The Comparative Studies Of Prussian And Austrian Absolute Monarchies In Late Medieval And Early Modern Times

In the Medieval Time, the political developments of the Holy Roman Empire processed in imperial and regional levels, and the development of the Empire and the one of principal states competed each other. From the 70s of the 11th century and with the interactions of the empire and principal states, the imperial authority and the centralization of the imperial central government was declining. From the middle of 15 th century to the middle of the 17th century, in order to adapt to the increasingly tough internal and external situations, a series of Imperial Reforms were carried out, with the aims of the creations, improvement and effective functioning of the Imperial Institutions, so that the Estates of the Empire could have the access to participate the political affairs of the Empire. Due to these Imperial Reforms, the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nations became a hierarchical, federal, early-modern-time parliamentary democratic empire, the political powers of the Empire were shared by the Emperor and the imperial Estates, thus displaying not only a kind of political pluralism, but also some political centralization of the whole Empire, and providing a protecting frame in which the principal states could develop smoothly.The state-building of the German principalities went on smoothly in the political and social transitions from the medieval time to the early modern period, and the territories of the German princes developed into territorial states. With the introduction of the absolute monarchy into German Empire, many territorial states adopted this new mechanism and developed absolute monarchy in their states, and the state-building of the territorial states went into a new stage. In the process of absolute monarchy building, both Prussia and Austria performed very well and became the model of other states. Prussia, a poor state in the northeast of Empire, after the Thirty Years War, attached the creation of standing army into the first importance, thus created an absolute monarchy with strong sense of militarism. The army played a key role in the process of the absolute monarchy, and with the help of the army, Prussia abolished the plural structure of State and Estates, and the authority of the territorial central government was also enhanced. Prussia became a powerful state very quickly and became the leader of all German states during the creation of the Second Empire in the 19th century. Austria was composed of various peoples, the conflicts of different ethnic groups, religions and the split of territories are the key factors which influenced greatly the creation of Austrian absolute monarchy and made the centralization of the central government stay in a relatively low level.