empire, which formed the German Confederation, was a complex process influenced by the rivalry between Austria and Prussia. Ultimately, Prussia, led by Otto von Bismarck's skilled political maneuvers, achieved German unity

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How A Thousand Divided German States United Into A Single Empire

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In the late 1700s, the Spanish government in Mexico sent explorers and settlers to the area, founding Mission Dolores in San Francisco in 1776 and later establishing Rancho San Pablo by 1815 as the first permanent non-Indian settlement in Contra Costa County. The land was named San Pablo in 1811 by priest Ramón Abella, while Mexico's independence from Spain led to the division of mission lands.

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Spanish and Mexican Era (1776-1846) | San Pablo, CA - Official Website

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In this video, John Green talks about the revolutions in Latin America during the 1800s. At that time, Spain and Portugal controlled the region. Inspired by the American and French revolutions, many people in South America wanted change.

He discusses Brazil’s “soft” revolution, where Prince Pedro took power from his dad but promised to give it back if King João returned. Then, he looks at the violent revolutions in Mexico, Venezuela, and Argentina. Despite Simón Bolívar's dream of a united South America being crushed, he helped free several countries and has many schools and parks named after him.

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Latin American Revolutions: Crash Course World History #31

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After the fall of Rome, the Italian Peninsula was divided into many independent states, and there was little push for unification until Napoleon invaded and briefly established the Kingdom of Italy. Although the first Italian war for independence failed, it set the stage for unification, which was achieved in 1861 under Victor Emanuel II, with Rome becoming the capital in 1870 after the French withdrew during the Franco-Prussian War.

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After the death of Charles II of Spain, the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14) led to a reorganization of power in Italy, primarily between the Austrian Habsburgs and Spanish Bourbons. The resulting Treaties of Utrecht and Rastatt established a new balance, with various territories changing hands, including Austria gaining Naples, Sardinia, and Milan, while Spain eventually regained control of Naples and Sicily after further conflicts.

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After the death of the last Spanish Habsburg, Charles II (ruled 1665-1700), fighting over the remnants of Spain's European empire consumed the continent's powers in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-14). The Treaties of Utrecht (1713) and Rastatt (1714) inaugurated a new pattern of state relations in Italy between Austrian Habsburgs, Spanish Bourbons (with Bourbon France always in the background), and the independent states. After complicated military and diplomatic maneuvers, this pattern eventually stabilized into a long-term equilibrium. In the initial treaties, Naples, Sardinia, and Milan (which had incorporated Mantua after the last Gonzaga had sold it to Louis XIV in 1701) passed to the Austrian Habsburgs; and Sicily went to Victor Amadeus II, duke of Savoy, who assumed the title of king of Sicily. Renewed Spanish hostilities, however, forced Victor Amadeus to cede Sicily to Austria in exchange for Sardinia in the Treaty of The Hague (1720). Spain acquired the duchy of Parma and Piacenza in 1731. In 1734, during the War of the Polish Succession, Charles, son of the Bourbon Philip V of Spain, conquered the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily from Austria. Spain had thus regained its two largest Italian possessions. After the Medici dynasty in Tuscany died out in 1737, Francis Stephen ( Francis I)-duke of Lorraine, husband of Maria Theresa of Austria, and Holy Roman emperor after 1745-ruled as grand duke of Tuscany from Vienna. And in 1748, after the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-48), Austria regained Milan, which it had lost more than once in the preceding years.

Society and economy

A slow economic recovery began in Italy in the mid-1680s, but it remained weak into the early 18th century. A slump in the 1730s gave way to strong mid-century economic growth, until the famines of 1763-67 highlighted the weakness and inefficiency of government policies. Regional differences in Italy's agricultural structure led to even greater divergences between north and south. Whereas some northern urban industries found refuge in smaller centres and rural settings, the south came to rely economically almost exclusively on agriculture. Overall, Italy's foreign trade decreased and its exports shifted from high-value manufactured goods to relatively inexpensive raw materials (including agricultural products) and semifinished goods, while it became a net importer of finished industrial products. At the same time, the Italian domestic market also contracted, and increasing social and institutional constraints further limited productive and mercantile opportunities. While Italy's population between 1700 and 1800 rose by about one-third, to 18 million, that of the rest of Europe grew at twice that rate. Italy's relative demographic and economic stagnation were to prevent an agrarian or industrial revolution during the 18th century.

The aristocracy retained hegemonic control of politics and economics, dominating land ownership and manipulating legal and political institutions in the towns to maintain their position. Tensions and conflicts arose from time to time between the central authority of the absolutist states and the nobility, between the rich bourgeoisie or professional classes and the nobility, and among the nobles themselves, but the nobility blocked, worked out compromises with, and co-opted these rival groups to preserve aristocratic predominance. In the north, especially in the republican states, city oligarchies resisted erosion of their power and privileges. In sharp contrast, the social and economic position of the urban masses and the growing rural population deteriorated, while the difficulties of daily life increased.

Political thought and early attempts at reform

By the beginning of the 18th century, a new cultural climate opened Italy to a wide range of European ideas-especially the philosophical thought of René Descartes, Pierre Gassendi, Benedict de Spinoza, Pierre Bayle, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Sir Isaac Newton, and Hugo Grotius. With it new cultural institutions came to the fore. The Academy of Arcadia, founded in Rome in 1690, exemplified the channeling of energies for rationalism and innovation. Among its more famous members, Gian Vincenzo Gravina, Ludovico Antonio Muratori, and Giambattista Vico gained renown by launching juridical, historical, aesthetic, and "scientific" critiques of society. Vico's Scienza nuova (1725; The New Science), the most enduring work produced by this group, found tepid reception in its own day, and the author's ideas on a universal philosophy of history won wide acceptance among Enlightenment thinkers only in the 1770s. Paolo Mattia Doria (1662?-1746) and the Medinaceli Academy in Naples also employed historical inquiry to seek remedies for society's ills. Doria revived the idea of a Platonic republicanism of philosophic magistrates, in which an anti-Enlightenment Catholicism would become a kind of civil religion. In Naples he led his group of self-styled "ancients" against the scientific "moderns" led by the Neapolitan diplomat Celestino Galiani and Bartolomeo Intieri, a Florentine factor in Naples who provided a link to Tuscan intellectual circles. The ministerial class that developed in Spanish Italy from the early 16th century helped foster such networks of intellectual exchange between the cities of Italy and between Italy and the broader cosmopolitan centres of 18th-century Europe.

The political and cultural roles of the church-in particular, the supranational character of the papacy, the immunity of clerics from the state's legal and fiscal apparatus, the church's intolerance and intransigence in theological and institutional matters, as well as its wealth and property-constituted the central problems in the reform schemes of Italy's nascent intellectual movement. The most incisive breakthrough came from Pietro Giannone (1676-1748), a Neapolitan jurist, who employed a jurisdictional, historical method to oppose church abuse of power and to break the church's stranglehold on the state. Probably the strongest arguments for church reform came from Enlightenment thinkers Francesco Scipione, marchese di Maffei (1675-1755), and Muratori (1672-1750), who sought to reconcile politics with morality and religion. Muratori's Della pubblica felicità (1749; "On Public Happiness") reached Bourbon audiences in French and Spanish translations and was probably read in the Austrian Habsburg realms by Maria Theresa herself.

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Italy - Reform and Enlightenment in the 18th century

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Italy - Italy - Reform and Enlightenment in the 18th century: After the death of the last Spanish Habsburg, Charles II (ruled 1665-1700), fighting over the remnants of Spain's European empire consumed the continent's powers in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-14).